Humanist Lent 2019, 40 Days of Mindfullness
40 days of mindfulness. 1
tara brach on how our creation of social hierarchies impedes our ability to have compassion:
a teacher gave two disciples each a chicken and an axe and told them to go someplace where no one could see and kill the chicken. the first disciple was back very quickly, and had taken the chicken behind a barn and killed it.
the second disciple was gone a very long time and finally returned with the chicken still alive. the teacher asked, “what happened?” the student replied, “i couldn’t find a place to kill the chicken where no one could see. every place i go, the chicken sees.”
40 days of mindfulness. 2
thich nhat hahn’s parable about connection, presence, patience:
then allen said, “i’ve discovered a way to have a lot more time. in the past, i used to look at my time as if it were divided into several parts. one part i reserved for joey, another part was for sue, another part to help with ana, another part for household work. the time left over i considered my own… but now i try not to divide time into parts anymore. i consider my time with joey and sue my own time. when i help joey with his homework, i try to find ways of seeing his time as my own time… sharing his presence and finding ways to be interested in what we do during that time. the same with sue. the remarkable thing is that now i have unlimited time for myself!”
40 days of mindfulness. 3
lao-tzu’s opening to the tao te ching points toward uncertainty, flexibility, relationship, authenticity, strainlessness:
TAO called TAO is not TAO.
Names can name no lasting name.
Nameless: the origin of heaven and earth.
Naming: the mother of ten thousand things.
Empty of desire, perceive mystery.
Filled with desire, perceive manifestations.
These have the same source, but different names.
Call them both deep-
Deep and deep again deep:
The gateway to all mystery.
ADDISS, STEPHEN & LOMBARDO, STANLEY (1993)
40 days of mindfulness. 4
fred rogers provides a kid-friendly version of impermanence:
“how great it is when we come to know that times of disappointment can be followed by times of fulfillment; that sorrow can be followed by joy; that guilt over falling short of our ideals can be replaced by pride in doing all that we can; and that anger can be channeled into creative achievements … and into dreams that we can make come true!”
40 days of mindfulness. 5
the buddha diagnoses the illness in the first noble truth:
what, o monks, is the noble truth of suffering? birth is suffering, sickness is suffering, old age is suffering, death is suffering. pain, grief, sorrow, lamentation, and despair are suffering. association with what is unpleasant is suffering, disassociation from what is pleasant is suffering. not to get what one wants is suffering. in short, the five factors of individuality are suffering.
the truth of suffering states that suffering is an intrinsic part of life, and it diagnoses the human condition as fundamentally one of ‘dis-ease.’ …neither pessimistic nor optimistic, the truth is suffering simply presents the facts of life in an objective way and is, therefore, extremely hard to grasp. (keown)
40 days of mindfulness. 6
eckhart tolle reminds us that it’s possible to learn from other (even very bad) animals about presence, connectedness, equanimity…:
“just watching an animal closely can take you out of your mind and bring you into the present moment, which is where the animal lives all the time — surrender to life.”
40 days of mindfulness. 7
benjamin hoff uses pooh bear to explain the taoist idea of a thing’s power in its natural simplicity:
the fact is, said rabbit, we’ve missed our way somehow. they were having a rest in a small sand-pit on the top of the forest. pooh was getting rather tired of that sand-pit, and suspected it of following them about, because whichever direction they started in, they always ended up at it, and each time, as it came through the mist at them, rabbit said triumphantly, now i know where we are! and pooh said sadly, so do i, and piglet said nothing. he had tried to think of something to say, but the only thing he could think of was, help! help! and it seemed silly to say that, when he had pooh and rabbit with him.
well, said rabbit, after a long silence in which nobody thanked him for the nice walk they were having. we’d better get on, i suppose. which way shall we try? how would it be, said pooh slowly, if as soon as we’re out of sight of this pit, we try to find it again? what’s the good of that, said rabbit? well, said pooh, we keep looking for home and not finding it, so i thought that if we looked for this pit, we’d be sure not to find it, which would be a good thing, because then we might find something that we weren’t looking for, which might be just what we were looking for, really.
i don’t see much sense in that, said rabbit. if i walk away from this pit, and then walked back to it, of course i should find it. well, i thought perhaps you wouldn’t, said pooh. i just thought. try, said piglet suddenly. we’ll wait here for you. rabbit gave a laugh to show how silly piglet was, and walked into the mist. after he had gone a hundred yards, he turned and walked back again … and after pooh and piglet had waited twenty minutes for him, pooh got up. i just thought, said pooh. now then, piglet, let’s go home.
from the state of the uncarved block comes the ability to enjoy the simple and the quiet, the natural and the plain. along with that comes the ability to do things spontaneously and have them work, odd as that may appear to others at times.
