Euphemistically Speaking

Dear readers (all twelve of you), I have been absent for a while as I adjust to the working world. In addition to building The Karuna Project's private practice, I am a Bereavement Counselor at Holy Name Hospice now, several days a week. It is wonderful, sometimes painful but very meaningful work. I hope to be more present on this blog in the future!

Words, words, words.  We all use them but they often mean subtly different things to each of us.  Words are affected by interpretation, culture, by the books we read or do not read. Choreographer Pina Bausch said that "words can't do more than just evoke things" adding that this was the purpose of art.

This is why I love poetry.  The literal words, distilled down to a minimal essence of expression, evoke more than inform. In poetry, there is a visceral resonance that speaks to the heart.  Reading a poem, a curious and literally minded colleague asked me, "but what does it MEAN?"  I dislike picking apart the meaning of poems. Listen, flow with them. FEEL what it means to you.  It's like staring at a Rothko painting; at first it is just a blue canvas, a pretty color. You think, what does it mean? Open your heart, your eyes, enter the color. Movement exits there, deep blue washes you. The painting becomes a meditation, awakening feelings, associations, stillness. This resonance cannot be described, even though I am attempting to do so.  It must be felt.

Grief is like that too. Someone said, "I cannot speak about this, it is too deep." Talking helps, but no words can really describe the dark abyss, the agitation, fear, the dissonance of life after a death. And we are hindered by a habit of using euphemisms that purposely obscure grief.  He "passed away."  This might be a good descriptor of a quiet, peaceful death but it doesn't work for a sudden one. She's "gone to a better place."  This is comforting to many people, but infuriating to some. I "lost" my husband.  A woman in one group asked testily, "why do we say he is lost?"  He's not a set of keys or one of my three pairs of glasses that have gone missing.

Good question.  "Loss" refers to what WE have lost – our partner, lover, friend, mother, sister, daughter. The loss of this relationship is what we mourn. The loss is of whom we are, our role, even our purpose. The hole in the middle of our lives where that person is not creates a place in which we wander, yearning, seeking a way to repair the chasm into which we plunged at the moment of death.

So why talk at all? Words are what we use to build a bridge.  Words are how we connect to each other, and when we speak, we also evoke. The position of our body, whether or not we are making eye contact, the tone of voice, our eyes welling up with tears,  color our words. These subtle clues create a responsive resonance. The listener, understanding and sympathizing, evokes a metaphorical buoy we can hold on to.

Maybe words have no literal truth at all. The Heart Sutra of Buddhism says form is emptiness, emptiness is form.  I use my words to reach you and perhaps they do.  Or maybe each word leaves my mouth and disappears into nothingness, flitting by you like a wisp of air, barely noticed. While I am no longer inside the chasm, I sometimes sit on its edge, dangling my feet down into the dark. If you want to know about it, maybe you could just sit next to me for a while. Sometimes I just can't speak about it.

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.