Tealights in the Tunnel

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Blue Ridge Parkway is one of my favorite places to drive. Even during the busy summer months when the winding 45mph road is co-opted by thundering packs of motorcycles and poky RV's, the sheer boldness of New Deal hutzpah and engineering never ceases to awe and amaze me. (Did our Recovery & Reinvestment Act funding even come close to anything as visionary? Well, that's a critique for another time...)

In the Parkway section south of Asheville, a traveler will quickly encounter a characteristic mountain driving phenomenon: The Tunnel. The Parkway includes 26 tunnels along the 469 mile route from Waynesboro, VA to Cherokee, NC, with names like "Big Witch" and "Bunches Knob." One minute you are careening along, captivated by breathtaking vistas, then suddenly you are plunged into cold granite darkness. Many of them are short--a brief submersion into the stone blocking the view. But sometimes the tunnels curve as a shawl around the mountain's shoulders, making the proverbial "light at the end of the tunnel" impossible to see. If you failed to heed the headlight warning at the entrance, all becomes very black--very quickly.

There are times in our individual and collective lives when it seems like we have been thrown headlong into a tunnel without the headlights on. It's disorienting and frightening. After the 2008 election, we were sailing along a clear sunlit road with a view of possibility that seemed limitless. And then, tunnel after tunnel seemed to obstruct the view and it was tempting to believe that we were stuck in the dark. I've recently entered into a tunnel of my own, a detour that surprised me--especially since my GPS hadn't mapped it out in my planning process.

Once I entered tunnel, however, the unexpected happened. When things seemed at their darkest, a friend sent me the perfect book I needed to read. Another person had just the right insight; I stumbled upon a music event that seemed orchestrated just for me. Each little occurrence and offering, each faithful word and hug, seemed as if people were bringing me tealights in my tunnel. And slowly, it didn't matter that I couldn't see the opening of daylight I was so desperately scrambling to reach. Right there, right where I was, the tunnel was becoming illuminated.

I hold these many small glimmers of light with me as I continue to walk through the tunnel--not nearly so frightened, and a little more curious about what will come next. I think about this today as we honor Dr. King, who was such a huge light in a world full of tunnels. Dr. King knew the power of tealights when he said "everyone can be great, because everyone can serve." The problems of our days, both global and personal, can seem overwhelming. But in each of us there is the capacity to bring a little more light, a little more hope, a little more love into the world. If we do no more than that today, it is enough.

peace and light,

cj

One, two, three...ROLL!

My friend Scott is an experienced kayaker. Whitewater, the real stuff. River or sea he actually seeks out crests and crescendoes, surrendering himself and his minnow-like craft into the crushing power of waves crashing on their merry and merciless way.

I, on the other hand, am strictly a flatwater girl. Calm and serene, the meditation of stroke, lift, stroke, breathes me into the landscape: the smell of the mud on the banks, watching for otters, sun baking my legs without a spray skirt in place. The last time I tried that, the drip of my paddle over a four-hour trip slowly eroded the paba-free, all-natural, and supposedly waterproof sunscreen from the tops of my thighs. Ouch. Several days of ouch, and a very unfortunate look for wearing shorts in July.

Scott is certain that he can teach me how to roll the kayak (even if he can't convince me to follow him to my death down the roaring Nantahala). I have complete confidence in him, although it sounds a little like Steve Thorsted in high school promising to be able to get me up on water skis..."you just haven't had the right person driving the boat!" Thirty years later I still haven't made it up for more than a few seconds. But I'm pretty happy to let that one go and ride the inner tube instead.

Rolling the kayak, though, is another story. There's a terrifying empowering in the enticement of rolling. I really want to learn it. Voluntarily turning yourself completely upside down, deprived of oxygen and encased in a fiberglass anchovy (aka coffin!) everything stops. It becomes a complete exercise of mind not to panic. Everything in you wants to barrel for the surface, head first. Not possible. The answer is counter-intuitive...not lifting with the head but powering from the core (damn it, another reason to start taking Pilates). Stay focused into the center and FLIP, you're upright, gulping air with the mammals again. Well, at least this is how I think it's supposed to go. I've not been able to get out of the upside-down position yet. Thankfully I have the wet exit down. "Safety first!" chirps my inner lifeguard.

The past few months have felt like a perpetual upside-down-in-the-kayak period for me. Interesting experiment in staying centered, practicing wet exit, and remembering not to panic. Slowly I've been learning to strengthen my core so I can right myself, surrender through the next wave and joyfully submerge, knowing that I can come full circle, alive, well and with water-free lungs. Wet exit is ok for emergencies, but the real fun comes with knowing you can flip and flip and flip and be ok. Yeah, all the spiritual teachers say the only way the core gets stronger is from practice. With all this practice, I must be on the way to expert.

Just for today, I'm righted again--catching my breath and heading toward a quiet eddy for the holidays.

blessings all...see you in Pilates class!

Bloom

In 2002 as the first anniversary of September 11 approached, some friends and I grappled with how we were going to mark the event. We wanted to organize something, but what and where? There were plenty of flag-waving, terror-fighting “pledges to patriotism” being promoted; equal numbers of prayer services were available, especially in the vast array of flavors in the Christian community--you could have your pick, with flag or without.

But somehow none of these felt right. Having just returned from my first overseas service project--a summer teaching English in the newly democratic and primarily Buddhist country of Mongolia--I had the enthusiasm of the newly awakened multicultural; like many people both within and outside the Christian faith, I was sensitive to the divisiveness that this lightning rod event was causing. We needed a place that transcended all the rhetoric, a container that could hold something bigger than all our biases.

Enter Oakhurst Community Garden. As I passed by on one of my regular neighborhood walks, it seemed to speak: “By the way, I am designated an international peace garden,” the garden murmured modestly.

One phone call later, Sally Wylde, the garden’s visionary founder/director, gave the answer she almost always gave when presented with a request, or an opportunity for service. “Absolutely!” she said. “It’s perfect.”

Two weeks later the event had grown organically into an interfaith expression of remembrance and mourning, a commitment to service and a call to peace. On the evening of September 11, people slowly streamed into the garden, until nearly a hundred clustered amid the waning harvest of tomatoes and squash and herbs. Some planted bulbs, others presented poems and readings from Buddhists, Christians and Muslims; an acapella group from the local synagogue lifted a prayer in song. A letter from Peaceful Tomorrows, a group of the families of survivors, called for unity in our collective grief and our hope. As night fell, the garden glowed with candlelight under the drooping heads of sunflowers, as neighbors, many of whom had never met, offered prayers for the victims, their families and the world. A photographer from Life magazine captured the scene.

Eight years later, we gathered today in the Oakhurst Community Garden. This time the focus was not the anniversary of that fateful day in 2001, but the remembrance of a woman who was teacher, learner, mentor, leader, servant, playmate, co-creator, activist, seeker, artist, friend. Stories and song, puppets and flowers, parade and potluck embodied Sally Wylde’s life in an exuberance that words can only glimpse. Did that rainbow really appear overhead as we sauntered and drummed down East Lake Drive?...now that’s just showing off! What more would you expect from the woman who created performance art ("The Lump Journey") in response to her body's encounter with cancer? The vibrant expression of her life and faith swept us up into the power of imagination, into the possibility of personal and communal liberation.

I was happy that, among today’s glowing and honest tributes, her husband Britt lovingly acknowledged her “sailor’s mouth." Once she sat with me over coffee compassionately listening as I grappled with the pain of divorce and the personal journey into therapy. Having grappled head-on with her own demons, she looked me straight in the eye and said with that New England candor, “Of course it’s hard! No one would do this work unless they fucking had to.” Well said, and true. But Sally rode the work full stride into art and gardens and webs of connection that transformed not only her own heart, but the lives of all those whom she touched--many of whom were gathered today to celebrate, honor and remember her with gusto. As she would have had it.

Today, Sept 11, as conflict and controversy swirl around us, when hatred and ignorance are in alarmingly plentiful supply, I can think of no place I would rather be than with these people, to honor this amazing woman, and to reclaim the roots that have grounded me in the sometimes uplifting and frequently frustrating path of social justice. Tonight, Amanda and I lit the single white candle in the Peace Garden, quietly remembering that evening 8 years ago. “Yeah,” I said. “Leave it to Sally to go ahead and tackle world peace.”

Wake up call

Buddy has a job, and he performs it faithfully.
Starting at around 4:30am, he rises and stretches his neck, and reaches deep down for a crow that bellows out over the garden and meadow and pond beyond.

Again at 5:30, once more at 6 ish--just to be sure we got the message. I turn over, twice, sound weaving in and out of my dream, first a car horn, next a saxophone. I'm on a gondola and there's music wafting from the shore. I squint my eyes open to see the morning. Prayer flags hanging in the trees wave in the heavy, cool summer morning air. I think they rustled a little from the boom of Buddy's call. I roll over one more time and then...crooowwwww! (Or in french: cocoRIco...cocoRIco". I like this better than cockadoodle doo. It doesn't sound anything like cockadoodle doo!)

