Practice Not Perfection
I was saved by a poem.
At Albany Bulb with Elaine…
This poem saved me this week.
It literally rescued me
From myself,
Liberating me
From my
Own
Galloping
Anxiety.
Here it is:
~~~
At Albany Bulb with Elaine
by Alison Luterman
Side by side on a log by the bay.
Sunlight. Unleashed dogs,
prancing through surf, almost exploding
out of their skins with perfect happiness.
Dogs who don’t know about fired park rangers,
or canceled health research, or tariff wars,
or the suicide hotline for veterans getting defunded,
or or or. We’ve listed horror upon horror
to each other for weeks now, and it does no good,
so instead I tell her how I held a two-day old baby
in my arms, inhaling him like a fresh-baked loaf of bread,
then watched as a sneeze erupted through his body
like a tiny volcano. It was the look of pure
astonishment on his face, as if he were Adam
in the garden of Eden making his debut achoo,
as if it were the first sneeze that ever blew,
that got me. She tells me how her dog
once farted so loudly he startled himself
and fell off the bed where he’d been lolling,
and then the two of us start to laugh so hard
we almost fall off our own log. And this
is our resistance for today; remembering
original innocence. And they can’t
take it away from us, though they ban
our very existence, though they slash
our rights to ribbons, we will have
our mirth and our birthright gladness.
Long after every unsold Tesla
has vaporized, and earth has closed over
even the names of these temporary tyrants,
somewhere some women like us
will be sitting side by side, facing the water,
telling human stories and laughing still.
~~~
As a Western Ma. person, I assumed Albany meant, well, Albany.
As in, New York.
What else could it possibly mean, right?
Nope.
Albany Bulb is a former construction debris landfill on San Francisco Bay where people have been making informal outdoor sculptures and paintings for decades. It’s home to 150 species of birds, huge trees, wildflowers, amazing views, and lots of walking trails.
I like knowing that.
The intervention this poem offered me—
By validating the floating anxiety,
By normalizing the totally un-normal things around us,
By acknowledging the bombardment of uncertainties—
The intensity of my gnawing anxiety was softened.
And by offering us bigger perspective—
A bigger picture,
“… will be sitting side by side, facing the water,
telling human stories and laughing still.”
Oh, my heart relaxed.
Oh, my mind slowed.
Oh, I could look around
And see the beauty.
Oh, I could look around
And see the grace.
Along with the assaults and the offenses
Against the human spirit,
Against our very nature of connectedness—
There is beauty.
There is grace.
How can that be?
Wherever you live, look out the window.
Check it out.
There is beauty.
There is grace.
~~~
I see:
Little red buds on the ends of tree branches,
Waiting for their moment
Of opening,
Of expansion.
I see sunshine
Breaking through
Dark clouds,
Miraculously
Guiding me
And Niki home.
I see birds
Flying
Hither and skitter
In the pure pleasure
Of being.
OH, dear friends,
May I never miss
The beauty.
May I never
Miss the grace.
Except, of course,
When I do.
And then,
May I practice
Coming back home.
~~~
What interventions work for you?
I daily scrounge around for inspiration.
For me, for you.
Poetry,
Something funny,
Music.
Something to change it up.
What helps interrupt your
Wild mind?
What supports you in realigning?
What supports your practice of noticing
And coming back,
To a larger perspective?
My dear friend Audrey said this week,
“I toggle between sanity and insanity.”
Sounds like practice to me!
~~~
Practice does not mean:
I got this. I’m done. Om shanti. Finished and evolved.
Practice is a fluid, a living thing.
A remembering,
A forgetting,
A strengthening
Of our muscles
Of kindness and rigor.
To honor the forgetting,
To return back
To remembering,
To the moment
With breath,
With body,
With possibility.
Practice.
Not
Perfection.
~~~
Music! Ah, music!
This song always worked for me in the past.
And now, in a Playing for Change format with musicians all over the world creating the song together, such a deeper and different sound emerges.
Diversity.
It gives us depth.
In our diversity,
The truth expands.
Here is:
Fly Like an Eagle
~~~
Dear Friends,
May we practice kindness
For ourselves.
May we wrap ourselves up
With tolerance and patience.
May we allow ourselves
To come
And
To
Go,
Toggling
Between
Remembering
And
Forgetting.
May we keep coming home
To the blessings,
To the kindness,
To the connectedness
Of our ourselves
And
Of our communities.
And may all beings benefit from our time together.
All blessings,
Aruni