GreenHouse Fantasy

I didn’t dally at the greenhouse. (I really didn’t.)

But one theory of the universe is that at every choice point two realities come into being—the world in which you took one path (not to dally) and the world in which you took the other (to dally). So I wonder what would have happen if…

I dallied at the greenhouse.

I didn’t mean to. I couldn’t help myself. The plants were so enticing. Each one abiding in its orderly residence of a four-inch green pot. Each one eagerly awaiting its blooming life to come. And there I was—stuck with my two legs walking and arms swinging and eyes looking eagerly as I walked aimlessly up and down the aisles.

I meant to leave quickly to avoid the virus and to get back to business. I really meant to get back to business—to take care of all the important things that need to be taken care of—to ensure the continuing and orderly functioning of the universe continues unabated. But I was seduced by the house of green and the abundance of orderly four-inch pots. I couldn’t help but hide myself among the emerald-leaved life of pure possibility.

I lived easily among the plants for several days, then time started getting a little fuzzy. At first I had to be careful not to be spotted by the staff. But after a while, they got used to me hiding in the different pots and actually started giving me extra water when no one was looking. I suppose I must have turned a little green myself because at a certain point I realized that the sunlight, soil and water were all I seemed to need—indeed, all I had ever wanted.

I lived the good life through the summer—basking in the sun of the long hot days and marveling at the mysterious whisperings of the nights. (Yes, plants do talk to each other at night when no one is listening. I was never quite able to decipher their conversations, but the gentle hub-bub was all so pleasing and reassuring to my ears that I never really minded.)

Eventually the days got shorter and the autumn chill arrived. The chrysanthemums came and went. Finally, when the greenhouse was empty except for me, I realized it was time to go home.

I wrote a thank you note to the staff and left it in an envelope on the desk, along with a small donation to cover the costs of my water and fertilizer bill. My car was right where I left it and my chosen seedlings were still in the trunk.

I drove home. It was a fine spring day. I was happy to find my (real) life patiently waiting for me—as if no time at all had passed.

Personal Practice: Daydream today. Imagine you had taken some other path at some other point. Who would you be? What would you know? What realms would you wander through? Be specific.  Make up outrageous things.  Be who you are definitely not.  Enjoy the possibilities of the many worlds of imagination.

Gardening in the Pandemic

Summer has come right on schedule. Yesterday, the day after Memorial Day, our long cool spring vanished as temperatures in the mid-80’s swept into the region. I’ve been longing for warmer weather, but this was a little more than I bargained for. I spent an anxious half hour in the mid-afternoon watering my transplanted marigolds, sweet alyssum and black-eyed susan’s that had all swooned in the afternoon heat. In a week or so we’ll be fine—I’ll be used to my watering routine and they’ll be used to the heat, but yesterday was a near calamity.

Over the holiday weekend, it was all I could do to stay away from garden centers once I heard they were open again. One of our local places, Robinson’s Greenhouse, is a family owned business that usually has greenhouses filled with four-inch pots filled with begonias, petunias, coleus and all kinds of other wondrous annual and perennial plants and flowers. My yearly spring visit(s) to them are time of anticipation and joy.

I have learned to go alone because I love to walk slowly up and down the long aisles. I imagine the pots and places I want fill. I go to my old stand-bys and keep my eyes open for new recruits. Robinson’s takes wonderful care of their plants, both in the tending and the displaying so I love just being in the presence of so many lively little green beings. The light reflecting off of a greenhouse full of new leaves. The moist air that holds the smell of humus, plants and flowers is intoxicating to a life-long gardener like me.   So many of each variety, all the same and yet each one slightly different. I even enjoy making sure I get the best and brightest of each kind I choose.

But I broke down on Monday afternoon, figuring that all the conscientious gardeners had bought their plants on Saturday or Sunday, or at least by Monday morning, so there would be fewer people and less risk involved in the trip. I was right and when I arrived at three o’clock, there were only half a dozen cars in the lot that is often filled to overflowing. The grounds and the greenhouses were mostly open.

I put on my mask anyway.

