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.

snow going

Hills and trees and houses are frosted with a thick marshmallow frosting of snow that dumped on us last night. The neighborhood is peaceful this morning, put into temporary time-out by Mother Nature. Everything is soft and quiet, no one is jumping up to do their Saturday chores and run out to Walmart. I think we mostly enjoy the forced opportunity to turn off the "go" switch.

So far the only activity of note has been at the several bird feeders hanging outside our window. Always a hot spot, today it's getting even more action, given the limited meal choices imposed by the snowy landscape. Yellow-bellied and downy woodpeckers feast on suet; the brilliant red cardinal stands out in relief against the black and white canvas of the yards below.

The harmonious buffet is suddenly disrupted by a few blackbirds that decide to start a brawl over the suet. Everyone flees the incursion and heads to a nearby copse to wait for the bullies to move on to other territory. There are no diplomats sent to broker a shared agreement; no avian Marshall Rosenberg is dispatched to build a bridge of empathy through communication. The language is clear and not negotiable: the weaker species yield to brute strength and aggressive force--it's just the way it is.

There are plenty of examples in the natural world--happily provided to us in real time via YouTube--of compassion and care among seemingly natural adversaries; the lamb does, on occasion, lie down with the lion--or at least the kitten. The anomaly fascinates and delights us, perhaps with the possibility that even the most primal programming can be overcome with instincts of empathy, nurture and play. Biologists, and social scientists of all stripes continue the debate over whether such models are tenable as examples for homo sapiens to emulate. Read more on one such theory in Frans de Waals book: The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society.

I am admittedly drawn to inquire and explore the issue of conflict among humans, the more "evolved" species. I want to believe that our human-ness gives us the capacity to act differently, despite the complexities, emotional power and biological legacy of survival that can become triggered when we engaged in even the most quotidian of disagreements.

The thought brings me back to the whole reason I started this blog, Listening for a Change: to ask questions, to venture into the territory of transformation. I am no intrepid explorer--a strange internal brew of something like anxiety mixed with hope prods me forward, usually when I want to run or look the other way.

For me the exploration starts with questions: How can conflict be constructive, rather than destructive? What are the tools we need to transform conflict into greater intimacy, trust, and fulfillment? How do we repair and reconcile relationships that have been severed through betrayal and abuse, even misunderstanding. What does it look like to forgive and to heal? Big stuff. I feel overwhelmed just writing it!

I don't know the answers, but often "I don't know" is a good map to use. I do know that my sweetheart and I are no longer a couple and that parting is painful. A friend and I are in a strained conversation about differing needs. A remark made by someone at lunch "pinched", and I retreated. There's no getting away from it or skipping over it. The way out is through. Hopefully we get to the other side without inflicting more wounds, without having amends to make, by forgiving and being forgiven.

Meanwhile, the hillside is filling with kids and dogs and sleds. Time takes time, healing can be slow going. And a good dose of fun can't hurt either.

Peace. It's not for sissies.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his 1957 speech Birth of a New Nation, shared a gritty and radical conclusion, based on the influences of his own spirituality and the example and teaching of Mahatma Gandhi:
“The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community. The aftermath of nonviolence is redemption. The aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation. The aftermath of violence is emptiness and bitterness.”

Images of inconceivable devastation in Haiti have captivated our minds and hearts this week. Yet in the midst of tragedy, there have been countless examples of generosity, humanity, and selflessness.

Perhaps these moments are hopeful glimpses that Martin Luther King's ideal of the "Beloved Community" could be a reality. We have come far, it is true. In Dr. King's day, it was inconceivable that a black U.S. president would be directing intervention efforts in a major international disaster. Still, I want to resist the temptation to focus on a romanticized notion of the dream that Martin Luther King dared us to actualize. On this day of remembrance, I am also compelled to acknowledge how far we have to go--in healthcare, in economic justice, in domestic and international peace.

As one friend said recently, "It's true that what Dr. King did was monumental, but who he was--a man committed to a relationship with God--was what made that possible." Dr. King believed in and relied on the power of Love, a power greater than himself, working through him to transform hearts and minds and communities into containers of healing and justice and peace. For Dr. King the idea of the Beloved Community was not a camp circle singing kumbaya. He led a movement which led real people voluntarily into real encounters with real violence and hatred. Certainly not a volunteer job for the pusillanimous. I admit I would much sooner sign up to serve disaster victims than face clubs and fire hoses in the name of equality, and am humbled to know those that have chosen, and still choose, to do so.

On my way to Atlanta Sunday morning I stopped off at a gas station in a small South Carolina town. At the next pump were two African-American men in their twenties, in suits, presumably on their way to church. I was struck with the realization that the possibility of being harassed, assaulted, and worse still lives in the recent memory (and current experience) of my black neighbors, friends and co-workers. Grandparents may still pass groves of trees where family members where lynched, or neighborhoods that were terrorized by midnight hordes robed in white.

And beyond the ravages of racism are other forms of violence that surround us each day, some explicit, some covert. In the U.S. child abuse is rampant, a sexual assault is reported every two minutes, homicides are a leading cause of death. And all this before widening our vision to the unbearable reality in Darfur, the Congo, Iraq; the list goes on and on. Our compulsion for power and force spawns infinite injustices in economic, socio-political, and interpersonal realms. Our relationship with conflict and violence is older than our humanity, and is unlikely to leave us any time soon.

Yet tragedies like Haiti consistently reveal our capacity to extend beyond self-interest and to experience the heart-expanding joy and goodness and creativity that is unleashed when that occurs. What would the aftermath of an earthquake of Love look like? Cataclysmic indeed. Dr. King could see that world, and he held in his words and example a radical vision for us to inhabit. Today I give thanks for his life and for the challenge of the gift he left in our care.

It's a scary thing to pray that God would use me--I might not like the assignment. Perhaps it is delivering water to disaster victims, perhaps it is defending the defenseless, perhaps it is sitting with others offering the metta-prayer. Perhaps, as President Obama said in his acceptance speech, it is living the commitment to "listening especially when we disagree." Whatever it is, I pray that I do it and that I will cultivate the internal resources to stand, hands extended, in the circle of beloved community. It's not for sissies.

So in many instances, we have been able to stand before the most violent opponents and say in substance, we will meet your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you. Throw us in jail and we will still love you. Threaten our children and bomb our homes and our churches and as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hours and drag us out on some wayside road and beat us and leave us half-dead, and as difficult as that is, we will still love you. But be assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer and one day we will win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves, we will so appeal to your heart and your conscience that we will win you in the process and our victory will be a double victory.

(Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered this message to the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, Christmas 1957.)