Flow

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photo by David Orias

photo by David Orias

I am beginning this year not with resolutions but a theme.

As a Christmas gift, my daughter-in-law, Linnea, enrolled me in an online class called One Little Word. You choose a word that represents something you want to invite into your life and then receive monthly prompts and tools throughout the year that will enhance the concept’s influence on you.

It’s one of those why-didn’t-I- think-of-that ideas. The leader, a woman named Ali Edwards, must be doing very well with it, and deservedly so.

Choosing a word can be a complicated process. When the family was all together in Linnea and Jesse’s new Vermont home over the holidays, Linnea told us how she came up with her word for the year. She set out certain criteria, looked at lots and lots of words, discarding them all, and then suddenly the right one appeared.

Linnea thrives on research. I do not, so I decided not to look for a word until I was good and ready. But once the mind gets something in its head, so to speak, it’s hard to let go.

A day or so after Christmas, when I was meditating and trying not to think of anything at all, words kept floating to the surface. Purpose. Steady. Desire. Finish. And one by one I dunked them down under. They kept coming and I kept letting them go because they weren’t right and I didn’t want to be thinking.

And then the word flow popped up like a bubble and I felt the warm happy in my diaphragm that I’ve come to associate with rightness. I let the word go and finished my meditation but I knew I wouldn’t have to research further.

Other words I’d thought of were should words. I should have a stronger sense of purpose. I should finish what I have started. I should be steadfast, assert my own desires more strongly. Flow, by contrast, represents both my deepest desires and my strengths—my flexibility, adaptability, and desire for harmony and movement. Flow is not only about me as an individual but also about the rhythms in family, community, and life itself.

As a writer I like that it’s both noun and verb, one syllable, and sounds like what it represents.

The cryptic online definitions of flow are good signposts. Consider the rich images of the verb:

  1. Move freely from place to place
  2. Move in one mass
  3. Circulate in body
  4. Be said fluently
  5. Be available in quantity
  6. Be experienced intensely
  7. Emanate as result
  8. Hang loosely
  9. Move toward land (tides)
  10. Change shape under pressure

All of these represent how I want to be and what I want to experience. Only one definition, in the noun form, struck me as totally unnecessary for my life right now: menstrual blood.

A theme song is already running through my head: My Life Flows on in Endless Song.

Healing back pain

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healing-back-pain-mind-body-connection-john-e-sarno-book-cover-artSeveral years ago a family member was suffering from debilitating pain in her back and other parts of her body that had built up for months, with no apparent cause or cure. In the course of researching what might be helpful to her, my husband and I came across Dr. John Sarno’s book Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection. Eventually the philosophy and instructions in that book became an important part of her healing so we’ve been recommending the book to other people, too. We’ve bought a number of copies and given them away or loaned them out. Right now we don’t have a single copy in the house.

Which is unfortunate because I really need it right now. I have been dealing with my own back pain of unknown etiology, as the physicians would say, for the past month.

Here is what I have remembered from the book.

1. Sarno says that back pain and many other physical maladies are psychogenic. Not psychosomatic—“all in your head”; the pain and physical symptoms are very real. But they originate in the psyche. The body becomes the repository of stress and trauma that the mind refuses to acknowledge. When it becomes too much, the body cries out in pain and protest and develops a real malady as a distraction from the subtle pains of the unconscious. “I’m hurting!” is the message, and we assume the hurt is physical—because it is at that moment. But it doesn’t start there, although the body often uses a physical incident or accident or even injury as an excuse to bring the pain to the surface.

2. Psychogenic symptoms tend to come on suddenly, go on a long time or recur mysteriously, and seem disproportionate to any physical trauma. They often move around to different parts of the back or body. They are not continuous, often showing up after you exercise, for example, rather than during the exercise itself.

