Wyzga On Words

December 21st & Still Standing.

Did it come to pass?  The Mayan Prophesy about the end of days. 

Can we peek out from under the covers?

Are we still standing?

Or is it all ended?

One of my favorite poems on endings was printed in the Sunday NYTimes Interactive Feature called "It's the End of the World."  The title of the poem is "Each Of Us Standing..." by Gregory Orr.  Click here to enjoy this satisfying little gem of words.  I think it would also make a lovely parting gift in lieu of a eulogy.

And for those of us who are simply grateful that the shortest day is here as we hoped, following is another favorite by poet Susan Cooper:

"So the shortest day came, and the year died.

And everywhere down the

centuries of the snow-white world

Came people - dancing, singing -

to drive the dark away.

They lighted candles in winter trees.

They hung their homes with evergreen.

They burned beseeching fires all night long

to keep the year alive.

When the new day's sunshine blazed awake,

they shouted - revelling!

Through all, across the centuries you can hear

them echoing behind us.

Listen.

All the long echoes sing the same delight,

This shortest day and longest night.

As promise awakens in the sleeping land,

They carol, feast, give thanks, and

dearly love their friends, and hope for peace,

And so do we - here, now, this year and every year!

 

Welcome Yule!"    – Susan Cooper

 

Yes, Welcome Yule!

Hope In Each Other.

While there is still grieving and mourning yet to be done, I found some small measure of hope in this post sent to HealingStory by friend and storyteller, Laura Simms:

This is the last paragraph of a short but potent article in Elephant Journal ( out of Boulder, Colorado) written by Cassandra Smith who was present in Columbine13 years ago.   Laura

"No one is going to be able to explain what happened today in a way that makes it okay. We will not find comfort by learning the shooter’s motivations, and we will not find comfort in screaming for stricter gun control.

We will find comfort in each other. 

We can heal by grieving together, talking together and providing an ear for anyone who is hurting. We find comfort in knowing our feelings of grief and confusion are not only our own.

I know I will never fully understand what made the young men at Columbine or Sandy Hook decide to take the lives of innocent people. But I also know that I do not need to understand in order to heal. We heal by showing our suffering to others and giving others space to suffer with us.

Together, we can and will get through this."

Dusting Off The Blog.

 

The Troubles began on October 26th.

Within 24 hours I would have to put Barney to sleep.  I've written about Barney, his diagnosis of feline chylothorax and the celebration of each week of life we had thereafter.  Barney made it to 91 weeks and then his 6 year old body gave out.

I still have The Feline Four (minus one) and Barney is with us.  Barney-in-a-box on the kitchen counter.

After that was Hurricane Sandy, rescuing a father, arranging for elder care, trying a case that was a tough, uphill battle in need of courage and brave souls, and then when it all seemed to be able to finally settle into some semblance of Christmas, the Connecticut Massacre of the Innocents/Innocence.

It is true: right now I have no words.  What I can do is sit and look out at the grey churning sea as rain splatters the windows, feel the cold salt wind, wonder how the honeybees are faring in their hive boxes I've not yet readied for winter.

Some might call it an escape.  Daydreaming is an escape, right?  I believe I am just being mindful of  other times, other worlds, other days.

Maria Konnikova writing for the NYTimes, The Power of Concentration, reinforces this notion for me, as follows:

"Though the concept originates in ancient Buddhist, Hindu and Chinese traditions, when it comes to experimental psychology, mindfulness is less about spirituality and more about concentration: the ability to quiet your mind, focus your attention on the present, and dismiss any distractions that come your way. The formulation dates from the work of the psychologist Ellen Langer, who demonstrated in the 1970s that mindful thought could lead to improvements on measures of cognitive function and even vital functions in older adults.

Now we’re learning that the benefits may reach further still, and be more attainable, than Professor Langer could have then imagined. Even in small doses, mindfulness can effect impressive changes in how we feel and think — and it does so at a basic neural level.

In 2011, researchers from the University of Wisconsin demonstrated that daily meditation-like thought could shift frontal brain activity toward a pattern that is associated with what cognitive scientists call positive, approach-oriented emotional states — states that make us more likely to engage the world rather than to withdraw from it.

Participants were instructed to relax with their eyes closed, focus on their breathing, and acknowledge and release any random thoughts that might arise. Then they had the option of receiving nine 30-minute meditation training sessions over the next five weeks. When they were tested a second time, their neural activation patterns had undergone a striking leftward shift in frontal asymmetry — even when their practice and training averaged only 5 to 16 minutes a day.

As little as five minutes a day of intense Holmes-like inactivity, and a happier outlook is yours for the taking — though this particular benefit seems to have been lost on Holmes himself, what with his bouts of melancholy and his flirtations with a certain 7 percent solution. A quick survey will show that the paradox is illusory: Holmes is depressed when there is no target for his mental faculties. Give him a project, and balance is restored.

