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Duck

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Imagine a mama duck and all her baby ducks. They follow behind her, trusting that she is leading them the right way. But she is just leading them the same way that she was lead, and so on.

And what if they are all going the wrong way?

So many people are like those ducks. Just following, blindly trusting. Because the people before them, whether parents or teachers or ministers or elders, walked in this path, it must be right.

Not necessarily.

Who walked that first path? How did she or he discover it? What made her or him go that way? What made others follow in that path?

Whether it is a clothing habit or a diet trend or a way of thinking makes no difference. A path is a path is a path.

Where are you going? Who are you following? Do they know the answers to those questions?

Yoga in the morning.

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I’m rethinking my idea of yoga. I think it is better to do it every day, rather than just once a week at a class. I also think it is better for me to do it first thing in my morning routine rather than at the end.

I hear it is best to do yoga before having breakfast. This would certainly take care of my need to get my morning started but not be in the way of my husband. Our day overlaps by about thirty minutes and if I go into the kitchen where he is it is a little chaotic. I’ve discovered that it is best for both of us if I don’t try to start my morning in the same place where he is trying to finish his.

As an alternative, I’ve been bringing my Kindle into the bedroom to write during that time, and while I may still do some of that, I think that doing yoga then would be good too.

I’d been leaving yoga for the end, just after my shower. Somehow I was running out of time and I was either rushing through the poses or just skipping them entirely. So that isn’t working. When I had been making time to do it I’d also been doing an example of “Praying in Color” and that was good too. In the past several months if I’d done either they were done as a sort of afterthought.

If I do them first, they are done. No excuses.

I like how I feel during the day if I’ve done a little yoga. Things seem to go better. I’ve actually found myself sort of checking in with myself. Did I write? Yes. Did I do yoga? Yes. It is like taking a multivitamin for my soul. If I’ve done it, I feel better.

Now, do I feel better because I’ve done yoga, or because I’ve done something I feel is good for me? I don’t know. This has long been something I’ve wondered about. Is it the activity that matters or the commitment and discipline that matters? Sometimes I think what helps me the most is intentionally living my life, rather than just drifting aimlessly through it.

This is part of why I write. Writing keeps me awake. Writing means I face things, rather than running away from them. Writing means I don’t hide behind the unknowing, behind the questions. When I write, I dig, and when I dig, I learn. I start to uncover, and recover, the truth, and with it, myself.

Writing is yoga too, like that. Yoga isn’t just poses. Yoga is a way of thinking. Yoga is sticking with it and working through it. Yoga is leaning in and being patient. Yoga is trying. Yoga is sometimes just showing up, bored and tired, but there anyway. Yoga is finding the center calm. Yoga is better lived off the mat. Yoga is being awake in the moment.

So why wouldn’t I do this every day? Why wouldn’t everybody?

Poem – How to get sober.

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One moment at a time, not one day.
At the beginning, a day is too long
too stretched out,
too scary.

At the beginning an hour feels like an eternity
packed with uncertainty
and dread.

At the beginning of our coming
to consciousness,
of our coming
back to ourselves,
even an hour is too long.

That is why we got high, got stoned, got drunk.
The day stretched out before us with
more questions than answers,
more problems than solutions.

We are adults in name only.
We were shortchanged
on the skills
to be human.

We have to relearn
and unlearn
a lot.

It is hard, this being human.

It is why we ran away
for so long.

Just like a person who was born with legs
but never used them,
We have to be patient with the process.

We have to relearn how to walk
when we never learned in the first place.
We have to relearn how to live
when we never learned in the first place.

We have to be patient with ourselves.

Patience isn’t one of our strengths though.

We were raised by a world that taught
“Get rich quick”
“You deserve it”
And instant enlightenment,
no waiting.

So now what?

Breathe.
Go for a walk
outside.
Soak up the sun
or the cold
or the rain.

Be open to what is
right now,
not what you want it to be
not what you think
it should be.

This is a time of relearning
what it is to be

Alive.
Awake.
Aware.

Just like a person who has spent
her life in a cave,
going outside is painful.
The light is too bright.
The sounds are too loud.
Nothing is familiar.
Nothing is comforting.

Don’t go back
to the cave.
Don’t go back
to being asleep.

Take a small step.
Acclimate.

Take another
when you are ready.

No hurry.

You can sit outside that cave mouth for a long time.

You don’t have to go running
because if you go too far too fast
you’ll fall
and retreat
back to that cave.

Slow and steady does it.