40 days of mindfulness. 8
pema chodron reminds us that when we are open we can take in the pain of the world, let it touch our hearts, and let it become compassion:
so fail, fail again, fail better. it’s like how to get good at holding the rawness of vulnerability in your heart. or how to get good at “welcoming the unwelcome.”
40 days of mindfulness. 9
one of tara brach’s powerful quotes is “when we trust that we are the ocean, we are not afraid of the waves.”
seven years ago this month, i jotted some notes on her dharma talk about fear:
— it is possible to move from fight/fright to attend/befriend.
— befriending fear doesn’t necessarily mean to embrace it; it may mean to move in the direction of gentleness toward fear.
— some of our fear is anticipation of things going wrong, a habitual reaction to life’s uncertainty. mark twain wrote, the worst things in my life never actually happened.
— befriending may mean to respond to fear by saying, i agree. if a dog is running at you, you can whistle for it. this is similar to the buddha teaching students in fear to sense the open field of love, where beasts becomes allies.
— attend: say, thank you very much, but not now. befriend: put your hand to your heart and become gentle.
— fear takes us away from home, away from what we love. adam carver’s poem, “and did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? i did. and what did you want? to call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.”
— the fear can be there but not define you. widen the lens: when we trust that we are the ocean, we are not afraid of the waves.
40 days of mindfulness. 10
sharon salzburg insists that mindfulness is as portable as our breath. anywhere. any time.
40 days of mindfulness. 11
for a long time i have been trying to learn thick nhat hahn’s lesson, “wash the dishes to wash the dishes, not to have clean dishes”:
“the fact that i am standing there and washing these bowls is a wondrous reality. i’m being completely myself, following my breath, conscious of my thoughts and actions.”
40 days of mindfulness. 12
lao tzu, likely with a smiling face, points out the paradox of the useful emptiness:
thirty spokes join at the hub:
their use for the cart
is where they are not.
when the potter’s wheel makes a pot,
the use of the pot
is precisely where there is nothing.
when you open doors and windows for a room,
it is where there is nothing
that they are useful to the room.
therefore being is for benefit,
nonbeing is for usefulness.
40 days of mindfulness. 13
mr. rogers gives a kid-friendly version of chodron’s “when things fall apart” when he says:
some days, doing the “best we can” may still fall short of what we would like to be able to do, but life isn’t perfect — on any front — and doing what we can with what we have is the most we should expect of ourselves or anyone else.
40 days of mindfulness. 14
deng ming-dao invites readers to contemplate taoist ideograms and consider their meaning in relation to our own personal tao:
dao. tao, way, road, path, course, head, principle, doctrine, to speak. the character on the left means “to run.” it is formed by combining the sign for “movement” (the diagonal lines) with the sign for “leg.” the character on the right is a picture of a face — the vertical lines at the top represent tufts of hair, and the rectangle below represents the face. tao is a person running along a path.
40 days of mindfulness. 15
sharon salzberg reminds me that being mindful and compassionate is not submissive but strong and bold:
sometimes we think that to develop an open heart, to be truly loving and compassionate, means that we need to be passive, to allow others to abuse us, to smile and let anyone do what they want with us. yet this is not what is meant by compassion. quite the contrary. compassion is not at all weak. it is the strength that arises out of seeing the true nature of suffering in the world. compassion allows us to bear witness to that suffering, whether it is in ourselves or others, without fear; it allows us to name injustice without hesitation, and to act strongly, with all the skill at our disposal. to develop this mind state of compassion…is to learn to live, as the buddha put it, with sympathy for all living beings, without exception.
40 days of mindfulness. 16
the buddha explains the cause of the illness in the second noble truth:
this, o monks, is the truth of the arising of suffering. it is this thirst or craving (tanha) which gives rise to rebirth, which is bound up with passionate delight and which seeks fresh pleasure now here and now there in the form of (1) thirst for sensual pleasure, (2) thirst for existence, and (3) thirst for nonexistence.
in the truth of arising tanha stands for the ‘three roots of evil,’ namely greed, hatred, and delusion. in buddhist art these are pictured as a cock, a pig, and a snake chasing around in a small circle at the center of the ‘wheel of life,’ with their tails in each others’ mouths.
at its most basic level the doctrine could be summed up as the claim that every effect has a cause: in other words, everything which comes into being originates in dependence on something else (or on a number of other things).on this view, all phenomena arise as part of a causal series, and nothing exists independently in and for itself. (keown)
40 days of mindfulness. 17
eckhart tolle reminds me (again) that my very bad cat can teach me how to be in the moment:
40 days of mindfulness. 18
pooh bear and piglet again embody a delicious simplicity and equanimity — not stupidity of course, or even that backhanded compliment “innocence” — that values presence and compassion over status or superiority:
by the way, pooh, how do you spell tuesday?
