The Body Remembers Beauty

A friend responded to my memory of canoe trips without phones. You could always drop the phone in the water. Splash!
"Invention is the Mother of Necessity"
Yes! On Yom Kippur when son Adam and I climbed Mount Doug, fasting, I would have taken my phone in my pocket, you know, just for safety and security and, you know, just in case . Someone could faint. You never know. But I forgot.
Our talk as we climbed was elevated, each tangled root carried a life metaphor for us, a tall tree grown past where the lightning had slashed it a perfect picture of Tamar Frankiel's symbol of forgiving while acknowledging the hurt as part of our bodies, letting the remembered hurt shape our contours to a thing of unique and asymmetrical beauty.
       When Adam and I got to the stunning sunshine of Mount Doug's peak, and the clearest view of    Mount Baker's snow in the distance, I had to memorize the scene in sharpest detail.
       Nobody fainted from the fasting and the climbing on no fuel but angel thought, and there were no emergencies down below. And no photo was needed of that thisworld beauty, the vastness of blue blue sea and distant snowy mountain. Without the iPhone, I printed the memory somewhere indelible and retrievable. Anytime. Now.
       Remembered beauty, too, leaves its contours. Our body shapes to it.

Radical Acceptance

Radical Acceptance is a very useful habit. Total, complete, entire acceptance that this is where we are at right now. It doesn't mean giving up. What comes next may be a burst of energy. But with Radical Acceptance we let go of beating ourselves up, we let go of resenting. We let go of thinking it should have been otherwise. Or grieving the changes that our age has brought about. We are this age. It is what it is.  Now there is work to be done. Have no worries. This huge teaching came in a sweet way today. Simply, I was reporting, in a bit of a complaining voice, that all my funding applications were taken hours and hours this week. So much not the work that is my mission and my love, the actual therapy. "So you're writing grants today", said my wise lover. "That's fine". And suddenly it was. It was what it was. Radical Acceptance.

I'll See It When I Believe It

I know. I know. I've got it backwards. Everybody also corrects me when I say "Invention is the mother of necessity". You have it backwards they say, but don't you see, they invented the iPhone and now we can't be off duty for a minute. I'm thinking of our canoe trips, two weeks away from any contact with the human world. And my year away at school overseas. One telegram, when plans for a family visit changed. Not a single phone call. Now......Invention is the Mother of Necessity. Today's seemingly backwards notion is "I'll see it when I believe it". Mostly people think, show me the convincing evidence and then I'll believe it. But in real life, that's not the place belief comes from. Other ways of saying this are, "We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are" ( ".... we see things as WE are" is attributed to a character in an Anais Nin novel who credited the Talmud. A woman saw the River Seine as silky and lovely, her partner painted it muddy with corks and garbage floating in it. "Lillian was reminded of the Talmudic words, "We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are". )
and
"You can ask the universe for all the signs you want, but, ultimately, we see what we want to see when we are ready to see it". Now, think of what this means to an educator or a therapist. "If a child can't learn the way we teach, we should teach the way they learn". That goes for all of our encounters. First meet the person where he or she is. And then journey together as partners.
       Our title here comes from Wayne Dyer's book, "You'll Believe It When You See It". Also, deliciously, from Wayne Dyer,  "When you dance, your purpose is not to get to a certain place on the floor. It's to enjoy each step along the way"

Relax! Nothing is Under Control

She who makes Himalayas and butterfly's wings knows her stuff. Let her be in charge for awhile. I think today's blog may be a secular and useful religion. For people who want to stay in a rational sphere, people allergic to any references to a divine (don't press exit! I promise, no more of that word. This will be this-world, here talk.) The useful messages and life style from religion, and how we can bring them into secular life. Demarcating the times. Setting aside times for rest, times for wonder. As in the top sentence here, Letting Go. Relax! Nothing is under control. There is a very useful Jewish prayer that could well come into secular lifestyle: at night you hand over all of your burden, your plannings, your worries, your unsolved questions. Trusting, you leave these in good hands. And in the morning you express gratitude that your mind is back on duty and that the universe has faith in you to take on your load again. I'll go find my children's book by Byrd Baylor, The Way to Start the Day. But this moment, I'love start my day. Grateful to have woken up, grateful to have my full and huge package of things to think about and things to do.

