Winter

As I sit to write, the world outside is a pearly grey. The bare branches of the backyard trees are encased in rime, and when the sun finally breaks through, as is promised by those who believe they can predict nature's behavior, all will be a stunning, shimmery-jeweled beauty. The calendar may proclaim it is still autumn, but the inch or two of snow covering the ground tells a different tale. I'm sure, were nature to give it a thought, she would laugh and call it folly, these attempts to contain her wild and unpredictable disposition within such tidy boxes. For no matter the date, in my neck of the woods, winter has arrived. 

It was 14° when I left the house for my predawn walk this morning, though dressed in many layers, I was sufficiently warm. When I arrived at the wildlife area, I was given the honor of being the first human to step upon freshly fallen snow. Why that thrills me so, I don't know, but it does. I only wish there'd been a way to not sully the whiteness with my own footprints. 

I set off on the wilder path of the lake's south side where woods and field were deep in slumber. Summer foliage was mere memory now, with the essence of every tree and shrub drawn down to root, still and at rest. The only sound I heard, but for my own footfalls, was the geese on the lake below waking with their usual brazen, honking racket. 

This winter, more than any other, I hope to meet the season more as tree than goose. As I age, I find myself moving into a quieter time of reflection, drawing into root after a lifetime of activity...some of it, sadly enough, of the brazen, honking-racket variety. I long for stillness, and I recognize winter as an ally in this desire. 

I recently discovered another companion. With my last library book finished and a new one not yet delivered through interlibrary loan, I was browsing my husband's bookshelves for something to read. I found Rick Bass's 1991 offering, Winter: Notes from Montana. The cover art was from a painting by landscape artist Russell Chatham, who spent most of his career painting the beauty of his adopted Montana. It is a scene reminiscent of my morning walk, trees dusted with and fields blanketed by snow. 

That image was all I needed. It is a slight book, as spare as the season itself. After savoring it once on my own, I shared it aloud with my husband who, though he'd likely been captivated by the cover himself when he got it for pennies at a garage sale, had never read it. 

In an ode to winter's special light, Bass writes of afternoons when "the light turns so strange...and still, that it's like a tintype—as if it's trying to hold that angle of light for as long as it can, for us to look at the fields and woods and meadows in that sharp light one last time before (it falls) away." Likewise, he is mesmerized by snow. "I watch individual flakes; I peer up through the snow and see the blank infinity from which it comes; I listen to the special silence it creates. Anything I am guilty of is forgiven when the snow falls." Southern born and raised, Bass writes "I'll never get used to snow, how slowly it comes down, how the world seems to slow down, how time slows, how age and sin and everything is buried." 

I have only the usual amount of sin to bury, and there is nothing that will hide my age, should I seek such a thing. But I do want to model myself on snow's slow fall. I want to be moved by late afternoon light and winter's special silence. I want to peer up into blank infinity. 

Winter is a season I have often dreaded and longed for in equal measure. Cold and darkness are not always pleasant. I can, though, always add more layers, and I can choose to identify darkness as delight, Yin's hushed answer to Yang's expansive energy. 

We do not need to fear the season's darkness. As Valerie Kaur wrote in a much different and immensely worthy context (see link below), we can see winter's longer nights not as "the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb." That feels apt, for no matter who we are, something yearns to be birthed through us, something unique to us and within our very personal lives. And that something has already begun to grow deep inside. It is time now for gestation. Nature knows it...and we know it too. It is time for the repose that is counterpoint to all the hubbub that has consumed us. 

As I come to these final paragraphs, night has fallen. I lower myself onto my cushion and see through the window before me that the skies have finally cleared, many hours after the weather prophets predicted. The moon, big and beautiful, is too high in the sky for me to see, but oh, how I see its light! It shines on the snowy porch roof below, causing the ice crystals embedded there to sparkle like jewels. I raise my eyes to find something even more exquisite, the nearby mountain peak glowing a vivid white as though lit from within, an inner light reflecting the larger one. 

This becomes my meditation, my own inner and very individual light reflecting a larger Light. No effort is required, no concentration, no work. This meditation is elicited by the quiet of the night, the beauty of the snow, the darkness of this womb. 

Yes, winter is a time to be still. Winter elicits stillness just by being itself. We need only allow it. 

May the peace of the season be yours. 

Leia 

You can find Valerie Kaur's writing by clicking here. It is definitely worth a read, though like I said, it comes to us in a very different context~~the night after the 2016 Presidential election.

Mama Said There'd Be Days Like This

You know those mornings when everything goes well, when one moment and each activity flow effortlessly and beautifully into the next? Well, I'm not having that kind of morning. 

I didn't dress warmly enough for my lake walk and, given the artic blast we're experiencing, it was more of a slogfest than its usual near~rapturous undertaking. And as the recent benefits I've received from P.T. have taken a nosedive, knee pain was my walking buddy. 

While making breakfast, gravity was against me. It seemed everything I touched fell to the floor, and when I poured tea into my water bottle, a lemon wedge lodged in the opening and water gushed across the counter. Then, I didn't think to wipe off the bottle's bottom and it left a ring mark on the table. 

Those are just a few of the lowlights. Suffice it to say that I haven't been able to get out of my own way all day long. It's not lost on me that yesterday was the exact opposite. I'd taken a retreat day, and it was everything I could have hoped for. It was meditative to be sure, but I also felt intensely alive and in sync from start to finish. 

I like those days much better. I want to live on the mountaintop always, rather than merely visiting it on occasion. And yet we all know that is not possible, though spiritual practices can illuminate the pathways to those peaks so we can dwell there more often. Anyway you look at it, this Yin~Yang life is a mixed bag. To play with the metaphor, it includes not only minor valleys, like I've traversed this morning, but sewers as well, places we'd rather not be and understandably would prefer to avoid at most any cost. 

