Thankful for Wonder and Wonders
As you know I am a Wonders. Daughter of Robert John Wonders, Mary Skotze Wonders, niece of Helen Wonders Chandler, Marion Wonders Wollum, Louise Wonders McKinnon, Lucy Wonders Doney, Virginia Wonders Rahoi, Joseph Wonders, and Harry Wonders. And Granddaughter of Claire Lemieux Wonders to whom I owe my middle name and my beloved Harry Wonders. He was only in my life for my first six years but I simply adored him and I am not sure I will ever know why. Why does a six year old love one human to the moon and back and not others? I do not know but I do know it isn't because her smart brain took a tally, or came to value assessment or built a spread sheet to point her in the right direction.She simply loved who she loved for reasons unknown to her. And that is what I want to write about today:The reasons unknown. Why do we love this one and not that one? Why do we get triggered by this one and not that one? But this isn't just about humans. Look through out your day. You have clear preferences for all kinds of things, from your favorite kind of pasta, to your preferred coffee house, (today mine is Champion on Nassau Ave in Greenpoint (Brooklyn), a block from my daughter's apartment), your route to the grocery store, etc. What is your favorite time of day? Mine: sunrise or sunset. My favorite day of the week is Saturday, and I am not even Jewish. My favorite season Autumn edges out spring, summer and winter by which also delights. But when fall arrives, I am done. I am at home. Leaves turning, the transition between the uber fullness of summer and the quiet barren landscape of winter, the transformation of green leaves into the bare branches of the season is the one I savor most. And luckily, living in Dallas TX, our autumn cycle is a slow circuitous path to the shortest of days.Do you ever wonder why you prefer one thing and not another, one man over all others, one woman? A season? A book? A movie? Anything? What is the preference making vehicle we all come factory loaded with?I wonder this a lot. And not just for myself, but for all of us. I think our preferences, desires, longing, affiliations and affections are glimpses of our individual souls, if you believe in such. If you don't then they are a peek into our essential self. It is the nest of our distinctness, like a cuckoo clock popping out on the hour, we too reveal ourselves to ourselves and to each other through our affections.Isn't that the loveliest of thoughts? Don't know who you are? Wonder who you came here to be? Just look to your affections and in due time all will be revealed.Yes, our preferences could also arise from longstanding, unconscious habits but even so, they were born out of either random chance or our particular resonance (the cuckoo popping out) to that particular thing. And if our habits began out of a random choice, a preference, an affinity for that choice set in early and thus it became a habit.Why is that? I think because our soul wants to be revealed, first and foremost to us, so we can follow it's code. But also it wants to be let out to dance in the world. I believe we each come with an "inner chooser" with dislikes and likes. Affections and repulsions. Longings and aversions.And why does this matter? Because the inner chooser, (I will name her, Joy) is also our inner compass who can help us find our way home. And by home I mean, to becoming our essential self, the person we came here to be, or who God made us to be.And why does that matter? Because that my dear friends, is the miracle of life. It is the wonder of life.So as we enter the season of wonder and awe that is initiated in Thanksgiving and ends in the positive resolve of a fresh new year, my favorite essayist comes to mind: Anne Lamott. I wish for us all a moment where "We start to get a hint of the power and sweetness and absurdity of life and to see it not as all fragile and harsh but as real, the really real. We get buoyancy and, God knows, sometimes even effervescence. Perspective doesn't reduce the gravitas, it increases reverence."Let's all raise our glasses and toast to wonder, reverence and effervescence.
May I not become trapped ...
"May I not become trapped, caught or entangled in false inner networks of negativity, resentment or destruction toward myself. May I treat myself as the nest of God...." John O'DonohueMay I treat myself as the nest of God! What would that look like? The first thing that pops to my mind is the humility it would require. The ultimate "don't know" mindset. When I get really quiet and look at the Pride of Barbados flowers just outside my window, there arises in me an awareness of my being the nest of God. Just for a moment. Just a glimpse. I don't really know how to describe this. I have a hard time staying with it. It is wondrous and frightening too. My monkey mind slips into the experience by whispering something like "...danger, danger...move away, back slowly out of this room ... it isn't meant for you. You will get hurt." Or it says "Who has time for this?" Or "You can do this later, you better do X,Y or Z now"But who will I become if I am not a nest of God? And in these times, these difficult and fearsome times, when the news features children separated from parents at the hands of the US Government; I realize how much work there is for me to make of myself a nest of the divine. I must look into and be with my fears and my immense grief. How can I be a sturdy warm protection from the energies of hate, fear and shame that swirl around us all? For I do not want to cradle the Divine with the fear I often find in my heart these days. What is to be done with it? Surely this is what the Holy Spirit of my Catholic girlhood was for, to help me create a heart that is beyond the geography of fear and worry. Just that thought brings a measure of piece. I will seek to grow a heart that is a nest for God, a heart so open, so wonder-filled, so safe and warm that the Divine could indeed nest here. Is just the wanting this enough?"When the Guest is being looked for, it is the longing that does all the work." KabirI will nurture my imagination for that is what humans can do AND I will double down on my longing for a heart that is beyond fear and all constriction. A heart that could be the nest of God.
