Month: March 2021

I’m never sure when I am ready to be opened up. I face disappointment, failure, loss. They all have the potential to open me. They all can have an effect more beneficial and lasting than success, but only when I am ready. Only when I yield to being opened up.

It seems I am hardly ever truly ready to be opened up by a friend’s growing distance and inattention. I often miss the opportunity to be opened and miss the chance to turn another blank page of unrealized expectations. I think I was ready to be opened up by the death of a close friend, and that allowed soothing grief to flood in, accompanied by a deep sense of my friend’s continued presence. I doubt that would have occurred had I not been ready to be opened up by the loss.

I wonder if I can be ready to be opened up by poor health or by failures that quietly stalk me uninvited. My failures as a gardener are sometimes on my mind, and I wonder if I can be ready to be opened by failures in my garden. Can I be opened up to something that success never seems to provide?

I wonder if I will be ready to be opened by the failures that every aging parent must experience. As an older parent, I become aware of my past opportunities lost, my failure to support, my unhelpful words. Am I ever ready to be opened by these growing awarenesses of my old actions as I watch my children grow older?

Success has seldom transformed me in a positive manner, except perhaps to strengthen the husk of my self-awareness. Mostly the breaking open times, the splitting of that self-supporting husk have served to allow me to grow. The breaking open times have allowed the mystery inside to unfold, the wonders of the world to come rushing in.

As I look across my bedroom at the tall bookcase that extends floor to ceiling, I stare into my stored past. So many books, some standing two deep on shelves, all remind me of my stored experience. Those pages tell part of the tale of all that has been stored in me.

A couple of books of chant are vestiges of the many songs I sang in those books. There are so many adventures and explorations. There are some fantasies, but mostly discoveries made by my heart and mind. Beginnings and endings are all there, as they remain in me. False starts that were never ended are there. So are also the repeated reads, and notes, and plunges into unfamiliar waters. All are reminders of what I carry stored in me.

Today I am aware of so many stored experiences, and the books only bring a reflection on a small part stored in me. Like the ancient maple in my garden, I have many rings that store experience of what seems the past, but is actually still present and part of me. So much has been stored in my roots and nourish me every day.

Even as I reach out to friends that surround me, I realize I do so with many stored experience within me of others and they are still present. I hold inside of me all those I have experienced and known. I have stored all those who have shaped me and still are part of my breath and my sighs. I hold a storehouse of encounters and intimacies on my yellowed pages and in my anchoring roots.

I have albums of photos that remind me of some days of my past, especially the stored memories of experiences with my two kids and Brenda. There are also other photos and written thoughts that remind me of the many people who have had intimate impacts on me and are stored within me. Their presence is more intense and intimate than the books standing vigil on the shelves in my room.

So much is stored inside of me, some easily accessible by memory and some not. Still, it is all there. What appears to be past experience is part of every everything that unfolds. What is stored has not ended. It seems to go on, day by day, moment by moment.

If I know that everything is instantly changing, always in motion, why does nearly everything seem to stay the same? Is it enough to realize that my mind provides the illusion of unchanging stability? Is my mind grasping for a stability that doesn’t exist. Is there, perhaps, some intervening plane that maintains the illusion of stability?

I wonder if things really are changing, or do they somewhat stay the same? Where lies the stability? And what difference does it make after all?

I suspect that stability is a creation of my mind and some notion of stability is maintained in spite of my unstable sense perceptions. Sometimes I just want life to be a stable path down which I travel with planning and deliberateness.

Perhaps all perceived existence, including my own, is more a river that will carry me along if I allow it. It is better if I simply relax, pay attention, and not focus on putting one foot carefully in front of another. I need not follow a stable path which, after all, may only exist in my mind.

Each morning, I tend to fashion a path that I plan to follow that day. One of my guides is my mental clock that marks how my day will be anchored. The danger is not that I might wander off this time-measured path, but that I might miss the thrill of a sweeping current that invites me into a world not at all stable.

If I truly relax, I never know what I might see of this changing world.

Being on a path seems to imply some kind of movement. The presumption is that the movement is mine and is in a forward direction, towards an outcome. That outcome is somehow better than where I stand.

I think I am starting to prefer to stand in place, to feel undirected toward some kind of goal. I think I like the feeling of embracing unintended outcomes and I am a little suspicious of things turning out just the way I planned.

