Looking at You, Joy!

Looking at you, Joy!

I am looking at the feathery fingers of purple Mexican Sage bush as riotous in their movement as in their beauty, a contrast to the quiet lavender shed they stand next to.  I am not looking at my recently deceased brother’s red tool chest tucked safely inside the shed, but I know it is there. 

Outside the branches are all a jumble like I have been since April 22nd of this year when sweet brother Bob died suddenly at work of a massive heart attack.  Yet, despite this disruptive and yet to be digested loss in my life, I sit this morning filled with wonder at how astonishingly beautiful my life is.  

I am looking at my dad’s rusted vice grip standing as sentry under that lavender shed window alongside an equally rusted metal butterfly that once topped mom’s beloved bird feeder.  And I am not looking at the wooden children’s table and chairs with kitchen sink and stove where I and all 3 of my siblings played for hours in our midwest basement, now stored neatly next to the red tool chest.   In the 1980’s that furniture moved to my parents’ new home where they converted a hen house on the property to a wood shed and upstairs playroom for their  grandchildren.  Oh,  and play those children did.  They colored at the table..   They taught each other and grandma’s stuffed animals,  with colored chalk on bare wood walls.  They managed each other’s unruly behavior.  They let loose their imaginations to wander and tumble much like the Mexican Sage bush I now admire.

I am looking at the shifting of the season, the last gasps of fall in North Texas, a particularly stunning display of red, golden yellow and almost fluorescent orange trees juxtaposed against the season’s low slung blue gray skies.   Solid as my children’s and  nieces’ efforts were back then, Nature clearly wins the coloring prize this year.  

AND I am definitely not looking at December To Do lists.  Gifts to procure, wrap and deliver, food to prepare for gatherings, decorations to place just so and lights to repair or discard and year end paperwork to complete.  These lists were beloved of my father and his son, Bob. Dad said “if you are lucky you die with a to do list”  I come from a people and a place that worships hard work.  And I too relish a sense of accomplishment, but mine is always more relief, than accomplishment.  

Why?

Because I internalized a message that savoring was a luxury not a necessity.  So, when lists are complete, only then can we notice fluorescent orange Chinese Pistachio trees on the corner and how they pop against an unusually perfect blue gray sky.  It is probably apparent the glitch in my dad’s approach;  by the time there is room for savoring there is little energy for it.  My dad favored his German DNA over the French in his genetic inheritance and I have followed suit.  My dear friend Dr. Liz Greenaway said to me in a David Whyte workshop 5 years ago .“Oh I see you, I do the same. Take things that are necessities and call them luxuries.”  When one lives this way it is not uncommon to be visited by the thought (maybe your soul’s whisper?) “  Is this it?  Really, is this all there is?”  

Someone once said, maybe Einstein, that there are 2 ways to live:  as if nothing is a miracle or as if everything is!  When the thought “is this all there is?” whispers to me I realize I have lost my literal birthright.  My given name is Nancy Claire Wonders.  My signature written as Nancy C (see) Wonders is both destination and path.  I was born for exactly what I am doing this December morning in Texas.  I am discovering and receiving the wonder in the life I have been given and have made.  In my own backyard, so to speak.  Spaciousness and curiosity are the gateway to wonder.  Spaciousness in the sense of being without the day’s pressing agenda.  But when I allow the tasks, responsibilities, lovely as many are ~ take over the screen of my day, I lose my ability to see wonder, much less Wonders!  Life can become a bleak gray, including the things I freely chose and value … all becomes burden,  and not a gift, under the relentless taskmaster in my mind that does not trust  “being,” only “doing.” 

In September David Whyte offered a webinar by the title Crossing the Unknown Sea, in which he suggested we might reverse the order, the cultural habit of preferring “doing to being”.  That instead of launching into my “doing” list, I could give my best and brightest time (early morning) to deep conversation where I make contact with my deep nature and what will nourish my soul that day, as well as overall.  In this context, the day’s To Do list is grounded by making real contact with my essential self.   Thus giving the “list” depth and meaning.  This essay is the result of such an encounter.   I invite you to join me in this practice of turning your priorities upside down.  Not sacrifice the “doing” for “being” , not at all.  Rather reverse the order.  Begin with “being,” with “savoring,” with receiving guidance from that which is wise and eternal within you.  Then take that experience into the list.  Ground your “doing” in your essential and true nature’s depth.

