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May 12th, 2011 On The Voice last week, Celo Green picked a country artist. He said he wanted to go to a place where he's never been.
These past few weeks in yoga, our teachers have been asking us to "go to a place we've never been before" in each pose. They tell us to push until we fall out of the pose. They say there's no judgment in falling out of the pose. Everyone does. Falling out means your working hard. It's not how many times you fall out – it's how many times you get right back in it.
I have gotten complacent in standing bow pose. I found the "sweet spot" in the balance, and could stand there on one leg for the full sixty seconds. When the teacher said "body down, leg up, go to your max", I'd just ignore her plea and hang in my comfort zone. These past two weeks she's been stressing moving past your comfort zone and going to that "place you've never been before". I was curious about this place, hearing it everyday in yoga, then from Celo, too. So, this week I pushed harder, fell out of the pose a couple of times, but I still couldn't seem to get past the fear of leaning farther forward and catching myself until I fall headfirst onto my hand. Today was the breakthrough. Each day I see the tip of my toe peek up behind my head in the mirror. Today, as I pulled out all the stops, for about two seconds before I fell onto my left hand, I saw my whole right foot high above my head, my hip opened in an oddly smooth way, and a giant rush of emotion was released. I found a place I've never been before.
As it is in yoga, so it is in life. Sometimes we get too comfortable where we are in life. We get complacent. We hang in our comfort zone. We plateau. Our energy begins to wane, and we hear ourselves question our happiness somewhere in the back of our mind. This is a signal for change. Maybe not a change of what we are doing, just a change in how we are doing it. Can we push a little harder? Can we go to a place we've never been before? What is there waiting for us? What kind of experience can we potentially have there? What happens if we "fall out"?
And so, as another day goes by, I'm learning not to fear the unknown, but to look at it as an unopened gift, and…I have written.
May 11th, 2011 Not long ago I wrote a blog about the two sides of forgiveness. Since then, a good friend pointed out that there is a third side to forgiveness, so I spent some time thinking about her words. Today I came across this:
“Time and health are two precious assets that we don’t recognize and appreciate until they have been depleted.”~ Denis Waitly
And therein, I found that the third part of forgiveness is absolutely essential to health. The third side of forgiveness is being able to forgive oneself.
Within the past two weeks, I thought about this. If you are truly sorry for your transgressions, and have expressed real remorse, but the other person will not accept it, you need to remove the yoke from your own shoulders and place it on theirs. Don’t get me wrong, this is not instantaneous nor is it easy. If you are truly sorry for your actions, you are not looking for a “get out of jail free card” or looking to make excuses for your actions. If you are truly sorry, you will spend a lot of time beating yourself up over what you did, whether your apology is accepted or not. Over a period of time, you will begin to see the toll it is taking on your own health – both physical and emotional. There they are – time and health – your most important assets, as stated in the quote above.
The peace that comes from forgiving yourself, now emanates positive energy into the universe, instead of the negative energy put forth in beating oneself up.
If you are truly sorry, if you have learned from your mistakes, then quiet your soul. Pray the anger still emanating from the other person will dissipate into peace. You have made your apologies in sincerity, now leave it up to God to do the rest.
And so, as another day goes by, the yoke has been lifted, inner peace reigns, and ….I have written.
May 10th, 2011 I haven’t spoken about my yoga experience for quite some time now. There was just the need to keep on practicing and watch things change and evolve over time. Just last week I noticed a new development in my practice. My practice used to be very studio centered, even though I would take what I learned, out into to the world with me. Lately, the opposite has occurred. Some of the outside world has found its way into the studio during my practice.
The first thing that happened was when a very dear friend of my daughter’s left for LA to Bikram yoga teacher training for nine weeks. I knew this was going to be long and grueling for her. Since the day after she left, I find myself praying for her daily when I’m in eagle pose. I stare into my eyes and repeat, “Stillness for Marissa. God let Marissa have a good day in training today.” So, for these nine weeks that she is there, eagle pose will be dedicated to praying for her.
The second thing that happened was concerning a relationship that is in need of some repair. During part three of awkward pose, the teacher says squeeze you knees tightly together. Pretend your holding something very precious between them. Do not drop it. Over the past two weeks instead of imagining a winning lottery ticket like we’re told to, I began imagining someone’s heart that I never want to drop and break again. The heart means way more to me than a winning lottery ticket, so my pose has improved considerably.
