The Incredible Vastness of Loving

Robin egg blue sky stretches across my world...so clear it could break my heart. I am traveling through the Interior visiting family and my own childhood memories. It seems that my time here is truly a venture inside of myself. A small unfurling of miracles that even the naked eye might miss, yet they sting my heart into a state wakefulness, like honey bees cultivating nectar.

Today my brother, whom is a recluse, living in a trailer, raising chickens and canning peaches showed up at my mom's unexpectedly. I have not seen him in at least 5 or 6 years, as he has no phone or internet. When he walked in, hobbling, his leg in a brace, his body twisted from accidents and intense heavy work he  beamed a smile at me broad enough to lasso wild horses. My heart tumbled around with joy, he is a big man, and when he puts his arms around me I am not the older sister, but somehow the little girl, and he is my protector, my brother!

This random miracle set off a day of kindness. 

I drove my mom through the back roads of where she was born, we talked more deeply then ever before about everything from the mistakes we had made as mothers to God and how we both love God, in our own different ways. I bought her cheese cake (her favourite) and chocolate milk, she was happy, just to drive and eat her sugar treats and talk with me.

I kept sneaking glances at her profile, this woman who I had adored with such pure love when I was little, here I was a middle aged woman adoring her all over again. How blessed it that?

We parted with her hercules style hug, her  physically shaking with emotion: I love you sweetie, she whispers several times in my ear, and I drink it in and cry quietly simply because it is true, she loves me, deeply and fiercely and I need that so much. That strong, unwavering love of my mom, it helps me be a kinder and braver woman, and this I want more then anything else.

Then I have tea with a woman I have known for a very long time, her and I cry because we are such good friends and miss each other, she gives me a turquoise necklace she has made, she puts it around my neck and holds me, and we tell one another we love each other, with tears in our blue eyes. I hold her as if it could be the last time. One of my trusted teachers told me that everything we do, do with the awareness that it may be that last time we are gifted with that experience. Touch everyone you love, like or do not even know as if you may never touch them again. How will you move your hand into their body, touch their hair, smell the sweetness of their skin? 

I am learning, I am actually learning that I am here for one purpose, loving, opening to whatever God puts in front of me...and walking into it, even if I am totally afraid. 

I end the afternoon by having tea with another friend of mine in the sunlight. He is on "meds" after a long bout of incarceration in the mental health system. I notice his hands shake, he has aged, the twinkle in his eye is muted. Yet he can still laugh, and engage. Our kids were little together, we farmed together and hiked and swam. Now he lives alone on a hillside in a huge house, made for a family. He lives is isolation. He is sad but the medication keeps the tears at bay. 

When we hug goodbye, I feel a emptiness, I let him go, he has a life to live out. I do not know what is best for him. I can only love him and let him go. 

I walk up the street, the sun is streaming all around me, I walk up a hill I used to be pushed up when I was a child in a stroller. I walk past the house I was a new born in...

I am born all over again, not a infant, but perhaps a woman of substance that can make her way home.

Internet Dating Malfunction Or: How the Dharma Got Me off the Computer

Last July my father died, it was sudden, shocking and brought into play a myriad of raw emotions inside of my body. My relationship with my father was multi-layered due to the fact that he developed the disease of alcoholism.
 
When I was young, especially prior to beginning school, the memories I have of my father were healthy, tender, playful and connected. As far as I can recall, he was a loving man, who although caught in the rhythm of intense work and responsibility was still able to enjoy himself and engage with me. He was smart, funny, creative and had a passionate love for nature. 
 
I spent my primary years living in the woods with my father, mother and two younger brothers. I have strong visceral memories of this time in my life and the ponds, forests, animals, swamps, rivers and lakes that were part of my daily existence.  It was a joyful world, this raw, natural wilderness, and from my best accessible memories it seemed a good life for my parents as well. 
 
