With Love to Those Who Stand at Standing Rock

With Love to Those Who Stand at Standing Rock

We put our ears to the ground
and feel hear know the
hoofbeats of the buffalo
in whose hearts our act
ignites. In whose cells our
act of resistance becomes
a call to run to join to stand.

We spot them first on the
horizon the gold line between
earth and sky and they
kick up the dust, remind us to
lift our heads and stand.
We call to them.
Our cries rise above the heads
of helmeted men who
wield weapons of steel
and by their presence alone
whisper the hurting words.
Nothing has changed. You
Have not been heard.

We protect. We stand.
There is violence against us.
There is a history unraveling
inside of our rib cages, a
familiar narrative that seemed
To sleep and now. Now.
It breathes us, sings us,
grows us into a single entity,
washes over us like the
water we protect. The drumbeat
and the heartbeat coincide,
meld into a single
rhythm. It sends ripples out
from this our center,
touches every corner of the
world that fans out from
beneath our feet. Enters the
collective consciousness, not
only indigenous. Human. They
begin to remember
their human-ness. All connect and
rise. It is a familiar sound, a
remembrance that lives now
that we sing it. Now
that our feet stamp the beat
of our resistance our wholeness our
refusal to become brutal. Our
refusal to be reduced to violent
action. Our knowing—expanded
to show us show them show the world
what we are. We are divine we are
light we are love—after all.

The buffalo make a ring around us
send up the signal that Spirit is
here near aware attuned.
We raise our fists in the air
clap our hands to our mouths our
hearts our heads we are
one after all we are
One.

Never Mind.

I think about my choices in writing. My predilection for antiquated language, ornamentation, complexity of syntax. Formal poetry, for gods' sake. Gah!

I think of D.G. whose own choice brought her prosperity during the time she knew she couldn't invest more in her writing than a shallow but marketable voice (when baby spit-up and diapers called to her more loudly than her art, which happens to all we who bear children and commit ourselves to raising them with love).

She wrote under a pseudonym until that time that she knew she could take the time to be herself on the page. Her eventual foray into authenticity was less lucrative only at first (everyone loved those books she had written under the pseudonym and which sold at the market near the magazine section). Eventually the new books sold too, and she bloomed into her authorship unfettered by fear or uncertainty. She had the approbation of the industry, however it had first been gained, and she let it grow her.

Now she is a bestselling author writing under her own name, and although she once advised me not to self publish and never to reveal to a prospective agent that I had once done so, her fourth novel as herself, as the real writer she is and wants to be, I see is published by no less than D.G. herself.

But her path, so different from mine, was carved by a woman who knew a thing or two about business and who let that knowledge guide her. That woman is not like me. I have the heart of a poet, which is of course pathetic. I determine not to say it, not to speak it and thus make it true, but it seems I am not motivated by anything but the word itself. Which will make me a writer only to myself...and to the few individuals who will stumble upon my books by chance (fate?).

I teach my students about Dostoevsky, the existentialists, free will. I teach them about how our need to exercise that free will will subvert even the most basic of our needs so that in order to assert it, fulfill it, we will act even against our own best interest. Such irony in myself embodying the purest example of such a tendency. Human indeed.

I think of my inability to be inauthentic even for a moment, a quality that in my idealistic youth I thought of as a positive trait. How even if I resigned myself to writing in a way that didn't honor my self, my intellect, my truth, I would be unable to muster even a single syllable when in moments of silence I sat down to the page. Knowing that my idealism won't pay the bills, won't eradicate debt that hovers like a low fog, I wonder whether it is stubbornness or ineptitude that keeps me from writing what I know would be consumed greedily by the industry, by its constituents. Never mind.

Because where I always land is here: awareness of the privilege of this variety of problem. How sitting down to my school-issued laptop in front of my fireplace in the beautiful home where I live, I am lucky to have this as the topic of my preoccupation. Though it takes some effort to keep other worries at bay, these too are the forms of my privileged life. To have the luxury of contemplating my worth, as a writer, as a human, this is the greatest luck, really, and I am grateful for every other worry that does not belong to me.

Leaning Into What Aches So We Can Be Saved...

I read haiku aloud to the group of seekers who have gathered here; they are the group that has assembled for my first creative writing workshop in the Vail Valley. They are perfect, and they are gracious, each of them strong in his/her own way, each of them vulnerable, too...like me. Like every one of us who opens their mouth to speak, lifts their pen to write.

I want to keep them for another hour, but of course I must honor their time, and this is the last exercise we have time to complete. I have told them they can start writing as soon as they are ready, and for now a single haiku drifts to their ear at intervals of about 30 seconds. It's a beginner meditation, a beginner visualization...from a beginner human. If I had lives before this one, I don't remember them, so yes, I am a beginner at being human, and I assume the appropriate humility (now that I am 44 and have spent more than half a lifetime being fairly egocentric). Hey, at least I know what I know (even if it isn't very much).

What I do know is that what we are doing here is important. With time ticking (like always I have tried to cram too much into this small collection of minutes...it means so much, after all), each of them continues to listen, lips lifting up almost imperceptibly at the edges, soft foreheads and smooth, gentle breath. I love that they are present. That they are receiving each tiny poem as it comes, lands like a sparrow on their gently rising and falling breastbone, lifts off again. Finally, as gently as I can, I tell them it is time to come to the page.

We all begin writing, keeping in mind the word, the abstraction we have each drawn from a miniature deck of cards. My word is HEALING, and I re-enter this space, the yoga studio at Dogma--where I have used that word more times than I am able to count. I have talked about "creating the optimal conditions for healing" in the body, in the mind. I say it as we sink into Savasana, having breathed, moved, balanced and stretched into spaces we didn't know existed.