One of the things that was weighing on me this morning was knowing I needed to write this blog—a commitment I keep to monthly, believing it builds character—and me with no idea what to write about. I decided, though, to adhere to advice every budding writer is given: write what you know. And in this moment, this is what I know. I am familiar with chunks of time when nothing is going the way I'd like it to, when metaphorically speaking everything I touch falls from my fingers and life~giving waters don't make it to my mouth, but leave blotches on the table instead. 

So what to do during those times? First, I need to acknowledge what is. We humans often try to jump over this part right into the fixing stage, and spiritual traditions often seem to encourage this. But the cart can't be put before the horse, not if forward movement is one's goal. This first step, therefore, is not a step at all. It is a non~step. We still ourselves. We come into the moment, just as it is, rather than trying to force it into the shape we'd like it to assume. Force, after all, is not conducive to healing. It does violence instead. 

By simply telling the truth to ourselves and perhaps to another supportive soul, we abandon efforts to escape what is. Even if we need to grouse a bit, as I did just now with you, this truth~telling is essential in preparing us for the next step: to accept. In doing so, we stop the argument with life, an argument we can never win because it is one~sided. Life is not debating with us, after all. It is simply what it is, and the sooner we accede to its authority, the easier it will be to decide the best course of action. 

That is the third step. After we stop, and once we accept what is, we can then choose wisely from the options available to us. And we are more likely at this point to find possibilities we never imagined when we were stuck in malaise or frantically spinning and flailing. 

Only then can we zoom out to see all that is going well, a possible fourth step. While we may try to tell ourselves that others have far worse things to deal with than sore knees, we likely won't feel that truth until we attend to our own suffering. Counting one's blessings is not just a good strategy. The practice can actually help rewire our brains, brains designed to attend to what is wrong and potentially life~threatening. We are, after all, each alive today because our ancestors focused on disaster. 

And this tendency lives on, as Krista Tippett reminded us in a recent TED talk. "We are fluent in and very familiar with the narrative of catastrophe and dysfunction and disarray. And that is real. But it's not the whole story...There is also an abundant reality of things going right." 

"We don't know how, "she continues, "to tell this generative story of us as vividly. We don't know how to take it as seriously as that story of rupture." We must "actively, consciously orient ourselves if we want to attend to and get riveted by what is good and redemptive." 

There's no denying that the world is a disturbing place. Not only are major wars harming our fellow humans and threatening to engulf us all, but there are the smaller tragedies, like mass shootings in Maine a few miles from where I lived and worked for several years. But whether the ruptures are huge or embarrassingly minor, as in my own morning's challenges, we don't help anything by forgetting what is good and right and redemptive.

Our task is to tell the truth about it all, as we also look for ways to make a difference. In Krista's words, we need to "orient together away from what is death~dealing and towards what is life~giving." And to do so in the small and large moments of our very personal lives. 

Here's wishing you extended stays on your own mountaintops, and wishing you, too, the ability to bring that wisdom back down with you. And to live it with grace, while offering that grace to the world.

Opening to Awe

It's been wild lately. Much busyness, loved ones coming and going, decisions to be made, and the many things needing to be done vying with my own increasing need for stillness. Knowing it was time for a little guidance, I sat to meditate, spread out the Starseed Oracle deck in front of me, closed my eyes, and let my hand find a card. Beneath an idyllic scene rendered in glimmering pastels were these words~~

"Surrender to the Sweetness. Pleasure. Joy. Make love to life." 

A beautiful message, one that encouraged my breath to soften, my shoulders to relax. I settled into the moment, trusting that needed decisions would be made and a way would open before me so that all that needed doing would get done. That message has stayed with me ever since, and was seconded by the opening lines of the Mary Oliver poem "Don't Hesitate", which a friend read at a local poetry gathering a few weeks back~~ 

"If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don't hesitate. Give in to it." 

So I have been practicing. And as I attune to joy, surrender to sweetness, and approach each day as love-in-the-making, I find that life meets me at least halfway. Life makes love to me in return. 

Of course such an attitude doesn't make everything easy. Challenges don't magically evaporate. But when I maintain a connection to the stream of goodness that runs beneath it all, I am better able to meet whatever comes with a freshness conducive to a beneficial outcome. This is not earthshakingly new. We know this. We have all found ourselves better able to manage difficulties when in a good frame of mind and heart, than when we meet them already burdened. 

When I created my website nearly 16 years ago now, I needed to choose its name and a url to match. That task required that I find and briefly state what guided me through this world, so that others would have a sense of who I am and if we'd be a good match. I rather quickly came up with www.in-awe.net, which linked to this blog titled Living In Awe. Those names are accurate. Awe has been my lodestar, lending me focus and eliciting from me a commitment to live its teachings in my life. 

Of course, I'm not always successful. I stumble and fall on a regular basis. But in seeking to live that intention, I am keeping company with a vast host of others. Not only is awe a cornerstone of most faith traditions, it is getting some big press these days from modern-day researchers. 

For example, in his recent book Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life, UC Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner shares the results of investigations he and others have done into the nature of awe and its effects on humans.While Keltner's attempts to dissect and catalog the various manifestations of awe struck me as odd, since what so often gives rise to awe is communing with the great Mystery which, by definition, cannot be understood rationally, I did find the biological effects of awe illuminating. 

It seems that awe is good for us, its effects measurable. For example, immersion in the natural world leads to "awe-related vagus nerve activation" which in turn leads to reductions in "fight-or-flight cardiovascular response, blood pressure, cortisol, and inflammation." When listening to music, "the dopaminergic circuitry of the brain is activated, which opens the mind to wonder and exploration." And portions of our brains—the amygdala, caudate nucleus, and prefrontal cortex—synchronize with the brains of others when we listen together. 