3. The way to deal with such pain is to bring all our subconscious mental/emotional pain and stresses to awareness. It’s not quite that simple, but almost. Our psychic pain doesn’t even have to be resolved—only acknowledged. And then we can talk to our body pain, telling the aching back, in effect, “There, there. I know that I’ve been dealing with a lot in my life lately—there’s this and this and this that I know of and probably a lot more. I promise to keep these things in my conscious mind and deal with them there. You don’t have to carry them for me.” This acknowledgement—and not any kind of physical treatment, no stretching or relaxation or special exercise—is the key to healing.

That is as far as my memory of the book’s instruction went. So I mined my unconscious for weeks, dredging up all the reasons that my back might have begun twingeing early in November and then seized up seriously after Thanksgiving in painful spasms that came and went so unpredictably that I was on constant alert.

I found plenty of reasons that my psyche could have been generating this pain, and they were all issues I thought I could deal with. But the more I talked to my back, the worse it got. And nothing else helped, either. Not rest, not exercise, not ice, not heat, not meds, not herbals, not, not not. My back was becoming a mass of (k)nots, one gigantic “No!” Every time something seemed to make it feel better, a spasm would come on and I would feel utterly defeated. I felt like I was coming apart in the middle.

I needed help. This past week I scheduled two sessions over three days with my daughter, who lives a few hours away. She is a Feldenkrais practitioner and she has always been able to work miracles with my body. I wasn’t sure she could help me with this, and I knew both of us would be disappointed if these sessions didn’t help. But, God be praised, they seem to have set me on the path to healing, for a combination of reasons.

First of all, she was able to untie the knots that my body had tied around the pain, all up and down my torso, front and back. Until much of the physical tension that had become embedded from a month of pain and frustration—let alone what might have brought on the pain in the first place—was released, nothing could help. This is why techniques like Feldenkrais are crucial in healing back pain. Massage or chiropractic may serve similar purposes.

While she was gently probing my body, Joanna probed my psyche as well with gentle questions, bringing me to a deeper awareness of the causes for my psychic tension as well as my internal resources for healing. This literal joining of the mind and body was astounding, nothing less than miraculous. I was so proud of my wise and gifted daughter. Few healers possess such a combination of skills.

Finally, she helped me remember a key instruction of the book, one I’d forgotten: Don’t give in to the pain. This is important because, although the pain truly hurts, it doesn’t hurt you. That is, the pain does not mean that you are injuring yourself further.

I stood up from her table feeling assembled in an entirely different way but still afraid that the pain would come back. She helped me get over that fear, not by denying that it would return but by finding a different way of meeting it when it did. She helped me summon my inner strength, my inner athlete, the one who could say, “Bring it on! What’s the worst you can do? A few seconds of torture and that’s it!” She encouraged me to breathe through the pain. It reminded me a lot of Lamaze instructions on labor pains. Huff and puff your way through!

I’ve been practicing these instructions for the past two days and they are working. The pain did come back (when I got into the car, when I stood up, when I went up steps, yada yada) and I huffed through it and went right on doing what I was doing. And it didn’t last.

Then I walked two miles late yesterday afternoon, feeling fine, but afterward I hurt a lot. This was a familiar pattern. This time, however, I tried not to let the pain feel like a defeat. I breathed through it. I went to bed early and slept long. This morning I am fine, proof that, whatever last night’s pain represented, no harm was done. I believe I am on my way to healing.

And I just bought the Kindle version of Sarno’s book so I’ll always have it. Why didn’t I think of that before? Duh.

The Civil War and climate change

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MV5BMTQzNzczMDUyNV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNjM2ODEzOA@@._V1._SY317_CR0,0,214,317_I want to see the movie Lincoln so I read the book first. The movie is based in part on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s 2005 Team of Rivals—a biography not only of Lincoln but also his brilliant, contentious cabinet.

I know most of my favorite scenes won’t make it into the movie because the film is about a very small slice of Lincoln’s story, his efforts to get the 13th Amendment passed, abolishing slavery. I can’t wait to see two of my favorite actors—Daniel Day Lewis and David Strathairn—bring Lincoln and his secretary of state, William H. Seward, to life. But the movie should make you want to read Goodwin’s book. It is a great read and a revelation of the dynamics at play in that fateful time in our nation’s history.

