This Stuff of Heaven

This summer felt like just another summer with just another Powell trip. I’d been to Lake Powell a gazillion times, dating back long enough to memories unremembered.

And over the years, the lake had somewhat lost its lure.

Like New Yorkers who apathetically pass by supernatural skyscrapers each day—

or Parisians peering out into the landscape, seeing beyond their iconic Eiffel Tower—

or Californians who no longer detect the briny, beachy air they breathe.

Like them, I had become impassive about a place, remarkable in its offering; I’d ignored the powerful immensity and native spirit exhaling from that lake.

But this year, this summer, I woke up. I saw Lake Powell as it was. My prosaic familiarity changed into awe, awe for the lake, awe for the change it created in me, and also reverence and gratitude for the change it allowed within those whom I call my best friends – those whom I love most – my family.

All of us arrived already exhausted, weary and on-edge. All of us struggling with the typical life rigor of providing for bare necessity. All of us striving to hone ourselves and our children, ardently attempting to refine and become better. And most especially, all of us with our unique infirmities, weighing on us so individually –

My sister-in-law, learning to navigate life as a new widow, without my brother. And the relentless strain of raising 4 little-ones all alone, with all the anxiety, and all the exhaustion, on top of all the grief.

A close brother, open about being gay, and apprehensive about how he is being received, and fearful how the religious chasms lingering between him and his loved ones might alter their relationships—

Impeding health scares, threatening test results, bodies waning, pulled down from the gravity and heaviness of life.

Brothers and husbands and sisters and wives and parents, all stricken with unique physical, mental and spiritual ailments, in manifest as we grow older. All of us trailing difficult histories. And all of us clenched with particular anxieties and worries about the imminent future.

And with our particular load, or perhaps in part of our individual pain, there felt a wedge, a wall around each of us, the wall pronouncing, “All of you don’t understand how hard and rough and relentless life has been for me.” Each one of us eager to feel validation for our personal life struggle.

But as the days went on, I noticed a sort of mutation occurring in all of us. The lake and the red rock and the sun (and the lack of cell service) seemed to cleanse us of all that exterior load that had been so suffocating. That wall, that wedge had dissipated, dissolved of its divisive forces, as if the lake itself possessed a quiet power, gradually absorbing our anger and our hurt.

And we were left standing as we were, real in our vulnerability, and somehow freed from the laden stones weighing previously upon us. It became suddenly so clear, so easy to see each person authentically, so accurately. Like the honest intent and nature of our hearts were exposed. And it was compelling how similar our hearts were! We all had been wanting and needing and gasping for the same things: to feel loved, and to be heard, and to find peace.

We then experienced a unity and a communion which blossomed and fed and filled us. The bland, cordial kindness was replaced with truest interest and care, the awkward conversation turned to dancing and laughing and punching wars with my brothers that left my arm blue for over a week. The grandpa and uncles filling in for missing fathers, and the love-filled teasing extended to those feeling out of place. Easing the pain, filling the pain that had once been our source of separation.

The rest of the week we soaked in that place, that milieu, filled with beautiful repose and comfort – sweet soluble comfort.

We had arrived, depleted and floundering, anxious to find solutions and answers and reprieve from our very individual life struggle; when finally it was realized,

we understood,

we were the solution, the answer to one another’s ailing all along.

We were each other’s solution.

It was there in Lake Powell, engulfed beneath towering walls of sandstones, it was there the walls of differing opinion, and heartache, and belief came crumbling down and it was there that I saw the necessity of combined hearts, the need to nurture and care and feed one another. The peace, the rest, we are all pleading, longing, aching for was, and is, only found in each other.

If a family of much the same upbringing can become so disjoined, think of all the variances within our culture, our nations, our world and how we can seem so far removed from one another’s frame of reference and how it is so easy to misunderstand one another and be misunderstood. We will disagree and have differing beliefs and will be influenced individually and separately by our unique life circumstances. But dwelling on these differences and disengaging from one another and even despising one another is not only diminutive,

but it is entirely fruitless.

Our peace, our hope, our rest is found in the comfort of one another.

We are each other’s solution.

We are all pleading, and longing and aching for rest, for joy, for peace and for love –

And we may just find that this stuff of heaven, is already in our midst. It is right in front of us, it is found in one another.

““A human being is part of a whole, called by us the ‘Universe’ —a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts, and feelings, as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.””

— Albert Einstein (1950)

Photo by Julie Blackmon: Homegrown, "Night Movie."

