The Things of Our Lives

When I was little, coloring books were still considered creative entertainment for children and I received great praise for a picture of a person that I colored in at the age of four or five. I may still have it in the folder of mementos that my mother remanded to my care some years ago as she was lightening her load (and increasing mine.)

These objects of the past have a mysterious claim on us—the things we created and the pictures of who we were—the certificates of achievement or graduation—the faded clipping from local newspapers from when our name or picture appeared. Then there are the hundreds of beautiful and unique objects that we have gathered along the way—objects found or purchased in exotic locations or given to us at significant moments. Not to mention the innumerable file folders from projects and workshops. A lifetime recorded in the precious and sometimes overwhelming detritus of things that surround us.

It used to be my job to work with our daughter cleaning her room. I think this was because her tendency toward randomness was directly inherited through me, so the role of clean-up supervisor was both punishment and matching my extended study of disorder with her need for support in the midst of a chaotic room full of her things. This was before Marie Kondo had taught us about sensing what ‘sparks joy’ but long after my mother used to lie on my bed when I was growing up, supporting me with encouragement and suggestions while I cleaned my room every nine months whether it needed it or not.

With our young daughter, and as I recall this worked all the way up through high school, I used to bring three bags because there were four categories of things. The first category was things to keep and they had to find a home in a drawer or closet, or on a shelf or bookcase. The next category was the bag for the things that were going to be thrown away. Category three was the bag for the things that were no longer wanted but had enough remaining life and value to be worthy of being given away. But it was the fourth category which was the most helpful—the black bag that contained things that were to precious to release, but not important enough to find a place for. By the time we finished, this bag was almost always the largest one and was carefully labeled with the day’s date and stored up in the attic. The rule was that anything that she wanted from this bag she was welcome to get, but that after six months, the bag would be thrown or given away.

What my system had in common with Marie’s (she encourages her clients to call her by her first name) system was the reliance on cognitive overload. Marie recommends going through your things one category at a time. You begin with your clothes. Every article of clothing you own gets put in a big pile on your bed. You then pick up each shirt, sock, sweater, scarf, etc and hold it for a second to see if it ‘sparks joy.’ My theory is that in this decision-making process, as in the four-category process I used with my daughter, the endless pile of stuff and the repeated decision-making eventually weakens the brain’s attachment muscle and it becomes easier to let things go.

Over the years that my daughter and I brought bags of questionable stuff up to the attic, I never remember one instance of her going up to get something. The things she could barely stand not to have in her room one day, were forgotten the next as the new things of life easily filled in available space in her room and in her mind.

The line drawing picture I colored in that my mother saved was carefully done—not a small accomplishment for little hands holding crayons. But the remarkable thing to my mother was that I had used color with no regard for realism. The face was purple and the shirt yellow and the hands red. She thought this was wonderfully precious, that I hadn’t yet realized the correspondence of the pictures to real life. I think that I was, like Matisse, simply more focused on the reality of the paper and the color than on the image it was supposed to be representing.

All this holding on and letting go is alive for me this morning as Melissa and I continue our slow but definite move from the Temple to a small nearby cottage. There are closets to be excavated, file cabinets of a decade of work and play to winnow through and the challenging opportunity to release the accumulated things of our life as we lighten our load in preparation for the new life (and death) that is coming.

Angelic Sightings

Ten days ago I sprinkled twenty-some tiny seeds as randomly as I could into a four-inch square pot of soil. The seeds themselves were so small, I couldn’t even see where they landed, so I kept my hand moving like a priest giving a blessing as I scattered the minuscule dry bits. I resisted the urge to cover the seeds with soil as these seeds (Lobularia/sweet alyssum) are among the ones that need light to germinate.

These particular seeds were the remnants of the package that grew with great success into last year’s garden. After a slow start, the seedlings grew into a lovely and fragrant covering for the feet of the morning glories and also did well in small pots on the porch. Each seed directed itself into a small sweet-smelling carpet of tiny white flowers that bloomed through the summer. But I wasn’t sure if the over-wintered seeds would have survived into this year in their condition of dry stasis.

I sometimes forget that seeds, though appearing dry and inert, are as alive as the plants that sometimes grow from them. Their space capsule of hard fiber protects the embryo until conditions are once again conducive to growth. When enough moisture, warmth and light return, the container of the seed shell dissolves and the spark of life is thrown out into this uncertain world.

