Ode To Joy

Early this morning my son, Zachary Robert Wonders Dearing, asked me:

“What one thing will you do today to bring yourself joy, mom?”

My son knows my heart is heavy with worry for our world.  The war in Ukraine is breaking my heart.  The people’s fierce and undaunted bravery juxtaposed along side their country’s suffering and ruin.  I pray. I truly can’t imagine how these people are putting it all on the line, all of them for their Democracy.  Zac has taken to asking me this question each day, and it grounds me.  It helps me notice and savors the joys in life alongside its agonies.

My last bog post I wrote about beginning again, again.  And it is so true.  Spring of course reminds us dramatically of new life.  But every day we begin anew as well.  So moving through this year I want us to begin again and again with joy.

Like the old song lyric, “looking for love in all the wrong places,” I believe we also look for JOY in all the wrong places.  We leap to our grand dreams and desires.  Big moments.  You know the ones that in every life are actually few and far between!

Well at least some of us do this.  I do this.  Maybe you do too. “I’ll feel joyful when there’s World Peace. When Putin has an appetite for democracy.  When I’m X pounds thinner. Or have Y amount more in my bank account.” You get the idea.

When I/we define joy grandly it becomes almost inaccessible.  Since we cannot will these big things into being with a proverbial magic wand, we allow our grand aspirations to render all the truly accessible everyday moments and ordinary joys“less than”  or “not enough.” Bet you can see where this leaves us.  Definitely outside of joy.

For example, yesterday I finished a chapter in a book I am reading. Immediately my ego-mind (the birthplace of grand dreams and plans) chimes in “This shouldn’t have taken so long.  You are too slow, too unfocused.”  A small moment of completion, of satisfaction, and success (which fits the Merriam-Webster definition of joy) is thus wiped out by those critical thoughts.  And so is…Joy!   Gone!

Joy is elusive.  True.  BUT equally true is she’s more readily available than we think.  Available yes, but also, she scares easily. To cultivate her, we need to study her.  Here’s what we know:

• We are deeply present in moments of joy. It both fills us with good vibes…like the wind in our sails on a perfect Halcyon Day, while simultaneously anchoring us.

• Joy steadies us. In these moments we have the sense that life is good. An awareness of what a gift it truly is. This holds true even when outside those moments life is clearly not good. She helps us endure the clearly-not-good.

• Joy expands us. Physiologically, my chest swells while gazing at the sunrise, and mentally, I have the sensation of being connected to both the visible and the unseen worlds. Time seems to stand still. I step outside of clock time into timelessness. I am both a human in my life on planet earth and also of the gods, connected to the vastness of all that is.

Joy is how humans endure unimaginable suffering.  It is necessary for wellbeing.  AND of course, it never stays.  Which explains our ambivalent relationship with moments of joy.  Brene Brown talks about “Foreboding Joy” in her book Daring Greatly.  She speaks directly to our anxiety, our deep vulnerability when we embrace joy, in this 5 minute clip from Super Soul Sunday with Oprah:  Foreboding Joy

It turns out that joy makes us feel terribly vulnerable.  Thus our reluctance to embrace it when available.  Brene tells us that our ambivalence is because some part of us knows that she, JOY, is not moving in for good.  She will come and she will definitely go.  And we assume we will feel loss and other uncomfortable things when she exits.  Therefore, as Brown says, we try to beat vulnerability to the punch by “dress rehearsing tragedy,” as if that will protect us from missing her when she moves on.   AND when we do that, she, joy, is left outside and we are inside our worried minds, missing her completely.

If, as Brown states based on her research, joy is the most terrifying of feelings, and if, as I believe it is also necessary especially in dark times, how do we hold this paradox? For the sake of our own wellbeing, how do we risk the terror that comes with joy? Turns out the answer is easy and not frightening, because we only have to take some simple little, baby steps.  But every day.  Slow and steady will win this race.

Noticing is the tried-and-true path to activating feelings of joy.  Noticing has to do with our conscious choice about where to direct our attention.  It is such a simple but potent act.  Here is your mission if you choose to accept it:

NOTICE and SAVOR JOY.  

3 times a day, set a timer and spend 1-or 2-minutes noticing something that delights you.  Maybe go outside or look out a window.  Pull up a beautiful image online or smell your cologne or light a candle and watch the flame.  You might listen to a few minutes of a favorite piece of music or read a quote…but stay small…close to the ground.  AND LINGER…Take the delight in.  Expand it.  Make it bigger.  Let yourself fill up.