This practice of beginning my days this way, (Being/reflection first and Doing/production later) shifts my life satisfaction level, when I choose it.  And truth be told, it isn’t always easy to choose this.  There are some things between my ears that continue to shout their bad advice and I continue to listen.  What I can attest to is that when I ignore this deep bias within me to let doing become more important than my being, my day goes far better.  

In these times of so much loss and suffering, so much uncertainty and violence we need, more than ever,  to dip into the “wonders” of our daily round.  

“Every morning I awake torn between

 a desire to save the world and an inclination to savor it. 

This makes it hard to plan the day”

E.B. Whyte is the author of this deep wisdom.  He came to the same conclusion that I have, (thanks to following Whyte’s admonishment), that the only path to sustain a life worth living is to do both, savor and save the world,  and hold the tension of those two opposites.  If you, like me, have a bias to favor the culture’s dictates to worship at the altar of productivity, this I can promise you:  if you flip the script the list will still get done.   I have not become lazy or indolent.  I have become more grateful and more at ease in my  life when I do this more consistently.   I would love it if you joined me in my experiment with  this radical, counter cultural thing of Savoring first, of making real contact with what is timeless within yourself as you greet your day and your life’s demands.   This switch in priorities builds a deep reservoir of nourishment to draw from during the winter seasons of our own lives.  We still experience the losses and setbacks, but we come to see them as we see winter, just a season in the whole of our lives.  And when we can do this, we find that Joy abides with us, even in the darkest seasons of our lives.  And ” for everything under heaven, there is a season.”  

Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver

Resurrection 2020: We are the ones we have been waiting for...

A HOPI ELDER SPEAKS*

“You have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour. 

Now you must go back and tell the people that this is the Hour. And there are things to be considered…
 

Where are you living?
What are you doing?
What are your relationships?
Are you in right relation?
Where is your water?
Know your garden.
It is time to speak your Truth.
Create your community.
Be good to each other.
And do not look outside yourself for the leader.

Then he clasped his hands together, smiled, and said, “This could be a good time! There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore. They will feel they are being torn apart and will suffer greatly.  Know the river has its destination.  The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open, and our heads above the water.  And I say, see who is in there with you and celebrate. At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally. Least of all, ourselves.  For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.”

“The time of the lone wolf is over.  Gather yourselves!”

“Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. “

 “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

* Hopi Elder Prophecy, June 8, 2000

We are in Holy Week in the Christian and Jewish traditions.  The Hopi elders tell us to step beyond our fears into the river, running fast with change, uncertainty, and therefore extraordinary possibility.  Think of this as a roller coaster ride.  We will feel all the feels.  So, will everyone else.  

But remember, we were born for this time.  Maybe my generation, the boomers is not the greatest generation, but could it yet become so?  To my millennials:  truth be told, I have always thought you came with some super power.  Maybe the adults around you didn’t nurture it, but no time for regret.  You got what you got, and now it is time to share that super power and lead us through your deep commitment to what is right, true and wise.  We all have emotional courage even if we aren’t aware of it.  It is a choice.  A choice to do hard things.  Gen Z, the best antidote for the depression that has plagued you, is small daily actions. Colored markers to make a to do list on unlined paper.   A single note to an elder in a nursing home  or someone in prison matters.  

To all of us:  We  are the ones  we have been waiting  for.  We are enough.  We are more than enough.  We are mighty.

5.19.20 Update:  

If you, YOU, you, really believed that your own sweet self is the one you have been waiting for.  If you believed you were enough for these Covid19 times.   If you believed you were mighty, how could you put that into even a small action today?  For some of us, we might give ourselves a much needed break.  Take a walk, listen to a podcast because this gives us permission to take care of ourselves for the marathon we are running right now.  For others, we might  pitch an idea to someone we have been holding back because of self-doubt.  After all the river is running fast and even though our idea is a different than the past, we aren’t in Kansas any more Dorothy so why not try it?  Or maybe some of us will start building a bridge to others we want to travel this river with.  So, back to the original questions above…what small action might you take today if you believed in yourself,  that you are more than enough for the times that are upon us?

There is always more to the story than meets the eye ~

The Winter Woods  by Parker  Palmer

The winter woods beside a solemn
river are twice seen—
once as they pierce the brittle air,
once as they dance in grace beneath the stream.

In air these trees stand rough and raw,
branch angular in stark design—
in water shimmer constantly,
disconnect as in a dream,
shadowy but more alive
than what stands stiff and cold before our eyes.

Our eyes at peace are solemn streams
and twice the world itself is seen—
once as it is outside our heads,
hard frozen now and winter-dead,
once as it undulates and shines
beneath the silent waters of our minds.

When rivers churn or cloud with ice
the world is not seen twice—
yet still is there beneath
the blinded surface of the stream,
livelier and lovelier than we can comprehend
and waiting, always waiting, to be seen.

As our nation more deeply entrenches itself in a patterned reaction to the other side, my heart,  maybe yours too has grown heavy and weary of  this.  Just as in a midwest January it is hard to hope for spring.  Will spring ever come?   Will we as a nation, ever mend?  Or at least get to a place where our leaders think beyond  the next election to the common  good.

As I was  reading Palmer’s  new book: ON THE BRINK OF EVERYTHING: GRACE, GRAVITY AND GETTING  OLD, his poem Winter  Woods appeared and my heart  took wing.   It is the first thing that has comforted me since the impeachment trial began.  It  reminded me of something important I had forgotten.  “There is always more to the story than meets the eye”.

I have felt so deeply sad at the distance between us as fellow citizens of this country.  To my eye, it grows ever darker.  Maybe some of you too, are  experiencing the depth of winter in your own experience.  I just loved his reminder that the stark frozen cold of my pastoral Wisconsin landscape was not the entire story.   There is something below the surface.  And  so to the frozen cold between Dems and GOP is only half the story.  There is yet movement, we can only glimpse or guess at but ephemeral as it is, it is also real.  Spring will come.

When rivers churn or cloud with ice
the world is not seen twice—

The news and constant railing at the other side, is Palmer’s river churning,  we cannot see then (and now) what is below the surface.   But the poet tells us
yet still is there beneath
the blinded surface of the stream,
livelier and lovelier than we can comprehend
and waiting, always waiting, to be seen.

We will grow  weary of  our walls.   This is not  sustainable. Until the conversation changes, it is important that each of us find and become Sanctuary to each other.  Not for agreement with your point  of view  whatever it is but rather seek in each other the sanctuary of  our common humanity.  Let’s commit to remind each other that  “meanwhile”  there are things of great beauty happening daily, there are acts of kindness given and received every where around the globe.  We are not just our partisanship.   We are not  just divided and walled off.  There  are  things we can agree to do together, even if our leaders cannot.  We can start by focusing on the fact that the other side doesn’t like being apart from us  any more than we like being apart from them.  That’s a beginning.  The rivers will run again, if  we don’t let our hearts freeze up.

"Always we hope someone else has the answer, some other place will be better...

“Always we hope
someone else has the answer, some other place will be better,
some other time, it will turn out
… This is it.”     Pema Chodran

Abiding truth.  This.   It recalls T.S. Eliot’s “Hope would be hope for the wrong thing” as he too, calls us to the Waiting.  

the Being Here.

just

just  Here.

Waiting.

It requires the body in full presence.  Anxiety hates waiting. Monkey mind, that chatterbox and ally to the gods of productivity, recoils in the face of Waiting. Of Being just Here.

Waiting.

Here.

just the Waiting.

What might arise in that void of activity?

Monkey mind is pretty sure nothing good will come of this “Waiting” this just “being Here.”

And now we find ourselves deep in the season of Waiting: Advent.  In the Christian tradition, the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas are designed to be a spiritual preparation.   Even more than physical preparation.  The gift giving of this season of the return of Light to the world is an outward manifestation of generosity, particularly the generosity of God.

Black Friday. Cyber Monday. That’s trickier. These are built on scarcity. “Only this day. You must act and buy or you ‘lose’ the  bargain.” That thinking and energy is the opposite of generosity. It is scarcity.

But I digress. Back to Waiting. To just being.

The Pema Chodron poem I opened with indicates a surrender in this “Waiting.” Surrender takes humility and openness. Maybe I am not the best judge of what is best for me in the whole of my life? What is desired now could become a poison to my soul  then.

Yet, how does this willful, German-stubborn woman (me) surrender to what is?  How do I wait in that? Instead of jumping to what could be?

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.  

T.S. Eliot

It is hard indeed not to wish for what we believe we want. For most of us it is a heavy lift to open to, be curious about, and actually embrace the reality we have in this moment rather than the one we “think” we should have or the one that we “believe” will make us happy.

I can think of so many times in my life I was mistaken about what would make me happy. Or what would be best. And even in the times I was right, how much joy did I sacrifice, how much real life did I miss when I chose to give my attention to my preferences for a different and yet to be reality? To what “Could be.” Didn’t this wanting “some other place” or  “some other time” increase dissatisfaction with current reality? And of course it did.

My first baby steps into “the Waiting” and into “Embracing what is” was a daily practice of gratitude, specifically, journaling my gratitudes and sharing them.