"Rest," I say. This is how we heal ourselves, and like in asana, we lean, mindfully, into what aches, what makes us afraid, what challenges us completely. We just lean into it, try to love it. Breathe it. Ardha Chandrasana, Utthita Trikonasana, Urdhva Mukha Svanasana. Oh. We soften into these ways of moving or being still, try to claim them as our own.

This we can also do with disease. Heartache. Fear. Lean into it, receive it, acknowledge it. How can we begin to send it light, to heal it, if we simply deny and reject it? These are my cells, these are my tears, this is my hurt, and by softening into them, I can begin to attend to them, to heal myself.

In the same way, I bring what aches out of darkness and onto the page. Lean into it by giving it voice, letting it be the truth that it is, here, in front of me. Where I can see it and where others may also see it. Perhaps only in this way, in daring to allow what is to fully BE, as I give it language and expression, can I begin to address it. Send it the loving, healing energy that it needs. Rest. Softness. Acknowledgment. Healing. Om.

I look around the circle and some of us are beginning to wind down, letting the pen lift from the paper across which it has been busily moving. Eyes begin to lift, too, and there is a softness there, as well. I am overcome with the importance of this work, which requires no special gift on my part, but rather a holding of sacred space for each of these who would come here and lean into their own stories, their own impressions and memories. Those who would "give voice to what is inner," so that indeed, they may "survive what is outer" (Nepo).

I know that I will continue to do this work, with anyone who wishes to "dive into the wreck" of memory, to explore their "dreaming place" and to learn what it is they think or believe or wish--by seeing what they have to say.

When we close the circle, gratitude hangs in the air, and wonder--at our own authentic voices, more beautiful than we could have imagined them, simply because they are our own. We lean into our stories, into the sensations and memories that grew them, and we know that what aches can also save us, if we can only soften into it, acknowledge it as our own.

The River Fear

There was a period of silence. A period of undulating urgency, where one importunity spilled and rolled into the next like the troughs and crests of a river wave. Something I knew nothing about before I moved here, and something about which I am bound to learn a great deal more. How can one live without water after all? Not just drinking it, but being in it.

The silence was because of a fear that felt in my body like an electric current (which never mixes well with water).  At times we were rushing down the rapids of a current we had willingly entered, with our children no less, and hanging on to the raft (and our sons) for dear life. At others it felt easier, more mellow, but we knew that what lay ahead might be worse than what was behind us. It was pretty terrifying. How could I produce words during a time like that? How could I tell a story?

And even in the calmer moments, the fear was there. It baffled me, paralyzed me at times. But I knew that it was born of creating, of making esssaie. It was a response to the turbulence that comes when one risks everything for a change that feels necessary...not just unavoidable but absolutely critical for moving forward. We were making a place for our family in this valley. I had to love even the fear.

Knowledge of surfing gives you no advantage in a river. None. And it would take a much greater knowledge of river lore and language for me to extend the metaphor any further, but let it suffice to say that it was a year that challenged us. Slowly, slowly we got our heads about us. Things began to open for us, began to support the wild and risky choices we'd made. We began to feel that we would eventually be safe. And we had each other. We had our gratitude.

I have lived long enough (and written long enough) to know that you can't really write something real until you've finished living it, and with the uncertainty of how this story would end, or at least segue into the next chapter, I was wordless for over a year. Voiceless. There was fear in that, too.

Mary Ruefle once spoke about the fallow periods of a writer. Periods where the soil from which one's stories and poems grow is at rest. Things germinate, and the soil prepares itself to yield something alive and unfurling, but until then, it seems like nothing is happening. But it is. I still don't know what it is, but I feel that it is time to write and "see what I say" (Forester).

I will start slowly. As the fear falls away, there is peace, and there is language. There are stories and verses that want to give themselves to me, and I am safe enough to receive them. I let them arrive from the mystical world that generates them and projects them against a cloudless sky. I transcribe them from there. Live their heaviness. Their lightness. They are who I am, and for the first time in over a year I am not afraid.

Angel DNA

No, says the angel, and Shhhhh... There is no need for tears, though they are beautiful and can be loved. Drops of glass refracting light. You teach yourself the lesson again: "Everything not fully suffered, not fully resolved [comes] again: the same sorrows [are] suffered over and over." 

Ask yourself, she says, Ask yourself the question. So I do. And in doing so, I have beckoned it. The answer rises like a wave--a wave nearly identical to the ones that have been dragging their bellies over this reef for a lifetime, before standing up and bowing to the sand. To the stone.

It is as clear as day, as clear as night: There is no roof under which I need to station myself, no shelter I should seek from the beauty and worth of stars. Easy is not best--why should I begin to believe otherwise now? I choose the way that speaks to me of a well-chosen journey, of the kind of independence I have always garnered, and of the million names I might give to a single shape on the horizon.

The angel settles herself among feathers and tulle, lets a smile curl the edges of her lips, where she wears her approval. Where she reflects the heredity I carry in my genes. Where she looks exactly like me.

Emergency Flotation...

Three doors open, two click shut again before her heart has even absorbed the joy that was building around it. Collection of sighs and affirmations become homeless in the space of two emails. Such a fine line between what the heart imagines and what it can actually contain.

