There is always more to the story than meets the eye ~

The Winter Woods  by Parker  Palmer

The winter woods beside a solemn
river are twice seen—
once as they pierce the brittle air,
once as they dance in grace beneath the stream.

In air these trees stand rough and raw,
branch angular in stark design—
in water shimmer constantly,
disconnect as in a dream,
shadowy but more alive
than what stands stiff and cold before our eyes.

Our eyes at peace are solemn streams
and twice the world itself is seen—
once as it is outside our heads,
hard frozen now and winter-dead,
once as it undulates and shines
beneath the silent waters of our minds.

When rivers churn or cloud with ice
the world is not seen twice—
yet still is there beneath
the blinded surface of the stream,
livelier and lovelier than we can comprehend
and waiting, always waiting, to be seen.

As our nation more deeply entrenches itself in a patterned reaction to the other side, my heart,  maybe yours too has grown heavy and weary of  this.  Just as in a midwest January it is hard to hope for spring.  Will spring ever come?   Will we as a nation, ever mend?  Or at least get to a place where our leaders think beyond  the next election to the common  good.

As I was  reading Palmer’s  new book: ON THE BRINK OF EVERYTHING: GRACE, GRAVITY AND GETTING  OLD, his poem Winter  Woods appeared and my heart  took wing.   It is the first thing that has comforted me since the impeachment trial began.  It  reminded me of something important I had forgotten.  “There is always more to the story than meets the eye”.

I have felt so deeply sad at the distance between us as fellow citizens of this country.  To my eye, it grows ever darker.  Maybe some of you too, are  experiencing the depth of winter in your own experience.  I just loved his reminder that the stark frozen cold of my pastoral Wisconsin landscape was not the entire story.   There is something below the surface.  And  so to the frozen cold between Dems and GOP is only half the story.  There is yet movement, we can only glimpse or guess at but ephemeral as it is, it is also real.  Spring will come.

When rivers churn or cloud with ice
the world is not seen twice—

The news and constant railing at the other side, is Palmer’s river churning,  we cannot see then (and now) what is below the surface.   But the poet tells us
yet still is there beneath
the blinded surface of the stream,
livelier and lovelier than we can comprehend
and waiting, always waiting, to be seen.

We will grow  weary of  our walls.   This is not  sustainable. Until the conversation changes, it is important that each of us find and become Sanctuary to each other.  Not for agreement with your point  of view  whatever it is but rather seek in each other the sanctuary of  our common humanity.  Let’s commit to remind each other that  “meanwhile”  there are things of great beauty happening daily, there are acts of kindness given and received every where around the globe.  We are not just our partisanship.   We are not  just divided and walled off.  There  are  things we can agree to do together, even if our leaders cannot.  We can start by focusing on the fact that the other side doesn’t like being apart from us  any more than we like being apart from them.  That’s a beginning.  The rivers will run again, if  we don’t let our hearts freeze up.

"Always we hope someone else has the answer, some other place will be better...

“Always we hope
someone else has the answer, some other place will be better,
some other time, it will turn out
… This is it.”     Pema Chodran

Abiding truth.  This.   It recalls T.S. Eliot’s “Hope would be hope for the wrong thing” as he too, calls us to the Waiting.  

the Being Here.

just

just  Here.

Waiting.

It requires the body in full presence.  Anxiety hates waiting. Monkey mind, that chatterbox and ally to the gods of productivity, recoils in the face of Waiting. Of Being just Here.

Waiting.

Here.

just the Waiting.

What might arise in that void of activity?

Monkey mind is pretty sure nothing good will come of this “Waiting” this just “being Here.”

And now we find ourselves deep in the season of Waiting: Advent.  In the Christian tradition, the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas are designed to be a spiritual preparation.   Even more than physical preparation.  The gift giving of this season of the return of Light to the world is an outward manifestation of generosity, particularly the generosity of God.

Black Friday. Cyber Monday. That’s trickier. These are built on scarcity. “Only this day. You must act and buy or you ‘lose’ the  bargain.” That thinking and energy is the opposite of generosity. It is scarcity.

But I digress. Back to Waiting. To just being.

The Pema Chodron poem I opened with indicates a surrender in this “Waiting.” Surrender takes humility and openness. Maybe I am not the best judge of what is best for me in the whole of my life? What is desired now could become a poison to my soul  then.

Yet, how does this willful, German-stubborn woman (me) surrender to what is?  How do I wait in that? Instead of jumping to what could be?

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.  

T.S. Eliot

It is hard indeed not to wish for what we believe we want. For most of us it is a heavy lift to open to, be curious about, and actually embrace the reality we have in this moment rather than the one we “think” we should have or the one that we “believe” will make us happy.