If anything moves, it is not me but the path itself. It carries me along, intent though I might be of not falling off the edges. I am thinking less of outcomes and more about yielding to where I am. I like to sometimes just sit on the path.

I sense that I have no place to go, no where else to be. The path will carry me if I do not resist or stray onto its sides. The flow of the path knows how to carry me. I need not move but only look around and be aware of where I am. It is enough to become part of where I am.

For months, I have been sitting with groups of people as we explore the impact of trauma on all of us. We have been guided by Resmaa’s book on trauma as we have attempted to come to grips with the unfortunate impacts of the trauma experienced by our ancestors or ourselves.

In talking so intently with others about this inherited trauma, I have forgotten about something equally important. I have not remembered equally well that I am the beneficiary of countless acts of kindness, not just acts of trauma.

So many acts of kindness have shaped me. These are not just the acts of kindness I have directly experienced, but also the vast number of acts of kindness that have preceded me and had such a great effect on me. I may have a dark side to my inheritance, but I also have a bright side as well.

I think of the thousands of gestures that have both saved and enriched lives, and I received that bounteous inheritance from the first moment of my existence. I am remembering the countless acts of kindness that have created a high functioning species like me. Every morning, I immerse myself in the memory of the acts of love that have shaped the kind of person I am today.

I know that I carry the burden of past trauma, my own and my ancestors. I also carry all the acts of kindness of those who have come before me. I carry in me all the warmth and support of the sea of kindness of those who surround me with an abundance of compassionate love.

The raw hostility of the world is softened by the generous kindness that I see as the prevailing face of a universe that is essentially benevolent and kind. I have been marked by countless acts of kindness of humans just like me.

I aspire to play my own role in shaping with kindness what is yet to come. My every act of kindness reaches out beyond the time I still have to be alive.

It seems almost like an unreal dream that Kip and I practiced this time so often. I know I have been here before, but the reality is taking its time to settle in.

It has been only a week since I suspected that Kip was back in the hospital. He had not answered my Sunday email suggesting how we might schedule our routine Monday morning chat on FaceTime. There was his ominous silence. It was a silence we had laughed away numerous times before when I quipped that when he didn’t answer my email or my phone messages, I could assume he was in the ER or the hospital. Again.

This time it would be a day before I got the email from Ellen announcing that this was a serious return to hospital. Kip was very seriously sick. He was put on a ventilator on Sunday. Then came the dreaded but expected news that his close family would be gathering to say goodbyes on Wednesday morning.

Kip and I had witnessed this chain of events before. Practiced it. Examined it. Turned it over and over. Imagined what it would be like. He from one perspective. Me from another. His was about letting go of life. Mine was about letting go of a friend.

Cancer may take life, but it gives time. We had years to prepare for the bend in the road we both knew was inevitable. Though we could only see vaguely through the fog of medical uncertainty, we new there was a sharp curve somewhere ahead. We moved along as though we had all the time in the world, for today.

It has been a week since the practicing ended and reality set its uncertain course. Kip died on Wednesday. Even though it has been only a week since I was certain he was about to die, it seems like a much longer time. Even though the reality that was emerging slowly was strangely familiar and practiced, it became a slow and difficult process. The peeling away revealed a pain and sadness I had not seen before. Practice is one thing. The real performance is quite another.

It has been a week of raw newness blended with studied familiarity.

I guess that I thought I was being prepared and practiced for the inevitable. But in the arriving of the letting go Kip and I both had to do this past week, I found it unfamiliar. The more I have allowed myself to settle into the reality of Kip’s death, the more I am finding the experience deeply sad and difficult. I have been down this path before. We had practiced, after all.

I now realize that the practice mostly made it easier for me to slide down a familiar route. Letting go was a practiced experience. I felt little resistance to the reality I slowly settled into. The practiced ease, however, has also allowed the sadness to enter in so effortlessly and deeply. Practice was no shield from sadness.

I wonder what it was like for Kip. When I knew he was dying, I wished him acceptance and an ease in letting go. I never thought to wish him the joy of realizing that he had experienced a wonderful life. Perhaps it is not too late to remind myself to think of what a gift it has been to have Kip as a friend, to have shared all those moments of supporting friendship.

As I delete all those future 9:00 FaceTime visits with Kip from my calendar, I also remember all those past scheduled times that are still there. We may have spent a little time practicing for what was to come, but we spent a lot more time living shared moments of life together. A good blend.