Hope-walking on the Middle Path...with Deer Scat & Shadows

My mate is going to head back to Indiana to unravel a knot of worry about children, financial shenanigans and the shit literally hitting a fan of sorts in the crawlspace of the house we left behind. I mean ta tell ya.....

But what I want to tell you is about this moment when he confirmed the trip with me and I replied--with no irony intended (pre-coffee, folks, pre-coffee)--  "I'll have to be the Hope-walker, then."

Gentle (pre-coffee) amusement ensued as we considered what might be implicated in being a "Hope-walker."  The subject of this metaphysical hilarity, however, is a very physical Hope--our innocently recalcitrant, entirely devoted, and slightly difficult 2 1/2 year old lab/terrier mix.

Pema Chodron, one of my favorite Buddhist writers, says that hope is a subtle betrayal of the present.  There is a despairing little soul in me that whines "yes, okay but....really?" Because--come on--what the heck is one to do in this deadly mix of bodily challenges, psychic puzzles and maddeningly disappearing socks, spoons, and glacial ice?  No hope?  Surely not.

Hope came into our lives cupped in the hands of the across-the-street neighbor.  She had two offerings and we picked the one she'd already named Hope.  The other one seemed lethargic (oy vey--what I wouldn't give for a bit of canine lethargy now) and we knew we'd picked well when Mark came home and sighed, "I guess we have to take her; the topic of this morning's meeting was hope."  It all turned super-mystical months later when the woman casually mentioned that the other pup had been named "Whiskey."
Of course.
So now we have Hope who actually never betrays the present because she is entirely about the present...and a little bit about that squirrel out there under the pine tree.

I, on the other hand,  have a rather finely honed sense of despair. For example, something as small as a lag in response to an email can convince me I am on the brink of 1. losing a friend 2. losing my job 3. some son's loss of  job, friend, gpa or limb.  I'm also in physical pain a goodly amount of time.  It puts a pall on things.  And then, conversely, there are these hopeful emotions born of anticipation and glee--about to take off for the ocean, the prospect of bed time after a long day, the vision of my dissertation finished, the thought of an holiday, an African American Democrat about to become President, the immanent opening of a beautiful child education center.  These things seem to be sourced in hope.  What to do with that gap?  Am I betraying the present when I aim for good works for the future?  If I don't hope does that leave only despair?

It feels like it.  It does.

Little Sweets from Royal Art Lodge

I can veer so easily into a wasteland of vibrational worry--a veritable landscape of doom quaking me to a 7.0 on the richter scale of "we're all being poisoned, lied to and shoved over a cliff...oh and don't forget about global climate change." In the absence of hope I turn immediately to fear. Perhaps the hope that betrays the present is a hope that primitively clamors away from fear.
 
Well yeah, we're all gonna die.  Seriously, that's the truth and it is worthy of a clamor or two.  And--heavens, yes--there have been and are some grand disasters of cruelty, mayhem and apocalyptic indifference--always have been..... And yet....Here's a story that might help to soften this dichotomous thinking:

I am enjoying my new abode, these days.  My pretty things are arranged just so,   and it is easy to look at the corner in the living room and think--"that lamp I saw at Shopko sure would brighten it up." And then, puritan descendant that I am, I think of the comfortable families in so many pre-war worlds where their biggest worry one day was whether they had lost a piece of china, or had more horses than the neighboring tribe or ...well you get my drift.  Today I worry about lamplight, tomorrow I could be worrying about light in general, right?

That's a reality check on attachment and desire--which I suspect are the trickster twins whispering in hope's ear. That reality check is a helpful course correction.  But if I live there, it's fear--it pastes the past onto the future and completely forecloses the present.

When I think of the truly joy-filled moments in my life I realize that they are just that--moments.  Often, indeed usually, I could never have HOPED for such a moment because such joy, true blissful joy, is simply beyond my imagination and emerges in subtle, surprising, sneakily mundane ways.  Real joy transcends the material that might comprise it and becomes an illuminated glimpse of timelessness--sunlight, a kiss, the aha of a perfect line, velvet of a newborn's skin,... a laugh, the spin in dance, a curtain arcing gauzily in the breeze, the smell of bread....and it is none of these...it transcends these vehicles, suffusing them and shining through, beyond.And all I have to do is notice.

