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Frame

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If you want to miss the big picture, put a frame around it.

I’m learning that the more I decide what things are going to be, or how I should deal with them before I get to them, the less that I learn. The more I plan ahead, the less I’m able to experience what is really happening.

Instead of saying to God “This is what I want out of this experience”, it is me saying “God, what do You want me to get out of this”?

I want it all. I don’t want to miss anything.

I want to be open, like a child, to whatever is really there. I want to see with new eyes and hear with new ears.

I want to stop defining and start delighting.

I want to stop deciding what is “bad” or “good” and see things for what they really –are-, right then, and know that God is working through them to make them something else as well.

Nothing is constant. Everything is in the hands of God.

The more I expect to see things or people a certain way, the more I’ll see just that, and the less I’ll see what God has put right in front of me.

It rains on the just and the unjust alike.

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Instead of saying “Why does this keep happening to me”, turn it outward. “This” keeps happening to everybody. “This” is life, and it is normal.

Jesus tells us that “It rains on the just and the unjust alike” in Matthew 5. More later on that.

Bad things don’t just happen to bad people. They happen to everybody.

So how do you deal with it?

Thankfulness is a good start. Look at Jonah, praising God while in the belly of the whale.

Look at David, dancing and praising God, even after his son died.

Look at Job, saying that who was he to get angry at God for sending bad things and not to remember that God sends good things too.

Start a gratitude list. Look at the things that you like. Give them your energy, not the bad things. Look at all you have, not what you are missing.

Another idea is to not see things as “good” or “bad”. They just are what they are. The more you resist, the more you fight, the harder life will be. The more you define situations as “bad”, the more resistance you will give them.

Don’t give your energy to the wrong things

Pity parties only are parties of one.

While it is important to acknowledge pain and loss and occasionally say “This sucks!”, it is also important not to stay in that space.

Do what you can to help yourself. Start eating better. Go for a walk.
Feeling bad tends to make us close up and go inwards. That is the worst thing because it is self perpetuating.

Turn your energy outwards.

Go help out people who are worse off than you, not only so you get a sense of perspective, but also because the very action of helping others helps you.

Here’s the full verse of what Jesus said in Matthew 5:43-48
43 “You have heard that it was said, Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons and daughters of your Father in heaven. For He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward will you have? Don’t even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing out of the ordinary? Don’t even the Gentiles do the same? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Don’t run away from the situation. Give it love.

Account balance

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The secret to saving money is to spend less or make more, or both. Likewise, the secret to losing weight is to burn more calories or take less in, or both.

Move more and eat better and you’ll lose weight. But the weight isn’t the goal. The goal is health. If you move more, you’ll have better mobility in your joints. Your heart will be stronger. If you eat better, you’ll be giving your body the fuel it needs. Both will make you feel better and live longer.

I’m not about a starvation diet. There is no reason you have to eat salads and feel miserable. But do cut out the fried foods. You think you want them. You don’t. They don’t taste of anything except salt and fat. You can’t taste the goodness in the food when it is fried.

Do eat less food in general. You don’t need to eat like a dog who just got adopted from the pound. Slow down. Chew everything at least 20 times. You’ll digest it better if you eat it more slowly. Because, you aren’t what you eat, you are what you digest. If nothing else, think of all the money you’ll save if you eat less.

Eating less meat and more vegetables is always good too. The meat portion, if you are going to have it at all, needs to be the size of a deck of cards. Really. It is often the size of half the plate. And that is just the first helping.

For vegetables, the more the merrier. The more variety you can have, the more different vitamins and minerals you are getting. Every plate of vegetables is a gift from you to your body. Aim for a lot of color and you can’t go wrong. If you think you don’t like a certain vegetable, try it another way – steamed or grilled or baked. Sometimes it isn’t the vegetable, it is the way it is cooked that is the problem. Texture is essential. Baked squash is totally different from boiled or steamed squash. Try it, you might like it.

I’m stunned at the number of people who saw my husband take his bike to work who still wondered how he lost all that weight. He lost nearly a hundred pounds in a year. Now, it wasn’t from just riding his bike. He walked at lunch. He worked out at the Y several times a week. He ate healthier. But his coworkers didn’t see all that. They did see the bike, and they still didn’t get it. They thought he had gotten stomach reduction surgery.

Perhaps that is the problem. People just don’t see the connection. Hard work equals results.

No, it isn’t easy to get healthy. No, there are no shortcuts. You just have to do it.

You’ll fail a lot at first. You’ll get started and then stall out. You’ll be doing well and hit a snag. You’ll come full stop. Just start again. It isn’t the stopping that is the point. It is the starting again. Know that failing is normal. You aren’t a failure for failing. You’re normal. You’re human. Just get going again.

Even when you finally get a good routine going and you are doing very well, you’ll start to slack off. You’ve gotten to your goal and you think you can ease up. Then your joints start hurting again, and your jeans start not fitting again, and you’ll realize there isn’t a stopping point.

This is for life. You can’t stop because if you stop you’re done. You have to see eating well and moving more as something you just do as part of being a human. It has to be part of your life, and not just a thing you do to lose a few pounds before your high school reunion.

This is for life, because otherwise, you don’t really have a life. Otherwise, you’ll end up, if you make it to old age at all, on so many pills you’ll need an assistant to sort them for you. You’ll need a cane, or a walker, or a wheelchair. You’ll spend your days sitting at home because you are too feeble to get out on your own. You’ll be dead before you are dead.

This is for life. This is so you’ll have a life.

Poem – Harvest yourself

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This may sound strange –
this line between
mental health
and problems
is through the field.

Go out there.
Go walking.
Find a field full of
ripe sunlight
and harvest yourself.

Remember what you think you can’t do
you can’t do.
Remember that in our childhoods
there are no rules.

Every day is broken.
Everyone needs a story
about how God has healed them.
Everything we are is a little
bit of energy,
and it is a little bit more than we ever thought.

——————————————————————

This started out as a predictive text poem, using the letters in the word “tree” to prompt the suggested words that I would choose. The meditation was about the Christmas tree, that it is a blend of pagan and Christian. Is it necessary? Is it honest? When something new comes along, does it have to steal bits from the old to get validity?

But then it became something else. It wasn’t about new traditions stealing old customs. It was about staying sane in an often insane world. It was about finding yourself when you are lost. I had to edit out quite a bit of ‘noise’ to make this make sense, but I like it this way.

This is part of the process – whatever you intend may not be what happens. Being creative sometimes means that you are just a vehicle for the Source. Sometimes you aren’t even that – you get carjacked and taken for a ride and then you get dropped off somewhere you’ve never been to and you don’t have a map.

But somehow, because of the beauty of it all, you still find yourself safe and well, in spite of the scary ride. It is scary only in that you don’t have control over it. But that is part of why anybody becomes an artist. To be an artist is to be a bit of a shaman, or an explorer. To be an artist is to go Out There with the hope that you’ll find something new to show to everybody. To be an artist isn’t to take a snapshot of what is – it is to discover something never before seen. It is to discover, uncover, recover. It is to boldly go where… wait, that’s been done before.

Fighting the Nothing.

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I went to yoga class today. This isn’t normally a big deal. But today was different because my wrist hurts.

I’ve skipped class for various reasons recently. It is too cold outside. I’m tired. I’m out of town. The last one is the only valid one. My wrist hurting seemed like a good reason as well, but I decided that I had to go anyway.

I think I’ve stretched a ligament at work. My work involves a lot twisting my wrist and picking up heavy books. My wrist is getting worn out from it. It would be great if we could replace body parts like we can with car parts. Some we can. Not always. Until then, rest is required.

There are several yoga classes at the Y that don’t do any moves that involve wrists. This is not one of them. Downward facing dog, plank, upward facing dog, fallen triangle – all wrist moves. This is the class I’ve committed to going to because this one is on my day off.