Left to swim in uncertainty again, she puts a hand on a nearby piece of driftwood and extends her arms and legs as she knows to do in a swiftly (or slowly) moving current. She fills her lungs with air and believes in her own buoyancy. Lets the water kiss an oval frame around her face as she lifts her eyes skyward again, always on the lookout for the truth that might spell itself against the clouds overhead.

She thinks of Ophelia, singing her snatches of old tunes, but only as a passing expression of despair--Ophelia sinks in the fidelity of the story, but not she--she rises, her garments fanning around her like pale wings. There is gratitude here. She immerses herself in it again, lets the thoughts of her love, her boys, her friends, her family swirl into the negative spaces of her body against this mottled blue. She surrenders to it.

Lungs fill with air, push sternum to the surface. Ribs are a sweet little cage for the pulsing aspirations of a seeker. A lover. A writer. A teacher. This soul straining heavenward, asking the question again and again--how? Not why--That is the wrong question, says the angel. But how? Yes, how to be the thing it is in her to be? How to believe. Her willingness is all, and she does know. Knows it will take shape in time. Knows that the softness of her heart is all. Is all.

Angel Card: Synthesis

Yes. Synthesis. And harmony. Together we can. I never worked well in groups. I was "bossy," my mom told me. And a little controlling. I preferred to work independently. Choose each color, each word, even the arrangement on the page or in the air. And spirituality as a group effort? Never. But now. But now...

Sisterhood, I see, is all. Not just the synthesis of souls, intentions, efforts, but of my own experience, my own gifts and offerings. There is a way to give it all and be left to overflowing. Be a fountain, Kim. Be a fountain.

Loving Jane...

When I think of Jane Kenyon and why I love her so much, though I have only discovered this since she has been gone from the Earth, I am not entirely sure. It seems it would have to do with her language, with the utter purity of her images and the sweet, hymnal intonations of her verse. Of course I first loved her language. What else have I to go on?

I never met her and have only ever corresponded with her husband, who forgives me the fact that his poetry is not my favorite because he knows that the poet whose work holds that position of favor is his late wife. Jane died at 44 when her husband was 66. Now, at 85, he writes back to me in all graciousness, though he is weary and must receive a great deal of mail from people such as myself, wondering about his great art, his great success and, like me, his fabulous wife of 23 years.

Today I read A Hundred White Daffodils and even while I try to read slowly, savor each delectable syllable, I am aware of the dwindling number of Jane's works that remain to be read by me. I will have to start again, from the top, when that happens. For now, I am at a church fair or in a garden. I climb Mount Washington and take the train down--or not.

I am with Jane and it is as if the two years that remain between this moment and the moment I turn 44, her age at her death, are all I have of her. It is a bit eerie to think like this, and I try to understand the source of such a sense, but it is lost in some notion of time and poetry and in an image of wild geese against blue sky.

From Fear to Affirmation...

"If you do not come too close,
If you do not come too close..." --T.S. Eliot

There is fear here. I am reminded that fear is perhaps the polar opposite of all things edifying. It is crippling. It obscures and hinders. I will not move with fear directing my course.

I still believe in karma. I still believe that if my intention is perfect, good will come of what I do. Good will come of what I create and what I share--and I will reap the rewards of seeds sown in love and beneficence.

Abundance is mine. I open my hands to receive it, while at the same time opening my heart to my purpose. To giving what I can give. To being the thing I was born on this planet to be. 

All I Ever Wanted

I look around me, and I realize that I have everything I have ever wanted. It's not at all in the shape I might have imagined (how could I have conceived of this exact thing?), but it's all here. I can always find something to complain about--it's the special propensity of humans, I think--but why? If I look too far forward, there is fear, I must admit. But again--why?

All is provided for today, in this moment, by our perfect intention and our efforts to manifest them in the world and in our lives. By the Divine in us, if you will--what is perfect and light in our imperfect selves. By God, quite simply, though that particular name had begun to feel foreign on my tongue.

In my heart I know that I cannot agree with Confucius when he says that nothing exists until it is named. As a poet, of course, I like the idea, but as a human, a spiritual seeker, I have to admit that my knowing speaks to me of the most profound truth: that which I have called God, Spirit, the Divine, Creator, Source--it (she?) existed long before I spoke the syllables, pushed them around, swapped them out for one another.

Furthermore, that entity, that Perfection, is constant and unaffected by my choice of nomenclature. I live inside of the Divine, and the Divine inside of me. In my best moments, I move according to her voice. Thank you. Thank you. God. Source. Brahma. I am whole. Life is good. In that light I grow, full of gratitude.

When I get impatient to see the fruits of my labor, when I fear that my belief in "good karma" is rather a misguided kind of idealism, I remember the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. "All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence." And so I continue to do what I do. I love up my sons, share in their nurturing with my husband. I keep writing. I keep teaching. Keep sharing what I can with those who want what I have to give. Keep looking for the light in every person, believing it's there no matter how deeply buried. Keep hoping to learn, because I know that every single individual I encounter has something to teach me. What else can we do but keep on doing these things?

"So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up." --Galations 6:9. Indeed. No 'misguided idealism' here. Just truth. And a reminder to be patient. A reminder to have faith in what I am up to in this life.

Thank you Daily Word for pairing this MLK quote with this verse from the Old Testament Bible. Perfect wisdom for me today. Namaste.

To the Woman Who Abused Me on the Phone the Other Night...

Thank you. You opened the door a hair, a crack, and you let the light in. You showed me that I am stronger than I thought. It matters not at all that I cried for some time afterward. It was not for the insults that I cried. Not for believing there was any truth in what you said. Those tears were for cruelty in general--the way people try to hurt one another sometimes. The way it's from hurt itself that such hurting usually issues. Perhaps next time my tears will even be for you, dear woman, tears born purely of my compassion. For now, I let them be nonspecific.

You showed me that, to a greater extent than I thought possible, my ego has dissolved. I know this because no desire for retaliation grew in my heart as you abused me, made convoluted accusations and denied me. I only recognized the fruitlessness of my efforts to communicate and to understand, and I was calm enough to end it. Though you seemed to hold out to me a vehicle for manifesting something I deeply wanted, I ended it. Somehow there was clarity and peacefulness in saying no. And goodbye. I even said "thank you"--twice--hardly knowing the source of my gratitude.

Now I can see clearly the liberation of it all--the moral victory contained in not responding to your attack. But more importantly I see that I have become more powerful than I was before. I was full of grace in that moment. Full of light. Mary would be proud of me. I am proud of me. That I chose not to grasp. That what I heard, I did not receive with my ego and interpret as a reflection of myself. I heard it for what it was: a reflection of someone with whom, for whatever reason, I was not going to be able to connect. Someone who, in spite of my best efforts, was not going to see me.

"Thank you," I said again, voice soft, gentle. And, "Goodbye."

What I Have to Say to Me

"How do I know what I think until I see what I say?" --E.M. Forster

I decide to "see what I say." I sit down to write. My dog sits, too. I settle into an easy, meditative breath and be still. I know my gypsy heart resists even this moment of stillness. Even this level of stasis. 

In life I commit, at intervals, to putting down roots. I believe it is what my children need. What they want. I believe it is "should." There are times my heart feels it will implode, times that tears surge from somewhere deep within and unknown but unbelievably powerful.

"Eight years is not so long," I say with an out-breath. "I have created this way of learning, this way to grow into a more content, less restless version of myself." Even as I say them, I know these are labels I have learned and which represent societal expectations. But they also represent a belief I hold, or else why would I say them? And then it happens. I speak to me:

This impulse--it doesn't arrive out of discontent. It ends up getting expressed like that sometimes, but that is not its source. The source is a wildness that is utterly pure. A wildness that drives me toward the new, the vibrant, the alive. 

This routine thing--I cannot love it. I will do it. I will do it well. In order to sustain a life I have offered to my sons. But I will not be ashamed of the impulse to go. To fly. To see and know things other.

I don't expect to pass this way again--or if I do, I don't think I will remember this time around. I want to see and know every beautiful thing--every real thing. And I want to do it all with this family I have made with the man I love.

**Inertia for Kindle is FREE TODAY ONLY on Amazon. Click here to get your copy in an instant! HAPPY 2014!

What is Tonglen?

I sort of stumbled upon Tonglen as a practice when I was reading a book by the American Buddhist nun Pema Chodron. My twelve-year-old son chose it from among the books at the Northshire, our local bookstore, and put it in my Christmas stocking last year. It's called Comfortable with Uncertainty, which is really relevant to me, as I suspect it is with most of humanity, because I have never really been "comfortable with uncertainty." This has to do, I know, with fear. So the second part of the title of Chodron's book is "108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion," and something that I learned in its pages is that both of these ways of being (compassionate and fearless) can be cultivated through Tonglen.

Tonglen is a meditative practice. The word Tonglen essentially means "sending-and-receiving," and it has to do with allowing ourselves to receive, or sit with, what is painful, grievous, or harmful in the world. Suffering exists. The Buddhist dukkha. Indeed. So to sit with it, with all of the emotions surrounding it, breathe it in, we connect with it...in ourselves and in others. Then sending, with the out-breath, we exhale, we send into our circle of compassion all that is healing, peaceful, and positive. When we start, we might be alone in our circle of compassion, but through the practice of Tonglen, that circle can grow...and grow...until it encompasses the whole world! The universe.

Tonglen is a way of cultivating fearlessness and also compassion in our lives. Often our first impulse is to move away from someone who has sustained an inconceivable loss. But the older I get, I find myself leaning in to these people. I find myself less fearful and less tentative. It has to do with being willing to receive what aches in them and knowing that my compassion, sent innocently and without judgment, sent simply with my intention, with my breath, is adequate. I don't need to "say (or even do) the right thing." I just need to be willing to share in their sadness, their loneliness, their grief.  Compassion is always adequate. It is, in fact, what heals us. Not only does it connect me to others in an authentic way, but it cultivates in me a kind of courage I know I want.

I want to walk this Earth and connect with others fearlessly. By practicing Tonglen, we train ourselves to do this, and at the same time we remember our own compassion. We remember how to love without condition. We remember that what we have suffered and have seen suffered is nothing new--"There is nothing new under the sun," intones the philosopher in the Book of Ecclesiastes. There are new faces, new stories, new shapes of things, but the suffering and the pain are universal. They are ancient. But so is the love, so is compassion. Through the practice of Tonglen, we can open ourselves to these two fundamental truths and practice connecting with others and with the Divine that inhabits us all.

If you'd like to listen to a discussion I recently had with Reverend Paulette Pipe on the subject of Tonglen over the airwaves, just click on the link below. In the broadcast, we chat for about 15 minutes on the topic, and then I lead a guided Tonglen meditation, which is about 12 minutes long. Paulette's radio show, "Touching the Stillness," is a rare find and I am honored to have been her guest.

Radio Interview with the Reverend Paulette Pipe: "And Unwrapped Gift" on "Touching the Stillness"

Wholly New...

