Learn to be still

Lyric girl comin' at ya today, with a meditation on stillness... and the peace it provides...

The Eagles:
Though the world is torn and shaken
Even if your heart is breakin',
It's waiting for you to awaken
And someday you will-learn to be still

Probably the deepest, most sustained stillness I've engaged in was back in 2005 in the mountains of Tennessee. I was at a week long Stop at Nothing retreat, held at Barry and Su's "farm." Each participant pitched his own tent at least a half mile from anyone else's and much of the meditation during the week took place sitting outside the front flap. In the early light. In the dark. On a mountain. With the trees. Opening up to only the sound of my heartbeat, no movement, no thoughts, just being.

Wind stirs the bambo,
But once the wind passes,
the bamboo is silent.
Geese land in the chill pond,
But once the geese fly away,
there are no reflections.

In the same way,
Once the red dust passes,
The mind is still.

When the mind is still, it can't shriek quite as loudly that it is in control. Breath, heartbeats, sensations, come to the foreground, and it is sometimes possible to recognize that much of the time the mind is exerting a level of control it shouldn't have. In the woods on the mountain, putting myself in that place allowed me to see and feel energy around me that I would have been oblivious to on a normal day. I connected to it.

And while one or two experiences during that week counted as profound, the benefits of quieting the mind and focusing on the breath don't need to be profound in order to make a big difference in your life. Detachment from the noise, scattering, and frenzy swirling around us most of the time is reward enough - especially since that benefit lasts and can help us seal out the anxiety and shallowness that are everywhere.

Best of all, it takes no effort. You don't need to do anything, just be.

Moon above water.
Sit in solitude.

If waters are placid, the moon will be mirrored perfectly. If we still ourselves, we can mirror the divine perfectly. Neither the water nor the moon make any effort to achieve a reflection.

Sisters

I don't have a sister. (A great brother, but he was a "little" brother, and although I love him dearly we weren't particularly close growing up). I don't honestly remember whether I really wanted a sister, but I said I did. And when I imagined the family I would have one day -- in the form of a 3rd grade project called "My Life" -- I created three children, one boy and two sisters. Voila!

And as I watched Lindsey and Stephanie be sisters, I experienced some pangs of jealousy from time to time. They would fight, of course: Stephanie's first tattle-tale moment came when she was only two and yelled down the stairs: "Mom! Lindsey hit me back!" But they had "sleep-overs" in each other's rooms once a week, regardless of who had stolen whose jewelry or socks.

Lindsey recounted a memory about her little sister:

"I was about six and Stephanie was about four. We were a block away from home swimming at a friend’s house. It was one of those four foot tall pools that kills the grass in the backyard because it’s up all summer and filled with water…the kind you can easily pour out by accidentally flipping part of the wall down. It started raining lightly, but quickly became a thunderstorm and Steph and I had to get home, so we took off at a full sprint toward the house. We were almost there…about two driveways away, and I realized that I had left all my little plastic jewelry, which was more important than anything on Earth at that time, sitting by the pool on the fence. I stopped the both of us dead in our tracks.
“Stephanie, I have to go back!” I yelled over an earth-shattering clap of thunder.
“Okay,” such a tiny voice replied.
“Stay here!”
I took off back in the other direction, heart racing, mind racing, so frightened I couldn’t even comprehend what was going on. I snatched my jewelry off the fence, terrified and alone, and it seemed to take forever to get back fighting through rain. As I neared the point at which we had stopped, I saw little Stephie standing there on the sidewalk being soaked through, lightening streaking right above her head, thunder shaking the ground…she was so calm. My dad was on the front porch yelling at her to come in, but she just watched the other direction for me. She waited, staring as I passed each driveway. She waited patiently until I was right by her side, and when I got to her, she broke into a run again and we were home safely in a matter of seconds. She doesn’t remember this, but I’ve told her the story a million times."

As they got older, they were there for each other in all the important ways,and they have stayed true friends. Whenever I see a picture of them together, I feel all warm and lucky. Sisters. What a blessing.

"We Wait to Hate"

When I worked for CCG, one of the most interesting and rewarding clients we had was Baltimore Safe and Sound, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation program site dedicated to improving the quality of life for children and families in Baltimore. Lots to improve there. Our initial set of focus groups we conducted to position the campaign yielded some poignant and insightful revelations. "When you go outside," we asked the young people, "what do you see that tells you that things aren't OK here in Baltimore?"

"Babies crawling on the steet."
"No nets in the basketball goals in the park."
"Hypodermics on the ground."
"Kids out at all hours with nobody watching them."

One young woman said, "Why can't someone give our parents home training?" Home training, we asked? "Yeah, like somebody needs to teach them. Like not to throw garbage out the window, but to get a trashcan to put it in."

The campaign had seven goals, ranging from improving prenatal care, to making sure kids entered school ready to learn. But all of the goals - and all of the problems - were interrelated, and systemic, and sometimes seemed insurmountable.

Hathaway Ferebee, executive director of the campaign, headlined one of the advertorials we created as "We Wait to Hate." She said, paraphrasing, that we don't ensure moms get good prenatal care, babies are born with low birth weight and struggle with cognition, we don't provide good pre-school education, kids start school unprepared, and through all of this we either feel sorry for them or ignore them. Then, they fall behind, drop out, hang with bad people, commit their first crime, and then we decide we hate them.

Thinking about this today after hearing the press conference in Chicago about starting a national conversation about youth violence. Someone asked Arnie Duncan why today people appeared to show up to hear this message when he has been giving the same speech for years. His answer was the power of video. Watching an innocent child get beaten to death moved people.

If only the problem wasn't so entangled. But it is. It's like a giant root system, underground. The predictive modeling program they've developed to identify and target the most likely victims and perpetrators may help. (And to Hathaway's point, they are the same group). But until we go oh so far back upstream and start with the addicted pregnant mom who needs inpatient drug rehab, which costs far less than the foster care her children will eventually need, until the systemic problems are fixed at their root, it's going to be a continuing game of Whack-a-Mole.

We'll get outraged, and many of us will hate.
God love and protect our children and their parents. We can do better.

50+2 Great Memories

Capturing two - among many - wonderful memories of my 50th birthday, two years ago tomorrow. It was a spectacular birthday, starting with the arrival of Sid, and ending with the wonderful trip to Sedona with the coolest women I know.

On the actual day of my birthday, Jeff presented me with a a series of prints. Each one was an image of the state flower of the places I've lived, accompanied by a poem that reflected that particular time in my/our life. One after the other... Texas, Ohio, Iowa, Colorado, Indiana, Georgia, Kansas. I was overwhelmed, and just sobbing by the time he gave me the Kansas sunflower and Grace Cavaliere's Tarot Card VI. The Lovers:

"Having loved me when I was young
and now when I am not,
you are twice blessed
for giving
a rich person a gift.

In no one else's dream but yours,
I will be the old man
wearing a white straw hat

with a red satin bow
who says Thank you."

OK, he substituted man for woman, but that just made it all the more precious. Was there ever a more loving gift?

And, was there ever a more loving friend than Terri? She gave me a gift of words, as well, powerful because they came from deep insight and an attempt to understand another. People who make the effort to"get" you, who really pay attention are the very best friends. Here were her words:

"When I think of you and the reasons I admire you so, two words come to mind. Not optimism. Though you do, as we say, default to it. Not compassion. Though you are the first to shed a tear for someone else’s pain. Not strength. Though you sail through crises that would swamp others. No, the first word I would choose would be arthroscopy. While the rest of us are wallowing in the muscle and tissue, you are able to bore to the core of the issue, the problem, the irony – even the joke – with the accuracy and certainty of the finest surgeon. In this one way (and others), you are uncanny. The other word I would choose is easier to explain. Love. I love you, Jeanne."

My deepest gratitude to you both for making my life so rich. I am very lucky.

Resist Hysteria

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/09/28/assignment_america/main5347232.shtml#comments
My friend John Martellaro always teases me about my frequent use of exclamation points in my emails and other correspondence. He's right. I do use them alot. But I think I'm going to give them up. In my case, they almost always signify excitement, pleasure, wonderment. But in the year of our Lord 2009, they are everywhere. And they mostly signal outrage.

I don't know how or why we got here. I'll let the pundits speculate about partisanship, racism, fear and the rest of it. But I do know that I've been taught the lesson, directly and indirectly, over and over, that you can only control yourself. And that railing against the (whatever), or trying to make (somebody) do (something) or behave a certain way is almost always a losing proposition. That's not to say I can't or don't try to influence people to adopt a certain viewpoint from time to time, but I focus only on what is in my own circle of influence because the rest of it is a tremendous waste of energy that would be much better spent on something positive.

The story linked here is a perfect example of when to groan and go on. It is a beautiful story about a dog whose family was in a horrific car accident and who stayed on the scene for 13 days, sleeping with the little artifacts he had gathered up - toothbrushes and the like. A very smart rescue worker who "wouldn't take lost for an answer" figured out what had happened, and found the family, who had all survived and thought the dog had died. Unfortunately, the family's medical bills - there were five of them in the accident - meant they temporarily had to move to a place that wouldn't allow pets. So the rescue lady agreed to keep the dog for them until they could get back on their feet.

You know where this is going, right? The very first comment on the website where this is posted was this:

Quote: "Unfortunately, because of the accident and the medical expenses, the Kelly family has had to temporarily relocate to a place that doesn't allow dogs."I hate these veiled attempts at swaying the majority opinion on socialized health care. We're smart to your tactics, CBS!!!!

Note: FOUR exclamation points. (Yes, John, I guess capital letters could fall into the same category). So I'll re-state. Four exclamation points. Don't you wonder what this person thinks those extra little marks are going to do? Be the last straw that convinces Texas to leave the union? Convince Nancy Pelosi to drop the public option? More likely, the post wil be featured on Colbert. And people will laugh, but uneasily.

And this isn't just about politics, by the way. What about children flying off the handle over minutiae and murdering each other in Chicago? My point is this: there is so much craziness that the only sane response is to abstain from participation in it. So I won't rant. I won't exclaim. I'll remain calm and focus on what I can contribute.

And, sorry, John, you won't have my exclamation points to kick around anymore. At least not for now.