Turning Over A New Leaf

New post.  What shall I talk about?  Sundays?  Rainy days?  Mondays?  Today is New Year's Day.  In my mind I have a yearly calendar that stretches from January through December like the letter C or the curve of a bow.  December does not connect to January.  To go from December 31st to January 1st you must cross an inlet of blank space.  I have had the opportunity to inquire of  a few others about their internal calendars and none of theirs resembled mine.  Granted my sample is small, but still I find this interesting.  I wonder why my internalized calendar is this way.  

This morning I opened up One Day At A Time in Alanon which is a daily reader.  It has a short entry for every day of the year.  Now, I admit that I have gotten out of the habit of reading from this every morning so it didn't fully hit me that it was January 1st, New Year's Day until I parted the book cover and out of habit, headed toward the rear of the book where December's readings are located.  That's when it hit me that it was no longer December and that I could not read a January entry from the rear of the book.  It was time to start over, time to go to the front.  I closed the back cover, turned the book over and started from the beginning.  I turned a page and then another until I came to the heading, "January 1st".  That's when I got hit a second time.  My internalized calendar is read, like a book! It is turning over a new leaf, finishing a book and starting it anew.   The inlet of space between December 31st and january 1st is the space created when you close a book and turn it over to open it anew. 

To my recollection, my internalized calendar goes back for as long as I can remember, predating my few years of reading Alanon daily readers.  I cannot say exactly why I internalized the calendar this way but I can say that I found feet-up, arms-behind-the-head satisfaction in the epiphany that my internalized calendar not only isn't odd, but is down right poetic.  Indeed, starting your first few conscious moments of New Year's Day with an epiphany is not a bad start at all.

Somewhere

Who am I?
I am a dancer,  a writer,  an artist at heart.

I am a scientist,  a humanist, an intellectual.

I am not timely,  organized or well spoken.

I process slowly. I think deeply.

I seek meaning in actions,  in words, in art,  in silence. 

I find boredom in complacency.

I feel socially awkward.  I think of my friendships often.  I reach out to them infrequently.

I am one person in a country on a planet spinning on its axis around a sun in a solar system in a galaxy somewhere in the universe.

Who are you?
Do we matter?
What has meaning? Biologically? Individually?  Culturally?  Spiritually?  Artistically?  Professionally? Globally?  Universally?

What does it mean to be alive? Biologically? Individually?  Culturally?  Spiritually?  Artistically?  Professionally? Globally?  Universally?

What does it mean to be dead?
"You are dead to me. "
"It is dead to me. "
"He was dead to me,  once. "

I am alive.  No one is dead to me.  I breath,  eat,  think,  sleep, feel,  heal,  move,  express,  love,  withdraw,  confess, reach out timidly to people in a world spinning on its axis around a sun in a solar system in a galaxy somewhere in the universe.

simple questions, no simple answers

I was recently at a party when someone asked me if others were accepting when I told them that I couldn't deliver what they wanted.  My first thought was, they have no choice but to be accepting.  My second thought was, do they?

To answer their question, I had to ask myself what does it mean to be accepting? What does accepting behavior look like?  To me, acceptance means surrendering to reality, no longer resisting, pushing back or trying to change it to be what one wants it to be.  This means no arguing, foot stomping, chest puffing, silent treatment, guilting, shaming, or bargaining.  It certainly doesn't include name calling, use of pejoratives or threats.

The next question I had to ask myself is how do I define reality?  Reality is not the bendable thing I have tried to superimpose on my children, the type they could alter by pushing back or by any of the other before mentioned behaviors of non-acceptance.  Those of us who grew up with such malleable realities tend to lack in adulthood discrimination between the arbitrary realities set down by a weakly committed parent and the true realities of life on life's terms.  Even if you didn't experience this, acceptance doesn't come easily.  It requires an admission of powerlessness, not an American ideal.

We grow up hearing "we can be anything we want to be," "do anything we put our mind to," "we can overcome," "nothing is impossible," and "where there is a will there is a way".  These pump you up, feel good sayings I believe to be blatantly untrue and harmful.  I postulate that we would be better served by growing up hearing that "some things we cannot change," "where there is willfulness there is disappointment," "some things are impossible" and "maturity is recognizing when to surrender".  How much more peace might we all experience with such slogan soaked psyches?

As you might imagine, there was a long pause after I was asked that original question, a pause which belied the answer I wanted to give.  The truthful answer is largely, No.  Others are not accepting when I tell them I cannot grant them their wish, and for the most part, I am okay with that now.  It is not pleasant being in the presence of another who is fighting acceptance, but I've been there and I will be there again.  I do my best to greet others in the grips of willfulness with understanding and compassion because I don't like it when life doesn't go according to my plan and timeline.  So in those moments when I am receiving their push back, I try to remember that life is not going according to their plan right now and that sucks for them.  Most importantly, I try to remember that the person whose happiness is most disrupted is the one who has not surrendered.  In those moments I am grateful that this time, it is not mine.

I wrote this earlier this year while camping at Rock Island Campground in the Leavenworth area.

Will you meditate with me, Wise One?
Is this where you reside?
Are you inside of me or walking by my side?
Are you everywhere, by every tree I pass?
Waiting and watching, your patience outlasts.

I like that you are near me, never too far to hear my voice.
Of all that is good and wise, you make me feel deserving.
Tenderness, a gentle kiss, a forgiving heart, a kind goodbye.

With you I feel a rejoicing, a dance, a song of joy.
You're a parent, a friend, a breeze, a bird, a fire's flame, a kind word.
You're in the hardships, the lessons that I learn.
You spare me no part of you.  
Without the worst I wouldn't know the good that lives here too.

On spiritual practice

I have chosen to spend some time in silence today, to connect with God and to be with myself.  It feels good.  It feels loving.  I want to practice today continually asking God what his will is for me now.

Right now I am receiving the message that taking a shower, cleaning the kitchen and making meatballs is how he wants me to take care of myself.  Rather than those being dreaded and boring tasks, they become ways of saying, "Laine, you are important to me."  Hmm. That is a new way to think about it.  I can do the same when it comes to picking out clothes for work tomorrow or sitting down to look at finances.  For now, I look forward to getting out of bed.  I look forward to taking care of myself - in all of my affairs.

God - Help me to choose your will.  I can trust in so doing, that you will provide the time to accomplish all that is important.  If your will is for me to write, than I needn't make it happen.  You will give me the opportunity to do so.  I am glad that trusting in you and doing your will doesn't mean that something is sacrificed.  As I allow your will be become mine, the less I experience deprivation.  Thank you for transforming my life from one of self-sacrifice into one of abundance.

Transitions

As I have indicated before, things in my life are changing.  I am preparing to move.  I am preparing to lose my dog, my companion for 14 years.  My professional interests are changing.  I am transitioning into a life of unity with a significant other.  My relationships with my children are transitioning as one inches toward adulthood and the other grapples with adolescence.

I wonder though, when is life not in transition?  I've held this idea that life occurs in discreet segments of plateaus followed by abrupt changes but as I write this, I feel this idea is changing.  Perhaps we are in a constant state of transition which at times is so slow that we cannot see it.  As the external landscape of my life transitions, so is the internal.  My thinking, my beliefs, my views of myself, of the world and my place in it is also in transition.

What is this correlation between the external and internal transitions?  Is there one?  Certainly changing life circumstances can occur without internal change, at least I believe that I have had that experience though I could be wrong.  I do know from my own experience, however, that internal changes allow me to experience my changing circumstances in a new way.  Yes.  There is a link between changes in my thinking and changes in how I experience the world.  I suppose this is why that while I am moving through changing life circumstances, I feel relatively unperturbed and on the whole, at ease.  I feel this way because of changes in my internal landscape.  Today I am grateful for the process of internal change.

On Peace

It is Nov 1st, 2010.  We have had a short and late summer this year.  However, fall is officially here.  The leaves on the trees are turning shades of orange and yellow and are forming a bright carpet on the sides of the road day by day.  Soon enough the trees of St. Edward's Park will be bare and I'll be able to see the sunset over Lake Washington through their skeletons.  How different the view is season by season.

Often I walk my dog, Rango, on the trails,  headphones on, lost to the external world of people but tuned into the sight of nature and into my internal world,  wherever the music transports me.

Music is magical that way.  It brings forward memory, dreams from the night before and emotion you thought was dead and buried over events long past or events you never realized had significant emotion attached to them at all.  One day you find yourself listening to

"The cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man on the moon
When you coming home dad
I don't know when
but we'll get together then,  son
You know we'll have a good time then,"

and tears are streaming down your face.  For the first time in forty years you realize that you are grieving the loss of a father you never knew not because he wasn't physically present but because he wasn't emotionally present.  As your fingers could touch his skin and feel his warmth,  or your ears could sense the resonance of his voice or the rattling of his snores, so too you wish it could be so easy to feel connected,  loved, and that you mattered to him.  These are the types of things I think about when I'm listening to music and walking my dog on the trails of St.  Edward's Park.

At the waters edge I remove my headphones.  The gentle waves lap against the shore.  The leaves rustle.  A bird chirps. Kenmore Air passes overhead and the clopping of a runner's foot passes behind me and fades into the trails from which I came.

I continue my trek up the hilly trail,  back to my vehicle, back to what awaits me. My focus shifts from the present to what's next.  Anxiety and dread return but I know that on the trail, beauty surrounds me and peace lies within me.  I need only return to experience it.

It would be three more years before I would realize that the experience of beauty and peace lies not out on the trail,  but is accessible always within.  How nice to find this bit of writing nearly three years to the day,  to see where I was and to be grateful for how far I've come.