Happy New Year 2017

Part of our beautiful New Year's Party (so wonderful, and Beno loved that everything went so gracefully, without a hitch, the jumbo lobster was possible to crack, the braised fennel kept its signature essence, the St. Paulin chambréd to perfection, the karaoke lusty and spirited, the reminiscing over 2016 buoyant and loving, the fireplace gentle and warm) (this was a party for 2, Beno and me, by the fireside). Part of our beautiful New Year's Party, just the two of us, was going over the datebook of the past year. Susie's dear visits, Janie, sometimes on her own and sometimes with Justin, Sunny and Shlomo, Raymie and Ursula and Jeremy, Mel and Pearl, Lil Blume, David Baskin, Adam's exuberant reaction to the forests and the climb to Mount Doug,and his renewal of deep and unique conversational connection with Murray and Eleanor, the way each one of the grandchildren has a unique connection with them, Yoni's beautiful visits and the day we were too daring in the rock climbing by the sea and both Adam and Yoni stood at the bottom of a rock cliff, their solid hands guiding me to a safe place, and so many many others. Reading Justin's Facebook post in which he dared to say that he had experienced personally good year (are we allowed to have had a personally good 2016?), I wondered what is the correct attitude. And now, January 1, 2017, I wake up to the balancing, gorgeous writing of Marina Popova, my current mentor and guru for how to read a book in a shareful way, letting one's own world view swoosh to the reader through generous quotes from great authors' works, along with ample personal reflection. "There are events in our personal lives and our collective history that seem categorically irredeemable, moments in which the grounds for gratefulness and hope have sunk so far below the sea level of sorrow that we have ceased to believe they exist. But we have within us the consecrating capacity to rise above those moments and behold the bigger picture in all of its complexity, complementarity, and temporal sweep, and to find in what we see not illusory consolation but the truest comfort there is: that of perspective." Steinbeck writes so realistically, in 1941, of the species that we are. Steinbeck writes on January 1, 1941: Speaking of the happy new year, I wonder if any year ever had less chance of being happy. It’s as though the whole race were indulging in a kind of species introversion — as though we looked inward on our neuroses. And the thing we see isn’t very pretty… So we go into this happy new year, knowing that our species has learned nothing, can, as a race, learn nothing — that the experience of ten thousand years has made no impression on the instincts of the million years that preceded. https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/12/30/john-steinbeck-new-year/?utm_source=Brain+Pickings&utm_campaign=f4f02a9ca5-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2016_12_31&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_179ffa2629-f4f02a9ca5-237779697&mc_cid=f4f02a9ca5&mc_eid=983df15d91

Words

Let me see the world with brand newborn clean astonished eyes, this fresh new 2017. Let words be only feeble pointers toward notions, notions being new things and not tired; words being worn in and comfortable. A word has been used already, for someone else's thoughts. And mine are new. Let me never once assume that these words of mine have conveyed to someone else, this sparking new thought of mine. For each person has his own old and comfortable, or not so comfortable but at least we're used to it, meaning for each word. Let me stand far out on the diving board of words this 2017. Let me stretch meanings as wide as love's arms can stretch. Let me find new ways of getting across what I am newly thinking. Outside of boxes and swimming in fresh thawed glaciers, new waters that were solid ice just moments ago. Let me invent, this year, new modes. New Year's Resolution for 2017. To enter every dialogue wide open to learning, to clarifying my own notions, and most of all, to be ready for a shift in my notions. "Scout" Listening, the kind of curious, open listening we do when we truly intend to learn. Not "Soldier" Listening, on guard to defend every inch of our preconceived notions. Oh, and the loudness and the passion that attend energetic dialogue are just fine. They are a sign that we care enough to learn. " For last years words belong to last year's language and Next years' words await another voice and to make an end is to make a beginning" T.S. Eliot 2017. No sense of "entitlement". I will never ever just assume that the words I send forth from this idiosyncratic oneofakind being that I am, will travel safely and unharmed into the other person's ears. I will send off each word with a small blessing: Travel like the milkweed seed, dear word. May gentle winds carry you, rains germinate you in welcome fields. May you sprout and grow. Words, I let you go. Travel well dear words. Our house has been so filled with beautiful people and songs and food this past year, it's fitting somehow that tonight'/ New Year's Party was the two of us, velvety, loving, soft. One very big lobster for the two of us, eaten noisily. And then karaoke by the fire, we two singing our little souls big and hearty to Simon and Garfunkle and Jeffreson Airplane. Don't you want somebody to love. I have somebody to love. Plus I have so many many people to love in that friendship kind of love. I also reviewed the events and the visitors of the past year, and felt replete with the many many relatives that have come to Victoria. Good night 2016. You've been good to us.