But mindfulness goes beyond improving emotion regulation. An exercise in mindfulness can also help with that plague of modern existence: multitasking.

And it doesn't end there.  Mindfulness training benefits are also physical. Plus, it's free for a little invested time each day.

I find that when I sit on the cushion I come away a better version of myself - even if only for a time.  Like anything else worth having, mindfulness training takes practice.  It also helps me understand that when something does not work out right away it will - in a different way - another time.  And I can hold on for that revelation.

 

 

 

 

Transforming Fear In The Aftermath of School Massacres.

 

Members of the Healing Story Alliance scrambled to gather and post resources which might be of use to you and your children:

Click here to access: Transforming Fear in the Aftermath.

And feel welcome to share this material around the world.  We all seem to need something.

Movies Have Messages.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is what my dad would call "a nice bit of a movie."

Give me anything with Judi Dench and Maggie Smith and I am quite happy.

Here's one of my favorite lines from the movie:  "Everything will be alright in the end.  And if it is not alright, it's not the end."

I keep repeating it to myself in trying times.  How do I know it's not just a throw-away movie line, but maybe a message?  Trust.

Trust
    by Thomas R. Smith

It's like so many other things in life
to which you must say no or yes.
So you take your car to the new mechanic.
Sometimes the best thing to do is trust.

The package left with the disreputable-looking
clerk, the check gulped by the night deposit,
the envelope passed by dozens of strangers—
all show up at their intended destinations.

The theft that could have happened doesn't.
Wind finally gets where it was going
through the snowy trees, and the river, even
when frozen, arrives at the right place.

And sometimes you sense how faithfully your life
is delivered, even though you can't read the address.

"Trust" by Thomas R. Smith, from Waking Before Dawn. © Red Dragonfly Press, 2007.

Have Faith. What Else Do We Have?

For some time now I've been trying to get back to the keyboard to write my blog posts.

How faithful I was in the beginning.

Why do I blog?  I like to write.  I write to inform, inspire, educate, motivate, maybe even comfort as I share stories and words.

But for days now I find I have no words.  I find I lack the faith to find the words.

I am reminded of David Whyte's poem entitled Faith.  It's only a few lines long but when Whyte reads or recites it he keeps repeating a line like a refrain or a chorus.  To me the style of telling the poem adds to its depth.

Here it is:

Faith

I want to write about faith,
     about the way the moon rises
        over cold snow, night after night,

faithful even as it fades from fullness,
     slowly becoming that last curving and impossible
          sliver of light before the final darkness.

But I have no faith myself
      I refuse it even the smallest entry.

Let this then, my small poem,
     like a new moon, slender and barely open,
          be the first prayer that opens me to faith.

  -- David Whyte
      from Where Many Rivers Meet
     ©2007 Many Rivers Press

Now, click here to listen to the poet.

I am reminded: Have faith.

 

Breast-feeding & Chemicals. What's A Mother (& Baby) To Do?

    There are a million and one reasons why breast-feeding a newborn beats formula.  As reported by Pam Belluck writing for the NYTimes, "Hospitals Ditch Formula Samples to Promote Breast-Feeding," it's generally healthiest for mom and baby.  Excerpt.
  

"Breast-feeding decreases babies’ risk of ear infections, diarrhea, asthma and other diseases, and may reduce risk of obesity and slightly improve I.Q., experts say. "

So why send mom home from the hospital after giving birth with some nifty little gift bags packed with sample cans of formula?  Some argue that the samples are too convenient at helping to deter a mother from breast-feeding when she learns how easy it is to just pop the top.  Others argue that babies do just fine on formula.  And still others argue that hospitals should be in the business of health - spelled mother's natural breast milk - and not canned formula.  Excerpt.

 

"The question is whether samples tempt mothers who could breast-feed exclusively for the recommended six months to use formula when they’re exhausted or discouraged if nursing proves difficult. The C.D.C., the World Health Organization and breast-feeding advocates say samples turn hospitals into formula sales agents and imply that hospitals think formula is as healthy as breast-feeding. Health experts warn that even small amounts of formula dilute breast-feeding’s benefits by altering intestinal micro-organisms and decreasing breast milk supply, since women produce less when babies nurse less. They say that while some women face serious breast-feeding challenges, more could nurse longer with greater support, and that formula samples can weaken that support system."

Moms, like each of us, should know what's in what we ingest.  Click here to read more about the political nature of "Ban the Bags" program designed to eliminate samples of formula distributed by hospitals to new moms.

Then ask yourself about the more complex story of toxic chemicals that are passed through breast milk to nursing babies. Chemicals like DDT, PCBs, mercury, lead, benzene, perchlorane, and others.

For that information you will have to turn to Florence Williams' book, Breasts, recently reviewed by Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez for ORION magazine, September/October 2012.  Excerpt:

 

"Yes, human milk is like ice cream, penicillin, and the drug ecstacy all wrapped up in two pretty packages.  But, women "off-load" up to90 percent of their own chemical loads  through their breast milk, prompting Norway, the country with "the single highest breast-feeding rate in the world," to consider recommending that women limit their breast-feeding to six months. Firstborn infants are at particular risk of chemical exposure through breast milk."

