Dinner at My College Professor’s Apartment

(for Phil Ennis)

I never imagined I was included.
I fully believed in the world
of loneliness and relentless achievement—
I knew pretending as the only possibility.

But that night he laughed with delight
while he wrote his fresh insights in magic
marker on the kitchen cabinets that held
his hodgepodge of second-hand dishes
and while the soundless black-and-white TV
surreptitiously revealed (as he explained
to me) a wealth of deeper truths.

Then he turned to me in all seriousness
and slyly invited me through the open door
saying: “The world is an interesting
place, Rynick, and you can think.”

I was shocked and amazed. No one
had ever mentioned that insight and liberation
on my own terms were possible, let alone necessary.

—

Seeing and thinking through the deep surface
training the world opens herself and you
are free to be irreverent—to laugh and cry
and even, if you choose, to write
in magic marker wherever and whatever you want.

Personal Practice – Spend the day watching closely the people and patterns of interaction that surround you. Don’t believe what is said, but listen for what is unsaid and perhaps more important. Turn off the sound on your TV and see if you can glimpse the wealth of information being revealed beneath the surface. Write whatever crazy idea comes into your head, then share it with someone who might appreciate a brief respite from common sense.

Responding to Difficulty

We’ve had such lovely weather these past few weeks. After an early spring where it wouldn’t stop raining or get very far above freezing, we’ve had glorious June days with cool nights and articulated days of full sun. The heat and humidity will come later, but for now the mountain laurel is in full bloom. Even the fragile and wondrously gaudy iris have been in bloom for several weeks.

We’re also in the middle of a mini-drought and I’m now glad for the earlier soaking that has sustained most of the perennials. And I don’t mind the daily watering that is required to get the annuals settled to the point where they can tolerate a few days without active watering without fainting.

My daily ministrations begin with filling up two two-gallon watering cans at the side faucet. Then I carry my thirty-two pounds of water evenly balanced on each side as I wander through the different sections of the Temple garden. It’s not just the annuals that need support. All the perennials I moved earlier in the spring to create more room or to fill in empty spaces in the garden also need tending this first year. As I stand trickling water over my little charges I imagine the moisture soaking down through the soil, encouraging the roots to go deeper and deeper. Self sustenance is of course the goal.

Each plant has a different tolerance to these dry spells. Some, like black eye Susans and marigolds, once established, are relatively unfazed by periods without water. They don’t panic. They simply stand still and wait certainly for the next rain. I wonder if, beneath their calm exterior, they silently adjust their leaves—quietly closing down respiration to conserve moisture? Or are they naturally light breathers?

But some, the divas, like the impatience and the pansies are quite dramatic about their needs. They swoon at the first sign thirst—going limp and flopping down as if death were imminent. I then must rush in as the hero to revive them with a long drink. Nothing happens at first, but after I walk away, they miraculously rise up and often go on as if nothing had happened.

As a young boy, I was taught that it’s much better to be like the tough ones than the demonstrative ones. Don’t show what’s going on inside. It’s fine to have feelings, but one shouldn’t talk about them, they should just be understood. I still think there’s something fine and honorable about bearing whatever comes without complaining. But the line between complaining and sharing useful information and asking for help is often lost on me. I’m so well-trained that sometimes I hardly know myself.

Of course, in my own way, I can be quite dramatic as well. When I’m in a bad mood, I go around inside myself as if the world were coming to an end. Everything is stupid and I get lost in the world of suffering that I am carefully narrating and maintaining with my internal complaints and observations.

Sometimes it’s just too embarrassing to admit how petty I can be. I’d rather be equanimous and easy-going. The truth is, sometimes I am and sometimes I’m not. Sometimes I can be still and content in the middle of the inevitable droughts that come and go. Other times I lose myself in stories of lack and separation and throw myself to the proverbial ground in my mini-despair. Limp and helpless I wait to be noticed and rescued.

I’m learning to be thankful for both sides of me and for all kinds of flowers and people. Different styles of response. Different shapes and needs. Different capacities in different moments. How wonderful!

