Personal Earthquakes and Tsunamis

Crossing

This past week my personal landscape hosted an internal earthquake. A sweet friend of mine who fearlessly and gracefully navigated some health challenges in the last couple of years, took gravely ill. She had done a round of tests, which came out clean and she mused on how many ways there was to say yippee.  But suddenly everything changed. Her daughters chronicled her progress for friends and family with daily email updates. We kept watch as Thelma hoisted herself from life support and ICU into a world of conversation and condo renovation plans. Each day I opened my paper free envelope to smile and cheer her progress. Wednesday when I greedily tore open my note, hungry for more good news, I found that instead, she had taken a turn for the worse the previous morning and died peacefully in the evening.

Even though we know death is inevitable for all of us, there is a great sense of loss when someone dear to us leaves the world. Wordless tsunamis of grief washed over me during the week. Snuggled right up against the  quivering news of Thelma's death was a week long visit by birding friends which pulled us out into dripping forests to hear the call of wrens, view the totem pole work of woodpeckers and shimmy under giant fallen trees. It was a time to hold both joy and sorrow in the same container. It was a time to say quiet prayers under the canopy of old firs afloat in deep carpets of velvety moss, to wish Thelma auspicious good fortune on her new journey, through her own forest.

On the easel

It is always a surprise to me, how we can, as humans, hold contradictory ideas and feelings in our heart, how one doesn't stand against the other, how sadness and joy can lock fingers.  There is, if we allow it, a gentle back and forth movement like sunlight  peeking through the trees as the wind plays in its branches. My old Zen teacher used to say this: "one thing doesn't stand against the other." It's simply our western minds carving things into black and white.

Thelma's gifts to us were many but mostly I remember her for her gentleness, grace and fearlessness in facing life's difficulties. As a parting gift she tapped me on the shoulder to remind me of the fragility and preciousness of this human life. She lifted the cloud of stupour to remind me to attend to what is important because we never really know what day our next journey will begin. To Thelma, may she return to this lovely blue planet as a beautiful being to enrich the lives of others as she did here, perhaps as an actress or a songstress in some exotic locale with a heart free as a bird, that's how I imagine her. Here's to you Thelma Midori. And to you, dear reader, may your life be filled with gentle beings as sweet as Thelma. And may you constantly savour the preciousness of your life and attend to what your heart longs for.

Earth Martinis - Shaken & Stirred

I am generally not much of a news follower but this last while it seems unavoidable: trouble in the middle east, earthquake in New Zealand, earthquake and tsunami in Japan, weird political rumblings in the US. It's not just the news media trying to drum up another drama to keep the evening news ratings up. It seems to me we are truly being shaken and stirred. Ice storms in the north east, torrential downpours here overnight, not that I'm a martini drinker, but I'm thinkin the cosmic bartender is up to something.

And as much as we try and create our little cocoons of safety we can see from these events that there really is no ground to rest on, nothing we can wrap ourselves in, except perhaps the Dharma. And the Dharma tells us that everything is changing, moving all the time, everything is impermanent. The truth at least makes the landscape navigable. And in our tiny lines of vision we really have no way of seeing the big picture. Our ability to swallow the martini, comes from, as Joko Beck, says, (and I think I've quoted this recently), "being a bigger container."

We need to be a container big enough to hold all the ingredients for the earth martini and in this work, we are called upon not prefer the cranberry martini one over the mud or dictator flavoured version. "I didn't order this, bartender, take it back." Of course we experience grief when faced with destruction and the death of thousands but it is within our ability to experience the grief and as Trungpa Rinpoche used to say, "have a strong back and a soft heart". We need to take action if it is necessary, say some prayers, dedicate the merit of our meditation, send some money, or more, if appropriate, whatever we can do.

And we need to carry on with the other flavours of the day, rather than becoming a newsicle frozen in front of the TV. There is the joy of the Bufflehead swimming on the pond, the good humour of the guys tiling the bathroom, the intermittent shafts of sunlight flooding the dirty windows between downpours. There is our livelihood. The world is always moving and shaking but mostly we are too preoccupied to notice. Sometimes it takes a really big shake to wake us up, to remind us that this life is something to be grateful for, rather than grumble about.

My tiny bit is over at my etsy shop, 50% of sales will go to earthquake relief in Japan and I will support others locally in their work. Rawsome Living Foods is donating all of their profits from their Saturday (March 19th) craft fair sales at Mahon Hall. Another islander is having a vegan bake sale on April 2nd. What flavour is your martini?