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.
“Every day when I awake I am torn between saving the world and savoring it…”
As we stand at the gateway, a summer stretching out in front of us, this quote is particularly meaningful to me. Full quote: "Everyday when I awake, I am torn between saving the world and savoring it. It makes it hard to plan the day."And that reminds me of another poem by David Whyte What to Remember When Waking where the poet states
"...What you can plan
is too small
for you to live.
What you can live
wholeheartedly
will make plans
enough
for the vitality
hidden in your sleep. ..."
Is there a kind of planning that is more like a conversation with a person? Where no one leads, you aren't leading and life isn't leading but you are co-creating the dance together? I believe there is. Conversational planning may be the secret to 21st century well-being, whether planning your family's summer or your organization's vision and mission for the next 3 to 5 years.Recently, I lost a most dear soul friend. It reminded me of the futility of a plan that does not include the following:
- Interruptions
- The random...things taking a surprise turn (positive and negative).
- Trust in oneself and life.
The last one is particularly important I think, because I cause myself unnecessary suffering when I get out ahead of "now" and tell myself a story about a possible future that is not here. But when I am able trust the unknown (unplanned interruptions and the random), what C.G.Jung called God, only then can I stay present and fully available to this moment instead of my story about this moment. How do I trust the unknown and random? By trusting that I can meet whatever life is bringing. I Part of what makes this a bit easier is staying in this moment where I can't truly see if what is happening is actually good or bad, in the long run. What I can know in this moment is only that I like it or I don't. I want it or do not. But I can't actually know how I will feel about it 20 years from now. You see until our last breath, we are all always in the middle of a long play. So this "detour" or "setback" might actually be a kind of divine intervention giving me the chance to pause and relook at what I am doing or where I am heading. If you don't believe in Divine intervention, no worries, you can still take a pause and ask yourself the question, "How is this potentially a gift to me?" In other words, use it as Divine intervention giving you the chance to pause and regroup. Even if it is not!In that pause, you can ask yourself questions, like:
- "Am I all in?"
- "Do we have anything nagging us that we keep turning away from?"
- "How is this actually a good thing? Even though I still don't like it.
By the way trusting the unknown or trusting Life, doesn't mean I don't get to feel, sad, mad and/or scared. But if along side those feelings, I can squeeze in a little curiosity and wonder via exploratory questions (like those above), the whole thing opens up again and I can move forward with more confidence and commitment. Not in outcome. No one gets to have that. Confidence and commitment in myself and my direction, come what may.So back to 21st century conversational planning. What exactly does that mean? It means planning expecting a partner (Life/the Unknown Future) that will ultimately help you create more than you could have without her. Planning for interruptions, detours and reversals. Keeping the end in sight, but holding the "how" and the "when" loosely. And trust yourself, especially that vitality hidden in your sleep and your dreams.
Trusting the good ...
It's a new year! How about a Bold and Courageous Aspiration for 2015?Your vow to Trust the Good! AND magic it happens, right? Probably not! Unless you are a magician. Because it turns out that trusting the good" is NOT easy. AND it is because your brain is hardwired to pay more attention to negative experiences than positive ones. So, what to do?Rick Hanson, and Kristin Neff have done pioneering work on self compassion and self care, tell us that negativity is like velcro and sticks to our brains. Positive experiences, "the good" are like teflon, they don't stick. Research offers ratios like 3 to 1 and 5 to 1. It takes 3/5 good thoughts to have an equal weight to one bad thought for each of us. Hanson's response to this is to "install" the good thoughts. My favorite exercise of his is called "taking in the good". I was stunned the first time I did it, at how quickly my brain wanted to dash off and not take in the good. I was recalling a particularly peaceful, halcyon day at Amrita Island on Cape Cod ... but part of my brain was not at all interested in "installing" or deepening this experience. That part of me thinks the idea of "trusting the good" might be the dumbest or most dangerous thing it has ever heard of, so thus my struggle through the exercise and why I am writing this post. I believe this is the most important work we can do right now and that we must teach our children this too. AND it will take practice. But thank goodness it is a 15 second exercise... once you get your mind to settle down and stay focused on exploring and absorbing the good. I will be writing more about this during the year. So why should you add this to your already full schedules?
- It makes you hopeful and happy, therefore the learning and creativity centers in your brain turn on. It is fun.
- Nothing new or alive will find you if you are worried or busy "being prepared for a future you don't know will ever happen!" Worry and negativity block out happiness, creativity and learning. Lots of brain research on this too.
- It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Notice the good and you will feel the good. Notice the bad and you feel bad. Remember you can't come up with good strategy or new idea from a place that is fear based.
I could go on and on. It is good for your health etc. but really the most persuasive argument is your own experience. So, at the start of 2015, will you join me in committing to take in the good? I am doing this exercise once a day, five days a week. For specific instructions on how to do this. Check out Rick Hanson's website. Watch Take in the good, to learn from a master.