When I entered school at the age of six, everything shifted and we slowly began an integration process back into the social norms of North America. 
This shift was extremely challenging for myself and for my family, everything changed. We infiltrated the cultural rituals of television, packaged food, school and consumerism into our family. The deepest and most confusing ripple of this transition was the fact that my father began to spend his none working hours drinking in the pub, away from the family. The corrosive affect of his behaviour caused a multitude of difficulties that progressively worsened as the years went by. 

Hence, by the time of my father’s death, he was entrenched in the thick milieu of alcoholism, but I had already taken the opportunity years earlier to talk with him and had laid to rest any unfinished relational obscurities between us. I felt clear and at peace.  When I spoke with him his ability to be accountable and loving eased my heart completely.
 
This story of my father’s death is a strange bridge to my experience as an Internet “dater”.  Shortly before hearing of my dad’s death I decided that perhaps I needed to be more pro-active if I wanted to develop a loving, intimate relationship with a potential partner. I knew several people who had met their mates on-line; I had tried it myself a few years ago, but gave up quickly. This time I wanted to actually meet people and to spend some time and energy looking for a kindred soul who might be traveling a path similar to my own. 
 
I set up as honest a profile as I could, I did my best to represent myself with clarity and intention. I felt ready. Then my father died. When this happened I decided I needed to spend some time integrating his passing. I went off line, and preceded to cry, pray, do a lot of walking in the forest, and allowed the memories and sensations to move through me. It was a fertile time, abundant with a plethora of feelings and thoughts.  
 
About three months later I felt even more ready to embark on a relationship. It was as if my father’s death had freed a part of my heart that had been somewhat nebulous in it’s willingness to open to love. Perhaps I had still been fettered in the confines of the lonely, forgotten daughter who found trees and animals more easeful to relate to and trust then a lover. 
 
Nonetheless I reposted my witty, joyful profile on the dating site and the birds started to fly home to roost. I began to go on small dates, for tea, a walk, to see a film; these dates were novice, as I really have not dated much. There was a quality of enjoyment and a small quiver of excitement with each meeting. There was also a slightly melancholy tremor to the dating; it is not that the people I met were unkind or distasteful. Truth be told they were generally very sweet, good hearted, hopeful and interesting. Yet, for me, what I yearned for was perhaps an illusion. My heart swelled like a small boat in the ocean. I ached to meet someone who had also stretched their body across the grass when they were a child, had felt the grass reach into their skin, had loved the sky with it’s palette of blue and pink and orange and had known what it was to break with the wonder of it all. This world, with it’s chaotic dancing cattails, eagles and rushing water, pulling me in every direction as I drink in the beauty around me; rushing my innocent body into the grass, collapsing with delight and reverence. The world was holy; bringing me to tears and lifting my heart into endless tailspins of wonder.

What I yearned for was not a date, but rather,  I wanted a grown up to worship with. Someone to smell the moss with, to roll in the grass and then build a fire and roast potatoes. I wanted to live the wilderness inside of me with a mate I adored. 
 
 I did not understand, this was a very tall order for a dating site, yet I persevered. I stayed open; I kept up with the dating and the answering of emails. I did not give up even when I felt discouraged. I was a real trooper. 
 
Then a miracle happened, I was simply minding my own business, doing my meditation, breathing in, breathing out. Focusing on the Tonglen practice, welcoming the feelings of loneliness into my body, allowing them to permeate me like thick smoke and then breathing out loving kindness and sending it back into the world with a soft heart.  During this meditation it struck to me like a light going off inside my chest, I did not need to search for a mate. I did not need to feel alone or that I would not be loved. I did not need to be on a dating site. 
 
Love lived in my body, always had, always will. Love is not something to “make happen”, to conjure up. Love is simply love. Loving is wonderful, but I had become preoccupied and even somewhat exhausted by grasping, trying so studiously to find my beloved. If there is a mate for me, we will find one another, in this life, or perhaps some other. We will walk into each other’s lives with ease, just like the breath. I do not need to “work” to make this happen, the way I felt I had to work to attempt to have my father love me when his drinking began to alter his heart and take his attention away from myself and our family. 
 
My Tonglen meditation gifted me with such insight, making it utterly clear that I could let go of the responsibility of being on the dating site. My intention is to keep my heart as vast as possible to the grace of life, to the opulent lushness of my existence and let love wash through me like it had when I was a girl. I did not crave or grasp for a “lover” to join me when I was in my child like wonder. I simply danced in that place of open heartedness, danced like a wee dervish afire for life. 
 
When I wrestled with the mechanism of the dating site, finally figuring out how to delete my account, I felt a wave of relief, faith and delight rushing through me. I was free! I was free of the confines and the restrictions of my own romanticized delusions. Love was in me and all around me, all I had to do was open the gateway of my sturdy, joyous heart and breathe.

Making Out In the City

February 14/2012

Blessed Rat Race

Happy Valentines Day

Hard times in the city, do you feel it? The trellising dark roots of winter holding on with a vengeance as the birds push against the sky with their persistent optimism. Riding my bike into China Town a few days back I was filled with a thick lethargy that seems to eat my bones. The oppressive low clouds pushed me into the cement, keeping the pedals turning felt almost impossible as I hunched into my own body, looking for some heat as momentum to lurch me that last fifteen minutes that it would take to get me home.

I felt exhausted by something metallic that lolled in my mouth, I kept spitting, and attempting to free my body and my thick skull of self imposed darkness. A hopeless clamoring rattled against my heart, I felt lost and alienated. Trees, rivers, and the wild that I have always run to, felt like an opaque delusion I had fabricated in some other lifetime. My neurotic, self-absorbed ego was dancing a joyful victory dance as I wallowed in the depths of self-pity.

Then I heard it, the unmistakably glorious call of an eagle, pulling my sorry head out of my own pit of distraction I gazed up.  Thirty feet in front of me, lacing the budding trees with glory was a young eagle and it’s parent dancing in mid air. They were so close it felt as if I could have stretched my body into their tail feathers.

Here amidst the smut and squalor of my inner and outer reality a thorn of beauty ripped across the heavy handed sky and kissed me awake. My mind leaped out of the dirty tales I was so preciously building as my heart threw open it’s red door and made love to the world like an awakened hungry bear on the prowl.

I looked across the infested, clamoring city skyline, and fell into that drunken angel love that is giddy and translucent with new beginnings. I began to sing the glorious song by the Po Girls: Take The Long Way and wheeled my bike across the streets and into my life, realizing that I was home. That this city was my place; I am a rat in this blessed rat race, with its undeniable beauty and horror. For the first time since I was a girl I am truly living in an honest reality that offers me the opportunity to find grace in concrete, rain, filth, poverty, and general fucked up urban squalor. I love this city; I adore it with a crushing determination. Yes sometimes I go down into the depth of the rabbit hole and lick my ugly old stories until my fur falls off, but no matter what I am always lifted up and into life once more. Not that home and garden story book life I lived nestled in the middle of the Kootenay mountains, where interestingly enough, I was far more despondent then I have ever been here. I have found more opportunities to be human in this city then I ever imagined possible. I have felt loved and have loved in ways that are so honest and sometimes so tragic with a raw inescapable openness.

I live on the Eastside, I am an Eastsider at last, thank the powers that be, city living, I love it. I cannot placate myself with cascading waterfalls or serene wild flowers at my doorstep. My door step is often littered with puke, garbage, people going through my recycling or stealing my bike, and what have I learned, keep open, keep opening, don’t push it down but just stay curious and eagles will fall from the sky and kiss me.

