The Dance

It is getting late on the night of Ash Wednesday, and while I came close to donning ashes today, the timing just didn't work out.  Instead I met with four other women in the sanctuary of my UU congregation where we enjoyed delicious conversation, devotional dancing, and chocolate (eating meditation).  It was our monthly Spirit in Practice session, and while one by one some members of the group have fallen off, others have remained, and new ones have joined.  Our focus tonight was on spiritual practices of the Body-- which for UU's falls somewhere in the middle of asceticism and hedonism, somewhere in the realm of "Real Time"-- as one woman described being outside, with your feet on the ground, fully aware and present of the cold air on your face and the wind in your hair, fully in the here and now.

It was last year during Lent when our minister first invited us to meet at 8AM to study spiritual disciplines.  It was that invitation drew us together in the first place, and tonight we shared how much we miss him as he serves in Afghanistan, and held a space for him in our circle and in our hearts.

Since that time last year, I have spoken to so many people in our congregation who are seeking a deeper spirituality.  And though we may crave an experience of wonder and awe during our worship services, it is also what we bring into that space which creates the spiritual experience...and so we must work to discipline ourselves, rather than to come empty-handed, expectant of the feast. This is the work of our gatherings- and our commitments in between.

Tonight, I played the perfect Enya song, as each of us found a place to move freely in interpretative dance.  Light and trusting of our bodies, fully and freely, we each experienced the music and dance a little differently. For me it was a dance of devotion and prayer, as I swayed and prostrated to an empty altar.  As we turned back to the circle after the music had ended, we all fell into a deep natural silent meditation which lasted.

This is my beginning to the season of Lent.  On this day of ashes, I remember I am dust, and to dust I shall return.

But I am also a living body between the edges of my life--and while I am here on earth I will dance.

Life: Savored

Tonight I long for sleep and dark chocolate, citrus fruits-grapefruit and tangelo, and warm furry winter blankets and socks.  I long for comfort, kind words and soft hugs.

My world is a bit harsher than this-- isn't everyone's?  Everyone is busy, harried, harsh- surrounded by sharp edges.  If only we took to heart: Be kinder than necessary.  If we could learn to sing in soft hues, like a high school chorus- singing Turn, Turn, Turn tonight at the new Seeger Auditorium, where my daughter sang with her elementary school to Pete and Toshi- their celebrity, their great contribution, our children's promise.

I suppose I could see the work of a lifetime there- a work that after 94 years of age, 70 years of marriage, does not end.  A work through civil rights and river renewal that continues still.  Will the world ever be saved? Or are we in the doing simply bidding time? Meanwhile the nuclear acceleration, the global warming goes on.  Or is the doing itself--the loving, the singing, the returning again to the morning walk, the crossing boundaries to create beloved community--the work that saves us where we are?  The axis leans, and good always wins- I heard a woman say.  Faith maybe then is believing in the light-- though I know only this thought that eternity is now, ever shall be, and not some future time.

I can't save the world, but I can savor it.  And to savor is not, as one might think, a matter of indulgence but rather one of discipline.  I have missed the disciplined practices of contemplation, walking, and writing which border and fill my days.  I have craved and needed discipline, and surrender myself to the season of Lent most fully.  It is a paradox, perhaps, to seek the romance of living fully by committing myself to discipline.

But tonight I savor the warmth of this bed, after a day of hard work.  And after a day's fast of simple eating-- a tiny piece of chocolate on my tongue is bliss.  

Bird Call Within Reach

I returned to the woods today. The winter woods boot-thick with snow made for heavy trudging, uphill both ways it seemed.  Meanwhile the chickadees and other elusive birds sang songs while remaining hidden high in branches.  Everything we long for is here now, heard but not seen, sensed but remaining still out of reach.

It is hard work now, each day that heavy trudging through unexpected piles of snow.  I think of my father delivering mail through so many Rochester winters, the never ceasing labor and the smell of sweat through a gray-blue parka. My own labors pale, with emails and phone calls appearing lighter to the eye; and yet I too seem bombarded by piles of letters and packages--filling up my inbox, the mental clutter.

