Not for the squeamish...

Lights up on a woman sitting center stage, on a toilet. The lid is closed. She sits forward, on the edge. Knees together, ankles splayed, elbows resting on knees and forehead in her hands. She’s barefoot. Wearing blue jeans and an oversized white man’s shirt.

The music starts. Leona Lewis' "Bleeding Love". She raises her head and looks at us. There is blood trickling down her face from the inner corners of both eyes.

She gets up. Begins to move. Sort of pacing. Rhythmic. Her shoulders swivel. Her chest begins to move, undulate, heave even. She turns to face the audience. Holds the collar of her shirt open to look inside. Looks back at us, in shock. Then rips the front of her shirt open. Blood is dripping down her torso from long razor-like cuts, symmetrical lines of three on each breast.

She tries to use the shirt to mop up some of the blood, pressing and patting. The resulting cover-up-and-reveal is almost coy. Disgusted, she balls the shirt up, throws it on the floor. Resumes her pacing, which is faster now. If you couldn’t see the fear in her eyes you might mistake it for a strut.

Her hips begin to move. Undulate. Then almost to jerk. She unzips her fly, slowly, afraid of what she’ll see. Reaches one hand in between her legs. Closes her eyes. Slowly pushes the denim down her legs, not wanting to know, even though she does know.
She steps out of her jeans. Faces the audience in just a bra and a pair of thong underwear. And blood is running down the insides of both her thighs. Too much blood for a period.

She falls to her knees. Turns her back to us as she fumbles through the pockets of her jeans, looking for the things she put there. Things she thought she might have to use, but hoped she wouldn’t. She reaches around, we see her fear-numbed fingers slowly unhook her bra, slowly ease the straps down off her shoulders…

Then she makes up her mind. No more stalling. With a bloody, victorious grin she whips her bra off and turns to face the audience. She uses the bra to tie off, then quickly shoots up something from a syringe she had in her pocket. Then she takes the razor blade she also had in her pocket, and makes two long, deep cuts in her wrists. In the direction that means business.

Blood pools around her as she sinks forward onto the ground. The music ends.

This is how I’d do burlesque.

The Red Shoe Sutra

Thus have I heard (and from a professional, no less): "You need more red in your life."

Just so it's clear, this from the modern equivalent of the enlightened being/guru, aka the therapist. Who feels I need both more of the energy of red (passion, power, pride) and the actual color (one homework assignment was to buy red underwear) in my life, in the wake of my life blowing up and all.

At first, it was kind of a dutiful thing. My new place is in shades of brown and cream, so red accents felt like a reasonable fit. During the Great Re-Nesting of 2010, I bought a red leather club chair (coolest part? It swivels!) to mark the transition between the living room space and the office nook (logistics of loft living). I also bought a faux-distressed, faux-red-laquer, faux-Chinese-medicine-chest entertainment center (Andover collection from Pottery Barn, for those of you who are happy I've finally gotten around to writing an accessories post). And my friend Brandyn salvaged an antique wooden birdcage destined for the trash, and spray-painted it red as a house-warming gift. So that sits on the entertainment center and there are a couple of other accents scattered about that I had pre-divorce that happen to be red as well: a garuda totem from Jakarta, a (supposedly active) Legba head from NOLA, some sari-cloth curtain panels.

So there ya go, right? A little red.

I did give the underwear homework assignment a try. But I'd like to point out how hard it is to buy intimates that are the *right* red. Being neither twenty nor trashy, I do not want valentine red. I do not want candy red, or maraschino cherry red. I want blood red. Black red. Wine red. I seem to be in the minority.

So I tried to fulfill the underwear assignment. I agreed (with myself) to keep my eye out for the right sort of red every time I pass a lingerie section. I purchased and prioritized some red accents for the living space. While I didn't really get this whole "you need more red in your life" prescription, I could at least take credit for being compliant.

And then, something happened.

The red shoes.

Things you should perhaps know first: I don't do color. My closet is a monochromatist's dream of black, white, and shades of brown. I don't put color on my nails (finger or toe). I wear very little jewelry and what I do wear is simple metal. This has always been true. Someone recently told me this is typical of women who've been sexually abused. I find that interesting to wonder about. But really, it's not angst-y. It's noticeable. People have commented on it, but I am not bothered by their comments nor do I feel restricted in any way. I buy and wear what I want... what attracts my eye. I don't see colored clothing, wish for it, then tell myself no, it's too colorful. Truth is, I just don't see colored clothing in the first place.

