The Best is Yet to Come

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Friends, time is ridiculous!  When was it? I don’t know.  Two years ago?  When things in my life imploded, marriage, work, diagnosis—to name a few.

In the midst of all of that, my dear friend Barbara gave me a present.

It was wrapped well, as one can expect from Barbara; some people just have the wrapping gene, unlike me.  The strangely shaped package was long and narrow, wrapped in soft blue paper, with a splendid silver ribbon.  I tugged at the pretty pale paper.

It opened partially, revealing something thin and long and wooden.

I tugged and tore some more.

And there it was.

It was a sign.

I mean, literally, a sign.

You know, one of those cool signs, thin and long and simple yet inherently decorative and simultaneously profound, and it said:

THE BEST IS YET TO COME.

I instantly hated it and loved it.

It rested in my hands.  I paused and breathed, feeling its weight.

I knew the truth of this message historically.  Life had gotten better and better, evidence-based data showed me.  But recently, getting older, imagining life as an old woman in our culture seemed, well, a stretch of the imagination, a leap I was not able to make.

It was a gloomy time.

I believed in the sign’s bigger truth.

I just wasn’t feeling its promise in the moment.

I put the sign on the kitchen shelf.  There, amongst its cousin mugs, it has quietly beamed upon me ever since, through COVID and apparent cancer, through lockdown, through caregiving and reconciliation.  

Through Donald Trump and the blowing apart of every fault line in our culture.  

Through insurrection and through fires and floods.

There it sat, reminding me:

THE BEST IS YET TO COME.

I ignored it.  

I randomly and occasionally noticed it.  

I riled against it.

I cursed it.

I snubbed it.

And you know what?

I am beginning—ever so slowly—ever so hesitatingly—ever so cautiously—to feel its truth.

THE BEST IS YET TO COME.

Why not?

~~

Some back story—

I come from this Jewish headset—kina hora—

Do you know what that means?

Something like:

Don’t say it.  Don’t even think it.  It’s bad luck.  You’ll jinx yourself, you asshole.  (my addition).  It is a warding off, a pushing away of bad luck, of the evil eye.

My attitude does minimize my imagination.  
My fear does limit 
My capacity to hope.

And then, how might I manifest?

(Expect the worst?  Yes, that’s a mantra I have lived into.)

I thought—spiritually, one had to simply surrender, not imagine, not to hope, certainly not to want.

Just endure,
Cautiously
And
Carefully.

Yet, the other day, in my in-box, came the reframe of superstition.  Check it out—

Knock on Wood

From the Free Dictionary:

In order to avoid misfortune and/or hope for good luck. This magical formula put as touchwood in Great Britain is based on the superstition that touching or rapping on anything wooden will avoid a disaster, especially after one has boasted. 

There may have been an ancient religious significance to the gesture, perhaps from the time of the Druids, who regarded certain trees as sacred, but the precise meaning has been forgotten.  

Knocking on wood is calling the tree spirits forth for protection and for blessing

(Picture by Eva M. Crowley, thank you!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

~~~

I always thought being spiritual meant never, NEVER ask for anything.

Never, ever imagine good stuff.

Suffer and wait and see.

Endure and receive.

Amazingly, the other day, I heard Ron Young, an amazing spiritual teacher, end his meditation class with these words.  

He said:

“EXPECT WONDERFUL THINGS.”

Ron Young said, “EXPECT WONDERFUL THINGS.”

Omg.  

If he said it……….
He would never, NEVER be frivolous.
He would never encourage entitlement.
He is the opposite of frivolous.
He is the opposite of entitled.

Can I really expect wonderful things?

Why not?

~~~

A wonderful thing would be people healing the infinite chasms that separate us.  Here is a musical inspiration to that end:

Playing for Change, the miraculous global music cooperative offers us this song, created by more than twenty musicians from seven countries.  Check out the power of each voice, each sound, separate and together making something so profoundly powerful and heart-opening.  Enjoy:

Watch Here

~~~
A wonderful thing would be our remembering we are all one.  Here is poetic inspiration: hopefully to that end, the profound Palestinian-American poet, Naomi Shihab Nye, reading her poem, Gate A-4

I Sometimes Forget 

Poem by Hafiz

~~~
I sometimes forget
that I was created for Joy.
My mind is too busy.
My Heart is too heavy
for me to remember
that I have been
called to dance
the Sacred dance of life.
I was created to smile
To Love
To be lifted up
And to lift others up.
O’ Sacred One
Untangle my feet
from all that ensnares.
Free my soul.
That we might
Dance
and that our dancing 
might be contagious.

