There’s a Lot In-Store

I was out doing errands this afternoon and two of the stores I visited hit me hard.  Jody needed a small piece of foam to provide cushioning between sores on her chin and chest.  Our VON nurse Henry suggested the dollar store.  So I walked into Dollar Tree shortly after noon.  It had been years since I’d been in such a place and I was eager to see what’s what.

The overhead lights were really bright.  Oh well.  Lots of stores are like that. Then I started down an aisle.  I intended to scan all the offerings on either side, looking for foam or sponge or something that would give my dear wife relief.  Instead I stopped halfway down.  I felt assaulted by neon bags everywhere, hanging on hooks to a height of seven feet or so, screaming their brilliant rainbow selves at me.  I expelled some air in a ghastly cloud of revulsion.  And any spiritual energy that was bubbling inside me leaked out too.

Shoulders slumped and soul depleted, I wandered down corridor after corridor, trying to see what was in those bags.  Eventually, eight sponges of the genus red, blue and yellow drew my eye, if nothing else.  “That’ll do,” I muttered.  And $1.25 plus tax later, I escaped.  Exhausted.

“Just a little sensitive are you, big boy?” a voice inside intoned. Well, I guess I am.

Farther along on my travels, I needed to go to OK Tire to have Scarlet’s lugnuts tightened after the switch to winter tires a couple of days ago.  I opened the door onto a lower light situation.  No shouting bags, just some tire posters plus a few stackable chairs beside a serviceable coffee table.  But then there was Brian standing behind the counter.  A huge smile lit his face, and it got even bigger when I shared “I’m here to have my nuts tightened.”

I first came into OK Tire a few months ago, with a nail problem. Brian greeted me like royalty.  Glad to see me, whether the bill ended up being $20.00 or 980.  Brian is just folks.  I had been a Costco Tire Centre customer up until then, and those service reps were fine, but none of them shone like Brian does.  It is so worth it to me to spend maybe 10% more at OK, as long as I get Brian’s chuckles and soul.

Sort of a yin and yang afternoon.  There’s certainly a place for both shops, but only one feels like home.

An Inside Job

I wonder what we look like on the inside.  I’ve turned the pages of anatomy textbooks and seen the jumble of muscle, blood vessels, organs and bone, but that’s not what I’m talking about.

If Spirit fills us all, it’s often not visible to the outside world. With many people, however, it does leak out into the atmosphere some.  But you have to be an alert observer to see it walking by you on the street.

Let’s say most of Spirit hangs out inside us somewhere.  Would it be in the brain, in the heart, tucked under my kneecap, or just spread liberally throughout the bod?  I wonder if an autopsy has ever come across patches of essence.

For the pathologist to catch sight of Spirit, it had better be some colour. How about red?  (That’s my favourite.)  Might get confusing, however, with all the blood that’s usually in the immediate vicinity.  Isn’t purple a common New Age colour? Perhaps that’s it.  Or … maybe you could reach under the spleen and find a pocket of rainbow – the full spectrum blended together, from Red to Orange to Yellow to Green to Blue to Indigo to Violet.  Maybe that’s how Spirit abides. And another thought: Is it possible that it can only be found in one human being on Earth – a certain Roy G. Biv?  No, that’s silly. Spirit is in all of us.

I also wonder whether the light of Spirit vibrates inside of me, or flashes, or if it’s a steady beam.  Relying on my knowledge of Christmas lights, I vote for steady.  The flashing types bother my brain, while a string of solid white lights looks so pretty in the falling snow.

These could be deep thoughts, or maybe shallow.  Whichever the case, please don’t go cutting into yourself to find the colours. Makes a mess and it hurts. Far better to let your pores shine out your goodness to the waiting world.

Standing On Guard For Thee

On Wednesday, a terrorist killed a soldier standing guard at the National War Memorial in Ottawa and then walked into Canada’s Houses of Parliament. He engaged in a shooting battle with security guards and was killed while standing only one door away from federal politicians.

Kevin Vickers is the person responsible for order in the House of Commons. He wears ceremonial robes and carries a large golden sceptre into the Commons as proceedings begin.  Many people see his role as a symbol of the past, as an example of unnecessary ritual.  Kevin shot and killed the intruder.

What should a good person do when faced with evil?  What would I have done?  “Thou shalt not kill.”  “Do not harm any living being.”  The calls of Christianity and Buddhism are clear.  And yet …

Kevin is a good man.  As his niece Erin expresses it, “He’s a thoughtful and considerate person.  He’s halfway to a saint in my opinion.  He’s a very capable human being.”  Clearly.  And he had never shot anyone before Wednesday.

