Beginner's Heart

Meditation is hard for me. I’m not good at sitting still. I’m not particularly good at walking mindfully. What I do best is be in nature. Want someone to watch birds with? I’m your girl. Sit and watch a mountain breathe? Sounds great. But sit on my butt on a cushion/ a chair/ a zafu? Hmmm…

So I have to trick my monkey mind . I’m a firm believer in what Thich Nhat Hanh says about washing the dishes: just wash the dishes. Don’t anticipate dessert, he admonishes — just wash the dishes. It’s the same with being still: just be still. Focus.

So when I go places, if I can, I draw. Badly, but I still draw . This weekend, I sat in a white rocker on a turn-of-the-century (1886 ) balcony and drew. With a pencil. In a new art journal.  The first drawing, still unfinished. And I was still. Sure, my hand moved — my thumb, the measure of which divided my page into fourths, and the larger tree into thirds, fluttered above the page like a pale moth. But my monkey mind settled, drawn into the drawing…focused on the cross-hatching that isn’t at all like coniferous needles, and the scribblings that aren’t quite leaves .

This is one of my favourite meditations: being outside, watching a tree dance with light and shadow, or a mountain play canvas to the painting of sunlight across its slopes. I can sit still for an hour in front of Mt. Hood, for instance, and I have the bad art to prove it . Like I can sit on the deck, and follow a bird through the trees, on to a feeder, then back into the tree above. The heart of focus: staying the mind on an object outside itself. Letting go.

The art may not be good, but the stillness is ~

It’s a shameful confession, for an eco-nut (a friend’s husband once called me an ‘eco-terrorist’ because I’ve supported Green Peace since the get-go ). I love fireworks. Yes, they’re probably horrible for the environment. Yes, they’re totally ephemeral. (I think of them as a kind of Buddha board art — see below )

But they’re so lovely — the perfect dandelions of colour, exploding against the hot summer sky. The neon colours that almost defy naming — sear and tang and bright and fire . And while I know the origins of fireworks –  Chinese through & through; they still dominate the business — they seem quintessentially American to me. A fitting celebration of the country’s birth. Pyrotechnics, colour, loud noise and beauty that goes up in smoke .

In fact, the entire idea of July 4 celebrations has become a politicized issue, research shows. Republicans see themselves as ‘more patriotic,’ and flag-waving is the way to show it.

I don’t mean that to sound unpatriotic or cynical. Much of my life has been spent outside the US and I have always been glad to be able to ‘come home.’ When we had other options, my husband & I made the choice to return to the USA to bring up our two sons. We didn’t want them to be, as I am in many ways, expat brats . We wanted them to be firmly rooted in America, with all its complexities.

As the Fourth looms, I wonder why we define patriotism so narrowly. A neighbour flies a large American flag, but brags about stiffing the nursing homes where he does medical care. I doubt George Washington would find that laudable. A family member truly believes that only Christians should be allowed to vote. That lets out Thomas Jefferson, a deist but not a Christian. Another advocates mandatory birth control for welfare recipients. None of these seem to me to resonate w/ what I think of as real American virtues: hard work for fair wages, a reasonable profit for quality goods, freedom of religion and freedom from governmental mandates. Ironically, the more people I know tout ‘patriotism,’ the more likely they are to limit American rights to people who look and act and believe as they do.

So I offer you my ultimate American patriotic icon: the Bill of Rights. Freedom of religion, freedom of press, due process… For me, that’s what it’s all about: I may not agree w/ what you do w/ your rights, but I will celebrate them joyfully with you this hot Oklahoma Monday. After all, three generations of my family have fought to uphold them…:) So celebrate our glorious right to disagree ~ Happy Fourth!

You may well be sick of bees. I, on the other hand, see them everywhere. At the botanical gardens we visited as a field trip last week (see photo, attached ), there were bees. And they make a lot of noise .

I confess: so do I. I buzz around doing this, babbling as I work. I buzz around on that, la-la-la-ing as I go. In other words, I talk too much. But at least I’m trying not to .

In a presentation at the Summer Institute I help facilitate, a friend shared her presentation on the power of silence in the classroom. I loved it. She talked about silence (ironic, but she also had us be quiet, and listen to the silence. It was amazingly powerful. It wasn’t long, but the absence of extra noise somehow highlighted the lack of total silence.  Even a ‘quiet’ room was alive: there was the sound of the ethnographer writing in her journal, someone else’s keyboard clacking…  Not true ‘silence’ at all…

In fact, I can’t remember ‘hearing’ silence for a long time. Certainly not at work! My classes are rarely silent, something colleagues sometimes tease me about: ‘Wow, Britt, your classes are like barely controlled chaos.’ As they are .

So I’m going to try harder. I’ll take up sitting still again (it waxes & wanes as a practice for me, something a Buddhist aspirant probably shouldn’t  admit…), and even go back to haiku for a bit, to cut out extra words in my work. Somehow that sounds as seductive as honey ~

And hey ~ even bees hibernate.

This is my past few months: the sands of time in a huge gritty mess . Complete w/ the occasional glass shard. But yesterday my largest summer project ended (successfully!), as did another project, and a third the week before that. So tomorrow, in honour of hard work and exhaustion, we’re off to relax. A balcony room overlooking the Ozarks, walking quaint Victorian streets, a haunted hotel, and breakfast someone else makes and cleans up . Can it get any better?

Only if you add in a lovely drive through the hills up to our destination, dinner at a real log cabin (best steak imaginable), and artisan crafts. Those who know me will know how enticing that all sounds .

Then feast your eyes on the hotel, built before the turn of the 19th century ~ complete with turrets, breakaway vistas to the church behind and 50′ below, and a ground floor spa. Sigh… My over-worked brain is already softening in anticipation.

We need R&R.  Otherwise, how can we find within our frazzled hearts any peace for the people who need us? I’m a smiler — and a hugger, my friends will warn you. And unless you make it transparently clear that you hate hugs, I will envelop you in one. Maybe even if we haven’t actually met, if there’s any pretext of me knowing. People need to touch . We need hugs, in my opinionated opinion.

But in order to keep smiling (w/out the family Alzheimer’s to fall back on), I need to rest. And I need to feed my inner artist, as Julia Cameron says. So I’ve packed the portable oil set my indulgent husband bought me for my birthday a few months ago, a Moleskine for drawing and painting in, my new journal (the old one’s about full!), and a couple of books — both the e- kind and the traditional hard-copy kind .

I’m going to sit like Denise Levertov used to do, watching a mountain (well, an Arkansas hill ) breathe. And I will breathe almost as slowly. There have been fireworks exploding in my head for weeks now — well, some might call them neurons, but they sure felt hotter and more incandescent than usual! I’m going to celebrate silently. Peacefully. And maybe find the time to reconnect with what sparks imagination — R&R.