The poets call us to surrender to the present moment and…to trust it. To trust reality!  If I trust that I am enough for my life and for what is yet to be, then I can “be here now.”  Just HERE.  Trusting the present moment, my current reality, requires trusting myself. Trusting I am “able” to meet this moment, whether it is to my liking or not.

What helps me do this is to remind myself that preferences, “I want this and not that,” and, “It should be this way and not that way,” belong to the mental constructions of our Ego’s. They are not real. And therefore, they are not necessary. They are simply an idea, my preference. This is why spiritual and religious traditions ask us to surrender to “God’s” will over our own. They, too, know that our will comes from a place within that seeks security over vitality. This part of us seeks safety over experience. The entropy of the known and seemingly predictable over the aliveness of growth and newness.

We humans have the amazing ability to imagine. To imagine new worlds. To imagine and then enact behaviors to reach these possible futures. “What Could be,”  and “What is yet to be” is indeed miraculous. This faculty is what makes us different from animals. We can take a step back, reflect on ourselves and our lives (New Year’s  resolutions) and imagine new futures for ourselves. I love our human capacity for “Could be.” I have made a living for over two decades helping people imagine themselves into new ways of behaving and responding, into new futures, into new ways of understanding and relating to themselves and others.

I am all for “could be.”  AND  I want to invite myself and you to fully be grateful for what is, embracing the yucky parts of “Here” before we start to imagine a different “Could be.”  Embrace the reality we have.  Poet David Whyte suggests in his articulation of conversational leadership/Invitas that we “Come to ground. That we meet the reality we have, not the one we wish we had.” I think the reality we have has its own secret treasures.

Why do this?   For the sake of being able to chart our course forward from a  place of the soul’s revelation. Our soul desires are our true desires.  They are  often very  different than the preferences of our  Ego’s.  They are the ineffable and the abiding.   They reside in that still place within us that Eliot would have us wait in. They are “the dancing.”  Within their sweet embrace we do not hope for the wrong thing. There we do not love the wrong thing.  There, “the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”

And there lies the originality that was born in each of us.

May this holy season,  this winter of Waiting bring each of you the peace that  surpasses  all understanding.

