Tag: life

Remember Your Heart

How do we live through difficulties and challenges with our life spirit intact? The current political landscape is full of such extreme divisiveness and hatred, both nationally and globally, that it is hard to feel optimistic about the future. Almost daily my heart is filled with sadness, and peace on Earth seems like a lost dream. Recently, as I sat staring out the window at a cloudy winter landscape, I sensed similar cloudiness within me. I realized then that I had felt exactly the same way in the late 1960s when the Vietnam War was at its height, and fiery race riots raged in Detroit, Newark, Watts, and other cities. The world seemed to be in hopeless conflict, and I couldn’t see how basic human rights, justice, equality, and peace could ever come to be.

Many others of my generation felt similarly, and it was the birth of movements for nonviolent social change and the possibilities they held that helped us survive. Civil rights workers and peace activists, flower children and feminists, began to grow in numbers (yes, I was among them). The vision we held for a more loving and harmonious planet moved us forward, our hands and hearts joined. Music, speeches, marches. Hope lived in collective actions by thousands against war, racism, sexism, homophobia, and environmental destruction. Over the years, gradual but significant changes took place, even nationally. The end to the Vietnam War. The first African American President and first woman Vice President; a more diverse Congress. Women’s health rights. Voting rights. Martin Luther King Jr. Day; Earth Day. Legalization of gay marriage. Rainbow flags across the country seemed to symbolize the possibility of a diverse and inclusive future for all.

 Yet systemic racism and injustice, misogyny, anti-Semitism, hatred of immigrants, transphobia/homophobia, and the rise of the 1% economic elite continued to grow and become stronger. Right up to the present, when it all burst out into high-profile predominance with the current elected (and non-elected) government and its single-minded focus on power and money. Decades of social change are being battered and broken. Once again I/we are facing hopelessness.

At times like this, we need to remember what lifted our spirits and helped us through in the past. The positive energy that inspired us and encouraged us to continue. In books, articles, speeches, songs, films, meetings, demonstrations—in hundreds of places across the country and around the world, we have been sustained by our individual and collective voices of hope for human freedom, equality, compassion, and love. This is our Survival Kit for Troubled Times.

This past week,  I watched two classic Frank Capra films from the 1930s: You Can’t Take It With You and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Both films are quintessential Capra: average citizens pitted against ruthless wealthy businessmen and unscrupulous politicians. They struggle against seemingly impossible odds and yet in the end, “we the people” prevail. Each film is a hopeful vision as well as a cautionary tale. One with relevance today. How many times over the years have people been called to stand up and refuse to relinquish the dream of a just and free world, a heart-centered humanity? Sometimes it seems like a horrible replay that we don’t want to relive, but we came to Earth for exactly this. With each generation, there is a shift, a further awakening into recognizing the basic oneness of everyone and everything, even in the midst of our differences.

We have to remind ourselves that possibility lives within impossibility. In her book A Paradise Built in Hell, Rebecca Solnit writes about groups and communities of caring, support, and mutual aid that have spontaneously arisen within disasters, both natural and human-made. As unlikely as it may seem, when everything falls apart, humans often turn to one another with kindness and generosity and build connections anew within great loss. Such stories belong in our Survival Kits, along with memories of our own strength and resilience, our own optimism in the face of pessimism. Maybe “hell” will begin to recede as our human hearts reach out to each other with hope and resolve. As my friend Heather recently said, “Remember your heart.” Everything we need is within us and among us.

Find Something to Celebrate

Every morning, I look for something to celebrate. Something that makes me smile or laugh. Something that fills my heart with gratitude. At times, it can seem unlikely when each day’s news headlines bring something to feel fear or sadness about. Yet there is much more to life than those unsettling news stories.* I’ve discovered that my path to inner peace and optimism lies in looking for something positive to focus on. Something to celebrate in the world, rather than shed tears. It could be my partner’s sweet smiling face; her beautiful artwork. A neighbor’s kindness or a friend’s sense of humor. A Mary Oliver poem. Jon Batiste at the piano. Often it’s in Nature where I discover the inspiration to continue believing life is good.

One day last week my celebration was a flock of robins eating ripe red berries from winterberry trees as I walked by. Hearing them excitedly calling and flying all over in the cold winter air was such a thrill! I love robins—their rosy breasts and bright eyes. When I was growing up in the Midwest, we always thought of them as harbingers of spring, and they still hold that energy for me here in New England. New beginnings, sunshine, birdsong.