I haven’t been in the past three or so weeks. In part I’ve used the holidays as an excuse. But I’m starting to think that seasonal affective disorder doesn’t have so much to do with less sunlight and a lot to with less activity. Sure, they are connected. Less sunlight means it is colder outside, and it gets darker sooner. Thus, we are less inclined to go exercise outside, or at all. We think we’ll take a break, just like the Earth does. We’ll fly south for the winter, even if it is in our heads. We’ll hibernate as much as we are allowed. We still have to go to our jobs, but that is it as far as activity. Everything else can just wait.

This year of writing has taught me the danger of that. Slow down too much and the doldrums set in. We are dead in the water, going nowhere. There’s no wind in our sails.

Then depression comes for a visit.

And when depression comes to visit, it isn’t really interested in a quick stop. It stays, longer and longer, gathering energy while we lose it. Depression is self perpetuating. It feeds on itself and gets bigger and bigger while our control on our minds gets less and less.

Writing has taught me this. It has made me stop and see patterns that never made sense before. It has made me realize that the only way out of this funk is to pull out the paddles and start rowing for dear life.

So I went to class today. I went even though I could only do half the moves. I went even though it meant that I had to modify all the other ones. Downward facing dog became dolphin. Plank was done on my forearms as well. I’ve never looked forward to doing warrior one and two nearly so much as today. I took child’s pose a lot. I did some of my favorite twists at other times. I tried some moves on my fists instead. It wasn’t that great.

But I went. And I stayed. And I did what I could do and didn’t push myself today. Sometimes yoga is about pushing. Sometimes it is about backing off. You don’t ever want to hurt yourself. The motto “No pain, no gain” is not a healthy mantra.

But really, I did push myself. I pushed myself to get up out of bed, and showered, and dressed, and to the class on time. I know me. If I’d let the doldrums win, that horrible inertia, that nothing that just feeds on itself and gets bigger and bigger, then I would have stayed at home all day and done nothing. Then I’d feel worse. Then I’d do more nothing. And I’d use it as an excuse to not go next week.

And while I wrestle with the concept of stillness, I know that doing nothing is death.

Poem- being OK with silence

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It is about being OK with silence.
With not having words.
With not knowing how to fix it.

With being rooted where you are.
And not worrying about where you are headed.

It’s about celebrating the brokenness
because that is how the Light will get in.

It’s about making the broken bit
the centerpiece.

It’s about making the leftovers
the main course.

It’s about not holding on,
not hoarding
not being a homeless dog gobbling up all the food
for fear
there won’t be more.

And it is about being OK even when I do all these things wrong.

It’s about knowing that I am loved regardless,
not in spite of my brokenness,

but

because of it.

Because of my brokenness
Jesus came
to let me know
I’m not broken
I’m human
And it’s OK.

On process and pain – chewing the steak.

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We all have problems. Don’t identify with your problem.

You aren’t an addict. You aren’t an abuse survivor. You aren’t a cancer patient.

With the new guidelines for talking about children with disabilities, we are supposed to talk about the child first, and the disability second. He isn’t an autistic child. He is a child with autism. He is a person first. He isn’t defined by his diagnosis.

Apply the same rules to yourself. You are a person first. The diagnosis is second. It isn’t you. It isn’t who you are. It affects you, certainly. But you are so much more.

When you define yourself by your diagnosis, you are giving it power, and you are diminishing your own.

Now, you also aren’t going to win any friends if you are constantly talking about your terrible childhood or your abusive husband or your sciatica or how you have to take care of your Mom with Alzheimer’s.

We all have problems. We all have something we have struggled with. Sometimes we have overcome it. Sometimes not. Sometimes it seems we can’t ever catch a break. But if you only talk about this, you are going to be lonely. The only companion you will have will be your problems.