There are many resonances with today. We could really use a Lincoln just now—a wise, canny, principled reconciler; a master at maneuvering the rift between factions and stitching them together; a genius of political timing; a big-hearted changer of minds. I know President Obama loves Goodwin’s book and reading it gave me a better idea of what Obama is trying to do. But, alas, there will never be another Lincoln. For one thing, I don’t think Obama has a great sense of humor. He takes himself very seriously. A good dose of Lyndon Johnson’s arm-twisting, storytelling skills would help.

In fact, Lincoln seems like an amalgam of the best qualities of some 20th Century presidents: FDR’s ability to rise to the occasion, LBJ’s political skills, Jimmy Carter’s generous spirit, Bill Clinton’s charm, Barack Obama’s intellect. Notice I’ve matched the first Republican president up with more recent Democrats. Goodwin agrees that if Lincoln were alive today he would be a Democrat. The parties have totally flipped. But Republicans have every reason to be proud of Lincoln.

One thing that has always bothered me about Lincoln is how such a great humanitarian could have presided over the slaughter of more Americans than have died in all wars before or since, combined. Okay, I’m a pacifist and I don’t believe in war at all, but even by the measure of “just” war, the Civil War was a disaster of disproportionate brutality.

Clearly, Lincoln believed he had no choice. I am not in a position to judge that. It seemed like all parties were marching in their own, long-since-laid tracks to confrontation. But I was struck in this reading by the sense that Lincoln made of it all as the war was drawing to a close.

In his Second Inaugural address, Goodwin points out, “The president suggested that God had given ‘to both North and South, this terrible war’ as a punishment for their shared sin of slavery.”

Saying God punishes people through natural disasters is one thing. But saying that God uses war, which is totally engineered by humans, as an instrument of punishment seems like stretching a point, laying responsibility in the wrong quarter.

Here is how Lincoln makes the case:

“Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue [I still cringe at this] until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’”

Thus, he does not absolve humanity—himself included—of responsibility for setting the machinery of war in motion. It is, in fact, a reaping of what we have sown, and, at the same time, a terrible divine justice from which no one is exempt. It is us and it is God.

And if this is true, there is a lesson for us in these times as the hurricanes wreak havoc on our coasts, the droughts and floods devastate, the winters warm and the springs freeze. We are reaping what we have sown. We must do what we can to turn it around. But no one is exempt. It is us and it is God.

An anniversary and an encounter

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photo_2

looking at my CT scan last December with husband and Our Son the Radiologist

A year ago today I almost died in yoga class. Maybe that is why my back has been having severe spaz attacks for the past week, preventing me from going anywhere near yoga class. My health crisis last year had nothing to do with yoga but it is one of those association things. Like, I can never eat M&Ms since I got a terrible stomach upset, probably flu, after eating M&Ms as a kid.

Ah poor back, we have safely made it through the year with no more clots in the lungs so you can relax now.

It does feel better today, and I woke with a great dream this morning. I like this one a lot better than the rat dream I got on my birthday (which was, incidentally, about being kinder to my body).

A charismatic young man who is famous for his humanitarian work is featured in a grand convocation. His work, and perhaps mine as well, is to rescue people one by one. The image is of pulling people across a river with a cable strung from bank to bank. Among the crowds of people at this gathering he singles me out and we make an instant, deep connection. I become part of his inner circle. The dream ends when he puts his arm across my shoulder and says, “We will always be friends, we and our whole families.” I know this involves obligation in the African way but I gladly take it on.

For some reason this dream reminded me of an encounter I had last week with a neighbor.

He came up behind me on his bike as I was walking on the road just beyond the steepest slope of hill in front of our house. “Hello!” he said, and I jumped.

“You scared me. You snuck up on me!” I recognized him as the older man who farms a mile away and runs a stand that sells the region’s best sweetcorn.

“Yeah. I thought I was pretty quiet.” He pedaled ahead of me for a few yards and then turned around and headed back down the hill. “I am walking up Curran Hill for exercise,” he explained.

“Okay,” I said. “Good for you.”

