Taking Flight

This morning I set out for a run, choosing the trail behind my apartment which weaves through rolling fields, past a pond, over a brook and by some pine woods. I hadn't been running in a few days and my lungs felt it,  and my legs were a little shaky, but I ventured on, determined to add five miles to my running tally. As I passed the pond a Great Blue Heron took flight, he was invisible to my eyes until he made his move. It jarred me from my meditation. Herons transition between water, land and air, and although it appears that their bodies may be heavy as they take off, once they are airborne, their flight is smooth. It occurred to me that over the last few months I have been considering myself to be in a transition period, graduating from college, and waiting for the next adventure to begin, that new job or writing project. I have been focusing on getting someplace, finding that source of income, making a contribution to society. When that didn't happen this summer, my first instinct was to run away, to start over in a new place, because maybe just maybe I would actually get somewhere then. But today as my lungs reminded me to stay present and the heron reminded me to pay attention, I realized that I haven't been in a transitional limbo. This is a necessary part of life. Just as winter isn't the transitional period between autumn and spring, the last few months haven't been the transition between school and employment. Winter is essential. Without it there would be no opportunity for new life to sprout. Life is cyclical, each day is necessary, not just another 24 hours to get through in order to get to the good stuff. As westerners I think we value the active life, the workaholism, the doing doing doing. Meditation and quiet seem unnecessary in the scheme of life, because nothing gets done. But watch a heron as it stands completely still in the water. In that stillness is action, without it the fish would never be spied. When the time comes I will be called to action just as the heron will move to spear its prey, but just for today this stillness, this so called "transition" period is exactly what I need to be experiencing. When I ran this morning, what mattered wasn't my starting point (my house,) or my ending point (my house,) but the grass, the mud, the cattails and heron between the two points. That is the journey, that is the point.

It just might be time for a nap...

I have been putting off writing this post for a few weeks now, resistance is a powerful force, and is futile, as the Borg say. But what I resist is what I know I need to look at. On September 1, my son went off to college, leaving a very quiet, empty home. I am also no longer a student and at present have no job title. And this is exactly where I need to be at the moment. My person has been stripped of cultural markers, labels and identities. I am no longer a single working mom or a student and I am no longer (insert job title here.) What is left when we strip away the external words that identify us as legitimate members of society? I have had much quiet time lately, time to think (not always a productive way to spend time,) write, meditate and be with God. I am not alone and I am whole because I am spirit, but it is hard to force my way past the voices (don't worry now) that tell me I should be doing more, that I am not worth anything unless I am actively contributing to society. But when I force life to happen (such as sending out 40 resumes with spelling errors or frantically texting my child) God has a way of gently coercing me down a different trail, usually toward quiet, unplanned solitude. I have to allow life to unfold while taking the next right action. What does it feel like to be, without a purpose? Pretty scary to this workaholic, but that is what needs to happen. I need to sit in the unknown, without any answers and learn to feel comfortable there. My soul needs to just hang out, without my ego expecting her to perform, to do, to hustle through the day. Who am I without, labels? The question seems cliche, but is relevant because I don't know the answer. I have a feeling though, that if I just make peace with the quiet, some knowledge might come. And if it doesn't, at least I will have gotten a lot of use out of my hammock. 

Looking at Myself

Today is a day of remembrance for all who died on September 11, ten years ago. I wonder though, if we could remember all who have died, period. Yes, violence was directed at us, but what about those we kill? Are they somehow not worthy of our prayers and love? What about the millions of people killed in senseless war, even the Native Americans we killed, either through malice and greed or via the introduction of illness? Can I look at the violence I put out into the world, the anger, the jealousy, the fear? Where have I contributed to the violence that seeps our beloved planet? Am I senselessly using more than my fair share of resources? Am I purchasing products that support repression of peoples? Am I eating food that has been treated inhumanely? Am I tailgating the driver in front of me? There are many ways in which I contribute to this already violent world. Just for today, can I suspend all forms of violence and send prayers to all who have died and acknowledge all the harm that I have done, either knowingly or in ignorance. Perhaps I can continue this ritual tomorrow as well.

Fly...no wait, come back

I delivered my son safely to college this past Thursday and immediately plunged into an uncomfortable emotional experience. There is a phenomenon out there known by psychologists as empty nest syndrome. It is not actually an illness, but rather a certain set of feelings that accompany this transition period. Where once one's life is consumed by raising a child, now the parent must discover what it is like to be an unencumbered adult. After getting my fledgling settled into a room half the size of my bathroom (which he will share with two other teenage boys) I drove home, with a stop at the grocery store for the ever-consoling pint of Ben and Jerry's. I ran into another empty nester in the store and realized that I no longer had to buy three bags of chips so that I could guarantee that I would be able to eat six. I could put the chocolate milk back in the cooler, and one brick of cheese would suffice. My attitude was less than chipper and I spent hours lamenting the fact that I was a single mom, no longer a mom, just a single lady alone in the world. I had an empty nest. Thank God someone told me it was time to spread my wings and fly. And thank Goddess that I had friends that surrounded me, reminding me that although I do now have this empty nest, I have a full life. I will always be a parent, but I need to learn how to let my child learn to be an adult. And in order to do that I need to spread my wings, and show him how to leap. The Ben and Jerry's helped as did the nachos and Haagen Daaz (I am an equal opportunity ice cream eater, although read more on gelato in my other blog.) A healthy dose of gratitude was what lessened the symptoms of ENS, I have an amazing life and an amazing child that I will miss dearly. I will get to see him soon, and when I do he will be soaring without me. Isn't that, after all, the point?

