Grace in Small Things – 71

Most mornings I have to find my way out of the cloud of crazy, anxiety-producing thoughts and back to a place of peace before I can go to work. Sometimes I can do this with the day’s lojong card. Some days I can move out of the anxiety cloud while sitting in meditation. Some days I have to use a systematic CBT approach or mindfulness-based exercises.

I take out my poster with the WILLING instructions on it and remember to allow the experience to be.

“Make room for the experience, make space for it,” I say. I feel myself relax just from focusing on that simple concept.

One morning I found a particularly helpful technique. My heart felt like it was racing and my whole chest felt compressed. I was in that fight or flight mode, or close to it.  I was getting into the shower.  I looked around me to find out where was the huge tiger ready to leap out and eat me.  After all, for my heart to be racing like that, there must be an immediate threat.

There was nothing but a bar of soap in my hand…organic at that!

“This bar of soap is not threatening me,” I said. “The universe is not threatening me.”

Then I said it of the water falling onto my face. “This water is not threatening me. The universe is not threatening me.”

Everywhere I looked, it was just friendly things, no tigers or lions or bears.

My breathing slowed, my heart rate slowed, I took a nice, deep breath.

Another thing I have found helpful just in the past two or three days is to remember how important we are to each other as team members just now. We are all in the same boat, and we are beginning to see how much difference it makes in our morale when we support each other.  We do not sit around and trash talk others. It is not about gossip. It is about saying to one another, “remember, it’s not personal,” or “I’m sorry it’s your turn today. Monday it was my turn.”

When one of my coworkers got it three days in a row, I was actually feeling grateful when the microscope turned toward me on day four, knowing my friend needed a breather.

This attitude helped me tremendously this morning, as I was flirting with the idea of calling in sick due to the knot of dread in my stomach. I remembered that I am needed. My coworkers need me to be a leader in how to handle this situation. My clients need me to pay their claims so they can get their money sooner. Taking the focus off myself helped me put one foot in front of the other and report to work.

Today the microscope did not turn on anyone. We worked away and helped each other. Whew, that feels SO GOOD.

One of my team mates has recently returned from a few months leave. Before the hiatus, the energy between us wasn’t all that good. Prickly. I had shenpa for her, you might say.  Today at 5:15, after everyone else had left,  I decided to follow her into the parking lot and find out how she’s doing, how she’s adjusting to being back. I told her to be sure to let me know if there was anything she needed to make her transition smoother.  That felt good. That felt right.

Grace in Small Things – 70

• Two nights ago, right after the last blog post, I had the most wonderful dream in which a Crow or Raven allowed me to come so close. Closer and closer I inched, and finally dared put out my arm. The Crow climbed on and together we went inside a nearby school building.  It let me stroke its soft head. It seemed to be vacation time, as the building was empty except for a headmaster, whom I asked how to get to the room we needed. He told us just to follow the lines on the floor that had been painted there for the children to follow. Off we went, the Crow and I, following the lines on the floor.
• Spending all day Saturday cooking up three dishes for my meals this week, all from a beautiful cookbook loaned to me by a friend: hummus, saagwalla daal, beans  & rice with onions, cheddar and tomatoes.
• A semi-lucid dream last night in which I saw my brother as he was at age six…so cute with a tiny nose and little freckles…and my grandfather as he was when I was very small. In the dream my grandfather was a doctor, white lab coat and all, and I was so glad to see him alive again that I kept kissing his cheek. It was one of those dreams with a holographic feel… like time travelling. I realized I was travelling back in time and wouldn’t be able to stay long, which made the encounters with my little brother and with my grandfather that much more precious.
• Rising at 6:00 to spend all day at Point Pelee with Sylvain, spotting the first Blue-Winged Warbler of the week and having the interpreter put it on the white-board map for others to find it, and coming home sunburned and exhausted but very happy.
• Receiving this award from Lynn.

Grace in Small Things – 69

Sometimes I have to find grace in the things that did not happen.

I came very, very, very close, but I did not quit my job. I did not tell Sylvain “hasta la vista, baby,” and high tail it back to Arkansas, leaving my landlord in the lurch with a bunch of furniture to get rid of and five months left on the lease.