He disappeared down the hill. I was puzzled. He was on a bike. He must have meant he was biking up the hill for exercise.

The hill we live on is the steepest one in the region and we often see bikers practicing on it. Slow, steady up and really fast down. When I bike I prefer to head downhill from our driveway, ending my ride with the gentler climb from the other direction and braking on the steep descent to our drive, which is 2/3 of the way down the hill. The steep side of the hill is a challenge for me to take on the rise. I was a bit surprised that Mr. Vite was up to climbing it repeatedly. But if so, indeed, good for him.

I was taking advantage of the sunny, mild late-November weather for a trash walk. (I could still walk and bend over then.) The roadside was nearly clean because I’d walked it just three days earlier. But in the 2.5-mile roundtrip to Red Bud Trail, I filled a small grocery bag with trash: beer cans, fast food wrappers, and a postcard from Myrtle Beach dated August 16. “Brady. Went golfing today. Saw 8 turtles. Miss you. Sheryl and Rick.” I gather trash out of anthropological curiosity as well as to keep up the neighborhood.

My bladder was calling me home by the time I approached the crest of Curran Hill from the gentle side and began the steep descent to our driveway. I was thus in a bit of a hurry. But there was Mr. Vite again and he was, indeed, walking up the hill, pushing his bike. The bike was apparently for a fast trip downhill to get the effect of a continuous hike uphill with the repeated climbs. Not a bad strategy.

He stopped. “Hello again,” he said. And then he added, “You seem like an outstanding person.”

I did not know how to respond to that but he clearly wanted to talk and I did my best, pinching my legs together. We talked for a minute about exercise and collecting trash and how long I have lived in the area. I was wearing a low-brimmed hat and he apparently didn’t recognize me as one of his customers. I told him I often come by his stand. And then he repeated, “Well, you seem like an outstanding person.”

I did not know what he meant by that or what, in our first encounter of only a few seconds, caused him to draw that conclusion about me (he didn’t recognize me and I didn’t even have the trash bag in my hand…). I wanted to ask but I really did have to go by then and so I just laughed and said goodbye and squirmed the last hundred yards to the house.

Now here is the dream connection. The young man in the dream was my inner Outstanding Person. Maybe he was shining through in that brief encounter.

May we, indeed, be friends forever, we and all our families. Happy anniversary.

Centering Prayer meets Tree

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tree

I was annoyed. My back was still giving me angry twinges despite everything I had done for it over the past weeks—pampering it, not pampering it, ignoring it, talking to it, medicating, hocus-pocusing, stretching, relaxing, strengthening. And then my sewing machine was acting up, turning a creative project of making doll clothes into a chore.

It was midafternoon and I realized that I had not yet done my daily Centering Prayer meditation. Rather than sit at my desk, as I have been doing since I started the practice two months ago, I made myself get up and walk into the woods to my special tree. My mood improves whenever I spend time with the tree, though for some reason I am always reluctant to test this proposition. I had not paid a visit to the tree for several months.

Rather than sit on the cold ground at the base of the tree I perched on the branch scar that juts from the trunk several inches off the ground. Immediately my mind became a blank slate.

I don’t know how to draw the line between excessive self-awareness, which nullifies the point of Centering Prayer, and true appreciation of the experience that this kind of meditation can bring. The prayer is an opening, an invitation, and sometimes things happen because of that opening.

Up to now the happenings have been subtle changes in my daily life and how I respond to events: an emerging sense of both purpose and contentment with the present and what comes, a deeper patience with myself and with other people. I haven’t experienced much, or expected much experience, during the meditation itself. The point is to be open, to train yourself to let go of everything the mind brings up, including expectations. The only palpable result I have noticed during the meditation has been an easy, calm, blank peace.

For a number of years, as I have written before, I have experienced this particular tree as a prayer companion, a meditation preparer, an energy field that somehow connects with me. But I had not been to the tree since starting a Centering Prayer practice. The difference this time was palpable.