Yesterday I heard the warm-up notes of a male cardinal’s spring song. Every year in January or February those first “rehearsal” notes are heard here in Massachusetts. It’s not a rise in temperatures that triggers their song; it’s seasonal timing, the shift into a little more light each day. Gradually, spring is coming, and all the birds sense it. They too celebrate the “return of the light,” as humans do at the solstice.

Bird or human, the light connects us to life, to the positive overview. When I look out the window and see the morning sun sparkling on the trees (whether snowy or spring green), I feel the magic of the unexpected beauty that Nature brings us again and again. Every season moves us through our lives with new and exciting moments of wonder. Even if somewhere in the world there is harshness or hatred, here there is softness and love.

I never tire of the dynamic energy of winter transitioning to spring. It always gives me hope that whatever may be weighing on me can be lifted instantaneously with singing birds and blooming flowers, longer hours of sunshine and warmer temperatures. Winter holds us gently in hibernation and rest; then spring opens the door to the light, and our bodies and spirits move with renewed energy in the world again.

 When you smile with delight seeing bright yellow daffodils or hearing a wood thrush’s ethereal song, your smile may then touch the heart of the next person you meet…perhaps then continuing onward, person to person. In this way smiles can circle the globe, hearts opening along the way. Celebration can be as simple as that, and it changes everything. In your day and in your life. So wherever you find something to celebrate, in the wonders of Nature or the eyes of a loved one, hold that feeling of joy and appreciation in your heart, and it will switch on the light within you and in the world.
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*Read about everyday people living their lives for a gentler, more peaceful Earth at “Good News Headlines,” https://www.spiritofchange.org/.

My Life in Waves

In the past few years, I’ve found that life has become a series of waves that rise and fall continuously, carrying varied emotions with them. Even in the course of one day, I can feel sadness, happiness, peace, unrest, and calm again. And part of me, my soul, is just silently observing it all. My soul’s view encompasses everything, expanding both inward and outward. My human physical self wonders about the meaning of all the wave action; my soul just accepts it. 

On New Year’s Day, I had a phone conversation with a longtime friend. We caught up with one another’s lives and then moved into a deeper, more sacred space as we spoke of a dear friend’s recent death and other friends courageously living with health issues. We talked about our own physical and emotional challenges as we age and also face a world increasingly at war with itself. She too has experienced her life as vacillating waves of sadness and joy, pain and love. Never one thing permanently but always shifting, moving, even within the space of a few hours. The longer we talked, the more our hearts opened, and a shared awareness passed seamlessly between us. We each found that some experiences had slowed us down and yet that very slowing had allowed us to live fully in the moment and to see the world anew.

My breast cancer journey in 2021-22 deepened my connection to Spirit while lessening my desire for outer busyness. At times, I became a quiet witness to life as it passed before me and through me. Many of my most profound moments of joy in living were/are in Nature, especially with birds, flowers, trees, and the ever-changing sky. As I described this to my friend and listened to her description of walking in the woods and living each moment completely, I could feel that same truth touch us both. 

 And it began to expand further as I realized that the more I live in the moment, the more that moment opens up to include everything! If I look at all parts of life the way I look at Nature (intensively, expansively, with love), then that is perhaps the greatest wisdom of all. Whether I am active or contemplative, I am always centered in my soul’s inner stillness. I could feel it happening within me as she and I spoke.

I am actually one with the waves that are my life, that are all of our lives. We rise and fall, expand and contract, with the cosmic tides that affect everything in the universe. Our lives reflect the spirit within us and in the world. Some call this connection to God or Universal Consciousness. The words we use don’t really matter. It is the motion, the flow, of something greater that carries us. We are being moved to fulfill our destiny as evolving souls on an evolving planet. The stardust that brought us here is lighting the way, even when things seem unclear or unsteady. And it is the waves that are bringing us Home—to a sparkling golden ocean that encompasses All That Is.

Framing Your Life

“It’s all in how you frame it,” a good friend once said to me when I was lamenting something that had recently occurred in my life. This gem of wisdom has remained with me ever since. It shifts everything when you remember to call it actively into your conscious awareness. The gist is that whatever you picture seeing before you is what you will experience. Same with hearing. My friend refers to landscapers with their loud leaf-blowing equipment as “Tibetan Buddhist monks chanting.” Completely changes the experience from annoyance to laughter, and I invoke that image when I hear them blowing/chanting outside where I live.