I did not cry in front of my coworkers.

I did cry in front of my meditation group, which is okay. They allow crying.

I did not hit anyone.

I did not kill anyone.

I did not harm myself.

I did not stop at a dive on the way home and order a beer, because I had a car to bring safely home. I did buy some Corona and bring it home with me. I thought that was the lesser of two evils: have a nervous breakdown or drink a beer.

I reeeeaaaally hope this is a) hormones or b) the tension right before a breakthrough.

Please pray for me.

Searches That Find My Blog

Below is a pretty typical profile of the search engine terms that cause my blog to get hits. Every day someone finds my blog by looking for a zereshk polo recipe. In fact, if you Google zereshk polo, my blog is now the top result. Not that I check blog stats every day, but when I do, it’s pretty much the same every time: nudism, women’s feet, how to make a dress, how to make little gift boxes, pasta putanesque, pocket doors, piano windows, Stella market Windsor, Taloola Cafe Windsor. Pretty tame stuff compared to how people find Violet’s blog or even Kitty.

Today

Search	Views
everglades habitat wide	1
fauna	1
taloola’s windsor ontario	1
purple starfish	1
kinder spirits waterloo ont	1
oh the places you will go clip art	1
how to make a dress	1
lisa bloom feet	1

Yesterday

Search	Views
hafez	14
feet fetish	5
putanesque	4
divine sex	4
secret divine sex. nude	4
template for paper box with a lid	4
zereshk polo	3
nudism	3
la stella market windsor	3
mom feet	3

Grace in Small Things – 68

• Sharing Malai Kofta with my sweetheart
• Three straight days at work with a bit less stress
• Being given a beautiful framed bead and sequin elephant by my friend and coworker J when I mentioned that I liked elephants
• My Nellie Elephant song. She’s wrinkled and grey and nothing stands in her way, Nellie Elephant!
• How uplifting it is to come home after a stressful day and read such encouraging comments from all of you

Joy Rebel Mission: Give

Aha! I am not a week behind and I’m not squeaking in under the wire. I’m right on top of this Joy Rebel mission.

Today while chatting with my interviewer as she looked over my application, I was asked about my first volunteer job, which I did from age 25 to 28. I was an infant stimulator (aka baby rocker) and sometimes Spanish interpreter at Arkansas Children’s Hospital baby unit.  I’m sure I perked right up when she asked me to tell her more about that. What amazing memories I have from that time in my life.

I originally chose that volunteer job because at the time I was married to a man serving fifty years without parole in Cummins Prison…down there in cotton country in south Arkansas.  He and I were only allowed to see one another for 4 hours every week when he was a Class I (earned through good behaviour) and once every two weeks when he was a Class 2. We didn’t get to visit at all when he messed up and got thrown in the hole.  But I digress.

I had skin hunger.

Holding babies fed my skin hunger.

Wow, the memories keep coming back. For a while I taught Japanese at a boys’ and girls’ club, part of a Judo program for youth at risk. I will never forget the one little boy who wanted to be a gang leader because they have cars and fancy jewelry. He was only about 11 years old, but he could rattle off the Japanese syllabary like nobody’s business…better than the Judo Sensei, better than  the maintenance guy who sat in on the lessons (Hi, Frederick!)

One of the most interesting volunteer stints I ever had was when I accompanied my Spanish prof to Bolivia to teach English teachers there the TPR method of language teaching. I brought back some hierba mate, a gourd and bombilla.

Another intriguing job was at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics–first as a tour guide at Einsteinfest and later as an usher for concerts and lectures. For my trouble, I got an Einstein action figure doll. There was this really quiet IT guy where I last worked, and one day he asked me where I had gotten the Einstein doll, which–still in its packaging–adorned the shelf over my desk. When I knew I was doing a huge material purge to move here, I gave him the doll.

Looking back, it’s pretty clear that I have gotten at least as much as I have given in each of these pro bono positions.

Aside from responding to the odd plea for donations to this or that cause that comes along now and then, my only regularly scheduled giving of late has been to Canadian Blood Services. They take a pint every 56 days.