Tonight I think of my dad again, under different circumstances. We are out picking up the food we have ordered online from our local buying club.  Mondays in Beacon have become community night as  we gather to split shares of black beans, satsumas, and local grass-fed beef.  With 187 members, ours is one of the largest buying clubs that Wholeshare has created.  I enjoy arriving to see my friends and neighbors gathering on a weeknight, while children make new friends.  As we are leaving, my young daughter says- "Mom, you know everybody", noting how many I have greeted that night.  And while what she says is far from true, I notice the warm feeling of this community in me;  I remember how I probably said something similar to my father, who really did, in a city much larger than this one, seem to know everybody.

It is now end of day and I am far from accomplishing everything on my list.  The taste of sweet blood orange is on my lips, as my heart slowly begins to remember-- that no matter how far we have to trudge, or how distant the bird call may seem, this is a precious moment., and everything we think we have lost is really still here within reach.  

The River in Me

One year ago, on the Sunday right before Ash Wednesday, I left church fighting back tears and went down to the river to pray.  A year has passed since that date and I am once again experiencing some of that sadness.  But this time the river I turn to does not beat against eagle-nested shores, but ebbs and flows in me.  Perhaps the sadness is just that ever-present longing- loss of our loved ones and friends is constant, and the more we age, the more we experience.  There is joy, and there is loneliness that follows.  And there is falling and finding again.  It is the secret wisdom to be one with that flow, and to stay steady-- even as I feel the sadness and acknowledge it, I am not overtaken and immobilized by it.  I recall on a recent spiritual direction meeting in Silver Bay, words my teacher said about not blocking the emotions that come.  I let them come; tears fall, but I do not fall apart.

It is from that opening that compassion flows.  Twice today I felt my eyes well with tears, in empathy.  Perhaps the empathy was strong because I know the chords of absence and longing so intimately myself.  There was a woman whose fiance had just died, and there was another who revealed an unexpressed feeling of abandonment. And my own heart rose, raw and vulnerable-- though my response was kind.

These are not tears of self-pity now, as I turn again to the quiet of this room and the patterns of this page.  This is a place of restoration, a river of living water and replenishment.  It has been some months of wandering in the desert, but it is time for a return.  Of course, Lent is associated more closely with deserts than with rivers, and I do not expect any sudden revelations from my contemplation.  Rather, I hope to find that thing that makes me wait, that emptying and purging that helps me to prepare.  The river will come, in time-- gatherings of many kinds I foresee.  And more I cannot foresee.

There is prophecy, but so much is yet to be foretold.  There are only the lines of a letter, and all that is longed and hoped for will be revealed in time.   

Return

The past three or four months have not been easy.  I have been overrun by busyness, and longed to return to the joyful communion of last summer and early fall. Attempts to begin again have been short-lived; I have lacked the discipline to sustain practice.  The end result:  some high points and some real low points, fluctuations of mood dependent on which way the wind blows.  The hurricane has tossed and swirled and I have not found center. I am a sailboat tossed at sea, without equanimity to keep me afloat.

And now I have come full circle-- approaching Ash Wednesday this week.  It was Lent of last year when I began the practice of nightly writing, following meditation. I credit my dedication to regular contemplative practice with the fruit that blossomed in my life last year, the fruit that continues to ripen and sweeten on the vine.  I must return.  Return to sitting, to writing, to train rides and morning woods, to slow conversations and deep listening, to healing circles, to synchronicity and aliveness, to hope.  I must return to worship on street corners, to warm mugs at coffeehouses, to waterfalls and crowded stations, to mountain hikes and marshes, to long hugs and long letter, to hearts held in love and hands held in prayer. I have fallen away from so much in frustration and despair, and I must lift myself from these dredges and return to the river that brings me life.

Ashes to ashes.  Dust to dust.  I begin again in centering prayer, in the silence of a red room.  I begin again to bring words to the page... and to bring my soul back to life.  It will take discipline, and the heart is lonely...the spirit is willing, the flesh weak.  Memory and will suffice.... I will do my best.