What is Available?

 

Years ago I was visiting a yoga retreat center with a beautiful common room, and a large fireplace with a small card placed on top of the andirons which said “The Fireplace is not Available for Use.” I chuckled to myself about the clever use of that word “available”- It could have said “fireplace is out of order” or “fireplace is closed.” There could have been some extensive explanation about why the fireplace was forbidden, instead they simply, politely and elegantly let us know the limits of our use of the common room.

Lately, when I am thinking back on some moment in my life, and wondering why I made the choices I did, suspecting that now I would make a different choice, I find myself musing “that choice was not available to me at that time” I don’t need to tumble down a rabbit hole of why it happened, or what I “should have done.” I believe we are, for the most part, doing the best we can, making the best choices we can make in the moment.

Since the start of the pandemic, I have heard many people worrying that they are not as productive as they were this time last year. They see other folks posting on social media who are learning a new language, touring international museums online, hiking the state parks, and wonder “what’s wrong with me, that this is all I can accomplish? Like the fireplace in the common room, there are many things right now that are not available to us. Instead of looking at the fireplace and asking, “why can’t I use it?” or determining “I should be able to use it” it can be liberating to simply observe that “it is not available for use” and respond accordingly. Let’s even imagine that you were really excited about using that beautiful fireplace, and acknowledging the reality that it is not available for use might be sad. It might be disappointing. It’s okay to grieve all those small and large losses, that is how body, heart and spirit let go of those things that cannot be.

I am a list maker, and most days I have a list of what I would like to accomplish, but these days I look at my list and ask myself “what is available?” If I feel too tired for a hike, too introverted to call a friend, too discouraged to start a big project, it won’t help a bit to beat myself up. Our hearts are already bruised and tender these days. I simply ask “what is available for me to do today?” It not only helps me let go of all those things that just don’t seem possible right now, and helps me forgive myself for paths not taken, but it also encourages me to listen to the spirit. What is available? Something always is- even if that’s a nap.

In this time many things are not available for us to do, for reasons outside our control, or within our body, mind or spirit. By asking “what is available” we find a path forward that is aligned with our own capacities, or own soul. We honor the reality of who and where we are right now, and where spirit may be leading us. And so, I invite you to ask, whenever the world is too much, or the losses too great, “what is available to me right now, in this moment?”

A Well Worn Path

There’s a little strip at the back of my garden where nothing will grow. I’ve planted all different kinds of things, each year crossing my fingers, but that little strip stays bare. After years of trial and error, I was starting out the window and noticed a cat walking along that narrow strip. Soon after, I realized my dog was also walking that path as part of his morning rounds, and later found evidence of a groundhog. The problem wasn’t the soil or the sun, but simply that seedlings don’t do well in the middle of a critter highway.

Over the years I’ve seen my little dog walk the perimeter of the garden even in a foot of snow. That’s his path. It’s comfortable to him. It takes quite an obstacle to nudge him off his path. (I finally gave up and put down paving stones.) Watch the animals in your neighborhood and you will notice they have paths they love to follow day after day. Humans are no different. We love our well-trod paths.

In the same way that my dog likes his morning perimeter walk, and much as I take the same route to work most days, the heart, mind and spirit also develop some well-worn paths. Many of these paths develop early in life because they help us navigate the complexities of our own unique family and the challenges we have faced. These patterns are so natural and invisible to us that we don’t even notice them until someone plants some Loosestrife in our path. There are lots of words for these patterns; some folks call it “conditioning,” in the Hindu and Buddhist traditionsit is often called “Samskara” or we can just call it a rut.

Part of the spiritual path is becoming conscious of the choices we make habitually, noticing the patterns, and noticing when we are making choices that reinforce those habits. The “aha” of noticing our patterns is not necessarily followed by the ability to choose a new path. Those old patterns are powerful, and we flow naturally into them like a creek in its bed. Whenever we notice one of those old, powerful patterns, it’s best to treat them with compassion. For example, if your family of origin discouraged the outward expression of emotion, and you grew up stoic to fit in and please your family, give yourself credit for finding a path that worked. Now that you are older and wiser, you have the capacity to ask “does that path still serve me? Or would I like to choose a different path?”