~Hafiz

~~~
Well.
That pretty much says it, 
I do believe.

To be lifted up,
And to
Lift up
Others.

I have been fairly ensnared in the events of the past months.

How about you?

I have been fairly ensnarled in the political, the cultural.

The inequities.
The injustice.

How about you?

And appropriately so, it does seem.

Bearing witness to my suffering,
To the suffering of others—
My Buddhist teachers tell me,
That is the journey.

Yet—how easy to forget—
That the bearing witness to suffering
Is the doorway,
Must be the doorway
To joy.

It is a continuum, I do believe,
This journey of healing
The broken self.

To ignore the suffering
Denies us the blessings
Of joy.

To deny the joy
Denies us
The benefit
Of suffering.

We get it all.
The more we are able,
The more we receive.

The more willing we are,
The more healing that is possible.

My Socially Engaged Buddhist teachers
Tell me that we are the world.

That everywhere we go,
We take the world with us.

We really are one.

~~~

What about joy?
What do we know about joy?

Clearly, we can’t force joy.
Clearly, we can’t make it happen.

Nor do we force suffering.

What is our role, then?

I believe
We create the circumstances
In which joy emerges.
In which connection flourishes.

Hum.

Dear Friends,
What do you do, to create the circumstances for joy?
How do you lean toward joy?

What do I do?

I play with my doggie.
She is the best snuggler on the planet.
I check in—as best I can—inside–
Asking my young self, asking that new/old question—
Honey, does this feel good? 

Tell me.

I get outside plenty.
I watch the birds.

I do my best to remember.
And when I forget,
I come back.

Let’s remember—
Let’s create the circumstances in which
Joy can be given to us,
In which
We can see
The grace
That is right there.

~~~
Michael Jackon.  Oh, dear Michael.  
He said it.  And here it is.  The truth.  The answer.
How can we be socially engaged?
How can we make a difference?  
How can we impact change?  
They all said it in 1985, all these musicians coming together, to respond to the famine in Africa.
And here we are, 11,000 years later:

 

Shopping with the Guru–

Part II

 

It’s an odd thing, this getting old.
Along with it tags its companion, memory, another weirdo.

Sometimes I look back, peeking over my shoulder at the iterations of my life.
It feels like dozens of lifetimes have been squashed into this one.

The Kripalu Ashram!
Reading my story, Part I, last week, was so evocative—for me.
The ashram was a lifetime of lifetimes ago and oh, how I loved it.

I was a member of the community from 1989-1995, when it disbanded after the guru’s most spectacular and public fall from grace.
I stayed on, hired as a department head and core faculty member for the balance of these years.

I am grateful for all of it.
Yep, every single minute of it.
Even the moments I despised.
Even the moments
That terrified me.
All of it.

For all of it,
I 
Am
Grateful.

Shopping with the guru, being with him in Pennsylvania, took place probably in 1992-ish.
How many lifetimes of experience and evolution
Have I been carried through
Since then?

Quite sincerely, my ashram years were the happiest, the richest of my life.

I want to repeat something I said in last week’s blog:

If you call Kripalu your spiritual home—
Or—
If you have been there once and never attended a class
Or—
If you have never been there—
Or—
If you have never heard of it…

You must know that this organization today and every iteration of it literally stands on the shoulders of the Kripalu ashram and on the shoulders of those ashram members who created its programming and culture. 

Whatever the new iteration of Kripalu might be, come August 18, upon its reopening, one thing I know to be true:

We are blessed to have Kripalu’s work in the world.  

This I know to be true.

~~~
And now, what you have been waiting these past seven days, surely with bated breath…

Thanks for abiding my slightly less than perfect recording…

Here it is:

Shopping with the Guru, Part II.

