More Than a Nod of the Head

“It’s a beautiful day,” I observed to the older gentleman helping me at the quiet little store.

“When you get to be my age,” he said decidedly, with a piercing gaze, “you’ll realize that they are all beautiful days.”

We had never met before, but this sparked a lovely conversation. The gentleman, in his status of elder, clearly wanted to share the distillations of his lifetime of wisdom-gathering with someone willing to listen; I, with some time to spare before I had to be elsewhere, was happy to hear what my new friend had to say. This is what he told me:

·      Recognize the blessing of each new day; the blessing is always there, whether or not you see it at first.

·      Be sure to have goals, but don’t get caught up in thinking that attaining them is all-important: it’s the journey toward them that matters most.

·      Keep your body in good working condition; you’ll need it.

·      Listen more, and trust those around you.

·      Recognize a good friend when you’ve got one.

·      If you connect with your soul mate, count yourself immeasurably blessed.

There is nothing new or revelatory on this list; anyone reading it probably nods their head in agreement with a “yeah, sure, of course” attitude. The very fact that we know these things is what allows us to mentally acknowledge and then dismiss them.

But after 84 years of running and going, raising a family and doing business, all the desires and dreams and frustrations and sorrows to which this mortal coil is prone, it is these simple truths that my elder friend has distilled. They are simple, yes; that means that they are not complex, but not that they are not profound. There is more about really living contained in these simple words than a simple nod of the head can begin to acknowledge.

Thoughts of this conversation stayed with me as I went over to a routine doctor’s appointment a little later. My doctor’s office is housed next to the hospital where my husband David died, and the two share a parking garage. As I got out of my car to walk to the elevator, I thought about the 17 days in that other May, 9 years ago now, when I more or less lived in that hospital, when walking through that parking garage was a journey of heart-wrenching pain and unbearable love and felt like the most important thing that I could possibly do. I thought of my new elder friend’s words, and I stopped for a moment to recognize the blessing of those days, and this one; to remember the importance of that journey, and how it continues; and to give thanks for the immeasurable blessing of a soul mate whose love is always with me.

Sunshine and Serenity: In Memory of Rita

“Hey, immortal one, you who was called Rita! The time has come for you to find your path in the reality of the spirit.”

            Tibetan Book of the Dead

I didn’t see Rita the first day she came to our church, but she saw me. I was speaking from the pulpit about my mystical experiences, those times when the scales fall from my eyes and I see and feel God quite literally in everyone and everything around me. Rita later told me that she recognized her own experiences in what I was saying, and they gave her an immediate connection to this place she had never been before. Her exact words were, “I knew I was home.”

And she knew she had found a friend and soul companion, too. Rita and I formed an immediate connection. We didn’t spend as much time together as either of us would have liked, but when we did our conversations were often intense and profound.  She talked about her deep study and subsequent teaching of Tibetan Buddhism, and I told her of my readings in world religions. We shared stories about our husbands, the ways in which we had lost them, and the different kinds of letting go that these losses required of us.

“Hey, immortal one, you who was called Rita! Now you have arrived at what is called "physical death". You are transitioning from the physical reality to the spiritual reality. You are not alone; it happens to everyone.”

            Tibetan Book of the Dead

Among the things I loved in Rita was her gift of effortlessly combining passion and serenity. An actress in her younger years, it was clear that all endeavors that give expression to the deepest and wildest of human emotions – theatre, dance, music, art – called to Rita at her core. And yet such calmness she carried with her at all times, and offered to others. This was a product of her Buddhist training, I am sure, but also of simply who she was. 

It was that same serenity that Rita carried into a response to her illness, and an awareness of her impending death. “I’m not afraid to die,” I heard her say often. “This is where my practice has led me, and what it has prepared me for.” Rita’s serenity calmed those around her, allowing them, too, to face the coming loss of her earthly presence. Although it happened much more quickly than any of us expected, it happened with Rita serenely greeting death as a welcome friend about whom she had become curious.

“Hey, immortal one, you who was called Rita! Your physical breath has stopped; the perfect clear light of the Infinite Potential of the first phase of your transition into the spiritual reality has begun to manifest. Your immortal, infinite spiritual awareness begins to awaken, clear and empty…”

            Tibetan Book of the Dead

I had the great privilege of being one of those who accompanied Rita in her last days, and to be present as she met that welcome friend. I heard her last words, telling me that she was so very ready to go, and stood and chanted from the Tibetan Book of the Dead with others as she took her last breaths. In those holiest of moments, we watched with awe as Rita departed this life with the same grace with which she moved through it.

