Category: Gratitude

Survivors

There are imitation “survivors” like those on the contrived TV show. Then there are real ones, such as those who have survived cancer, stem cell transplants, heart surgery, or another extreme health challenge. Surviving these involves courage and physical stamina unlike any other life experience. On the other side is relief, gratitude, happiness, but also, unexpectedly, sadness. The latter is invisible to others and almost unidentifiable at first to those experiencing it. It may have many sources, such as loss of “life as it once was” or the realization that one’s own mortality is inevitable, sooner or later. Unexpected tears arise for no specific reason, except perhaps the poignancy of life. I am a breast cancer survivor, and these issues came up for me. I am finding that they come up for others as well.

I just finished reading Suleika Jaouad’s book Between Two Kingdoms, Memoir of a Life Interrupted (and listened to her powerful TED talk), in which she describes her reactions to surviving a leukemia diagnosis at 22. Her prognosis was dire, and she went through almost four years of difficult treatments to finally emerge cancer-free.* She too then felt both relief and sadness, at times an unshakable depression. Yet she eventually came to great wisdom about how the two “kingdoms” of health and illness are not inseparable but “porous.” We all move back and forth between them in our lives. There are always “interruptions” of every kind.

The breast cancer treatments I received lasted about six months, and the prognosis was good, so my experiences were very different from hers in significant ways. She faced setbacks and brushes with death over years. Indeed, each person who lives through a difficult diagnosis or illness has a very unique experience. For the most part, after initial shock and fear, my experience became one of trust in my soul’s path and accompanying inner peace because of that trust. This helped me through any discomfort/pain that accompanied treatment. I had moments of extraordinary spiritual epiphanies throughout the surgical, chemo, and radiation treatments, ones that expanded my view of my own life and all life. It was only after the completion of treatment that an inner sadness appeared.

I must add that all this took place during the first years of COVID as well and brought up general issues of health and growing older. Looking ahead to one’s eventual death can happen at any age, young or old. It is something we each face. Those experiencing health challenges may have it handed to them unexpectedly, but we all eventually must come to terms with our own mortality. There can be fear, sadness, acceptance—or all simultaneously. It is never just one thing.

To be completely honest, thoughts of death and infinity have been with me since childhood (as those who read my blogs or books may know). I have carried background grief about the nature of life/death all my life. Yet, as I’ve explored a more spiritual path as an adult, those fears have shifted; a new balance has been created with deeper trust in the wisdom of a greater universal Intelligence. This is where I was when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Eventually that took me to the next level, an indescribable expansion into the unknown which gave me a broader acceptance of both the tears and joy that is life on Earth. Yes, I’ve had sadness and emotional ups and downs after recovery from breast cancer, but I’ve also had amazing moments of connection to the spirit that exists everywhere. I became aware that at that level, life and death are One.

So, to be a real survivor (as opposed to a TV one) is to recognize that the deepest survival happens at the soul level, because the soul is eternal; it never dies. Our human bodies may survive illness, disease, trauma, heartbreak, loss, and other life crises. Our souls survive beyond all those physical experiences, even, or especially, death. Sometimes that’s how we learn this wisdom, through the challenges of our physicality. God shows us irrevocably that the form may “die”, but spirit never does. We are ALL soul survivors, every one of us—butterflies of light.
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*Suleika was recently diagnosed with a cancer recurrence after ten years. She has moved once again through a successful bone marrow transplant, with her husband Jon Batiste by her side (as seen in the film American Symphony). Their mutual journey is very inspiring.

Books and Freedom

My grandmother was a librarian and schoolteacher. She loved books. My parents also loved reading, and our house had walls covered with bookshelves and books of all kinds. From the time I could read, I visited the local library regularly. It was a wonderful building—an old Victorian house with bay window seats, fireplaces, and rooms filled with books for all ages: children, young adults, and adults. Worlds opened up to me as I read my way through book after book. There was a freedom in that experience, an opportunity to travel to other times, other places. To expand habitual ways of seeing. Books can change your life. It did mine, and it continues to do so.

A well-written book can take you beyond your usual mental meanderings to locations and thoughts heretofore unseen or considered. It awakens the senses and touches the heart. It leaves you breathless with delight or tearful with empathy. It can engender gratitude for a world full of so many unique individuals and experiences. Such books open a door and welcome you inside, freely.

And this freedom is what is now endangered in the U.S. as books deemed a threat to more conservative belief systems are banned in state after state. Classic books such as Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and The Diary of Anne Frank. Even Charlotte’s Web. When the realm of “acceptable” beliefs constricts to one narrow perspective, freedom vanishes. Both children and adults lose the ability to wander the world in wonder and joy through the pages of diverse authors’ books.