Actually I learned some of this from my parents. My dad tended to see first the problems that needed to be addressed and solved (weeds, a leak, rabbits eating his garden). My mother looked out the window and saw the flowers, birds, and sunrise. The optimist’s view. Not that she didn’t see problems or that my dad missed seeing the birds; together they were a complementary blending—which I inherited. And both my parents had the sense of humor that my friend showed with his monks-chanting analogy. We often laughed at such silly things in our household when I was growing up. I’ve carried those shared smiles with me from childhood on.

Now, even though I thrive most on sunshine, I’ve found that seeing rain as renewal for Mother Earth’s greenery helps me appreciate the balance it provides. When I’m running errands, if I miss a bus, I remind myself there must be a reason, so then I immediately know that the person I have a conversation with on the next bus is someone I was meant to meet. This imaginative reframing can touch every moment of life, even a breast cancer diagnosis, which I received three years ago. When I framed it in peace instead of fear, I experienced my treatment as a spiritual gateway—and a surpisingly expansive gift. Anne too is finding her own wise reframing (gratitude for life) with a similar diagnosis.

Our lives pass by so quickly. How we see the events of our days can mean the difference between regret and acceptance, sadness and joy. As each year’s end approaches, this overview can become particularly clear. To celebrate the blessing of every moment we are given in our lifetimes is to know not only wisdom but deep inner peace. And ultimately to realize the sweet intermingling of all our life experiences, creating a tapestry of light.

Nature gives us stunning visual examples of this truth all the time. When a bright yellow leaf floats to the ground in autumn, it is not separate from the leaves still on the tree or those resting below it. It is a part of the continuity of all life that flows through the year in perfect synchronicity. This oneness of being includes the air and the tree branches, the summer sun and the winter snow, the light and the dark. Life on Earth is a circular, multidimensional work of art that gives us the opportunity to experience every possible aspect of its complexity, always magical if we see it that way. Over and over, with each passing picture, I find it’s all in how I frame it.

Life As Is

How we see life changes over time. When we are children or young adults, it stretches before us in vast waves of possibility and potential. In middle age, we become one with the waves and often forget about our own progress on the trajectory of life. Then as we begin to grow older, we may find ourselves looking more closely into the greater meaning of life and our own lives in particular. A subtle shift in language occurs: “my life” becomes “the rest of my life.” How strange that seems, both to hear and to say. That “rest” could be 30+ years or one year, no way of knowing. Of course, that is true at any time of our lives, but the longer we live, the deeper we feel that truth.

 As I look at my life, I feel both joy and sadness. Joy at the blessings that fill it, both people and experiences, and sadness at its ephemeral essence. Impermanence is the basic nature of life on Earth. Yet, full acceptance of that very impermanence is one of the greatest pieces of wisdom we can attain in our lifetime. At a certain point, we come to realize that all we are given here is rich beyond words. Language cannot fully express the wonder of living with eyes and heart wide-open on this sweet planet. The longer I live, the more profoundly I am touched by the beauty of Nature and the love of friends and family, realizing it is all fleeting and everlasting simultaneously.

Over time, I have come to surrender to life exactly as it presents itself. That is the essence of the spiritual journey I have been on for many years. Initially I was looking for a way to accept eternity, the stretch of infinity beyond my lifetime. What I found, and continue to find, is that that acceptance lies hidden in all the details of my daily life. Each tree, flower, or human soul I encounter is eternal, the entire universe held in its very beingness. When I stand in awe of that living Presence, I “hold infinity in the palm of my hand,” as William Blake wrote. Infinity, once a source of fear and suffering for me, instead becomes a source of liberation.

Humans invented time and space to try to explain the world and our lives. When we step away from that limited view, explanation is no longer necessary. We stand in eternal Presence, and within that is the meaning of life. What I have searched for most of my life is not what I thought it was. It is not an answer to a question, but rather living beyond questions and answers. This is what Ram Dass referred to as “loving awareness.” It is not something that can be explained but only experienced. And the longer you live, the deeper the experience.

Ultimately, we discover there is no end, nor any beginning. Definitions and parameters fall away, and all that is before and within me is life as is, both a miracle and a blessing. Human joy and sadness interweave within that vision. Every single experience is part of life, designed at the soul level for our expansion into awareness of the light that fills us—and everything.