The third thing happened in standing head-to-knee pose. You interlace all ten fingers and make a “basket” with which you bend over and place one foot in it. This grip is very important. It’s used in many other poses, also. The fingers have to stay interlocked and you have to hold them so tight that your knuckles turn white. You can’t let them slip due to the sweat. The grip embraces and drives the poses. As I’m holding each foot in this “basket grip” I found myself liking it to how God holds everything I fear, and when the teacher gives the clap to extend the leg out straight, I can just hear God saying, “I got it covered. Extend your leg.” A few days later, a friend just happened to share the photo below of a cloud formation taken in Texas. When I saw it, it looked like God was making “the basket grip”. (I’m sure His is a lot stronger than mine – I still slip.)
I guess you could say these little sentiments brought in from my world outside the studio, personalize my practice. Instead of just outgoing lessons from the poses, now it’s a two way street. Maybe this is a sign of a connection being made between my body and the universe, I don’t know. I do know I like remembering God and people as I practice, hoping to send out positive energy, prayers, and love each day.
If you have a heartache or a worry today, look at the picture below and remember God has a “basket grip”. He’s got it covered.
And so, as another day goes by, yet again my yoga practice touches and enriches my life, and …I have written.
May 9th, 2011 On Saturday my husband and I spent the day doing our annual spring ritual of putting up the screens on the garage, turning it into a summer room. This involves total garage and shed emptying and cleaning. I enjoy the way my husband and I go about this, working in perfect tandem with each other all day. Music on and vacuum cleaner going, we share cleaning supplies, brooms, and tools in rhythm with each other, pausing now and then for easy conversation about our dreams of future projects around our home. At five o’clock we step back and admire our work, shower, and head for our favorite seafood place.I love our days spent this way together. Over the course of 35 years and three homes, we have spent many weekends in this way. My soul derives great peace from days such as these.
My husband’s project of choice for Sunday was resurrecting the grill. It was too cold outside for me to hang around and help with that, so I found myself in the basement going through at least twenty plastic storage bins, getting ready for my spring garage sale. I want to do the girls’ room over, but every time I do over another room, I have to have a garage sale to earn the money to do it. It was quiet work, where I could let tears flow over a difficult situation I have no control over. One that causes deep pain in my heart daily. I was telling God how I felt as I worked. While going through one daughter’s mementos, I came across an Angel of Patience figurine. Just the way she sat with her knees folded in close, evoked a peace in my troubled heart. Once again, I no sooner uttered my prayer and God puts just what I needed in my hand. I took her upstairs and set her by my rocking chair where I could see her every morning.
Today I didn’t go to yoga, or anywhere else for that matter. I wanted to be alone and continue in silence on my garage sale project. I spent the morning carrying the bins up from the basement to the garage. After lunch I set up shelving, opened all the bins and set up my little “store”. It was quiet, methodical work.
Sometimes when we’re wrestling with difficulties, we can think too much, reason to much, figure out too many solutions, – we can even pray too much- until God places His hand on our shoulder and says, “Stop, my child, I got it covered. Go on with your work.” I found that sometimes our minds need to rest, our hearts need to quiet, and our hands need to work.
It has been three days of quiet, healing work. I love my Angel of Patience. I especially love the way her hand curls pensively under her chin. She calms my heart and mind and reminds me to sit quiet while God does what he needs to do; to go on with my work and rest my spirit for awhile.
If you find yourself wrestling, find some quiet work to ease yourself into and step away for a bit. Give your Higher Power a chance to speak. Give the universe a chance to move around and in you.
And so, as another day goes by, God wHispers to me once again, giving me what I need, and …I have written.
May 8th, 2011 On this mothers day I have a whole lotta moms to be thankful for in my life. In addition to my own mom, who we so recently lost, and my wonderful mother-in-law who loved me like a daughter, I am so lucky to have had a lot of women in my life that touched and guided my path.
There’s the kindergarten teacher who was kind and gentle to a shy, scared, little girl. There’s the second grade teacher that understood how it was to be an outcast. There’s the seventh grade English teacher who always saw something special in me and my work. (Years later, I got to repay the kindness when I had her “difficult” grandson in kindergarten and she wrote me the most beautiful thank you letter.) There was the next door neighbor that taught me all the things I needed to know about cleaning, gardening, “putting up vegetables” to freeze, yardwork, caring for a dog, and even teaching me to drive stick on her Mustang GT. (Every one of these skills made new married life so much easier for me,) There was the high school Spanish teacher who was the big sis I never had. There was the college resident hall director that became my maid of honor in my wedding and is still my closest friend to run to today. (And lately I run to her a lot – and after 40 years she’s STILL there for me.) There was MY fourth grade teacher that mentored me in my first years of teaching and was responsible for setting my basic teaching philosophies. There was the principal who never let me quit, no matter how much I cried, when I returned to work 6 weeks after having my daughter, suffering with post-partum depression. To these women, my heroes, I give thanks for all the ways they have touched my life and contributed to who I am today.
