Remembering Lyn

My meditation walk is covered with yellow and brown leaves but the centers of energy around which I traverse can be brushed off.  Today I will walk in honor of a friend who left this earth on Sunday.

She was very tall and skinny and had been on life-sustaining, cancer abeyance medications for 4 years.  Her struggle to stay alive was coupled with her struggle to continue to work despite dizzying side effects. A gentle soul who cared deeply about ecology, peace and her daughters, we shared several threads of connection: the people we knew and living locations although at different times. Lyn was the Volunteer Coordinator at the hospice where I worked for some time and always tried to offer ideas for working with children since she had run creative programs for little ones for many years.

About a month ago, I visited Lyn in her home. She was still trying treatments but her body was rejecting even hydration attempts. She could no longer drive but she had many friends providing help.  She wanted to clear the energy in her home and we developed an affirmation for her to hold with intent. She wished to release negative thinking and ask for what she needs.  I gently suggested that she ask to receive whatever this was, including peace.  I lit sage and wafted it all over her home, upstairs and down, into nooks and corners, over boxes, books and bedclothes.  Lyn sat on her couch with her eyes close, desperate to hold on to the thinning cord of life that she still had.  With sympathy and love, I made her lunch and then gave her a cardboard circle and some pastels.  She made herself a shield with a golden center, black lines jagging out of the circle and blue lines of peaceful energy pointing in.  Then she said she was tired and I left.

Last week another former colleague and I went to see Lyn in the hospital.  We gave her a stone engraved with the word Peace and another that said “One Day at a Time.” She clutched them both and said she was scared but she also had what she needed – her two daughters had returned to be with her.  Lyn finally decided to enter Hospice on Friday.  My colleague felt that she would be more comfortable there and would probably feel better for a week or two; I thought I would have time to visit her again. But we did not know what was happening inside her.  Perhaps having finally accepted that death was near, she relaxed and let go.  Lyn floated into peace on Sunday.  She was a gentle, loving person and now, she has melted into that peaceful energy that surrounds us.

Today I will walk in Lyn’s memory rather than attend her funeral. I am glad I got to see her, hug her frail body, one more time before she left.  Relax, Lyn. You’ve been holding on for a long time.  You deserve this peace.

Buttercup in the morning

This morning I ventured out to Buttercup, walking quietly, following the path, following my breath, listening to bird song and squirrel rustles in the trees. Two deer ran across the path; two beaver stood on islands of their own creation before slipping in to the water and gliding away. I tossed a pebble into the water and watched the ripples change the reflection of the bare trees standing above the beaver dam. The geese on the other side silently swam away.

Stillness has never been comfortable for me. I am so action oriented; I want to DO rather than just BE. I want to BE something – writer, dancer, mother, wife.

This is how I describe myself, by a list of activities. There is some trepidation to claim the fullness and wholeness of who I really am, a struggling, evolving human trying to BE the best I can be. And even that is an activity – I am always trying to do something with my Being. Birds, frogs, beavers do not worry about this - or do they? They are busy building, nesting, swimming in the swampy water. But I treat my life as if it were some lump of unformed clay that I am supposed to mold into a beautiful, useful shape. I treat my losses as if they are obstacles rather than gifts for discovering a deeper way of Being. The losses, the gains are part of the shape of my life. Why do I always want to make them into something else?

It doesn't matter, really. I followed the path and my breath. I squatted on the wooden bridge and smelled the algae in the water. Bugs buzzed around my hair; they touched the water creating tiny ripples. The beavers did not return but it did not matter. I filled my basket with ferns, daisies and flowering branches. I filled my body with the sound and smells of the woodland. I walked back home, quietly.

Presence

There is a quality we can achieve sometimes, a heightened sense of integration and focus. It is a transpersonal, extra-ordinary way of being, an indescribable sense of being more than the sum of our ordinary responses. When we enter this zone, we often generate a presence that is more centered, concentrated and open at the same time.

I have experienced this state of integration during artistic performance, when singing with others or dancing on stage, or in moments of sharing or intimacy. I have also experienced it during meditation practice, something I engage in rarely, I must admit. I am not particularly scheduled or disciplined in this regard, but have learned over the years how to drop into a calm state of open awareness for short spurts. The best meditation practice for me is a walking meditation, and sometimes a walk can generate this calm, quiet focus naturally, without engaging in a personal lecture to me on the benefits and necessity of meditating in the first place.

In preparation for my first public workshop, I invited a dear friend for a nature walk. We did not do this silently; we always talk about many things when we are together – our feelings, worries, relationship issues, goals in our fledgling endeavors – yet about halfway through the walk, everything came together. Time slowed, and my sensory awareness heightened, even as we continued to talk, stopping to notice the shape of green algae on the water, separated by patches of clear, reflection filled stream. The scent of goldenrod and butterfly bush caressed us and the breeze blew our hair around. She gathered acorn caps for an art project; I picked a yellow flower and stuck it behind my ear. We took the long way through Buttercup Nature Preserve, walking through tall pampas grass by the lake, skirting the fence on the hill behind a farmer's hay field, passing the stone Folly, which we could hear before we could see, its creaky metal flag calling to us as it turned in the wind. As we moved from a rolling field into a mossy, tree lined forest lane, she said, "A nature walk is a meditation."

That quality of awareness, of heightened presence floated me to my workshop. It carried me through my slight surprise at the age of my group – they were much older than I expected. The focused feeling helped me easily adjust my plan to fit the seasoned hospice volunteers, and to begin by saying there was much I had to learn from them since they had so much more experience with Active Listening than I did. To be in the presence of a group of compassionate volunteers, who regularly sit with the dying as they move through their transition, was an honor.

This sense of concentration and calm stayed with me all the way home. It seems to have been felt by the participants too, since the feedback was mostly positive. One person even mentioned my "calm presence" as a workshop leader. Considering how jangled I have felt in the last month, I am grateful for a meditative nature walk. I think I should take one every day.