Winter Greeting: 2017

Winter Greeting: 2017Winter has long been the season of reflection so, get cozy, pour yourself a cup of something and let’s chat.This year for the first time I started my decorating, shopping and gifting early. Ask my siblings; I am notoriously a last minute girl. Myers Briggs P through and through. But this year, I think I needed her more.  Her? She is Light, Hope and Mercy.  Mostly Mercy. “Her” is Grandma Anna, the grandmother of the universe as well as the grandmother of Jesus, and mother of his mother Mary in the Christian faith. She is the part of the universe that is infinite love and mercy. Mostly Mercy.To my mind, Christendom’s celebration of the birth of Jesus is also a celebration of the triumph of light, hope and mercy over all that stands against their expression.   (Mostly Mercy.) Did you know that around the world there is some sort of celebration of light at this time of the year? Whether it is the birth of Jesus, the light of the world, or the Jewish Hanukkah, or Kwanza or Denali…worldwide there are celebrations of light returning. Increasing hours of daylight means the promise of new beginnings, of redemption, and for me in particular, the triumph of mercy and empathy over fear and constriction.There are a number of seasonal firsts this year for the Wonders Dearings. In addition to getting an early start on the season we are taking a trip and hosting our first open house. After years of promising that one year we would not do Christmas gifts etc. but would instead take a trip, the Wonders Dearings finally did it. The 24th found us on the road to the Gage Hotel in Marathon Texas and exploring Big Bend National Park. The 27th we discovered the magic of Marfa, Texas, home to artists and spiritual seekers.   We renewed and re-discovered the magic of our connections, of our shared passions and learned to be a bit more elegant in navigating our divergent temperaments. It is no small thing to put three solo adults, all more leaders than followers together for a large amount of time and in close quarters.   We did that.  It brought us closer together as these kinds of conversations do.  We had and made time for them.  We are better for them.  Each of us.Another first: No true Christmas tree with all the ornaments our memories can conjure, but instead something I have long wanted; decorating with nature and light. An abundance of greens, flowers, candles. I have thoroughly enjoyed the change, maybe even more so because it was so long in coming.And … and … and yet, I feel this melancholy. Even in this long desired reinvention of how we do this season, (and my heart flutters at the thought of any kind of reinvention), yet this unshakable melancholy persists. Why?Even in our togetherness there were poignant moments of time passing too quickly or where-has-it-all gone. Even in the best of experiences, the extraordinary drive through Big Bend replete with hiking the Santa Elena Canyon, the vastness of the Chinati museum, and time unbounded a bit, it persists. This curious combination of deep thankfulness mixed with some unnamable loss. Like the vast beauty of the desert that also holds all manner of prickly cacti and fierce critters.Maybe this is aging and the nostalgia that comes with it? Maybe the desert sky renders this feeling larger? Or maybe it is realizing that more Solstice celebrations of the return of light are behind than ahead of me?  Or the dawning (and unbearable) awareness that I will not accompany my children (physically) through all the pivotal moments of their lives.I remember my sweet and humble academic father, who never saw his grandson graduate from MIT, now studying at Harvard Law School. Papa missed this all and how it would have thrilled him.  Zachary Robert Dearing, you can't possibly know what this would have meant to your grandfather. He would not have even dreamed this as a possibility, it was outside of his rural and humble beginnings to hope or dream for these institutions. But please trust he would have been both humbled and proud by your remarkable achievements, especially in the face of your dyslexia. And my mother would have been beyond wowed at her granddaughter Katharine Lillie Dearing’s culinary talents and the culture shifting work she is creating in the world. Even though it might confront her political and worldviews, she adored her Katie and would have not been able to easily dismiss her series, Woman of a Certain Age, and it’s Tribeca acknowledgement. There are so many things my parents are missing. As we too miss sharing these moments with them.  A granddaughter married and their first great grandson. Another granddaughter is engaged and planning her wedding while making a new life for herself in fashion in New York.My life holds so many gifts and blessings...and always has ...but as I play the Leslie Odom, Jr.’s Simply Christmas CD (the new) alongside Barbara Streisand’s Christmas album and so many other old favorites, I wonder: Is this the magic ...(albeit bittersweet) of Christmas? Is this annual seasonal celebration a direct line to everything that came before and everything that will yet come to pass?  A direct line,  AND all at once!  How do we sweet tender human hearts hold that kind of complexity? How do we grow hearts large enough to continue to rise up with a full throated “YES!” to each day, ever more aware of time moving on? This daunting challenge is more and more my daily companion. In small and large ways, I am reminded I must apprentice myself to the beauty of impermanence.Recently, I have sensed, just a hint or a glimmer, that there is a singular and stunning ~ heart stopping ~ beauty in this part of life’s trajectory. For this very young-at-heart woman, this woman whose life has been firmly planted in innovation, emergence, and possibility, how will I find those beginnings in my decline and death?  I love, adore maybe even worship the expansiveness in beginnings. Can I uncover a different expansiveness in loss? Is that even a thing?I am sure it is beyond words, it is unspeakable.   Yet, I feel compelled to attempt to incarnate my new sensibility of this time.  I continue to sense that there is an abiding but different security and comfort in impermanence. Please don’t ask me to explain it. I also can’t explain why I simultaneously cry and feel a deep abiding peace driving in the desert. Something about the soul piercing starkness of this beauty. Is this the face of God?  Is this wonder and awe?Isn’t it interesting that in the bible when the angels come to visit a human their first words are “Be not afraid.” Indeed, this impermanence is of the divine and I/we humans initially respond in fear. “Be not afraid my soul whispers, but my mind resists.”   Is this the blessing of life? Succumbing, surrendering to the Unfathomable but not in fear rather in love? AND with that surrender, do we glimpse the beauty beyond all naming? A beauty as majestic as the Marfa, TX desert sky. Impermanence is not what we think we want. But we aren’t always the best judges of what will truly make us happy. I know from my own life that what I thought would make me happy, often failed me miserably and paradoxically what I was sure I didn’t want, often fulfilled me in ways beyond my wildest imagination.  I no longer think I am the best judge of what will make me happy. And that makes it easier to welcome and embrace what is, even when it falls very short of my desires.As we move into 2018 in the era of Donald Trump, with abundant natural disasters and nuclear threats, it might be more important than ever to love what is. That includes each of us loving our own flawed and imperfect selves. Enough self-improvement! Instead a full-on embrace of how we are made; the good, the bad and especially the ugly. And then onto our equally imperfect family, friends and neighbors. Maybe there is something inside of each of us that is truly inviolate, wise and as vastly loving as the West Texas sky. Touching that sweet spot with far more regularity might be the gift that never disappoints.So, in the spirit of the Beauty and the Joy of Impermanence I wish each and everyone one of us  a very Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, a Sweet Solstice, and Happy New Year.