it isn’t algebra

December 17th, 2012    -    5 Comments

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There are so many questions, and so many possible answers. But then again, it isn’t algebra.

Even if it were algebra, I’m not very good at algebra, so I wouldn’t be able to help you with your algebra. But it isn’t algebra.

For the last three weeks my daughter has been out of school—a temporary homeschooler—while she finishes the run of a theater production. She’s been doing algebra at home, where I can’t help her with the answers. I can only hover and hound her, stressing the importance of keeping up with algebra.

Around fourth grade, math becomes the marker by which our schoolchildren are judged. Fourth grade was when I stopped being able to do the math.

I dropped by the school to deliver some assignments last week, and I walked into the algebra class with a completed chapter test in hand. The test was a big benchmark for me. Perhaps she could get through this month without falling too far behind, is what I’d been telling myself.

I thought the room was empty until I saw the teacher sitting in the corner, his back to me. When he saw me, he said hello, and his voice sounded strained.

Are you okay? I asked.

Can you tell? He asked.

Is something wrong? I asked.

It’s my mother. She’s dying. He paused. Do you have any advice for me?

I listened. I had no answers. It is so hard, but it isn’t algebra.

Even now, I’m breaking down at how much I’ve misunderstood the questions and mistaken the answers.

None of it is algebra.

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let it snow

December 12th, 2012    -    8 Comments

It is the silent season and yet it is so hard to find quiet at this time of year. Busy making ready, in a hurry to finish, we can fret away nature’s patient calm in the blur of a frantic ending.

I spent half a day looking for a video of snow falling without added music or special effects. Why do we think we need music or special effects? This one-minute video inspires soundlessly. I post it here so I can look at it over and over, and let go of everything that will disappear if I try to hold on.

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eclipsed

December 9th, 2012    -    20 Comments

Georgia as Little Fan in A Christmas Carol.

When they induced labor that morning of the emergency, nothing happened. I would not dilate. My baby wouldn’t come. The doctor said we’d try again tomorrow. Sitting up in the bed that evening poking at my hospital dinner, I suddenly knew why. The man on TV said there had been a total eclipse of the sun that day, the last of the 20th century.

The moon had passed between the earth and the sun, turning day to night. I was certain that when the sun rose unobstructed the next day, it would happen. It did happen, faster than anyone predicted, and Georgia was born by 10 a.m.

She is pure light, and although what passes between us has always been so radiant, I have not always been able to look straight into it. I have not been able to understand.

And now she is a young woman loving womanly things, going her own way, illumining new ground. This transit, lately, has been difficult. There is tension in the approach; there is resistance and confusion. She does not rely on me but for the slightest reminders: a gentle glow of approval, trust, encouragement. Transport here or there. Showing up on schedule. Saying nothing.

Isn’t there more to a mother? Am I not the earth?

I once held her light inside me, then let it grow. Released, it filled the universe. She covers her own ground now, where I can see her always. Mine is a distant face made beautiful by her reflection.

I am the mother moon, and I have been eclipsed. It is not the end. It is joyous. I will never leave her sky. I love her sky. Here I am complete.

For my mother and my mother’s mother and all mothers in the sky.

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a mountain sees

December 6th, 2012    -    No Comments

The physical form of seated meditation is called the mountain pose. It looks just like it sounds. Sitting on a cushion or chair, the body is anchored in the earth and the head supports the sky. A mountain is what we imitate, but the more we practice sitting like a mountain, the more we become a mountain. Sitting, standing, lying down and walking about: the mountain is unshakable, but moves whenever it wants.

With strength like a mountain, you can keep your eyes, ears, mind, and heart open. Light comes in, and you see things as they are. You see that the sun encircles you, the moon follows you, and the clouds disappear by themselves.

Beginner’s Mind One-Day Retreat
Sunday, Feb. 24, 2013: 9-3
Hazy Moon Zen Center
Los Angeles

Thank you, Nichole
Sun Over Mountain Peak, Tokonoma Scroll

empty field

November 26th, 2012    -    7 Comments

Women of my age are not asked what they want to do when they grow up. But if I were asked, I would say this.