I settle in to write the story. Hang its bones with flesh, fat, "miraculous organs." I wrap winter around me like a blanket--white snow a buffer against all sound, all activity. I am this story. I learn to love the winter. Love the cold that leaves me leaning into these interiors, these warm pockets of living. I lean, too, into my language, each syllable a gift, a "new arrival" that means the story grows. The story goes. It becomes me.

I look around me and there is this difference: I have finally learned patience. After yearning so long, just like that. I arrive at stillness. My longing is a soft undercurrent, no longer a raging river tearing at roots and tumbling stones as it spills itself headlong toward the sea. Oh. What sweet respite from wanting.

I learn to sustain this light, let it burn down slowly, the thin and enfolding flame of a candle. "I can see for miles, miles, miles," he croons. Indeed, the distance is great.

I determine to craft, draw in the lines of the lungs, the veins and arteries. The heart itself I will endow with muscular pulsing. Life. I will line the flesh with marbled fat, just enough, and enclose it with the largest organ of all. When I stand it up, it will breathe, and I will recognize it as my twin. Beauty I never believed in.

Bonsai Soul

I have begun to understand the soul as much like a bonsai tree...one's higher self, God within as it were, as a sort of bonsai artist. I have learned that bonsai artistry is a lifelong commitment...to clipping and shaping, watering and monitoring--light and soil and air. Bonsai tree growing, then, involves all of the elements, even fire in that it is from the belly of the artist that the flame of passion arises and from that fire that each intention lifts itself and takes the shape of action: pruning, root reduction, potting, defoliation and grafting.

The tree of the soul grows from source material--a cutting or perhaps a seedling--not from a genetically dwarfed or altered tree but rather from the real deal. The regular stock and seed of the full-sized Tree in all its glory. Source material indeed.

The purpose of bonsai is twofold: contemplation (for the viewer) and the mindful exercise of effort and energy (for the grower). I realize then, that each action I take in the effort toward understanding, nurturing and directing the growth of my soul is another way I attend to that tree, a perfectly miniature version of its Source.

I therefore know each individual as such an artist and each soul as the thing that grows as a result of  perfect intent. Left to its own devices it would become unruly, grow beyond its bounds, or else diminish to the point of disease or even perishing.

I consider the implications of this and decide that I can only be a contemplative viewer of the bonsais that surround me. As for my own bonsai tree, I must attend to it minutely, each limb, each tiny leaf a reflection of my care and the way I hope to grow it. I must love it up, the way I am loving up my children. And I must trust in the power of my love to make it worthy, finally, of its Source, of being a sliver of that light in this world. An island of serenity in this life.

Seed Talk

What matters is these five women, holding space for one another--angels on earth, angels in the ether of E's heaven.

"This could be heaven," she said matter-of-factly, looking around the circle, sort of assessing us before reasserting, "Yeah, you could all be in my heaven." We laughed but were inwardly honored, without speaking it, by the notion. By E including us in such a place in her heart.

What matters, then, is this tower and the seeds we have planted here. They rain down from the sixth floor like petals or snowflakes and settle in the rich soil beneath us.

Each day we have gathered here in earnest. The sixth floor of the tower at Awaken Whole Life Center. Together, with pens in hands, layers of trepidation and restraint shed for the opening, the unveiling of our own personal truths, each of them nestled into the nest of this larger Truth. Satya.

What matters then is a village. People who are trying, really trying to be whole, good, light. People whose practice it is not to judge but to open themselves one limb, one petal, one thought at a time to what is possible in the world.

It took me a while to realize what made this place so special. It was, all around me, the collective 'essaie,' the effort to be good. The intention of each person who walked there--the chefs, the bookstore clerks, the spa staff--to be kind to one another. To see each other clearly and come from a place of acceptance for each interaction, whether with strangers or friends.

What matters then is the miracle of a dog. A boy with words in his heart. A mother willing to give him the spoon that feeds him.

N, you are so beautiful in your love. It is, we could all see immediately, without condition. It is for everyone you encounter, everyone with a hurt or a need or a hope. How lucky your children are to have such a strong presence of maternal compassion in their lives...one who is rooted in her feminine lineage but not bound by it.

What matters then is a formidable woman who embraces a girl--forlorn in a foreign land, rejected by those who would love her, confused by the incongruity of culture, family, propensities and lives that enveloped her in eighteen short but enduring months.

What an honor, P, to be among the midwives of this amazing birth. Your story will unfold itself before your eyes. All you have to do is "show up" to write. This story wants to be told by you; it picked you, as I believe a child chooses its parents...I can't wait to see all the ways it will grow!

What matters then is an ageless woman with a love for life that supersedes all fear, all inhibition, all self-consciousness. A woman who, after 87 years, continues to evolve, grow herself, attend to the business of blooming.

Thank you, E, for modeling sheer gratitude for life and all it brings. For reminding us that we are constantly and ever evolving, and for giving us so much to look forward to!

What matters then is a mother of six who springs into the autumn of her life in beauty, in joy. She is a fountain, she is a source of life in and of herself. She, too, seeks to blossom heavenward.

C, whose 'peasant feet' root her to the earth. Ground her in her present and give her the steadiness of heart and step as she moves through a life with the intention of becoming what it is in her to become...never forget that what you are already is beautiful and worthy of every good thing.

What matters then is a woman cupping the heart of a man in her warm hands. Her own beats like a sparrow's--quick skittering rhythm hidden in her breast as she breathes in his brokenness, exhales what would heal him.

T, I wish you could have fully grasped the amount of admiration and appreciation carried in the hearts of each of the members of our group...for you, friend. For you.

