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Look how far you can go on a box of cookies
June 19th, 2009 - 2 Comments
The angel of Assisi
June 16th, 2009 - 24 Comments
Here’s a little story about spiritual pilgrimage for those of you who are traveling to my city of angels this weekend for the Mother’s Plunge – and those of you who aren’t. The extraordinary response to the first splash has me planning a countrywide tour of backward steps. Where should I bring the retreat next? Minnesota? Arizona? Kansas? Tell me.
Even the man at Marshall Field’s who had sold me the yellow travel umbrella had said it: “You must go to Assisi.”
Everyone, it seemed, had said it – You must go to Assisi! – and so the fifth day of a solo trip to Italy became the day for me to go the distance. It would require a car, which I obtained from a rental agency a few blocks from my hotel in Florence. It would require getting out of town, which I accomplished with an angel on the dashboard. And it would require a couple hours’ drive south on the Autostrada, which I high-tailed in the slipstream of the surging traffic.
“You will see it on the hill,” another advisor had told me rapturously. And I did, in a purple haze of trees and tile and imagination. I steered my little vehicle onward in the soldierly direction, ascending the hill and circling the top, passing the marked parking lots with all the beached buses, inching slowly alongside the streams of tourists who had come for the St. Francis experience, motoring up the wrong streets and down again until I mustered my purpose and pulled over on a narrow hillside shoulder. I angled in among the other likeminded pilgrims who were committing, I hoped, the pardonable sin of illegal parking.
I strode upward to the Basilica de San Francisco. It was big, too big, outsized for its namesake, and oddly uninspiring, I thought. Inside to more frescoes, more pews, more people, and decidedly more organization than in the other sacred spots I’d stopped. This, I could see, was a system.
I headed down into the crypts containing St. Francis’ tomb and there uncovered the day’s only treasure. “Scusa, scusa,” the ushers whispered to those, like me, who had barged in to bystand at the wedding ceremony underway in the underground chapel. I lingered in the shadows at the rear, charmed by the elaborate smallness of it. A local couple surrounded by local people, wearing uncomfortable new clothes for the biggest event of their lives.
Leaving, I wandered the winding medieval village. The heat had turned the streets into baking stones.
“You will feel it in the air,” another friend had confided. I felt stifling languor and epidemic disinterest. Wandering into an antique shop, my idle browsing did not disturb the mistress at the back watching American TV soap operas dubbed in Italian.
Then the divine message arrived.
Every place is holy.
It was my departing thought, a conclusion and a comfort, and I headed home, satisfied.
Quit happiness and be happy
June 15th, 2009 - 5 Comments
Happiness is my new pet peeve. Just the idea of it makes me cranky.
We’re suddenly steeped in happy talk. Research and theories, projects and workshops, books and blogs on nothing but happiness and how to find it. Happiness is a new industry. I guess every industry is a happiness industry, and all pursuits are pursuits of happiness.
The other day I googled “ways to be happy” and the articles on just the first page of results enumerated 129 ways to be happy. If someone had the free time to look up and do those things you’d think they’d be plenty happy already. Yet even with all the advice, a lot of us say we are less happy. That really ticks me off.
Read the rest and leave a cranky comment on my latest post on “The Laundry Line”
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Actual testimonial and giveaway by a mini-mermaid
June 11th, 2009 - 17 Comments
I think this camp looks fun because I love art and drawing. In this camp a video is given once a week to give you the theme of an artbook page. We then make a whole artbook by ourselves. Flickr photos of your drawings will be posted for those who want to share. I want to do it because I love art and because I want to have other friends all over the world I can share it with. During the summer my mom usually says “Get off the computer right now!” or “Don’t even think about turning on the TV!” but this way I can do my art and connect with my new art friends. I’m gonna do it this summer. How about you?
Yours,
Georgia G. Miller
little girls changing the world from mccabe russell on Vimeo.
Georgia is signed up as a mini-mermaid art e-camper this summer with the one and only dancing mermaid and we have an even bigger mess in store with one full camp tuition to give away to another girl age 8-13 (or younger, or older!) The camp runs all summer so you can start anytime and count Georgia G. Miller among your best art friends in the whole world. I’m tellin’ ya, she’s devoted to her worldwide web of friends. Leave a comment here, with a way to reach you, and give your girl a chance to show her stuff this summer. Winner to be drawn and announced sincerely by Georgia G. Miller next Wednesday, June 17 on her last day of school. Look out world!
Winner: Georgia picked Shanna. Congratulations!
In the end analysis
June 9th, 2009 - 24 Comments
You know I’ve been married before, so you might wonder how the second time around is better than the first. Surely the first one was wrong and the second one is right?
I’ve stopped thinking that way. It seems to me that we have the same fights, the same frustrations, the same salty tears, the same low-grade despair, and yes, even the same loneliness. I’ve stopped thinking that one husband is different than the next, or even that my husband is different than yours. They all seem a lot alike to me. After two, five, ten years or more of cohabitation, they still don’t know where you keep the extra toilet paper.