Yet hope is not completely lost. It lives in the libraries and independent bookstores across the country that continue to carry and advocate for books that have been banned. When Anne and I moved to a new community in the Boston area recently, we were heartened to see an in-depth informational exhibit at the local library on book banning. An extensive history of banning books in the world was displayed along with book covers, including African American, feminist, and LGBTQ authors. The library encourages patrons to read these books with an open mind in order to experience varied lives and viewpoints. This is what freedom looks like.

Books are the common denominator of basic human rights. So many people have spoken about the importance of reading. Oprah Winfrey says books changed her life when she was growing up; as an adult, she created a book club to offer that experience to other readers. Cancer survivor Mark Nepo writes how reading others’ writing, poetry or prose, gives us “the strength to go on.”

My own life would have been very different without books and the life possibilities I saw in them (like becoming a writer myself). I traveled the world, in imagination and then in reality, because of experiences I first had through reading. I learned of the challenges and struggles of others through reading about their lives and often hidden historical events. Books not only offer freedom to the mind and body, but they also give the soul freedom to soar. To me, this is the essence of life on Earth.

The Changing, Yet Familiar, Landscape

I was born in Illinois and grew up in a rural area where farms, cornfields, and scattered houses dotted the landscape. My parents built their home on five acres in the countryside, not far from a small town where I subsequently went to school. My daily life was spent mainly outdoors, playing among the trees, fields, orchards, and gardens my dad planted. It was a small paradise, which I still hold in my heart and have gravitated toward in other places and other landscapes over the years.

As an adult, I’ve lived in or near urban areas (mainly Boston and San Francisco). I’ve loved the convenience and ease of living where I could walk everywhere or take public transportation. Neighborhoods with small gardened spaces and trees around the buildings or houses. Corner stores. But it has been the parks and nature sanctuaries where I have spent much of my time. That was the balance for me, a place to live where I could walk as well as visit natural settings. Easy access to buses, trains, and an airport where I could travel to other places in the world. The towns and yards changed over the years, west and east coasts, but each one seemed to fit my life at the time. Even a few years in Florida recently provided an entirely different experience of Nature.

After moving back to the Boston area three years ago, Anne and I began to look for an affordable place to live, in the midst of rising rents. That meant living further away from the city. We eventually found a place we love, but it has meant an adjustment in how we live our daily lives. There are no neighborhoods or corner stores like those we were used to. Instead, an almost rural landscape stretches around the small group of condos where we live: woods, fields, small houses, roads, and occasional shopping plazas. There is a town about a 50-minute walk away with a train to Boston and Cambridge (which I greatly appreciate!). We are grateful for so much here (birds in the trees outside our windows, open skies clearly visible, quiet), but the walkability factor has required us to let go of previous parameters and expectations.

In doing so, suddenly, one morning I was reminded of my own childhood home. We lived in the country, a rural area not that different (except for the cornfields!) from where we live now. School buses took me in town to school. My parents drove to local markets, etc. Trees surrounded our house. Have I come full circle, returning to a distantly familiar landscape, one I have to accustom myself to but that from that perspective becomes newly interesting?

Life is full of surprises and replays and new beginnings that remind us of past experiences. Everything is both old and brand new in our lives. There is nothing on Earth that has not been lived before in some form or another, and yet at the same time every experience feels like a new discovery. We have lived many lives, within this one and among those in the expansive past of the planet. Often that sense of deja vu touches our hearts deeply and opens us to possibility and a fresh outlook on daily life.

That is where I am now. I am living changes, centered in a new present. Simultaneously, I am being reminded of the rich and diverse past I have already lived. In the distance, a train whistle evokes both past and present-moment awareness. Landscapes shift throughout our lifetimes, and within that motion is the purpose of every life: soul expansion and recognition of our commonality in all experiences and all lifetimes. In that, we realize that every moment, every landscape, is a gift of grace.

Remember

I have just finished rereading the ending of Ann Patchett’s new novel Tom Lake. I am crying—at the poignancy, at the beauty, at the soul wisdom. Last night I watched a 1988 PBS production of the play Our Town, which figures so prominently in Tom Lake, though always in the background (Tom Lake is a summer theater). I wept at that too. There are such deep life lessons in both of them, ones that few remember in their lifetimes, unless they are “poets or saints,” as the Stage Manager says in Our Town. The characters Lara and Emily open to these lessons over the course of events in the novel and play. As does George in the film It’s a Wonderful Life. As are so many of us now at this time on Earth. We are awakening to how extraordinary human life really is.