spell what? asked pooh.
tuesday. you know – monday, tuesday…
my dear pooh, said owl, everybody knows that is spelled with a two.
is it? asked pooh.
of course, said owl. after all, it’s the second day of the week.
oh, is that the way it works? asked pooh.
all right owl, i said. then what comes after twosday?
thirdsday, said owl.
owl, you’re just confusing things, i said. this is the day after tuesday and it’s not thirds – i mean, thursday.
then what is it? asked owl.
it’s today! squeaked piglet.
my favorite day, said pooh.
40 days of mindfulness. 19
pema talks about failure as opportunities to feel fully, to be genuine and vulnerable, and to open to something unexpected:
someone gave me a quote, something from james joyce’s _ulysses_, where joyce said that mistakes can be “the portals of discovery.”
sometimes you experience failed expectations as heartbreak and disappointment, but at the time maybe instead of doing the habitual thing of labeling yourself a “failure” or a “loser” or thinking there is something wrong with you, you could get curious about what is going on and remember that you never know where something may lead.
can you allow yourself to feel what you feel when things don’t go the way you hoped and wished and longed for them to go? if there is a lot of “i am bad, i am terrible,” somehow just notice that and maybe soften up a bit. instead say, “what am i feeling here? maybe what is happening here is not that i am a failure — i am just hurting. i am just hurting.”
40 days of mindfulness. 20
tara brach’s dharma talk reminded me that the ways i am so hard on myself are based in fear and end up isolating me from the loving connections that we all need:
If I pause in the midst of feeling even mildly anxious or depressed and ask, “What am I believing?” I usually discover an assumption that I am falling short or about to fail in some way.
Thich Nhat Hanh suggests that when we are with someone who is in pain, we might offer this deeply healing message: “Darling, I care about your suffering.” We rarely offer this care or tenderness to ourselves. We are definitely not used to touching ourselves, bringing the same tenderness that we might to stroking the cheek of a sleeping child, and gently placing a hand on our own cheek or heart.
The Buddha said that our fear is great, but greater yet is the truth of our connectedness. We might feel too small, too tight and aversive to open to the pain that is moving through us. At these times it helps to reach out, to discover an enlarged belonging through our friends, sangha, family and the living Earth.
After his night under the bodhi tree, the Buddha was very awake but not fully liberated. With his right hand, the Buddha touched the ground and called on the Earth to bear witness. By reaching out and honoring his connectedness to all life, his belonging to the web of life, the Buddha realized the fullness of freedom.
40 days of mindfulness. 21
thich nhat hahn reframes the goal and the magic not as being extraordinary but as being ordinary and fully present:
when you are walking along a path leading into a village, you can practice mindfulness. walking along a dirt path, surrounded by patches of green grass, if you practice mindfulness you will experience that path, the path leading into the village. you practice by keeping this one thought alive: “i’m walking along the path leading onto the village.”
if we’re really engaged in mindfulness while walking along the path to the village, then we will consider the act of each step we take as an infinite wonder, and a joy will open our hearts like a flower, enabling us to enter the world of reality.
people usually consider walking on water on in thin air a miracle. but i think the real miracle is to walk on earth. every day we are engaged in a miracle: a sky, clouds, green leaves, the curious eyes of a neighbor. all is a miracle.
40 days of mindfulness. 22
lao tzu is speaking my language when he turns conventional wisdom about faith and fealty on its head:
when the great way is abandoned,
benevolence and righteousness arise.
when wisdom and knowledge appear,
great pretense arises.
when family ties are disturbed,
family love arises.
when polity is unsettled,
loyal politicians arise.
40 days of mindfulness. 23
my favorite meditation is lovingkindness, which allows us to take the kindness that’s effortless and use its momentum to extend kindness in tougher contexts, eventually encompassing all life. no pressure.
40 days of mindfulness. 24
the tao te ching said, “amidst the worldly comings and goings, observe how endings become beginnings.” mr. rogers said it this way:
often when you think you’re at the end of something, you’re a the beginning of something else. i’ve felt that many times. my hope for all of us is that “the miles we go before we sleep” will be filled with all the feelings that come from deep caring — delight, sadness, joy, wisdom — and that in all the endings of our life, we will be able to see the new beginnings.