In the middle of it all I remember that my husband doesn’t have a spiritual practice, so he can’t always see things clearly. In the middle of it all I remember that I do have a spiritual practice, so I try to see things clearly. I cannot find a different husband, but I can find a different me, who looks at things differently, taking more responsibility and assigning less blame, appreciating the whole instead of dividing the parts.
***
A reflection on recent social media reconnections.
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True north is due north
June 7th, 2009 - 6 Comments
The Buddha Way lies outside thinking, analysis, prophesy, introspection, knowledge and wise explanation. – Dogen Zenji
I’ve just come from two events: sitting a day at the Zen center, and performing the monthly memorial service for lost children. You might think I do these things for a reason. In a way, I do. They are acts of compassion. But in truth, I do them just to do them, because they appear due on my calendar to be done, and that is what true compassion is: the absence of a qualifying rationale. The absence of self-service. They are good, but not in a way I can know or identify. Not necessarily in a way I can see. They are good because they are not tied to the expectation of an outcome.
The first book I stumbled across when I started to look beyond hope and reason for spiritual salvation was that slender remedy, The Tao te Ching. All the verses struck me, sung me, rung me, but none more than one that went slightly like this (memory serves when memory fades):
In the absence of the Tao there is goodness
In the absence of goodness there is morality
In the absence of morality there is piety
Even in my faulty recollection you can begin to see the essence of the wisdom. You can see the erring ways we layer our value judgments onto reality, to the fundamental truth of what is, and propel ourselves farther into self-righteousness and intolerance.
Beyond the superficial clouds of reason, thinking, introspection and wise explanation is the clear blue sky of wisdom and the deep ocean of compassion.
All this is a delinquent announcement of a trip north I’m taking later this month to give a free talk at the South San Francisco Public Library on Saturday, June 27 at 2 p.m. I don’t know if anyone will be there. I don’t know many people in the area. There’s no particular reason I’m going, except that they asked me. Have compassion and come! I’ll meet you due north – true north – for no good reason at all. Perhaps good will come.
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One more thing I can live without
June 4th, 2009 - 18 Comments
My daughter comes to me after watching TV.
“Mom, I know what I want to save my money for. A laptop or a cell phone.”
She’s nine years old, and the money she’s talking about is her weekly allowance. As long as I’m her mother, she won’t be fulfilling either desire any time soon, but that doesn’t resolve the problem for me. I perceive it as something far bigger, more menacing and upsetting. Something not right.
Those insidious commercials! Our consumer-driven culture! Our insatiable kids! Those inexhaustible desires! How I want to put an end to them! Specifically, how I want to put an end to hers!
Or so we chant in the Four Bodhisattva Vows:
Desires are inexhaustible
I vow to put an end to them
What exactly do we mean by that? Have no desires? Want nothing? Is that what we really want? After all, it is desire that brings us to the Dharma, desire for truth, and desire that brings us back to practice again and again.
Maezumi Roshi once responded to a student who professed to having no desires.
“Your practice is wrong!” Maezumi replied.
Continue reading on “The Laundry Line”
my new blog on Shambhala SunSpace
Not now, I’m working
June 2nd, 2009 - 39 Comments
It’s the full-time job of a writer to keep reading, so I just finished two delicious books to send your way with a chance to win and a 100 percent guarantee that either is worth buying anyway. Leave a comment below to enter the giveaway. But let me whet your appetite first:
Eve: A Novel of the First Woman – You will love this sumptuous tale of Eden’s Eve and her troublesome family. Ever since I read The Red Tent I’ve been convinced that bible stories could bear retelling from a woman’s point of view, because then they become stories I want to read. Author Elissa Elliott made this tale real and recognizable to any woman. I’m no biblical historian, thank heaven, so nothing stopped me from appreciating the sheer magic of the fiction. This is Elissa’s first book, and writer-to-writer I just can’t imagine how she made the whole thing up. Let this inspire your deep wondering about who we really are. I have a hardcover copy to give away.
Mating Rituals of the North American WASP – Now for a different slice of the apple. Here’s a love story spun in a wickedly comic way by Lauren Lipton about a girl who wakes up married to a guy she doesn’t even know, gets engaged to another she hardly ever sees, and dates someone she can’t even stand. I know, it sounds dangerously close to reality, but unlike my life story, this one will be a movie. Funny, smart, likable and the perfect fit for any summer tote bag. Let this inspire a day at the beach, the pool or the hammock. I have a paperback copy to give away.
Leave a comment including a way to reach you through your blog or email. I’ll draw the winners (and I’ll decide what you win) after this Friday at 6 p.m. PDT.
***
Our hard-working winners: Latisha for Eve and Kristin H. for Mating Rituals. Good job!
Calling all summer readers! There are more words of wisdom in store at the Mother’s Summer Reading Salon with Mojo Mom Amy Tiemann and me on Tuesday, June 23, 7 p.m. at Sierra Madre Books. Learn how a little light reading can change your direction this summer.