A lot of getting sober
is unlearning.

You aren’t alone
in this process.

We are all unlearning
and relearning
what it means to be ourselves.

You are beautiful. You are needed. You are loved.
And you can do this.

Paper or Plastic?

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If you want to be really mindful, go to the grocery store with cash.

I’ve started using cash for everything. I’ve created an allowance for myself. Every week I go to the bank to get cash. It is really weird.

I grew up this way of course. I’m old enough that credit cards weren’t a part of life during my formative years. When I first got a credit card it was just for emergencies. Then somehow it became a way of life. Somehow the credit card became the norm and cash became the thing I used for emergencies.

So many of us reach for plastic over paper these days.

I know a young guy who bought a wallet. It took him two weeks to realize that it didn’t have a place for cash. He didn’t even think to look for a place for cash when he was buying the wallet. He was constantly scoffing at me for carrying cash at all.

There are so many advantages to using a card. You can see online what you are spending your money on. Many companies give you money back or rebates for using their cards. If you pay your card off every month, you can actually make money doing this. I did, for many years.

But it is all a trick. I spend way more money when I use my credit cards. I don’t think about what I’m buying. I need it, so I get it. Or, I think I need it. Well, sometimes I just want it.

And then I have to make a place for it. Whether it is a new dress from Goodwill or a pint of ice cream, it has to go somewhere. With the ice cream the somewhere is my butt.

Shopping with cash at the grocery store means I have to really think about what I’m getting. Do I need it? I can’t justify buying snacks and other non-food items. I’ve not bought sodas in a while, but chips and cookies are still appealing. The more money I spend on those, the less money I have for actual food that I need. You know, food with vitamins and minerals. Actual nutrition is going to win in this debate. Having limited resources makes me mindful. Thus, it means I’m eating better.

Even with a bargain dress from Goodwill, I have to be mindful. I’ve got other dresses. I’m fine. It isn’t like I don’t have clothes that fit me and look acceptable. I justify buying the dress because it is a great price. But even then I’m not being mindful of my money. Ten dollars spent is still ten dollars spent, and it adds up. Too many trips to Goodwill means I’ve spent $100 before I even know it.

A bargain isn’t a bargain if you don’t need it.

I’ve always carried at least $40 in my wallet. I rarely used it, but when I needed it I was reminded of how useful that practice is. Sometimes the credit card machine isn’t working. Sometimes your card doesn’t work. Then how are you going to buy your gas or your meal? Cash always works, and cards don’t.

Some places don’t even take credit cards. We went on a trip to North Carolina and ate at a restaurant. It was a nice meal, but what happened at the end wasn’t very nice. We found out they only took cash or checks. There was no message about this on the door or on the menu. Fortunately I always kept a spare check in my wallet and used that. Otherwise we might have had to wash dishes to pay our bill. Or one of us would have to leave to find an ATM.

These days I’m turning this around. I’m carrying the credit card as the backup and carrying cash as the main thing. I’ve done this for a week and already I’ve noticed I’ve spent $200 less than normal, and I’m eating better. Instead of eating out as often, I’m making food at home.

It is interesting how this is dovetailing into my New Year’s resolution to cook more. I’ve wanted to get better at cooking for years, and the only way to get better at cooking is simply to cook. I’ve wanted to go to the store and get fresh vegetables and cook from scratch, and now I’m doing it. I’m feeling really empowered by learning how to feed myself well. But then I started deciding to use only cash, and that is going nicely with it. Both practices are keeping me mindful of how I spend my money, which ultimately represents my time and my energy.

I’m sometimes resentful of having to spend forty hours a week at work. I’m grateful for a job, but I’d like to have more time away from it to live my life. Thirty hours would be better but it isn’t an option. But how smart is it for me to waste that money on expensive, unhealthy food and trinkets and baubles? Using my money wisely will mean I have more money saved up for bigger things, like a trip overseas, or improvements to my house. In the meantime, I’m learning how to take better care of myself, and that is the best investment of all.

Practice

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What is a “practice”? You may have heard this word before and wondered. People these days will talk about something that they do as being part of their practice. Your practice is anything you do mindfully and intentionally.

In the same way that you have to practice playing piano to get better at it, you have to adopt a practice for life to get better at it.

The interesting part is that there is not just one way to practice. Anything you choose mindfully can be your practice. You can have several practices and they can change over time. You don’t have to keep the same one. In fact, when your practice becomes stale is a good time to reexamine it. It may be time to change it. It may also be time to stick with it and dig deeper.

There are just as many practices as there are people. Gardening can be a practice. So can walking outside. So can painting, drawing, and writing. Eating vegetarian, or raw, or local can be a practice. Being part of a group class at the Y is just as valid a path as exercising at home alone to a video or making it up yourself.

The only constant to a practice is that it must be intentionally chosen. It can’t just be something you do because that is what you’ve always done. It can’t be something you do when you are bored. It has to be the exact opposite of an addiction.

How do you pick a practice?

First, think of where you want to go. If you don’t have a goal, you aren’t being intentional. Now, your practice may be the goal. You may find yourself opening up and growing just by adopting a practice.

A practice is like a map that gets you there. If you want to go to Cleveland and you have never been there you’ll either ask someone who has or you’ll get a map. The same is with a practice. Ask people who are good at what they do and enjoy it. Ask people you admire, either friends or experts (the two can be the same thing) what they did (or do) Read a book or twelve. Pray for guidance. Ask God/Source/the Divine to show you what direction you should go.

Then pick something and do it. It will be awkward at first. Give it some time. If it doesn’t feel like a good fit for you, try something else. You can’t get there if you have on the wrong shoes. Sometimes the practice works for someone else but it doesn’t fit you. That is normal. It doesn’t mean you are wrong. It means the practice is wrong for you.

Your practice may be to fully participate in your religion. Practice doesn’t have to be something new, it can be something old. You don’t have to take up a new habit or hobby. You can just do what you already do, but more mindfully.

You can find enlightenment through almost any path. Even doing a jigsaw puzzle can teach you a valuable lesson. Being open and childlike is essential. If your practice becomes like a job, then it isn’t a practice anymore.

It helps if your practice helps others. Sure, you need some inward focus too. You can’t help others very well if you are broken. If you are off balance and you try to catch someone else who is off balance you will both fall. But a practice that is all self-focused will be tight, like a flower bud that isn’t open. Flowers are made to open and be delightful. So are we.

Meditation on mindlessness.

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Every now and then I get stuck in a loop. I find myself doing something that I don’t want to do, and I’ve been doing it far longer than I should. It doesn’t make any sense. I’m an adult. I’m in charge of my life, right?

It sure doesn’t feel like it to me sometimes, and I suspect you might know what I’m talking about.

There are habits that I fall into that don’t do me any good anymore, if they really ever did to start with. Doing the same thing over and over feels safer than trying something new, even if the old thing is a dead end.

This is how I’ll end up eating a whole bag of potato chips in one sitting. This is how I’ll spend two hours scrolling through Facebook to see if anything is happening. This is how I smoked clove cigarettes and pot for ten years.

Mindlessness. It’s all mindlessness. It’s being on auto pilot. It is worse than death because at least with death I don’t have control over my actions. I’d like to think when I’m alive, I do.

The bad part is that when I get in these loops I usually know it. I’m aware of how badly I don’t want to be doing this thing but I’m still doing it anyway. Ten minutes later I’m still doing it. Ten minutes more and I’m still there.

It’s how I end up plodding through books that I don’t really enjoy. They aren’t for a class. They aren’t assigned. Most of the books I read I got for free or really cheap too, so it isn’t like I’m wasting money if I stop reading a book that is going nowhere.

Sometimes when I am stuck in a loop, I start to think like this and it helps me so I offer it to you:

Would Jesus be spending his time like this? What if he were here with me? Would I be doing what I am doing?

It works for food too – would Jesus be eating this? Is it healthy? Would I serve it to him? Wouldn’t I serve him good food, something healthy and tasty?

As for the state of my house, would I be embarrassed to have him over? Is it welcoming, or a mess? And what would we do? Would we sit around watching tv or checking updates on Facebook?

So, if I wouldn’t treat Jesus like that, why am I treating myself like that? I need to show myself the love that Jesus showed.

I sometimes get Scott to let me do something nice for him by talking him into the idea that it benefits me. I’m trying the same trick on myself. Instead of thinking about my own needs, I’m imagining what if Jesus were here. Would I be doing this?

Would I be treating my body this way? Would I be spending my time this way? Would I be talking to myself this way? Would I be living this way?

Now, understand that I wasn’t raised with a guilt and gloom image of Jesus. Jesus enjoys a glass of wine and playing board games. But he also values doing the real work too. It isn’t all fun and games either. There is a balance there.