And sure, that's been becoming slightly more flexible in the last year or two. I have an Eileen Fisher sweater that some folks point out gleefully as pink, while I swear it's really just a slightly rosy nude. My workout hoodie might be yellow, but I'm gonna call it a nice, rich cream. That sort of thing.

But I do not have red clothes. I don't even see red clothes. And I don't really do shoes at all. My philosophy on shoes, for years, has been, well, they go on your feet. You walk on them all day. They should be comfortable, cheap, inoffensive, practical.

That began changing after my life fell apart. Apparently, when there is no ground under your feet anyway... I don't know exactly how to finish that sentence, but it sure changed the way I felt about shoes. Last winter, I could have written The High-Heel Sutra. Or The Boot Sutra. Or the advanced-practice text, The High-Heeled Boot Sutra. Last winter I bought my first pair of thigh-highs. And that was all, obviously and overtly, about power. About feeling powerful in a place of perceived loss of control.

That's also sort of stopped. Maybe it's just about practicality. How many boots do you need in South Texas? I mean, most of the year, I live in flip-flops. But the red shoes... this just keeps happening.

The first pair... red oiled leather Sanita clogs... happened early last spring. Just saw a picture of them in my head. And began to obsess. Fortunately, in the era of Zappos, I did not need to obsess long. The first time I wore them, my feet felt radioactive. But in a kind of cool way. And the world did not seem particularly phased by this change. I got one or two "hey, cool shoes", but that was it. Apparently, red shoes were something I could get away with, without drawing undue attention to myself. And they made my heart happy.

I really did think one pair of red shoes would scratch this dimly-understood itch, and they did for awhile. But a few months ago, I saw a picture in a magazine and was soon obsessively searching Zappos again for red Birkenstock clogs. These are flat slip-ons with a little cut-out, great for schlepping to yoga class or sitting (where I'm just gonna slip them off again anyway), or for late-night potty break walks with the dog.

And now I'm just giving up on thinking this might be a temporary thing, because the newest addition to my closet is a pair of red Dingo cowboy boots, ankle-high, with little zips and tassels. They've already danced at Dia de los Muertos, and went very well with skull-face makeup. So, you know, red shoes appear to just be this new thing I'm doing.

And last night, I started to think about why.

Red shoes.
Famously dangerous.
Filmic icons of obsession, ambition.
Powerlessness. Possession.

Red means stop.
Warning.
Caution.
Pay Attention!
This is Important!

Red is blood.
Pain and death.
See enough red, and there's no saving you.
Seeing red is anger.
Loss of control.

Red is inflamed.
Is Communist.
The exhaustion of the red-eye.
Getting caught red-handed.
Hell, we had to take this country away from the redskins.
Red marks every mistake on our schoolwork.
And nobody really trusts a redhead.

But...

A red-letter day is a good thing.
And red roses say something about love.
Red is blood.
It's life.
The color we want the newborn to be.

Red is big.
It's scary.
We're conflicted about it.
Because underneath all the metaphor
Red *is* blood.
It's life *and* death.
It's the color of bad blood... blood outside the body
Blood where it shouldn't be, is red.

For most of human history,
Red blood (blood where it shouldn't be)
Meant death.

But

Women bled, and didn't die.
Every month.
And when they didn't, it was because they were making life.
Making life from the blood itself...

Sure, we know now that isn't true
But we believed it longer than we've believed anything else
And some part of our brain remembers.

Red is the color of mysterious power.
Of triumph over death.
Of fear that does not diminish.
Of pain that does not destroy.

Red is the color of living through it.

I think
After great loss
We all walk through the world wearing red shoes.
Whether they *look* red, or not.

And we're back...

There was a storm last night. One of those sudden, clamorous, air-clearing, late-autumn thunderstorms that make way for the cooler weather that is finally, finally soothing sunburned South Texas.

It happened fairly late, but I was awake for it. This was Gabe's (the new dog) first such thunder-boomer, and turns out he's not a fan. He growled and barked relentlessly at the storm for as long as it splayed itself over our windows and balcony and metal-clad roofs and outer walls. Reclaimed urban architecture is a rich sounding board for wind-driven precipitation. And I'm in a top-floor, corner loft. So with all the water-music and the canine protestation, it was a wild and wooly (and noisy!) stretch of night for a stretch of time.