I can think of so many times in my life I was mistaken about what would make me happy. Or what would be best. And even in the times I was right, how much joy did I sacrifice, how much real life did I miss when I chose to give my attention to my preferences for a different and yet to be reality? To what “Could be.” Didn’t this wanting “some other place” or  “some other time” increase dissatisfaction with current reality? And of course it did.

My first baby steps into “the Waiting” and into “Embracing what is” was a daily practice of gratitude, specifically, journaling my gratitudes and sharing them.

The poets call us to surrender to the present moment and…to trust it. To trust reality!  If I trust that I am enough for my life and for what is yet to be, then I can “be here now.”  Just HERE.  Trusting the present moment, my current reality, requires trusting myself. Trusting I am “able” to meet this moment, whether it is to my liking or not.

What helps me do this is to remind myself that preferences, “I want this and not that,” and, “It should be this way and not that way,” belong to the mental constructions of our Ego’s. They are not real. And therefore, they are not necessary. They are simply an idea, my preference. This is why spiritual and religious traditions ask us to surrender to “God’s” will over our own. They, too, know that our will comes from a place within that seeks security over vitality. This part of us seeks safety over experience. The entropy of the known and seemingly predictable over the aliveness of growth and newness.

We humans have the amazing ability to imagine. To imagine new worlds. To imagine and then enact behaviors to reach these possible futures. “What Could be,”  and “What is yet to be” is indeed miraculous. This faculty is what makes us different from animals. We can take a step back, reflect on ourselves and our lives (New Year’s  resolutions) and imagine new futures for ourselves. I love our human capacity for “Could be.” I have made a living for over two decades helping people imagine themselves into new ways of behaving and responding, into new futures, into new ways of understanding and relating to themselves and others.

I am all for “could be.”  AND  I want to invite myself and you to fully be grateful for what is, embracing the yucky parts of “Here” before we start to imagine a different “Could be.”  Embrace the reality we have.  Poet David Whyte suggests in his articulation of conversational leadership/Invitas that we “Come to ground. That we meet the reality we have, not the one we wish we had.” I think the reality we have has its own secret treasures.

Why do this?   For the sake of being able to chart our course forward from a  place of the soul’s revelation. Our soul desires are our true desires.  They are  often very  different than the preferences of our  Ego’s.  They are the ineffable and the abiding.   They reside in that still place within us that Eliot would have us wait in. They are “the dancing.”  Within their sweet embrace we do not hope for the wrong thing. There we do not love the wrong thing.  There, “the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”

And there lies the originality that was born in each of us.

May this holy season,  this winter of Waiting bring each of you the peace that  surpasses  all understanding.

Thankful for Wonder and Wonders

As you know I am a Wonders.  Daughter of Robert John Wonders, Mary Skotze Wonders, niece of Helen Wonders Chandler, Marion Wonders Wollum, Louise Wonders McKinnon, Lucy Wonders Doney, Virginia Wonders Rahoi, Joseph Wonders, and Harry Wonders.  And Granddaughter of Claire Lemieux  Wonders to whom I owe my middle name and my beloved Harry Wonders.  He was only in my life for my first six years but I simply adored him and I am not sure I will ever know why.  Why does a six year old love one human to the moon and back and not others?  I do not know but I do know it isn't because her smart brain took a tally, or came to value assessment or built a spread sheet to point her in the right direction.She simply loved who she loved for reasons unknown to her.  And that is what I want to write about today:The reasons unknown.  Why do we love this one and not that one?  Why do we get triggered by this one and not that one?  But this isn't just about humans.  Look through out your day.  You have clear preferences for all kinds of things, from your favorite kind of pasta, to your preferred coffee house, (today mine is Champion on Nassau Ave in Greenpoint (Brooklyn), a block from my daughter's apartment),  your route to the grocery store, etc.  What is your favorite time of day?  Mine: sunrise or sunset.  My favorite day of the week is Saturday, and I am not even Jewish.  My favorite season Autumn edges out spring, summer and winter by which also delights.  But when fall arrives, I am done.   I am at home.  Leaves turning, the transition between the uber fullness of summer and the quiet barren landscape of winter, the transformation of green leaves into the bare branches of the season is the one I savor most.  And luckily, living in Dallas TX, our autumn cycle is a slow circuitous path to the shortest of days.Do you ever wonder why you prefer one thing and not another, one man over all others, one woman?  A season?  A book?  A movie? Anything?  What is the preference making vehicle we all come factory loaded with?I wonder this a lot.  And not just for myself,  but for all of us.  I think our preferences, desires, longing, affiliations and affections are glimpses of our individual souls, if you believe in such.  If you don't then they are a peek into our essential self.  It is the nest of our distinctness, like a cuckoo clock popping out on the hour, we too reveal ourselves to ourselves and to each other through our affections.Isn't that the loveliest of thoughts?  Don't know who you are?  Wonder who you came here to be?  Just look to your affections and in due time all will be revealed.Yes, our preferences could also arise from longstanding, unconscious habits but even so, they were born out of either random chance or our particular resonance (the cuckoo popping out) to that particular thing.  And if our habits began out of a random choice, a preference, an affinity for that choice set in early and thus it became a habit.Why is that?  I think because our soul wants to be revealed, first and foremost to us, so we can follow it's code.  But also it wants to be let out to dance in the world.  I believe we each come with an "inner chooser" with dislikes and likes.  Affections and repulsions.  Longings and aversions.And why does this matter?  Because the inner chooser, (I will name her, Joy) is also our inner compass who can help us find our way home.  And by home I mean, to becoming our essential self, the person we came here to be, or who God made us to be.And why does that matter?  Because that my dear friends, is the miracle of life.  It is the wonder of life.So as we enter the season of wonder and awe that is initiated in Thanksgiving and ends in the positive resolve of a fresh new year, my favorite essayist comes to mind:  Anne Lamott.   I wish for us all a moment where "We start to get a hint of the power and sweetness and absurdity of life and to see it not as all fragile and harsh but as real, the really real.  We get buoyancy and, God knows, sometimes even effervescence.  Perspective doesn't reduce the gravitas, it increases reverence."Let's all raise our glasses and toast to wonder, reverence and effervescence.      

