I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
On this "MLK Day of Service", I ventured out onto the streets of my neighborhood, answering the call from an email to do "community clean-up". This is not new to me, as I spent many summer mornings doing this very task.
What felt new to me today was my reaction to the repulsive sights and the association to the person whose legacy was most definitely NOT this.
My stomach turned knots and angry, judgmental tears got stuck in my windpipe with each disgusting piece of filth I picked up -- evidence of the disregard and disrespect for the earth that is not ours but was freely given to us by a loving God who absolutely worked through Martin Luther King. Yes, I am engaging in self-righteous anger and I will need to make amends and put myself in-check later !
After being in the midst of the ick of the world today, I too have a dream:
That no one is exposed to the kinds of things that should go unseen --
empty 40's of stale beer
cigarette butts that decorate the sidewalk like confetti
used condoms still oozing with their contents
empty crack baggies in every color of the rainbow
the refuse of an entire meal from Chick-Fil-A, complete with straws, napkins, empty soda cups and chicken carcasses
gum and candy wrappers of every kind
I have a dream of seeing beauty in the world; at least for one portion of today, there are a few streets that have a little more shimmer to them.
Monday, January 16, 2012
I Have a Dream ...
Saturday, January 14, 2012
And this too ...
rising like a ball
of lava in my throat
i choke back
each
indelible
façade
i once believed
with my
whole heart
the repeating words
of promises un-kept
play like a broken record
notes
i can no longer hear
i retaliate
with meditation
and tearful prayers
searching for the
answer
in the Divine
i cannot
seem to reconcile
accept
or
let go
instead
i sit
and
notice
and make room
Oh.
And this too …
of lava in my throat
i choke back
each
indelible
façade
i once believed
with my
whole heart
the repeating words
of promises un-kept
play like a broken record
notes
i can no longer hear
i retaliate
with meditation
and tearful prayers
searching for the
answer
in the Divine
i cannot
seem to reconcile
accept
or
let go
instead
i sit
and
notice
and make room
Oh.
And this too …
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Genuine Acceptance
I have made a return to listening regularly to the Buddhist teacher, Tara Brach. The podcast I chose tonight was titled: "Genuine Acceptance".
This is EXACTLY the nourishment my being needs.
"Acceptance does not = being a doormat."
She speaks about how when we "give up" and resign ourselves to a situation or to how a person is -- it is under the guise of accepting, but this is not the case. Acceptance is NOT passive.
Genuine Acceptance is recognizing the truth of this moment, without resistance. It is an engaged willingness of our heart to be with the Life that is here.
Easier said than done. I feel like I need to listen to this podcast several times daily. I want to disengage with what's here and distract or lash out or blame or tense against my Life circumstances on a regular basis. I do a practice called "Work of Return" which opens my senses to the thoughts, bodily sensations and feelings that are in the present moment. It can be deeply painful or disconcerting or cause me to cringe when I really am awake to this.
Tara says that true, genuine acceptance is more than just an intention to be awake to what is here. It also involves continuing to stay with what is here in us, soften, lean into, get curious about what is arising, until there is simply a surrendering presence that finds us able to fully let go.
I have a Big Toe in this. I need to go all the way to the edge and dive in.
The statement that really got my attention was this one: "The space of the heart that absolutely accepts what's in me in relation to another is LOVE." I really have to wrap my heart, not my brain, around this. My willingness to engage what is here in me and totally accepting what is here in me -- in relation to another -- is LOVE. I feel like this means if I can FULLY and TOTALLY own my reactions, feelings, thoughts -- about another -- I wouldn't try to place blame on them or want to cut them out or want to run away. That this kind of presence is LOVE. And it's not targeted for the other person. It's not, in fact, about loving them. Because they could be acting like an asshole ! But if I genuinely accept, it is being with what's here for me about them. It may not change me liking them any better or any of that, but I won't act out or resent them or try to poison them as a result. The act of LOVE is really for me and how I relate to another.
Tara ended the talk with this:
If you let go a little, you'll have a little peace.
If you let go a lot, you'll have a lot of peace.
If you let go absolutely, you'll have absolute peace.
This is EXACTLY the nourishment my being needs.
"Acceptance does not = being a doormat."
She speaks about how when we "give up" and resign ourselves to a situation or to how a person is -- it is under the guise of accepting, but this is not the case. Acceptance is NOT passive.