I like to think that I would have shot that man as well.  That, in order to save the lives of others, I would have been willing to live the rest of my life knowing that I had killed.  And willing to grapple with the daily emotional pain.

I see sporadically that I’m on the planet not to become a better person, not to accumulate experiences, not to be smart and witty and rich.  I am here to serve and love.

Angles

I’ve often thought about how people hold their heads.  I don’t mean with their hands.  I mean the angle … as in centred, slightly left or slightly right. Also, looking down, looking up and looking with the head level.

I enjoy being centred in life, squared up.  Same thing with my gaze.  There’s power, I believe, in looking right at the person I’m with, the line of my shoulders forming a right angle with the direction my head is pointing.  A little one way or the other seems to lessen the contact.  And I want each moment I’m with another human being to hold the possibility of contributing to them.  Naturally my intention, my attitude, my words and my tone of voice are important, but I also sense that my alignment makes a difference.

And then there’s down, up and level.  As I was driving today, I passed a young woman walking with purpose, head down in mid-text.  She seemed so tight and contorted.  There was no flow.  But sometimes head down can be a blessing.  On meditation retreats, we walk with our heads down as a way to centre ourselves.  We’re asked not to make eye contact with other yogis. This is not to be distant, but to allow each person their space.  Even without eye contact, or touching, there’s lots of caring transmitted from retreatant to retreatant.

As for eyes up, that can show devotion or wonder.  “I lift mine eyes unto the hills”, lift them not only to the beauty of nature but also to the best in us, to whatever we experience God to be.  I remember as a kid sitting on the crumbling cement porch of my grandpa’s farmhouse, listening to him tell stories from his favourite chair.  He’d talk and smoke his cigar, and the people would come alive in me.  Devotion.

My favourite is to look at someone on the level.  Person to person, neither one better or worse, two people making meaning together.  As a teacher of many young kids, I’d usually kneel down as we talked, so that we could be eye-to-eye.  That felt good.  Whether with a child or with someone older than me, the meeting of the eyes, especially if we linger, is lovely. Communion.

To everything – turn, turn, turn
There is a season – turn, turn, turn
And a time for every purpose under heaven

 

Less

First of all, I think of food and drink.  I just don’t want as much as I used to. And it’s not that I’m trying to lose weight.  I just like the semi-empty feeling.  It’s soft inside my body, and spacious.  My stomach just sits there, instead of pressing against my pants.

I have a long history of “more” in the arena of nourishment.  My former wife Rita and I regularly went with her parents to Erickson’s Family Restaurant in Lethbridge, Alberta.  Just about every time, I’d eat so much, usually prime rib or steak.  And after an overflowing sweet dessert, I’d invariably undo my belt and the button of my pants (discreetly, of course, under the tablecloth). Today I’m shocked that I found this normal back in the 1970s.

Up until a couple of years ago, Jody and I would go out most Friday nights to Longhorn’s, a roadhouse in St. Thomas.  And more of the invariably – I’d down 30 ounces of beer, then feel horribly bloated, and then fall asleep at home within an hour of our arrival.  Normal all right – normally vacant in the head.

And it’s not just food.  I want less noise.  I want less speed (and I used to love playing the video game “Need For Speed”).  I want less TV.  I want fewer clothes.  I want less small talk.  And it seems that I want less talk of any kind, even discussions of spirituality.  More and more, I want to be silent – still very much with people – but quiet.

But then I also joke around a lot with folks, including strangers.  I don’t want less of that … I guess … Gosh, I’m just not understanding myself very well right now.  But wait a minute – maybe I want less of that too.  Understanding stuff, exploring the mind of reason, having an opinion.

I truly wonder what type of human being I’m becoming.

 

Tonglen

In meditation, picture someone you know and love who is going through much suffering – an illness, a loss, depression, pain, anxiety, fear.  As you breathe in, imagine all of that person’s suffering – in the form of dark, black, smokelike, tarlike, thick and heavy clouds – entering your nostrils and travelling down into your heart.  Hold that suffering in your heart.  Then, on the outbreath, take all of your peace, freedom, health, goodness and virtue, and send it out to the person in the form of healing, liberating light.  Imagine they take it all in, and feel completely free, released and happy.  Do that for several breaths.  Then imagine the town that person is in, and on the inbreath take in all of the suffering of that town, and send back all of your health and happiness to everyone in it.  Then do that for the entire country, the entire planet, the universe.  You are taking in all the suffering of beings everywhere and sending them back health and happiness and virtue.

