Forget about the Rapture - try Karuna instead

A small group of people, fueled by a pastor whose church has been raking in millions on his claims, have declared May 21, 2011 the End of the World. Some people have sold all their belongings and piled into cars, vans and RVs, driving around the country to convince the rest of us to Believe Before It Is Too Late. They are standing on street corners, stopping people as they go about their own business. The signs are everywhere, and I am not talking about floods, fires and famine. There are signs throughout the New York City Subway system, people are carrying placards in Times Square. The New York Times reports that a nice family from New Jersey has dragged their three reluctant, skeptical teenagers to the City to spread the word. The kids wonder if they will still have to make their beds.

Doomsday rumblings are nothing new. The Right (or possibly Wrong) Reverend who predicts the End this time draws his calculations supposedly from Biblical sources and says that while the true believers will be lifted up sometime on Saturday, the rest of us will roast until October 21. It will be oblivion by then. He said the same thing in 1994. End Day predictions have been made with certainty and the accompanying pamphlets, placards and proselytizers in 1844, 1914, 1918, 1924 by the same group, 1942, 1981 and again in 1988,'89.'92,'94,'95…..Apparently, Sir Isaac Newton even calculated the date: 2060.

Some claim the ancient Mayans have also predicted the End (or could it be the New Beginning?) on December 21, 2012. Personally, I think the Mayans got tired of carving, thinking that 500 years into the future was enough to predict. There is a large movement of intelligent people who believe that Mayans were predicting a major shift in consciousness. If we are all about to experience a worldwide consciousness shift for the better, if we could truly develop peaceful, respectful dialog across the dinner table, across political aisles and across borders, then I say, bring it on. I am not exactly seeing signs of an increase in civil discourse right now; political wannabes still spout vitriol and lies, governments still send in the guns, crazed fanatics are routinely blowing themselves into tiny bits, along with as many people as possible for some kind of "cause." This morning it happened inside a hospital.

Rapture literally means "to catch up" or "to snatch." To be rapt means to be engrossed or absorbed. To be enraptured means to be transported with emotion or filled with joy. Which brings me to my question:

Where is the joy? How do we trust that we will wake up tomorrow and it will be a good day? What can we do to change our attitude to approach any day as if it is a good one? How do we stop our rapt attachment to negative thoughts, worries and fear? I don't for a minute believe that selling all my earthly belongings and standing on a hill with my arms up waiting to be wafted into heaven is the answer.

Karuna is the answer. Compassion, first applied to my unruly mind which can't seem to stop its habit of drawing false conclusions and believing the worst is about to happen. Karuna, pouring like honey on all my self-created obstacles. Compassion radiating out towards the people I love, once karuna has soothed my inner beast. Karuna will bring my arms down if they reach away from what is real, to gently wrap them around the people I love, soothing them as well. Joy can be generated by spreading karuna out to the whole world.

As I write this, there have been no earthquakes, no beam-ups. The Doomsayers are still standing in the subway stations holding their pamphlets. I've got cinnamon rolls in the oven and nothing says karuna more than something freshly baked. Take a deep breath. As you exhale slowly, breathe compassion out towards all.

A tribute

I thought I would write something new but words fail me. I offer this, spoken at the first planting of the Spiral Garden, on May 6, 2006.

When I first met Alby he planted a huge garden, nearly half an acre. He was always full of garden plans, flowering gardens, vegetable gardens, dreams of ginseng growing in the woods. Together we planted lilies and hostas to feed the deer; we played together in our new home and we grew little people.

We used this poem at our wedding and gave it away as favors: The faith waiting in the heart of the seed promises a miracle of life which it cannot prove at once.

The heart of the seed promises abundance in its future flowering.

The seed of a new baby promises unimaginable miracles in first discoveries.

The promise of miracles is found in each of these amazing children, and I feel strongly that our partnership and love helped guide them into the people they are today. They continue to teach me and fill my life with abundance with their ideas, insights, compassion and hope.

The faith that Alby and I could step off the cliff into the unknown together, the heart in the seed of our life blossomed into blessings of home, travel, laughter and love, and even in the midst of the shock and grief of this past year, and in the suspended place of my life now without him, I am reminded over and over how I still live in the abundance we created.

Alby, you have been released into pure energy, and these remains are simply the dust left behind. You are all around us, in the air we breathe, in the feelings we have for each other, in the music we hear and in the love we share.

Alby, May everything you have given us live in us and let our legacy be to create abundance of love and blessings in our lives.