As I said, I was awake for it. And when I'm awake - still, and despite my best efforts on the cushion - my mind gets busy. One maybe-benefit of all the mindfulness practice I've done is that now, while it's getting busy, it's also getting busy noticing how it's getting busy, and noticing the quality of that noticing, and etc.

So I can tell you, this afternoon, something about what was going on in my mind early this morning while the storm blew itself out.

I was calm. (Sturdy construction, fairly recent rehab, no worries about serious structural failure). I was excited. (Because, really, I love big nasty storms. The bigger and nastier, the better. It's like mainlining electricity.) I was a little frustrated with the dog. And I was wondering how much damage was being done, out there.

Not "if" damage was being done. But how much. And with every arising of that thought, I'd notice another thought arising as well, reminding me that the damage was inevitable, and there'd be time to deal with it after the storm had passed. But for now, let the wind and water wreak their havoc and just lie down under it all.

Just lie down.

Which I did.

So in this story, the damage "out there" meant damage to my urban balcony ecosystem. Which is way minimal. Some cat food was spoiled. A couple of litter boxes were flooded. Some planters got blown around. Damage was minimal because I have put some thought into what is out there, and where it's placed. I've planned as best I can to minimize the damage that the inevitable storms will wreak. So when a storm hits, I trust my plan. I accept that there will be some damage anyway. And I just lie down under it all and wait for the skies to clear.

That's kind of how I've spent the past year. It's been a stormy one - although the storms have been quite various. In the early months they were terrifying. Roiling toxic-green emotional skies and wind-blows to the heart and stomach that sounded and felt like they were wrenching giant trees, still alive and screaming, from the ground by their roots. Storms I'd never imagined planning for. Storms so vast and violent I had no conception of what kind of damage they were doing to me. In those days, I would lie down under it all not because I trusted the process, but because I couldn't get up.

Lately, the storms have been... pyrotechnic. Sunshowers. Heat-lightening. Freak wind-gusts and flash-floods and sudden, surprising snow flurries. The emotional weather is variable and the terrain is changing all the time. New opportunities, new interests, new structures. Recommitments and deepenings. Healing is a complicated enough process when it takes place in quiet and seclusion. Mine, for whatever reason, is taking place amidst an explosion of color and sound and light. I am tempest-toss't from one shiny thing to another, and this, too, is a storm.

And I have been lying down under it all, while it has been doing some damage. Some of which is actually hard kindness; pruning away decayed relationships and rotted obligations. But there has also been damage to some of my commitments to myself. To the practices that establish themselves in the calm between storms - to the sitting & writing & movement practices that make me strong and flexible enough to withstand the big weather, when it comes.

This morning, I cleaned up the damage done by last night's storm. It was a simple enough procedure, if not particularly sexy. Just a moment-by-moment recommitment to the (mostly physical) work of putting things back where they belong. And, this afternoon, I'm extending that recommitment to include cleaning up the damage done by the storms of this past year. I smoked my last cigarette last night. I've come back to this space, today. I spent the weekend reconnecting with my meditation practice through art (truly my favorite type of meditation-in-action). I suppose you could call it an early New Year's resolution.

I just think I'm done lying down under it all.

Not that there is anything shameful or wrong or even unskillful in lying down and waiting for a storm to pass. In fact, I think that kind of lying down - in trust or without, in fear or resignation, on purpose or out of necessity - is profound mind/body wisdom. But the nature of storms is that they blow over. And when they do, it's time to stand up again.

To look around. To re-assess.

To rejoin the new-washed world.

Love is a Dark Place

Orpheus and Eurydice were married, and on their wedding day, she died. His grief wrested, from the gods. the secret of entrance into the Underworld, where he begged Persephone and Hades, the Queen and King of the Realm of Death, for the return of his beloved. He sang of love, and loss. He sang the unbearable beauty of the broken heart. And Persephone wept.

They told him he could have Eurydice back again. That she could follow him back into Life. The conditions were these: for the whole of that long, dark journey he would not hear or see her. He was asked to trust that she would be behind him. He must not, under any circumstances, look back. Not until they both reached the light of the upper world. If he looked back, they told him, she would be lost forever.

