Archives for category: Spirituality

Weaving a life

November 12, 2015 //

My paternal grandmother was a weaver. Her loom was a large, intricate contraption that filled half the room. As a youngster in wonder I watched her hands throw the shuttle back and forth and her feet press pedals that squeaked mysterious parts into place.

Nearby was another enigma to this child, a wooden wheel she used to spin wool into threads that her loom transformed into cloth. Most treasured was the clan tartan she wove for ties for her grandsons and skirts for her granddaughters.

As did many crafts born of the necessity to provide one’s own food, shelter and clothing, weaving yielded to impatience with the pace of production and the progress of technology. Still, the power of its metaphor remains a guide for the spirit.

In this prayer from sisters Pat Kozak and Janet Schaffran we are both weavers and woven.

Weave for us the tapestry on which our lives are stretched. Give us patience with the endless back and forth of shuttle, hand and effort. We look too closely, seeing only strands and knots and snarled threads of too-much-trying or none-at-all.

Grant us to see the whole of which we are a part.

In the end, we ask for gentleness with ourselves, acceptance of our less than perfect ways. We pray that what we do and what you weave form patterns clear to all, of mercy in the warp of it and love throughout.

My grandmother’s loom remains in the same house that is now her town’s historical society. Her spinning wheel graces the landing on the stairs of our home in NH. As I pass it daily I am reminded that the task of each of us is to create and stretch the fabric of our life in our generation.

Categories Growing Older, Personal Growth, Spirituality

Lost…or Not

October 29, 2015 //

Those of us who live close to the land are graced with many blessings. Moments like the one captured in the photo below are an example – an October sunrise from the ridge where we live.

Many gifts of the earth are essential to our survival – the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we consume. The aesthetic beauty of the earth expands our hearts; the sense of place grounds our spirits.

A poem by David Wagoner from the anthology Life Prayers offers another grace note of bounty from the earth. Have you ever been turned around in the woods, maybe even lost for a moment? Ever been turned around a bit in your life, having lost your direction? Perhaps you are facing such a time today.

For most of us finding our way (again) begins with being fully present to the moment and its messengers, “to know it and be known.”

Stand still. The trees ahead and the bushes beside you are not lost. Where ever you are is called HERE. And you must treat it as a powerful stranger. Must ask permission to know it and be known.

The forest breathes. Listen. It answers, I have made this place around you. If you leave it, you may come back again, saying, HERE. No two trees are the same to Raven. No two branches are the same to wren.

If what tree or bush does is lost on you, you are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows where you are. You must let it find you.

Categories Coaching, Inspiration, Personal Growth, Spirituality

An Infinite Expectation

October 8, 2015 //

Peering from the upstairs window as daylight began to chase the night, I noticed a large deer under the apple tree. It moved slowly, an elegant shadow that ambled unrushed down the hill past the burn pile and out of sight. Later, as the first rays of the sun brushed the tips of the trees, highlighting their fall colors, Thoreau’s familiar passage from Walden came to mind.

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn…

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor…

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every (one) is tasked to make (their) life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of (their) most elevated and critical hour.

Whatever today brings for each of us, whether, like so many in the news we are facing the enormity of loss of home, health or loved ones, or we are just staring at the monotony of routine, we have choices to make. Those choices come from our thoughts, which are the source of our attitude and effort, the brushes with which we paint the quality of the day.

I saw the deer, having just emerged from meditation where I had read the following quote attributed to the Buddha:

The thought manifests as the word; the word manifests as the deed; the deed develops into habit; and habit hardens into character.

So watch the thought and its ways with care and let it spring from love born out of concern for all beings.

What is one thought that will help you affect the quality of your day?

Categories Inspiration, Personal Growth, Spirituality

Timbered Choir

October 1, 2015 //

Autumn returns to our New Hampshire hillside. The light of day grows shorter. Fading from its rare eclipse, the harvest moon wanes. The garden yields its last bounty.

The leaves change color and begin to fall, reprising how much the trees contribute to our landscape and our lives. Throughout the seasons the oxygen they produce fills our lungs with life. Their branches shelter families of birds. A pliant buttress, they buffer us from the strong winds and soothe us with strains of reassurance when the breezes are light. They provide the beams that support our home, firewood that warms our hearths, and grains that inspire and challenge a budding craftsman at the lathe.

In the signature poem of his collection, A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997, Wendell Berry honors these pillars of what to many of us is our spiritual temple. They represent and embrace all of life’s gifts for which the only response can be a grateful heart.