It’s hard to judge the danger level these days. With the virus being invisible and infectious for ten days before displaying symptoms, anyone could have it. Catching the virus is related to vulnerability, proximity, length of exposure and concentration of the virus. So being a relatively healthy person, being outside for a short time at some distance from others should be quite safe. ‘Should be’ is the operative word here.

There’s an old saying: ‘It’s not wise to try to cross a river of an average depth of four feet.’ Averages, percentages and projections can be quite accurate, but as a particular individual I can never know which of the categories I will fall into. If I have only a 5% chance of catching caronavirus, that’s good news, but it doesn’t tell me if I’ll end up in the 5% group or in the 95% group. Caution is advisable, but how much? Life is a risk. But how much risk is acceptable? Or wise? Or necessary?

But I was in the middle of telling you about the greenhouse when the pandemic inserted itself and I’m determined to return to where I was (as safely as I can). The greenhouses themselves were about one third filled – whether this was from the amount they had sold over the weekend or because they did not grow as much as usual, I’m not sure. I hope it was the former as I dream of many more trips to Robinson’s in the future.

I didn’t dally at the greenhouse. I got a dozen or so plants to fill the pots I strategically place around to beautify Temple. I grew my own petunias this year, they’re already in their usual pots on the access ramp, but I didn’t know that the compact habit of the ones I buy from Robinson’s are the product of their expert pruning to encourage bushiness, so mine, though quite healthy, are a little leggy. Hopefully just an adolescent trait that they will outgrow in the warm weeks to come.

I know I should grow more vegetables, but I am hopelessly infatuated with flowers and leaves and beauty. Each flower, each plant, is a miracle beyond compare—an ongoing stream of energy in the universe. The annuals come into being each year to bloom in wondrous shapes and colors before dying completely. They will die completely by the first frost but will send their energy and wisdom forward to the next year in the tiny space capsules of their seed. I am delighted to be able to be a part of the miracle of it all.

Personal Practice: Help a plant today. We are surrounded by and utterly dependent on the green plants and trees of this world. Look around you today at the amazing variety of shapes, sizes, colors and smells of the plants in your immediate life. Take the time to do something to take care of one of these plants. It might be just brushing off the dust from the leaves of a houseplant—or moving a plant to a better location, inside or in the garden—or watering or making space for plants to grow. Whatever you do, enjoy the privilege of tending the growing world around you.

Dreaming of Life #2: Fulfillment Is Not A Fixed Point

Yesterday I wrote about the importance of touching some dream or vision that calls to you—about the power of your heart’s dream to transform your experience of the present and to move you into action around things that matter. Today I want to write about the second idea that changed my life from the coaching training* I did in 2003.

Fulfillment is not a fixed point.

The great misunderstanding about the function of dreams of the future is that they operate in linear time. It’s easy to think that I am here and my dream is there. When I get to my dream, then I’ll be fulfilled. Then I’ll be happy. While this how the mind works, it is not how life works.

You may have noticed this yourself. Whenever we say ‘I’ll be happy when….’ and we actually get there or get that thing we were longing for, we find that we’re not completely happy. Or we’re briefly happy, then we’re dreaming of some where, some thing or some one else.

Several studies of happiness have shown that when people achieve major life goals (getting married, getting a major promotion or getting a significant amount of money) they are happier for a short period, then fairly quickly come back to the level of happiness or satisfaction that they were at before the major change.

There was a time when I thought having an ipad Aire would change my life. I resisted buying one for many months, but filled my spare hours learning the models and the specifications – including the weight down to the ounce. Eventually I broke down, went to the Apple store and treated myself. What a gorgeous piece of machinery it indeed was. I was totally delighted for a couple days. Then I was pleased for a couple weeks. Now it sits in the bottom of my drawer and comes out once a week or so and I hardly notice it.

It turns out that fulfillment and happiness are not a destination we can reach and then retire. You can’t have enough money or enough power or enough admiration to quell that nagging sense of unease or that wild despair that sometimes arises. While there can be great satisfaction in using our skills to make a difference in the world—even this satisfaction is short-lived.

Fulfillment is a process not a destination. Fulfillment comes when we act in alignment with our deepest values. Fulfillment is not something that will happen to you at some other point.