If you decided a new path would suit you better, again begin with compassion. Those old paths have power. Think about the last time you were stuck in the mud. When we first realize we are stuck, we usually back up, and then try again. We may drive back and forth trying to gain ground and instead create a deeper and more slippery rut for ourselves. It is finally when we turn the wheel to angle up over the ridge of our rut that we are able to break free.

As part of your spiritual practice, I invite you to look for well-worn paths you tend to follow. Be curious about where they came from, and consider whether each pattern still serves you. If you decide to make a change, I encourage you to be curious, playful, and compassionate as you look for a new way. It may require coming at things from a new angle to reach fresh ground. And if you get stuck, remember to ask for help. Sometimes a new angle and a helping hand is all we need to get out of our rut.

Ordinary Miracles

We are surrounded by miracles, but we don’t often notice because they seem so ordinary. Consider, there was nothing living on this earth, and now it is teaming with life. Scientists and theologians have many ideas about why and how, but despite centuries of study, there is much we just don’t know. All we know is that we are alive. We see around us an amazing array of life’s creativity. There are millions of species of plants and animals across the face of the earth, and that doesn’t even include the billions of bacteria and virus species. If you’ve ever been to an aquarium or watched a documentary about ocean life you know that stranger things live on this earth than any science fiction writer ever dreamed of.

Even the common plants and animals we see in our neighborhood are a miracle. Birds, for example, can fly. That’s a fact so basic that we’ve stopped marveling at it, but that doesn’t make it any less extraordinary. Children know this. If you’ve ever taken a walk with a toddler, you won’t get very far because they have to stop and be amazed every few minutes. They know that birds are amazing, and dogs are amazing, and sticky things are amazing and dandelions are definitely amazing. But somehow we forget. We see birds fly a few thousand times and it becomes ordinary to us.

Jewish ethicist and mystic Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote about the importance of awe and wonder in our spiritual life. He wrote: “Awe enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the Divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple, to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.”

Violets in my Back Yard

This season, I encourage you to consider a practice of cultivating awe and wonder. Consider the world as a toddler does -- each tree, each bird, each bit of ice cream a miracle. As adults we are out of practice, so this may take time. Don’t worry if you can’t see it right away. Searching for something awe-inspiring requires patience, curiosity and a willingness to let things reveal themselves to our gaze. Perhaps you are traveling and will see something wonderful as you visit a new city or rest beside the lake. But life is no less miraculous just because you see it every day. The ordinary view out your front door is a miracle; let it fill you with awe and wonder.

What we can count on

 Sometimes when I hear the news I lose hope. Some days it’s just hard to picture a positive outcome for all the struggles in our own lives or in the world around us. Perhaps that’s why these words “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love” (from the Christian Scriptures - 1 Corinthians) keep popping into my mind. Hope can be a quixotic thing, it comes and it goes. But the scripture tells us “hope abides” reminding us that even when we lose hope, it still abides. When we cannot hope for ourselves, remember that others are holding hope for us and for the world.

But, I realized, even when hope is hard to find I still have faith --even when I’m discouraged, or even despairing. I know that things change suddenly in ways we can’t expect. I know there is a larger picture I can’t always see. I know that life finds a way. Life was here long before I was born and will keep living long after I am gone. There is something big and old that endures even the great dramas of our time. It is like bedrock under all that moves and changes.

Maybe that’s what the Psalmists were pointing to when they wrote “God is my rock.” Consider the solid things that are holding you up right now- the chair, the floor, the earth. When we are afraid or discouraged, it can be a soothing practice just to notice the solid things and how they hold us up. Just notice the places where your body is being supported right now. Let yourself sink into those places, and give up your weight to them. It’s not hard to have faith in a force as persistent and enduring as gravity.

Love also abides, and in fact, the passage from Corinthians tells us, “the greatest of these is love”. Today as I consider those words, I imagine a love that pervades all things. Love is in rough places and smooth, in solid and the fluid, the changing and the stable. This is not only the love of romance novels, not only in the sweetness of friendship, not only in the parent holding the child, but as the Christian Scriptures tell us “God is Love” and earlier in Corinthians “love never ends.” To imagine a love that never ends, to imagine a love that is big enough for the divine, we might have to change our picture of what love looks like, or feels like. Just as it can be reassuring to notice the solid things in our life that hold our weight, it is an important practice to notice all the faces of love in our life, and to have faith that it is all around us even when we can’t see it. 

