Gravity
by Donna Hilbert
What binds me to this earth
are the hands of my children,
as I hold my mother
holding her mother
back to the mother
who begat us all.
This is gravity.
This is why we call the earth Mother,
why all rising is a miracle.
***
From Gravity by Donna Hilbert
Photo by Markus Spiske
Tell me, what brings you back to earth?
I will award one commenter the lyrical wisdom and loving company of this beautiful new book.
This morning I went into the backyard and took this photo of the Japanese maple, which is just now starting to change color. You might look at it and think, isn’t that lovely, and it is, but the color change used to take place in early November. The old calendar is obsolete.
This is my daughter’s final semester of high school. In the fall, she will be moving to New York to start college. I don’t know any more than that. I don’t know what will happen then or after. It’s not my life. I might have pretended I wasn’t obsessed with the future for these last 18 years or so, but that was a lie. Before our children leave home we have a pretty clear idea of what we expect to happen the next day, week, month and year. We’re all in. But now the future has finally escaped my grasp, leaving my hands ready for—ready for what?
A new year always brings with it the drive for change and renewal, but this one seems pointed straight at my keister. Everywhere I turn I see the message: What will you do with your days? What will you try now? What is it time for? How far will you go?
My friend Mary Trunk has a new documentary project, Muscle Memory. A former dancer and choreographer, she reunited with her college dance buddies after 30 years and filmed them learning new dance steps while they talked about how they’d changed since their glory days. Were they still willing to take risks, create, and discover new things about themselves? I find the answers mesmerizing.
Muscle Memory #1 from Mary Trunk on Vimeo.
A few months ago my daughter asked me the very question lurking around these margins. “What will you do after I leave?” She beamed her electric smile at me, buzzing with her approaching freedom. I shrugged. “You could write a book about raising a teenage daughter!,” she said. She was trying to help, and she meant it. She was giving me her permission. It was a kick, a jump, a start. Let’s see how far I’m willing to take it.
***
Maia Duerr has written a handy new book right up this alley, Work That Matters, a wise and realistic step-by-step guide to finding a livelihood that you love. If the questions on my mind are the questions on your mind, this book can start you off in the right direction. Leave a comment on this post for a chance to win a brand-new copy and a brand-new you.
A couple of weeks ago I saw one of those charity appeals scroll past on my Facebook feed. Someone was sick and needed help. I let it pass at first, and then it came back again. So I clicked on the link. It was for this fellow I’d never met, who lived across town, a Facebook friend who was always kind and—get this—encouraging. He’d been hit with a triple whammy on the health front: lymphoma, kidney disease and congestive heart failure. I hesitated before I signed up. My choices were to give money, make a meal, or ignore it altogether. His location wasn’t exactly convenient, so maybe money would suffice. Or I could drive a meal over. In the end, I decided that if I couldn’t do that little, my friendship wasn’t worth that much. So I put my name next to a date, cooked that morning, and showed up on his doorstep.
I apologized when I got there, because the food I brought didn’t even taste good. There were dietary restrictions to follow, and anything cooked without salt ends up tasting like wet cardboard. But it turned out we had a lot in common and had a nice visit. The meal I brought, and the meal he needed, wasn’t my tasteless stuff in the plastic containers. The meal was the company we shared. I told him I could drop by and hang out anytime, and I meant it.
The next day he learned that his lymphoma had progressed even further throughout his body. He was devastated.
This isn’t the ending you’d like for this story, is it? And yet, it’s the ending we all share.
There’s a New Age mantra that tells us if we own our story and reframe the story we can rewrite the story. We can turn down into up, failure to success, pain into promise, and fear into courage just by changing the way we talk to ourselves. It’s true up to a point, and it’s not a bad way to spend a few days if you find yourself in a career or lifestyle funk. But the suffering I see all around me is too real for that.
The other night I flipped open a Buddhist magazine and saw what are called the Buddha’s Five Remembrances. These are the remembrances that we spend our whole life trying to forget.