Genuine Acceptance is recognizing the truth of this moment, without resistance. It is an engaged willingness of our heart to be with the Life that is here.
Easier said than done. I feel like I need to listen to this podcast several times daily. I want to disengage with what's here and distract or lash out or blame or tense against my Life circumstances on a regular basis. I do a practice called "Work of Return" which opens my senses to the thoughts, bodily sensations and feelings that are in the present moment. It can be deeply painful or disconcerting or cause me to cringe when I really am awake to this.
Tara says that true, genuine acceptance is more than just an intention to be awake to what is here. It also involves continuing to stay with what is here in us, soften, lean into, get curious about what is arising, until there is simply a surrendering presence that finds us able to fully let go.
I have a Big Toe in this. I need to go all the way to the edge and dive in.
The statement that really got my attention was this one: "The space of the heart that absolutely accepts what's in me in relation to another is LOVE." I really have to wrap my heart, not my brain, around this. My willingness to engage what is here in me and totally accepting what is here in me -- in relation to another -- is LOVE. I feel like this means if I can FULLY and TOTALLY own my reactions, feelings, thoughts -- about another -- I wouldn't try to place blame on them or want to cut them out or want to run away. That this kind of presence is LOVE. And it's not targeted for the other person. It's not, in fact, about loving them. Because they could be acting like an asshole ! But if I genuinely accept, it is being with what's here for me about them. It may not change me liking them any better or any of that, but I won't act out or resent them or try to poison them as a result. The act of LOVE is really for me and how I relate to another.
Tara ended the talk with this:
If you let go a little, you'll have a little peace.
If you let go a lot, you'll have a lot of peace.
If you let go absolutely, you'll have absolute peace.
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Moving to the Light Source ...
We can only appreciate the miracle of a sunrise if we have waited in the darkness, a photo by sharaff on Flickr.
This is the last sentence of the AA literature piece read at the start of meetings, titled: "How it Works". This brief and concise statement has a powerful electrical charge when you really plug into it.
My last couple of days in recovery rooms have all been lovingly moving me to the Light Source -- through the God-connection of the members and the shimmering container of the sacred spaces we gather.
In a struggle last evening, I dropped to my knees and actively sought God. I didn't get a could or would ...He DID. In the form of an angel on earth. Nurturing and Loving and Unconditional. Sending me on my way to carry the message as I chaired the Alkathon meetings that brought us into the entryway of 2012.
My intention for the coming year is simple: keep moving away from a drink and toward the Light Source. I wish every soul traveling this path the same.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Destined ...
Pulsing
an alive
turning,
purposeful,
within a
3-dimensional
shape,
embedded deeply
and it is of me,
birthing the holomorph
of not-yet
though what is
inevitable,
my God-given path.
Can I let go,
surrender,
into what
I am
destined ...
an alive
turning,
purposeful,
within a
3-dimensional
shape,
embedded deeply
and it is of me,
birthing the holomorph
of not-yet
though what is
inevitable,
my God-given path.
Can I let go,
surrender,
into what
I am
destined ...
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Skeletons in the closet ...
Yesterday, I visited a dear friend who has been admitted to an eating disorder treatment program and will remain there for 6 weeks. While she does not look the part, the skeleton in her closet is actively at work, starving and excessively exercising in hopes to be the real deal someday.
As I walked up to her building from the parking lot, there were a cluster of young girls on the path. They were literal stick figures. Hollowed faces and clothing barely hanging on their bones. I see why my friend is still comparing herself to those around her and shaking her head over and over: "I can't be that bad?"
It's a matter of perspective. As I see it, addiction is an inside-job. And so is recovery. When we let the outside inform our interior, we get confused, trying to make sense of what we see and then that influences how we feel.
My friend is at the wee beginnings of what I suspect will be an enormous shattering. She is without her 3x daily rigorous workout regimen. She is watched at every meal and if she refuses, then she is made to drink Ensure. She has no contact via cell phones or internet. It is just her and the 4 walls of her tiny room and tiny roommate and all the other tiny women trying to figure out if they can be full again.