This time together, here, in a seven-story tower, we have leaned in to one another. It has been a time of intrepid openness and unfettered self-expression, each woman moving toward a light that she herself placed before her. Each one holds the space toward this expansive motion and shared evolution. We know ourselves as in the process of becoming, but also as already embodying that perfect thing toward which we strive. Time is inconsequential in the mapping of our intent.

This weekend was the synthesis of souls, intentions, efforts, but also the synthesis of my own gifts and offerings. We are the "seed group." We acknowledge it aloud. We know that it will never be like this again and this we speak, as well. "We are the 'good old days,'" E asserts, having most certainly looked back and known herself like this in other settings, other circumstances over the course of her 87 years. She grins broadly, and we know it to be true. "Seed Talk," we called this meeting...Sunday evening, the last of our retreat. Indeed. Seeds and talk and love and the cultivation of this fine thing that has already begun to grow in the garden of our collective consciousness.

What matters, then, is my own effort to tend to this garden of unruly but fantastic flowers. And to trust in the process. There is a way to give it all and be left full to overflowing. Be a gardener, Kim. Be a fountain.



**Thank you to Margaret Robison whose untitled poem inspired the refrain of this post: "What matters then..."

The Art of Being Still

I have sometimes thought that I had nothing in common with my mother, content to raise her children, keep our tidy house, put food on a maple-wood table. My mother who never heard the call of distant countries or foreign cultures but instead hunkered down and laughed about being an "Okie," though each step she took distinguished her as "other" than what her Oklahoma Dustbowl lineage might define.

In California, she watches the sea from the shore, her feet firmly planted on East Cliff Drive, arms wrapped around her body against the chill of North Pacific breezes. My mother, resigned to working in the same tiny medical office for over 20 years, all the while anticipating a time of rest in retirement. Slowly working her way up a pay scale and growing in the esteem of the doctors whose insurance billing she governs.

I have spent my adult life in a steady progress away from this kind of stillness, always moving, always driving in the direction of the unknown. Driving seaward, lusting for the adventure of ocean swells. Winds of change. Only now, in my 42nd year, the year that for my mother held the wedding of her daughter and the diagnosis of breast cancer, do I begin slowly, slowly, to learn the art of stillness. To know the difference between still and stuck.

I see now the strength in making a choice and carrying it out over time. Being very still and waiting out times that don't measure up. Nurturing hope and indeed action for incremental change, rather than flying to the dramatic: abandoning your post in the face of a picture of life that is incongruous with the picture in your heart.

Looking back over my own story, I consider counting the number of times I have thrown the proverbial baby out with the bathwater, fled from a place that was still becoming "home." Created the need to rebuild, start again in a new place under new circumstances.  What has been the draw of utter and complete upheaval? Have I never known moderation?

But there is no point in doing this. No point in trying to imagine what might have grown had I ever had the perseverance, the patience, to nurture something akin to a garden. In fact, I have come to see gardening as the symbol of the kind of rooting of the self that I still don't really know how to want. The kind of rooting of the self that I believe I will evolve to find myself understanding. Even desiring, one day.

In the meantime, I will practice the art of being still in Vermont. Because my children love this place in which I have begun to learn it. It is the place that held up a mirror for me to see my mother's features in my own brown face. Her expression of steadfastness. Her constancy. These endow me with a kind of beauty I did not have before now but which was always in her, though I did not understand its origin. They provide me with an anchor. I drop it here among the carrots and the lettuces. I find comfort in the tautness of its line, as the waves of my life lift me up and away from it. But the line holds. I stay. Still and not stuck.

Thank you, Vermont

The rain begins with the commencement of school--an impressive concussion of thunderstorms that lasts for two days. I notice that the leaves in Snow Valley have already begun to let go of their summer green, though not yet infused with the dazzling palette of autumn.

The air is cool during the rain, heavy and hot during the moments of stillness. I find myself serene and knowing this place as a kind of home. For all my resistance, I do like Vermont--in spite of its being a part of New England, which always feels stifling and accusatory, if only for its history and the vestiges of the puritanical sensibility that gave it its place names, its conservativism, its general fear of pleasure.

No, I find I can forgive Vermont its geographical association with New England (though I still joke that I think I was burned at the stake in my last life--besides, if that's true it had to have been southeast of where I now reside). Plus, Vermont's "hippies" and rednecks defy the standards of her Massachusetts and Connecticut neighbors, making me feel less like a fish out of water.

I find I can embrace Vermont for its verdant hills, for its sparrows and chickadees. I can embrace Vermont for its blue lakes nestled in the blazing fall foliage, too, but mostly I begin to embrace Vermont for the joy it brings my sons. I can even love Vermont for the way it has adopted them and absorbed them into its snow culture.

I find that after 20 nomadic years I could possibly learn to be still, and I know that Vermont has taught me that. There is undeniable gratitude here and a fondness for the seasons, which I could never have anticipated. In Vermont I have learned to be home.



*I can't in good conscience not admit that I have borrowed a morsel of language from Ray Bradbury in this piece. I first saw the word 'concussion' used to describe a storm in a short story of his called "All Summer in a Day." Thanks, Mr. Bradbury. Love your work. 

Imagine Yourself a Writer, Part II

My interview last week with the Reverend Paulette Pipe on her radio show "Touching the Stillness" inspired me to put down in writing a navigation of my happy discovery that suffering is not a prerequisite for great writing and that the most important aspect of what we create as writers is not that it distinguishes us as separate from others but rather, that it connects us to them and highlights what is shared among us...