40 days of mindfulness. 25
deng ming-dao invites readers to contemplate taoist ideograms and consider their meaning in relation to our own personal tao:
tu. moon, the picture is of a crescent moon. the moon is constant; let the light that falls on it change. let its face sometimes be in shadow: the moon daily witnesses with its own body the play of shadow and light.it keeps to its course, but it gently influences. what other body could pull an entire ocean from shore to shore? the moon is a model for how to be true to tao and to yourself.
40 days of mindfulness. 26
the buddha determines that a cure exists in the third noble truth:
this, o monks, is the truth of the cessation of suffering. it is the utter cessation of that craving, the withdrawal from it, the renouncing of it, the rejection of it, liberation from it, non-attachment to it.
when craving is removed suffering ceases and nirvana is attained. nirvana literally means quenching or blowing out, like a candle. what is extinguished is the triple flame of greed, hatred, and delusion, leading to a transformed state of personality characterized by peace, deep spiritual joy, compassion, and a refined and subtle awareness. (keown)
40 days of mindfulness. 27
eckhart tolle (and artist patrick mcdonnell) show us how to let the critters show us how to slow, be still, be present.
(i’ve never had a cat who would let me spoon them, but they would all spoon me when i was still.)
40 days of mindfulness. 28
a koan is a paradoxical anecdote or riddle, used to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment. for example:
When the nun Chiyono studied Zen under Bukko of Engaku she was unable to attain the fruits of meditation for a long time.
At last one moonlit night she was carrying water in an old pail bound with bamboo. The bamboo broke and the bottom fell out of the pail, and at that moment Chiyono was set free!
In commemoration, she wrote a poem:
In this way and that I tried to save the old pail
Since the bamboo strip was weakening and about
to break
Until at last the bottom fell out.
No more water in the pail!
No more moon in the water!
40 days of mindfulness. 29
contrasting piglet and tigger, benjamin hoff illustrates the wisdom and humility of lao tzu’s suggestion that no quality is too useless, too crooked, or too small. it only depends what you do with it:
a saying from the area of chinese medicine would be appropriate to mention here: “one disease, long life; no disease, short life.” in other words, those who know what’s wrong with them and take care of themselves accordingly will tend to live longer than those who consider themselves perfectly healthy and ignore their weaknesses.
the same goes for one’s limitations, whether tiggers know it or not — and tiggers usually don’t.that’s the trouble with tiggers, you know: they think they can do everything.
once you face and understand your limitations, you can work with them, instead of having them work against you and get in your way. and then you will find that, in many cases, your weaknesses can be your strengths.
for example, when owl’s house fell down who was able to escape even though there was a heavy branch against the door and the only way out was through the letter slot? piglet, the very small animal.
40 days of meditation. 30
pema chodron has been talking about what to do with feelings of failure for forever. comfortable with uncertainty; start where you are; when things fall apart:
i have been in this space of feeling like a failure a lot of times.i used to be like anybody and just kind of close down. i can tell you now that it is out of this space that real genuine communication with other people starts to happen, because it’s a very unguarded, wide-open space. out of that space of vulnerability and rawness and the feeling of failure can come our best human qualities of bravery, kindness, the ability to really care about each other.
40 days of mindfulness. 31
i think this story read once in a dharma talk by tara brach might be about “freedom to.” she was talking about wholeness, and “not so much doing as undoing,” and relaxing into bigger-ness.
just before telling this story, she said “we create masks and personas of who we are and how to respond to life’s struggles. relaxing is putting down the mask”:
When he was very young, he waved his arms, gnashed the teeth of his massive jaws, and tromped around the house so that the dishes trembled in the china cabinet. “Oh, for goodness sake,” his mother said. “You are not a dinosaur! You are a human being!” Since he was not a dinosaur, he thought for a time that he might be a pirate. “Seriously,” his father said at some point, “what do you want to be?” A fireman, then. Or a policeman. Or a soldier. Some kind of hero. But in high school they gave him tests and told him he was very good with numbers. Perhaps he would like to be a math teacher? That was respectable. Or a tax accountant? He could make a lot of money doing that. It seemed a good idea to make money, what with falling in love and thinking about raising a family. So he was a tax accountant, even though he sometimes regretted that it made him, well, small. And he felt even smaller when he was no longer a tax accountant, but a retired tax accountant. Still worse, a retired tax accountant who forgot things. He forgot to take the garbage to the curb, forgot to take his pill, forgot to turn his hearing aid back on. Every day it seemed he had forgotten more things, important things, like which of his children lived in San Francisco and which of his children were married or divorced.
Then one day when he was out for a walk by the lake, he forgot what his mother had told him. He forgot that he was not a dinosaur. He stood blinking his dinosaur eyes in the bright sunlight, feeling the familiar warmth on his dinosaur skin, watching dragonflies flitting among the horsetails at the water’s edge.