I had checked the pot once or twice over the past week, but nothing was stirring. It wasn’t until yesterday that the miracle once again manifested. When I looked, not expecting much, I was amazed to see in the four-inch square field of the pot, a dozen or more pairs of tiny oval leaves floating a quarter-inch above the damp brown soil. Each of the paired leaves was no bigger than the size of a pin-head and yet it was undeniable that innumerable angels were dancing on each. Looking closer, I saw that each round pair was held aloft by the thinnest translucent thread of green wire—a wonder of tender engineering.

Viewing the modest scene, I was filled with an oversized joy.

What is this disproportionate delight that comes over me at the sight of such a small occurrence? How is it that each emerging green being so clearly sings to me with the voice of the divine? I don’t know, but I am grateful that my eyes and ears are tuned into this particular channel of grace.

I suppose part of our human search is to find the channels of grace to which our particular senses and self are tuned. How are you tuned? What is it that in the doing, seeing, or sensing a deep joy arises within you? Is it in the stories you watch or read? Is it in the sounds of music and voices harmonizing? Or the rhythmic running of your legs beneath you? Or the smells and sounds of food cooking or the delicious taste of a well-seasoned soup? Or walking amidst the murmurings of a forest of trees?

Whatever it is, know that this channel is how you and the world snuggle up to each other—this is how you and the world were designed to touch and be touched. Do your best to notice and appreciate the resonance of the unprecedented giving and receiving that is your true nature.

And, for my part, I will keep you posted on the sweet alyssum seedlings.

(Excerpted from forthcoming book Wandering Close to Home: A Year of Zen Reflections, Consolations, and Reveries. September 1, 2024.)

Working With What Comes

The wind has died down but the bitter cold is still here. The protective sheet I carefully placed over the hydrangea blew off so the buds that were just swelling with the promise of this summer’s flowers will have to fend for themselves. And I’m only slowly emerging from yesterday’s deep hole of discouragement. It wasn’t just the weather or my concern for the fragile buds, but something more pervasive that just came over me.

From the place of dark discouragement, everything feels overwhelming. All the plans and projects that usually hold some excitement and promise become burdens that have to be carried and pushed forward. I feel compelled to make some progress, in the midst of my certainty that my eager busyness will only lead to more of the same. I become conscious of my familiar buoyancy of spirit only in its absence. I don’t feel like ‘myself’ and wonder who or what I am.

A friend calls these places realms. Realms are worlds of experience that we fall into that are self-contained, self-reinforcing, and self-limiting. Self-contained in that our experience in these places of great difficulty allows in no information that might contradict or shift our thought process. Self-reinforcing in that everything that appears in the realm is interpreted as evidence of the truth of the realm. And self-limiting because, at some point, the state of dark limitation ends by itself—not through our own efforts, but through the grace of the movement of life itself.

To me, it feels like I have been dragged into the underworld and possessed by dark spirits that won’t let me go. My resistance and my attempts to fight my way out only add to the stuckness. Everything I tell myself gets used by the process of darkness to reify and elaborate my sense of separation.

Over my many years of meditation and life coaching, I have learned that sometimes there is nothing that can be done. Sometimes we are just where we are whether we like it or not. (This is, of course, the truth of our lives at every moment, but I’ll confine my remarks this morning to the case of the dark realms.)

But just this realization of being caught in some unavoidable place of stuckness allows a slight easing of my desperation. Though I don’t want to be where I am, at least I know that I am in a realm. This is a kind of freedom. Certainly not the great American individualist freedom of ‘I should be able to do whatever I want because I’ve earned the right to be happy.’—but rather the freedom of not having to struggle anymore. The freedom to give up a certain kind of narcissistic fantasy that is actually part of what keeps me lost in delusion.

The growing awareness of the truth of my predicament—that I am in a realm, or I might say just a really bad mood—allows me to try and remember what I know about these places and behave as skillfully as I can.

1) Wherever you are, it’s not just what you think it is. The mind creates endless stories and all the stories tell some truth about the moment and the moment is larger than any story that is told about it. From this place, if I’m lucky, I can begin to get curious about aspects of this place that I haven’t yet noticed.

2) At some point, this will be over. This leads me to struggle a little less and to do what I can do from where I am rather than spending time trying/wishing/hoping to be somewhere else. Then the darkness is just the darkness. I can’t be very productive, but I’m usually good for some rudimentary cleaning and practical simple caretaking.