Everything we need, everything we are and can become is right here, right now.

Il faut cultiver le jardin.

Intuition

Last week I did not follow my intuition again. I was traveling from the top of Manhattan to the bottom, heading for a water taxi across the Hudson to a restaurant in Liberty State Park to meet my daughter for lunch. I took the A train from the last stop – or first, depending on how you look at it – down to the World Trade Center. Surfacing, I oriented to the west and trekked across town, through the winding streets towards the river. I passed the PATH train station and my inner voice said, "you should take this train."

Of course, I did not listen. I had my plan and I was sticking to it, even though I was already late and probably missed the 11:30 boat. I look across the water and see the restaurant, just north of the Statue of Liberty. I arrive at the ferry terminal; no boats. Realizing that I actually do not know where the taxi dock is, I run down to a nearby marina, circling through the roller bladers, tourists snapping photos, children eating snacks. A man emerges from a schooner and says, "I don't think the taxi runs on the weekend."

My daughter calls. I am becoming frantic. She has limited time and now I have to dash back across town to that train. Off I go, asking various people which train to take, where to get off; I jump out at the first Jersey stop and ascend on the world's longest escalator up to a nearly deserted square. Now I can see the back of the Statue, and Battery Park across the water. I ask again and find that I have to take another train, called the Light Rail. I am at Liberty, but do not know where the restaurant is and she doesn't know where the train station is. The trip has taken two and a half hours and I am still not quite there. I do the most natural thing; I burst into tears. Her fiancé says they will pick me up. I calm myself and finally we sit down to lunch and a nice, short visit.

It occurs to me that this journey is actually a metaphor for my life right now. I am stuck in my plan, running around in frantic circles, feeling like I am not quite getting there. My intuition tells me that I must take the PATH and I ignore the message. Yet, when I backtrack, get on the path to the unknown, ascend into new territory, everything works out.

I keep circumventing the obvious. The river can't be pushed or even crossed; in fact, I had to go deep underneath it in order to emerge into the sunlight. My own worry and fear kept me from getting there sooner; I did not investigate the alternatives. I was not prepared to shift from my original plan but change was required. It was only when I lightened up, trusted my instincts and asked for help that I finally arrived.

Mise en place

There are three guests coming.
I do not yet know who they are
But I have assembled the ingredients for the feast
My mise en place is set,
The chicken rests in a slick of olive oil,
Here, little bowls of chopped parsley,
Coriander, cumin,
Grey sea salt, cracked pepper
An orange will offer its aromatic zest to the mix
And the juice will blend with garlic and wine.
The guests will be pleased. They will offer
Some surprising words that will shift the world
As we know it.
We will sit and sip, savoring the feast before we leave
The past behind
Bones and drippings on the plate,
The napkin crumbled and the lees
Left in the bottom of the glass.

Little Martin Guitar

Yesterday I did something I had not done for perhaps…well, let's just say, a really, really long time. I walked down the street carrying my guitar.

I bought this little Martin with my babysitting money when I was 16. It was, and hopefully will be again, a beautiful instrument, small but with a rich sound. I remember playing it in California, in Tennessee, in the stairwell of an auditorium, where the sound engineer had placed me to record a Don McClean song. He said that recording in the stairs would create a natural reverberation. I sat on the stairs, closed my eyes, and sang The Circus Song. I remember carrying my little guitar with me on an 18 hour bus ride to Myrtle Beach, which I insisted on taking by myself to assert my independence in my first year of college. The case still has the remnants of an Impeach Nixon sticker on it. Over the years, the bridge has worn down and the action has gotten quite high. This means that the space between the neck and the strings has increased, making it more difficult to play. Since I hardly play at all, my now uncalloused fingers object to the amount of pressure needed to chord properly.

The little 018 has been collecting dust under the bed for years. One of the tuning pegs has popped off and it has a broken string. But I've been thinking that it might be nice to play again. I would like to remember how; I used to be fairly good at it. Now that my son has bought himself a guitar and taught himself to play, I want to get my own facility back. But the guitar needs fixing, and I had to jump through some hoops to get Martin to agree that I am indeed its original owner. My mother searched through dusty bins of newspaper clippings in an attempt to find a photo to prove it. Ultimately, one of my sisters found the right picture of me, at 17, playing my beautiful new guitar.