But today! Today I got my police background check form, my health form and my requisition for a 2-step TB test. The training I need in order to work one-on-one with clients is not offered again until September, so that gives me lots of time to read. Also in the interim I am allowed to do clerical stuff, like reception.

I used to think that in order to feel my life had been worthwhile, I would have to do something really big before it’s all said and done…like run a daycare for homeless kids or go overseas to dig wells…or go to Appalachia with Habitat. Lately, though, I’m starting to see that no act of giving is too small. Every smile counts. Every hello to a lonely neighbour counts. Every quarter put in a parking meter for a stranger counts.

Every goofy, uplifting message written on a sticky note and placed somewhere to cheer the person who finds it, counts.

Joy Rebel

I’m getting this week’s Joy Rebel mission in just under the wire. The mission is a question: what does being a Joy Rebel mean to me?

For me, being a Joy Rebel means having the courage to live my authentic life in the face of all the forces in modern day western society and culture that would like to pull me down.

For me being a Joy Rebel means tuning out the major networks and tuning into YES! magazine, to the blogs of other lovers of life, or skipping news altogether and just looking into the faces around me…all the news I need.

For me being a Joy Rebel means meeting up with a blogger from another country and walking a labyrinth together.

It means blowing bubbles on main street and not caring who thinks I’m crazy.

It means wearing a name tag to facilitate getting to know my neighbours.

hello, my name is kelly

Being a Joy Rebel, to me, means that when a coworker warns me that the customer she is about to transfer to my extension is being a big jerk, I answer the phone as if I had not just heard that warning at all. I answer with the same calm patience and eagerness to make that person’s day as I answer every other call. And you know what? It works. The “jerk” who was just cursing or raising his voice to my coworker is a total pussycat with me. Every time.

Being a Joy Rebel means believing in magic.

It means never forgetting that I hold the power within me to transform my world.

Being a Joy Rebel means looking for heart-shaped rocks.

…cutting out multi-coloured snowflakes…

…and wearing red shoes, and fixing a sandwich for the guy on the park bench whose sign says he needs two dollars.

Being a Joy Rebel means adopting 9 rats from shelters and homes that can no longer keep them…and taking them for walks in the neighbourhood where children soon learn that rats are awesome companions.

For me, being a Joy Rebel means getting with a group to sing out my love for God at the top of my lungs, even though I’m almost tone deaf.

It means going to school on Saturdays and sitting in a wee tiny desk surrounded by beautiful children with the darkest brown eyes and black hair, learning Farsi together.

Being a Joy Rebel means having the courage to share my overflowing heart…

with the whole world.

Grace in Small Things – 67

Yesterday was a gloriously sunny and warm day. Sylvain and I spent the warmest part of the day on Ottawa Street exploring the shops and having lunch at Tres Bean Cafe.

After the big outing, I let myself have a nap.  I love naps.

In the late afternoon and evening, there were fifteen little boats anchored out near Sand Point. The fishing must be really good right there. I had fun counting the boats again and again as night fell.  Seven.  Now five.  Three.

The last boat did not come back to the marina until it was very dark and all I could see were the little boat’s lights sliding past the docks.

Today it is overcast and cool and nobody is fishing.

I got up very early, stretched, meditated and headed down to the pool for some laps. It was my first time ever to get my butt down to the pool in the morning. But gah! I forgot the fitness club does not open until 10:00 a.m. on Sundays.

So instead I did my grocery shopping and came back home. With Manjula’s video running right there in the kitchen, I made Malai Kofta. It was a lot of work, but it turned out great. Now I have that AND Navratan Korma for this week’s lunches, plus baby spinach for salads. I’m set.

Today was a Kelly day; except for the errand, I spent it alone in silence. That was restorative and felt good to my soul.

Grace in Small Things – 66

During these times when so many are feeling the effects of the economic downturn, I feel particularly blessed not only to have the necessities of life, such as a roof over my head that does not leak, food on my table and healthcare, but to be able to have a few luxuries, as well.

It feels almost sinful at times when I go to my pantry and can choose from five or six high end teas or tisanes: Tazo Calm or Ginger Green Tea, Four O’Clock Licorice Spice or Traditional Medicinals Sleepy Time. I know I am blessed. I know it.