Buddhism has a story that speaks to this. A lady’s child had died, and she was unable to accept it. She carried her dead child around the village, going to every house asking for medicine. They were all horrified. One kind person suggested she go to the teacher and sent her to Buddha. Buddha told her to go to each house and ask if they had experienced a death in the family. If nobody had died in that family, she was to get a mustard seed from them. She was to collect all the mustard seeds and bring them back to Buddha, who would then make a medicine for her.

She went all over the village and wasn’t able to find a single family that had not experienced death. She came to realize that her experience wasn’t unique or special. She came to realize that death was part of life, and to hold onto it and identify with it was causing her more problems than the death itself.

Simply going to each person’s house, she created her own medicine. Buddha taught her to look outside of herself, and to not identify herself with her suffering.

How often do we hold on to our pains and sufferings, just like that lady carried around her dead child? How often do we think we are alone in our suffering, that we have it worse than anybody else?

We all suffer. That is just part of life. Holding onto it makes it worse. Accept your loss and your pain, but don’t identify with it. Accept it, because to not accept it means to not process it.

Pain, like a big steak, needs to be chewed thoroughly to be digested. Choke it down and you’ll get sick. Spit it out and you’ll miss the lessons it has to teach you.

Pain teaches us about holding on and letting go. It teaches us about what we think we have to have in our lives and what we really need. It teaches us to accept, and live in the now, rather than in the past or the future.

The past never was as awesome as we think it was. Even in the past we were looking back to “the good old days” and thinking about how great things will be “if only I get…if only I can have…when I finish…” In the future we will do the same thing.

The only island is now. When we aren’t on that island, we are drowning in the sea, stuck away from the solid stability of that island. The past isn’t real. The future isn’t real. The more we live there, the more we are missing out on the only real thing that is, and that is now.

How to get back to now? Start looking at it. Start being thankful for it. Make a gratitude list. Notice what you have, right now, and be thankful.

Pain teaches us about ourselves.

Once we are through chewing on it, we need to swallow it, and then digest it. Then it does its work and then we have to let it go. Holding into pain is just like holding onto poop. We get sick if we can’t eliminate our toxins. But it still has to go through us, all the way. Resist it, fight against it, and you’ll only hurt yourself. Just like a tree in a strong wind, if you don’t bend, you’ll break.

One reason why we eat too much.

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I believe that our bad relationship with food is taught to us as children. We are taught to deal with our emotions by eating. Food is offered instead of comfort. When bad feelings happen, food fills the gaps.

How often do you see a parent putting a pacifier in her child’s mouth when he cries? This is so normal that we don’t even think about it. The child has legitimate need that needs to be addressed, and instead of getting help for his problem, something is put in his mouth.

Every time he is hungry, or tired, or wet, or sad, or upset, or too cold or too hot – something is put in his mouth. After months of this, he learns that this is how you deal with problems. Something isn’t right? Put something in your mouth.

This child will internalize this. He’ll either learn to eat or smoke or drink whenever he feels any twinge or any anxiety. When things aren’t going right, don’t find the reason for the problem. Self soothe by putting something in your mouth.

This is so simple that it is overlooked. This is so obvious that nobody sees it.

We need to stop using a pacifier and actually pacify children who are upset. We need to find out what the problem is and address it. They can’t fix their own problems. They can’t change anything about their environment. They let parents know that something is wrong by crying. Crying is natural. Crying keeps them alive. Ignoring it is neglect.

Say they have had enough food, and their diaper has just been changed, and they are still crying. They might just need love. They certainly don’t need a piece of plastic shoved in their mouths.

We have to think about the deeper lessons we are teaching children, those lessons we don’t even realize we are teaching them.

Dream of Fields

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I had a dream the other night that didn’t mean anything at the time but now feels relevant.

I was driving on a freeway and got off. I parked in a field, newly sown with seeds. There were hundreds of thousands of seeds. The land soupy, even bog-like, with them. I laboriously slogged through the field. The excess of seeds kept slowing me down.