What happened that afternoon at the tree was too powerful to ignore. The sense of peace was so strong that it vibrated in my core. The interval between distracting thoughts was so long it was as if the thought-manufacturing part of my mind did not exist. My earlier irritation not only dropped away; it receded so far that it seemed as if I would never feel that way again. After 20 minutes I walked back to the house elated and refreshed.

This experience was not qualitatively different from what has happened to me at the tree before. The difference was quantitative. I was far more sensitive and receptive to it than I had been before practicing Centering Prayer. The daily meditation had trained my sensibilities, opened me to this visceral experience of an unseen and indescribable reality, this tree—these trees—and my connection to them. It was as clear a before-and-after experiment as I could have engineered if I had thought about it (my tree experiences before the Centering Prayer practice and now). I didn’t think about it. I didn’t expect it. And it was therefore all the more remarkable.

And then, just as I was thinking this kind of experience was particular to the tree, something similar happened in church yesterday. I was more present, more aware, more moved by everything that unfurled in the worship service and my encounters with the community. In the beauty of a sanctuary adorned for Advent, my attention was riveted, my sensors tuned high. It was like church in HD.

A central purpose of Centering Prayer, as Cynthia Bourgeault describes it in Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, is to learn to use “those more subtle perceptivities of spiritual awareness—the “spiritual senses,” as they’re known—to see and taste the presence of the divine as it moves fully in and out of everything.”  I think it’s working.

Weight loss and violence

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The dream I’m going to report is not pretty. But it is instructive on a topic I’ve been thinking about for some time: my split food personality and how it relates to gaining and losing weight.

I have known that rats are in the house but I’d rather not think about them. Then I see one. It is slow and fat so Lalo-cat is able to pounce on it but I can see he isn’t going to kill it. So I stomp on it with my foot and hold it down, looking for something to kill it with. There is rubble around. I try whopping it with a stick but that isn’t going to work. Then I drop chunks of concrete on its head, my foot still holding down the fat body. That doesn’t work well either. But by the end of the dream the rat is looking sorrier and sorrier, maybe dying a slow death.

I was totally baffled by this dream until my spiritual director read it back to me and asked me to think about the rat as myself. Oh yeah. “Slow and fat.” “Fat body.” That’s the Fatty in me, the one I have been calling “Stuffer.” I had really been hoping to do away with Stuffer once and for all. This dream is about my latest effort to lose weight.

Over the years I have learned to know Stuffer quite well. Stuffer lives in my mouth, not in my stomach. Stuffer gets hungry but not the way the stomach gets hungry. She is tuned into my emotions, not my body. She gets hungry for stimulation when she is bored, company when she is lonely, consolation when she is upset, celebration when she is happy, calm when she is stressed, energy when she is tired. Stuffer tends to address all these needs with food (and drink), although most have nothing to do with food.

Certain foods are especially pleasing to Stuffer-in-the-Mouth. Although she enjoys a hit of carrot cake with cream cheese frosting now and then, she is basically a salty-fatty girl, not a sweets craver. Cheese and crackers, chips and dips, KFC—oh my.

Because Stuffer lives in my mouth she tends to ignore the signals of the stomach until too late. Stuffer has a lot of problems with heartburn.

Stuffer is not only hungry in all these ways; she is also afraid of being hungry. She fears not getting enough to eat so she hesitates to share a restaurant meal. At home she always has seconds, on principle. She fears going to bed hungry. She snacks all evening.

After many months or years of this, Stuffer gets slow and fat, like that rat.

And I get fed up, literally.

I put my foot down (ouch).

And I switch into Healthy Eater mode: Calorie- or point-counting. Portion control. Lots of fruit and veggies. Yada yada. We all know the drill.

After a few weeks in full-time Healthy Eater mode I have all but forgotten about Stuffer. Gone are the cravings, gone the evening snacking, gone the heartburn. Healthy Eater is tuned into the whole digestive tract, not just the mouth. Healthy Eater is more afraid of feeling too full than of going to bed hungry. She looks with horror on large plates of foods glopped with cheesy fat. Because of body awareness, Healthy Eater does a pretty good job of separating emotional ups and downs from eating. She eats when she is hungry and is grateful to be satisfied and no more.

And thus, the Stuffer pounds begin to drop away.

What happens, of course, is a shift in body chemistry as well as body awareness. When you wean yourself off of carby-fatty excess you influence that complex set of hormone signals that suggests what you want to eat, how much, and when. Willpower is involved at the beginning but the need for willpower tapers off as the hormones do their thing. And sometimes the shift is sudden, like flipping a switch. That is very cool. This happened for me on that 3-day juice fast that launched this latest weight-loss campaign, which is progressing nicely and gradually as I continue in Healthy Eater mode, with the Weight Watcher point system keeping me honest.

But my dream was showing me something else that I hadn’t realized before. Which is that all of this involves quite a lot of self-loathing. And that includes both personalities.

While I like being Healthy Eater, I don’t much like her. She is a bit of a weenie, self-righteous and judgmental; a foodie know-it-all who can’t understand why anyone would want to eat those plates piled with cheesy fried stuff; a thinning person who feels superior to all the fatties she sees around her.

And I really don’t like Stuffer. I find her disgusting and pathetic. I want to get rid of her. I, in Healthy Eater mode, would like to hold her down and drop things on her head. Like that poor chubby rat.

Whew. The violent aspect of weight loss?

I resolved to try to make Healthy Eater a little kinder. Try a little tenderness with Stuffer, who is, after all, an emotional gal.

This week at a local restaurant Healthy Eater allowed Stuffer a piece of raspberry cream pie after choosing the chicken noodle soup for herself (both agreed that neither was that good). We have stocked up on treats: Hummus to glop on thin crackers. Dove Promises (dark chocolate, 1 point apiece). Mixed nuts (good protein with the salt and fat). Weight Watchers big latte bars. And Stuffer’s favorite, popcorn—nutrient-free but harmless.

Tonight, while the husband is still out of town, dinner will be a judicious, point-controlled assortment of snacks.

Congo joy, Congo lament

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While we were hosting friends from Congo last week, the situation in Congo itself began deteriorating rapidly.

However, in the brief days Pastor François and his wife, Felly, spent in our home; at the Thanksgiving celebration we hosted with more friends; and in the discussions we held on how our churches might continue to relate to each other we never got around to discussing the troubles that were bringing Congo into the headlines once again after a long absence from the spotlight. The personal and communal superseded the political, even as Congo seemed on the verge of falling apart.

It was partly the timing. The invasion and conquest of Goma happened when I was too busy with the visit to be reading or listening to much news. More important, it was such a contrast to the joy and warmth of the visit itself. It coincided with a jubilant crosscultural worship service in a lovely rural Michigan church. We had other things to do and talk about and little time. This is perhaps a landmark of crosscultural friendship. We have reached a stage where the particulars of our lives, families, and aspirations; reminiscences of our shared experiences; and news of our mutual friends crowd out talk about major political/military developments with international repercussions. We don’t see or treat each other as representatives of our respective countries; we are only ourselves and we focus on each other.

This is not to say that the concerns are too distant or minor to matter to those we know and love. Our friends may return to rioting in Kinshasa, even though the events took place on the other side of that vast country, which usually seems a world apart from the capital. The Kabila government is threatened. Thus, other friends and acquaintances who are members of the Congolese parliament certainly have their hands full. And life in Congo will no doubt get more difficult before it improves (and one wonders if as well as when).

Whatever happens, it will be impossible for my husband and me, and a growing group of our friends, to ignore, because we are unalterably bound by ties of love with that impossible country. When the political is personal and the personal, political, the news can become heartrending.

I don’t know if this makes us wiser or gives us any insight about courses of action our government should take. I don’t know the truth about, say, the machinations of the Rwandan government or whether the Chinese could move in and straighten things out as some are suggesting. It is tempting to sign every e-petition that promises some kind of solution. I do let my government know I care, for what it’s worth.

What I know to do is to pray for Congo when I can pray fervently. I don’t bother much with routine prayers. My experience is that serious prayers actually make a difference. But fervent prayer comes out of love, attention, even heartbreak. My heart is breaking for Congo.