Something that plagued me for many years as a young writer and teacher was the idea that suffering and art go hand in hand. I had the idea that only misery and grief could generate good writing, and historically, there are so many examples to support this. The “tortured artist” is not a new concept. I had this fear that I could never achieve peace and happiness in my life and still write meaningful poems and stories. It was some comfort that in my periods of misery, self-loathing and grief, I could come up with some very powerful poems, but ultimately, I wanted to be happy. And I wanted to be a writer. So much of what I knew about writers supported the argument that these two conditions were mutually exclusive.

Theodore Roethke, arguably one of America’s greatest poets and writing instructors, once said, “I can’t go on flying apart just for those who want the benefit of a few verbal kicks. My God, do you know what poems like that cost?” It was true. In my own experience, each poem, each crown of sonnets, each villanelle, had been born of some devastating sensation or experience. They exacted a very real cost in that the requisite suffering took its toll, one that didn’t necessarily, and certainly did not permanently, get erased or even compensated by the works of art so exalted by others. Roethke went on to exclaim, “They’re not written vicariously: they come out of actual suffering, real madness.”

I feared, too, that inherent in the poetic sensibility was a kind of instability and even this “madness” Roethke talked about. I wanted to write, but my fear that what made me a writer also constituted inherent flaws in my mental state began to overwhelm. It helped when I started to write more prose, more fiction. I would eventually move away from wrenching the personal material from my gut for the poetry I had been so committed to writing in my twenties and early thirties, and I would start to invent characters. It would feel safer, more stable, and finally I would all but forget what had previously felt like an irreconcilable conflict….but it did not happen all at once.

I began to deepen my yoga practice. I began meditating regularly, exploring stillness, sitting with my quiet self and simply being. These practices brought me profound peace, and I began to find that the sort of fissures in the heart, caused by suffering and causing a kind of leakage of consciousness, were not the only way I could access what lived and moved in my “dreaming place.” It was one way, and indeed I had haphazardly dredged up the contents of my “dreaming place” in this way for years, dragging them over the coals of my own torturous uncertainty, through the darkness of my melancholy, trying, as it were, to tend to wounds that always surprised me with the keenness of their sensation. I would often later craft these images, this language, into poems that would then get published in a literary journal or magazine, but the cost. “My God,” the cost.

Through my practice of yoga, which led naturally into meditation, I began to change. I began to heal myself. I began to find my centre. To know and love stillness, which landed me smack in the middle of the present, where I found I could let go of every fear, every ache that had ever plagued me. Not by resisting it, but by acknowledging it. Absorbing it. Breathing it in, letting it be transformed in me, and then breathing it out as peace. As gentleness. As love. This, I learned, was the practice of Tonglen. It is a Buddhist practice that, roughly defined, means “giving and taking,” or “sending and receiving.” In the practice of Tonglen, we breathe in not only our own suffering, but also the suffering of others, the universal hurt that differs only in the stories that encapsulate it, and we breathe out what we believe will give relief: serenity, human connection, joy, confidence. In this way we heal ourselves. In this way we heal the world.

So where did this leave me as a writer? Could I exist as two people? The elevated, joyful yogi, and the tortured poet? Or could I somehow integrate these aspects of myself, allow the “torture” to be transformed in me, and let it feed my writing? Would my writing become flaccid, undisciplined, springing as it would from a place that was wildly happy and content? It was a risk, I felt, but this softness of heart, this boddhichitta,  or “awakened heart,” was not something I was willing to give up. I was realizing my true nature, it seemed, and I was not willing to accept that this meant that I would no longer write. When I began to try, I felt in some ways that I had little to say in a poem. The poems just did not come. I knew, though, that writing is like child-rearing, and as soon as one says, “I always do this,” or “Whenever I do that…,” the maxim just formulated becomes null and void by a new behavior, a changed and wholly unpredictable variation in the pattern. With this in mind, I did not get too worried.

Instead, I tried my hand at fiction. This was new for me. By meditating and navigating my way consciously into that “dreaming place,” instead of waiting for the membrane between my conscious and subconscious thought to tear painfully, I found that I could give myself access to all the wildness of my imagination without the suffering. I could begin to generate language, images, and whole stories in a healthy way. I found that my writing became richer and more intricate, and certainly more accessible to others, since I was no longer skulking about in the semi-obscure language of my secret longing.

Characters began to arrive at my proverbial door, and I began to welcome them happily, weaving them in to the stories that germinated somewhere inside and found their ways to the surface, like gardens. I felt only partially responsible for them, and yet I had the desire to cultivate them, and this effort, this loving time invested in them, gave me ownership of what felt otherwise divinely gifted to me. I had discovered, it seemed, a new way to create. I had also begun to realize, that this experience was not unique to me. People love to think that they are unique, special in some way, and it is through no fault of our own that our egoic self is so intrigued by the feeling that we are doing something that no one else (or very few others) can do. I had to let that go. I’m not special. Not in this way, at least.

EVERY person is a writer. EVERY person has a “dreaming place” that is unique to herself, and EVERY person can learn to access what is there and to bring it onto the page. We can also ALL learn to craft that material into poems, stories, essays… It is limitless, really, what we can create and how we can, through our creation, connect with others. Why do we orient ourselves early on toward asserting ourselves over others? There is room in the world for infinite expression, infinite art, and ultimately, infinite empathy. How about that as a goal of art? To unite?

I do believe that many artists throughout history have ‘gotten’ this. Albert Camus, for one, who said in his banquet speech upon accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature, that “often he who has chosen the fate of the artist because he has felt himself to be different soon realizes that he can maintain neither his art nor his difference unless he admits that he is like the others.”  In Camus’ words, “the artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.” Gospel. Seriously.

