TOUCH

Take a moment to just breathe.  Gently close your eyes, breathe easy and notice how your breath interacts with your body.  Pay attention to its coming and going without forcing it to be any certain way.  Just notice how it IS.  Notice that you have a body.  After settling into your breath for a few minutes, slowly place one hand on any part of your body that seems to want to be touched – perhaps there is a small ache or dull pain or itch or roughness.  Do this before reading on! 

When we touch our body, we are giving it a message that we hear what it is trying to tell us.  Our brains certainly give us a lot of information and we are used to listening to what we THINK.  But our bodies have a different sort of wisdom… a wisdom that is a bit more subtle than the stories our brains tell us.  Can you explore a bit about what kind of wisdom your body has to share with you when you slow down and pay attention to it right now. 

If there is a place in your body that is stressed or tired or achy or painful, place your hand there.  Breathe softly and just notice what you notice.  Now imagine that you are comforting a child who has a fear or an ache of some sort.  What might you do with your hand for that child?  Maybe you gently pat the place that hurts.  Maybe you softly rub it.  Maybe you rock just a bit.  Maybe you soothe it by humming to it softly.

Just experiment with this idea of asking your body for its wisdom and then listening to what it is telling you.  Place a hand there, soothe yourself.  Tune into the messages that our bodies are sending us all the time. 

HOW IT IS NOW

~Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

In every moment, doors appear—

not literal, of course, with knobs and locks,

but metaphoric, yes, with thresholds and casings

and simple invitations I feel

in my body, an architecture of possibility.

I didn’t used to notice them.

Was it because they weren’t there,

or because I simply had not yet learned

to see them? Now I marvel

at how omnipresent they are,

and all they ask of me is that I choose

to step through them or not

.I recognize them more in my body

than with my mind. As if the body

has spent decades learning, 

oh, this is whatit feels like when a door appears.

As if the mind is at last learning to say

yes, body, I believe you. Now I trust

that I can change everything with

just one step across that invisible

threshold. Or not. Now I know

once I take that step, I can’t return

to the place I had been.

And there will always be

another door.

Another door.

Another door.

Generosity

No act of kindness, no matter how small is ever wasted.  ~Aesop

I read recently (where??) an article about generosity which suggested that we not second guess our desire to be generous.  To be kind.  To not decide against generosity because it might cost “too much” time or money.  But rather to use our own generous impulses to be the kind of person we want to be.  To give into generosity rather than to mistrust it.  She gave the example of someone admiring a scarf she was wearing – and her impulse was to take it off right there and give it to the person who admired it.  But, she thought to herself, “I may need this scarf several months from now… I might miss it if I give it away (even though this is the first time I’ve worn it in months.). She didn’t give the scarf away --- and later she wished she had.

What does it really cost our soul when we decide not to be generous?   … to leave a meager or no tip, to avert our eyes from the person on the corner asking for change, to hit NO on the question “round up for the hungry” at the grocery store.  Yes, there are, of course, people who might scam us, and how do we know the money we give goes where we want and on and on.  All valid questions – and yet?   And yet, might we treat these opportunities where we have an impulse to bake some cookies for a friend or to take a casserole to the neighbor, or add some extra to the tip – what if we treated these as opportunities to practice our own generosity.  To expand our giving rather than to measure it out.  To name that as a spiritual practice.

I’m not suggesting we give away the family fortune, only that we take opportunities to be generous (especially with our time) when they come our way.  I want to see myself as generous.  I want to live in a world that is generous. Generosity doesn't only mean giving money -- but giving time, giving space, giving physical assistance. May we create the generous world we want to live in. 

To give is not

to give away –

but rather to accept

oneself as generous.

To open your heart,

your fist, your wallet.

Not for the other

but for you.

For you to embody

the person you say

you want to be;

open

            generous

                        easy…

To give because

the giver also  gets.

            ~Penny Hackett-Evans

HAPPY??

What can you say YES to?   Can you make a list right now?  If you suddenly had more time, more energy, more money, more space, what might you say YES to?

I did that recently.  Some frivolous things appeared, some very simple things… what also appeared on my list was –" I could say YES go accepting my life as it is."  I could say YES to needing less.   And a line I heard many years ago about happiness came to mind..

If you want to be happy, be happy.

Just that.  To realize truly that my happiness does not depend on the exterior world.  Being happy is an internal experience.  I remember a spiritual director I once had who went suddenly deaf after she had a baby.  She talked about how she ranted and railed at God, at the universe, the hospital, and on and on.  She lived as a ball of rage for several years, chasing possible “cures” etc.  At some point, she just gave up.  She faced the fact that she would never hear again.  And somehow, she found her way into a deep acceptance of that.  Nothing in her life had changed.  She was still deaf.  She still had to deal with all that that meant.  But, suddenly she described herself as “happy”. 

I don’t imagine that happened overnight.  I don’t imagine it was just a matter of “be happy”.  Of course, she was not permanently happy.   There were still times when she deeply wished she could hear again.  The exterior facts did not change.  But she somehow engineered or stumbled upon, or relinquished into the truth of her life.  She was deaf.  And she could also be happy.  Or at least she could be more or less happy.  At least as happy  as the average person – even though her life was not average. 

This story gives me hope.  Even though how it happened is not clear.  The fact that it happened.  A person suffered an unwanted calamity and somehow found her way to accept the truth of the situation.  And that acceptance set her free. 

I don’t think one can just “decide to be happy” and happiness will suddenly descend.  I always disliked that phrase/song “Don’t worry.  Be happy.”  But I do think it’s possible to both worry and be happy.  And maybe “happy” is not exactly the right word.  Maybe it is about having equanimity  with your life as it is.  Maybe it’s about teeny moments of joy now and then.  And it’s about opening the gate to the possibility of joy – despite our circumstances.