Moving through Time

I think about time a lot. How time is perpetually moving, never stopping.  And how our lives keep going because time keeps going, even when it feels like we want it all to just slow down

or even pause,

 just so we can catch our breath.

And perhaps time’s most enigmatic, ethereal revelation is recognizing time past, life past, bewildered where it all went

and how we are so changed from life then, and life now.

I’m certain we all experience a golden nostalgia for life long ago, we perceive it to be simpler, less painful. Perhaps it is the romantic quality of the dated film or photograph; but most likely it is our memory so selective, emitting the mundane and the unpleasant, reminiscing mostly the good.

And sadness is created as we watch a life in its early stages, in blissful hurdle over sprinkler heads, grazing in dandelion summers …unaware of life’s imminent misfortunes waiting ahead.

Returning to the county I was raised in, causes me to frequently bump into individuals that were part of my life before marriage and kids: friends, neighbors, acquaintances, teachers, etc.  And it catches me unaware. Like my two worlds are succumbing to a brazen collision, a crash of life then and life now.

Somehow, somewhere I have created a canyon. A chasm in time separating my life, even my being, into compartments of existence. But this isn't reality.  We are, in reality, a composite entity of every experience, every encounter, every relation.  

“Time is a fluid condition which has no existence except in the momentary avatars of individual people. There is no such thing as was — only is. ”

— William Faulkner

Einstein, the man who saw time as relative, rather than time absolute, said, "the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one."  Timelessness allows us to sojourn beyond parts, phases, stages and into an ensemble of life experience. 

As adults who once in youth, frolicked in that freedom of summer light, that past felicity and respite will never be long lost. It remains constantly within; it is ours to carry and sustain through eventual winters ahead.

And we may now have to hurdle obstacles far more daunting than sprinkler heads as time keeps moving; but I'm certain that when we look back at the now, we will remember the good and emit a lot of the unpleasant, just as we did before. And we will recognize how we have bloomed throughout it all.

As we connect the dots, seeing the continuity of ourselves and of our fellow travelers through time, we will apprehend the totality and the grandeur subsisting in every individual life. And no more sadness will arise from remembering what once was, because we will comprehend each life in gratitude and in genuineness: a life consummate in whole, unfragmented and eternal. 

What Really Is

My favorite 7 year old, if raising himself, would undoubtedly squander his life to electronic gaming.   And perhaps we, my husband and I, make his obsession worse by denying him any gaming units or even any computer time in our home.

I just want his unadulterated brain to stay sharp and alive and motivated.

So we regularly discuss the why behind our rules. Because he is incessantly asking.

And it always comes down to the same phrase, “Buddy, we just want you to focus on what is real. And video games aren’t real." 

After pounding this concept of “real” into my kids’ heads, I have attempted to instill a keener focus on what’s “real” into my own life, and subsequently exclude time and energy spent thinking or giving to things that are of lesser realness.

So I hate being late for things, like really hate it. And I was late for one of the kid’s pediatric checkups the other day and was in panicked fluster topped with heated anger at my family, all because we were about to walk in that office door 8 minutes late. 

And then, as if somebody had climbed into my brain and ignited a “reality” synapse, I suddenly understood what was real in this situation; but most importantly WHO was real. 

If the doctor’s appointment needed to rescheduled, so be it. No damage rendered. 

 But these kids sitting behind me in the car were and are everything. Their well-being is everything. And I was hurting their souls with my anxious fury. I shifted to what was real: them. And the things that weren’t, melted and faded, and it all seemed okay. 

Our world is obsessed with the portrayal of fake realities, or idealized images of idealized realities. We can even promote idealized realities of our own lives whether through social media, or even social interaction. But the double consciousness we gain by surrounding ourselves with all this fakeness is entirely detrimental.  What I mean is that we see all these idealized life portrayals and an emphasis on aspects of life that seem so real. But when we have a sudden loss of something so real. Like a loved one. Or a relationship lost. We begin to decipher and discern what things are of great and real value. And what aren’t. 

It becomes strikingly apparent that realness is grounded in people. In seeing goodness in people. And giving goodness to people. It is found in relationships, in connections, in attachments.

Deciphering what is real comes back to the last post on our motives. If our motives are self-elevating, self- aggrandizing than we aren’t dwelling in what is genuine and true.  It’s at times difficult to detach this from reality though, because our society and culture praise self-promoting success. 

But when we are motivated by love for this world and for the people inside it, we find stableness. Because we are standing in realness. We must ask ourselves, do we get degrees, jobs, homes, cars, because we desire to bless and enjoy our interactions with mankind? Or do we do it to impress mankind? Do we exercise, clean, read, write, study, preach, shop, cook, weed, plant, because of our love of this world and love for humanity? Or do we do it to impress humanity?    

I was walking past my college campus a few weeks ago and noticed the harried, worried nature of all those students. I was so one of them. Head down, bogged down by my sole individual load, tunneled into my own, massive life burdens. And how inane it all seems now that I couldn’t see past that paper, or exam, or assignment. It all seemed so big and real at the time. Oh that GPA seemed so real.

And then came life. And love. And pain. And grief. And beauty beyond the boundaries of language. And I reminisce with regret that I failed in recognizing the actual realness existing in the students and teachers I came in contact with. And I so regret and so wish my emphasis would have been less on the fleeting scores and more in my pursuit of enhancing the world we tarry in. I missed it. 

And so we all are living in the weedy mucky stuff below, because it takes constant daily weeding just to survive… no matter what season of life we are in, be it school, parenthood, etc. 

 But if we can peer through it all and really perceive what is real,

 or rather who is real,

we will find we aren’t missing it, missing life. Cause nothing will give us greater pain in the end than the realization that it all passed and we were blind to what and who were actually real. 

Contrastingly, nothing will bring us greater fulfillment than discovering who is.

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(Top image by the incredible Christina Thurston)

(Bottom cinemagraph via Anne Street Studio)

Thief of Joy

I need Yoga. Because I am anxious and uptight and I can get a bit extreme.  Yoga is the only way I can actually “keep calm and carry on." The strenuous postures and flow supported by the continual inhale and exhale, soothes my brain and permits it to find rest.  I’d be maniacal, or technically more maniacal, without it.

But this post isn't about how wonderful and healing yoga is, although, yoga is very much those things.  It’s about how I was able to turn something so therapeutic and restorative, in this case, yoga, into a destructive, even corruptive activity.   

I was just getting back into my yoga practice after having baby #3 and felt pretty uppity in my yogic capabilities. Until this early morning class I went to, where I was noticeably the outcast to this ardent, kinda cult-like, morning group. I set my mat next to a woman who likewise had just had a baby and who was still in the stages of early nursing. As we began our sun salutations and ventured further into the class, eventually contorting our bodies into floating poses and back-bends beyond normal human ability, I quickly saw this woman was incredible.  She was so rhythmic and serene, so completely malleable and light in her movement.  By the end of class, I realized I had spent my entire hour comparing my abilities with hers, that I hadn't even savored my precious time to myself.  I couldn't let go of the thought that she had outshone me. That I was less than her. I walked out that door entirely defeated.

But anyone who knows anything about yoga, knows that it is supposed to be an individualistic, healing practice. The movement and breath and postures are meant to cleanse and nourish your own body. You learn to feel and hear what your own body needs.  Comparing and competing with your neighbor destroys the entire practice. And comparing myself to this woman had most definitely stricken, even corrupted, my own source of nourishment.  

There’s this quote by Teddy Roosevelt that can’t escape my thoughts; you've probably seen it floating around Pinterest, you know the one:

Well it’s true. It is. And that’s why I can’t get it out of my head. 

Basically any aspect of human life can lose its virtue and power in supporting and sustaining life as it becomes compared and contrasted against another person. 

It takes love out of our thoughts

and our hearts,

as we fragment loving, feeling, whole human beings into single abilities, talents, looks, assets.  

And then yearning to exceed or advance upon those singular facets.  

C.S. Lewis wrote,

We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not.  They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better looking than others.  If every one else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud, the pleasure of being above the rest.

                                                     - Mere Christianity

What if we were motivated by love in all things instead?

What if we did yoga out of love for ourselves and for the benefit of those surrounding us. What if love was the driving force, rather than the need to measure up or excel above the next individual….

Start looking at what motivates you to act or to think in the ways that you do? If you are trying to prove something, or be better than the next, you will never find joy.

It will always escape you.

Because there will always be someone smarter, wealthier, wiser, kinder, prettier, faster, stronger, taller, skinnier, etc. But if you are motivated by love you can always reach another person, you'll see the beauty and goodness in yourself and all you come in contact with; in this there will always exist satisfaction and joy.

From this view, we let go of competitive elevation, of degrading or promoting, and we become filled with compassion, confidence. We begin to see ourselves and each other as we are, whole and real and good. 

Getting Wet

A few months ago my 31 year old brother collapsed, without warning, and died.  It was an undetected heart arrhythmia. And since then, I’ve had a paradigm shift. A huge one. His sudden departure, from this mortal phase of existence, has caused me to see life so differently. And it has especially caused me to see other’s so differently.  Like I notice them more. And I feel of their malady more.  At times I am overcome with moroseness for the abundant affliction that persists here.  Not just in my familiar circle, where four babies and a loving wife are left fatherless and husbandless, but within all the lives of all of these people. Admittedly, I even question, at times, if life as man is more about enduring, rather than enjoying.

However, accompanying this heightened commiseration for the plight of mankind, is an acquired bravery and courage, courage that I failed to notice existed inside.  It’s like there is this true grit that stirs with vigor and eagerness at life yet to be lived.  That I am here in this body experiencing loads of incredible and radical emotion, getting soaked by life, by all of it.  And to be weighing the amount of good against the bad, or the pain versus the joy, or toil competing rest, is pretty much pointless.  Because the point of it all, is to get wet. In other words, it is becoming acquainted with the whole gamut of emotion and sensation and experience.

And when we look around, we realize, everyone else is getting wet too.

Really wet.

In recognizing the communal nature of life rain, we suddenly feel greater strength to not only abide the wetness, but to maybe even sing and dance together in it. 

Overall, life is to be lived in, and lived in side by side. It must be felt in all its pain and glory so that whenever this part concludes, whether at age 31 or 101, we will feel entirely rendered and worn out, joyful that we took full advantage of this incredible ride.   

*Images of the "Rain Room" exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in Manhattan

           *Click Here to see an exclusive video of this unbelievable exhibit.

Stuck in the Moment

In an earlier post, well actually, this blog’s introductory post, I wrote of the benefit of learning to live more horizontally, and by that I meant living more in the moment by feeling more in the moment.  Horizontal living entails greater awareness of the sensory experiences occurring all around us.  And in succeeding posts, the goal of this blog has been to help facilitate your ability to access this “horizontal” awareness. 

Really being “in” the moment requires our ability to see and feel and touch and taste and hear the ongoing’s of life surrounding us. However, it is our human nature to be one step ahead preparing for future moments; and many times our thoughts are looking behind and dwelling back there, at life already lived.  It is quite hard to suspend ourselves from the vertical onslaught of time, and experience a moment contained and exclusive to itself.  Yet, if we voluntarily access our senses within a given moment, our senses give us the ability to engage and become absorbed into a span of time where we feel most alive and most connected, integrated throughout the soul and the body.

For instance, I’m rocking my one year old, reading him a book before his afternoon nap.  And unintentionally my mind is wandering to the unfinished laundry, and the unachieved run I was probably never going to get in that morning, and oh, I forgot to renew the library books online, and gross, is my leg hair really that prickly? Lucky husband…. And abruptly I pop back to the rocking chair I’m sitting in.

 Suddenly I realize that this boy is heavy. He is no longer a baby.  He will only get older, heavier, more independent. And I am missing it.  I feel overwhelmingly ill that there have been so many instances inadvertently squandered, due to my own disconnection from a beautiful moment with this boy, who is fleeing babyhood, moments never to be regained.

And so I refocus. I begin to feel the tops of his feet all porcelain and smooth. And I smell his newly cleansed, lavender emanating, curly hair. I look into his big brown perfect eyes. And hear his enthusiastic gibberish pointing out familiar animals on pages that we've read a thousand times.  And suddenly I’m fully aware. I’m “in” this moment and I am consequently satiated with intense love and happiness for this boy's life that is mine to care for. 

Ultimately, when we engage with our senses, we immerse our entire self into a life’s moment and in return we gain greater purpose, connection and life affirmation.

I enjoy reading Michael Gerson’s opinion column he writes for The Washington Post; and recently I read a personal article he wrote, “After my cancer diagnosis, seeing mortality in the near distance.” He remarks on his change in perspective caused by this cancer diagnosis.  I love what he notes concerning his “intensification of physical experience;” he writes,

I was fortunate to see mortality in the near distance. As I awaited to learn my fate, I noticed an effect on matter — an odd intensification of physical experience. Things around you offer more friction and hold your attention longer. Commonplace things like the bumps on tree bark. The light filtering through floating dust. The wetness of water. A contrast knob is turned, revealing the vivid pleasures of merely existing.