Whenever I am feeling disconnected from love, I take a moment to meditate on the center of my chest, to just breathe in and out and remember all the people I love, all the people I care about, because as that verse in the gospel of John says “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” Whenever you are feeling hopeless about the world, I encourage you to remember- who do you find easy to love? Who needs your love? Sometimes it’s hard to remember that we are loved, but it can be easier to remember those who need our love. Maybe this is why videos of baby animals are so popular- we are hard wired to feel caring and protective when we see a baby. When I call to mind my son, and how much I love and cherish him, a feeling of love surfaces. Start with something easy and sit with that as long as you need, and then let it grow. Whenever we cultivate this feeling of love, it helps us remember the larger love which holds us all.

In these hard times, remember that even now, “faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love”

 

Spiritual Practices for the Grocery Store

 I had just returned from a retreat, and was feeling very peaceful and centered. Then I went to the grocery store during that crowded time of the week when everyone seems to be at the grocery store. Almost immediately I felt impatient. It seemed like everyone was getting in my way- blocking aisles with badly positioned carts or bodies. It’s not uncommon for me to feel grumpy and impatient at the grocery store, but on this occasion, perhaps because I had just come from a retreat, it occurred to me to wonder “why the impatience?” I didn’t, in point of fact, have any place else I needed to be. I had plenty of time to buy my groceries, get home and cook dinner. If I totaled up each time I had to stop and wait for folks to move, it couldn’t possibly add more than 5 minutes, so where was the harm?

I noticed that I was seeing all these people at the store as obstacles to my goal. They were not fellow shoppers, they were objects in my way. I was humbled by the realization.

Two habits of mind contributed to this perception. First, the idea that time spent in the grocery story is wasted, is taking away from my “real life” which can only continue once I get home. From this point of view, any additional moment I spent waiting for the cross traffic of lumbering grocery carts was perceived as taking away from “my time.” But I know this is not the case- my life in the grocery store is still my life. I get to choose whether I spend that time mindfully or whether I treat it as “waste time” that I discard. My dad used to say, once he had us kids loaded in the car for any outing, whether to the bank, the grocery store or the gas station “We’re off—on the greatest adventure of our lives!” This inevitably caused us to groan and roll our eyes. But I wonder; how would my time in the grocery story be different if I thought of it as a great adventure, instead of a waste?

The second habit I noticed was seeing obstacles instead of people. Each and every person in the grocery store is having their own troubles, their own adventures, their own feelings about being stuck in the produce aisle. No person is an object. I asked myself, “how would my visit to the grocery store change if I challenged myself to think of all these people as souls”? It was harder than I thought. I could do the things I would do if I saw them as souls, like slowing down, and being patient and letting other people go first, but it was hard to really feel that they were souls. Perhaps it’s because when we go out shopping, we ourselves act like objects, not souls. We put our protective coating on, and our souls barely leek out. It helped when I started making up stories about my fellow shoppers: “she looks like she had a hard day at work” or “perhaps the man in line at the prescription counter has just gotten some bad news from his doctor.” It also helped to look at people, to really notice them: “look how patient that woman is being with her 2 young children.” Or “look how hard that cashier is working to get people through her line quickly.”

I’ve decided to make this my new spiritual practice everywhere I go, but especially those places where everyone seems like an obstacle or an object: like in traffic, like at the store. What would it take to see the people around me souls? And what difference might it make to my own spirit, and to the spaces we share?

Waiting in line to vote- "The Greatest Adventure of our Lives"

A Spot for what Feeds our Spirit

We can connect with the spirit any time, any place. Even standing in line at the grocery store or stuck in traffic can be an opportunity for prayer or mindfulness if we choose. But there are benefits to having a special time or place set aside for our spiritual practice.

My husband plays the guitar. When we moved into our new house, he set up all his music equipment in a nook on the second floor, where it mostly gathered dust. Finally he was inspired to hang his guitar on the wall not far from his seat at the dining room table. Now anytime he had a musical idea, his guitar was just a step or two away, and he started making music again. The idea worked so well that before long we moved his mixer and turntables onto a nice piece of furniture we had on that same wall (I was very committed to that point- it had to look nice if it was going to be in the dining room). Now almost every day he spends time making music, and the upstairs nook continues to be a storage area for musical instruments and equipment not currently in use.

I also have a spot for my daily practice. It’s in the office where I do most of my work, literally one step from where I am typing this right now. Our house is quite small, so there’s not a lot of extra space for me to spread out, but there’s room for a meditation cushion and a tiny table just big enough for whatever book I am reading as part of my daily practice. It helps that from my spot I have a view of a windowsill covered with plants, and a tree where sometimes birds and squirrels alight.

It’s amazing what a difference it makes. My desk is a place of busy-ness and problem solving, but when I take that step and seat myself on my meditation cushion I enter a space that is just-right for my practice; It feels like a whole different room. Because I come back to this spot day after day for a single purpose, it’s like the body knows and remembers what is coming, and as soon as I enter my spot, I start to sink into a meditative or prayerful frame of mind.

What kind of spot would you want for your practice? One of my friends has a painting practice, so she has a little bag with everything she needs always ready, a portable spot that comes with her wherever she goes. Another friend loves to sit in her comfy chair in front of a window with a view of a beautiful old tree. Your spot doesn’t have to look any certain way. You don’t need any fancy gear. The idea is to make it easy to slip into your practice whenever you are ready. As you shape your space, allow yourself to be like the puppy who walks in circles getting his bed just-so before he lies down. The more you use this space, the more it will start to take on a quality of sacred space and the easier it will become to slip into your practice like a favorite pair of shoes.

 

Finding the Present Moment

Let’s try a mindfulness practice right now, as you read this column. Take a breath and arrive fully in this moment. One way to do this is just to start with something small, like your hands. If you put your hands on your legs, you can feel the air across the back of your hands. You can feel the warmth of your legs under your hands. You can feel the reality of your hands, right now in this unique moment. Notice whatever arises with a non-judgmental compassionate awareness… When your mind wanders off, just notice and gently bring it back… back here to this moment…Back here to the lived reality of the moment we are sharing together.

Notice if you have any expectations of yourself or of the moment, and notice how those differ from your actual experience…

Here are a few things I’ve noticed from my own experience of this practice:

First of all, I spend very little time in the present moment. Apparently I focus most of my attention planning for and anticipating the future.

Second, trying harder doesn’t seem to help. If I’m “trying” I’ve created a story about what “should” happen, a goal to strive for. If I’m captured by my expectations, it divides my attention from what is really happening. Instead I can notice what I’m thinking, notice what I’m feeling, and gently allow my attention to come back to this present moment whenever that is available to me. The present moment can seem like a shy kitten who will go hide if it feels pursued, but might come sit near you if you just wait quietly and patiently.

Third, it helps if I start with the premise that I can’t do it wrong. If I notice I have expectations that I SHOULD be able to be in the present moment, and I begin evaluating and judging and analyzing myself, now I’m even further from the present moment than when I started, that kitten is hiding in the attic by now. But if I notice my expectations and feelings and thoughts non-judgmentally, without expectation, without trying to decide if they are right or wrong, if I just notice them with compassion and curiosity, I increase my availability to reality. Because even the thought “this is lame and difficult, this shouldn’t be so hard” is a real thought, if that is indeed what is arising, so noticing it non-judgmentally allows us to stay on the path of reality.

Fourth, reality is pretty interesting. I like to practice paying attention to reality when I’m bored, because I’m always saying I don’t have enough time for my spiritual practice, so why not use some scrap of time I’ve already labeled as boring? Moreover, I’ve found that I sometimes I feel bored because I EXPECT to be bored. I assume waiting in line at the grocery store is boring, that being stuck in traffic will be boring, but if I get curious about this moment, there’s often a lot going on in my body, my mind, my feelings, or in the world around me. That boredom might be a barrier between me and a really interesting moment I might miss. Or it might be a barrier I put up because underneath I was starting to feel something challenging -- a restlessness, a sadness, a frustration. I will leap out of my own experience of lived reality as an escape from feeling something that might be difficult.

As you move through your day today, I invite you to notice, with a non-judgmental compassionate awareness, when expectations and reality diverge. Hold your expectations loosely where you are able, and look for opportunities to be present with reality as it is unfolding, because that is where life is, in this very moment.