As long as I remember the fullness of it all, then I can also remember to appreciate the necessary differences between me and you—between me and the many different universes I encounter in the garden and in life.

Personal Practice – What is your style of response when things are not going your way? Notice the little (or big) irritations that arise for you today. What is your natural tendency? Do you keep quiet and wait for things to change? Do you make sure others know immediately? Can you notice without judging your style to be better or worse than someone else’s?

What would it be like to expand your range? If you tend to be a hold it inside kind of person, what if you complained a little more today? If you comfortable sharing your internal weather with others, what if you said less today? Notice what happens when you step over the line of whatever rules you have been taught.

On Missing a Day

I spent most of yesterday morning sleeping. I got up several times—even made a cup of tea and headed for the porch to write, but felt dizzy and nauseous so headed back to bed. I wanted to write—felt I should write, but I just couldn’t.

It’s hard to stop. The patterns of our lives pull us forward—for good and for ill. The virtuous cycles of writing every morning, of daily time in the garden, of nutritious eating—all of these are habits that nourish me and bring me alive. Of course there are the vicious cycles as well—patterns of behavior that offer immediate reward but ultimately leave me feeling disconnected and exhausted. Most of my vicious cycles have to do with too much—too much time on the computer or TV, too much work in the garden, too much sweet food or being too nice. (The last one is really complicated and I’ll write about it some other time.)

We all have ways to escape and these are important human necessities. Life is often too much and to be able to stop whatever important work you are doing and take a break is an important thing to do. Too much of almost anything is not healthy.

The Buddha taught about the middle way. I recently learned that in the Anglican tradition there is a similar concept called the ‘via media’ – the middle road. This teaching of some path between two extremes is a guide to help us living balanced and meaningful lives.

We all have a tendency toward extremism. I knew a guy who spent three or four hours a day in the gym. While spending time in the gym can be a healthy thing to do, he was obsessed with the appearance of his body and it didn’t seem like it was improving the quality of his life to work out so much. Now I’m not in danger of that particular excess, I have learned to be moderate when I do exercise. At my tender and advanced age in my seventh decade on this planet, I can easily do damage to my body in my enthusiasm for the project of getting in shape.

How do we find and maintain good habits? For the past few months, writing every morning has been a habit that has enriched my life. Every morning, until yesterday, it was the first thing I did. I’d been wanting to write regularly again for the past three or four months. I’d even decided to write another book and I’d been noticing the people (including my mother) who said they missed my regular writings and postings. But I couldn’t get started.

We human beings are creatures of habit. The things we do today are the best predictor of the things we will do tomorrow. Our challenge is to break out of the current patterns that no longer serve us and not to let the new ones carry us away. There are all kinds of theories about how to break old habits and create new ones. All these theories are true to some degree and sometimes work. But none of them work all the time.

For me, creating and maintaining life-giving habits is a matter of intention, stubbornness and grace. Any two of these three, without the third are not enough.

Intention comes from asking the perennial question: ‘What do I want? What do I really want?’ This question has the power to take us beneath the surface of habit and busyness—to take us out of our heads and down into our hearts and bodies. This is a very different question from ‘What should I do?’ While this can be an essential question too, it often leads us into more thoughts of what others think and what we’ve heard and read. This is different territory from the deep longing of the heart and perhaps has its place only after we have touched the deeper purposes of our beings.

When we touch some purpose beyond and beneath all our ‘shoulds’, then we have to decide to take some step based on that purpose. This is where determination comes in. What is the next thing to do? How do I take one step to move toward what is calling to me? And then take the next step. It doesn’t have to be a big thing. It doesn’t even have to be the best thing. But every worthwhile adventure begins with some small action. Then we need the determination, the stubbornness to take the next.

Finally is the matter of grace. While there are all kinds of skillful means and helpful perspectives, life remains, for me, a mystery. Sometimes I am conscious of how easy it is to move in alignment with some deeper intentions of the heart, other times I feel utterly powerless to live the life I so glibly talk about. It is always premature to take ‘credit’ for any good habits you have. We continue on our path only through the grace of good health and favorable circumstances. We should every day give thanks for whatever behaviors we currently have that nourish and enrich our lives—and vow, as we can, to continue as long as we are able.