3) This is how human beings sometimes feel. From this perspective, I can do my best to be compassionate with myself. This state is not an indication of what is wrong with me. It’s not even personal. This is just how it is for human beings sometimes. I realize I too am a human being, sharing this mysterious and sometimes frightening journey with everyone else who has ever lived.

This morning, though the bitter cold persists, the wind and I have quieted down. I notice a particular flavor of quiet that sometimes comes after the storm has passed. I am grateful to have survived once again and wonder what will come today.

(Excerpted from forthcoming book Wandering Close to Home: A Year of Zen Reflections, Consolations, and Reveries. September 1, 2024.)

If We’re Lucky

I covered the hydrangeas
in the Temple garden
with a sheet last night
in hopes of protecting
their tender buds from
the predicted bitter cold.

Their azure future,
precariously held
on the brown tips
of old stalks is
nothing to look at
now, but in July,
if we are lucky,
their deepest blue
will survive the freeze
and extravagantly appear
in puffy balls of blossoms
held aloft on the same
woody stems that wobbled
through the long dark winter.

Virtually Touching

It was a year ago yesterday that we had our last in-person meditation service at the Boundless Way Temple—and a year ago tomorrow that we had our first Zoom meditation service. Since then our daily attendance at morning sessions has increased four or fivefold and our overall attendance has doubled. Our ‘regulars’ are no longer confined to the greater Worcester region and now live in Boston, Hartford, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Tulsa, Los Angelos, Brussels, the Isle of Wight, and beyond. Almost every day we gather virtually to meditate and to support each other in walking the path of awakening.

Religion and spirituality are almost always communal endeavors. Just setting off on a personal journey to find God or to wake up or to be saved is rarely enough. Of course, it is about that personal existential journey however we define it, but this journey is almost always taken with the support, guidance, and encouragement of other like-minded spirits. Hermits and recluses, though a revered part of many traditions, are the exception rather than the rule.

Most of us need each other. We humans are herd animals. Like horses, when we gather, we sense and respond to each other’s energy and intentions. The first time I ever galloped on a horse, it wasn’t my choice. I was simply carried away on my horse who was carried away with the energy of the other horses around us. We were riding one early summer morning through a dewy pasture when we came to a small hill. One of the riders decided it would be fun to gallop up the hill. She began and the other (experienced) riders urged their horses to follow. The small group of horses gathered energy and surged forward. Before I knew what was happening, my horse was galloping up the hill with all the others. It was astonishing to feel the power of the horse and rider community manifesting through the four-legged being I was riding. We quickly reached the top of the hill and paused—horses and riders were all elated.

It was somehow similar when I began going back to church in my early 40’s at the local Unitarian Universalist church on Main Street here in Worcester. I was amazed at how powerful it was to gather with people and to turn our attention together toward these ultimate questions of life and death and the meaning of existence. I found myself delighted to be sitting in a large room with people I knew from other roles in the community, and for once we were all setting down our organizational and political agendas to sing together and to listen to inspiring words that caused us to think deeply about our human existence.

In the Zen tradition, we have honored this ancient wisdom of communal worship in its simplest form. We sing together (mostly just on one note) and listen to inspiring talks, but the heart of our worship (which we call ‘practice’) is simply sitting still together in silence. And in this stillness and silence, even as it is conveyed over Zoom, we find some ineffable, undeniable, and ever-changing connection that supports us.

In years past, I probably would have refused to participate in a virtual meditation session. I would have said that authentic Zen has to be in-person. Zen practice is a physical practice—one position yoga, we sometimes say. An upright, balanced and dignified posture—or as close to that as you can come—is essential. But the energy we generate, share and receive as we practice together is not some physical, measurable substance that has a limited range of effectiveness. Just like the power of prayer that is conceived as reaching beyond the room where you pray—just like the correspondence of the spin of related particles that shift instantly with each other no matter the distance—our connections to each other and to life are not as limited as we imagine.

In our Zen community, we are now talking about how and when we will return to some form of in-person practice. With the vaccine rollout progressing so quickly, we are hopeful that the early summer will see us physically together again in some form. But we are clear that we are not simply going back to how it was. We are adding in-person local practice to the vibrant and virtual community of practice that has so surprisingly emerged over this year of the pandemic. How to mix and match virtual and in-person will (hopefully) be the learning of the year to come.