The trick is to be disciplined about it, taking only 1 or 2 minutes.  End on time and wave goodbye knowing you will return in a few hours for another dose.  Do you see what is happening?  Actually, several things:

1. YOU (not some external force) are choosing joy through where you place your attention.

2. You are empowering yourself through your own noticing (a thing you always have with you). This gives you an increased sense of agency and control of your experience.

3. You are reminding yourself that YES! FOR SURE JOY WILL LEAVE…you will show her the door in 2 minutes, AND she will RETURN. She will always return because she depends on the one thing you control. Where you put your attention.

4. You are not GRASPING for joy. You are building trust in yourself and in joy. You are building resilience too.

5. You are increasing the amount of joy in your life. By doing this 3 times a day for at least 3 weeks (that is how long it takes to make a habit) you are also defeating Brown’s “Foreboding Joy.” We are here for such a short time really. Why not decide to notice as much Joy as possible? Or as the poet Mary Oliver says in her poem The Summer Day (below):

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?

Summer Day by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper? 

This grasshopper, I mean ~

the one who has flung herself out of the grass

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down ~

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

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?

Beginning Again, Again

For the Road to Santiago by David Whyte

“For the road to Santiago, 

don’t make new declarations

about what to bring

and what to leave behind.

Bring what you have.

You were always going 

that way anyway,

you were always 

going there all along.”

No New Year’s Resolutions, as we traditionally think of them, is what this poem says to me.  No NEW declarations. No asking, “What practices do I bring with me into this year, and which will I leave behind?”  Interesting, even useful, as those questions might be.

Instead, this poem suggests I “Bring what I have.”  And what I have is moi!  Battle scarred in places, threadbare in others, jewel like radiance in yet others.  What is it to bring just what I have, just me, into 2022?  It must mean that what I have is enough.  Could it mean I don’t need a new improved version of myself?  Could it mean that what is inside of me, what has always been inside of me, now mixed with 70 years of experiential learning is enough?

I do not love the idea of imagining a “new and improved” Nancy.  That view fundamentally makes who I am right now, less than.  It makes the work I have done thus far, particularly last year not enough!

There is something in our unending quest for self-improvement (as contrasted with growth) I find wanting.  To start with, it often become deficit based, a one-sided conversation about what I am lacking.  I declare who I want to become and what I intend to do, often perfectionism in disguise and a quest for control.  But who is the “I” doing that pronouncing?  Often it is the part of me that lives in the land of lack of “not enough.”  There is not enough time or money or worst of all, I am not enough or worthy enough.  This “I” is not the part of me that offers something aspirational, meaningful, or exciting.  All those things scare it because is aligned with control and security, what I should declare more than what is in support of my becoming.

So, this year, in my winter retreat, I focused on “where I was always going…the way I was always going.”  I feel most at home in the world when I’m aligned with my deep joys that are grounded in my true nature.  When I bring what I have.  Who I am.  “The way I was always going anyway.”

By beginning my days in this retreat from “beingness” (my essential nature) and allowing my “doingness” to flow from that, I found belonging and ease.  I have spent most of my life trying to do it the other way around.  You know “early bird gets the worm.”. But think about that little admonition, it is based on lack. The idea that there aren’t enough worms, so you better get up early!   To be fair, it could have originated from someone whose “beingness” is in fact getting up early and “doing” something.  There is no one size fits all.

I have a son who simply delights in “doing things.” He does them for their own sake.  He loves the process of “doing” all the things he does.  Whether he gets an A or D or misses something on his list, doesn’t seem to matter much.  He just loves to begin again the next day. He loves being in motion “toward” something.  Maybe anything.

He has relatives on my side of the family who are very much like him.  I love this about him and them.  But I am not like that. I do things to get them done.  (Other than laundry. I love doing laundry. 🤪) But everything else, I do to get it done. When I complete the task, I do not feel satisfaction, I feel relief.  I like good healthy food so therefore I cook it, but there is no “atelic” pleasure (pure joy in the doing) in the process for me.  My relationship to many of the activities of my day is what Oliver Burkeman would call instrumental or “telic.”   They are a means to an end for me.

On the other hand, you know the way my son lights up working his way through a to-do list; well, I find that level of pleasure and joy in the arena of real connection and transformation.  What psychotherapists call 2nd order change, which is not incremental improvement but a change in perspective that reframes everything.  I make my living helping people achieve 2ndorder change, a change in how they see something, particularly themselves and what is possible for and through them.   I seem to never tire of 2nd order change, it is endlessly exciting to me.

Oliver Burkeman’s book 4000 Weeks is a book that yields 2nd order change for the reader.  And because of his book, I reordered my days for a week during my winter reset.  I discovered that the “I” that had been leading me through my days was not the part of me that trusted me or joy!  It was the “not enough” part. That part thinks we must get up early to get that dang worm!  That part thinks enough productivity will yield a meaningful life for me.   But I am built for exploration more than for the execution of lists.  Or said another way, my execution is best on display when in service of exploration.  My productivity feels meaningful when it comes from my essential self and is connected to what matters to me: connection and transformation.

I started this piece saying I am not a fan of “new year’s resolutions” and mentioning that I found them to be one-sided.  They are generally authored, at least for me, by the parts of me that don’t particularly trust me or life.  They trust control.  They may present themselves as aspirational, but underneath the surface lurks a desire to be in control of life, for the sake of security.  Now while this is most human and perfectly normal, it is not the place that enlivens me (us) or our days nor is it connected to the forces of evolution and emergence.

While not a fan of New Year’s resolutions, I am a fan of a conversational approach or invitational approach to beginning again.  In this approach, you rest enough and create enough space free of regular distractions, so that you might overhear yourself say something you didn’t know you knew.  You bring along curiosity to meet the sometimes-wild ideas or impulses that may appear before you.   Also bring your courage, to reduce the influence of the “I” that tends to be based in scarcity and not enough.  That “I” has good questions to offer, even if they come from a fearful and self-protective place, BUT it should not be able to control the Begin Again, (the what-matters-most-this-new-year) conversation which, if you are like me at all, it often does.  Its role comes later when it is time to carve a path to what matters most this year.

A conversational approach to a new year is a back and forth between current reality and emergent reality.  “The place we were always already going anyway.” Because the emergent can only come from what currently  is.   I was always going to discover the joy that comes from honoring my nature instead of trying to control it.  How do I know this?  Because my life has been filled with a certain level of discontent these past few years.  And it took that discontent and trying so many other things before it occurred to me to stop.  To just stop “trying.” To stop “efforting” in my life.  And instead adopt the curious and invitational posture of wonder towards the miraculous collection of atoms and energy that is me.  The Oliver Burkeman book helped enormously in this effort.  As did the exhaustion of these last few years!

If, after these past few years, you too find yourself weary of life in some way, this could be a very good thing.  It could in fact be FOR YOU.  It could be a gift from your soul, your essential self, who has decided to sit down and withdraw all energy from the activities of your days until you listen to it and feed it.  Because…

“…It’s still possible in the end

to realize why you are here

and why you have endured,

and why you might have suffered

so much, so that in the end,

you could witness love, miraculously

arriving from nowhere, crossing

bravely as it does, out of darkness,

from that great and spacious stillness

inside you, to the simple,

light-filled life of being said.”

 David Whyte

Here is to the brave new land of a deep and abiding trust in the “way we were always going anyway.”

The Wonder and Mystery of the "Negatives" in our Lives.

I penned a version of this essay on Mother’s Day 2021.  I invite us to consider the idea of finding our way into appreciating the gifts hidden in our impossible life situations, those things we cannot change, but deeply wish we could.  To shift our gaze and adjust our narrative about our difficulties and treat them as unfolding mysteries that we do not, cannot yet, comprehend but that we trust that one day, we will be able to make whole the fragments and brokenness of our individual lives.

As an example of that I offer you this piece:

“I have been well mothered in my life, but not from my mom.  Instead true mothering came to me via my dad, my siblings, my friends and even from strangers. My own mother had considerable talents and gifts for cooking, for piety, for sewing and constructing things, and for creating order and structure in our daily routine, which was incredibly important with four young children all two years apart. But in addition to those things, another equally important part of raising children is the ability to mirror and align with the the child. To witness them and see them as distinctly separate from you. To see the unique intelligence and the destiny in the making, unfolding in this other human being.   In this endeavor, curiosity and wonder are the coin of the realm. These were not my mother’s gifts.

But within 48 hours of her death, I realized that everything I love most about myself, arguably my very destiny was determined because she lacked the specific gifts not because she had them. Out of the suffering of not being seen, of being often criticized for my otherness was born a deep desire, honed over many decades, to truly see each human with a particular wonder about who their deep intelligence wants them to become.

I write this missive on Mother’s Day 2021 to remind myself and us all that the “ ideal” lives, parents, jobs, friends, partners, bank accounts, etc (you get the point) that we long for are not what will turn us into the lit angels we came here to be. I write this for everyone reading this who finds themselves in conditions not to their liking. I urge us all to consider stepping outside of that complaint and into the ocean of wonder.

Consider this “wondering” question: “If this/these conditions were created to help me give birth to something unique, a gift to me and others, what might that gift, capacity or action(s) be?” Pick one thing in the external world that affects you, that you struggle with, and apply that question to that thing.

Thank goodness that two decades before my mom died, I was finally able to give up the wish she would be different. I realized I was judging her as “less than” and how hurtful that was to her, and to me. I was doing exactly as she had done. Oh the irony! But it wasn’t until her death that I realized her soul gifted me with my destiny in a roundabout way.   Our human personalities both suffered. Neither of us could attain the depth of friendship we both wished for, but we did retain our deep love for each other.

It has taken me this last decade to apprentice myself to her gifts of order and structure. With my random, creative brain, I can only approximate them, because while they were her nature, they are far afield from mine. But as I do this, I find increased empathy for what a challenge my nature may have been for her and how she steadfastly loved me, even though she didn’t often really like me. Even though our relationship felt and was conditional at times, (“mama doesn’t like you when you are sassy”), even at those times I still knew the love was unwavering. I knew she might rail at me for my mistakes, but I also knew she would never not love me. She struggled to like me. AND I always knew that. Even when I was young I would say to dad, “Mamma doesn’t like me but she loves me”. I don’t recall him ever making a response to that. 

It hurts to live with that, and I really suffered when I was younger. When a child believes a parent doesn’t like how they are made, they are in a terrific bind. They need and are attached to the parent and they can’t do a lot about how they are wired. Although they might try. I tried. And in the trying I/we contort ourselves. And in the dissonance of that contortion, I/we have the chance to grow because of that very constriction.  This is really the point I am making.  The “negative” of my mother’s inability to truly like how I was wired hurt me, but the story doesn’t stop there…it also created Me!  

Back to mom and me.   How human of my mom, right?  Don’t we, don’t you struggle to like someone so different from you when you have to do daily life with them, at work, or in your family? I sure do. I don’t understand why the world seems intent on delivering this experience to all of us… intent on giving us someone or something completely immovable to our desires and needs.   The 20th century poet Maria Rainer Rilke who also struggled with a sense of exile from dominant society his entire life wrote:

 “Winning does not tempt that man. This is how he grows, by being defeated, decisively, by constantly greater beings”.

“Winning does not tempt this woman. This is how I grow, by being defeated, decisively, by constantly greater beings.”  Beings such as my mother, whom I could not bend to my will. But also, by conditions that I cannot change but must navigate. Personal health challenges. racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, all the other ways we separate ourselves and disconnect from each other. They still break my heart as much as when I was little. As they should.  These are the result of a civilization that fosters disconnection rather than connection. Many, if not all of us feel a sense of exile. Maybe from some part of ourselves that we have othered, and therefore banished, or from others, or maybe because we don’t seem to fit the dominant ideal.

 But…another wondering question comes to mind: “How could it be true, that the very conditions or people that we feel imprisoned by or exiled from in our lives, are actually inadvertently helping us give birth to some new capacity that can navigate this reality and evolve us, into an ever more human and humane version of ourselves?”   And what happens when we focus on this new growth within ourselves, instead of our complaints about our current circumstances? 

 I am not suggesting we deny our suffering.  Nor am I suggesting that these negative conditions are made tolerable by what we can wrest from their grip.  They are not.  I would much prefer a lifelong connection and affection going both ways between my mom and me.  Denying the level of impact of our suffering leads to negative psychological and biological costs. BUT I am suggesting we give ourselves something forward moving, (our becoming and our own growth) to focus on instead.   Because really what else can we do that is life giving, in the face of our losses and suffering?

In the words of Rilke,  “…until some distant day, without hardly noticing it, we will live ourselves into an answer.” An understanding or insight will find us, much as mine did 48 hours after mom’s death. Maybe it was a gift from her? I like to think so.  BUT it was also a gift from myself.  Those years of growing and becoming a woman who could love well even in the face of disappointment and disconnection set the table for that insight to find me so that finally both of our hearts were at rest.

Art by: Hilma AF Klint

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.