Rejection is protection!

What?Rejection is protection! How can that be?  This is a saying in 12-step programs.  When someone rejects you, or your proposal, it is actually a sort of "whew...dodged that bullet!" because even though you wanted "it" or wanted a relationship with this person, your IDEA of what you would actually receive in the bargain was just that:  YOUR IDEA.  Not the reality of what would occur.This is one of the hardest passages of adulthood.  Recognizing that the voice inside our head, the strategic mind that tells us what it thinks is good and bad, is actually not what is wisest in us.  There is another voice, "that small still voice within" that knows more but often scares that strategic mind and so it shuts that voice down.  I have a long time friend, going on 3 decades.  She is a recovering alcoholic.  She told me once that first time she tried a 12 step program it didn't work.  The step (maybe first?) that asks you to surrender to your higher power?  Well, she really believed that "She was her higher power".  And I don't blame her.  First of all she might be the most competent person I know, and I know so many, that this is actually a huge complement.  Second, she grew up where there was no reason to trust any adult around her and every reason to assume she was the only person that was for her.  The only person she could trust and the only person who would protect her, was herself.But when she said it ("I always thought I was my higher power.")  my first thought was "She is just like me."  I too find it easier to trust my idea of what should happen instead of trusting "life" or "God" or even that small still voice deep within me that whispers, maybe it is better this way.  My strategic mind hates that voice.  It doubles down on its list of why things should be the way it thinks they should.For most of us our idea about a job, a marriage, really any endeavor we wish for ourselves never materializes that way.  It is always something different.  Sometimes better, sometimes worse, but always different.  So silly me, why do I really think I know what is best?  So, picture me raising my right hand and swearing:  "When the "no" comes, on any front, I resolve to recall all the times a "yes" made me unhappy and say "I probably just dodged a bullet, and I don't know why yet."  Care to join me?  

They're really saying I love you...

They’re really saying “I love you”…Everyone who has heard this song loves it.  It is a song of wonder and joy.  A song of seeing deeply to the heart of what is happening.  Yes, on one level that person that just reached out and said “Hi” or “What’s up?”  or “How’s it going?” is following a customary greeting practice when we meet someone.  But what Louis Armstrong knew, is that this was only the surface of the interaction.  At the heart of the greeting was “I love you”,  a desire for connection and community; an example of caring and kindness.I can almost hear your smart minds going, “How can s/he know that?” Or maybe it is saying “That is a sweet idea but really? Come on.”   Here is what I know for sure:  we are all a mess of different feelings and motivations and intentions.  We are everything.  None of us purely good or bad.  That’s what makes us so interesting … and impossible to predict!  For me it doesn’t matter if the idea that someone is reaching out to me is accurate or not.  When I choose to see a greeting as a request for contact and connection, my better angels take over, I become someone I admire.  AND the world becomes a little  brighter, softer and filled with wonder!   Just like the song says.So, where can you shift your seeing and hearing just enough to hear "They're really saying "I love you"?  Often it is only those smart minds of ours that cover over our experiences of wonder and joy with the mind's need for predictability and control.  Predictability and control are fine for machines and schedules but they can hurt living things, like relationships.  The choice is ours moment by moment.  This new year, I apprentice myself to wonder and joy.   To turn my dial to the frequency of ..."they're really saying, I love you"  I so hope you will join me.