Discernment

I wonder how often on any given day I make a judgement that gives rise to my own suffering…. The garbage truck is too noisy, that driver didn’t signal before turning, the lanes at the swimming pool are all taken, it's June and it should be warmer, the book I want at the library is not in, we are out of eggs, my friend has not answered my email, today my hair is bad.  Wow!  Lots to suffer over! And that was just a quick 2 minute review of my thoughts!!  I read somewhere that humans are somewhat hard-wired to notice what is WRONG, rather than what us RIGHT.  Makes sense in light of survival strategy.  It’s wise to see the lion and to miss the mouse, after all.  But, so few of us, writing and reading this post, need to worry about surviving. Luckily.

While the following poem is not exactly what I am addressing here, still it seems that the writer, Mark Nepo, is addressing how we can change our perspective and understand things differently.  We have choices about how we see the world! And over ways large and small that we can create suffering for ourselves.

DISCERNMENT

The trouble with the mind

Is that it sees like a bird

But walks like a (hu)man.

And things at the surface

Move fast, needing to be

Gathered.  While things

At center move slow,

Needing to be

perceived.

What I mean is

If you want to see the

Many birds, you can

Gather them in a cage

And wonder why

They won’t fly.

Or you can go to

The wetlands, birding

In silence before

The sun comes up.

It’s the same

With the things

We love or think.

We can frame them

In pretty cages or follow

Them into the wild meadow

Till they stun us with the

Spread of their magnificent

wings.

Start, Stop, Continue

My friend and neighbor, Christie Hardwick has recently released a book.  THE ABSENCE OF LIGHT. About how we move forward in this difficult time in our country and the world.  She basically asks the reader three questions;  What do you need to START doing?  What do you need to STOP doing?  What do you need to CONTINUE doing?

The challenge she poses to the reader is to assess in what ways you personally are contributing to the difficulties in the world.  It is easy to blame politicians, big money, big Pharma, the Republicans, the Democrats and on and on.  Her question is how to look within and challenge the ways that you personally hold some responsibility for contributing to or supporting what is happening in this world that you don’t like.

I find this empowering —- to look at the small ways that I might make changes that would help me to feel I was living the life I want to be living in the world I want to be living in.  So my responses to her questions are;

What do I want to STOP doing;  I want to get out of the echo chambers where we all moan about “Ain’t it awful”.  I just want to stop participating in those conversations.  I want to try to stop spending my money in places and businesses who have ethics that I don’t agree with.  For instance, I want to scale back my dependence on Amazon.  I want to quit buying coffee at Starbucks.  I want to look at where my money is invested and stop (to the degree that I can) investing in corporations who are exploiting their workers, the worlds resources etc.  I want to stop being hopeless. —- and there is much more - but those are some big ones to begin with!

What do I want to START doing?  The big one is I want to consume less.  I want to know more about and get more engaged in my local neighborhood and political scene.  I want to check my many assumptions about what is right and good and preferable.  I want to be more curious than judgmental about what others think

I want to continue caring about others, staying peaceful, finding joy.

I hope her questions are meaningfu to you too.

Carry Something Beautiful

The writer Blaise Pascal wrote. “In difficult times, carry something beautiful in your heart.”  What good advice.  Without denying that troubles abound, ugliness proliferates, injustice reigns,   still there is beauty, always.  It may seem simplistic to just “put on a happy face”.  And, I’m not so much suggesting that as to remember that happiness exists alongside discouragement.  Alongside fear, anger, uncertainty, looming elections… still there are snap peas, tiny lettuces and red radishes appearing at the farmer’s market.  The sun still casts a gorgeous pink over everything before it sets and this week-end we will have a blue moon (the rare second full moon in a calendar month).  It matters to remember and to look for the beautiful in these days.  To not notice or appreciate the simple things risks embroiling ourselves into political knots that choke us.  Find 10 things right now that are beautiful — just from where you are sitting.  It’s a spiritual practice — to notice the beauty and the ugly — and not to cling to either — simply notice.  There is a way to balance out our personal world.  Is there one tiny way you can add a speck of beauty to this day?

WHY I SMILE AT STRANGERS

~by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

And so today, I walk the streets

With vermillion maple leaves inside me,

And the deep purple of late-blooming Larkspur

And the living praise of meadowlark.

I carry with me thin creeks with clear water

And the three-quarters moon

And the spice-warm scent of nasturtiums.

And honey in the sunlight.

And words from Neruda

And slow melodies by Erik Satie.

It is easy sometimes to believe

That everything is wrong.

That people are cruel and the world

Destroyed and the end of it all

Imminent.  But there is yet goodness

Beyond imagining — the creamy

White flea of ripe pears

And the velvety purr of a cat in my lap

And the write smear of milky way—

I carry these things in my heart,

More certain than ever that one way

To counteract evil is to ceaselessly honor what’s good

And share it, share it until

We break the choke hold of fear

And at least for a few linked moments,

We believe completely in beauty,

Growing beauty, yes, beauty.