As I alluded to above, I am not inclined to bring my rational mind into the subject of awe, beyond recognizing it as essential to a vibrant experience of living and finding avenues for its fuller embodiment. And I care not whether we call it awe or sweetness, ecstasy or joy. It matters little to me whether I find it amid the splendor of nature, while listening to music, or through stepping into that vast current of Love. 

It is not the words or the avenue that matter. It is opening to it and letting it have its way, allowing it to change us and heal our misconceptions and limited views. Surrendering to it, as my oracle card urges, leads to more love. Thus, we really do make love. 

Mary Oliver's poem ends with these words: 

"Joy is not made to be a crumb." 

Indeed. No matter who you are and what challenges you face, I wish you a full meal, my friend. No, I wish you a seven-course feast to feed your soul. In love and awe, Leia

In love...and in awe,

Leia

And for a short (less than 10 minutes!) guided meditation on Awe, click here. And enjoy...and share to your heart's content!

Adventurers All

We are all adventurers. We set out each morning into the unknown, outfitted with whatever wisdom and knowledge we have managed to accumulate, perhaps carrying the guidebooks and roughly~drawn maps of others. Yet even the sagest insight garnered from our own experience or the details of the finest travelogues need to be worked with, made our own as we adapt them to the ever~changing conditions in which we find ourselves. 

We know we can never truly foresee what we will encounter. We may meet with a day more or less the same as the one which preceded it, or we may discover a delight, a heartache, even a tragedy, we never saw coming. We just never know. And still we walk on. 

How we walk on, though, is largely up to us. We can fashion ourselves as unwilling travelers, walking hesitatingly or in outright fright into what we anticipate as hostile territory. Or we can move forward in a different way. We can step into that wilderness as avid explorers. 

Walt Whitman, the most romantic of voyagers, put it this way, "Darest thou now O soul, walk out with me toward the Unknown Region...all is a blank before us, all waits undream'd of in that region, that inaccessible land." 

With the choice of the word darest, Whitman highlights the courage needed for such an undertaking. And yet the overall tenor of the poem, as with all his writings, is the excitement, even elation, that comes from entering life wholeheartedly, eager for whatever unfolds. 

The first few words of the poem also offer a hint as to how he manages to pull this off. He directly addresses his soul. It's irrelevant that Whitman's poem seems to be speaking in the voice of the soul calling to the far more timid personality, rather than the reverse.The point is that his words convey a recognition that he is not going into unchartered territory all on his own. He has a companion. 

We may have our field guides. We definitely have our past experiences. And if we're lucky, we also have living, breathing humans who can witness our becoming and with whom we can share our befuddlement, our sorrows, joys and terrors, and our surprising discoveries. But ultimately it's just the two of us, our souls and our psyches, who must journey together through the wilderness. 

Luckily the soul, whether you define it simply as some essential you~ness or a thing eternal, comes with apparatus fundamental to a vibrant journey. For over 40 years, I have sat with countless individuals as they've walked into and progressed through their own personal hinterlands, and I am continually astounded at what the soul knows, how it guides and whispers its secrets. 

It is true, souls speak a different language and do not always offer the kind of specificity our personalities would like. They guide through intuition and a felt sense of things, requiring of us a quiet receptivity if we wish to receive their messages. Yet if we open ourselves to them, make room for their moment~by~moment nudgings amid the busyness of lives, we will find them ever available. Always true. We will know where our next footfall must land, as well as sense when that foot needs to stand stock~still for a bit. 

I am reading the Mythago Wood Cycle by Robert Holdstock, a many~layered and quite dense fantasy series that requires a bit of work from the reader, with poetic language that defies a left~brain understanding of what the heck is going on. But I love it, despite my tendency to be a rather lazy reader. 

I'll soon finish the second book, Lavondyss, Journey to an Unknown Region, a title that accurately describes each day of our lives, every one a pilgrimage into the inchoate, the unprecedented, the not~yet~encountered. There are two passages I'd like to share. First, "All things are known, but most things are forgotten. It takes a special magic to remember them." And this one, "To each his entrance to the realm. To each his gate." 

There is, indeed, a special magic that allows us to remember what our souls already know. And there can never be a one~door~fits~all entrance into that realm where such magic speaks. Our gateways are our own, growing from the substance of our lives. 

Both Whitman and Holdstock remind us that it is through willingly immersing ourselves in what life brings our way that we become more ourselves and find a richness of experience that we'll never get through playing it safe. Whatever life brings our way, it offers an opportunity to choose our response. And in choosing, we not only can grow and deepen ourselves, but learn to interact wisely with life itself. In allowing life to change us, we grow better able to shift the life around us for the greater good. 

And here we stand, as always, at the next threshold on our path. We have our wisdom and our guidebooks, living things that must be engaged and allowed to grow and deepen as we grow and deepen ourselves. 

So pull on those cargo pants and bush jacket, many~pocketed to hold all your accumulated knowledge and the maps of others that may~~or may not~~inform your journey. Strap on that pith helmet, letting its gentle weight awaken the wisdom gathered throughout a lifetime. 

And step forward now into that undream'd of and inaccessible land, as the avid adventurer you know you can be and already are in the depths of your soul. 

I shall meet you there!

Leia

For the full text of Whitman's poem, click here. 

And if you like your poems sung by beautiful voices, click here: 

This Human Life...An Archeological Dig

I gave my husband two surprise gifts for his birthday this year. The one I though would be a shoo-in for the Simple But Great Gift Award was a complete disappointment, while the other sprinted off with the prize without even breaking a sweat.  

We'd both been quite taken by videos of k.d. lang's live renditions of the Cohen classic Hallelujah. Without an audience to propel her into true brilliance, however, the CD studio version was stilted, lacking the passion befitting an ode to the glory and the heartbreak of life. 

The second gift, a DVD box set of all 110 episodes of Northern Exposure has been a different and thoroughly engaging experience. Quirky, evocative, funny, well-written with ultimately endearing characters, each episode holds at least one wise pearl. 