Wisdom v. struggle

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photo by Nina B. Lanctot

For the third time in the last 12 months I have gotten the Wisdom v. Struggle essence in the personal blend my daughter prepares for me intuitively.

How many terms should I unpack and explain before I go on? “Essence” refers to a preparation an herbalist (in this case Merri Walters of Great Lakes Sacred Essences) makes from flowers or under the influence of places or celestial events. Essences have energetic properties linked to healing and influencing human emotions and development.

“Personal blend.” My daughter sometimes makes individualized blends of these essences for people who request them.

“Intuitively.” She makes her choices based on the energetic sensations she receives at the moment, from individual bottles in her collection, not on her knowledge of what the individual might need. Whatever the mysterious process involves, it works. The blends she makes for me are always spot-on, appropriate, revelatory.

I experience these personal blends as catalysts. They make things happen in my life and psyche that need to happen. They are not always soothing but they help produce profound, necessary change. The plants, rocks, and waters they represent have become my allies on my life journey.

So when “Wisdom v. Struggle,” drawn from the waters of Lake Superior, shows up three times in a row out of several hundred possibilities, I pay attention.

I like the first part of Merri’s description of this essence’s properties:

This essence is for those who are truly ready to see, who are no longer afraid of the unknown but are ready to sit peacefully and watch the great mysteries unfold…..no longer distracted by the irritations of this plane…..profound peace, the doorway to initiation and the mysteries of the cosmos.

Yes, yes, that’s me! I’m there, baby.

But she goes on:

This essence can also be extremely helpful to those who are still caught up in struggle, who seek wisdom, seek depth, seek to know the truths of all time but as they find themselves in perfection ~ their hearts desire ~ they become preoccupied by the flies that are there too.

Alas, that is also me. I am often preoccupied by flies.

The gray brown chill of November. The roofer who took our deposit and disappeared. My husband’s absence on my birthday. The prospect of a difficult conversation with a friend. Climate change. Whether the turkey that’s been in the freezer for a year will be all dried out and I should get another one for Thanksgiving. A low-energy day.

(What is it about the state of the world and the small disturbances of everyday life that makes these things weigh heavily, and equally, on a given day?)

On Saturday I asked for a special early birthday celebration, a visit to Jasper-Pulaski State Park an hour and a half away in Indiana to see the migrating Sandhill Cranes.

The cranes come through this area every year on their arduous trips, feeding and socializing for several months in the area. They gather by the thousands at dusk in large pastures in the park, where you can watch flocks soaring in just before sunset, a great bird O’Hare Field at rush hour. They socialize there for a little while then lift up en masse, sometime after dark, to roost in nearby marshes. They sleep with their feet in cold water. They get together in the pastures again at sunrise.

We watched the cranes flying in until we couldn’t stand up anymore, then ceded our choice viewing spot on the platform to people who were crowding in behind us, gabbling like cranes. Look at that. There come some more. And more! See that big bunch! See how they put their feet down. Ah, ahh, zoom zoom! They make it look so easy.

I thought of Wisdom v. Struggle. I thought of how I wanted to live like a crane, soaring with the thermals, landing on my feet, hanging out with the community. Following the journey where it takes me.

Sunrise. Photo by Nina B. Lanctot

 

 

Election day in the other America

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The gray-faced couple clutching Tea Party literature offered their driver’s licenses to be scanned and their names popped up in the ePollbook. Duly noted, I handed them their ballots.

They had stood in line for a long time because the turnout in this rural Michigan precinct was huge. Their shabby coats didn’t look all that warm, and getting here on this chilly morning had clearly required some effort. The woman grasped her husband’s arm as they shuffled to the booths.

My fellow Americans. I saw a wide range of people in my long day of working the election–all classes, races, and ages—but the numbers belonged to white people who bore signs of struggle. They were the ones I noticed as I played my part in the frantic but relatively well-oiled machinery of Milton Township’s election process. I noticed the poor, the grossly obese, the tired farmers, the harried parents who brought their kids because they had to, not because they wanted to teach them about democracy.