And the journey was long. Long enough to invoke doubt. And despair. But he never looked back. Not until he finally, finally stepped into the light. And then he turned, and saw her behind him. Still just within the shadow of the cave's entrance. He saw her, for a tiny, timeless second, before she said "goodbye".

This is a story of grief.

A long walk in the darkness, each step fueled only by the faith that, somewhere, somehow, the pain will cease. Or at least lighten. A journey begun in a time when the only way we can imagine finding the light, again, is to regain what we have lost. To have, again, our lost beloved, be it a person, a place, an innocence, a dream... to have again our lost beloved in the form to which we have become attached. Because any other form is unimaginable.

And so "don't look back" the gods say. Because they know (being gods - and therefore the incarnations of our own best wisdom) that looking back is all we will want to do. We walk forward believing, or maybe just desperately hoping, that we are returning in some way to what is gone. That we can return. Because without that belief, that hope... well, we can't even breathe. Much less put one foot in front of the other.

This is how we keep breathing.

If we make this journey looking back, we will never find the light again. Our eyes will be too full of darkness. Our fists closed tight around loss. We will be blind, and full of pain, unable to see a future, much less find our way to it. Unable to grab hold of joy, or even comfort. "Don't look back" the gods say. And because, being gods, they are under no obligation to tell us the truth (only to lead us to our own becoming), they promise us the unpromiseable. They promise us return, and reunion. An impossible continuity of form. Only that promise has the hope of making us strong enough to take the journey. They know that, one day, they will be revealed as liars but, when that day comes, our journey will be over. We will stand in the light of a new life, raw and angry but finally empty-handed. Vessels washed clean and made ready for filling again.

This is a story of grief, and the dark truth of redemption. Everything you love, you will lose. I promise you. I promise you. When we fall in love, we say goodbye. That's the bargain. And if you don't know it, or deny it, or just try not to look at it... that doesn't exempt you. This is the bargain. This is the price.

And so why do we do it? And do it over and over and over again? Because love is the forge. It is the crucible. The alchemical retort. The fire of love softens us, burns away whatever is not our pure, authentic heart. The water of our tears strengthens us. Shapes and refines us. This is how a tool is made. This is how we are made. This is the process that turns us into the tools, the gifts, the miracles that we are. This is how we do it.

Light and dark are not opposites. They are, in fact, each other's hearts. Light is the gift of the darkness. Darkness is the hard wisdom of the light.

And love is a dark place.

I am in love, for the first time in a long time (and maybe in some ways, for ever) in a way that is free of pain. Free of fear and anxiety. And yes, this is about a person. But it is also about myself, and my life. Hard-learned wisdom: that all three have to be true. The cost of entering into this dark place is no less than everything.

If you want to be given everything, give everything up.

So we step into the fire again. Each time we can love better. Love bigger. With clearer eyes and a clearer understanding of all there is to be thankful for. Each new love invokes, at times, the old. They all intersect someplace in the heart.

When we fall in love, we say goodbye. Someone asked me, recently, what it's like to fall in love and know this. I didn't think I had an answer, but it seems that I do. It's having all the sweetness of everything I've loved, and all the sharpness of everything I've lost, all at once. It is a sort of skinless expansion into ease and grace and gratitude. It is being unbearably, exquisitely open. It is being alive.

This is a story of grief, and the hard truth of redemption.

This is a story about why we keep breathing, and the impossible rewards of courage.

This is a story about the gifts of the darkness.

And this is a love letter from the Eighth House.

It's Simple

A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing no less than everything)
And all shall be well
And all manner of thing shall be well
- C.S. Lewis “Four Quartets”

My life is on its way to simple. Smaller space. Fewer responsibilities. Clearer priorities and less of ‘em. Fewer people in the mix, most of them not insane and, regardless, none of them mine to take care of.

You could say lonely. Some people would. But that’s not how it feels to me. It feels simple.

Which is not even remotely the same thing as easy.

This is something I maybe always knew, in some way (I’m betting you did too), but that really came home to me since working in hospice. I’ll get something said right away: I am not a “good person” or a “saint” for doing this work. I am, in fact, almost embarrassed about how much I love it. I can’t believe I’m allowed to be in the room where someone is dying. For a lot of reasons. But here’s the one I’m going to talk about today…

Because that space is so radiantly, life-changingly simple.

Gruelingly, grindingly, hard, too. Often. Especially in hospice because that is, essentially, a vigil. Long hours. The growing tedium of waiting for something that, when it happens, will be a shattering of everything that has been. And yet even with something so momentous hovering on the horizon, the waiting is unbelievably banal.

People are tired. Dirty. Together. With all that implies. Family tensions don’t magically dissolve in the face of the mortality imperative. Well, almost never. In fact, often, the existing dynamic just rachets up in the face of the utter loss of control that Death is.

When we are in uncharted territory, the familiar is comforting. Even if it’s the familiarity of discord.

And, there’s the other way in which this is hard. As much as we try to make it different, there is often some pain. Sometimes, a lot of pain. There is certainly the body’s struggle to keep doing its job. To keep breathing in and out. To hang on.

How many families have I seen flay themselves with that image, and their belief about what it means re: their loved one’s will to live? If he’s fighting so hard, maybe we’re not doing the right thing? Maybe she’s not ready? Maybe we should revoke (take the patient off hospice service as far as insurance is concerned), tear up the DNR, admit her to a hospital, help him fight…

I’m pretty sure that’s pointless self-flagellation. I don’t see any will to live in those last grasping hours. I see people I believe are ready to die, more often than not. Believe me, not ready looks very different. It’s hard to miss.

I see a mind and heart and spirit that just want to be free, or have already flown. And I see the body just doing its job. Right up until the last minute.

Because that’s simple.

Bodies are simple machines. Complex in form, but simple in function. We’re just circuitry. If you’re ever able to have your hands on someone at that final moment – not so much holding their hand, or resting your fingers on their shoulder, but really laying hands on their body, which I’m not necessarily advocating because it’s not always welcome or appropriate – if you ever have that experience, you’ll feel that death is an electrical event. And I’m not a doctor, and I’m sure I’m oversimplifying this, but that’s not really the point I’m trying to make.

Bodies are simple. Life and death are simple. One is a state, the other an event, but they are basically very simple things. Not much is required to maintain life. And death is just the moment when one or more of those requirements fails.

Minds, however…. Our glorious, baroque, impossible, incorrigible minds flood all the color and the horror into existence. What is beautiful, we make beautiful. What is terrible, we make terrible. What is beautiful to me may well be terrible to you. Nuances and digressions, schisms and meanders. Our own minds are hopelessly complex, half-seen, barely-understood, shadow-filled strangers. Truly impossible, then, to bridge that gap between one slippery, inconstant mind and another. Most of the time.

What can tame the mind – smooth it into a state in which it plays well, however temporarily, with itself and others – is simplicity. Put the mind in a place of one-pointed focus, either through trickery or overwhelm or discipline or terror, and there can be some ease. Not an easy ease. Not always comfortable. But a space. A clarity.

When everything else falls away, what is left is simply what is. And the mind, like an exhausted bird flying endlessly over a flooded landscape, will land in the only place it can and, knowing there is nowhere else to go, or even to plot or consider or plan about going… it rests there.

A condition of complete simplicity, costing no less than everything.

The end of a life is such a condition, at the cost of everything that has gone before it.

The end of a part of a life is such a condition, at the cost of everything that has gone before it.

This part of dying we do all the time. Often enough to have felt the fear, and the loss, and the space, and the rest. To have spun knowingly in this cycle, time and again, is to have the key to overcoming the fear of death.

The Tyranny of DNA

So I sort of dropped out of the world for a bit.

And an unavoidable consequence of such behavior is that I now tend to regularly run into people I haven't seen in awhile. Because, you know, I was out of the world and my mind and control and etc.

And they all tell me how good I look.

And I've pretty much been ignoring them. I mean, sure, I'll bet I look better than anyone expects me to. Given the epic scope and public nature of my divorce, I'm sure that people would say I look good if I just show up without a palsy. And I did lose a lot of weight. The heartbreak diet is not a method I recommend, but there is no arguing with its effectiveness. But I'm pretty sure I don't look good - like the way you notice that a total stranger is good-looking - just smaller than before and surprisingly less visibly traumatized than expected.