Don’t miss a second of your life on this remarkable planet. The sadness and suffering as well as the joy and celebration. It’s all such a tremendous unrepeatable experience, like no other in the universe. Each morning, when you wake up, remember. The poet Rumi said it: “The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep,” This is the greatest wisdom of each of our lifetimes, throughout time, and especially now. Don’t go back to sleep. See the living spark of divine light in your partner’s or child’s eyes. Love your friends and family with all your heart. Appreciate them. Love yourself. You are a miracle.

Look around at the beauty of Mother Earth, the birds and trees and flowers. Everywhere there is beauty, even in the smallest detail of the most insignificant blade of grass. Even in a cemetery. A cemetery is a central figure in both Tom Lake and Our Town (and It’s a Wonderful Life). It stands as a coming together point of all life and eventually all the wisdom that arises from living. Spirit lives there. Spirit, which continues throughout time and space.

There is a cemetery that is a central figure in my life as well: Mt. Auburn. It is also a nature sanctuary, and for more than 40 years, I have walked there in the sweet silence and sounds of the natural world. I greet the birds each spring as they migrate and sing their lilting songs. Anne and I were married at Mt. Auburn, under the trees by Auburn Lake, the most beautiful day of our lives. I heard about the death of a friend there, tears streaming down my face as a bright red cardinal appeared on the path before me. I felt my mother’s spirit there after her passing, a cardinal singing nearby then too. And I have sensed my dad’s energy in the trees and the crows calling overhead. One cold November night many years ago, Anne and I watched meteor showers streaking across the cosmos in the deep darkness of Mt. Auburn at 3 a.m. Some of my most powerful moments of connection to something greater in the universe (Spirit, the Great Mystery, God) occurred there. All of life and death coming together as One in my awareness.

In Tom Lake, a cemetery on a rural wooded hillside brings everyone together in love and continuity. I feel that at Mt. Auburn. That is why I return, year after year. It helps me remember. We are all finding our own ways to remember now, we latter-day poets and saints of the 21st century. We came to Earth at this time to become fully awake and aware, to connect with one another, and to see the miracles in everything. In life/death, in pure being. Don’t go back to sleep. Remember. It is the gift of a lifetime, of all lifetimes.

What If…?

What if you found out that today was the last day of your life? How would that affect the way you experienced everything? Would you see and hear the world with fresh eyes and ears, the way a newborn baby does, everything new and wondrous? Would you notice the colors of the trees and flowers, the vast expanse of sky, the music of birdsong, the faces and voices of those you love? Would habit and routine fall away, to be replaced by an appreciation of the miracles we live with on a daily basis?

This thought passed through my mind recently as I walked among the autumn-colored trees at Mt. Auburn. I realized that I was a bit distracted, only half-aware of my surroundings, and I consciously made an effort to become fully present. I sat on a wooden bench and closed my eyes for a few minutes, and when I opened them, there was the world before me in full vibrant living color. My heart reminded me of how fleeting each moment is and how extraordinary every detail. As I looked around with tears in my eyes, I remembered Mary Oliver’s words: “I want to live in this world as though it’s the last chance I’m ever going to get to be alive and know it.” Exactly.

We have the opportunity each day to remember that, to live it fully. That’s why we came here, to wake each morning and see sunrise, to pass through our days with awe and celebration. We are all strangers on this planet, slowly recognizing that we are actually family. Whether you think of humans as souls, angels, ETs, or just physical organisms, there is a thread of connection among us. A thread that links us to the stars and the galaxies and to all living matter. We are tiny beings in the cosmos, with one life to live here on Planet Earth. One second in universal timelessness. I don’t want to forget that, ever.

As I continued my walk with Mary Oliver’s perspective fresh in my mind, I found that everything took on a shimmering aliveness, as if I had never seen it before. Gratitude filled my heart. I know I have the opportunity to press this inner “refresh” button each moment of my life. Many of us experience a renewed outlook if we go through a health crisis or lose someone we love. Or if a particular birthday reminds us of aging. Life becomes precious beyond words. We realize at the deepest level how little “time” we have in the greater scheme of things.

In human-created time, today is always the last day of your life because there is really only the present moment. If I am not fully awake and in love with life now, will I ever be? Today I am “alive and know it,” with all my heart and soul. May that continue. And may each of us feel the sweet unrepeatable perfection of everything visible and invisible throughout our lives.