With every true thing staring me in the face, I stopped flipping through the pages.
***
The response American crowds gave to Pope Francis last week was not surprising. We are drawn to his being because we suffer deep ills that cannot be fixed by ego’s clever devices, wounds that cannot be healed by the shallow salve of American self-help. We need a real priest for real times. The times we’re in.
So here’s the purpose of this post: I’ve been handed two beautiful books that I’m going to give away to folks who are ready to read them. If you’re interested in winning either one or both, leave a comment on this post by this Saturday, Oct. 3. Let me tell you what you’re in for.
The Taste of Silence: How I Came To Be at Home With Myself by Bieke Vandekerckhove. This is the most profoundly brilliant book I’ve read in a long time, and it took me completely by surprise. When she was 19 and in college, the Belgian author was diagnosed with ALS and quickly became paralyzed from the pelvis up. Facing the certainty of approaching death, she took refuge in the silence of a Benedictine monastery and Zen practice. Remarkably, she experienced an unheard-of remission, and from her extreme forbearance came this small book of shining teachings. A week after I read this long-awaited English translation, I learned that Bieke had died after 27 years with the disease.
How to Live Well with Chronic Pain and Illness by Toni Bernhard. Fourteen years ago, Toni was traveling in Paris when she fell ill with an acute virus. She never got better. She is still sick. Toni is no longer a law professor or college dean. She is instead a tireless author of books about the unavoidable presence of pain and the power of sickness. Her work is wonderfully honest, practical and wise, proof that living ill can be living well. From the midst of suffering, Toni is generous and clear. This book is a bountiful gift to caregivers too, so they can keep giving when they’ve given just about everything.
A taste of hard wisdom offered with love and delivered to your doorstep. If you could use the company, just tell me so.
From Gardening Gone Wild:
I’d published two books and I was having trouble getting started on my third. As a Zen Buddhist priest, I write about spirituality in everyday life. My first book, Momma Zen, was about the path of early motherhood; the second, Hand Wash Cold, was about making a mindful home. But for the third, I wanted to write something “important” about Buddhism. Boldly ambitious, I made several attempts, each summarily rejected. I thought my writing career was over.
Then a sympathetic friend offered a simple suggestion. “Why don’t you write about the garden?” The idea was obvious. I could suddenly see exactly what the next book would be, and how easily it would come to life. It was already alive, and filled my vision at every turn.
My backyard is southern California’s oldest private Japanese garden, constructed in 1916 by a landscape designer from Japan. The unlikely prospect that a 7,500-square-foot garden — with four ponds, three bridges, two waterfalls and a teahouse — would be hidden in the backyard of a house in suburban Los Angeles is a rich premise for a book. But Paradise in Plain Sight goes beyond any history I can tell, and instead recounts what the garden has told to me: the living wisdom of our natural world. Released from my notion of what an important book should teach, I found instead that the garden already teaches everything. Rocks convey faith, ponds preach stillness, flowers give love, fruit teaches forgiveness, and leaves show how to let go. The garden right in front of me gives the lessons in fearlessness, forgiveness, presence, acceptance, and contentment that form each chapter of the book.
A story about this unique garden might be interesting, but wouldn’t provide lasting benefit, so my purpose was to change the way readers understand the word “paradise.” The secret to doing that is found in the word itself. Its old Persian roots convey its original intent: pairi-, meaning “around,” and diz, “to create (a wall).” Before it became a mythical ideal, paradise meant simply “an enclosed area.” A backyard, if you will, and not just my backyard, but everyone’s.
In the 17 years we’ve lived here, my family and I have made this paradise our own. Now I want readers to find their own paradise in the here and now, on the ground beneath their feet. Then I will have done something worthwhile.
If you’re a gardener (or wanna be) visit the Celebration of Gardening Books 2014 Giveaway for a shot at one of 7 just-published gardening books, including mine.
Find a short interview with me at Shambhala SunSpace.
Enter the Goodreads Giveaway for a free copy. You have until Sunday to find faith in yourself.