Although it may have been unwise for me to take this condo where the rent I pay barely leaves anything left over for the savings account, for now I feel extremely fortunate to have a view of boats on the water, access to a salt water pool and a dry sauna where I can sit by myself with the glow of the coals and commune with the warm cedar walls and benches worn smooth by years of use.

I did save money last time by cutting my own hair, but today I allowed myself a cut by Khalid at Sabin’s. Oh, that young man is a master with my thin, fine, limp and very straight hair.

I am blessed to have enough money, through frugality in other areas, to have organic and specialty products in my refrigerator and pantry. Every time I put a box of Nature’s Path gluten-free cereal in my shopping cart, I am aware that it is a luxury.

I could go on for a very long time reflecting on all the things I am fortunate to be able to afford. But instead, I will acknowledge one blessing that I can easily overlook: my own attitude of gratitude. May I never lose it.

Grace in Small Things – 300 to go

• My friend sent me a link to this interview with Leonard Cohen. It was long, but I am so glad I watched it all the way to the very end. What a man, what a heart, what a soul.
• Being contacted by a friend of Elspeth who lives in my city! We are going to meet for tea soon.
• Sun, sun, sun and warmth!!!
• Watching all the happy fishers in their boats out on the water.
• All the people smiling and saying hello.

Grace in Small Things – 64

• Finally going for a swim again after weeks of neglecting my need for exercise.
• Finding the motivation to go for a swim in my desire to train in energy work. I have to take good care of my own chi if I’m going to share it with others.
• Meeting with some people today to map out a strategy, a concrete way of dealing with a stressful situation in our lives.
• Being told that my sharing a helpful tool made a lot of difference in a friend’s outlook and completely turned her attitude around. The tool was to remind oneself: “not permanent, not personal.”
• Having so many good teachers in my life.

Grace in Small Things – 63

• Giving myself permission to skip meditation group tonight because I needed to cook for myself, not having gotten to do it on the weekend as I normally do.
• Being able to have Manjula join me in the kitchen, thanks to the portability of a laptop. When she said Namaste, I bowed to the screen and said Namaste back. She is a good cooking teacher.
• That my friend L from meditation group is going to have a baby.
• Weather in the 60s this week. I could jump for joy!
• The warm and caring faces of the other volunteer candidates in my orientation group last night.

Grace in Small Things – 62

• A transcendent moment yesterday morning that has left me in a state of liberation for two straight days.
• Wearing my hELLo mY nAme iS kELLy tag again.
• Going to the Hospice volunteer orientation tonight and leaving feeling very comfortable that I have made a good decision. The woman who lead the orientation is herself a cancer survivor who once made use of the hospice’s many (free)  services. I like her.
• How I felt standing in the hospice library surrounded by books about life and death and meditation and faith and grief and cancer and AIDS and nutrition and yoga.
• An empty paper cup rolling back and forth and back and forth in the driveway as dusk fell, a rainy wind dancing it to and fro.

Superhero

I continue to be one week behind on the Joy Rebel missions, as I am just now coming up with my own superhero. Well, if I were to design a superhero figure, I think she would look a whole lot like Goddess Kali. While searching for the perfect image of Kali, I came across this great essay on the paralells between Kali and Black Holes!

Grace in Small Things – 61

• Spending a sunny, cool day with Sylvain in Ann Arbor yesterday, and all the fun we had investigating restaurants, shops and cafes on Main Street.
• Portobello quesadilla at the Prickly Pear… my first Southwest cuisine since Blue Moon closed in Little Rock decades ago.. and a boyfriend who gives me all his cilantro. Ok, so he doesn’t like cilantro, but it still makes me very happy.
• How much these audio exercises helped me with my crazy head today.
• The message of resurrection.
• Looking forward to dinner with Sylvain’s family later this evening.

Grace in Small Things – 60

• The sun is shining.
• Using the “Letting Go with Mindfulness” sheets I got from a link on the Live Mindfully blog during a period of much mental turmoil. I was able to move from a 1 to an 8 on an “able to let go” scale of 0 to 10 using the method presented, and move on with my day.
• Sylvain and I are headed out for a day exploring downtown Ann Arbor.
• There are three days in this weekend, enough time for laundry and cooking AND some fun.
• You in my life.