Ok so...

life is going to unravel exactly the way it is supposed to...God will handle it, without my hand reaching into the cookie jar. So why not just allow it? Why is it so scary to actually turn my will and life over to my Creator? Am I really that arrogant as to think that I can come up with better solutions? Or do I not trust in times of anticipation? The questions I need to ask: What is in my survival kit? What is in my spiritual tool kit? My survival kit involves the desire to manipulate or control my surroundings and closed hands. My spiritual tool kit contains prayer, meditation, gratitude, acceptance, my God box, and open hands. Yesterday I made the proclamation that God was going to do whatever the $%^& He wanted anyway, so I might as well surrender. I think I actually did. I surrendered and then I got to work, cleaning my sock drawer, where I found the money I had lost 6 months ago. Surrender + Action + Faith = Grace. The leaves are beginning to change on my favorite old oak tree that I can see as I sit here in front of the window in my apartment. I don't know how long I will be able to stay here, I haven't been able to pay rent. But I know that my Higher Power will guide me as long as I can give up my control, as long as I can just allow Grace to enter, to allow a little space in my head for the answers. So today I will finish this post, I will keep my appointment with someone at a local college who will give me some much needed career advice, I will open the study guide to the GRE exam and I will be ok...so...

The Eyes Have It

The other day I day I drove past a hiker who had just emerged from a segment of the Appalachian Trail. For the briefest of moments I caught his eye, or he caught mine. I will never see this gentleman again, I don't even remember what he looked like, but I do remember connecting with him through that glance. Call me crazy (you won't be the first) but connection is possible, even for seconds, as we pass our fellow travelers on this journey we might call life. We hear that the eyes are the window to the soul or that some guy or gal caught your eye. There is something about looking someone directly in the eye (don't try this with dogs or just-released convicts however.) G.K. Chesterton said, "There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect." We consult our third eye, we create in our mind's eyes and we live in a visual culture, a culture that champions what can be seen, or what can be proved. Even what cannot be seen, has to be translated into a picture, a God with flowing white beard, Krishna with a flute or Buddha with a belly. We even relate our Selves with our eyes. Our ego, the "I" in English is a homonym of this gateway to the soul. In Italian, "I" or "Io" is found at the end of the word for eye, "occhio." Yes that argument is a little far reaching and no I am not going to hang out with Google translate all day to prove a point (is there a point at all?) There is the eye of the beholder, the eye of the tiger, or an eye for detail. We have a vision for our futures and we look back on our past. The ayes have it, "aye aye Captain," look that problem straight in the eye. So I looked, or rather glanced at that hiker, right in the eye, I connected for that moment with someone, who knows what would happen if I did that more in my daily life. What would it look like, if I, say looked at the cashier as I said thank you? Would it mean more than an automatic polite response? Or am I inviting trouble? As James Hetfield said, "It's all fun and games 'till someone loses an eye, then it's just fun you can't see." Made no sense? Well I will try to end this short essay with another quote by Wordsworth. "With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things." May your day be filled with harmony, joy and beautiful things. Take time to pay attention to the beauty and connect with another, after all, there is more to life than meets the eye.

A Dog's Life

The Partnership for Animal Welfare defined temperament as "the general attitude a dog displays towards people and other animals; it is the combined inherited and acquired physical and mental traits that influence the dog's behavior." Temperament is hereditary, but behavior is the result of the upbringing and external situations in which the dog was exposed. While we might not be able to change the temperament of a dog, we can influence its behavior. I worked at an area Humane Society years ago and was able to observe the temperament testing that each new shelter dog had to undergo. Once the dog's natural drives were identified we were then able to work to amend the dog's behavior, to help him to unlearn reactions to situations, whether social or drive related. Dogs 4 Life, a training center, wrote that there are three social temperaments in dogs; social, neutral and unsocial. The social is just how it sounds, dog greets you with a nice friendly wag of the tail, perhaps a slurpy kiss. The unsocial reacts with either fight (aggression) or flight (hiding or fear). Now I know I am not a dog, and perhaps some might find it offensive to be compared to an animal (we are mammals, part of the animal kingdom whether we like it or not) but I think there is something here. What is my temperament versus my behavior. What is my ingrained response to the world, hereditary perhaps (you do know that this is the one post my parents will stumble upon), versus how I react to the world. If I can pinpoint that, say in my social response, maybe I can understand why fear is such a driving force for me today. I could consider my temperament to be that of an unsocial dog. And according to Dogs 4 Life, "The unsocial dog needs a program of counter-conditioning the fight/flight response, through classical conditioning and removing the reward for the aggression." When I am in fear, as I am now, stewing in my lack of earning potential, I either lash out at the world, blaming everyone else for my problems or I retreat into a cave, hiding and removing myself from life. I either want to throw a rock or step in front of a moving vehicle. I slip into the deep subconscious and react without thinking. What would be my counter-conditioning program? As an unsocial creature perhaps the answer is the end to self-imposed isolation. I don't suppose that anyone will drop treats in front of me as a counter conditioning tool, but I do get "rewards" each time I try a new behavior. For instance, when I ask for a help, something counter intuitive, I receive the reward, providing I ask from someone equipped to actually help. When I call about a job opening, working against my ingrained tendencies to run and hide, I am rewarded with the satisfaction of working outside of my comfort zone. Today I will attempt to react to fear in a new way, and like my dog who gets a biscuit when she sits, I will gain the satisfaction of moving beyond my temperament, my base fears. I still want the cookie though...I would be happy with shoes as well. 


Resources:
http://www.dogs4life.com/Temperment_and_Pet_Train.html