"Alright already! I'm up." This is starting to feel personal.

I rouse myself and shuffle over to a chair by the window for morning meditation. Time to listen. The still small voice inside calls..."cocoRico." but more like a whisper, gently nudging me into consciousness, inviting me into the day, into my life.

It is said that soon after his enlightenment the Buddha passed a man on the road who was struck by the Buddha's extraordinary radiance and peaceful presence. The man stopped and asked, “My friend, what are you? Are you a celestial being or a god? “

“No,” said the Buddha. “

“Well, then, are you some kind of magician or wizard?”

Again the Buddha answered “No.”

“Are you a man?”

“No.”

“Well, my friend, then what are you?”

The Buddha replied, “I am awake.”

May I be a little more awake today, and a little more grateful for the rooster.

can big ears save the world?

A few months ago I inexplicably developed an allergic reaction to corn. Along with a wheat sensitivity and sugar avoidance, I'm now even more annoyingly in that 21st century category of dinner guests with a mile-long list of dietary special needs. Besides being a pain to my hosts, this limitation is also just a plain drag for me, since I LOVE a good enchilada, crunchy-salty corn chips, and popcorn at the movies.

Now that I think about it, this mysterious reaction developed not too long after seeing Robert Kenner's brilliant Academy Award nominated documentary Food, Inc., "a powerful, startling indictment of industrial food production." (PBS, POV) If you can stomach second helpings, check out also Deborah Koons' terrifying "Future of Food" (2004) and Eric Schlosser's now classic (book and movie) "Fast Food Nation." The films' messages come as no surprise to food justice advocates and folks who have been waving the red flags on health, agri-business and green living for decades. The stark reality of our vulnerability to corporate interests, particularly the devastating story of corn around the planet, is enough to make even a semi-conscious person break out in hives.

Monsanto holds fast to the argument that their genetic breakthroughs are driven by altruistic motives, such as ensuring farmers of explosive "yield potential," boatloads of increased income and the side benefit of conserving habitat for wildlife. (Monsanto) What's not made as clear by the PR spin, is the motivation behind the vaguely Soprano's-like tactics being employed to keep small farmers compliant with the slow but inexorable corporate ingestion of their livelihoods, and some would argue, our lives.

So what's this all got to do with listening, anyway? Can Big Ears really change the world? it's a pretty simple and maybe somewhat counter-intuitive approach to social change: leveraging the double-ear tactic. Being curious. Telling a story. Asking questions instead of sharpshooting answers. Building understanding instead of defense. It all sounds good, until life and livelihood feel threatened and the reptilian brain conspires with the sympathetic nervous system to make sure we're SAFE. We come by it honestly-- fight, flight or freeze are built into the package. But film makers like Kenner, Koons, and Schlosser are the front line of a revolution which will slowly dismantle power structures, institutions, and corporate strangleholds, not through brute strength or intimidation, but the power of story--engaging the listening ears of a public ready to give a deafening response...the vociferous ch-ching of cash registers ringing in organic markets, slow food movements, co-ops, and intensive gardening programs around the planet.

It can't come soon enough. I'm ready for that enchilada.

fast track

A friend of mine has a great behavioral barometer: "Want to know why you're doing something? Stop doing it."

Besides being a test of willpower, the Christian season of Lent can be a testy time, as observant folks run loose without the usual fixes that keep society too hyped up on (fill in the blank...coffee, chocolate, booze, TV) to realize we're riddled with anxiety. I wonder if anyone's done a study on increased accident rates during the 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter. Moses fasted for forty days and forty nights, twice; the second time he returned to find the Israelites partying and busted the holy tablets in anger...I can relate after a few weeks without sugar.

The Biblical lesson more commonly referenced among contemporary Christians is the 40 days that Jesus spent in the wilderness before beginning his ministry, a time of being tested by Satan and shoring up his relationship with God--a journey which culminates in Good Friday's crucifixion (kind of makes you want to read the fine print on the release form before repeating that outing) and the resurrection of Easter. So the period of Lent is one marked by abstinence, solemnity, and introspection. Many religious traditions embrace some form of fasting and penitence as a means of drawing closer to God by withdrawing from our human attachments --from the great fast of Ramadan to the penitence of Yom Kippur.

Exploring my ecumenical ways, it's been a while since I've observed a traditional Lent, but always found it a provocative time. One year I gave up using the words "I'm sorry" just to see what would show up in its place. Chocolate, meat, wine, or TV--the tweaks of cravings or temptation of habits invited me to wake up from the sleepy patterns of my daily routine. And, once awake, to lean into the gap that was left when I left my familiar crutches behind. It takes a while to cultivate a taste for sitting in uncomfortable emptiness without shoving a brownie in it. The Buddhists are really on to something here.

Yesterday I sat in St. Lawrence's Basilica with devout Catholic friends visiting from Charlotte. I opened to what I would be willing to leave behind this Lent, what fast would shake things up and make more space for God. The prayer alone felt like a step into the wilderness.

There's hidden sweetness in the stomach's emptiness. We are lutes, no more, no less.

If the soundboxes stuffed full of anything, no music. If the brain and belly are burning clean with fasting, every moment a new song comes out of the fire.

The fog clears, and new energy makes you run up the steps in front of you. Be emptier and cry like reed instruments cry.

Emptier, write secrets with the reed pen.

When you're full of food and drink, Satan sits where your spirit should, an ugly metal statue in place of the Kaaba.

When you fast, good habits gather like friends who want to help.

Fasting is Solomon's ring.

Don't give into some illusion and lose your power,

but even if you have, if you've lost all will and control,

they come back when you fast,

like soldiers appearing out of the ground, pennants flying above them. A table descends to your tents, Jesus' table.

Expect to see it, when you fast, this table spread with other food, better than the broth of cabbages.

~ Rumi ~Ghazal No. 1739 from the Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi

brave heart

There are a lot of not-so-great parts about getting through a breakup, but one of the toppers has got to be Valentine's Day--especially when said break up is in such close proximity to said "holiday." Everywhere I turn are looming towers of bad milk chocolate in pink cellophane and ubiquitous reminders to remember my sweetie February 14. Ouch. But lest this entry become just another lament on love or diatribe on commercialism, I want to talk about the real issue at hand, or rather, at heart.

Last Sunday I attended an ebullient and gracious religious service during which a congregant got up to share a rather personal valentine's story. He is a family practice physician, and despite the insurance against disease one might guess would come with that line of work, this was the one-year anniversary of his open heart surgery. His talk was accompanied by a slide show with video of his own heart in the operating room, projected in images 5' x 4' on the wall of the sanctuary. He warned us when to close our eyes. I've never been one to look at such things on TV, but the sheer intimacy and courage of such an offering drew me in to watch. I could hear the 7-year old girl sitting next to me, "Yewwww, that's disgusting!" My contorted face echoed her sentiments in silent agreement, but I could not not watch. (Ok, I scrunched up my eyes and closed one in a couple of parts.)

The point of the story-- and the graphic accompaniment --was that in his career as a doctor, he had never successfully resuscitated a patient when applying defibrillation more than 3 times. During his surgery, after the implant was established, the surgeon applied the paddles directly to his heart to prompt the familiar "thum-thump" that would carry the body and the person back into life. The video showed the excruciating suspense of one.. two... three... four... five... six tries. On the sixth, it worked. We breathed a collective sigh of relief, even though the happy ending was standing before us in flesh and (full-on pumping) blood.

Our speaker didn't have to say it: What if the surgeon had given up at the 5th try? In his unsentimental, but transparent account, the man conveyed the almost indescribable gift of appreciating, literally, a second chance at life. This radical experience for which I was an intimate participant truly brought the point home for me. The heart and its vulnerability is magical in myriad ways, and unquestionably a brilliant work of divine design. Being exposed like this invited me to never see this organ the same way again. Watching the grisly images of this fist-sized, miracle mass of muscle--center of our being and energetic seat of love--graphically reminded me of the immensity of life contained in its 11 ounces.

Can we survive a broken heart? Definitely. Then there is rest, and recovery, and healing to be done. Then, what will we do with it? Will we give up on the 5th try? Is it too scary, too fragile to take it back out there? (Well, ummm, YES!) But if we don't, what's the point--isn't that just another kind of death? Most of us would certainly rather not have the pain that's packaged with loving a friend, a child, a parent, a mate. But just like the heart is built to pump 5000 quarts of life-juice each day, we humans are built to love--despite the risks and the breaks and the gluing it back together--because there is also joy to be received, and given, again.

So happy v-day everybody. Brave hearts, all.

p.s. And if you're struggling with the recoverty part, check out this article on Death Bear, the break-up aftercare crusader.