After I had gone far enough from my car that I couldn’t see it because of the trees in the field and a bend in the land, I noticed that the field had an end. I saw a guardrail and the freeway again. It wasn’t an endless field.

I turned around to get back to my car. When I came back to it I saw that there were other people who had followed my un-beaten path and had also parked in the field. They had followed me, but they weren’t doing what I was doing. They weren’t walking in the furrows or studying the unusual amounts of seeds. They were taking pictures of the field, like it was a tourist attraction or a historical landmark.

I was a bit disgusted with them. They didn’t get anything about the field.

And how is this not different from my path?

I’ve left the road of church as usual. I’ve gotten off the path and found a field of green seeds. There is so much life and growth and vibrancy here that I am getting bogged down by it all. There are so many ideas for posts to write that I get overwhelmed at times with where to start.

I hope that my posts are helpful. I hope that they have spoken to fellow travelers. I hope that they have provided encouragement or enlightenment. I hope that they have shown a way out or a way in.

The last thing I would want is for anybody to follow me off the road and then treat it like it is a game or a show. It isn’t. It is hard work. It is like growing your own food or building your own house. There are some books offering suggestions but they can’t really show you exactly what to do.

By definition, they can’t.

Nobody can give you a blueprint for your life. It is your life and yours alone and they can’t really know what you need to make it work. They can offer advice from the sidelines, but they can’t play the game for you. They have a different perspective from seeing things from the side, but they can’t see it the way you are seeing it.

So I want people to read my words and get them, sure. I feel that I have useful things to say. I feel that they can help people get out of ruts or avoid falling into them in the first place. But I don’t want to be followed or iconized.

I want people to pull off their own roads and find their own fields and wander around them for a while. I want them to be inspired by my journey to take their own. I want them to question everything. I want them to be awake and conscious and intentional about life.

It all goes to fast to spend it in someone else’s field.

On quitting smoking.

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Many people stop doing something bad or start doing something good for their New Year’s resolution. Why not combine the two? If you are going to stop smoking, I suggest you start walking.

Take the time you were going to use on your smoke break and go for a walk instead. Many people take a 15 minute smoke break. 15 minutes is a great amount of time for a walk – but even 10 or 5 minutes is good.

Walking does for you what smoking does, but better. It is calming. It is a mental break. It takes you away from your problems, both literally and figuratively. But while smoking takes away from your health, walking adds to it.

Walking clears out your head like nothing else.

You can walk anywhere. You don’t have to have a walking path around your workplace. You can go for a walk inside your building. While it is better to go outside and get some fresh air and sunshine, it is important just to walk. Walk up and down some stairs. Walk around the hallways. Get outside and walk around the building. But just walk. If you limit yourself to walking outside, 90% of the time it will be too hot or too cold or too wet. Rarely will it be just right. Savor those days when it is nice outside, but don’t just walk on those days. Walk every day.

You don’t have to walk fast. Just walk. Ambling is fine. A stroll is good.

Think you are too out of shape to walk? All the more reason to walk. Just get going. Do what you can. You’ll get stronger. People don’t walk because they are in shape. They walk to get in shape.

Some people use this as an excuse – “I’ll walk a mile and then I have to walk a mile to get back where I started.” Walk in a circle. Find a path and loop around.

You may be self-conscious at the start when you are walking. That is normal. You are doing something different. You are taking care of yourself. The shame you felt from sneaking away to smoke will be replaced with pride that you are doing something to help yourself. Try to recruit others to go walking with you instead of smoking. That way you have a group. You can cheer each other on.

Realize that every excuse you come up with is your unhealthy self trying to stay that way. Your healthy self is really weak right now and you can’t hear its voice very well. See those excuses as a sign that you have to stick up for your healthy self. Just go ahead and do it. The more you put it off, the longer it will be before you start feeling better. Every little bit you do towards the good will give you energy and momentum to do a little bit more.

Go walk instead of smoking. Your life will thank you for it.