40 days of mindfulness. 32
according to thich nhat hahn, we can be connected in mindfulness to the long succession of people who sat to meditate in the spot we sit now. he also shows how to be connected to ourselves, even as we are scattered among our daily tasks:
but active, concerned people don’t have time to spend leisurely, walking along paths of green grass and sitting beneath trees. you might well ask, then how are we to practice mindfulness? my answer is: keep your attention focused on the work, be alert and ready to handle ably and intelligently any situation which may arise. during the moment one is consulting, resolving, and dealing with whatever arises, a calm heart and self-control are necessary if one is to obtain good results.
40 days of mindfulness. 33
maybe lao tzu uses binary to undermine sides. maybe the point is humility and compassion. or maybe it’s about an openness to the wisdom found in absurdity and paradox:
know the masculine,
but keep to the feminine:
and become a watershed to the world.
if you embrace the world,
the tao will never leave you
and you become as a little child.
know the white,
yet keep to the black:
be a model for the world.
If you are a model for the world,
the tao inside you will strengthen
and you will return whole to your eternal beginning.
know the honorable,
but do not shun the disgraced:
embracing the world as it is.
if you embrace the world with compassion,
then your virtue will return you to the uncarved block.
the block of wood is carved into utensils
by carving void into the wood.
the master uses the utensils, yet prefers to keep to the block
because of its limitless possibilities.
great works do not involve discarding substance.
40 days of mindfulness. 34
hindu teacher nisargadatta maharaj wrote, “the mind creates the abyss. the heart crosses over it.” mr. rogers said it this way:
people have said, ‘don’t cry” to other people for years and years, and all it has ever meant is, ‘i’m too uncomfortable when you show me your feelings. don’t cry.” i’d rather have them say, “go ahead and cry. i’m here to be with you.”
40 days of mindfulness. 35
deng ming-dao invites readers to contemplate taoist ideograms and consider their meaning in relation to our own personal tao:
she. water. the picture shows the flowing of a stream. teachers compare tao to water:
water is flowing. every drop is made of the same substance and never fears being divided because it knows it will flow back together.
water is soothing and can also be mighty. its nature is constant.
water is profound. in the depths of lakes and darkness of oceans, it holds secrets. it is dangerous and mysterious, yet life came from those depths.
water is unafraid. it will plunge fearlessly from any height.
water is balanced. water will seeks its own level and conform to any situation.
water is nourishing, without it nothing can live.
water is still and, in its stillness, perfectly mirrors heaven.
water is pure, needing neither adornment nor augmentation.
for all these features, one who would follow tao need only emulate water in every way.
40 days of mindfulness. 36
the buddha sets out the treatment in the fourth noble truth:
this, o monks, is the truth of the path which leads to the cessation of suffering. it is this noble eightfold path, which consists of 1. right view, 2. right resolve, 3. right speech, 4. right action, 5. right livelihood, 6. right effort, 7. right mindfulness, and 8. right meditation.
in the hustle and bustle of everyday life, few stop to ponder the most fulfilling way to live. the buddha’s eightfold path is called the middle way and steers between indulgence and austerity. the eight factors exemplify the ways in which morality, meditation, and wisdom are to be cultivated on a continuing basis. it is a model: the eight factors reveal how a buddha would live, and by living like a buddha one gradually becomes one. (keown)
40 days of mindfulness. 37
tara brach uses the sea in ways that sharon salzberg uses the sky to illustrate impermanence, presence, and non-attachment:
when i trust that i am part of the ocean, i am not afraid of the waves.
40 days of mindfulness. 38
40 days of mindfulness. 39
a.a. milne himself described wu wei, which is a kind of doing without doing, or doing by going along with the nature of things:
by the time it came up to the edge of the forest the stream had grown up, so that it was almost a river, and, being grown up, it did not run and jump and sparkle along as it used to do when it was younger, but moved more slowly. for it knew now where it was going, and it said to itself, “there is no hurry. we shall get there some day.”
benjamin hoff connects wu wei to my martial art, tai chi: the basic idea is to wear the opponent out either by sending their energy back at them or by deflecting it away in order to weaken their power, balance, and position-for-defense. never is force opposed with force; instead, it is overcome with yielding.
40 days of mindfulness. 40
pema chodron suggests that living into uncomfortable dissonance is better than quick? superficial? solutions:
as human beings, not only do we seek resolution, but we also feel that we deserve resolution. however, not only do we not deserve resolution, we suffer from resolution. we don’t deserve resolution; we deserve something better than that. we deserve our birthright, which is the middle way, an open state of mind that can relax with paradox and ambiguity.