The more that I practice yoga, I see that I/we can achieve union, as it were. Between body, mind and spirit; between our selves and others; between our subconscious and conscious minds. I see that it is possible to access my creativity, indeed my “dreaming place,” through peaceful contemplation. Through the softening of my heart, the opening of my self to the infinite possibilities of my own imagination, I can create, and this connects me with my fellow human beings. And I see that with a little guidance, we can all do this…and experience the joy, healing and liberation of speaking our truths, whether through real or invented characters.

I have made it my mission to provide such guidance and to help other people, people who desire to be both happy and creative, to find their way through this labyrinth of human experience. I love teaching yoga, meditation and writing. What better way to combine these things than in a Lotus Wheel Retreat? I invite you to join me for the upcoming retreat at Awaken Whole Life Center in Unity Village, Missouri (click the link below for more info). And in the meantime, may your spiritual path be well lit, and may you cultivate your own creativity through daily practice, even if it is to sit down and write a single sentence each morning. Your stories, your observations, have a place in this world, and they connect you to others in a way that means everything.

Namaste.

 Creative Awakening Yoga Retreat at Awaken Whole Life Center

Imagine Yourself a Writer....

I often begin my discussions on creative writing with the idea that Wallace Stevens had of “the Dreaming Place.” I believe I first learned about this from Pat Schneider during my Amherst Writers and Artists training over fifteen years ago. I remember being a fairly young writer and teacher at the time, arriving in the idyllic town of Amherst, getting settled in to my room at a farm house belonging to a woman named Clara, and heading off to learn from the master.

I loved everything about that training: Pat’s easy-going approach, her sincerity, the wide range of ideas shared for generating material, and Pat’s staunch belief that anyone can write…and should. It confirmed that I was onto something with my idea that Percy Bysshe Shelley, for one, was full of something unsavory when he defined poets as “spirits of the most refined organization…hierophants [or interpreters] of an unapprehended inspiration.” I have always secretly felt (as appealing as it can be to be part of something exclusive and elite) that writing was not something reserved for an elite group, for  “those of the most delicate sensibility and the most enlarged imagination.” No, I had an inkling that every individual was a writer, a potential story-teller and poet, and that the only thing that distinguished one who called herself a writer from one who did not was the desire to be that thing. One is a writer because one desires to cultivate their story-teller/poet self and, perhaps most importantly, because one is willing to put in the hours of practice it takes to really craft her work.

So this “Dreaming Place,” it exists in every one of us, and access to it is our birthright. It belongs to us. It is the field of one’s imagination, one’s thoughts, tame or wild, animate or inanimate, squawking or humming; all of it is there in the wide open space of one’s “Dreaming Place.” It is through early criticism, the poor reception of a story, perhaps or the red-pen markings of a well-intentioned teacher, that we begin to bar our own entrance into this place. Finally, I think, most of us forget the way.

Happily, though, the memory is always there, latent perhaps, but present, and with a little effort, we can retrace our early steps to this place and remember our creative selves. We can grant ourselves not only access to this place, but also permission to fish things up from it, record them on a page. This is the stuff of our dreaming, it is the way we remember our writer selves, and it is the way we can say something new. No, as emphatically declared in the biblical Ecclesiastes countless times, “there is nothing new under the sun.” But there are new ways to say everything. What connects us to others and, paradoxically, asserts our individuality, is the story we tell. The poem we write. At the end of the day, if we want to write, we can.

The techniques I learned at that little training in Amherst paved a way for the writing circles I lead now, and over the years, the experience of working with budding writers from all walks of life and of all ages has deepened and bloomed into something quite lovely. I have sort of made it my business to guide people in this process, and I have to say, it is one of the more rewarding ways to spend my time.

The other very rewarding way I spend my time is guiding people in yoga and meditation, both as an expression of the self and as a way to listen. Through the meditative movement of yoga and the stillness achieved in deep relaxation, I believe we can visit our “Dreaming Places.” We can connect with our own imagination, our wildness, the pictures and words that populate our thought, and we can gain insight into our own creativity. If I visit my “Dreaming Place” regularly, the way into it becomes more familiar, less intimidating, and easier to navigate. The speed with which I can reach it, and draw from it for my writing, increases…to the point that when I sit down to the page, there is little to restrict the free and easy rummaging, sifting, recording and crafting of the material it offers me.

If you have peace with this whole process, if you trust it, you can know your writer self. You can bring her to the fore and indeed embody her. If it is what you want, whether to forge a new life path or simply to find the wherewithal to write one particular story that you have it in you to write, you can certainly achieve it.

As for the yoga part, you do not have to be able to twist yourself into a pretzel, and I will not make you chant “Om Namah Shivaya” (unless you want to, that is!). You just have to arrive with the willingness to breathe, move your body a little, set an intention to yoke body to mind and both of these to spirit. If you would like to attend to this integration of the self, through yoga asana, meditation and yes, writing, you might like what we are up to at Lotus Wheel.

This is what my Lotus Wheel: Creative Awakening Retreats are all about. I hope you’ll visit the website for information about the upcoming retreat at Unity Village this October (click link below). This retreat is limited to 30 participants, mostly to keep the writing circles to the intimate size I like them to be, so be quick! It’s filling up! I hope to see you there…

Namaste.

Creative Awakening Yoga Retreat at Unity Village 

*Both quotes in this essay come from "A Defence of Poetry" by Percy Bysshe Shelley, which was first published posthumously in 1840 in Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments.