Focus

I want to own myself.  I want to be fully in control of my actions.  I want to make my choices deliberately, consciously, not by rote learning or automatic defense mechanisms.

I am often avoidant without knowing that I am being avoidant.  I am unconscious and in-deliberate in it.  Many of my feelings are still instantly suppressed.  This is a new depth of self-awareness.  It is  like journeying to a deeper level of a darkened castle in a video game.  I do not know in which rooms I will find the demons but I know most by name: avoidance, dishonesty, justification, self-righteousness.  They are all defenses of fear.

Bit by bit God is illuminating the rooms in which they are held.  I needn't be afraid of them.  They are known to me.  They have served to protect me.  They have watched me grow.  They are only waiting for me to release them into the hands of God.  Like children who have been separated from a beloved parent, they run from their rooms to greet me, happy they no longer have to be on guard and acting in extremes but are freed to bless my life with the assets they offer when used in moderation.

I am coming to know myself more fully and to appreciate the wealth in my life experiences.   I will never own myself one hundred percent of the time but I can be grateful for the process of self-discovery which brings not only knowledge of my shortcomings but also nurtures the growth of foundling capabilities and transforms old skills into expertise.

Where I focus my time, thought and effort is where I experience growth.  Am I using my time wisely to develop the qualities, skills and expertise that I say I desire?  This is the question I must ask myself again and again.

chapels

What makes a chapel, a chapel, I ask myself?  I come here seeking peace, silence, tranquility.  I look around the room.  I see the stained glass art hanging on the wall.   Beneath it is a long wood table.  A single vase with a dry arrangement rests at one end.  At the other is a guest book.  I recall turning pages in that book, reading some of the entries, the reasons others had come here.  Some were grieving the illness or loss of a loved one.  Some were seeking solitude, answers or guidance.  I recall reading the entry of an employee who had visited on her last day.  She left a testimony of what her work had meant.  She had come to say goodbye.  She had come to remember and to be remembered.  Feeling inspired, I wrote my own entry that day.  Remembering this makes me smile.  I continue scanning the room.  In front of me is a table made from a tree trunk upon which my water bottle sits.  I am sitting in one of five chairs arranged in a circle around it.  There is a couch against one of the walls with a side table and lamp.  The couch and chairs are upholstered in light shades of blue, the walls painted a calming green.  There is a place for Catholics to kneel and pray and a rug for Muslim prayer.  In one corner is a cabinet made of a warmly stained wood.  The upper half contains a historical display of religious texts.  I take this all in and decide that it is not the things in the room, exactly, which make this a chapel.  It is the subtraction of things.  

There are no discussions to be had here, no meetings, no supporting rationals to be given.  Here, I need not be “on”, ready to go, shoes laced.  The decor, it contributes, but its contribution is in that it is almost meant to go unnoticed.  Yet, I notice this.

I ask myself, is it the absence of things which allows for the presence of God?  If I took any particular moment in my life and subtracted what was going on, would I not find this same space?  Would I not find God?  

I come to the chapel seeking silence.  So then, am I not seeking God?  And when I am seeking God, do I not go to quiet places, to the wilderness?  Do I not go alone?  To give God my attention, I go to quiet places and I go alone. 

Meditation is a place of silence.

Meditation is a place of solitude.

Meditation is a place where I can be with God.

Meditation is where I go now, to seek silence, to seek solitude, to seek God.

Physical pain and menopause

I remember being a child standing in our kitchen with the avacado green rotary phone, oblong table and tall kitchen chairs with whicker backs when my mom said, "Dammit, I'm having a hot flash!"

"Laine," she'd say.  "Go upstairs and turn down the thermostat, will you?"

Turning, I'd run and climb the stairs placing my palms down on the steps ahead of me, scrambling like a bear as fast as I could go.  Atop the second staircase against the wall which lay ahead was an ivory trunk and above that, the thermostat.  Placing my hands on the truck I'd jump up and scoot my knees beneath me.  Standing tall, the thermostat was at eye level.  "Just touch it 'til it turns on," I'd hear my mom's instructions in my head.  Gently I'd nudge the lever and like an old engine uncertain of starting, I'd hear the air conditioner turning over.

When I was in my twenties and thirties, I used to live in Austin, TX where it is 100+ degrees in the summer.  When the temperature drops down to 98 degrees in the shade, it feels downright lovely out, "cool" one might say.  I played competitive tennis in that heat where my face grew red, not from sunburn.  No, before each match, practice session or drill group I'd rummage through my tennis bag in search of my Coppertone Sport sunscreen.  It had to be Coppertone Sport. I'd give it a good shake before squeezing its not too greasy contents onto my hand. Starting at my ankles I'd make my way upward, applying it at last upon my face. If I was to be out more than two hours,  this ritual was to be repeated.  My face did not grow pink from sunburn.  It grew pink from the heat.  During change overs I'd pull a rag from a thermos of ice water and place it on my face and neck while downing cold gatorade from another thermos, warding off heat stroke.

Today I live in the Seattle area where more often than not the temperature remains in the 40's or 50's and where I can be infrequently found on the tennis court yet frequently my face is red.  When this happens, the last thing I want to do is exert myself and the only thing I can think of doing is removing my clothing and sticking my head in the freezer.  Should an attack occur while in the car I roll down the window.  Should passengers be on board I know what to expect, complaints, but I have a remedy.  I turn to face them.   The sight of my flushed face qwells their protests.  If stopped at a light, I will stick my whole head out of the window.  I don't care how it looks.  In that moment all I care about is cooling the fuck down.  Yes, physical pain and menopause, what do they have in common?  They are two experiences which cause me to cuss like a sailor. 

The first perimenopausal symptom I had, though you will not find it written as a symptom anywhere, were hot flashes of the ear, typically only one ear at a time.  When this first began, I searched the internet looking for a cause.  Was it related to niacin or some other dietary factor, I wondered?  There were plenty of other people reporting this experience on the web and also searching for answers, but I found no definite known cause.  I was okay with that and let it go.  Sometime, many months down the road, this red hot ear syndrome extended to my whole face. It wasn't so bad, I thought.  I rather liked the novelty of it and it was well worth not having to suffer through monthly periods.  Then the hot flashes grew worse.  They became hotter and they lasted longer.  It wasn't long before the hot flashes spread down my body.  My co-workers pointed out my flushing arms and my girlfriend pointed out that my back was wet with sweat.  Soon it was not only my back but also my belly, neck, chest and legs.  I might as well have been playing tennis on a hot summer day in Austin, TX.  I was, however, strangely grateful.  If I had to suffer through this experiece, at least there was an external manifestation of my inner discomfort, something others could at least see and sympathize with. 

How different this is than suffering from depression where what people notice on the outside is only a hint of the suffering felt on the inside.  It sheds light on the physical acts some will take when they do not have the words to express what they feel inside.  Their acts become their words, their means of expression.  A cut, a burn, a noose, what are these if not visible manifestations of an internal suffering which knows no other way to be pacified, let alone to be accepted?

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.