This heightened awareness applies to strangers in the street, who suddenly have faces. An unsolicited smile, the obvious creases of worry or pain, engage your emotions...All of this is a function of a shifting perception of time. When the days seem limited, we more fully inhabit them. The arrow of time makes decay inevitable — and each moment unrecoverable. So we gain in appreciation for things as they are when we realize they will eventually be otherwise.

It is my issue to readers to participate in this heightened physical awareness, this horizontal experiential style of living where we fully engage ourselves with multisensory consciousness.  Practice just feeling the grass underfoot and what that sensation brings.  Smell the earth awakening from deadened winter.  Go up and touch the buds starting to emerge from barren trees. Look and observe and really hear the emotion of your loved ones, as you engage in seemingly simple conversation.

 And suddenly you will be connected to not only the moment, but to the earth you stand on, and the body you live in, and most significantly the people you interact with.  And from this connectedness you will experience a more full life.  Like Mr. Gerson said, you will begin to “reveal the vivid pleasures of merely existing.”

From Girlhood to Womanhood

It is weird being grown up. It never feels real. I keep waiting for the consummate moment when I will feel a woman, no longer a girl.  Even after 3 children and almost a decade of marriage, I feel inadequately aged.  Like I am an adult charade.  I even feel foreign in this grown up body, curved and matured. 

Surviving inside me is that small girl who spins in the wind, and cries when she falls down, but inhales the smell of grass stains, and even, every now and then, wants to be calmed to sleep. 

I've long contemplated and deliberated over the essence and mantle of womanhood, the kind of womanhood expanding across culture and continent.  What makes girls become women? Does becoming a women reach beyond just a physical transformation?  Is there also a spiritual metamorphosis accompanying girlhood to womanhood?

This is what I have learned: I have determined that girls become women when they exist for more than just themselves. A woman’s purpose generates beyond the individual and ruminates within lives outside their own.  And a girl feels she has become a woman when she embraces her otherness, the life she gives in addition to her own life.  This life giving source not only lives in the physicality of child bearing, but also in the creating, strengthening, educating and growth of souls. 

And when a girl fulfills this role of vitality, she has matured into and received the distinction of “Woman.”

In regards to that girlish wonder that is still thriving within, it is never lost. A woman gets to keep that. For from that wonder a woman implants hope to lives that are thirsty for life.

Even seeing our grown bodies as life giving emblems, bodies created after the pattern of the “mother of all-living”, we are reminded to breathe hope and nourishment into our fellow men. And we may eventually experience comfort in our mature frames, knowing they are a symbol of our life-giving abilities to both bodies and souls.

We must never let life experience, relationships, or trauma suffocate our capacity to sustain and nourish mankind.  If we no longer feel capable of creating, we aren't whole; we are at the crux where we must regain our womanhood.  It is imperative to reclaim. And the world at large will undoubtedly benefit by us doing so. 

"It is like when you throw a stone into a pool, and the concentric waves spread out further and further. Who knows where it will end? Redeemed humanity is still young, it has hardly come to its full strength. But already there is joy enough in the little finger of a great saint such as yonder lady to waken all the dead things of the universe into life."

                                     - C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

On Letting Go & Pimples

I get these underground, buried pimples on my chin sometimes.  And every time, despite past experience, I think I can push all that white crap to the surface and pop it all out. And of course, what ends up occurring, is a massacred chin with cuts and bruises, even scars; and the un-phased, stubborn, underground zit smugly stares back at me.  I never learn. I repeat this same mistake over and over again thinking THIS time I will discover success: pus popped, mirror splattering, white head success.  Gross. 

Deep down, I know that if I leave it alone, it will go away eventually, without all that self-inflicted additional mutilation. 

In life there crops up metaphorical pimples. Things that aren’t completely life altering, but that make our insides bubble in fury.  Like our child locking the car keys in the car while at Target; or your husband’s 60 minute bathroom habit; or the newly discovered bleach spot on your newest blouse; or the guy who flips you off because you cut him off driving while trying to reposition your babies propped up bottle (I mean, not that I would ever prop up my child’s bottle or anything.) 

The point is, life will always be unpredictable and even unavoidably messy.  But ruminating, dwelling, agonizing over life’s inevitable annoyances will only exacerbate our frustration, not resolve it. It may even cause negative scarring on our outlook of life.

At best, we must laugh at the impossible and then breathe. Breathe deep. Breathe slow. And then recognize, with gratitude, that this is part of being alive. And move on.

Eventually the pimple and any memory of it will all fade away.

Until the next one comes; but this time I vow I’m going to just let it be.

“Let it be” album cover, 1970