Photo Safari

This was last week’s Joy Rebel mission, and I am late posting it because I mislaid my camera. It was in my desk drawer at work over the weekend. Here are some random scenes from my daily life.

Yoga mat and bell by window.

Happy collage greets me in the kitchen.

I put on my shoes and socks.

I am grateful for a reliable car.

Arriving at work, I notice the sky.

During the workday, I try to remember Loving Kindness.

Sylvain says these are called bull rushes.

I work on the industrial side of town, with lots of dump trucks.

One night a week I go to Sheila and Gerry's house.

Some evenings I stop at the library. I love that it's open late.

Sunset seen from library parking lot.

Joy is coming home to find a letter from a friend!

Some evenings, we go for a walk.

...around the neighbourhood...

...under the trees...

Each morning, the sun rises differently.

...

It always gets my attention.

Answering the Call

Before I started reading Buddhist material, I thought it was just a strange obsession of mine.

Death.

My goal in life was to be ready for death.

To keep myself more present, I would play what I called “the dead game,” imagining I had already died and was getting to visit earth in my old body for an hour or two.

Or, like Patti Digh, I would propose to myself, what would you do if you knew you had only x days to live?

All my practice comes down to one thing. When that moment comes, should I be fortunate enough to have even a little warning, I want to be able to relax into it.

This is why I practice letting go of the world of form now.

Whenever I get lazy in my mindfulness practice…

Whenever a particularly challenging situation pushes my buttons and I fail to handle it mindfully…

All I have to do to get myself right back on track is remind myself that death might be like that.

“When you are dying, Kelly, there might be some aspect of it that pushes the same button. Clinging. I like it this way, I don’t like it that way. I don’t want to die NOW. I don’t want to die THIS WAY.”

A lack of peace. A lack of accepting what is.

When I realize that I am missing an opportunity to build those “accepting the Now” muscles now, whoa Nelly! That wakes me up. I get cracking.  I turn lovingly toward whatever situation had me riled. A chance to practice! A chance to get better at accepting what already is. A chance to practice dying.

There is nothing but nothing more important to me.

====

Then I started reading Buddhist material, I discovered this is not just my little quirk. There are loads of teachers out there who recommend meditating on your own death to help you live your life more mindfully, more fully, more in each present moment.  Thich Nhat Hanh advised me, in his book the Miracle of Mindfulness, to meditate on my own corpse being eaten by worms.

I get it. The human tendency to deny our own mortality is so strong that it takes that much determination to break through the veil of denial. If you picture your own corpse being worm food… I mean really picture your own body on that metal cart in the morgue and later in the ground and later feeding little bugs… then maybe, just maybe you can taste the reality of the finiteness of your time in the earth school.

====

Midlife crisis.

My friend J is so blessed. She went to school to become what she dreamed of becoming. She is a social worker and she works with homeless people every day. Her calling is also her livelihood.

I have not managed that in my life.

I have fallen into a series of nice jobs halfway between administrative and technical that have paid the bills.

In the meantime a very soft, barely audible voice in my back of my mind has occasionally called to me about what I want to be when I grow up.  What about my gifts?  What about serving humankind? What about my dreams?

I’ve had a lot of them… fantasies about what I shoud be doing with my life.

I am hesitant to list any of them here because I don’t want to open myself up to the very painful experience of having someone who is insensitive to my particular set of phobias, anxieties and self-confidence issues to say, “Oh, you could do THAT, Kelly. Go for it.”

No, YOU could do that. If I could do it I would already have done it.

Since reaching the MIDlife years, however, the voice asking me what in the hell I’m doing with my life is getting louder than the voice telling me I can’t, I’ll fail, I don’t know where to start.

=====

The experience with my grandfather taught me something about myself. It taught me that I am one of only a handful of people comfortable talking about death with someone who is dying.  Comfortable touching someone who is dying. Comfortable offering to talk if talk is desired, to sit silently if that is what is right in that moment, to fluff the pillow or do the dishes or rub on the lotion or bring the drink of water, if that is what is helpful. Comfortable opening my heart and crying with the other person, if that is what arises from the authenticity of the moment.