In this moment, this very moment, what do I find?  More and more often...when I pause and still the fear AND the hope....I find okayness.  And in a world of lost socks, lost spoons, lost glacial ice and ever-present genocide, okayness is a kind of ecstasy.  In a body that wakes in pain, okayness is pleasure.  In a world where mayhem shifts our ground from detail to survival in overnight coups...okayness is deep luxurious union with the divine.

I am worried about my mate driving 600 miles home.  We glimpsed our mortality in a car accident en route just months ago.  I am worried about living a few days alone here--my mind can torture me without the fresh air of another mind.  But those are fears--they are the converse of hope. Hope, on the other hand, naively bounds forward, tail waggingly sure she will find the deer that left scat along the trail. If I bound with her, I might find the deer but I'm more likely to find more scat and my torn meniscus in my tired right knee. 

And yet, right now, Hope the dog is attending closely to the wind as it shifts the weather, the chimes leaving  delicious belling trails across our air.  I am, too.

I can be a Hope-walker--keeping her from bounding thoughtlessly into traffic in pursuit of the scent of something not here. I can be a Hope-walker--keeping her close to my side so she doesn't panic and snap in fear at the sight of  a looming shadow of other.   I can tread the middle path between fear and hope as a Hope-walker.  I can notice the leaves dancing, rejoice in the juiciness of squirrel play and sniff the wind just for the fun of finding wind.  And that will remind me that I am most joyous and at peace when I am an okayness-dweller. 

Meditation:
Let your body find a comfortable position, supported and relaxed.  Slowly settle through breathing--in and out--"breathing in I relax my body, breathing out I smile."  Take several of these nourishing breaths--in.........out.... Let the out breath wash away worry.  Let the in breath notice the new space in you. 

Notice the little vibrations of thinking backward and forward that tempt you out of this breathing moment,, notice the shadings of fear and hope. Find a fear and notice it's tether to the past, how it echoes a trauma or sorrow that has already happened, casting that shadow onto the future.  Spend a moment softening to this, having compassion for that understandable perception and--like a thread binding point to point, that gets gently unknotted-- see it sag, get loose as your attention relaxes it.  No need to push against it or unbind it, it will loosen and that is enough.

Now find a hope and notice how desire and attachment to outcomes have tightened that thread to the future, making it a stricture instead of a guide.  Hope is understandable. Let it be acceptable. Loosen your grip on it and it can fly like a prayer flag, offering a signal and a blessing.  Ahhhh.

Notice how NOW is the intersection of many threads of hope and fear and that by letting them loosen you gain space and breath--the here-ness of here, the now-ness of now.  Breathe in and notice the here and the now. Notice details like light, temperature, scents, the small sounds of life. You are in the true womb of what might yet be. Breath gives your gestation life-force.  Space gives your emergent dance new freedoms.  

Breathe... Breathe... Breathe.....What is there to celebrate here?  Now?  How delicious is this?  What delights fill in the new openness?  Unbound from past and future, yet held gently in the now, you can contemplate your beingness with new eyes, gentled muscle, a sense of ...yes....okay...yes.

Why Not?

My new home was only 10 miles away from this moment:  Lavender loss closing in, pristine new opening up and the "what now?" beckon of shine all happening beneath my rib cage in a  perfect echo of the vision before me. I took the picture and prayed...and pulled over to post it to Facebook. LOL, right?

The sun was setting after I had driven over 10 hours, sobbing my way through the hills and jungled greenery surrounding Spencer, the music mysteriously elegiac as I envisioned my recently departed friends--the old imp Warren and way-too-young-to-die  fellow artist, activist and mom, Sophia.  My own private memorial service on wheels--car loaded to the gills with plants and boxes full of geodes, bath items, photos--a rather senseless collection, wedged with great precision into a compact car.  I worried about tire-wear from extra weight. I worried about my spouse left to pack the house and direct our first-ever professional mover help.  I worried that I would fail at my new job. I worried I would crash the car on some non-descript verge in Missouri, not find decent coffee in Hannibal, be ostracized from Lincoln friendship for being a populist, hippie, feminsist buddhist, miss my kids so badly I would piss them off with constant texts  In short, I worried....and wept.

"Little Sweets" Series from Royal Art Lodge

I am a champion worrier...a "worry warrior" I have joked. There are a myriad reasons for this including some powerful genetics, birth order and the tantalizing notion--instilled by culture, myth and delusion--that with enough forethought life becomes livable.

In anticipating a move from my home in Bloomington my study gears ground nearly to a halt last year.  If I never finished my PhD, I wouldn't have to move, right?  Such maneuverings are guaranteed to bring the trickster out of hiding.

So in the lull of my refusal to face the future, we traveled to Canada, visited friends who emigrated to Nova Scotia, got their immigration attorney's name and I job searched after all, even short of my PhD (ABD is close enough, right?). I don't know how it happened (well, I do...but I don't) but I am now working a job  I thought I'd never do again in a land as far from the ocean as "binders full of women" is from feminist respect.

As a child, I was pretty sure Lincoln, Nebraska was a non-place--a refuge from the  Grandparent's family farm in Hebron, sure--but a viable choice for making a big life move?  pshaw. However, one glance at a Big Juicy Job and a light response email saying only "why not?" from my mate when I sent the posting to him...and here I am.  Stars aligned, interviews extended, budgets stretched, rental homes redistributed and WHAT?  I live in NEBRASKA?

I am still terrified.  It is the little stuff--what lane become a turn lane suddenly, where the best deal on produce is, which Asian market has the tamarind, and who the heck is a decent doctor--these are the things that keep me wound tight as a newbies violin string.  I have lost 15 pounds.  I cry every Saturday and revel in the rest of each Sunday.  I am making a new life in a new place.  The trickster is giggling like a 4 year old saying "booby."

There is no such thing as planning ahead--not with the quirks of this trickster world.  Sure we do it...we'd be bored otherwise, and it does keep the cream on hand for the coffee.  Now if I could just remember to pick up the coffee.

Kokopelli

To share this coffee in Lincoln, I don't yet have a friend other than my dear companion man. But remember the Facebook posting? I did share this picture of my moment of arrival.  And one of my women-sisters chastised me for driving and shooting. I know, I know.  But the crash has happened and I wasn't even driving.

Ah what we have dear sweet friends, is not the coffee klatch but the tricksters match.  Our thoughts bouncing from satellites, our hearts beating in synch even as they fade from flesh.  The mystery of love and care is that it is invisible.  I cannot hold love in my hands; it cannot be traced or stapled or even hugged.  But it can ride those acts--the cry into the posting wind of social media, the smile across a room, the thought wafting through at just the right moment, a preschooler's art arrives in the mailbox and the weight of my sisters' belief in me is held in a necklace talisman that warms my skin on the days I need a boost.

A child of many moves, I learned early that family loyalty and care can stretch across a continent, that communities can mushroom forth from the hidden networks of our subterranean commitments, that one can easily perch at kitchen table after a 20 year absence and murmur caring inquiries as if 20 years had been but a blink.  Because it is.  Just yesterday my mate mentioned reading about a climate-provoked "die off" on this planet that lasted FIVE MILLION YEARS.  Five million years of the poles being the only viable place for sentient life.  And that was just a breath, one inhalation of Gaia's pulse.

If the breathing beings of our planet can migrate to the poles for 5 million years, I guess that 600 miles is not so far to stretch my love.  Someday I will know where all the turn lanes are, and I'll have a doctor and even a friend or two.  But I bet I still forget to pick up the coffee.  And someone 600 miles away will smile. 

Time by Kristi Soojung Fernandez Kim, friend from Louisiana

Meditation:  Close eyes and and gain quiet and Breathe.....breathe... and breathe a bit more.  Feel your PLACE-- that you are somewhere.  Sitting on somewhere. Some Where.  And steady yourself, relaxing into that that place.  Envision your heart a lodestone, a location on the map of your body.  See the lines of energetic connection between your heart and your lungs, breathe that connection.  See the lines of connection between your heart and your brain....and feel the miniscule zings of that intricate communication. Envision the lines of connection betweeen your heart and your veins that meander and underpin your lovely skin.  Feel the gift of that pulse.....
Now envision your heart again with its entwined tendrils and imagine all the invisible lines of care and love between you and those around you.  Maybe these weavings form a dreamcatcher across the lands and oceans. Maybe they merge with the geometry of magnetic fields.  Maybe they chirrup like bird flight through an ether composed of breath.....

Breathe in and feel love. Travel your map lines of connection in and out.  Breathe in and feel what it is to be connected, invisibly and yet irrevocably.  Indeed, what does it feel like?  What swells the love? What tugs at it?  Rest in the waxing and waning of breath, the lines secure, the map of love radiating from your heart.