The company of mothers
May 31st, 2009 - 5 Comments
The author Mary the poet Jena the joyful Myriam the faithful Chris the teacher Melinda the peacemaker Janet the mystic Melissa the first responder Nancy the traveler Sheryl the actress Holly the educator Jen the yogi Jill the artist Stacy the columnist Anissa the graceful Kathleen the singer Francie the manager Jody the gardener Amy the athlete Brenda the doctor Cassandra the cheerful Blue the leader Liz the writers the healers the cooks the scientists the coaches the doctors the lawyers the nurses the musicians the songwriters the sandwich-makers the crying the smiling the laughing the sisters the daughters the grandmothers the aunts the mothers the non-mothers the you that you haven’t yet met, just as you are.
Sixty women full of grace coming together at the Mother’s Summer Plunge on Saturday, June 20. The possibilities remain wide open, but registration closes this week. There is room for you; there will always be room for you and time for you in the company of mothers.
The way we are
May 29th, 2009 - 24 Comments
As a farewell to backpedaling Mercury, whose retrograde ends this Saturday, thereby closing reopened chapters and resolving unfinished business, awkward pauses and anxious backward glances, I offer this parting remembrance of last year’s fire:
We evacuated the house yesterday, probably the last people to be evacuated, because as soon as we drove away the mountain cooled to a wispy simmer and they started letting folks return. We had already loaded up a week’s worth of clothes, assorted papers, dusty photo albums and baby videos, the dog and the dog crate, with the potholders, yes those very potholders, at the bottom of the suitcase. That talisman alone probably turned history on its heels.
And for the record, as Georgia swept through her room choosing those few things she would rescue, she donned her pink Disneyland cap and her Girl Scout vest. She strode out bedecked with badges and pins, under a pair of mouse ears. That precious glimpse of who she is, who she is right now, was proof enough that there’s no need – ever – to look back.
***
My 400th post. Proof enough of the wonders ahead.
Originally published on April 29, 2008 as my 200th post.
From a tipi to a tribe
May 27th, 2009 - 2 Comments
Perhaps if this woman had ever been here, she would have had the fearless forethought to stay there. Maybe if more girls could find their own expression, they wouldn’t be lost in translation. It’s not farfetched to imagine the day we’ll have one of our own braves as chief. That would indeed be tribal justice.
My friend Wendy Cook has taken an impossible dream out of her laptop and into her lap with the launch of the Mighty Girl Art empowerment camp starting this summer. It’s for our tweens riding the raging waters between slippery rocks and hard places. (And those aren’t just the frontiers where calls get dropped.) I have a tween, and I hope in the months and years ahead she will learn to trust the voice of her native intelligence above the mindless cacophony of the crowd. But she needs wise mentors and guides beyond her mother’s fleet fingertips. All of our girls do.
What I really want is for Wendy to bring her tipi to my front lawn for a West Coast outpost. Saving that, I want you to look around the camp see how you can add your muscle to the magic. How can we grow this? Spiral it outward? I liken it to my own recent kids’ writing project, which has ricocheted to 70 places all over the world in just the last week. There’s no underestimating the power of getting ink all over your hands, and no one has to make a case for it.
It’s about time, girls, to put our faith in the tipi instead of the WiFi, connect to the sacred circle and not just a cell network, and flex something other than our thumbs.
We have a whole world to rescue and seven generations to serve, starting now.
Whoop!
The backward step
May 26th, 2009 - 3 Comments
Take the backward step and turn the light inward. – Dogen Zenji
re•treat
1: an act or process of withdrawing especially from what is difficult, dangerous, or disagreeable; the process of receding from a position or state attained
2: a place of privacy or safety: refuge
3: a period of group withdrawal for prayer, meditation, study, or instruction
Someone asked me to write about how to prepare to go on a meditation retreat. This is a good topic, since the matter of preparation is what often keeps us from going on retreat, whether it is for one day or 100 days.
How do you know if you are prepared to handle the silence, the physical rigors, the discipline, and the mental intensity of a prolonged meditation retreat?
Relax. You can’t know. You don’t need to know. There is no way to prepare. The very notion of preparation traps us in false expectation and self-evaluation. It shows us how often we are paralyzed by the feeling of inadequacy in our lives. We are never inadequate but we are immobilized just the same.
Continue reading and leave a comment to continue
the conversation on “The Laundry Line”
my new blog on Shambhala SunSpace
the conversation on “The Laundry Line”
my new blog on Shambhala SunSpace
Take the forward step now. Register this week and you won’t miss the extraordinary company of 45 ordinary women all taking the backward step into an oasis of deep wisdom and empathy at the one day Mother’s Summer Plunge coming up on June 20.
Daily bread
May 24th, 2009 - 9 Comments
My grandmother set her bread to rise each day before the sun yet dared to dawn, wresting two loaves into the oven before a shadow had stirred. She saved a handful of the dough to roll into the morning’s coffee cake and topped it high with buttery struesel. By the time I tramped into her ancient kitchen on summer mornings, the air bloomed with the sweetly sour greeting of yeast. It was breakfast time, and no one needed to ask.
Her house is now flattened, ground into the dust of the earth’s eternal crust. She is gone and the time has passed. But what she fed still ferments on my tongue, and I recognize my place and lineage.
I made pancakes today.