This is all I want to do.

All I want to do is show people how to sit. All I want to do is sit with them. All I want is an empty field blanketed by the stillness of time.

Maybe you want that too.

If you can make it to Cincinnati in March, I’ll point you the rest of the way.

Cultivating Stillness: A Weekend Meditation Retreat at Grailville
Friday, Mar. 15-Sunday, Mar. 17, 2013
Grailville Retreat Center
Loveland, OH
20 miles northeast of Cincinnati
Registration open for full-time participants

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gratitude list

November 21st, 2012    -    6 Comments

A 35-year-old oven
Prayer
Miracles
Tap dancing
Microwaves
Mashed potatoes
Wine
Wishes
Small families
Small appetites
No expectations
Pie
Laughter
Leftovers
Forgiveness
Sunshine
Rain
Moon
Stars
Age
Perspective
Children
Ancestors
Memory
Forgetfulness
Forever

Gratitude is humility on a plate. Thank you for coming to my table.

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can’t apologize

November 19th, 2012    -    7 Comments

Yesterday I made an error in speech, which was actually an error in typing. Sending an email, I intended to write what I always advise on the subject of conflict resolution: “Say you’re sorry. Apologize not because you are wrong but because you can.”

After I sent the email I re-read it. What I had written was “Apologize not because you are wrong but because you can’t.” I wavered: should I send a correction? A quick clarification? Make sure that the recipient understood that I was in my right mind?

When I looked at it again I decided that the mistake expressed an even deeper level of practice. Apologize because you can’t. Send the apology you never thought you would. Do it because it doesn’t make sense.

This is the way we resolve everything: by realizing that the only thing standing between can and can’t, love and hate, war and peace, us and them, is a hasty, reckless and erroneous contraction. So get over it.

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unsaid

November 16th, 2012    -    3 Comments

 

I do not want to write what doesn’t need to be written.

I do not want to say what doesn’t need to be said.

This life is purely good.

Be still and know.

 

the turning season

November 11th, 2012    -    6 Comments

My head was heavy
when I laid me down to sleep
the wind still sweeping the sky
the leaves crumpling at their end
like the paper bags
we used to hold old newspapers
when there were newspapers
our brand being the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner,
a fealty as final as Pepsi or Coke
the afternoon paper on your porch said your dad’s collar was blue

when there were collars
and porches
and afternoons.
There will always be leaves.
They are piling up these days,
a mountain of yesterdays.
I don’t know how high the mountain will be
I only know it is deep.
We called it a newspaper drive back then,
giving them up was good.
I looked at you, the long stretch of you,
not looking at me
and said, for lack,
You used to be so little, I loved you so much.
Do you remember that?
and you said no.

For my sisters, on a November day, 2012.

raising a little one

November 5th, 2012    -    2 Comments

She seemed so tiny, about the size of a silver dollar, when we brought her home in the palm of our hands. We hadn’t prepared nearly enough, but we told ourselves that it couldn’t be that hard to raise a baby turtle.

Put it in the tank and watch it grow! Was there more to it than that?

Then we Googled it.  The experts said we needed to add a heater, use a special feeding bowl, and keep the habitat tidy. It was a lot of work, especially for Mom.

When she was little, she made little messes.

When she got bigger, she made bigger messes.

This made mom a lot madder than she would ever admit. Soon, she had to clean the tank nearly every other day! No one else ever seemed to notice all the work that Mom did, which made mom really, really mad.

Was she raising a lazy, ungrateful slob inside those four walls?

As the turtle kept eating, she seemed to get more and more fed up, too. Sometimes she tried to climb out of her special feeding bowl when Mom turned her head. She tried to claw her way out of her cozy tank even after Mom had spent the afternoon cleaning it just so. Sometimes even at dinnertime that turtle would turn her head, looking disgusted, and say “I’m not hungry right now,” or “Is this all there is to eat?” or “I’m going back to my room.”

One day Mom decided it was time to put turtle in the backyard pond. Dad was upset, saying “But she’s still my precious little baby!”