The Practice of Intimacy

Just finished my practice, it ended in tears. I stand up, look out the window and see that it is snowing. Somehow the piercing cold outside amplifies the heaviness in my body. The words “the wisdom of no escape”, the title of a book by Pema Chodron comes to me. I sit with my thickness; it permeates my flesh with an obstinate determination, calling me into the dark of my momentary grief. I know this will pass, these tears, the overwhelming surge of helpless loss. Yet, I cannot push it away, there is no escape. I have spent large parts of my life attempting to build distractive addictions, or ways of placating the heartbreak of human existence-it is simply not possible. Life has plans for us; how these are determined I have no idea, yet it is apparent to me that some pathway, a pathway of the desirous spirit is laid out. I do not believe this path is set in stone but rather that it has many segues or offerings that are presented. When we come to these junctions we decide, we handle and form the fabric of our destiny.

Looking into my life, there is so much I feel gratitude for; I believe that my path has been deeply bountiful in terms of kindness and love. My family, my friends, my students, and their presence in my life touch me on a daily basis. I often think of the people I know or have known and feel a fullness and tender ache inside of me. This searing is not comfortable because with loving also comes the knowledge of impermanence, I will leave everyone I love one day. This awareness of my own death is far more present in my life over the last few years.

The cycling accident, and the full ramifications of it, as well as the bout of chemotherapy a few months ago pushed the concept of mortality into the forefront of my existence. I will die. I will leave this world I love so much, I will leave my children, my clan, I will even leave my body. How remarkable, how utterly amazing. What am I to say in the face of such a mystery? There is not really a response that is suitable, I sit with it, I cannot escape it. I hold the bounty of my life in one hand, I hold the ambiguity of my death in the other. This thought, suddenly, makes me smile. It seems ridiculous that I am weeping, I am alive, and it is snowing in March in this coastal rainforest of a city. I have just completed a sweet yoga practice, found out my neighbor does not have bed bugs; (this is quite the blessing in my part of town), I had a shower this morning, a friend I have not practiced with for awhile is coming over to teach me a yoga class. This is a lot of blessing and it is nowhere near noon yet. I can only ponder what else is in store for me if I keep my heart open.

What is the middle path here? Truly, I am delighted with all that is offered up to me. Rich bounty especially in terms of connection with my community and my kin, but under that is the piercing, the soft spot of yearning for something of a different flavor, for an intimacy, a pair bonding. This is my human struggle, one I weave in and out of on a daily basis. It seems that my yoga practice, my prayers and my meditation bring the fruit of this longing to the surface, draw my heart, my essence to the empty space that I would like to hold another in.

Loving, it comes in many forms, all of them precious and valuable. If I were never to be intimate again, it would not mean my life is fruitless; it would not negate all the blessings, the random connections that bring out the juice of uncharted moments. No, this is not the case at all, each morning before I rise I whisper a sleepy mouthed thank you to the world, simply for offering up another day. Am I lying to myself in this ritual of gratitude, am I covering up a wound of longing? Truth is, it seems I finally understand, that there is a bridge in my body, the in-between spaciousness that does not judge life as bad or good but simply holds a vastness in the moment for what is. Yes, I love my life, I have faith in the wonder of not knowing anything at all, except of course that I will die. But right now I am alive, I love so much of what is in and around me and I also long to be intimate with a beloved. Denying that is like denying that the sun rose this morning.

I am learning to live with the unknown, the place where I step off the cliff into the nebulousness of being unable to contort or manipulate my life into a package that I feel I am in control of. To meet the here and now, even when it is so unexpected, messy, emotional, devastating, sorrowful, chaotic and life changing that I may feel like I have no idea what is going on; to stand in this place, body quivering, heart racing, tears falling; and to keep standing, without expectations for it to stop, or perhaps without any idea why it is happening- this is my practice.

It seems my body draws me to this humble river over and over, yoga, mantra, prayer, nature, humanity, catch me off guard and I find myself standing naked and raw on its banks. My task in this moment is to simply breathe, soften my chest, and allow my feelings and my body do the work of bringing me fully into the fecundity of the present. Learning to yield to this inherent body wisdom has taken many years, but finally it seems there is a communicative relationship of trust in my body that eases and expands my heart regardless as to external circumstances.

I am so grateful for my practice, for all of the daily rhythms that remind me of the impermanence and the richness of living until the time comes when I let this body go forever.