This is bad news and good news.

The bad news is that there is nothing you can do or get that will make you permanently happy and fulfilled. Your life will always be the wondrous and frustrating mix of everything that it is right now. Of course there are changes we can make are important and perhaps even necessary.

But the good news is that it is in working toward the life we dream of, for ourselves and for others, we find our fulfillment and joy. When we align our actions with the things that are truly important to us, then we can work with joy and satisfaction right where we are.

This is not just about working toward or reaching goals, this is about being true to the kind of person we want to be in the world. If I value being kind and clear or giving to others, when I actually do these things, I am fulfilled. It doesn’t have to be about being thanked or recognized, the satisfaction is in the action itself.

Personal Practice: Take some time today to remember something important to you. It might be a quality you want to cultivate or it might be an important goal in some area of your life that you want to work toward. It might be some important change you want to make. Remember what’s important and then take one step in that direction today. Notice any resistance that arises. Notice what it’s like when you move in the direction of what you love.

Dreaming of Life

When I did my first life-coach training in 2003, most of the curriculum was common sense, but there were two teachings that shifted the course of my life. The first was the possibility of a 10. Let me explain.

The first exercise we did in my training group was called the ‘balance wheel.’ It’s a circle divided into eight pie wedges. Each wedge is labeled with an area of your life: career, finances, health, friends & family, significant other, personal/spiritual growth, fun & recreation and physical environment. In each of these areas, we were instructed to come up with a number based on our level of satisfaction with our life in that area.  1 means that it’s really terrible and hard to imagine it being any worse. 10 means that your life in this area is so wonderful that you can’t imagine anything better.

A 1 for career means you hate your job (if you have one) and can barely drag yourself out of bed each morning. A 10 means that you can’t believe you’re getting paid to do what you love.

I still do this exercise with each of my new clients. Just this part of the exercise is often illuminating. Looking around the wheel, you can see the balance, or unbalance, of your life. Are all the numbers quite low? Or high? Or is there significant variation—some aspects of your life that are going well and others that need a lot of improvement?

But it’s the next part of the exercise that was most revelatory for me personally. This begins with taking one of the areas and describing why you gave it the number you did. If career is a 7, what are the things that are good about your job that give you satisfaction? What parts of your job align with what you love? And what are the things about your career that are not working?

Then, the most powerful question—one that we are often taught not to ask: “What would a 10 look like?” What is your dream? Most of us have been carefully socialized to be ‘realistic’—to appreciate what we have and not ask for too much. Dreaming is often associated with daydreaming and is discouraged from a young age in favor of being realistic and staying on task. Especially if things are going well, we are encouraged to not rock the boat or want too much.

But exploring the matter of what a ‘ten’ would look like is a way to begin to move toward some mysterious deep purpose that human beings all seem to have. Articulating your dream for your career, or your relationship with your significant other, or for fun & recreation may seem unrealistic and selfish. Sometimes it may feel dangerous even to verbalize that things could be better.

In exploring what a ‘ten’ would look like, we may find it is all quite vague or it may be very specific. But to spend time dreaming into what vision calls to you has the capacity to touch some part of ourselves we had hardly noticed. I’m always amazed at how different each person’s dream is and the energy that can be awakened in the present moment when we allow ourselves to articulate that dream.

The final coaching question is: ‘What is one step you could take today to move from where you are toward that dream?’ There’s no guarantee that we will get exactly what we want. Life doesn’t work that way. But to articulate and feel the shape of some future that calls to you is a way to change the quality of your life in the present moment and lead you toward making steps in the direction of your love.

Personal Practice: Pick some aspect of your life and try this exercise. It could be quite specific: food and nutrition, or exercise, or my garden. Or it could be one of the ones on the ‘balance wheel.’ Pick an area you’re interested in and would like more information about. Then follow the steps above, jotting notes to yourself as you go. Where are you now?  What is good/bad about where you are?  What would a 10 look like?  What is one step you can take today or tomorrow?   Write it down and do it.

Extra credit: share your dream with a friend and tell them the step you are going to take. Have them check in with you to see what you learned from taking that step.

Tomorrow’s post: The Second Thing.