What would Jesus do, indeed. I always hated those rubber bracelets. They seem so cheap, so trivial. I felt that the people who wore them didn’t have a grasp on the real Jesus anyway, because their Jesus was anti everything. The Jesus I know is about love.

I feel like Jesus wouldn’t waste his time but then I remember that he spent a lot of time alone, hanging out talking with God. So there was certainly some down time, but I can’t compare that to surfing the internet mindlessly or reading boring books or ignoring things that need to be done around the house or eating junk food.

I think what I’m trying to do is use Jesus as a reminder to be mindful. I’m not giving Jesus control. That isn’t what it is at all. I’m not trying to guilt trip myself into doing or not doing anything. I’m trying to come up with a trick that helps me get unstuck from a groove, a rut.

So far, when I remember to do it, it works.

Doing WordPress

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I’m pretty sure I’m doing WordPress wrong.

I’ve read that I’m supposed to put pictures in all my posts. I’ve read that I’m supposed to “follow” a lot of other similar blogs, and comment on them. I’ve read that I should post several times a day.

Well, I do that part, sometimes. And then I think that I’m overwhelming people.

But how am I supposed to follow other blogs when I barely have time to work on mine? How am I supposed to comment on them if I don’t read them? And how would that get me more followers?

I’m pretty sure that a lot of my followers don’t even follow my blog. I have nearly 200 followers and really only about 20 people manage to saunter over and look at what I’ve written every day. Are the rest those people who do blogging for money? They “followed” my blog with the hope that I’d “follow” theirs, and they’d get a percentage of a penny just because I clicked on their blog? Maybe.

As for pictures, I have pictures sometimes. But they are my own. I’m not going to take stock photos and paste them on my blog. That’s stealing. Well, it’s stealing unless you give proper credit. But then if a picture is worth a thousand words, how much more are worth actual words? A picture doesn’t mean anything without a context, and the viewer can make up whatever she wants. I’d rather write about what I see than show it, most of the time. I feel that it means more, and that the meaning is better expressed this way.

Mostly I write because I need to write. Setting up a goal of posting at least once a day makes it something I have to do. It makes me accountable to myself. It makes me take the time to put down my thoughts. I don’t need to post, but it seems to force me to think more clearly about what I say. And, if someone gets something useful out of it, all the better. But first and foremost, I write for myself.

I’ve learned things through writing that I never would have learned otherwise. Writing forces me to slow down and see the situation from many perspectives. Writing is an intentional, focused act. Writing keeps me conscious and alert.

I’ve got lots of things I want to write about, but not a lot of time. Plus, I think my recent sprained wrist is in part because I’ve been writing so much. So, I have to choose carefully what I write. Sometimes it may not seem like it. Sometimes I just need to “doodle” to get started. Sometimes I write about a fluffy thing in order to warm up to something bigger. Sometimes I avoid writing about something big and real and controversial and new because I’m afraid.

Sometimes I write because I want to confront my fears, and drag them out kicking and screaming into the light.

So I may not do WordPress the way I’m supposed to do it. But I do it the way I need to do it, and I think that is really the point of everything. It certainly is the point of my blog. Don’t do things the way everyone else does it if it doesn’t serve you.

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.

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.

Agate – God in the details

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I love Botswana agate. It looks like this.

agate4

It looks like a topographic map, but not flat.
agate2

Here’s a necklace I made with two different kinds of agate. The small round ones are Botswana agate. The tabular ones are bamboo leaf agate.

agate1

Closer.

agate5

It doesn’t really look real. It is hard to believe that God made something so amazing. But then again, God is constantly making amazing things and we are constantly taking them for granted. Just look at a bug – any bug. It is totally mind-blowing to me that something that small is self contained and alive. Surely it needs more space to be a fully functioning being, right? We do. We humans need quite a bit of space for our bodies to have all the stuff they need to work.

But I think that is the point. We often compare things to ourselves, because it is the only reference point we have. We look at something as tiny and intricate as a piece of agate with a bunch of fabulous lines on it, and we think it can’t be natural. Surely a human made that.

We forget that we ourselves are part of creation. We are not the most creative things around. We are co-creators – but God is the One that created us. The only reason we are able to be creative is because God created us with this impulse and ability.

I used to carry around a coin that was dated exactly one hundred years before I was born. I carried it around to remind me that the world existed long before me. There were people who lived and loved and lost long before me, and will do so long after me. I carried it to give me a sense of perspective.

This is part of why I like Botswana agate. It reminds me to stop and look at tiny things, and appreciate that God is indeed in the details.