Then, a few days ago, I ran into another friend I hadn't seen in awhile, who told me how good I look, and since she's going through a divorce of her own, I made free with my opinions about that looking-good bit (see above paragraph). And she said no, that's not it. There's this glowy thing, That she's seen in other newly-single friends, regardless of how they felt about their single status.

And I think glowy?

And then I think oh shit. Because now I have a suspicion that this is the tyranny of DNA.

Let's face it. On a cellular level, we're just replication machines. The DNA that makes and shapes us just wants us to reproduce. There is a biological blind, bullying, life-must-go-on imperative and we (well, at least our genitalia, and, unfortunately, our hearts because, dammit, we confuse the two) are molecular hostages to that imperative. Life doesn't care how we feel about making life. It just wants us to want to. So that we will.

The hidden agenda, the holy grail of bodies... the fertilized egg. (Kudos, yes, for this timely Easter-y post?). No matter how it came to be.

So I think glowy? and then I think oh shit because I am still technically fertile. AKA someone whose machinery DNA is interested in making use of. And newly single. And is there some sort of stealthy chemical attractant thing going on? That would be just like DNA... to give some hormones or pheromones or something a little nudge and say deploy!. There's still time to wrest an egg out of these ovaries. But the incubator is not cooperative. She is not actively seeking fertilization opportunities. Scramble Operation Glow!

Because, by all means, let's ignore my feelings about any of this. Let's ignore the fact that I don't want to be a mother, nor to engage in the sorts of activities that would make me one. Not even casually. In the parlance of my friend Dino, I am not looking for either dinner or a snack. I am broken. I am healing. I am deeply untrustworthy to myself in terms of the choices I make. I am confused and needy and an emotional mess and no good for anyone and not in the market. Or on the market. Not marketing at all.

I'll even go so far as to say that, given the amount and duration of infidelity that was a part of my divorce dynamic, sex is actually a kind of toxic topic for me right now. Many sections of my self-esteem have survived intact, but not that one. I feel like a complete sexual (and romantic) failure. Somewhat famously so, in fact, in the small pond in which I am a medium-largish-sized fish. Feel like it's been made quite clear to me that the coping strategy for the rest of my life is simply to shut up the south wing and pretend I just don't like it there. Don't pity me, I love being free of all those complications, it's the best choice I ever made, hell, I pity you, having to deal with all those emotions and needs and negotiations and compromises. My new life at the north pole is so blessedly clean. Yay independence!

I don't want to be a loser. In the most literal sense. I don't want to lose anything ever again. I don't want to want things in case I can't have them. I don't want to be on the market and find out that there's no market for me.

Are you saying yeah, well, good luck with that?. I am too. And still, it is sincere, this want not to want. And it feels necessary. Even urgent.

And. And and and... people tell me I'm glowy.

And there's the skin-hunger.

I am suddenly touching people a lot more than I used to. The other day, I even hugged my therapist. And I am not a huggy person. I don't recognize this behavior. Or its motivation. Another way in which the sheer volume of loss is re-shaping me. I don't always know who I am, anymore. Or what I think I know is contradictory, and confusing.

For example, I know I don't want to have sex... but I do seem to want someone to stretch out behind me and slowly trace patterns on my bare back with their fingertips for about a day and a half. I think the on my back part is particularly interesting. Contact without connection. Definitely not procreative. Just skin. Warmth and movement. Just touch. Not even eye-contact. Safe enough, if a bit weird and unlikely to happen, right? Safe enough to want?

Except. Oh shit. Is this the thin edge of the wedge? Another tricky, slippery slope engineered by the tyrant DNA? Does that damn molecule actually think it can force a fertilized egg out of loneliness and skin-hunger and low self-esteem? And what if it could? Would it even care about the consequences? No adoption agency would be irresponsible enough to send a baby into my life, or into the kind of fucked-up relationship I'd be likely to trip and fall into, under DNA's influence. What kind of life would that child have? DNA doesn't care. As long as the kid has working gonads.

What impossible cruelty, this biochemical manipulation. To trick me into thinking I want something that I actually don't want, and would very likely kill me in all the ways that matter, so that you can get one more notch on your replication belt?

You fucker, DNA.

No, really.

This glowy thing needs to stop. The light shouldn't be on if there's no one home.

May the Universe spare me the urge, or the opportunity, to surrender to your sadistic seduction.

Maybe.

Oh shit!

The Art of Graceful Response

So yeah. Even in the darkness, there are light days.

I spent the weekend reconnecting with one of my two spiritual communities. The local meditation center, of which I am a member - a place I have been missing from (and have missed) for about six months now. Which is also just about how long it's been since my life, as I knew it, imploded. And of course that is no coincidence.

It would be easy, and fair, to say that I haven't practiced at all in that time. Certainly not in any formal way. I have not attended public sits at the center. I took a break (with nothing but loving, understanding support) from my service tasks there. I have not met with my Meditation Instructor. I have not been sitting at home. It's less easy, but also fair, to see and admit that I have been doing nothing BUT practice, these past six months. My life has been a living, moment-by-moment immersion in some very advanced practice indeed - presence, mindfulness, holding space for what is to simply be what it is... There is a teaching, written and framed, hanging on the wall in our post-meditation hall that includes the phrase (well, the paraphrase) "the everyday practice is simply to develop a complete acceptance of whatever arises".

My life of late has been an unrelenting, ruthless, necessary and exhausting application of that everyday practice. Every single day.

But this weekend, I went back. Not to practice, but to serve. Our center presents a series of sequential trainings in meditation and its applications and revelations, offered in the format of weekend-long intensives, and I participated this weekend as part of the staff team supporting the event. On the one hand, this is a very nuts-and-bolts gig. Keeping track of time. Making sure food is prepared and clean-up gets accomplished. Do we have enough ice? Monitoring the temperature in the shrine room. Is there fresh coffee brewed? Is there someone available to greet people as they arrive? Taking out the trash.

Stuff like that.

And of course, on the other hand, that's not the gig at all. What we're really there to do is to model the teachings, and to create and maintain a container of gentleness, ease and acceptance. A space in which people can feel safe enough to look within, face themselves, share what they see. We are there to take care of the details, so that those who are doing the work are free from those concerns, and to do that in a way (ideally) that offers a living, breathing example of accepting whatever arises. Someone is late? There are food sensitivities we didn't plan for? Unexpected visitors arrive? Someone is crying? Or angry? Or confused? A staff member is sick and so duties need to be reassigned? Something has come up and the schedule needs to shift? Suddenly a meal needs to be ready earlier? Or later? Something goes hinky with the plumbing?

Things arise. Intensives are... well... intense. Things arise. We don't hide them, we simply work with them. We adapt. We explain. We accept.

No big deal.

The job is, in reality, all about the art of graceful response. Simply responding to what arises, in integrity with intention, in a way that is gracious and open-hearted and skillful and kind. In a way that leaves space for everyone to be who they are, where they are, in the moment. In a way that respects and grows from the understanding that we are all in this together.

I see my own heart, looking out through your eyes.

Whoever you are.

I'll digress for a moment here and suggest that one of the joys of mid-life may just be the opportunity to finally stop arguing with who we are. Growth is good. Change is good. And. Not everything needs to change. I couldn't get myself down to the center during this grinding, blinded, achingly empty time to sit. To be with myself. FOR myself. To refill. But I could get there in order to serve. And that service IS practice. And it does fill me. I can do for others what I often can't do for myself. And do it joyously. Not always. Not endlessly, I am no Mother Theresa. But this is work I can do, and the doing of it serves me. Makes me lighter, and stronger. Fills me up.

I will own some of this as ego. I enjoy doing things that I do well. And this, I am good at. I owe it all, of course. There is some natural inclination, but truly, whatever I know about the art of graceful response can be attributed to the generosity of my teachers. I have been fortunate enough to be able to reflect some of their excellence, and I honestly find that glorious. The way, I imagine, a horse bred to run glories in running, or a finely-tuned machine dreams light-shot memories of efficient, effortless operation.

My ego loves the skill with which I manifest egolessness. Which is, of course, hilarious. And a sign reading "Road Work Ahead". And simply what is. And perfectly OK. And sometimes even quite useful. And this paragraph, I realize upon writing it, is in fact a graceful response to myself.

I find myself thinking about two things, right now. One is a definition (originally of a "true calling", as it comes from a theologian) of "true service" that goes thusly: The place where my deep joy meets the world's deep need.