Not Much Going On

People keep saying these are unusual times. It’s true, but still some mornings I wake up and not much is going on. It could be any morning. Just the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen.   Just the leaves of late May fluttering gently in the first breezes of the day. Unseen birds warble and hoot from all directions.

When we don’t divide up our life into narrative arcs, then there’s not so much drama. Sometimes this loosening of the story happens through our intentional efforts to return our awareness to the vividness of the present moment. Sometimes it’s as if the story itself gets tired, goes off for a break, leaving us free in the quiet of the moment. These moments of ease, because of their nature, often don’t get woven into the ongoing story of our lives. When the narrative function of the mind comes back from its break, it often tends to leave out the parts that don’t cohere as neatly with its ongoing story of danger and struggle.

I am clearly an older man now. I can’t quite bring my self to write ‘old man’ yet. Whether this is due to the fact that more and more of my friends are in their seventies, eighties and even nineties, or to an unwillingness on my part to speak the truth—I’m not really sure. But from the ripe age of 67 going on 68, I can look back on my life and see many chapters: childhood, adolescence, college student, potter, dancer, food coop manager, partner, teacher, father, Zen student, school head, Maine sea kayak guide, life-coach, Zen teacher… Some of these roles are clearly in the past and some persist but are dramatically transformed. I am still a father, but my little girl is now a full-grown woman and no longer sits in my lap transfixed by the story we have read scores of times together. I’m still a partner, but my wife is no longer a young woman, but appears now as a woman whose age has increased with mine.

Time and memory are much more elastic and creative than they appear.

I can look back and clearly ‘see’ these chapters; the different jobs, roles and locations of my life. I was once a little boy myself. I lived with my family where Mom kept us fed and clothed and watched over our various comings and goings while Dad was out in the world doing mysterious and important things. While my siblings would probably all agree to the large outlines, but when we compare memories of the specifics, it gets a little more fuzzy.

Our memories and our stories are all based on things that really happened, but they are also tales told by an unreliable narrator—like a movie where you see the world through one character’s eyes and it turns out to be quite different from how he was making it seem.

We live in worlds that we participate in creating. The past and future are stories we tell that shape the quality of our experience in the present.

A long-ago bumper sticker: It’s never too late to have a happy childhood. I assume this was created by some associations of psychologists who were drumming up business. But it is true that the work we do on ourselves has an impact on how we experience not only the present, but the past and future as well. While no one can change the past, how we hold the story of our past has a huge impact on the quality of our life in the present moment. Likewise, though the future is unknowable, the stories we tell about what is to come play themselves out in our lives of the present.

But some days, the multitude of stores about who I was, who I am and who I will be fade into the background. An ease arises and it’s a little disorienting. I know I should be worried about something, but I just can’t seem to remember what it was.

A wise teacher once said: ‘When it comes don’t try to avoid it and when it leaves, don’t go running after it.’ So this morning, I appreciate the ageless life of cool spring morning. I’ll have a cup of tea and meander around the garden—seeing and smelling and listening to this green world of now.

Personal Practice – Stay awake today for the times in between the stories you tell yourself about your life. Notice the moments that don’t really matter—where you’re not doing anything particular, where you’re not being productive, where the grip of your internal narrator has loosened. No need to do anything with these moments except to perhaps appreciate the subtle ease and freedom that weaves itself into everyday life, even in the midst of it all.

Lessons In The Garden

The other day in the Temple garden I was surprised by wonderful scent. At first, I suspected the one of the various late-blooming daffodils. But when I investigated up close, they were innocent of fragrance. Distracted by other garden tasks, I gave up the search, but later that day and the days after, the sweet smell came back again. This particular perfume was new to me. It wasn’t the subtle cinnamon smell the mighty katsura trees release, that only happens in the autumn. It wasn’t the petunias which have their own intense and slightly addictive odor, you have to get quite close to smell them. This aroma was floating easily through whole sections of the garden and besides, the petunias weren’t blooming yet. Where was it coming from?

I’ve been trying to teach my grandson how to smell flowers. He’s just fifteen months old now and has shown a great interest in moving vehicles, dirt and flowers. Melissa and I have been doing childcare for him a day or two a week since before the pandemic began. Our bubble of isolation is the two of us and our grandson and his parents. I feel slightly guilty about this arrangement, while we are clearly helping his parents both be able to continue their fulltime jobs, the pleasure of spending time with this growing bundle of life seems vaguely improper at a time of so much suffering and dislocation.

Our lessons include instruction in two basic types of flowers: those you can pick (dandelions, violets and buttercups these days) and those you can’t (daffodils, tulips, pansies and flowers in other people’s yards). He’s doing pretty well with dandelion recognition. On walks he will go right for their sunny yellow heads and with one hand and great glee detach the flower from the stem. He then happily clutches one or two or three heads in each hand as we walk down the sidewalk (to the corner to watch and listen to the cars passing by on the main street.)

I suspect it’s the urgent tone in my voice that calls him back from the pruning of the other flowers. I realize that for him, it’s all be totally arbitrary. The small pansies that you shouldn’t pick are no bigger than wild violets that are fair game. So far, he mostly seems willing to take my word for it.

The smelling lessons began with holding him near a pot of sweet smelling pansies and then swinging him away before he could make a grab for a fistful of them. I was generally able to appease his tactile desire by dead-heading one of the spent blossoms and giving it to him for holding. Then I would lean in and smell the blossoms myself, then put his face right near the fragrant flowers. He seemed to like it, but a grandfather’s eyes often see much more of the brilliance and perceptiveness in his grandson than could be an objective outside source.

Now we’re into advanced training. Yesterday, in the garden with him walking on his own, I crouched down to smell a daffodil. Its smell was subtle but interesting. He then went toward the daffodil on his own. I feared for the life of this still blooming garden flower, but since it was one of many and nearly spent anyway, I took the risk. He crouched down, hands on knees, put his nose close to the flower and made heavy breathing noises. As his tutor in residence, I took that as success and gave him full credit for the exercise.

But back to the mysterious scent in the Temple garden. For several days it mystified and delighted me. Finally, I located the culprit. The delicious aroma was coming from clusters small white bell-shaped flowers that hung off of three or four inch stalks growing close to the ground. The leaves are much larger than the flower stalks and nearly hide the fragrant delicate blossoms. Lily-of-the-valley was and is the sweet culprit.

This invasive ‘weed’ that I am currently campaigning against turns out to not only produce mats of roots that choke off competing plants, but also gives off, for a short period every year and most arresting fragrance. With such a successful propagation by root strategy, I’m not sure why the plant would put so much effort into producing a smell. To attract pollinators?   To appease gardeners like me who would otherwise and still may totally eradicate them? (Though just to be clear, at this point I have no hopes of ridding the garden of these sweet smelling nuisances, just to limit their field of conquest to minor patches.)

Mystery solved.

Maybe next I’ll uncover some endearing and useful quality of mosquitoes. Who knows?

Daily Practice – On your next outdoor excursion, pick a flower that no one pays attention to and carry it in your hand as you walk. Dandelions and violets are in full season and quite plentiful these days. Also notice the scores of tiny flowers and plants that no one cultivates, that are happy to appear in random patches of dirt and in unchemicalized lawns. Appreciate the inventiveness, determination and beauty of the mysterious life force that continues with our without human intervention.

Limiting Time and Space

Yesterday, in Worcester, MA, the sky was bright blue and the sun shone all day. With temperatures in the low sixties, it was a glorious spring day. I had the great good fortune to spend a good chunk of the morning repairing the edging of one of the woodchip paths that leads to a sitting bench under the katsura trees.

The woodchip walkways we have in the Temple garden require constant maintenance. The woodchips themselves last about two years before the multitude of microorganisms quietly dissolve them back to rich dark soil. And the stones and bricks that edge the walkways seem to want hide themselves in the earth. Every year they sink into the dark coolness beneath them.

My job is to interrupt their entropic desires and get them back to their job of boundary sentinels for the path. I don’t think they mind. In fact, I like to imagine they are happy for the attention and enjoy their momentary participation in the multitudinous patterns of the garden.

