The Struggle

After rain

Trump's grand and vulgar self-absorption is inviting all of us to examine our own selfishness. His ignorance calls us to attend to our own blind spots. The fears that he stokes and the isolation he promotes goad us to be braver, more generous.

James S. Gordon, founder of The Center for Mind-Body Medicine 

The whipsaw of anger and sitting in stillness.

A long time ago Sophie began to seize and I began to resist.

A long time ago I placed the baby in the middle of the bed while she screamed and got into the shower, turned on the water and crouched there under it. The word drown covers both the sound and my life, in those moments.

A long time ago I also rocked my baby and recited a mantra as she screamed for hours and hours. I've written that sentence, juggling those words, over and over for the last two decades. Sometimes I write more than twenty years. A while back I wrote over ten years ago. 

While the baby screamed I recited the words of Thich Naht Hanh over and over, aloud.  Breathing in I calm myself, breathing out I smile.

When I feel most angry I sit with it feeling its flood. Lately, I go to water, swim back and forth, fluid and cutting.

Anger both cuts out the noise and is the noise. It is both distraction and diversion and the means to focus and sharpen.

Sophie and her seizures prepared me for resistance and for anger.

The peace that came was not something to work on, that I worked on but was, rather, imposed.

The story of the angel and Jacob, wrestling on a hill.



A little East of Jordan (145)

A little East of Jordan, 

Evangelists record, 

A Gymnast and an Angel 

Did wrestle long and hard – 

Till morning touching mountain – 

And Jacob, waxing strong, 

The Angel begged permission 

To Breakfast – to return! 

Not so, said cunning Jacob! 

"I will not let thee go 

Except thou bless me" – Stranger! 

The which acceded to – 

Light swung the silver fleeces 

"Peniel" Hills beyond, 

And the bewildered Gymnast 

Found he had worsted God!

Emily Dickinson

Gaugin, The Vision After the Sermon (Jacob wrestling with the Angel), 1888

Saturday Quote

Malibu Creek State Park, California

Please tell me how I can love you better.

Thich Nhat Hanh 

Love is a Verb

Blue Grosbeak, Malibu Creek Post

Love is a verb – it wants to be active. It wants to be witnessed, felt, demonstrated, shared, flung and sung from treetops and from the bottom of our toes. Love does not want to be subordinate to grief and hurt – it wants to be part of it, it wants to be known as the cause of it. Love is longing to be woven into the entire emotional fabric of our lives – winding and revealing itself alongside every thread that is not love. This big, messy, beautiful tapestry is the truth.

Kristi Nelson, from Heroic Hearts: Love in the Face of Despair 

I imagine we're all sort of still shattered by what happened in Orlando and what's happening -- well -- everywhere in this country. I'm in more of a daze than I generally live in, and while I've work to do, children to attend and a myriad of insignificant problems, I feel weighed down and not sure of how to go about lightening up. My usual sense of humor feels dampened. I'm restless and distracted. I'm not often like this, in fact am rarely so, but I'm thinking some kind of extended meditation is in order. Going in and breathing out. Tonglen meditation is a Buddhist practice roughly translated as "giving and receiving." It's about breathing in suffering and breathing out compassion. When Sophie was a little baby and suffering from the side effects of the drugs we were giving her, she'd scream nearly constantly. Some days I'd put her in the middle of the big bed and get into the shower, turn on the water, crouch down on the floor and let the water beat on my back, the sound of it drowning out her screams. Then I read a little book by Thich Nhat Hanh whose title I can't recall in this moment, and I learned a mantra that I repeated to myself, over and over, as I held Sophie while she screamed. I didn't need the shower, nor to take a break. Breathing in I calm myself, breathing out I smile. Breathing in I calm myself, breathing out I smile. I didn't know it then, but that mantra and those breaths were a sort of Tonglen meditation, and they have saved me over the years, over and over again. But this isn't about me. It's about all of us. It's about breathing in to calm ourselves and then breathing out love to others. Maybe that's all we can do right now. Breathe in calm, breathe out compassion. Love out loud.