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.