Nancy Lankston
Rules for Trees
1. No holding branches
2. No touching roots.
3. No losing your leaves
4. Keep your tree straight.
by
Dana Scharein Dague
🌱
The World
The trees are like the hair of the world.
The city is like the heart of the world.
The wind is a flute player
playing in the night…
by
Noel Berry
(excerpt)
Both poems are from the book Salting the Ocean; 100 Poems by Young Poets. All of the poems in Salting the Ocean were written by kids in grades 1-12.
4am – I wake up to a strange sound… can it be? Yes, it’s raining here! Finally. After a brief stint at the window with Dog Goddess Brigit – the smell of wet pine trees is AMAZING (!) – I return to bed and the land of nod.
7am – I prepare to go on Dawn Joy Patrol. My mission? To Hunt down Joy wherever it may be hiding… But first – what do I wear for this special mission??!
7:30am – After a brief descent into angst and indecision, I have chosen an outfit for Joy Patrol! It consists of groovy, yet functional Safari pants (may be rough out there) and a Bedazzled T-shirt. Oh yes, and a silly grin must be part of every Joy uniform 🙂
8am – My ADD gerbil brain flashes on a photo I found weeks ago of my brother and I reporting for Joy Patrol duty. Today’s Joy Patrol mission is happily sidetracked for 10 minutes while I locate the photo in question. LOL – We were such happy young whippersnappers! Apparently John and I already knew the value of wearing silly glasses and grinning like fiends when you are hunting for joy…
8:15am – Hubby David and I rendezvous at Amante Coffee in north Boulder for provisions. My Soy Bhakti and Brego are exquisite. Hooray for joyful tastebuds!
However, I find the hip Amante crowd to be super serious and unsmiling. When David dares me to whistle, and I comply with a short rendition of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” – people are not amused. The Amante crowd actually appears to be questioning my sanity. Such is the price one pays as a bona fide member of the Joy Patrol. It is a sacrifice I am willing to make…
8:45am – I leave Amante and head out to hunt for joy on a walk with Dog Goddess Brigit. Our search for Dog Joy is stalled by several streets to nowhere and roadblocks (a common occurrence when on the road to Joy):
9am – Brigit and I finally arrive at Wonderland Lake in north Boulder. Despite the rain, Dog Goddess Brigit is quite happy to report for Joy Patrol this morning.
10am Brigit’s full Joy Patrol report is illegible – it must be hard to type with wet paws. Luckily I am here, ready and willing to translate for the Dog Goddess!
The gist of Brigit’s report is as follows: Yucky part of Dog Joy Patrol in the rain? Drippy nose and ears. Favorite part? Stinky MUD everywhere!!!
My report on the dog joy portion of Dawn Joy Patrol? A picture is worth a thousand words…
(No joke… that is really the name of the lake)
Next stop on my personal Joy Patrol? Who can say? I happily go wherever Joy has been rumored to be hiding. Stay tuned…
“Life always gives us exactly the teacher we need at every moment.
This includes every mosquito, every misfortune, every red light,
every traffic jam, every obnoxious supervisor (or employee),
every illness, every loss, every moment of joy or depression,
every addiction, every piece of garbage, every breath.
Every moment is the guru.
–Charlotte Joko Beck
My experience of awareness; I take Dog Goddess Brigit on a walk by the river. We walk the same path almost every morning. On many occasions, I have returned from our walk and realized that I didn’t really notice my surroundings at all that day. I have been completely lost in my thoughts, unaware of what was right in front of me. I have been wrapped up in planning my future or ruminating on my past and the river slipped by unnoticed by me.
But some days are different; some days I actually focus on the path and my steps and the sounds on the wind. I notice the feel of the leash in my hand, the smell of some bush or tree nearby. And those moments when I am actually present and aware are so potent! On my aware days, I notice many new things that I never noticed before – even though it is the exact same path Brigit and I walked yesterday. An aware walk is magical.
It is as though I am more alive in aware moments. Awareness amps up my sensations and makes everything richer and fuller. For me, even awareness about something heavy and hard like sorrow or pain beats feeling half alive. I’ve learned that numbing out and avoiding yucky emotions and sensations comes at a price – if I numb out, I will also lose the yummy sensations and emotions that make my life sing.
Meditation teacher, Jon Kabat-Zinn describes awareness as being mindful, being present with whatever is in this moment. He calls it the art of “falling awake”. Ram Das tells us to Be Here Now. Zen master, Thich Nhat Hanh speaks of dwelling in the present moment. Not just living… dwelling in the moment. Seems like a very simple idea. And I find it very difficult to pull off most days!
Modern life seems to be about distraction rather than awareness; we distract ourselves by turning on TV shows we only half watch. We woof down food we don’t really even taste. We walk around dreaming of tomorrow or lamenting yesterday. We surf on the internet, popping from screen to screen without really taking any of it in. We pride ourselves on being able to do 3 things at once, even when we can’t actually remember much about doing any of them! Is that living?
I suspect that Dog Goddess Brigit is at least 100 times more aware than I am on any given day. My big, “superior” human brain gives me the ability to analyze and plan far beyond anything a dog can plan. And those same human abilities complicate the simple act of staying present and aware in this moment. My strength is also my weakness. Can I stop planning and analyzing long enough to notice what is here, right in front of me? Analysis is as useless as a dog chasing her own tail when it comes to being aware.
I wonder how much I miss when I am walking through my day half aware of what’s around me here and now? What would it take for me to double or triple how many moments of the day that I am actually present? What if I stop analyzing EVERYTHING and put my big, silly human brain to work sensing and perceiving what is here in front of me? What is the value of analyzing what happened yesterday if I miss today? How much richer can my day to day reality become if I make awareness my priority?
☾ ☼ ☽
What if I am both a good witch and a bad witch,
depending on the day?
When did I decide that women are supposed to be sorted into good or bad? saint or sinner? When did I conclude that we are either innocent pure madonnas or conniving evil whores?
I blame my messed up need to decide whether I’m good or evil on too many Disney movies… and I’m only half kidding! I challenge you to name one female Disney character that is not some ridiculous caricature of pure good or pure evil. And no, you CANNOT count the female dog in Lady and the Tramp! I’m talking about female HUMANS in Disney movies – name one – I dare you. 🙂 Consider Snow White and her nemesis, the Evil Queen. How about Cinderella and her Evil Step-mother? Or there’s Ariel and the Evil Octopus Lady Ursula. We are talking some seriously twisted black and white views of women!
Or maybe I should blame it on my Christian upbringing… no, wait, those are ALL bad, evil woman images aren’t they? Eve, Lilith, Salome, whorish Mary Magdalene. The only good female image I can come up with after years of Sunday School is Mother Mary and she is merely a vessel at the beginning of the story brought in to birth the baby Jesus. Then she exits quickly stage left. The Bible expresses a pretty dark view of my gender.
But it’s not just women getting labelled all good or all bad. The entire world seems to obsess about sorting everyone and every experience into good or bad, right or wrong, black or white. We love to polarize! Watch what the politicians say about each other and you’ll see exactly what I mean. Last week the Republicans praised Mitt Romney as our national savior and vilified Barack Obama as the evil anti-christ. This week it’s the Democrat’s turn; now Obama is wearing the white hat and Romney is pictured in black. What if we chose to realize that BOTH candidates are just mere mortal men? Human beings with both strengths and weaknesses? What if we just stopped buying into this black and white bullshit?
If you hate politics, just watch a little reality TV and notice how black and white it is. The Kardashian sisters appear to spend every waking moment fighting about which of them is the good-est witch and which is the baddest! Even the son-in-laws are sorted into good (Lamar) and evil (Scott). It is so polarized and so divisive. But it makes for tons of drama. And we all just cannot seem to look away.
What if we just stopped playing the polarity game? What if we chose to see the world as a thousand different shades rather than just black or white? Blow that black and white mindset up! It only makes us crazy and upset anyway.
Ok, so what if I embrace both my good witch AND my bad witch? Everyone who knows me will tell you I am quite capable of being both – and sometimes even in the same day. 🙂 What if I just relax and stop judging myself and my every experience as GOOD or BAD, RIGHT or WRONG? And what if I stop judging everyone else too?
I remember a story I heard years ago about the dangers of judging our experiences as good or bad:
A farmer had only one stallion. One day, the horse jumped a fence and ran away.
All the neighbors came by saying, “Oh no! Such bad luck! You must be so upset.” The man just said, “Maybe good, maybe bad – too soon to tell.”
A few days later, his stallion came back and brought twenty wild mares with him. The man and his son corraled all the horses.
All the neighbors came by saying, “Wow! This is such good news. You must be so happy!” The man just said, “Maybe good, maybe bad – too soon to tell.”
A few weeks later, one of the wild horses kicked the man’s only son, and broke the boy’s leg in 3 places.
All the neighbors came by saying, “I’m so sorry. This is such bad news. You must be so upset.” The man just said, “Maybe good, maybe bad – too soon to tell.”
The country went to war, and every able-bodied young man was drafted to fight. The war was terrible and killed many young men from the region, but the farmer’s son was spared; his broken leg prevented him from fighting.
All the neighbors came by saying, “You are so lucky! Your son didn’t have to go fight” The man just said, “Maybe good, maybe bad – too soon to tell.”
What will happen if I live in a state of not judging myself or my experiences?
What will happen if I meet EVERY experience with the energy of “maybe good, maybe bad – too soon to tell”?
“The temple bell stops
but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.”
~Basho
🌸
Flowers whisper in the wood
all hope and possibility.
Flowers sing to me,
heart knows the melody.
Flowers smile at me
holy spirit lights each face.
Flowers bloom pure joy
asking, will I join in?
~Nancy L
“Wherever I stand, I hear the trees petition.” –William Stafford
Patterns
I think of how the rain
is washing life away.
How do I know what life
has in store for me?
It is strange that I cannot
figure out the pattern.
The trees are so perfect,
they know how to grow.
— Leticia Gray
This amazing poem is from Salting the Ocean; 100 Poems by Young Poets.
Poems in the book were selected by Naomi Shihab Nye.
All the poets were schoolkids in grades 1-12 when they wrote their poems.
Joy spontaneously flows in us, as us, from us
When we remember how AMAZING we truly are.
Can we allow ourselves to BE that space of flowing joy?
What will it take for each of us to relax into Being Joy?
What will it take for us to live from that place of flowing joy?
How much joy can we embody and share with the world?
If your answer is YES, please join me by phone from wherever you find yourself on September 13 and / or September 20th.
Let’s explore remembering who we truly are! Let’s explore being pure joy!
What: Being the Joy of You Tele Call Series
When: Thursday September 13th and September 20th, 2012. Attend one or both calls – your choice.
Where: Phone in from Any Town, Anywhere
Cost: $19, includes both Tele Calls on Sept. 13 and Sept. 20
✧✧✧
Contact me if you want to be part of this Joy thing: nancy@nancylankston.com