So all day yesterday, once I was out of bed and stumbling through my day, I tried to decide whether it would be better to do some kind of short writing – to keep my ‘string’ of posting every day going. I don’t want to be controlled by ideas of purity and pride and I want to follow through on the intentions and actions that seem to serve me and the world around me.

In the end, I don’t know whether I actually made a decision or it was just laziness that led me to settle in to the couch next to my wife and watch the next episode of Veep and then the next episode of several other shows. It was lovely and easeful.

I only felt slightly guilty. In the back of my head were the familiar doubts. Will I write tomorrow morning? Will I lose the motivation of ‘not missing a day?’ I didn’t know, but realized that I won’t write forever and thought it would be good to have a day off.

But this morning, I’m happy to feel well enough to be here again. Happy to have this time to wander and wonder. And hope these mostly daily reflections continue to be helpful for a few others as I send it off without waiting for it to be perfect.

Windows of Opportunity

I began writing yesterday with the intention of finding my way to the most vivid image from Wheatley and Kellner-Rogers’ book A SIMPLER WAY. But I got so lost in the wind-up that I didn’t get to the delivery—so absorbed in explaining the background I didn’t get to the thing itself. It’s funny how often we set out to do one thing but then get distracted on the way. But more and more I’ve learned to trust that the distraction is at least equally valuable as the thing itself. Or that the distraction IS the thing itself.

If we imagine our lives as a series of events and the world as a collection of objects, then we’re liable to miss most of our lives in the space in between here and there—between this and that. Between me and you. I get in the car and go on autopilot and wake up when I arrive at the destination. Where was I while I was driving?

From the perspective of the mutuality of arising of life, however, we can appreciate that there actually is no space in-between. Every moment and every place we encounter IS the fullness of our life. We are embedded, woven into the world we help create. Everything is always interacting with and supporting everything else. One of the gifts of this perspective is that there is no need to wait.

No need to wait till you get to your ‘destination’ – because you are already there. It turns out that ‘there’ is ‘here.’ In the world of interconnection and interdependence, your whole life has led you to this moment and this moment contains everything you need.

Wheatley and Kellner-Rogers use this wonderful metaphor (which is the point I have been trying to get to all along):

‘There are no “windows of opportunity,” narrow openings in the fabric of space-time that soon disappear forever. Possibilities beget more possibilities; they are infinite.’  

There are no “windows of opportunity”—no small moments of time that we have to take advantage of or they are forever gone. EACH moment is the “window of opportunity” we have been waiting for. This is fully good news because it means that whatever situation in which you find yourself is full of opportunity. Our job is not to get to a better place but rather to be fully where we are so we can participate in unfolding the potential that is already here.

I’m most conscious of practicing this when I garden. Being a naturally spontaneous (disorganized) and creative (impulsive) person, I rarely have a clear plan for time I spend in the garden. This means that I often find myself engaged in some task for which I don’t have the tools I need.   So I spend a considerable amount of my time in the garden walking from one part of it to the garage and back to where I was in the first place.

These are the walks I have been training myself to appreciate. Rather than focus on the limited amount of time I have and all the things yet to be done, I try to remember that walking in the garden, even to fetch the clippers which I forgot, is spending time in the garden—IS gardening. The endless tasks will never be completed so I might as well enjoy being in the middle of it all—the green growing and wondrous flowering—the dying back and the sprouting forth. Sometimes I even pretend that I have come out just for this walk to the garage and back. I slow my pace and enjoy this walking life of a gardener.

Each moment IS the window of opportunity. Climb through and check out the view from right where you are.

Personal Practice – Pay attention today to the spaces in between. The time between when you realize you need to go pee and when you finally arrive at the toilet—the spaces between the decision to do something and when you begin doing it. You could also notice the spaces between you and the others in your life. What if we’re always ‘in touch’ but it’s just always a different kind of ‘touch’? What if the space in between is just a figure of speech and we’re always already there—already connected?