Slowly, slowly, they return to the small woodland let alone: great trees, outspreading and upright, apostles of the living light.

Patient as stars, they build in air tier after tier a timbered choir, stout beams upholding weightless grace of song, a blessing on this place.

They stand in waiting all around, uprisings of their native ground, downcomings of the distant light; they are the advent they await.

Receiving sun and giving shade, their life’s a benefaction made, and is a benediction said over the living and the dead.

In fall their brightened leaves, released, fly down the wind, and we are pleased to walk on radiance, amazed. O light come down to earth, be praised!

Categories Inspiration, Personal Growth, Spirituality

Taming the Mind

September 24, 2015 //

Our minds are magnificent liberators. They are also bedeviling oppressors. Much suffering in life is linked to the entrapment of our minds, as we become attached to the pleasurable highs and find the oppressive lows aversive. How can we mitigate the debilitating messages and harness our minds for happiness?

I am working on three strategies. The first is to interrupt the chatter. When the messages seem to be high jacking my thoughts or feelings, I find that a momentary deep breath or a change of activity provides a sufficient time-out to break through the static and allow me to refocus.

The second strategy involves the decision to create a new routine. Research on the brain is finding that a significant percentage of our daily behavior (40%) is habitual. The more the brain can relegate its management of repetitive situations to habit, the more it devotes its energy to paying attention and solving new problems. Two helpful resources for this are Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit and Daniel Goleman’s Focus.

For the past several years I have begun each day with a period of yoga, reading and sitting meditation. That routine has helped me diminish old patterns and pay attention to new potential.

The last strategy is the most difficult to do: let go of outcomes. That isn’t to say let go of dreams, setting goals and advocating for our beliefs. It means that despite our best planning, our most committed effort and our most devoted advocacy, results may turn out differently. Rather than bemoan the loss of what we had envisioned, we have the opportunity to open ourselves to possibilities we had never considered.

Taming the mind is both a daily opportunity and challenge. What strategies are working for you?

Categories Coaching, Personal Growth, Spirituality

Only Now

September 17, 2015 //

For those of us with more years in the rear view mirror than on the road ahead time takes on greater importance as a teacher. The lesson is “there is only now.” It’s a message that younger folks can opt into as well, although it is easier to embrace in our later years.

First, a disclaimer: by “only now” I do not mean living merely for the moment without caring about the impact of our behavior on ourselves and others. That is an indulgent prescription for hurt and harm.

My point is that most of us spend too much time reliving the past, even when part of us knows that it can’t be redone. Or, we fast forward to a fanciful future as an anesthetic for our stress. Much is going on in what we call now. Recognizing it and integrating it can alter not only the instant but the trajectory of the day.

My work with horses has reinforced this. They are fully present, reading and responding to the energy of the moment. Their survival depends on it.

As you read this, what thoughts are surfacing? What do you feel going on inside? Why is that? Paying attention to now may be providing a decision point for transforming your day. If not, whether intentionally or mindlessly, the moment has passed and with it the possibility of insight and a new beginning.

When we are with another person, are we truly present? What message is she communicating? What feelings does he express? What does her sharing surface in us? Are we truly hearing him, or are we focused on fashioning a snappy reply?

When we pay attention, each now opens a new world of possibility.

Categories Growing Older, Personal Growth, Spirituality

Building the Universe

September 10, 2015 //

When the news of the week drags me down with the dysfunction, vitriol and violence of our species, I search for a framework that provides a meaningful counterbalance. How do we gird our spirits to withstand the tsunami of negativity?

For me it entails shifting a paradigm. Instead of portraying ourselves as the center of the universe as our venerable traditions teach, what if we understand ourselves instead as a precarious experiment in one small laboratory at the margins of the cosmos? It seems like a reasonable possibility, especially as our capacity to love, nurture and create seems to be succumbing to our propensity to vilify, confront and destroy.

Maybe our task in our short span of life is simply to find our calling, pursue it with passion and love those around us. Maybe the energies of love extend out beyond the gravitational pull of our planet to combine elsewhere for the greatest good. Because our perspective is lost in the tall grass around us, we may not know if it makes a difference to anything larger than ourselves and our immediate circles of influence.

Nonetheless, a much larger world beyond our grasp may depend on our persistence in generating love. Mary Oliver raises this prospect in her poem Song of the Builders.

