The Pebble is SO Heavy Sometimes

Reverence the highest, have patience with the lowest. Let this day's performance of the meanest duty be thy religion. Are the stars too distant, pick up the pebble that lies at thy feet, and from it learn the all.

- Margaret Fuller -

Darn! I just read this and it made me think of yesterday and I don't think I was "patient with the lowest". I didn't "pick up the pebble" that lay at my feet. Or maybe just now, I have.

Rarely...very rarely...do I "take myself on a date", take a day off from the rigors of setting my own schedule to get a host of things done, just blow off the task master in my head. But Monday I decided to take myself to the movies. I even decided to spring for a first-run movie at a nice theater for a change instead of the $3 supersaver where there's only one seat per theater that actually works like a chair instead of a sliding board to the floor.

I never saw the movie. The theater was experiencing a rare power outage that day. Weird.

I shook off my disbelief, redesigned my day to include the host of obligatory things I "should" have done in the first place and decided to try a day off...or a MAE day, as Stan calls it...on Wednesday.

The theater was up and running yesterday and I got there early enough to be the second to pick a seat...the "best" seat in the house, in my opinion. I settled in, reading a book I brought to pass the time. By the time the previews started, the place was pretty full. Fifteen minutes later, when the movie was several minutes in progress, two women with a tray full of food parked just behind me. Whispering continuously and unwrapping their burgers and whatnot, crinkling as they merrily enjoyed their movie time, I couldn't hear the movie well. More significantly, I was distracted by the disturbance behind me, and even more importantly, I was extremely aware that this was bothering me intensely. I was irate that these people would have the nerve to whisper and crinkle in my space. I paid for this movie, too, not only with money but with my second day of time out. I deserved a quiet, peaceful experience, did I not? Who were they to command my space like that?

Simultaneously, I felt I had a right to turn around and glare at them, (something I would not let myself do, by the way) and yet I also was very aware that this was really a minor infraction in the grand scope of life and I wondered why I couldn't get beyond it.

Why couldn't I have "patience with the lowest"? (The "lowest" being NOT the two women, but my situation and my response to it.) Why couldn't I have embraced these ladies' obvious joy at being together at the movies eating a lap full of comfort food? Why was my own experience so important as to demand my own perfect viewing? Why was there not room for us both? Why couldn't I politely turn around and ask for more quiet? Why didn't I just get up and move? Why do I respond as I do in any given moment?

I do not ask you these questions. I ask myself.

A whole lifetime of lived experience brings me to my decisive actions. I am left to contemplate my response to the world. I am left to wonder how best to "pick up the pebble...and...learn the all".

The real irony is that I was watching the movie "The King's Speech". Guess you'd have to see it to understand why this is ironic to me.

Coincidence?

Other places at other times I have written about coincidence not really being coincidence. It isn't a new thought to me. But I was reminded how deeply I think coincidence just isn't. First, I was rewriting a chapter in one of the memoirs I have written and I was reminded about a time nearly eight years ago when my youngest graduated from high school. I was living in Maine at the time and flew to Ohio with my mother and Evan's sister to celebrate.

Was it a coincidence that the dog Evan grew up with chose to die that same weekend, a visceral show of solidarity with him? He was transitioning. She could, too.

Was it a coincidence that at our connecting city on our way back to Maine, we "happened" to see my brother and his family as they raced in an electric tram to get to their gate on time? We didn't know they were connecting through that same city. We didn't know that their first flight was two hours delayed and they should have been long gone. We had five precious minutes to see them before they left for Oslo, Norway. We wouldn't see them again for a year.

Thinking about my dog dying made me think of Stan's dog who "chose" to die just as I moved in after we were married. Again, is it a coincidence that this dog, too, seemed to know that his job was done?

I guess what really got me thinking about this issue, though, was when I saw a recent Oprah Winfrey show in which she revealed that she has a half sister she hadn't known about. The "coincidences" that had to occur in order for these two to finally meet after 47 years were beyond amazing.

I was left thinking that when we are meant to receive something, a blessing, a lesson, a healing, even a gift in the form of the death of a loved one whose time to go is so timely, it just can't NOT happen to/for us. What does happen I believe, is that we miss the coincidence, or we downplay it, or we deny it altogether.

Me? I just don't believe in coincidences. As a result, I expect them. I see them all the time.

My Lifestyle

Sometimes things will happen in the course of a day that help me see myself more clearly than usual. Today's offerings made me realize that my current lifestyle is really not "normal". I lived a "typical" American day once upon a time, putting in many long hours. For years I couldn't imagine life without a break from being with people. First, after growing up in a household of 6 or 7 depending on who was there, I raised three kids and even homeschooled them for 7 years. On the very, very rare occasion that I was away from the kids, I was always with someone else and besides, I never had enough time away to not feel the footprint the kids left on me. I remember wondering if I would ever get enough sleep again.

And then I went back to work and put in twice as many hours as I was paid for mostly because I loved being a youth and young adult director that much. But again, I was rarely alone and indeed when all of this came to an end and I moved out of state, I began to live a lifestyle totally foreign to me. I have been living this way now for 8-1/2 years and what was once foreign is now so familiar I had to be jogged into realizing today that I live a life that most might find enviable, at least at first, but then perhaps depressing or even frightening. Most days I spend in relative silence. And I spend it alone.

That is not to say I am idle. I read, pray, meditate, write, draw, and journal almost every day all day. Occasionally I am gifted sitting with a spiritual directee, privileged to hear how another's lifestory is unfolding. It is much like being on retreat all the time. As on retreat I have learned to discipline my day to contain the structures of eating and doing basic household necessities. I rarely watch TV or listen to music, preferring the quiet. For awhile, in the beginning, I was tempted to consider this lifestyle frivolous and worth next to nothing. But more recently, I realize that there is great growth in a disciplined life of contemplation which is essentially what I am doing as I read books from authors like Rohr, Tolle, Myss, and Nouwen. I contemplate life as I reflect in writing such as what I am doing now or when I am creating artwork for a children's book or when I meditate to listen for the voice of God, Reason, All That IS and the Wisdom that comes because I am profoundly loved.
I am blessed to be able to do this. I am grateful beyond measure. I may not always be able to enjoy this lifestyle. Indeed, I feel the winds of change. For now, it is good.

Dreams

Frequently I have very vivid dreams that come as my teachers. These are the dreams that remain with me after I wake. Sometimes these dreams are very cinema-like, sometimes very symbolic. Sometimes they are very happy dreams, sometimes frightening, sometimes just intense. All seem to want my attention. All, I believe, even the difficult ones, come to me for my own health and wholeness.

From time to time I will post my dreams. They will be described in present tense and for the most part will be told exactly as I remember dreaming them. If I need on occasion to add a note it will be put in parentheses to distinquish it as not a part of the actual dream. I will expound perhaps or perhaps not after telling the dream. But I will post each one separately.

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, images, etc. I only ask that you please begin your comment with "If it were my dream...." I believe that only the dreamer can know, when all comments are in, which ideas ring true.

Both-And

I'm made aware suddenly how long it's been since I have posted at this site. My younger son has posted a link for it on his blog site! Guess it's time to catch up.

A year is a long time and not a long time. Both-And. Isn't everything a both-and, really? Is anything really ALL bad? Is there anything that doesn't come with a silver lining in one case or a downside in the other? I am embracing the fact that it seems like yesterday that I last posted and yet all that has happened can't happen in a "yesterday". Both seem equally real to me.

It took a year for Evan's CD to mature to it's launch date on 1-11-11. It took a year for Melissa's relationship with Rob to bloom to engagement. It took a year to complete preparations for two family weddings, now behind us. It took the better part of a year for little Silas to finish cooking in his mamma's tummy and join us in the living-breathing world. It took a year for little Peyton to learn to walk, then run, then start potty-training and for Isaac and Noah to both be old enough to ride the bus to school. These things are easy to track and measure.

Somethings are less visible to me. A year of highs and lows, successes and less-than-successes bring me a year's worth of growth that I can't measure very well. But I am a better listener this year than last (I hope), I am a little more patient with myself and others, a bit better at taking responsibility only for what is mine. I am better at bringing myself into balance. I am better at seeing the yin-yang, the two sides of one coin, the blessings within the heartache...the both-and of all of life. Nothing is ever pure except maybe Love itself. And of that, I'm not sure I would know pure Love if it knocked me down! What is pure is the ability to embrace all of life at all times which means that in doing so, I am embracing All That Is, or, in my personal definition, God.

Maybe I need to rename God "Both-And".