We put her in the pond and expected her to be starved, eaten or lost. For weeks, turtle seemed to disappear entirely. I wasn’t surprised. In my heart of hearts, I never really believed she could make it on her own.

And then one day we saw turtle sunning herself on a rock in the middle of the water, already twice the size she’d been on the day she left home. When we tried to get close enough to take a picture, she dove back into the deep, her natural element, her true home, where she keeps her own secrets and dreams her own dreams.

That’s all there was to it.

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two handfuls

November 3rd, 2012    -    97 Comments

For those times when you feel the need to give your children something more than your non-distracted attention, give them A Handful of Quiet. But first, take two handfuls for yourself. — Karen Maezen Miller

Developed by Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, the pebble meditation described in this book is an easy-to-understand, hands-on way for children to experience interconnection with nature and calm busy bodies and minds. When asked to review the book, I gave it two handfuls. They sent me a copy of the book for helping out.

I’m sharing this very small favor with parents who’ve ended the week up late, wigged out, and worried sick, all in search of a blessed moment of silence. Leave a comment on this post for a good chance to win A Handful of Quiet: Happiness in Four Pebbles by Thich Nhat Hanh. Winner drawn on Monday, Nov. 5.

For more on teaching children to meditate, read on. I hope that everyone who enters cultivates a meditation practice for themselves.

Note: The contest has closed and the prize has been awarded.

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a life in a day

October 30th, 2012    -    5 Comments

Would you walk us through a typical day in your life?

Oh dear! It’s just like yours, literally. I’m the first up and into the kitchen. (I love a quiet house at dawn.) I feed the dog, make a breakfast that my daughter is likely to ignore. I check e-mail, and begin the daylong practice of responding to whatever appears. I quickly make the bed, get dressed, drive my daughter to school, take an exercise class and then I’m home again for the dog walk. I have a grand scheme of what I’d like to do each day, but am usually overtaken by small practicalities and urgencies. Sometimes the big thing on my list is something as little as pruning the azaleas! I do a little bit of writing here and there, sometimes for the blog, an article or something longer. Words sing to me all day long, and every now and then I catch one or two! My daughter is out of school at 2:30, the afternoon falls, I cook dinner, run the vacuum, finish a load of laundry, take my daughter to gymnastics. Before bed I sit on my cushion, and this is how I keep company with all the ancestors who have come before me. Then I let the day be done. I never regret what I haven’t done. Even as I write this I am overwhelmed with gratitude that this right here is my life. Who could want more?

. . . Read more of the interview on Mama Here Now.

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after the storm

October 28th, 2012    -    3 Comments

Do you remember the night we took that long flight from Florida and the pilot came on when we were over New Mexico and said the wind had blown out the power at the airport and we were landing in Phoenix to refuel and wait it out and we took off again and made it to ground and set out in the car up the road towards home and on the other side of downtown the wind bore down and the car started shaking and we saw the branches flying toward us like torpedoes and the dark sky grew darker still, the mountains ahead a pitch black nothing, the roar monstrous, the road littered and ghostly, a cemetery of trees, and we made it to our street and pulled in the driveway, the dirt swirling, darker than midnight, afraid to leave the car but we did, we ran to the house, it was heaving and cold, and we laid sleepless in bed while the storm still shrieked, the trees whipped, windows shook, roofs ripped, and in the morning we saw that everything was a remnant, a splinter, we raked and pulled and piled, and still no power, the candles burned down, the food spoiled, the limbs and leaves on the curb reached six feet high, and no help came, no lights, five nights no lights, it was hopeless, hopeless, and we lost all hope. I’ll never forget that, do you remember that, love? No?

Just as well. Today is balmy and bright.

In these darkening days of fear and dread, of conquests and battlegrounds, disasters natural and unnatural, screaming rage and blind fury, we must face the storms of our own brewing, the hurricane force of our own delusional thinking, and take higher ground. No matter the weather, the high ground is always the ground beneath our feet, where we reunite in the quiet calm of another day.

May you find your peace and live there.

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