Like this one in season three, disc 2: "There's a dark side to each and every human soul," muses free-wheeling, philosophizing disc jokey Chris Stevens. "We wanna be Obi-Wan Kenobi, and for the most part we are, but there's a little Darth Vadar in all of us." 

Psychology has been saying the same thing for decades. We might prefer to hold a view of ourselves as virtuous, but the human psyche is profoundly textured, holding depths, inconsistencies, and impulses that defy our best whitewashing efforts. All of life is a mix of darkness and light, and we humans are no exception. While many of us celebrate the ultimate goodness lying at our core, there's just no denying that there's also a lot of static that can get in its way. Darth Vadar lives in us as well. 

While Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung gave us many gifts, one of the most important was his elucidations on the concept of the Shadow, the repository within the psyche for those traits we deny or repress, preferring not to acknowledge them even to ourselves. Jung saw it as counterpoint to the Persona, which is the face we present to the world, full of qualities we feel are acceptable. The Persona need not be a lie. It's just not the whole story. To paraphrase Walt Whitman, we are large, we contain multitudes. 

The Shadow is simply a part of us. The trick is to become acquainted with it, to know it as well as we can, to make it our own. Otherwise it exerts its influence from the sidelines, or rather from the depths of our unconscious. The Shadow is not evil, or not necessarily so. “Everyone carries a Shadow," Jung wrote, "and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.” 

But how do we come to better know this part of us? By reflection, by looking deeply into our motivations or any responses that are in opposition to what we truly believe, and by exploring reactions that are out of proportion to the situation at hand. In other words, by living as consciously as possible, by scratching the surface of how we'd like ourselves to be, in order to discover who we really are in all our human complexity and contradiction. It's like an archeological dig. Our current responses and behaviors are the present-day civilization, but as we excavate a few layers down we find their causes, either in the distant past or something more current clamoring for our attention. 

If, for example, I get hurt or furious about something relatively minor, I stop to explore that reaction. Is the current situation similar to something from my past that's in need of healing? Are my present needs not being met and, if so, how can I rectify this? Perhaps I have a less-than story I'm carrying or, conversely, an exaggerated sense of entitlement. Whatever answers come to me, I simply feel my way forward, following the breadcrumbs and trusting the goodness at my core to lead me to a fuller truth. 

As we bring the light of our awareness to all our many parts, they become less dense, more known, and better integrated. We grow more whole, exchanging a cut-out, cartoon version of ourselves for something livelier, more authentic. True. 

"This ain't no either-or proposition," muses Chris Stevens, "cuz we're talking about dialectics, the good and the bad merging into us. Ya know, you can run, but you can't hide...Face the darkness. Stare it down and own it. It's like brother Nietzsche says, being human's a complicated gig. So give that old dark night of the soul a hug, and howl the eternal "Yes!' " 

Which brings us back to Hallelujah, an eternal "Yes!" song if ever there was one. If you're unfamiliar with it, you can click on the link below or google the video from the Juno awards, and let lang's voice carry you to the final crescendo in this ode to life's glory and its heartbreak. 

Our hallelujah moments are often gloriously ecstatic. And yet they can also be heartbreakingly painful, reflected in Cohen's phrase of the "broken hallelujah." Such is this mixed bag of a life we've been given. 

To say "Yes!" to life means saying "Yes!" to it all. If we practice doing so now, we'll have the best chance of arriving at our last breath whole and grateful for the life gifted us. Our final exhale then will be likely to carry with it a simple, a beautiful, and a heartfelt hallelujah. 

And streaming from me to you in this moment...Hallelujah!

Leia

Here are some links for you...

You can find the musings of Chris Stevens by clicking here.

You can find what is arguably the best of Hallelujah renditions, by k.d. lang at the Juno awards, by clicking here.

Deep Heart

I don't know how I wound up with the book in the first place. This is not an unusual occurrence. I search the online catalog, with this leading to that until a novel I never heard of appears on the screen, piques my interest, is ordered...and promptly forgotten. Weeks later, I get a notice from my local library that a book I have no memory of requesting is ready for pickup. 

It's a fun process, actually. Sometimes the book is a delightful surprise. Other times it's less than I had apparently hoped for when I ordered it six weeks earlier. Among The Beasts & The Briars by Ashley Poston falls into the latter category. It's not that it's a bad book. In fact, it's sweet, goodhearted YA fantasy fiction, and has held my interest sufficiently to keep me reading. But it lacked something. Depth? Complexity? Gems of wisdom? 

Until the bottom of page 273 when Petra explains to Cerys the Vorynian concept of deep heart. "You trekked among the beasts and the briars," she tells her, "and the deep heart led you all the way to Voryn," a fabled city deep in the Wildwood, just as the dark magic of those Woods intensified. Petra shares that deep heart is "that feeling inside you, the part that leads you, draws you forward—toward some great purpose." And that concept is applicable even in a world in which princes do not become foxes, and forests are not teeming with a menacing evil. 

I have been a psychotherapist and spiritual companion for well over four decades now, a career that has gifted me a ringside seat in the transformation arena. I have had the honor of witnessing hundreds of people as they access the deep heart Petra describes. Perhaps a sudden health or relationship issue has them reeling, or it could be a deadening depression that clamors for attention. Their life might be in a shambles. Or perhaps a gentle but insistent urging arrives for something different, something more, something heretofore unknown. 

Sitting hour after hour with such courageous souls continually bolsters my own commitment to nurturing a living, breathing, intimate relationship with my own deep heart, that part of me that calls me to a greater and fuller vibrancy. I know that my clients and I are not alone in this or any more special than are you. Regardless of the particulars of our lives, we each have a deep heart, and an ability to listen for its guidance, to ascertain its messages, and to follow as it leads us forward. 

It may not be easy~~okay, often it is not~~but deep heart is the navigating force that helps us find the pathway, or perhaps supports us as we create a path where none existed before. I prefer the latter sentiment. As poet Antonio Machado put it, "The path is made by walking." 

Deep heart is part of our internal wiring, the guiding force that helps us create the path as we walk it. And yet it is rather mysterious, and cannot be fully understood or explained, though many have tried. We may see it as having its origin in our genetic past, being a subtler, more developed form of mammalian instinct. We might call it intuition or Wise Mind. Or perhaps we identify it as the soul's urging or the still small voice of God. 

But no matter our personal theories, the trick is to listen for that guiding voice and follow its lead. And to do that best, we need an inner stillness, which can be challenging to cultivate in the busyness of modern life. And yet we all know how to do this, don't we? We know the practices that allow us to intuit our best next step. 

The possibilities are as varied as we are. For some, it's dropping into the stillness of meditation, prayer or conscious breathing. Physical activity might get us there~~jogging, cycling, hard physical labor, or any other activity that calms the mind and allows deep heart to whisper its wisdom. Perhaps artwork is our best avenue, or talking with a trusted companion. Or a mix of these...or some way uniquely our own. 

And after the listening comes the deciphering. We must figure out what that guidance means within our own lives and how best to enact its messages, often not an easy task. And then we need to place one foot before the other as we make that pathway a reality. 

But there is another part of Petra's definition of deep heart. She tells us that this part of us draws us "toward some great purpose." What is that great purpose? True, most of us won't be saving a fabled city from an ancient evil. Our purpose will likely be much subtler. And to find it, we too must trek through our beasts and our briars. These are our individual challenges, ones that stem from our biology, personal histories, or cultural influences. And we trek through them because it is what life asks of us. Our path moves us through those beasts and those briars to become who we alone can become, to be who only we can be. That is our great purpose, to become our true and authentic selves. 

I wish you happy trekking, my friend. May your beasts ultimately be kind and may your briars bloom with roses galore.

🌹🌹🌹...and many more!

Leia

Biomimicry

"We live in a competent universe," writes Janine Benyus, "we are a part of a brilliant planet, and we are surrounded by genius." Biomimicry is the term she coined as the title of her 1997 book dedicated to encouraging a "conscious emulation of life's genius." 

Her Biomimicry Institute describes its mission as helping "to solve humanity's biggest challenges through the adoption of biomimicry (nature~inspired innovation) in education, culture, and industry," which includes "the invention of healthier, more sustainable technologies." 

Central to this work is rethinking one long~accepted view of life as based on competition. In an interview with Krista Tippett, she reminds us that the term "survival of the fittest" didn't originate with Charles Darwin, but with British philosopher and sociologist Herbert Spencer. 

Benyus tells us that Darwin initially spoke of "survival of the fit," and I so love the shift that comes from dropping that superlative suffix. Just three little letters~~e, s, and t~~that together imply big things, like hierarchy, rivalry, victory over another, even a fight to the death. Survival of the fit loses that aggressive edge and stresses something else entirely. 

Fit is defined as "in good health," and "of a suitable quality, standard, or type to meet the required purpose." What strikes me about the latter definition is its implication that what is deemed fit must be flexible, changing as conditions alter. Benyus suggests it can also imply "coming back to fittedness," growing new behaviors when former ones no longer sync with current realities. 

The first definition also has something to give us. On every measure—immune system response, cognitive acuity, relationship satisfaction, psychological wellbeing—science is quite clear on the qualities that promote good health. Interconnectedness. Kindness. Nurture. Love. Darwin himself argued that sympathy, which today might be called compassion or altruism, is an important ingredient of natural selection, and referred to it as "the almost ever~present instinct." 

"Those communities," he writes, "which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members, would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring." And as these sympathies become "more tender and more widely diffused...they extend to all sentient beings." 

Charles Darwin speaking of extending compassion to all sentient beings? Darwin a Buddhist? Who knew?!! Sounds more like the Dalai Lama, who continues to maintain that human nature is essentially good, despite the death of over a million Tibetans from Chinese aggression. 

Darwin was not a Buddhist. Nor was he an atheist, having written that "agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind." Yet his ideas on the importance of empathy put him more in sync with many faith traditions than we have been led to believe. Science and spirituality not in stark opposition but as partners, each trying in its own way to understand this thing called life. It does my heart good. 

As does a quote from novelist Téa Obreht I recently heard in the sweet German film Faraway, now on Netflix. "Come on," Obreht writes, "is your heart a sponge or a fist?" I love everything about that quote. Its compelling tail end, of course, but the gentle, even friendly, nudging of those first two words makes me smile, though when written as a contraction it makes my smile broader. 

C'mon indicates that, really, we already know this. We do, don't we? We know that kindness feels better than meanness, that cooperation gives us better long~term outcomes than struggle, that love can ultimately be a more powerful force than anger or hate or greed. To put it another way, we know that having hearts that are more like a sponges than fists promotes optimal fitness. 

The choice is ours. We can keep our hearts tightly closed, ever ready to aggress, or we can promote better fittedness, softening to the pain and joy of the world. Benyus, medical researchers, the Dalai Lama, Charles Darwin, and Jesus to name but a few, would encourage the latter. 

Another quote came to me recently, this one from poet Lucille Clifton. "In the bigger scheme of things," she writes, "the universe is not asking us to do something, the universe is asking us to be something. And that's a whole different thing." 

So what is the universe asking us to be? Perhaps true to our essence, both individually and as a species. We are homo sapiens. Humans who are supposed to be wise, discerning, intelligent, and knowing, which are all meanings from sapien's Latin root sapientia. 

Our species name asks us to not close our hearts into fists of aggression, meanness or even simple disregard, but to open them to wisdom and to love, consciously emulating life's genius, recognizing that we are connected one to another and acting out of that recognition. We are asked to let our sympathies become more tender and more widely diffused until they extend to all sentient beings. 