It sounds so masochistic, doesn’t it?  This practice of tonglen.  Drawing in smoke and tar through the nostrils and sucking it into your heart?  Who would ever do such a thing?  Is it a form of insanity, an expression of a consciousness that is “less than” what our society says is normal?  Or could it possibly reflect someone who has largely let go of “I, me and mine”, someone  who has come to define themselves in a broader way, to love more expansively?  I think the latter.

I’ve had my glimpses of tonglen when faced with the suffering of a person, a group, or the world.  I’ve let it emerge, be a part of me, but then it goes away so quickly.  What then do I do?  Let the word disappear from my vocabulary, or start again, breathing in people’s pain in this moment, and the next, … ?   I think the latter.

It feels like the process of letting go of thoughts when I’m meditating.  First they come rapid-fire, then later a little less frequently.  But they always return.  More and more, I look at a thought’s arrival, smile, say hello, and begin again.

So I choose to embark on another experiment.  I will “be with” the newspaper headlines, such as the ebola crisis in Africa, and I will breathe in the agony of thousands, perhaps millions as it unfolds.  Then I will send them love.  Same for Jody.  Same for the folks I encounter on the streets of London.  Same for me.  Perhaps my heart is big enough to hold it all.

Artful

When I directly view, say, a great Van Gogh, I am reminded of what all superior art has in common: the capacity to simply take your breath away.  To literally, actually, make you inwardly gasp, at least for that second or two when the art first hits you, or more accurately, first enters your being: you swoon a little bit, you are slightly stunned, you are open to perceptions that you had not seen before … You are ushered into a quiet clearing, free of desire, free of grasping, free of ego, free of the self-contraction … For a moment you might even touch eternity.

So many years ago, I was taking a philosophy of education course at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta.  The professor, Gordon Campbell, gave us one assignment for the whole course: write a daily log, reflecting on our discussions, the readings and our field trips (such as to the school on a nearby Blackfoot reserve).  And of course, apply it to our lives.  Such freedom! Such responsibility.

I was looking through a book in the university library, and flipped the page to a remarkable photo, showing Michelangelo’s sculpture “Pieta”.  Jesus is lying in the lap of his mother Mary after he had been crucified.  I stared at the immense sadness in her face, at her right hand supporting Jesus’ back, and at her left hand, palm up.  After the silence diminished, I started writing, about the suffering in the world, in homes, in the classroom.  Over the course of the next day or two, it seems to me that I completed 8 or 10 pages.  It just flowed out of me.

I think the words are gone now, probably discarded inside a pile of stuff on one of our moves.  But she and he remain, tucked away within me.

Near us, in St. Thomas, there is a shrine also tucked away, in a leafy corner of a cemetery.  The centrepiece is an elevated statue of a kneeling girl, with arms upraised, looking in wonder at the golden ball she holds in her hands. Her smile is so sublime, beyond any words I could attach to it.  I go and visit her, just to be with the young lady.  Not often enough for my liking, though. People like me need to bask in her glow.

Sometime in the 1970s, my former wife Rita and I visited the Butchart Gardens near Victoria, B.C.  Paths dropped us into a host of wonderlands, such as the Sunken Garden, the Japanese Garden, and the Mediterranean Garden.  For part of the time, I explored on my own.  I was walking on a manicured lawn, bordered by a rainbow of flower beds.  My stretch of lawn was getting narrower and began curving to the right.  Finally I was “ushered into a quiet clearing”, where I came face-to-face with another girl.  She was naked, and her arms covered her breasts.  Her eyes touched the sky … no smile, no frown, just space.  So lovely to behold.

Three statues.  One Spirit.

I’m Wrong

I went to the tire shop today to have the winter treads put on.  I was heading north on a fairly main street in St. Thomas when I was stopped at an intersection behind a driver who was signalling left.  No one was coming the opposite way but he or she didn’t turn.  Just sat there, for at least a minute.

My nice transformed mind was thoroughly untransformed.  “What are they doing?  Texting? Doing their nails?”  So I immediately jumped to criticism, which disappoints me as I look back at the incident.  Only after a fair time spent tapping my steering wheel (thankfully not honking the horn) did I open to the possibility that the driver was sick or hurt.  At least my humanity eventually showed up.

I edged Scarlet to the right and pulled up alongside.  The woman behind the wheel seemed fine.  Then I looked through her side window at the scene on the side street.  A school bus was stopped right near the corner and the kids were crossing the street.  Arghh!  Humility, thy name is Bruce.  How wrong I was.

Now at home in my man chair, I’m thinking of another time on the road.  I followed a semi-trailer for miles through some gently rolling countryside near London.  The speed limit was 80 kilometres per hour (50 mph) and this guy rarely topped 70.  Okay, it’s probably a heavy truck but it’s not like we’re climbing the Alps.  I created a thorough character analysis of the trucker in my mind, and I bought the whole story, adding to the list of stereotypes that I had accumulated over the years.  Plus it was such a long straight road – nice scenery but still …  And then the road started curving to the left.  You probably know the rest: a compact car was tucked in front of the rig.  More arghh.

Strangely, seeing my assumptions completely proven false was okay, then and today.  I’m just your basic human being and life keeps throwing lessons my way.  Sometimes I’m a slow learner.  I don’t mind.

Coming, Joining, Going

In July, 2013, I spent a week at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, on a silent retreat.  Every afternoon, we had  a long enough break for me to walk a three-mile loop road from the centre.

Early in the week, I found myself really attracted to a woman named Karen. She and I were in the same small group interviews with each of the teachers. The way those interviews were set up, you only talked to the teacher.  So I hadn’t said a word to Karen.

One day, as I was setting out on my walk from the front door of the centre, doing my usual right-to-left loop route, I noticed Karen starting to walk down the circular driveway, heading to the left.  I wondered if she was going to do the loop.  If so, we’d meet about halfway.

I wasn’t very mindful as I passed fields and woodlots, unless you’d include being mindful of Karen’s (!) possible approach.  During the middle of the walk, there’s a long straight stretch. As I curved left to start that section, I looked way ahead.  A tiny figure was on the road, hundreds of yards away. And then a little less tiny.  And then someone definitely wearing a wide-brimmed hat, like I had seen on Karen’s head at the beginning.

Closer still .. and that was Karen.  One hundred yards.  Finally, as we approached each other, I brought my palms together in front of my chest, smiled, made eye contact, and bowed.  She smiled back and bowed to me. And then … poof!  We were gone our separate ways.

At the end of the retreat, we spoke for a few minutes.  Neither of us mentioned our moment of contact.  She told me about the summer program at the Omega Institute in New York State and said that, who knows, we might see each other there someday.  I agreed.

And that was it.  No last names.  No e-mail addresses.  Probably no ever again.  But we touched each other’s lives.  That I know.  The bow was enough.

My Song

Thoughts from Jack Kornfield, in his book A Path With Heart:

There is a tribe in east Africa in which the art of true intimacy is fostered even before birth.  In this tribe, the birth date of a child is not counted from the day of its physical birth nor even the day of conception, as in other village cultures.  For this tribe, the birth date comes the first time the child is thought of in its mother’s mind.  Aware of her intention to conceive a child with a particular father, the mother then goes off to sit alone under a tree.  There she sits and listens until she can hear the song of the child that she hopes to conceive.  Once she has heard it, she returns to her village and teaches it to the father so that they can sing it together as they make love, inviting the child to join them.  After the child is conceived, she sings it to the baby in her womb.  Then she teaches it to the old women and midwives of the village, so that throughout the labor and at the miraculous moment of birth itself, the child is greeted with its song.  After the birth, all the villagers learn the song of their new member and sing it to the child when it falls or hurts itself.  It is sung in times of triumph, or in rituals and initiations.  This song becomes a part of the marriage ceremony when the child is grown, and at the end of life, his or her loved ones will gather around the deathbed and sing this song for the last time.

Truly lovely.  And I ask myself what song I would have my mother choose for me.  To see me through the length of my life.  I’d want it to be sung for me during the tough times, when I was stripped bare of my usual comforts, standing naked before the agony of the moment.  I’d want it to rock me gently, like floating in some amniotic fluid.  I’d want the words and music to be something I could come back to again and again.  Something like this:

Be Not Afraid

You shall cross the barren desert but you shall not die of thirst
You shall wander far in safety though you do not know the way
You shall speak your words to foreign men and they will understand
You shall see the face of God and live

Be not afraid
I go before you always
Come follow me
And I will give you rest

If you pass through raging waters in the sea you shall not drown
If you walk amid the burning flames you shall not be harmed
If you stand before the powers of hell and death is at your side
Know that I am with you through it all

Be not afraid
I go before you always
Come follow me
And I will give you rest

Blessed are your poor for the kingdom shall be theirs
Blessed are you who weep and mourn
For one day you shall laugh
And if wicked men insult and hate you all because of me
Blessed, blessed are you

Be not afraid
I go before you always
Come follow me
And I will give you rest

And who is the “I” that goes before me always?  Something interior rather than exterior, and yet something up, up and away.  A part of me that embraces fear and everything else as merely a passing show.  A storm coming in, raining hard, and then disappearing.

May I be sung to as I die.