Humanist Lent 2018, Random Word Generator
humanist lent, day 1: copper
we are made of the same stuff as the stars. remember that you are stardust, and to stardust you will return.
langston hughes wrote, “one handful of dream-dust/ not for sale”
irene cara sang, “and i’ll look back on venus/ i’ll look back on mars/ and I’ll burn with the fire of ten million stars/ and in time, and in time we will all be stars”
and carl sagan said this,”every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. if a human disagrees with you, let him live. in a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
humanist lent, day 2: explain
at some point i started to sit down next to the very old women and men after we fed them dinner and before we put them to bed at the nursing home where i worked my way through college. they had whole lives i hadn’t bothered to imagine. i don’t know what made me stop finally, or ask, but that’s when i learned that there were worlds i couldn’t know without listening.
langston hughes again:
sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me.
nor do I often want to be a part of you.
but we are, that’s true!
as I learn from you,
i guess you learn from me—
although you’re older—and white—
and somewhat more free.
this is my page for english b.
i said humanist lent, but dorothy allison is scripture:
we all nourish truth with our tongues
not in sour-batter words that never take shape
nor line-driven stories bent to skirt the edge
of our great exhaustion, desire, and doubt.
we all use simply the words of our own lives
to say what we really want,
to lie spent on our lovers,
put teeth to all we hate,
to strain the juice of our history
between what has been allowed
and what has always been denied,
the active desire to take hold of the root.
amit kalantri nails it: “right to speak comes with a duty to listen.”
humanist lent, day 7: branch
a week ago the universe and i randomly generated a list of words where one day the word was “unite,” and the next day’s word was “branch.” this confluence reminds me of “cleave” and other contronyms where the word means both itself and undoing itself.
i probably bore people with my love of complexity and paradox. but if we can even begin to glimpse how pervasive they are, and how utterly (beautiful and) magical, then i think we could begin to celebrate disagreement and difference and dissonance instead of fearing that they will undo us.
i imagine that then we could branch, and unite.
Humanist Advent 2017, H. Jackson Brown Jr. “Priorities: 21 Suggestions for Living Wisely and Well”
“21. hope for the best”
first, hope. if we believe all is lost, we help make that our reality. too, hope for the best. not for what’s tolerable or unobjectionable, but for the ideal. hope for what you want most; make that your reality.
a friend said this as an affirmation, picturing the thing she longed for:
“this, or something better, now manifests for me in totally satisfying and harmonious ways for the greatest good of all concerned.”
“20. search for the truth”
whatever that is. maybe more than one truth, maybe full of contradictions.
someone said this about what god does and, since i’m somewhat estranged from imagining god’s comportment, perhaps it is true of truth, that it is “not what we want but what we need.”
“19. look for the good.”
apparently we need 5-8 positive affirmations to balance every criticism. that’s science. at that rate, we probably can’t wait around for the good to find us.
in another light, this reminds me of the indigo girls lyrics (go ahead and mock, i love them) “every devil i meet is an angel in disguise.” they meant i think that the people we’re taught to hate and fear are often fabulous. but i suspect that people who do shitty things are also salvable. whether or not people are essentially good, i suspect we’re all more complex than either/or allows, and remembering this might help us use more honey (and less vinegar) while we make the world less messed up with the angels we were taught to hate.
“18. Love people more than things.”
seems obvious.
in light of #blacklivesmatter, though, and #metoo, and trans day of remembrance, it seems worthwhile to connect this to something of more substance than just our obsessions with electronics or shoes (ouch).
it seems fair to ask if we will love (anonymous, different, dissonant, angry, unnamed) people (we don’t know, we don’t understand) more than comfort, peace and quiet, “objectivity,” a more opportune time.
not taking sides is taking sides. and. we can still love the people we need to hold accountable. in fact, if we love them, we can go ahead and keep loving the hell out of the people we are taking to task if we want; sometimes it helps.
“17. Discover the power of forgiveness.”
you know what, i’m just going to leave this one here and walk away. the closest i get to forgiveness most days is not letting resentment destroy me from the inside out. most days.
but i have the presence of mind to be grateful for the folks who have given me second (and fifth) chances. (looking at you, c.)
“16. Discover the power of prayer.”
c.s. lewis said prayer “doesn’t change god, it changes me.” as a pastor i thought that meditation was prayer. tai chi. gardening. coffee with a friend. therapy. driving without swearing. whatever helped me get outside myself and connect to something wider. i still do; now i’m just trying to find another word for it.
“15. Don’t overlook life’s small joys while searching for big ones.”
this has been a year marked by the search for one of life’s bigger joys. a few quotes about the smaller ones from winnie the pooh seem a very good idea.