Surely something to aim for, no? And that process begins in each moment, with each one of us and amid the individual conditions of the lives we lead. C'mon, my friend, you know it's true. Let's do this.

💖

Leia

Subsistence Spirituality

I woke to rainbows on my ceiling. After a luscious series of spring snows, the sun shone once more, streaming through the many~faceted prism that hangs from a beaded string in the high window of our bedroom. A beautiful way to start the morning, followed by a walk out of town, up to a place encircled by a ring of snow~covered mountains. I returned home sated with the wild beauty of this place. 

I certainly love moments of ecstatic spirituality, experiences that pull me into something more. These days, though, it is the humble gifts of the commonplace that call me, an ever~available, albeit quieter, route to that something more. Chopping vegetables for soup. Hanging clothes on the line. Receiving the birdsong that streams through a window open to the cool morning air. Typing these words for you to read. Or waking to rainbows on my ceiling. 

All such moments can be infused with significance. All already are significant, despite the tendency of our human minds to pass them by in favor of the novel. Life flows through all of them, an unending stream that animates us as it animates all things. 

Being attuned to these ordinary gifts becomes more important when life is difficult. And no matter who we are, life will get difficult. We will be jettisoned from the familiar, the safe, the life~as~usual into a place we'd rather not be, a place we feel ill~equipped to manage. 

The Bible is replete with such wilderness experiences, times when hapless souls not all that different from ourselves lose their bearings and wander, seemingly alone, as they try to figure out what the heck happened to the lives they once knew. And ecstasy? Well, there's not a whole lotta that going around when the pieces of a former self lie in tatters on the ground. 

Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor writes of the need for a different kind of spirituality for times such as these, one “lean enough to live in the wilderness as long as necessary.” In an interview with Krista Tippett, she refers to this as a subsistence spirituality. 

While something in me resists that phrase, given its connotation of lack and hanging on by one's fingernails, I realize those reservations reflect my discomfort with the whole notion. Like I said, I prefer spirituality of the euphoric variety, and I want it robust. As Taylor notes, though, such a spirituality will "lose weight pretty quickly" in the starkness of a desert terrain. 

Wilderness has a way of paring down the fat, of stripping us of all we think we know, of the belief that we can live out our preferences. Such times, Taylor says, "have increased my reverence...(and) reminded me how small and temporary and woundable I and all my fellows are." Both the natural and metaphoric wilderness offer, in Taylor's words, "a feel of your true size," but the figurative kind asks us to, "find some way to open (our) arms to what's happening instead of insisting that it shouldn't be." 

Subsistence spirituality also encourages us to anchor ourselves in the small moments of life. Chopping vegetables for soup. Hanging clothes on the line. Receiving the birdsong that streams through a window open to the cool morning air. Typing these words for you to read. 

I drift back again to waking this morning to rainbows on my ceiling. I turn my head to meet my husband's gentle, smiling eyes. Medical issues have aged him so these past 8 months, that frailty worsened by the trauma of it all. He has lost much of his former identity, and has not yet moved fully into a new version of himself. And yet, his eyes hold mine as they always have. 

Love flows toward me as it always has. And my love flows back. I open to the gift of him and see through the recent changes to the man he has always been and is still. I move into his arms, rainbows on the ceiling above us, rainbows shining between us, rainbows holding us steady in this newest version of our long life together. 

Simple pleasures, indeed. I am so grateful.

With love,

Leia

Finding Stillness

 My walk this morning has been delayed. Rather than arriving at the lake path as the sun lights up the clouds from its position just below the eastern rim of my world, it is nearly halfway to its zenith now as I step onto the more rugged southern trail. A few minutes later, though, I realize I don't feel like taking my usual fast-paced exercise walk. My life has been supercharged of late, both busy-busy and emotionally intense. I recognize that I need something else today. I need stillness. 

I slow my pace and search the edges of the path for the perfect spot. I find it, an elevation offering an unobstructed view of the lake below and the snow-capped mountains to the north and west. I step off the dirt track, walk the few yards up the incline, and sit atop last summer's dried grass, flattened to the ground by wind, snow and wildlife. The water below is calm, its surface peppered in places by dark specks I know to be ducks recently returned from their winter homes. 

Yet as serene as this view is, I need more. I stretch out on my back and look up into a sky much more deeply hued than those of my east coast childhood. That sky-blue crayon in my box of 64 doesn't even come close. The immensity of what that blue holds, the infinity that stretches out within and beyond Wendell Berry's "day-blind stars", soothes me. I become as calm and as unruffled as the lake below, undisturbed by the metaphoric ducks of occasional thoughts that rise and fall like my breath. 

Soon, though, my eyes close. Birds twitter in the bushes to my left, and the smell of vibrant life surrounds me. I breathe deeply of the clean mountain air, and on my exhale I imagine releasing that breath into the earth beneath me. Stillness descends. I have come home. 

Modern life can be crazy busy, so busy that we often lose ourselves in attempts to respond to its many demands. How very important it is, then, to take time—to make time—to still ourselves and come home to what is. Psychologist and meditation teacher Tara Brach refers to such times as sacred pauses, temporary disengagements from our usual goal-driven lives. Luckily we don't need to be surrounded by mountain vistas to pause in this way. 

As I type these words to you now, I still my fingers for a few seconds, recognize my shoulders have become tight, allow them to relax. Through the window, I see prayer flags dancing in the strong westerly wind, and hear its rushing sound. And when this paragraph is complete, you can pause in your own world, noticing what comes. Perhaps its the way light falls onto the floor, or a sound, or the feel of your body in your seat, or the quality of emotion that fills you. You might choose to pause now and open to what is. 

Brach identifies this sacred pause as one wing of Radical Acceptance, the title of her 2003 classic that applies Buddhist philosophy to modern life. The other wing is that of opening the heart and holding with compassion our experience, simply as it is. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that this human life is not all beautiful mountain vistas and clear skies. It includes loss and fear and anger and a host of other intensities. If we want to live fully, then finding a way to feel all of it and hold it with love is our task. 

Wendell Berry's poem, The Peace of Wild Things, which includes the day-blind stars phrase referenced above, ends with this line: "I rest in the grace of the world, and am free." I rested in that grace on this morning's walk. I rest in it now. 

 No matter the challenges that come with this day, I send wishes that you will remember that the grace of the world remains, that stars continue to spin in the vastness of space, and that our small lives are held within a whole so much greater than our minds can comprehend. 

And resting in that knowledge, may we all be soothed.

💜

Leia

Beads, Beads, And More Beads!

I've been thinking about jewelry~making lately. Not silversmithing, metal clay or fused~glass jewelry. Nothing that requires kilns or torches, drills or bits, stamps or blades. No goggles or fire extinguishers for this gal. The kind of jewelry design that calls me is simple beading, the quiet process of choosing one gorgeous stone after another and meditatively stringing them together to create a thing of beauty. 

However, my bead~stringing these days is of the metaphoric kind. I am not crafting jewelry to wear at neck or wrist. My creation is of a different nature entirely: a book that will be coming into the world in less than three weeks. And yet, the analogy not only works, but helps move me into a place of calm when I can't imagine my way through the sheer number of tasks and the dwindling time remaining to accomplish them. 

While writing a quality book is no easy thing, publishing that book is of another magnitude entirely. And while this process has been underway for many months, things have intensified now as the home stretch has been entered. In the last two weeks alone, the manuscript has been uploaded, formatting decisions made, several promotional videos posted on social media, an Amazon Author Page designed, and the book sent to a generous cadre of early readers. And in the next few days, additional decisions must be made, categories and keywords settled upon, library events planned, a launch party advertised and hosted, and much more. 

And of course, while all this is going on, life doesn't just stand still. Food needs to be bought and cooked, laundry done, relationships nurtured, and my body untethered from my desk chair at regular intervals to be taken out into the fresh air to gaze at vistas that keep perspective intact and spirit enlivened. 

Each one of these things is important and valued. Each is a bead, a precious gem waiting to be joined with others in a pleasing way. And to best do that, I need to inhabit a meditative space, focusing attentively on the particular gem before me while never losing awareness of the whole. 

When I become overwhelmed, I am swept out of trust and deposited smack dab into fear. I become frantic and begin to weave stories of impossibility. That is my cue to come back to center. To breathe. To trust there is time enough to do what needs doing. In other words, it is my reminder to focus on beadwork. When I do, it all becomes much simpler, much saner. I need only choose the next task from those laid out before me, give that bead all my attention, and string it with care. 

Of course, this kind of mindfulness is central to many spiritual traditions, most notably Buddhism. Thom Barnett writes of having received the following instruction from a monk many years ago: "Do one thing at a time, as beautifully as possible." So simple. So grounding. So kind. In the final days before the March 23rd publication of Enchanted, A Tale Of Remembrance, I will try my very best to do exactly that. And the bead~stringing metaphor works well for me, offering a visual that engages as it reminds. 

The stones are arrayed before me, each one integral to the evolving whole. I sense which is next in the overall design, reach out, take it in my hand. I bring myself wholly to it, do as it asks. I then add it to the others on the string, hear them speak to one another. Only then do I seek the next bead. 

This morning has been gem~filled. A walk at dawn was followed by the beads of meditation and breakfast. Stretching out with my husband on the couch for a few minutes came next. Then I reviewed my master to~do list, emailed early readers, and began this column. 

The inner workings of psyche and soul are beads as well. When anticipatory anxiety reared its head, I was able to recognize it as another bead and attend to it rather than brush it away. Heart and soul in sync again, I then planned my next video. 

I don't know what your own beads look like. I cannot see them spread out before you or know what you are creating from them. And yet I do know that attending to one stone at a time, discovering the beauty it holds, and finding a pleasing way to add it to your own creation is the way to go. 

It is, after all, the best and kindest way to create a necklace, a book, a home, a viable work experience, and a loving relationship. In other words, it's an excellent way to create a rich and vibrant human life. Happy and beautiful bead~stringing, my friend.

💜

Leia

Masterpiece In The Making

Life can be hard. If we're fortunate, our hard is a manageable, garden~variety sort of hard. However, some of us have challenges that rise above the ordinary. Some of us have challenges that threaten to break us apart. No matter the quality of your own particular difficulties, you will find food for thought and likely much, much more in a documentary that landed on Netflix last month. 

Titled Mission: Joy, Finding Happiness In Troubled Times, it is a discussion between the Dalai Lama and the late Desmond Tutu, dear friends who have each known hard, both personally and as spiritual leaders charged with walking their followers through turbulent waters. And yet, despite the weighty subject matter that references the horrors of the apartheid era in South Africa and the attempted decimation of the Tibetan culture by the Chinese government, this is not a somber film. 

Far from it. These two men are hilarious, giggling frequently, delighting in one another's company, and overflowing with compassion and a palpable joy. Theirs is a discussion about how we, too, might find a way to embody these qualities more consistently in our own lives. When individuals with such impressive resumés speak of transmuting hardship, we really oughta listen. 

This is no Hallmark, Pollyannaish pap. Their insights are born of suffering, both witnessed and personally experienced. They acknowledge that turning the negative into something life~affirming is no easy task. And yet they assure us we are capable of doing precisely that. "It's how we are made," says Tutu. "We're wired to be compassionate...to be caring for the other." 

The Dalai Lama seconds that sentiment in his halting English. "Basic human nature is goodness," and he encourages us to see that fact clearly. "There are very sad things, very negative things, but...there are much more positive things." Tutu agrees. Referencing Doctors Without Borders as a prime example of those who give selflessly, Tutu asserts that "people just give and give, because that is actually who we really are...We are made for goodness." 

I particularly love this line of Tutu's. "When I have some anguish in my life, what keeps me going is that I am a prisoner of hope." And yet this hope "is not something that just comes readymade from heaven," but is hard~won through diligent practice. "It's like muscles," he continues, "that have to be exercised in order for them to get the right tone and to be strengthened." The Dalai Lama agrees, saying "Growth...takes time, minute by minute, day by day, month by month, decade by decade." 

Thupten Jinpa, the Dalai Lama's longtime translator, has some key moments in the film as well. "Every single human being is exactly the same," he states, "vulnerable to pain, fear, unhappiness, and aspiring to be happy, to seek connection, to find meaning, to find love. That is the fundamental human condition, and compassion speaks to that reality of who we are...The key to joy is to get in touch with your own natural compassion and to live from there, to find a way to live from there." 

So as we live lives filled with challenges within a society that deeply struggles, let us continue the work of these two marvelous examples of what human beings can be. Let us be prisoners of hope ourselves. 

But what exactly does it mean to be a prisoner of hope? For me, it means to let hope claim us and lead us, to choose again and again to seek the very real good that exist despite the darkness, to live from that good and for that good, and to let it flow within our own lives. It means to remember that, despite heartaches and horrors, the apparatus for compassion and joy lives within us. And it means to commit to choosing to live more consistently from that place. 

It means, too, that we must also direct this hope inward, being kind to ourselves and never losing sight of our potential, even as we miss the mark repeatedly. "You are made for perfection," Tutu assures us. "You are not yet perfect. You are a masterpiece in the making." 

The masterpiece~in~the~making that is me sends love and gratitude to the masterpiece~in~the~making that is you. Thank you for all that you do and all that you are. Thank you for the times you get it right, and for the times you fail and choose to try again. Thank you, thank you, thank you so! 

💜 

Leia  

Here's the link to Mission: Joy

The Art of Walking

I stand quietly, bundled against the cold, wind on my face, snow~clad mountains in the distance. The words of Collette Baron~Reid that had jumped off the page earlier in the day come back to me now. "See everything as sacred, all of life as a meditation, and every action a prayer of devotion." To live this truth more consistently is my intention as I take my first steps into the labyrinth. 

I am on solo retreat at Joyful Journey Hot Springs in celebration of the Winter Solstice, a favorite time of my year given its invitation to be still and reflect. Cultures throughout the world and across time have found in this dark season of the year encouragement to turn inward. The labyrinth, of course, is a perfect metaphor for this process, the pressures of daily life receding as our feet find their circuitous route home. The one at Joyful Journey is modeled on the labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral, created in the 13th Century. These are not mazes designed to trick one up, but formal structures for walking meditation consisting of a single continuous course to center and back out again. 

The path I walk now begins as a straight shot to the stone Angel at the labyrinth's heart, but soon turns to the left. Still, the first few twists and turns of the stone~lined pathway seem to bring me closer to her...until suddenly I find myself carried to the structure's outermost edge. And a truth comes to my inner ear. 

"Don't reach ahead of yourself. Negotiate the segment of path under your feet. Keep your focus on the next right step as you breathe here and now with what is." 

So that is what I do. As I continue step by step and breath by breath, the stone Angel is sometimes directly before me. At other times, I can see her only in my peripheral vision or catch glimpses of her if I turn my head. Often, though, she is behind me and hidden from view. Yet I know she is there. And another truth drops in. 

"Do not mistake what you see with your eyes for what is true. She is there whether you can see her or not. And so, too, with the Divine, which is always and ever present." 

My feet continue to carry me forward, no matter the direction I face. And another piece of wisdom arrives. 

 "The path leads always to center. Do not fret, dear one. Even when it seems you are moving away from your heart's desire, your feet can move nowhere but toward it."

That last insight is quite helpful. Often it feels like I've gone astray. I can feel stalled in my ability to love more purely, to trust fully, to behave kindly. And sometimes, of course, it feels like I'm regressing or learning the same dang lesson over and over again. But I am reminded now that there are no detours. All is part of the path, and putting one foot in front of the other in the best way I can is all that is asked of me. I am invited to leave my mistakes behind and start anew with each step. 

Finally, I arrive at the Angel. Standing within a circle of stones and planted firmly upon the Earth, her gaze is on the blue sky and the vast sweep of the cosmos above. Another lesson.

"Stay grounded in this life, while never forgetting to behold with awe that which lies beyond." 

I stand at the labyrinth's still point for several minutes as I access my own. I come back to my intention for this walk, to see all of life as meditation, a labyrinth whose every twist and turn exists amid a sacred whole. I let the truth wash over me that every thought and each action can be a sacred prayer of devotion within a hallowed fullness. Another message arrives. 

"Just as this center point remained no matter the direction you faced, you too have a center point that endures. It is the spark of the Divine within you, present even as you walk toward it. The Divine is your here~and~now companion AND the endpoint of your journey." 

As I begin my walk from the center back out again, I reflect on all of this. These insights are not new, but the labyrinth has given me an embodied experience of them, one I hope will give them greater staying power. And yet I know I will forget many times. I will not live every moment as meditation. My actions will not always be prayers of devotion. I will forget the sacredness at the core of it all. And yet, as my feet carry me out of the labyrinth, I feel up for the challenge of the attempt. 

In my client work last week, forgiveness arose as a theme for many people, expressed within the unique details of their individual lives. In the new year that has now claim us as its own, may we forgive ourselves and others for the times we stumble upon the path as we learn the art of walking. In the labyrinths of our individual journeys, those sacred pilgrimages of the soul, may we keep our focus on the step before us. May we trust the path, no matter how a given segment might look or feel. And grounded in the here, may we feel the presence of the Infinite, ever and always. 

 Much love, 

 Leia