Listen Here

~~~

Non-violence and compassion—
Ahimsa and karuna
Happy birthday, to His Holiness the Dali Lama

I started writing my second book the day after I finished my first book.  My terror was palpable.  I fully imagined I would never write again if I stopped.

I find that remarkable— I just kept writing.  I was not able to give myself a day of celebration or relief or closure.  Oh, well.  That happened, as my friend Terry says.

This was probably 500 years ago, in 2008.  

It’s a blur, this-book writing thing:

• How long did each book take?  
• How did I face that blank computer screen?
• Did I have a concept, a plan for each one?  (I must have, right?)
• What did I think I was actually doing?  
• What was I actually doing?

I do remember feeling more purged, that a deeper dive was being called for in this second book.  The first book, Recovering My Voice, seemed to be about things I had already processed.  My second book, Already Home, Stories of a Seeker, seemed to offer me and call from me the processing of untouched and unintegrated situations.

And I never—NEVER read my writing after I send it out into the universe, into your in-boxes, in the case of my books, into my editor’s arms.

NEVER.

And I never—NEVER—talk about my books.  Never once.  I certainly have never written about my books or the process of writing them.  This is a first.

You all out there, you are good for me….thank you!

I’ve been ticked and engaged by the idea, by my idea, of reading your stories from my books, dear friends.  So, as I peruse this second book, Already Home, I am chuckling.

And chuckling some more.  

I appreciate and believe in the title.  We are—we are already home. We strive and strive and try and push and shove.  To get spiritual.  To get yogic.  To get happy.   To get love.  To get money.  To get safe.  To get, to get….fill in your blank.

And we are already there.

It’s a great cosmic joke.

Here’s part of my favorite chapter, Shopping with the Guru, from Already Home.

It’s complicated to explain the guru, Amrit Desai, and his role in our lives in those ashram days. It’s complicated to explain the ashram.  It’s like a language that doesn’t quite translate.  I am willing to try.  Those of us who love Kripalu, who call it our hearts’ home, and those of us who have not even visited, to all of us, I want you to know the shoulders upon which the organization as we now know it stands. 

It stands on the shoulders of the ashram.

Here’s Part One of this chapter, Shopping with the Guru.

Enjoy.

Listen Here.

~~~

To celebrate the freedom of this July 4th, to honor and respect all that we have been given through this time of such trial and confusion and transition, here is clearly, hands down, my favorite song.

A hymn, a blessing, a plea, a hope, a longing.  George says it for me:

It is said that the lotus flower 
will not grow in pure water
 and 
can only bloom 
when fed by the mud of decay.  

So too 
our collective trauma, 
brokenness, 
delusions, 
moral suffering, 
and 
pain 
can, 
ironically,
 be the very means for our awakening. 

Each day, let us awaken 
to transform ourselves, 
our communities, 
our nation, 
and our world 
with wisdom and compassion.

–Roshi Joan Halifax

~~~
Dear Friends, howdy.

I have a big toe issue.
It’s a long, boring, and somewhat embarrassing story.
Let me back up.
Truthfully, I have two big toe issues.
Both boring.
One comes out of a 40 year-ago drunken and stoned cross-country skiing adventure, unfortunately the events did not unfold as adventurous.     
The other toe?  She comes out of 70+ years of walking around on this planet.
The newer of the two issues, the apparent unbroken toe, today seems to be the most damaged. 
During lockdown, my “healthy” big toe started aching
And stabbing
And burning
And flaring up
Only to repeat the cycle again.
The weight of my top sheet was too much.
I did my best to ignore it, clearly an inherited Futuronsky response to physical pain.      
Well, a response to any pain.
Finally, after months of attempting to snub the pain, I went to a doctor.
Did you know that the number of broken toes during COVID lockdown doubled and quadrupled, according to some doctors?
I found it hard to believe that I injured my toe while being home.
He pointed to the x-ray—clearly there was a broken bone in my foot.
Eventually I went to another doctor.
And another.
X-rays, MRI—all good steps, all coming out of denial.
Coming out of denial.
That is my point, in this over-personalized ramble:

My point is this—I really worked hard at pushing away the pain.
Pushing away pain, not a helpful paradigm!

Check out what Roshi Joan is saying here—she is literally telling us that, like the lotus, we need our suffering.
We need NOT to ignore it.
We need to go to it, to dive into it, 
To befriend it—
To befriend
The angst, the heartbreak, the brokenness.  
In order
To become who we really are.

We must practice witnessing our own suffering to be able to be there for one another’s.

All I really want,
Truly and deeply—
Is to do my best
And
To make a difference.

The only chance I have of living into that intention, one nanosecond at a time, one day at a time, is to feel my pain.
Be it my apparently second broken toe, 
My loneliness, my fear of aging.
All of it.

If 2020 taught us anything, isn’t it this?
But wait…

What does Roshi Joan mean by her final two words, 
How do we awaken ourselves
With wisdom and compassion?

We notice.
We attend.
We relax into.
We appreciate.
We welcome
It
Into
Our awareness.

~~~
In response to the question, how do we live with wisdom and compassion, here is Frank Ostaseski, the lovely Buddhist teacher, leading a meditation on compassion practice.  Can you offer this practice, not only to others, but most importantly, to yourself?  I invite you to spend these few minutes with Frank.