“sometimes,” said pooh, “the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.”
“rivers know this: there is no hurry. we shall get there some day.”
“i don’t feel very much like pooh today,” said pooh.
“there, there,” said piglet. “i’ll bring you tea and honey until you do.”
“well,” said pooh, “what I like best,” and then he had to stop and think. because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called.
“nobody can be uncheered with a balloon.”
“14. Be satisfied, don’t grumble.”
i’m totally a fan of simplicity, of redefining abundance to count more of the ordinary joys, of slowing down. there’s a parable about a village fisher who catches enough to live on and otherwise spends his time doing what the western entrepreneur dreams of doing in retirement after decades of scraping and building. i’d like to learn to become more like the village fisher; i’m working on it.
and, silence serves oppression. don’t be satisfied. grumble. demand better for more people. hold power accountable. no justice, no peace.
“13. Maintain your resources wisely.”
this is likely meant to encourage simplicity and living within one’s means. screw that. that was yesterday.
sometimes the best use of resources is wanton excess. we spend so much energy being responsible, respectable, restrained. sometimes it’s important to eat the whole pint of ben and jerry’s and watch three episodes of the crown. with relish. no apologies.
“12. Tell the truth.”
i try to tell the truth. sometimes it’s a contest between being direct and being kind. sometimes the pickle is that i don’t realize yet myself what is true. sometimes i don’t have the stomach for it. but i try.
the complementary of course is to listen to the truths others are telling. that may make us uncomfortable or feel powerless. that may not make sense to us or seem right from our experience. that may make us culpable. hear the truth.
“11. Have courage when things go wrong.”
the zen response is to ask whether things go wrong or just not as expected, and to encourage equanimity and presence in the moment. equanimity is a goal of mine, several times an hour, several times a day. tara brach says that “when we trust that we are the ocean, we are not afraid of the waves.” Sharon Salzberg tells the parable of the sky; sometimes it has a bird in it.
and sometimes things go wrong. racism. sexism. transphobia. black women make 63 cents to white women’s 80. trans women of color are dying in record numbers every year four years and counting.
i for starters would like the courage to take a knee during the anthem in full view of whatever students/teachers/administration are watching when i guest speak at the high school first thing in the morning. i’d like the courage to tell the interviewer in the middle of the job interview that sexist jokes are part of the rape culture that my friends and i are trying to dismantle. i’d like the courage to say i have failed to do these things, i’m sorry, i will do better.
“10. Be of service to your community and your country.”
thich nhat hahn says that without the cloud, there is no flower. there is no place where i stop and you start. there is no difference between me, you, the community, the country. that we inter-are.
it’s critical that this be understood within the context of privilege. people with privilege already assume this to be true, compulsory homogeneity assumes sameness. that everything that is exists within the truths, experiences, and entitlement of whiteness. patriarchy. hegemony.
oneness has to include difference. heterogeneous and equal. distinct and invaluable. this is service to others, no one free until all are free. from each according to their ability, to each according to their need. if you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine.
“9. Be devoted to your spouse and dedicated to your children.”
one of the beautiful things about one of the awful things about being queer is family that goes beyond blood and marriage.
also understanding (utter) devotion outside of matrimony, monogamy, longevity.
also creating household maintenance independent of imposed gender norms and expectations.
one of my favorite things about jesus was that he moved his followers out of clan-based loyalty. who was a neighbor to the man? my mother and brother and sisters are those who love justice… (seems right to mention jesus once during advent.) devotion and dedication are bigger than blood and marriage.
“8. Be there when people need you.”
i’m absolutely not complaining. and i have had one of those professions for sixteen years where i am there when people need me. if you don’t or haven’t, try it. maybe become a volunteer for something you care about and experience that obligation and gratification.
for the rest of us, be there when you need you. i’m trying to figure out what that is (which for now looks a little like wanton excess).
“7. Judge your success by the degree that you’re enjoying peace, health, and love.”
sure. yes.
except i’m all over the place.
peace is a good goal, like equanimity. i’m working on it. and it’s a better alternative to force, war, resentment. and it’s at the expense most of the time of real change or justice. (i just watched kate winslet praise woody allen for four uninterrupted minutes; six women listening who disagree didn’t disagree.) long live peace. fuck peace.
health is one of those things which we value at the expense of people with disabilities and fat folk and people with chronic illness. and black folks and other oppressed people are made literally sick from overt harm and microaggressions. also all women’s healthcare is complete bollocks.
i have nothing contrary to say about love, though. just that rumi said this, your task is not to seek for love, but to seek all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
“6. Stand up for your principles even if you stand alone.”
so there’s a thing we have generally about standing alone where we act like it is a noble and exemplary thing. we idealize that margaret mead quote about being small and committed. the sound of one voice. the lone voice crying in the wilderness.
but a problematic side of it is posing ourselves as saviors. when we idolize (ourselves and) the idea of “standing” heroically alone in our principles, we fail to realize that for every principled, privileged one of us there is a whole population of people for whom it isn’t an ideal but survival. that we are in fact not alone, never were, and probably need to ask what is helpful help.
having said that, we should still for pity’s sake definitely please have integrity and stuff when it costs us.