To refresh the walkway, I unearth each stone and reseat it. As I work, I have to remember to step back often to make sure the width and curve of the path remain inviting and steady. This is wonderful work on a fine spring day. The part I enjoy most, aside from the pleasure of stepping back at the end and feeling that order has been restored in the universe, is that the task itself facilitates a limiting of time and space.

It’s not a challenging task, but it requires gentle attention. The random shapes of the rocks help me resign myself to imperfection so I just do the best I can—moving stones, digging and shaping the earth and woodchips that will guide the feet that will come. For a couple hours yesterday, my time space was delightfully limited to this particular activity in this particular space.

It’s such a relief to be where and when we are.

Gardening—whether actively cultivating or the gardening that is simply the walking through or looking at a garden—is a wonderful way to accept this endless invitation to be present.

Personal Practice: Find some simple physical task to do today. It should be small and fairly easy to do. Cleaning and tending and sorting are all good activities. As you work, allow your task to be what you are doing. Can you work easily and trust what your body knows and does and sees? Enjoy the job. Then step back and appreciate how this small corner of the universe sparkles just a little brighter.

Simple Pleasures

I made bread yesterday. For the first time in twenty-five years. It was wonderful.

Melissa and I have been doing our best to shelter-in-place, including radically limiting our trips to the grocery store. Through the assistance of a friend who did a couple small shoppings for us, the delivery of one box of fresh produce and one huge shopping trip at the beginning, we have not been to the grocery store in about a month.

I had, however, before the stay-at-home order began, bought two five-pound bags of flour with the intention of baking bread for us during these days of social isolation. I had had good intentions, but the garden and writing and meditating and watching Netflix had taken precedence until yesterday.

It was when we put two of our last three slices of bread into the toaster that I was pushed into action. Of course we could just put our masks and gloves on and go carefully to the grocery store, but we’re kind of enjoying the creativity that comes when there’s not much in the cupboard and going out to dinner is not a possibility.

So yesterday morning, I got out our beat up copy of THE TASSAJARA BREAD BOOK to guide my efforts. I made the ‘sponge’—carefully beating it the requisite 100 times with a wooden spoon. I was delighted twenty minutes later to see the bubbles rise as the yeast came to life—enjoying their good fortune amidst the lukewarm water, honey, and flour. I mixed in more flour, turned the sticky mess onto the floured counter and kneaded the dough into shape.

I can’t remember exactly what is happening to the flour at this point—something about stretching the gluten or creating elasticity—but I do know that kneading is good for the bread. I also find it good for the kneader as well as the kneadee. It’s a sensuous and engagingly physical thing to do—like playing with clay or getting all dirty working in the garden or diving into a lake on a warm summer day.

Our hands were made to touch and press—to shape and know. The touching, of course, works both ways. We touch and are touched by the world. This skin is the boundary that connects us to the world around us. Everywhere we are touched—by our clothes, by the air or water or by this sticky ball of wheat and water that ever so slowly became smooth and pliable.

Back into the bowl and an hour later, it had doubled in size. Punch down (twenty soft blows are recommended) and let rise again. Divide in two. Let rest five minutes. (Why?) Shape into loaves. Let rise again for twenty minutes. Then into the 350 degree oven for an hour.

The house filled with the wonderful aroma of cooking bread. I couldn’t resist carefully peeking a couple times. Then a little before an hour, when the crust was nicely browned, I pulled out my two loaves. They fell easily out of the loaf pans and passed the thumping on the bottom hollow sound test so I let them rest.

Twenty minutes later we had fresh bread and butter with hot tea. Smell, taste and touch – such astonishing and ordinary capacities.

The whole adventure left me inordinately happy and satisfied for the rest of the day.

Personal Practice: As you prepare your food, turn your attention to your senses. Notice smells and textures as you pour, cut, and mix. Appreciate how skillfully your hands know how to hold and release – each finger a ancient miracle of engineering – performing with its own internal wisdom.

Extra Credit: Before you eat, take a moment to appreciate the many people who helped bring this food to your table—the growers and the pickers, the loaders and the truckers, the unloaders and the shelf-stockers, the check-out clerks and you yourself who prepared the meal.