Despite or because of their struggles, these neighbors of mine were determined to have their say. They didn’t complain about the long lines. Instead, there were approving murmurs about the large turnout. In this township I could guess that meant the numbers would go opposite to my votes all the way down the ballot. That turned out to be true. But I also knew that this precinct’s results might not reflect the overall results in the nation or even the state.

I didn’t know how that was going. In the drafty firehouse we election workers were cut off from all communication about partisan politics or results. The township clerk did tell us, around midnight as we were retabulating ballots to try to account for a discrepancy between the numbers of votes and voters, that Michigan had gone to Obama. “Then why are we even doing this?” one of my Republican coworkers mumbled.

The missing voter was found—in the paper applications though not on the computer—at around 2 am. I drove home, turned on the TV, and caught the end of President Obama’s acceptance speech. I was so amazed and relieved that I poured myself an unaccustomed drink of whiskey (from a neglected bottle at the back of the cupboard, the only alcohol in the house), then another, because I was alone and had nobody to celebrate with except the cat, who seemed indifferent.  This was a big mistake. I proceeded to get mightily sick.

Even now my relief is tempered by the sadness, fear, and determination on my neighbors’ faces. They had their say but in the end it didn’t count for all that much. Unless their lives improve—and what are the chances of that happening anytime soon?—the fear and anger won’t go away. The divisions between my neighbors and me will deepen.

My weight-loss mythology

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I am losing weight. Yay, hurray! Twelve pounds in eight weeks. In this process I am discovering and deconstructing my own mythology about weight loss.

Myth number 1: The older I get, the harder it is to lose weight.

I am actually losing weight at nearly the same pace that I did in my 40s, on the same program, Weight Watchers (following a short juice fast).

It is true that I gain weight more easily as I age. I could probably put those 12 pounds back on in about two weeks. It is also true that my body is less forgiving of any slacking off. I rebound a bit after every weekend indulgence or day with no exercise. The rebound usually comes 3–4 days later.

Myth number 2: I can take the weight off just by exercising more.

For one thing, my increasing weight depleted my energy so it was becoming a chore to exercise every day. But even when I did, like last year when I was training for a century bike ride, my weight stayed steady. I need to follow the tried and true prescription of less food and more exercise.

The good thing is that as I lose weight I get immediate feedback in the form of increased energy and this makes it possible to exercise more. That energy gain is much more noticeable than it was when I was younger. The sensation of increased energy makes exercise extra rewarding. Yesterday I swam laps for a full hour and felt I could go on forever, at my sedate pace of 30 laps an hour. But lap swim was over at the Y and the kids were jumping in.

Myth number 3: I know how to eat in order to lose weight and maintain weight loss.

I am a good cook and have long followed a fair approximation of the Mediterranean diet: lots of vegetables, fruit, whole grains, a little protein, olive oil, very little dairy, red wine. I did not need to change what I eat; only how much. And I also needed to greatly cut down on the exceptions I had been making to this good diet. I made plenty of exceptions, especially when I ate out.

I am not good at estimating portions or paying attention to when I am full. This is where Weight Watchers comes in. (I do it online; I hate those meetings with testimonials and cheers for every half pound.) It introduces mathematical certainty to portion control and food choice. You can make exceptions to healthy choices but they take your point quota down fast. With a little forethought and calculation you can indulge in anything you want. But it is safer to stay with really healthful food.

I was shocked to discover how much I had been overeating—and, on the positive side, how happily I could survive on much less. Hunger has not been a problem.

I do not want to sound like a commercial for Weight Watchers. I enjoy “tracking” in a peculiar way. This may be a drag for others. I find, as I did years ago, that the program is, if anything, too lenient. I would never lose weight if I ate all my bonus points or exercise points. I have to stay close to the minimum daily allowance. And I may have to track points the rest of my life (sigh) because when I stopped, I regained the weight and more.

There is something more involved in all this, however; something at the intersection of spirit and body. I will explore it in another post.