“5. Take family vacations whether you can afford them or not.”
this is the line that caught my attention early this month on a poster on the wall of the state prison classroom, of all places, where i would spend the next two hours talking with inmates about sexual consent.
c and i had just decided a few days earlier to take a family vacation, despite the uncertainty and havoc i’ve wreaked in vocation and finances.
it felt pretty magical and validating. it felt less like being foolish and irresponsible and more like being present and beginner’s mind and meeting hardness with softness.
neither of us is honestly much for self justification (only a little), so we’ve been rolling with this as a trust exercise.
“in the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few. ” — shunryu suzuki.
“a tree that is unbending is easily broken.
the hard and strong will fall.
the soft and weak will overcome.” — lao tzu
“4. Do something every day that maintains good health.”
i have a list of stuff that i do to maintain my health (with the caveat of complicating/contrary thoughts about “health” at #7.)
feel free to add. please do.
in no particular order,
— tai chi (thanks, Annie)
— good natured, intermittent cussing
— couples counseling
— elliptical cardio training (thanks, Megan)
— strength and endurance training (eff you, Megan)
— blow off the gym
— tell people i love that i love them, not always in (those) words
— create account passwords at work that amuse me
— shower, brush my teeth, make the bed
— wear socks that make me happy
— laugh at my own jokes, which are hilarious
— say reassuring stuff out loud to my own self
— go to movies in the middle of the week, in the middle of the day
— strategic procrastination
— call my mom, for example, only when i have disposable optimism
— excessive consumption of ben & jerry’s and british television
“3. Never waste an opportunity to tell someone you love them.”
even after all this time
the sun never says to the earth,
“you owe me.”
look what happens with a love like that,
it lights the whole sky.
― hafiz
“2. Bless every day with a generous act.”
the little things can be pretty big. (apparently people like to be smiled at. i’m working on it.) we can change someone’s whole day with small, everyday generous acts. i’ve made this list before, you probably have, too: ask someone how they’re doing. listen to the answer. bring them coffee. use your turn signal…
and, when it comes to generosity, we sometimes use those everyday small things as cop outs. if i pay for the person behind me in line at the starbucks drive through every day for a year, as swell as that is it won’t make a difference in the deaths of trans women or unarmed black people, mass incarceration, working class poverty, rape culture…
sometimes generosity has to cost us. sometimes it has to. face to face hard conversations in real time about controversial, “political” stuff with people who may unfriend us or dislike us or not hire us. (like it or not, the personal is political. not taking sides is taking sides.) a willingness to pay more for groceries or electronics or clothing or tomatoes because it means that all along the product line people got paid a living wage…
i don’t mean to sound like an asshole or be a grinch, but this can’t always be about us feeling good about ourselves. it often does, and it’s totally fine of course to make ourselves feel good (and to be generous to ourselves). and. changing people’s days and lives won’t always make us feel good. sometimes, in fact, it will make us feel shitty and complicit. and we really need to do it then, anyway. maybe especially.
“1. Teach by example.”
i have this story about my godson that i’d tell elementary school kids about being active bystanders with bullying. we went to the baltimore aquarium when aj was about seven, and there’s an open tank there filled with stingrays, and you can touch them. and he really wanted to touch one, but he was afraid. I DID NOT WANT TO TOUCH A STINGRAY. but i did touch a stingray for him, to show him that he could do it, too. and so he did. he spent the next 20 minutes petting stingrays.
we can show each other how it’s done, model it so other people can feel emboldened, too. the successes, the good work, the kindnesses, the love, the hard victories of costly generosity.
and we gotta also be honest about the messiness. be transparent about our fear, our reluctance, the mistakes. not pretend that we have it all figured out. show our work, the scribbles and scratch-outs and eraser marks. how we got it wrong. how to apologize when we got it wrong, for real, and that we can try again.
Sharon Salzberg somewhere said (i think she did, or i made it up) that meditation isn’t that we are always present with our breath, but that when we get distracted (when, not if) we return to it, gently, and begin again. that’s the practice. that’s the miracle.
that’s it.
happy advent.
happy christmas.
Rev. Miller Hoffman 