The other is from a ritual I took part in, recently, in which a piece of wisdom was revealed couched in the form of a challenge: "What you feel empty of - pour it out." What you feel bereft of - fill the world with. Let it pour through you, and fill you. The well is, in fact, bottomless. It is the emptiness that is the illusion.

These days I feel very loveless, and lonely. I spent the weekend (somewhat thoughtlessly, in fact, at least on any level of which I was aware, because all I was aware of doing was simply choosing, over and over again, the appropriate - the graceful - response to each situation I found myself in) pouring out love, and connection.

And some of it stuck.

Who knows for how long, The well is bottomless, but the illusion of emptiness is also deep, and old, and powerful. For this moment, I feel filled. I imagine the emptiness will arise again, Hopefully, when it does, I can accept it. Sit with it. Make space for it to be what it is, without judgement. Without waiting to be filled again, but with an understanding, nevertheless, that the cycle will continue. The nature of things is to arise, and fall, and arise again. All things. The good and the bad (to use some admittedly unskillful language). The fullness and the emptiness. The light and the dark.

Perhaps even with the understanding that both are the same. My heart in your eyes. Your heart in mine. Whoever we are. No separation. No emptiness, so no need for fullness. No alone so no need for together. Nothing but what is, which is everything.

Utterly deal-breaking, life-changing, mind-blowing and, really... no big deal.

Now that would be a graceful response to life.

Where I Stand

My friend Ella, who baits a mean hook, recently reminded me of a past bit of arrogance. A public acknowledgement (in sacred space no less) that my gift is to stand in the dark places, to shine some light there, so that no one has to be alone in the dark. What darkness is calling you now? She asked. And can you bear to share it?

Well shit.

When I said that thing (and I make no assumptions, gentle reader, about your thoughts on words like sacred or phrases like sacred space or the import of things that happen there, but I know what I know, and I should not be one whit surprised that I'm being called to account for it)... when I said that I was referring to what I call deathwork. Work I do with hospice patients and their families, and work I do out in the community, with the rest of us - who are dying just as surely but hopefully a bit more slowly - about developing a healthier relationship with that surety.

Work I love. Work that honors and feeds and affects me. But not exactly personal work.

And work I haven't done in six months now.

Because...

Let me just say that when you find yourself sitting with a woman who is about to be a widow, sitting vigil with her as her husband of 60-some years struggles to take his last breaths, and what is running through your mind is the somewhat petulant-toned "well at least your husband didn't leave you"...

Hopefully, if you're a deathworker with any integrity and self-awareness, this is the point where you decide to take a hiatus. And work on your own stuff.

What darkness is calling me now? So un-sexy. So un-glamorous. So un-noble. This is the selfish-seeming, all-too-common (like death isn't common? and yet this is a commonality my ego didn't want to share) gloaming of mid-life divorce. I stand these days in the shadow of betrayal and shame, guilt and fear and loss and loneliness and it's all my own. No one to "help" but myself.

Why is that so much harder?

There is light in this darkness. A lot of it. New opportunities. A certain freedom, and peace. The possibility of a whole new life. But like any form of grief, it is an experience with many complex flavors. Oh, for the purity of one emotion! Oh, for the ability to feel just what we are supposed to feel. And really, who does this supposing? And why are they always so wrong?

I've had a lot of conversations about this. With people living through some of the worst days of their lives. Who are shocked to find that, mixed in with the culturally-approved sadness, there are things like relief and anger and even moments of a sort of giddy, exhausted joy. I tell them this is normal. All of this is what happens when the world cracks open and anything seems possible, because the impossible has already happened. The form is so fundamentally, overwhelmingly changed. We are in blue skies. Which is glorious. And terrifying. And yes, we can feel both at the same time. Yes, we can hold that.

Yes, we can.

Fascinating to need, now, to apply this knowing to myself. In this way. Talk about past arrogance! To stand with Death, over and over, and think She wouldn't touch me. Or that her touch would come only in expected, acceptable ways. We have this history, She and I. So you can stand there, she says to me. Good. And... can you stand here? And how about here?. Moving always backwards, farther into the dark.

What happens to the one who says I'm not afraid to die? How does she learn about loss? Maybe like this. Ah, arrogance. Death laughs. (Although it's a loving laugh, really it is, She's a compassionate lady). And... can I stand here?

We'll see.

Thanks, Ella. :-)