On a summer morning I sat down on a hillside to think about God –

a worthy pastime. Near me, I saw a single cricket; it was moving the grains of the hillside

this way and that way. How great was its energy, how humble its effort. Let us hope

it will always be like this, each of us going on in our inexplicable ways building the universe.

Categories Personal Growth, Spirituality

Building Bridges of Compassion

July 23, 2015 //

The collapse of a highway bridge in California this week is a compelling image. Our failure to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure mirrors our reluctance to invest in strengthening the connections that link us inextricably to each other and all life on the planet.

Our willingness to permit the chasms of commerce, class, race, religion and politics to divide is dooming us all. Can we build bridges to withstand the forces of human nature as well as Mother Nature?

We hear the naysayers’ answer daily. Those of us who would answer YES can begin by first tending the geography of our inner landscape.

Research on the brain is confirming what the experience of millennia has taught us about ourselves. Our ability first to survive and then to thrive results from the dance between our emotions and our cognition, our “heart” and “head.” Our ability to balance the two is key. Too much feeling without a rational reality check leads us astray and vice versa.

The good news is that our literal life-giving breath provides a transformative tool. Athletes, artists, counselors and those who meditate know this well. Training expands aerobic capacity and improves our health. Deep breathing interrupts cycles of fear, reducing stress. Breathing with focus and gentle intention creates a channel of mindfulness between head and heart, a conduit that brings the wisdom of each to the other.

Gaining perspective, balance and control of our own being is the first step in cultivating life-generating relationships with others. In words from Thich Nhat Hanh, Our breath is our bridge from our body to our mind.

An informed heart is our most powerful ally in spreading compassion. May your mindful breathing today launch ripples of peace within and outward to all whom you meet.

Categories Coaching, Relationships, Spirituality

I Will Not Dishonor My Soul

July 16, 2015 //

Each day the media spins its stories of our human condition. Most often we see what sells, the dark side of our fear that leads to greed, hatred, degradation, violence and destruction. Like images in a hall of mirrors the distortions of the dark side become the reality we perceive as our nature.

It is difficult not to yield to despair in the face of the ways we treat each other and our planet. At the same time, each of us contributes to the fear / love equation by our choices each day.

I have taken to searching for those whose lives, work and writing lift up the goodness and promise of our human journey. Without messages that nourish the light of our souls, how else can we survive individually and as a species?

Diane Ackerman provides today’s inspiration, reminding me that my attitude and my actions make a difference. May you find a gem in her words to nurture your soul as well.

In the name of the daybreak and the eyelids of morning and the wayfaring moon and the night when it departs,

I swear I will not dishonor my soul with hatred, but offer myself humbly as a guardian of nature, as a healer of misery, as a messenger of wonder, as an architect of peace.

In the name of the sun and its mirrors and the day that embraces it and the cloud veils drawn over it and the uttermost night and the male and the female and the plants bursting with seed and the crowning seasons of the firefly and the apple,

I will honor all life – wherever and in whatever form it may dwell – on Earth my home, and in the mansions of the stars.

Categories Personal Growth, Relationships, Spirituality

Lessons From A Garden

July 9, 2015 //

Climbing their lattice of bamboo and twine to a height of eight feet, the peas quickly staked their claim as the most visibly prolific performers in this year’s family garden. Less ostentatious, the radishes provided counterpoint in the ground. A bountiful teacher, the garden is a metaphor for mindfulness.

Through their gifts to each other last Christmas our younger son and his mother conspired to invest our small garden plot with a new approach. A carpenter by trade, his gift was to build raised beds and trellises, start the seeds early indoors and do the heavy lifting. Her gift was a set of grow lights and her knowledge from past experience. Together they agreed to tend the plot regularly.

The visible progress to date is a plethora of vegetables in various stages of growth toward harvest. Less apparent but longer lasting are the lessons this project is teaching. Certainly, there are the hours spent planning the plot and its contents; constructing the beds and selecting, ordering and planting the seeds. However, the more enduring lessons are the following.

The cultivation of intention and follow through
The give and take of partnering in a journey
Accepting responsibility for the things we can control and letting go of those things we can’t (e.g. the weather, seeds that don’t germinate and taxes paid at night to four-legged visitors)
New awareness (e.g. natural allies like the tree swallows who swooped in daily to feast on grubs and beetles and a family of foxes who appeared as the voles began burrowing into the beds and moved on as the borrow mounds subsided).

Most bountiful to this spirit is to observe a son’s new found interest and a spouse’s maternal joy in a joint project with one of her offspring.

Categories Inspiration, Spirituality