I, myself, have been a mom for 30 years now. My girls always tell me I’m a good mom. (a little “out there” as they like to say, and they do enjoy some good laughs over me, but I know deep down they really feel I’ve done right by them) My girls make me proud and are beautiful people today because of all the moms I’ve had in my life to show me how it’s done.
This is the first Mother’s Day without my own mom. There are no words to say how much I’ve missed her this past year. The tailspin that I am still maneuvering through due to her passing is testament to the profound influence she has had on my life. I talked to my mom everyday. She was included in every aspect of my life and my children’s life. She was the best grandma there ever was to my girls.
In this last phase of my life I may find myself a grandma someday, and because of my mom, I’ll know just how to do that, too. Thank you, mom, for everything. On this day, I miss you and love you.
And so, as another Mother’s Day goes by, I give gratitude to God for all the moms He has graced my life with, I want to wish all my reader moms a most Happy Mother’s Day, and…I have written.
May 7th, 2011 Deference has become my word of the hour. Tonight….I’m quieting myself, stepping back, and not thinking. The mind needs a “day off” sometimes to let the lessons previously learned sink in and take hold.
And so, as another day goes by, I will hold my thoughts close tonight so as not to deplete their energy, and….I have written.
May 6th, 2011 Today’s message went like this:
“Still, it is the heart’s capacity to rise one more time after falling down, no matter how bruised, that verifies such a drive within us, too.”
Today my hospice patient passed away and once again I am called upon to shoulder loss. It is safe to say “I feel like a salmon swimming upstream”. Here on the cape we have the herring, like the salmon, returning to their birthplace. You can go watch them at a place near me called Herring Run. Recently the Cape Cod Times announced this annual event and published a photo of a herring pushing against that white rushing water.
A few days later I read something interesting about the run of the herring and salmon. Most of us think it’s the rushing water that holds the fish back and makes them work so hard, when in effect, it’s the rushing water that guides their path. The fish instinctively know that if they are pushing thru water, there is no rock or debris in their path so they navigate the stream by swimming wherever the rushing water is.
Today, as I find myself pushing against more rushing water, I will take it as divine guidance that I’m not going to smash nose first into a rock. Pushing on is tiring, and sometimes draining, for both me and the fish, but at least we’re moving and not stuck in a roadblock.
And so, as another day goes by, I take some quiet time in my garden in honor of my patient, seek the rushing water, and…I have written.
May 5th, 2011 ..if livin’ is without you….”
Last night on American Idol James Durbin resurrected a song, that back in college, in 1971, literally changed the way I thought about life. I remember, during my freshman year, that song was playing when one of my roommates walked into the room. I was singing along with the song, hunched over on the floor, crying quite pathetically over the way someone treated me. She said, “You really “can’t live” because of a person? People will love you, hurt you, help you, step on you, inspire you, insult you, etc. …because they are PEOPLE! The only one who will love you consistently and never let you down, is God. Never, NEVER let people bring you to this. You have God. God is more powerful than any human being on this earth.”
She slammed me into awareness harder with her words than if she had slapped my face to stop my wracking sobs. From that day on, my outlook and basic principles I live by were forever changed. I vowed to never, NEVER let another human being reduce me to a hopeless crying puddle on the floor again believing I can’t live without them.
This is a life lesson I drive home to my girls when the times of their lives warrant it. I remember one daughter, about 10 at the time, came into my classroom after school and collapsed on the carpet crying hysterically because one of the “popular” girls didn’t want to be her friend anymore. She thought I was going to be the sympathetic mom. She got a surprise. I told her, quite emphatically to stop the crying, sit up and listen. Then I told her to never, ever, let another human being reduce her to this hysterical, crying puddle on the floor EVER again. Later on, when it came time for breakups with boyfriends, all I had to do was remind her of that time, and it made the storms weatherable.
This past year I have lost precious things and was brought to my knees once more. It seems as though every ten or fifteen years since that day in college, God dismantles my life and rebuilds it differently. The difference is now each time when I slip into the “puddle” I recognize it and “know the drill”. I know it means months of work and transformation, but never hopelessness.
I have cried my oceans of tears, felt my heart break and scatter in every room of my house, pounded out my share of anger, fell into a heap with pain so bad I thought I’d been stabbed, fought battles with forgiveness, questioned trust, searched for answers, searched for relief from pain, fought depression, talked a million words, wrote a half million words, prayed over five million prayers, read over 30 books, and attended over 150 yoga classes, but never once in my journey, not ever once, did I find myself in that hopeless puddle crying on the floor, believing “I can’t live” without someone or something.