Step through the gate by watching this video.
Spend thirty minutes in the garden by listening to this podcast.
Take a picture of your Personal Paradise and post it to my author page on Facebook.
Enter the Goodreads Giveaway here.
Listen to 30 Minutes in Paradise, a podcast here.
Art by Julie Kesti
Can’t do it.
Not now.
No time.
Can’t afford.
Can’t imagine.
Save my place.
Hold the space.
Hit the wall.
Saying no.
Not me.
Never again.
No way.
Can’t keep up.
Can’t keep going.
Can’t promise.
Can’t make.
Can’t wait.
Count me out.
Can’t commit.
Won’t.
Wouldn’t.
Shouldn’t.
Can’t.
And then you do.
Here’s hoping you get to 25.
In honor of Mother’s Day, May 11, I’m offering a paperback copy of the perennially popular Momma Zen, personally inscribed, to someone who comments on this post by the end of the day, Friday, May 9. Your gift will arrive shortly after, giving you time to consider what you will do with it.
Photo ©Perry & Roses 2014
When you see your life, you bring it to life.
Paradise in Plain Sight is now available from online sellers and will soon be in neighborhood stores. Please share this video glimpse into my home and garden via Facebook or Twitter, and then leave a comment on this post for a chance to win the very first signed copy.
If you are reading this in your email, click here to see the video.
I will notify the winner by Monday, April 28.
I’m giving away the brand-new book, A Beginner’s Guide to Meditation: Practical Advice and Inspiration from Contemporary Buddhist Teachers, edited by my friend Rod Meade Sperry and the editors of the Shambhala Sun. How marvelous to offer something useful for a change. To give yourself a chance, leave a comment on this post by this Sunday, Feb. 23 and then sit quietly.
Note: The randomly drawn winner is commenter #15. Thank you, everyone.
Subscribe to my newsletter • Come to a retreat • Friend me • Follow me.
When I first began my practice, I was already lying inert at the bottom of the deep end. Life’s triple decker of despair—heartbreak, grief and depression—had sent me plummeting into the murky realms. On the way down, I tried to rouse myself with the usual prescriptions, but nothing could reach. So when I bumped into a Zen teacher who reminded me how to breathe, it saved my life. Breath gave me the buoyancy to rise to the surface where I could float, and later, find the strength to swim. Breath always does that.
Not everyone comes to practice in the same sloppy way. Not everyone is as far gone as I was, in dire need of resuscitation. Some folks are holding onto the side of the pool, knuckles whitening, but still alert and awake enough to realize, “Perhaps I should give some serious thought to taking some swimming lessons.”
There’s a new book out that is like a set of swimming lessons.
Lynette Monteiro and Frank Musten have kindly packaged an eight-week mindful course into a single volume, Mindfulness Starts Here: An Eight Week Guide to Skillful Living. It includes the practices, explanations, encouragement and accountability you would find if you participated in a mindfulness course like the kind they lead at the Ottawa Mindfulness Clinic. And here’s what I really like: it also includes the people. The authors pair their artful instructions with real-life commentary from the students in their classes—students who might as well be you, facing the fear, doubt, resistance and even overconfidence we carry with us into the water. This is what I like best about this eminently likeable work: the human voices and stories reminding us that this practice isn’t academic or intellectual. It isn’t a course of self-improvement or just a tool for a toolkit. Mindfulness is not a seasoning, a flavor or a fad. It is life—your life—and it starts here. It starts wherever you are.
I’m still in the deep end, you know. We’re all in the deep end. But this much I know: I’m breathing.
Leave a comment on this post and I’ll draw a winner for a free, brand-new copy of Mindfulness Starts Here next Sunday, Oct. 6.
And in case you think you still don’t have the time, place, or teacher to begin your practice, look right here. There is water, water, everywhere.