I will admit that I couldn't wait to leave. Not to get away from my friend, no not that at all. It was the empty, vacant stares of the inhabitants of this place piercing through my heart. I became aware of the solidity of myself, much in the same way I feel the personal in impersonal space. I wanted to make space full. I had discomfort in the nothingness of what was here. Funny, this IS my work. But this is NOT the place.
I have another variety of skeletons in the closet I must face ...
As I walked up to her building from the parking lot, there were a cluster of young girls on the path. They were literal stick figures. Hollowed faces and clothing barely hanging on their bones. I see why my friend is still comparing herself to those around her and shaking her head over and over: "I can't be that bad?"
It's a matter of perspective. As I see it, addiction is an inside-job. And so is recovery. When we let the outside inform our interior, we get confused, trying to make sense of what we see and then that influences how we feel.
My friend is at the wee beginnings of what I suspect will be an enormous shattering. She is without her 3x daily rigorous workout regimen. She is watched at every meal and if she refuses, then she is made to drink Ensure. She has no contact via cell phones or internet. It is just her and the 4 walls of her tiny room and tiny roommate and all the other tiny women trying to figure out if they can be full again.
I will admit that I couldn't wait to leave. Not to get away from my friend, no not that at all. It was the empty, vacant stares of the inhabitants of this place piercing through my heart. I became aware of the solidity of myself, much in the same way I feel the personal in impersonal space. I wanted to make space full. I had discomfort in the nothingness of what was here. Funny, this IS my work. But this is NOT the place.
I have another variety of skeletons in the closet I must face ...
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
The Mystery of the Dead End
“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.
Delicious Ambiguity.”
― Gilda Radner
In a rather spontaneous, in the moment conversation with my healer over a lovely dinner, she shared with me a "seeing" that she had about my biological lineage. One that was riddled with tragedy, from addiction of all kinds to depression to early deaths and even suicide. This information confirmed the inherent wisdom in my being about "not going there" with regard to a desire to meet my biological family. I've been curious about my ethnic heritage, yet have always had a halting in my system about seeking the actual members out. It is quite likely they are not among the living.
The Reality I dropped into today during a healing session with a classmate about this subject was that moving in the direction of my biological lineage would find me at a dead end. AND ...
there is a mystery within this. I don't know what will arise for me. There are threads that have not yet been revealed or turned.
I became aware today that this is the Reality that lived in the background of me but was not something I actually wanted to see or know in this way. I would watch stories on TV of adopted children being reunited with their birth families and cry my eyes out. I believe those tears were a deep sadness for a longing that I knew would never come to fruition.
My healer shared that exploration of this would bring me to great grief -- that I would feel lonelier than I ever have AND that I would be Not-Lonely in a way that I never have.
I feel the tremendous split here, yet now I am not holding myself as the perpetrator who is doing the splitting but rather I am the container for the splitting -- holding the world of my biological lineage and the world of my adopted lineage simultaneously.
I don't know anything else about what this means and I am committed to being present to the mystery of this dead end, to see what else may arise from the ash.
Delicious Ambiguity.”
― Gilda Radner
In a rather spontaneous, in the moment conversation with my healer over a lovely dinner, she shared with me a "seeing" that she had about my biological lineage. One that was riddled with tragedy, from addiction of all kinds to depression to early deaths and even suicide. This information confirmed the inherent wisdom in my being about "not going there" with regard to a desire to meet my biological family. I've been curious about my ethnic heritage, yet have always had a halting in my system about seeking the actual members out. It is quite likely they are not among the living.
The Reality I dropped into today during a healing session with a classmate about this subject was that moving in the direction of my biological lineage would find me at a dead end. AND ...
there is a mystery within this. I don't know what will arise for me. There are threads that have not yet been revealed or turned.
I became aware today that this is the Reality that lived in the background of me but was not something I actually wanted to see or know in this way. I would watch stories on TV of adopted children being reunited with their birth families and cry my eyes out. I believe those tears were a deep sadness for a longing that I knew would never come to fruition.
My healer shared that exploration of this would bring me to great grief -- that I would feel lonelier than I ever have AND that I would be Not-Lonely in a way that I never have.
I feel the tremendous split here, yet now I am not holding myself as the perpetrator who is doing the splitting but rather I am the container for the splitting -- holding the world of my biological lineage and the world of my adopted lineage simultaneously.
I don't know anything else about what this means and I am committed to being present to the mystery of this dead end, to see what else may arise from the ash.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)