You somehow know your two feet are planted firmly on the ground, even in the midst of hurricane, when you feel it in your heart that you can make it in life even if you lost everything you have, and only God is left to get you through. He’s the only thing that can’t be taken away from you by anyone, and He’s the only one who can give everything back to you. People have tried to strip me of my self-esteem and integrity, but they couldn’t take away my faith. And if you have faith, you have hope. Hope is born out of faith. Hope is what allows us to put one foot in front of the other and build it all once again.
I dedicate this blog to my girls who have many more journeys to walk. Their lives will be torn down and rebuilt many times in the coming years. I just want them to know I’ll walk beside them every step of the way, because hopefully, now, God is done with me for at least another ten years.
And so, as another day goes by, I can “live if livin’ is without you”. Thanks, James, for reminding me of that with your heartfelt rendition of a very special song, and….I have written.
May 4th, 2011 My television show Sunday evening was interrupted with the news of Bin-Laden’s death. I sat there stunned and just tried to take in the meaning of what I had just heard. In fact, it has taken me two days to process the contents of that news break and all the subsequent ones that followed. Nothing could feel more right than the capture and death of one who wreaked such tragedy on 3000 families and our country as a whole. In the war against terrorism, this is indeed a major victory. Even though the war is not won, and still rages on, ensuring that the mastermind of 9/11 cannot plot to hurt anymore people on this Earth is a great, but solemn comfort.
If I were the one who had gotten to pull the final trigger, I’d just feel such sadness and disgust, throwing down the gun and turning away from what I’m sure would be a most hideous sight on the ground before me. It’s called “doing what had to be done” and I certainly see how it took such a highly trained unit of Navy Seals to accomplish it.
For me, it was hardly a time to party and celebrate, and I was a bit put off by all the rejoicing in the streets. It actually scared me a little because I never pictured that kind of street celebrating, over any kind death, happening in our country. It just reminded me of the kind of rejoicing that went on in the middle east countries during 9/11. Have we here in America come to that? To me it was a kind of closure for such a sad act committed on our homeland ten years ago. Much like parents finding the body of their murdered child and seeing the tormenter caught and punished. While feeling vindicated, and knowing justice had been served, as that parent, I wouldn’t feel like partying and rejoicing.
I was so bothered by the cheering for death, especially a death that represented such widespread grief, that I could not express my views until now. For me, it’s just not a happy time and I hope when the President visits Ground Zero tomorrow, it’ll be a time of reverence and respect for what this represents, more in keeping with what I think America is all about in trying to find peace in the midst of such profound tragedy.
And so, as another day goes by, I sit in quiet silence, feeling justice and vindication, but no joy, and….I have written.
May 3rd, 2011 For Easter, my husband gave me a beautiful lily. All last week I was enjoying each bell as it opened. I tended it carefully by taking out the pollen bulbs so I wouldn’t be allergic to it, and moving the curtains just right each morning so it would get enough light. But for three days now, when I positioned the curtains for the day, I noticed the new bells were bumpy and not smooth. They also seemed to be slower to open than the ones last week. I didn’t think anything of it, until this morning. As I moved the curtains aside I looked down into the pot and saw the brown, dried out dirt. I had forgotten to water it!
As careful as I was in taking care of my lily, still something essential to it’s growth was overlooked. In lilies, as in life, we must pay attention and not get distracted from taking care of the precious things we were given, so much so, that we miss an essential element for their growth. On the flip side, we have to be careful to not over-attend to things in our life so much so that we also miss providing the essential elements. Sometimes we are so ensconced in loving that we miss the real things our loved ones actually need and we are doing more harm than good.
The thought of the day in the Cape Cod Times was a disturbing one, and a concept I never entertained before. It said:
“Hatred is gained by good works as by evil.” ~ Niccolo Machiavelli
Our quests to “do good” and “help” can backfire, despite our best intentions. We get so blinded by being too loving and too caring, that sometimes a most important piece of care gets overlooked. We overprotect, overanalyze, and overwhelm and instead of love, we breed hatred.
Is there a place in your life you have over-attended and missed the obvious? Maybe it’s more space and freedom and less hand holding that is needed with a spouse, friend, or loved one? Or maybe it’s your own self that you been very careful to feed, exercise, and rest, but have lost sight of attending to your spirit and it’s causing you to not like or understand yourself right now.
In any case, take time to center yourself and focus on where your attentions have been of late. Is there thriving and growth or is there distress and puzzlement? If there is thriving and growth, give thanks. If there is distress and uncertainty, water it.
And so, as another day goes by, water, (or the lack of it), the essence of life, teaches once more, and….I have written.
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