When the repair technician opened the case, he exhaled in admiration. Then he pointed out all the work it would need. The soundboard is cracked; the pick guard is warped. The neck has to be steamed off and reset and the bridge replaced, but he said it would be ready in one month. Most of the repairs are covered by the original owner's warranty, but it will still cost a bit to get it back in shape. I found myself stroking it gently, remembering how it used to sound.

Although I have little intention of singing in public, I am looking forward to playing my little Martin again sometime soon.

Contemplating Movement

I took a Contemplative Dance workshop with Alton Wasson last weekend. His work comes out of Authentic Movement, and he calls it "movement as spiritual practice, artistic resource and psychological narrative." For me, it felt like coming home. My body is my home, the shape in which I live, breathe, and have my being. My body is also the conduit for the expression of thoughts and feelings, not only in words but also in movement and space.

Ever since I could walk, I expressed how I felt in and through my body. As a little girl, I twirled with joy on the lawn; I waved my arms and leapt about, mimicking the movement of the trees and flowers. As I studied dance and learned a larger movement vocabulary, I began creating dances and performing them. The initial inspiration was always based on how an event or interaction felt and was expressed through the body.

We tend to forget this. We often are unaware of the coded messages, the subtle cues our bodies are sending when we are communicating. Arny Mindell calls these secondary messages – our voices might be saying "How nice to see you," to someone we don't care for, and our body tenses, our chin drops down and the person to whom we speak has a momentary confusion. They hear the words and believe them but they are also picking up the secondary "I don't like you" message. Mindell works with these secondary channels, asking clients to perceive them, to amplify them and clarify their meaning.

The clarification opens the possibility for transformation. If I notice that a difficult emotion is locked into a part of my body, I can work through the feeling with movement. By releasing the tension, the emotion is allowed to flow. By flowing with it, I transform it. If fear hunches me over, drawing my shoulders up and my arms tight around my chest, I can roll my shoulders back and open my arms. I can shift my stance and awaken some courage in the face of fear.

Moving through emotion and giving it free expression within the body is very healing. There was one session in the workshop that was hard for me because sorrow welled up, unwanted. I was resistant, yet it was real and I had to let it flow for a while. I also noticed that I seemed stuck in one spot a lot of the time, and took this for a metaphor of being afraid to move forward. In another movement session, I let myself travel all over the room, feeling the freedom of forward motion, and discovered that staying in one place was not necessarily being stuck. Being rooted could mean that I am growing.

Flights of Imagining

I've been thinking a lot about tool kits – an imaginary box filled with skills, strengths, resiliencies and other "tools" to get through the rough spots. My own encounters with grief waves have become infrequent but they still occur. Episodes of darkness, when the world feels broken and slowed somehow, used to last for days. Now, at nearly 6 years out, I have a dip every few months for perhaps an hour or so. This is real progress, but when the grief hits, I still need to rely on my inner resources. I still need to pull out an item from my tool kit.

My tool kit contains music. Listening, singing, drumming, humming – music has the power to open the channel between head and heart, so often blocked and restricted around the throat. Flowing into music and opening my voice elevates my mood. Music brings out another tool – dancing. Movement brings the music into my body and out again, integrating head heart and body. Reaching up to the sky, expanding my arms out and waving my torso and arms in spirals reminds me that expansion cures restriction. When sorrow collapses me into myself, opening my arms and chest helps to transform the sadness into a calmer feeling. When depression drops me to the floor, I allow myself a few moments down in the depths, then slowly rise, reaching up and outward. It is hard to stay in a dark place when you are imagining yourself unfolding like a spring flower.

Imagery. Imagination. When we are children, our imaginations run freely. We have a conversation with a giraffe, imaginary friends who live in China are about to arrive for dinner. As children, we have no issue with being a Bear, a Pirate or a person who can fly with special superpowers. As adults, we suppress these fantasies; they are "silly" or "childish" or "not normal." Imagination is the most important resource in our personal tool kits. As we grow up, we tamp down our dreams, our fancies. We don't trust our dreams or our envisioning power. After a while, we come to believe that we shouldn't engage in imaginal flights.

My trust in my own imagination was eroded by widowhood. My life broke open and I became afraid. The future, as I had imagined it, was gone. Slowly, I am remembering that imagery seeds my dreams; imagination is a strength I can utilize. It doesn't matter that I cannot literally fly; I have special skills that I ought to be using right now – dreaming, imagining, opening up to a fuller experience of life.

As I write this, it is a little too early to play music. But I can still dance to the sound of the birds, to the beating of my own heart. I can move to open joyfully to the experience of this day. I am going to do that right now!!