The Plunge One-Day Retreat in Boise Sat., Oct. 5
Yoga & Meditation Retreat, Washington DC, Sat. & Sun., Oct. 19-20
Beginner’s Mind One-Day Retreat, LA, Sun., Nov. 10
If money is what’s stopping you from starting at these or any of my programs anywhere in the country, please contact me privately for help. Even a little help can help enough. Money never gets in the way of the Dharma, and that’s how you can tell what’s true.
Giving away the moments of your life, and four free passes to the Boise Plunge retreat on Sat., Oct. 5. Send me send me a private message to claim your prize.
Georgia turned 14 today. When she woke up and got dressed, I called her over to my desk.
Do you want to see the photos of you right after you were born? You mean when I was all wrinkled and red? No.
Do you know the time you were born? 10:04 a.m.
Do you know who was the first one to see you besides Dad?
She knew; she knows it all. Then she sat up excitedly in the scanty new Brandy Melville shorts and crop top, a gift from a girlfriend. “My favorite outfit of all time.” She was up late last night fielding happy birthday texts. “Really long ones.” She was going to walk into our little downtown and spend the day with pals.
“I’ll be in touch,” she said, on top of the world.
Then it was clear: she’s reached the point where parents don’t give you a birthday. Your friends do. I have a familiar sense of where I am in this go-round. Precisely where I was 14 years ago. After her birth I was too sick to see her for several days. I was no more useful for the next, oh, seven years. Through feeding and teething, coughs and fevers, tears and terrors, night after night, I felt just as clueless then as now. But something spoke to me, coaxed me out of my fright and confusion, brought me solace, and one day the crib was emptied.
“Today is a day to celebrate,” a knowing friend said to me. What shall I celebrate? Coming this far, I suppose. Having far to go. Being upright, in comfortable shoes, with a good dog at my side, friends near and far, an empty road ahead, and absolutely no idea.
Absolutely no idea.
I’ll be in touch.
***
Leave a comment on this post for a chance to win a copy of Momma Zen, a rite of passage, published the year Georgia turned seven. Winner selected this Sunday, Aug. 18.
Every now and then someone will write to me and say, “It feels like you are reading my mind. It’s so comforting to know that I’m not alone. You have a way of writing exactly what I need to hear at the moment I need to hear it.”
Other people will pipe up and say about me, “She is so not me. I can’t relate to her at all. We’d never click in person. I dislike the way she writes as if her story is exactly the same as any mother’s story.”
Whatever people say is revealing, because whether we realize it or not, we are always telling a story about ourselves.
Stories are universal. We think that our story is unique and special. Particularly painful, particularly wise, particularly interesting. What really matters is when we see that our stories are the same, because then we see the invisible connection between us—a greater truth than told in the particulars. For that moment, we stop judging each other and begin sharing what lies beneath the story: love.
Here are two pieces of storytelling I want to share with you today.
Amulet: Spring 2013
First, a community of wildly creative women has collaborated on the spring edition of an online magazine called Amulet. A friend asked me to spread the word, and this is what she said. See if it doesn’t sound familiar.
“We have poured endless love and guts into it, and you know the drill—being mothers and workers and creators—whoa. But we are so in love with doing what we do.
If you aren’t familiar, Amulet is a field guide for seasonal living that includes inspiration to help us keep connecting with the earth under our feet, the world around us, and the universe inside us through prose, DIY, recipes, herbal stuff, book stuff, music, hand made goods—every day life stuff. ”
Sounds like my stuff.
Lost in Living
In January I shared the story of a new documentary about the intersection of motherhood and artistic expression, Lost in Living. Filmed over seven years, Lost In Living confronts the contradictions inherent in personal ambition and self-sacrifice, female friendship and mental isolation, big projects and dirty dishes. The response was amazing. Many of you wanted to know how you could see it. Now you can. While the film makes its way around the country in public screenings, it is also now available on DVD. I have a copy of the DVD to give away to a reader who comments on this post anytime this week.
You will know if it’s your story. All stories are your stories. They tell you that you are not alone.
The winner for this giveaway has been chosen and notified. Thank you for entering.