Rita’s mother Sarah told me that when Rita was small, Sarah used to say to her, “You are my sunshine.” When she got older, Rita told her mom that maybe that was a little too much pressure – but when she got even older than that, she wanted her mom to start saying it again. Rita brought much serenity and sunshine into this world, and I am so very glad to have felt those rays.

Readings from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, trans. John WorldPeace

Retrieved from http://reluctant-messenger.com/Tibetan-Book-Dead_Houston1.htm

Faith and Fear

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, 

though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea
Psalm 46:1-2

Many are the prayers that are being said for the people in Boston: for those who died and the families and friends that grieve them; for those who are injured and all the assistance they will require; for those who responded so quickly with help and support to the many who needed it, the wounded in both body and spirit. Many are the prayers, and many are needed, because there is not only grief to contend with, not only physical pain of injury or emotional pain of loss. There is fear, and fear can break much more than we will ever be able to document in the news reports.

Must I fear what others fear?

What   nonsense!

Tao Te Ching, Ch 20 

Fear led someone, possibly more than one someones, to enough brokenness and hatred that he or she or they were willing to put bombs in bags and place them around with the intention to kill people they had never met before. People whose faces and stories were unknown. People who may have looked differently, lived differently, believed differently than the bomb makers – or people who looked, lived and believed exactly the same as the bomb makers; there was no way for the bomb makers to know. Did the bomb makers get a surge of excitement, even exhilaration, at the chaos and panic that the bombs brought into being? Maybe. Maybe they feel powerful, but the act of killing someone for no reason other than random placement on a street shows powerlessness, an inability to make yourself heard any other way, as though the killers question whether the system, value or belief that they want to uphold has enough merit to stand on its own without violent tactics to back it up. It shows fear. And fear always wants to spread. 

They are wise whose thoughts are steady and minds serene,

unaffected by good and bad.

They are awake and free from fear.

 Dhammapada 3.39-40 

Now that the bomb makers have had their say, another fear of another kind comes creeping in, and it affects far more people than a few bombs can ever hope to reach: the fear of those who could carry out an attack like this, and even more, the simple fear of others who don’t look or live or believe like us. Right now we don’t know who did this; someday soon we will. But the fear will still be there, the fear that this can happen again, that it can happen in my town, my neighborhood, to my friends and loved ones, to me. Fear that the person I pass on the street might be a Muslim extremist, or a right-wing extremist, or some other kind of extremist I haven’t even thought of, and that he or she or they might try to kill us or my loved ones or me. Fear that if we don’t keep Muslims from getting a foothold in this country, or stop our next door neighbors from owning guns, or don’t keep those people over there somewhere from learning on the Internet how to make homemade bombs, then something is going to blow up in my town/neighborhood/yard sooner or later. Fear.

He who knows the joy of Brahman,

which words cannot express and the mind cannot reach,

is free from fear.

Taittiriya Upanishad 2.7-9 

The question isn’t whether this fear has a valid grounding: it’s whether we want to live in the middle of it, and whether we are called to be people of fear or people of faith – of all kinds of faiths. 

Oh, verily, they who are close to God –

no fear need they have, and neither shall they grieve.

Surah 10:62 

Do we want to live in the brokenness of fear, which drops like a rock wall in front of compassion and generosity and openheartedness? Or do we want to follow the call of the scriptures we call sacred, and the example of the people we hold up as the guides of humanity – people like Jesus, the prophets, the Buddha, Mohammed, Gandhi, Dr. King, and so many others who set fear aside and told us of a better way of compassion and action?

  There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.
For fear has to do with punishment,
and he who fears is not perfected in love.
1 John 4.7-8 

I watch the little girls from down the street come running to play with the next door neighbors. One might have hit the double digit mark; the other certainly hasn’t. They laugh, they skip, they are joyful on this spring day.  And I don’t want to have to fear for these two sweet children just because they wear headscarves. I don’t want fear to lead others to treat them as enemies or criminals, as though they have to answer for things they have never done.  So just as I pray for the people of Boston and those affected by these bombs, I will pray for these two little girls, and for the society that surrounds them, that all of the fear may be cast out, and that they will grow perfected in love.