My latest and most consuming fantasy about what I could do with my life?

Death midwife.

Some people specialize in ushering little angels into the world. I want to specialize in the facilitating a peaceful exit.

And so I have spent a lot of hours lately imagining how to go about getting into this field. I’ve been devouring books like “Final Gifts” and “What Dying People Want” and “The Real Work of Dying.”

I have to keep working 8:30 to 5:00 to pay my rent, which doesn’t leave a lot of time or money for a chaplaincy program or graduate school.

I do not want to move back in with Sylvain and his family, and I don’t want to go back to Arkansas and live with my mother. Well, not yet, anyway. Not if there is another way.

So there my logical brain told me I was stuck. It said there was no way to pursue my dream, my calling.

So I prayed about it fervently.

And an answer came.

The answer voice told me that I do not need to worry about so many steps down the road, I only need to take one step in the direction of my dream.

Things will unfold from there as they are meant to.

And so I picked up the phone last week and called the volunteer coordinator at the Hospice of Windsor and Essex County.

My volunteer orientation is next week.

Grace in Small Things – 59

• Thanks to very strong privacy legislation in Canada, the Red Dot Campaign, and six months I spent tirelessly contacting and re-contacting companies who broke the law and used or sold my address for marketing without my permission, I now have a life completely devoid of telemarketing calls and a mailbox with no junk mail whatsoever.
• Mentioning in meditation group tonight that I was learning to cook some Indian dishes from Manjula’s Kitchen, then having Sheila disappear into her kitchen and reappear with a belan, which she gave me. It is just like the one I see Manjula using on her videos to make puri.
• Having another group member, who is from India, offer to teach me to cook some dishes she knows.
• The huge boost I get each Wednesday from being around others who practice meditation and mindfulness.
• Gerry’s hugs.

Grace in Small Things – 57, 58

“Meeting” a warm and adorable woman who welcomed me right into her kitchen where she proceeded to demonstrate for me how to make Malai Kofta and Navratan Korma. I can’t wait to stop in the Indian food store for asafoetida and mango powder so I can get cooking!

Screwing up the courage, after one false start, to venture over to downtown Ann Arbor for the first time. I did so by myself without a GPS and only got turned around three times going and coming home…pretty good for me. I’m especially happy that I caught the directional errors right away and got reoriented easily.

My friend Jo, who had explained to me in advance where I would park and where to go from there:  just up the stairs, following the voices, of course!

Being in the Ark! Gazing around me at the concert posters of Joan Baez and Great Big Sea and Leon Redbone…

My second ever time to stand in the centre of the hollow square. I got to lead TWO songs today, with Jo at my side teaching me how to keep time and cue the four sections when their parts came in.

Jasper, equally happy breastfeeding or helping daddy lead a song.

The way these lyrics break my heart open and leave me choking on my tears:

Now shall my inward joys arise, and burst into a song; Almighty love inspires my heart, And pleasure tunes my tongue.

God on His thirsty Zion’s hill, Some mercy drops has thrown; And solemn oaths have bound His love to show’r salvation down.

Why do we then indulge our fears, suspicions and complaints? Is He a God, and shall His grace Grow weary of His saints?

Learning that the women sitting directly in front of me had, like me, spent this past week using Buddhist practice to survive an especially challenging work week. We have declared ourselves a group within a group: Buddhist Sacred Harp singers.

Exiting the Ark to find a street festival in progress. The U-M student (STOMPesque) drum group GROOVE were beating their upside-down plastic and metal garbage cans with such energy, joy and zeal that I had to jump up and down.

A small girl with a yellow dog almost taller than she was who trailed her father into a gift shop saying, “Daddy, are dogs allowed in the store?” and then proceeded to offer, “Do you want to pet Daisy? You can pet Daisy.” I got on my knees and soaked up the dog kisses, announcing, “Free dog love here!”  A couple more people got in line behind me.

Bicycles, bicycles everywhere!