"Not only are babies and toddlers with high toxic levels of contaminants scoring lower on tests of mental, verbal, IQ, and physical development, chemicals are disrupting puberty.  "Today, half of all the girls in the United States start popping breasts by their tenth birthday," a statistic that is particularly  disturbing when paired with this one: "If you get your first period before age twelve, your risk of breast cancer is 50 percent higher than if you get it at age sixteen."

I guess like the canaries in the mine, womens' breasts are a window to an increasingly toxic world that calls for tighter regulations on food, chemicals, bottled water.  Maybe before banning formula samples we take another look at overall environmental, food and water health to learn who is feeding what to whom.   

 

 

Q&A Tuesday: Is This All There Is?

Q:    She asked, "Is this all there is?"

A:    First, you work with what you have.  Then you expand to living what you thought was impossible.

A dear friend came for a brief visit from her home in Hawaii.  We agreed to meet at our usual walking spot and then decide on breakfast.  I had a new place in mind so I left my money in the car thinking we would drive there.  She tucked a bill in her pocket intent on a NY style deli at the end of our walk.

Our route took us to the deli.  We sat down and ordered coffee.  Only then did I realize we had only her $20 between us.  Two starving women and nothing but that single bill.  "Well," she said, "let's work with what we have."

Number 1: you learn that $20 does not go far in a California restaurant. 

Number 2: you learn how little you really need to eat to satisfy starving.

Number 3: you learn how to work with what you have and still leave plenty for tax and the tip.

My friend and I are wrestling with the existential question: "Is this all there is?"  We both realize that we are at a cross-roads in our lives "where the true way is wholly lost" at least for the moment, and the moments are shrinking in number.  Our game plans are increasingly respectful of years. 

As we sat together in the chill morning air we found warm comfort in being together trading lies, stories, experiences, struggles, what-ifs, insights, intrepid plans, and the expectation that George Elliott was right:  "It's never too late to be who you might have been."

First, you work with what you have.  Then you expand to living what you thought was impossible.

 

Q&A Tuesday: How Does An Empty Boat Help You?

Q:    What's the use of an empty boat, especially at trial?

A:    It keeps you cool, calm, clear-headed, and collected, focused on your case and client, impervious to the devious distractions of your opponent designed to mess with your head and throw you off your game.

One of the Dharma talks I listened to during the "Be. Here. Now." retreat I attended at Deer Park Monastery was given by a monk who referred tongue-in-cheek to himself as "Young Brother" although he is actually quite an old brother. He told to a story I had not heard before which traces its telling back to Chuang Tzu, a Taoist sage living sometime before 250 B.C.  Briefly, it goes like this:

 “If a man is crossing a river and an empty boat collides with his own skiff, even though he be a bad-tempered man he will not become very angry. But if he sees a man in the boat, he will shout at him to steer clear. If the shout is not heard, he will shout again, and yet again, and begin cursing. And all because there is somebody in the boat. Yet if the boat were empty, he would not be shouting, and not angry."

His point was how to practice staying the course of calm in the face of some perceived action or word by another that might provoke us to unnecessary anger or rage.

So often it's our perceptions that make us crazy.  Zen Buddhism would say that most of our suffering is caused by our own perceptions.  And the notion of "colliding with an empty boat" is way to remind us that even if life is suffering we do not have to seek crucifixion.

In trial so often I've seen good lawyers go off the deep end because their opponent is just "messing with their head." If an emotion is true and serves you, by all means use it.  Those that distract you from the task at hand only dilute your effectiveness.

If you would like to read a bit more on the teachings of "An Empty Boat" click here to read David Nelson's post as he muses on the teachings during his drive home from our retreat on the mountain.

David's post is a good reminder that I have many many miles of river to practice.  At the very least I more fully appreciate a bumper sticker I saw recently that read, "When Jesus Christ said, 'Love your enemies' I think He probably meant 'Don't kill them.'"

The Appointment In Samarra.

 

A Syrian father weeps over the body of his son killed by suicide bombers in Aleppo. [Manu Brabo/Associated Press]

Many storytellers are familiar with "The Appointment in Samarra."  I've told it on a number of occasions; but in the version I learned the merchant was a father and the servant was a son. 

For some reason I've had this story on my mind as day after day I witness incomprehensible death in Aleppo.  These losses seem to track some of the death and destruction that is part and parcel of my working life as a litigation consultant.

Maybe we have appointments with Death.  Who am I to say?  But do we really want to act in ways that deliver each other to the meeting? 

Here is a version of the story as retold by W. Somerset Maugham in 1933:

The speaker is Death:  "There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me.  She looked at me and made a threatening gesture,  now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate.  I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me.  The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went.  Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?  That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise.  I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra."