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4/20/20

Poetry Monday 4/20/20

 

To Be Of Use

— by Marge Piercy

 

The people I love the best

jump into work head first

without dallying in the shallows

and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.

They seem to become natives of that element,

the black sleek heads of seals

bouncing like half-submerged balls.

 

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,

who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,

who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,

who do what has to be done, again and again. 

 

I want to be with people who submerge

in the task, who go into the fields to harvest

and work in a row and pass the bags along,

who are not parlor generals and field deserters

but move in a common rhythm

when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

 

The work of the world is common as mud.

Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.

But the thing worth doing well done

has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident. 

Greek amphoras for wine or oil,

Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums

but you know they were made to be used. 

The pitcher cries for water to carry

and a person for work that is real.

 

I know Marge Piercy more for her novels, which I love (Gone To Soldiers, Fly Away Home, Vida, Woman on Edge of Time) but she’s a brilliant poet too, and I love this poem for today. 

The newness of the novel coronavirus is behind us, but the havoc it’s wreaking on us emotionally (and otherwise, but I’ll leave that to the economists) is very much now and in the future. Here in Florida, our governor just cancelled public schools for the rest of the year. 

S#$% is real, ya’ll. We’re all coming to terms in our own way with this much longer and challenging road. And now in addition to the virus danger, we’re also in danger of the impact of fatigue, frustration, boredom, apathy, and cynicism.

We’re in what group therapists call the working phase, the long middle. It’s the slog. (You know how you tend to talk more to your seat partner at the beginning of a flight, and at the end of a flight, but during the middle it feels awkward to chat? That’s the uncomfortable middle). Plane rides aside, it’s where most of the important work happens in relationships, in work projects, and in life in general.

And when people engage, important transformation happens.

Science tells us that helping — helping others, helping a cause — helps our own mental health the most.

This poem reminds me of that. It reminds me that the best way around something is through. Diving right in. Joining with others. Common purpose.

We’re not going through this alone, and we won’t get to the other side of this alone. More than ever, we see how connected we all are. 

We humans are hardwired for connection. We’re born wanting to be involved with the world. Find a way to jump in and help others. You’ll help yourself get through this time more than you know. 

Be well, wash your hands — and stay connected!

Lisa

4/17/20

Book Rec Friday 4/17/20

Happy Friday of the world’s longest week. Was this the world’s longest week? It seemed like it. 

Maybe the loooong week got me thinking about a more bite-sized book. Or at least one with short chapters you can read in small doses as the mood hits you.

I thought about which books made a surprising and lasting impact on me, that also could be useful in this time of the Great Pause. And Write It Down, Make It Happen called out to me from the bookshelf.

Yep, it’s got some of that gushy self help enthusiasm spilling off the pages…but take a look anyway. It’s worth it. Like I said, surprising. 

Write It Down Make It Happen came into my life when I felt lost and was trying to forge my way in a new land (California) and a new professional career (post-Master’s social work). 

I needed some tools and some structure to get where I wanted to go, at that time. (It was another Great Pause in my life, come to think of it). 

In the mail came this deceptively simple book. Henriette Anne Klauser is best known for her book Writing on Both Sides of the Brain, the classic book on writing, creativity and understanding resistance and procrastination.

WIDMIH, on the other hand, is about how writing itself — in any form — is a simple tool that activates the reticular activating system (RAS) of your brain (and puts your subconscious to work for you), promotes  clarity, spurs courage, finds creative solutions, and in general gets life moving for you. Here’s her description of RAS:

The RAS is like a filtering system of the brain. Writing it down sets up the filter. If you’ve never owned a blue Honda before, and you buy a blue Honda, all of a sudden you see blue Hondas all over town. You might wonder, Where are all these blue Hondas coming from? But they were there all along, you were just not paying attention to them. 

Putting a goal in writing is like buying a blue Honda; it sets up a filer that helps you be aware of certain things in your surroundings. Writing triggers the RAS, which in turn sends a signal to the cerebral cortex: “Wake up! Pay attention! Don’t miss this detail!” Once you write down a goal, the brain works overtime to see you get it, and will alert you to the signs and signals that, like the blue Honda, were there all along.

I heeded the book’s advice and over the past 20 years or so I’ve probably used every suggestion in this book. Journaling, of course (off and on). Writing down goals. Keeping a compliment file. “Polishing coconuts” (you’ll have to read in the book about that one). Writing near water. Writing reverse stories. Writing letters to the future. Making lists. And more. 

But the biggest impact has been what Klauser calls a “What by When” group. This is a group (it could be just you and one person…or a few more) that meets to share personal goals, write them down, and be accountable to each other.

I’ve got 2 of these in my life: one that officially meets once a year (in January, to set intentions –and systems!– for the new year, with sporadic check ins thereafter) and one that for years has met monthly for breakfast (now we meet monthly on WhatsApp). We set goals, discuss progress, make personal commitments to ourselves with witnesses…and then meet again to see how it all went. We express fears, empathize, cheerlead one another, and remind each other that even when we fall short of a goal we’ve still made baby steps worth celebrating–or perhaps found new goals. It is the best kind of support, kindness and community. I would not own the business I have today without it. This kind of group support that changes lives.

So as we find our way through this new terrain of our lives — and I know that many of you are thinking about what you want life to look like on the other side of COVID-19 — why not get specific and write it down? I promise this book will help you do it, have fun while you do — and also make a difference in what life on the flip side looks like.

Have a great weekend!

Be well, wash your hands, and stay connected–

Lisa

 

4/16/20

Podcast Wednesday 4/15/20

 

Hello Everyone,

Don’t know about you, but this week has felt like the longest one yet. I hear about fatigue setting in everywhere… fatigue from sitting in the chair looking at a screen in unsatisfying attempts to connect, fatigue with too much connection (entire family all home) or too little connection (living alone), fatigue at the incessant rancor and disappointing “leadership” from Washington. We want relief and it’s starting to feel extreme.

Podcasts aren’t the answer — but sure am glad we have them. I feel a little more sane hearing some deep, interesting, knowledge- and/or heart-expanding conversation among people I admire and learn from.

I knew I wanted to highlight Russell Brand’s podcast, Under the Skin, for you and planned to link his great interview with Brené Brown here. (Episode #85, Vulnerability & Power (with Brené Brown).) 

 

And there’s a really enjoyable youtube video of the whole interview, check it out.

 

 

Instead of just linking the Brené interview and calling it a day, though, I hit “play” on his most recent podcast and next thing I knew, it was an hour and 12 min later:

 

Episode #122: Wim Hof’s Corona Survival Guide. 

Wim Hof, aka The Iceman, if you don’t know (I didn’t) is a Dutch extreme athlete known for his cold tolerance, breath holding, under ice swimming, barefoot in the snow marathon running, global perspective…and the Wim Hof method, based on cold therapy and breathing technique.

(But first — who’s Russell Brand? Brand emerged from stand up comedy, movies (personal favorite: Get Him To The Greek), and what he calls his own obsessive narcissism and debauchery, outrageous public antics and destructive drug use — as well as his short lived marriage to pop star Katy Perry — to become a serious and challenging voice in the world of activism, recovery, spirituality and Big Ideas.

In addition to the podcast, Brand hosts The Trews, a political YouTube show, leads virtual recovery (12-step) courses, authors books and has a Netflix special currently streaming. Brand says he wants to hear from “voices of solution, voices of heart” to discuss: given the extent to which our culture(s) seem to be frozen in the problems, in polarity — what are the solutions? He’s very funny — and an extremely thought-provoking, deep thinking and imaginative interviewer.)

Back to Wim Hof. In this episode, he and Brand about medical trials underway (but now on pause due to the virus) that demonstrate the medical efficacy in Hof’s cold therapy and breathing techniques — in particular reducing the inflammation that left untreated, causes deregulation of the innate immune system which allows damage to the lung tissue. It’s very interesting stuff.

But what really stands out in the episode is Brand’s connecting Hof”s ideas about health, commercialism — and the personal empowerment available to all humans if given the tools and information they need — to our current pandemic situation. Brand reacts to Hof’s assertion that his technique is an evidence based treatment modality appropriate for human immunity to this (or the next) pandemic: “That’s the kind of bravado we need in a world pandemic!”

Hof answers Brand’s question about his perspective on the coronavirus pandemic like this (English is a second language for him, so I summarized a couple of these sentences):

Humanity needs to stop. Humanity needs to stop to sodomize the planet, to pollute the planet, and to have insensitivity between people. And mother nature is showing us now – if we are not going to listen then she will come back and back and back and back. It should stop this voraciousness, this money system, which is unequal dividing energy all over the world. People are suffering, mostly; only one percent of the world is controlling and possessing more than half of the world. My philosophy, belief, is we can have happiness strength and health, guaranteed, through science. That is the future, that is going to be the future and the walls are going to be broken. 

Hof and Brand discuss the connection between pharmaceutical companies and health care systems based in profit vs. the kind of empowering self-healing that Hof has discovered. The discuss why they believe his medical trials are not more widespread. And most interesting to me, Hof describes the origins of his discoveries, rooted in a suicide close to him and his own struggle with his moods in the past. He asks us to consider: “What is happiness? How do you stay happy? How do you control your mood? How do you control your health and how do you control you energy?”

He asks — Would you trade happiness, strength and health for more money and things? Are you able to see clearly how motivated you are, given your cultural training, to make that exact trade which is so destructive to you? How clearly do you see the ways in which our system set up to make us want to expand and take and grow vs. going inward and discovering the true roots of mental and physical health?

He’s got interesting answers, and it’s super intriguing to hear Brand talk about his own experiences with cold therapy and breath work, in the context of his own personal and remarkable transformation.

I hope both of these Under The Skin podcasts are interesting and helpful to you as we travel on this pandemic journey.

Be well, wash your hands, and stay connected —

Lisa

 

 

 

4/13/20

Poetry Monday: 4/13/20

Hello All —

Summer temperatures arrived in Florida yesterday. So The Summer Day, by Mary Oliver, feels appropriate. And it’s one of my favorite poems.

I love Mary Oliver’s poetry — nature, personal awareness of ones place in the universe, the right to belong, to make choices, to experience a wake-up call, to think deeply and act on ones own behalf — all of this describes her poetry to me. (Two of my other favorite poems by her are The Journey and Wild Geese — so those may make an appearance here in the future).

The Summer Day
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?

Those last 2 lines. Wow.

When I was younger, I used to look at a quote on the wall of my therapist’s office which said something like: “Life. It’s not a dress rehearsal!” This poem makes me remember my gradual waking up to my own life –taking full responsibility for that life — in that office.

And yet…life and it’s busy-ness (and business) can hypnotize us into a daze of time passing and passing…of almost sleepwalking. Of dress-rehearsalizing it.

I don’t know about you, but it feels as if the crazy hamster wheel on which we were all running as fast as we could was a form of living life as a dress rehearsal. When I achieve this goal, then my real life will start. When I get through this tough period, then then life will begin at last.

Having that wheel come to a screeching halt is, among other things, an invitation.

That death and loss have entered our world so unexpectedly, so unwelcomely, is an invitation, too.

These are invitations to consider: what will we now do with our one and only wild, precious life?

I’d love to hear how this poem affects you.

Be well, wash your hands, and stay connected.

Lisa

 

4/10/20

Book Rec Friday 4/10/2020

Hi Everyone and Happy Friday! 

It’s Book Rec Friday. Each Friday I’m sharing a book recommendation that feels relevant/helpful/interesting as we travel through this pandemic time together. Last week I suggested Shauna M. Ahern’s memoir, Enough. Today’s recommendation: Everyday Zen, Charlotte Joko Beck.

Beck is  was an American Zen teacher and writer…looking her up for this post I discovered she died in 2011.

I’ve been thinking about suffering.  Probably not surprising — not only are we in the grip of a world pandemic, it’s Passover week and Easter week, and I’ve also been talking with my friend Natalie. Natalie and I trekked in the Nepal Himalayas not long after I read Everyday Zen for the first time. Nepal’s a melding pot of culture — Buddhism, Hinduism, animism, and the odd judeo christian practice thrown in. The whole region absorbs and embraces spiritual practices, creating a marbled soup rather than defined categories. Nepal is an incredible atmosphere of religious tolerance, surrounded the description-defying Himalaya mountain range. (Everyone should experience it once in their lives!)

And Nepal is where Prince Siddhartha Gautama, aka the Buddha, was born — and at age 29, the story goes, left his cushy upbringing to find ultimate release from suffering.

Everyday Zen is that rare book that (to me) speaks with such calm, unassuming, no bullshit authority, it makes you sit up at attention. Sigmund Freud declared that successful living means functioning well in love and work, hence the subtitle. Zen practice normally makes one think of monastic communities, removed from our everyday worries about jobs and relationships. But Joko Beck doesn’t cotton to spiritual bypass. Life is suffering, says the Buddha. Joko Beck brings these worlds together: Zen and Real Life, with its inherent suffering.

“Nobody can experience our lives for us; nobody can feel for us the pain life inevitably brings,” Joko Beck writes. She shows a path to take responsibility for our thoughts, including our willingness to directly experience our own pain, and how to work on creating what she calls “A Bigger Container” for them. If we don’t, we lose too much.

“[A]s long as we evade, we shut ourselves off from the wonder of what life is and what we are.”  She writes about Real and False Suffering and says “Finally we become willing to experience our suffering instead of fighting it. When we do so our standpoint, our vision of life, abruptly shifts.”

We are all grappling with suffering right now; we’re all experiencing personal and worldwide pain. And: The world has always been on the back of a sleeping tiger; right now, we’re experiencing the pain of the tiger awakening, as George Saunders reminds us (see Podcast Wednesday).

How will our world emerge from this pain? How will we? I hope the answer to those questions somehow involves a “Bigger Container.” I hope this suffering strips away some of the ways we’ve evaded pain, and created unnecessary suffering — in our selves and our fellow humans.

Everyday Zen reminds me that we’re not alone; in fact, wiser minds have been working on this issue of pain and suffering for eons. Wisdom is here for the taking, if we are but to engage with it. I hope this book is as useful to you in this time as it has been for me.

Be well, wash your hands, and stay connected!

Lisa

4/8/20

Podcast Wednesday 4/8/2020

Every Wednesday, I’m recommending a podcast episode I recently listened to that I loved, feel is relevant to what we’re going through in this pandemic era, and want to share with you. (The previous 2 were Brené Brown’s new podcast, Unlocking Us –on FFTs–, and On Being’s 2016 interview Rebecca Solnit). 

This week:  Cheryl Strayed’s brand new podcast, Sugar Calling. 

Sugar Calling is a podcast specifically for this moment in time. Strayed is talking with writers who inspire her with their wisdom, courage and insight, to give us some perspective on the history we’re living though right now.  

Strayed wrote the incredible memoir Wild (you know I love memoirs), about her trek on the PCT/Pacific Crest Trail, and she’s also known for “Dear Sugar,” the radically empathetic advice column on “The Rumpus.” 

In this first episode of Sugar Calling, she talks with George Saunders (author of, among others, the fantastic novel, Lincoln in the Bardo). 

 

 

The episode is called Everything Is Always Keep Changing. Saunders is Strayed’s mentor, friend, and MFS graduate school professor from years ago.

About the moment we’re in, with all the misery around the globe, and being a writer observing it, Saunders says: 

“In some ways, you know, there’s always misery, it’s always happening. In times like this, …[M]y mind wants to have answers for everything. Wants to have a take on things, to give myself comfort. 

It’s like when you slip on the ice…that split second before you’re about to hit the ground, that’s really having no take. You’re just out of control and the pavement’s rushing up. So sometimes, you’re like yeah, we’re in THAT moment.”

He reads the letter he recently wrote to his writing students at Syracuse University, which took my breath away — but also shifted my perspective and gave me comfort.

“….[T]his is when the world needs our eyes and ears and minds. This has never happened before here, at least not since 1918. We are, and especially you are, the generation that is going to have to help us make sense of this. And recover afterwards. ….

Fifty years from now, people the age you are now, won’t believe this ever happened. [W]hat will convince that future kid, is what you’re able to write about this. And what you’re able to write about it, will depend on how much sharp attention you’re able to pay now….Also, I think, with how open you can keep your heart. I’m trying to practice feeling something like ‘Ah–so this is happening, now.’ Or  ‘Hmmm. So this, too, is part of life on earth. I did not know that, Universe.’ ” 

Saunders describes meeting a man at a homeless camp in Fresno where he once lived incognito to write a story. 

“The best thing I heard in there was from this older guy from Guatemala. He was always saying ‘Everything is always keep changing.’  Truer words were never spoken. It’s only when we expect solidity, non change, that we get taken by surprise.”    

“The world is like a sleeping tiger. And we tend to live our lives there on it’s back. Now and then that tiger wakes up. And that is terrifying. Sometimes it wakes up when someone we love dies. Or someone breaks our heart. Or there’s a pandemic. But this is far from the first time that tiger has come awake. He/She has been doing it since the beginning of time and will never stop doing it. And always there have been writers to observe it and later make sense of it…or at least bear witness to it.” 

I love that image of the tiger. We’re so small on the back of the tiger, we forget where we are; we have the illusion of control and stability. The more we cling to that, the more pain we feel. Again, I go back to the spiritual concept of non-attachment. What a difficult balance it is, in this world, to love, to attach, to create security, while also knowing there are limits to our control, and to practice thriving in uncertainty, tolerating so much ambiguity, keeping our hearts open to both the beauty and the brutality of life…(as Glennon Doyle says, Brutiful life).

The rest of the interview is amazing; check it out. I can’t wait to hear following episodes of Sugar Calling. It’s the wisdom I need in this time, and I hope it’s helpful to you, too.  

Be well. Wash your hands. Stay connected. 

Lisa 

Tiger image: artist Lisa Congdon

4/6/20

Poetry Monday 4/6/2020: Peace On Repeat

The Peace Of Wild Things, by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

 

I’ve loved this poem for many years. It holds a space for two things that (to me), can either compete for relevance, or complement one another: the natural world, and the spirituality I am drawn to. 

Throughout childhood, nature was a refuge and a place of wide possibility and hope for me. And I found a personal spirituality there, that gave me comfort, and provided the connection I needed. As a parent, I want to transmit to my children this combination of nature and spirituality. I can’t protect them from all of life’s storms. But I can share what has helped me, and be intentional in my legacy to them. 

I want this for you, too. We are in one of life’s storms now — unlike anything we’ve witnessed before. As we find ourselves in darkness and fear, as our despair for our world grows right now, I want this for you: To find peace, to find relief from the heartbreak happening around us. For a short time, but as often as possible. Peace on repeat.

Twice last week, I walked at Sweetwater Wetlands Park. (It’s still open — probably due to its wide paths that allow for plenty of distance). I’ll be back again this week, and will return as often and for as long as possible.

Sandhill cranes. Egrets. Blue Herons. White Herons. Limpkins. Coots. Gallinules. Red winged blackbirds. Baby alligators with their mother. The sunrise.

Peace.

For a moment, peace.

In the present moment, peace.

All we really have is the present moment. In fact, without our ability to imagine the ‘what if’s’ of the future, or to regret the past, anxiety ceases to exist. But really staying IN the present? Our brains have trouble staying there.

A deep, immersive, sensory experience can help. So go to nature. Go into the peace of wild things, to help you be, for a time, in the present moment. Observe the water, the birds, the weather, the animals, and notice the absence of anxiety and fear.

It is a truth that world religions and philosophies recognize, but (to me) Buddhism speaks most clearly about: there is pain in the world, and no one escapes this. But there are paths, practices, beliefs that offer freedom, comfort and relief, and can be accessed now, in the present, no matter what happens. If only for a moment.

Our lives are made up of moments, strung together. So make some of those moments rest in the present moment.

Rehearsing for suffering does not prevent suffering (unfortunately…we’d skip a lot of pain if that were the case! And I’d be a black belt in it). But taking a break from suffering — by engaging deeply in the present — that reduces suffering and pain.

Find your moments of freedom, your ways of engaging deeply with the present moment. Poetry can help. Nature can help. Connection helps.

Personally, I highly recommend walking in nature — and paying close attention to it.

Be well. Wash your hands. Stay connected.

See you Wednesday–

Lisa

 

4/3/20

Book Rec Friday 4/3/2020

Hi Everyone and Happy Friday! 

This is installment #3 — Book Rec Friday — as promised last week in the blog and newsletter*. Each Friday I’ll share a book recommendation that feels relevant/helpful/interesting as we travel through this pandemic time together. Last week I suggested The Overstory, last year’s Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Today’s recommendation: Shauna M. Ahern’s memoir, Enough. 

Shauna came to my attention a decade ago when I found her blog The Gluten Free Girl. I loved her frank, straightforward and funny prose — I loved how she captured her real, messy life with such honesty. She’s such a good writer. (And I love memoirs for the same reason, probably, that I love being a therapist: I love learning about people’s real lives). 

The food blog ended but a newsletter took its place. Enough is a compilation of her essays from this newsletter. 

At age 48, she had a stroke. She was in the prime of her life and all the medical tests showed she was healthy. But she had a stroke. Her doctor said to her:

“This is a chance for you to think about your life, Shauna. We know the tangible test results show you’re healthy. But what about the intangibles? Emotional stress on the body can cause physical damage. Stress can kill us. So what are the forces that are causing you to lose sleep? To feel pain? To not take care of yourself? Where in your life do you not feel good enough?”

So began her inventory of her life, documented in the pages of this book, exploring all the ways in which she didn’t feel good enough. Not good enough about her body. Not good enough about money. Not good enough about her worth in our culture. She had to dive deep to understand a lifetime of damaging thought patterns…and then learn to let them go.

She writes about the legacy of mental illness in her family, how the legacy followed her even as an adult and shadowed her choices. She writes about rage, about work, about friendship, about taking up space and claiming her life — not just externally, which she’d already done beautifully, but inside, where it counts the most. She writes about finding contentment, community and joy as part of the complex weave of her life.

Her stroke was a wake up call to examine her life.

We are all in a collective wake up call right now. Our whole world is.

How have we been living? Who and what dictated our choices? What pretending have we been doing? How has this served, and not served us? How connected are we, now that it’s undeniable how interconnected we are?

When this surreal and heartbreaking time somehow shifts back into the everyday life we’re more used to — assuming it does and in whatever form it does — what will we keep, and what will we let go of? 

We all get to find our own definition of “enough”. I’d love to hear if you read it, and what your thoughts are, and what your definition of enough is, now.

Be well. Wash your hands. Stay connected. 

Lisa

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4/1/20

Podcast Wednesday 4/1/2020

Hi Everyone and Happy Wednesday! 

This is installment #2 — Podcast Wednesday — as promised last week in the blog and newsletter*. Every Wednesday I’m sharing a podcast with a great conversation/message/perspective for this pandemic time we’re in. (Monday is poetry and Friday is a book recommendation.) 

On Being with Krista Tippet. Episode 817, Falling Together with Rebecca Solnit. 

On Being is an organization that pursues “deep thinking and moral imagination, social courage and joy, to renew inner life, outer life, and life together.” Check out their website. www.onbeing.org. 

In this episode, host Tippet has a conversation with the great Rebecca Solnit. Solnit is a writer, historian, activist and (IMO) maverick thinker about our culture and our world. This interview took place in May 2016 but she could be talking about today and COVID-19.

Talking about disasters such as the 1989 San Francisco earthquake and Hurricane Katrina, Solnit says that when the world as we know it falls apart, people step up. Unlike the mythology promoted in popular culture — that in disasters, people’s worst, selfish, murderous selves emerge — what history tells us is that we actually find purpose, connection, and even joy in the middle of chaos, loss and fear. We tap into a collective life. And we find there, deeply in the present moment:  hope. Hope as a spiritual concept, the unknown, the present moment, where something new can — and often does — emerge. Unexpected things will happen. Hope as life’s surprises.

Favorite quote from the interview:

 “What if everything we’ve been told about human nature is wrong, and we’re actually very generous communitarian altruistic beings who are distorted by the system we’re in — but not made happy by it? What if we can actually BE better people in a better world?” 

I hope you enjoy it, and find it as grounding and hopeful as I did. 

Be well. Wash your hands. Stay connected. 

Lisa 

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3/30/20

Poetry Monday, 3/30/2020

Poetry Monday

Hey Everyone, 

Here’s the first installment of what I promised last week in my blog and newsletter* — to share the things I’m leaning into for grounding and perspective during this pandemic time.

I came across this poem from Emily Rosen, who is the Director of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating, and want to share with you — because it made me feel less alone, more understood, and more hopeful (and I hope the same for you). 

 

this is big

and so small

so loud and stunningly silent

as it screams through

systems nervous

policies strict

stories sold

and plans possible

leaving little trace

for a week or two

until the tracks

become visible

and pandemonium ensues

and

it’s done

the impossible

it’s stopped us

we have been stopped

in some very significant ways

we have stopped

and slowed

way down

we have

slowed

suspending

all not necessary

as inside

we must go

we are being

forced inward

a place

many of us

fear more than

the coughing, sneezing

and difficulty breathing

we’re being required

to revise our priorities

reexamine our values

reevaluate what we’ve

been giving our life to

and inspect

what we think

we indeed need

or must do

a restructuring renaissance

a righteous revolution

i don’t pretend

to know the result of

i just know this small thing

is so big

we all ought

do our part

so i go in, i

stop the sprinting

put the busy to bed

wash my hands

stay smart

make strong

be kind as we react differently

consider the collective

in each choice i’m making

support practically

aiding where i can

as problems of privilege

become preposterous to deny

and make this count

i make this unprecedented halt

to life as we know it

matter

matter not just for our health

now

but for our future better

our future

that at the very least

i’m pretty sure will be

more honest

maybe even wiser

conceivably more considerate

perhaps compassionate

ideally kinder

yes that’s

a possibility

worth protecting

to me

~emily joy rosen

 

This poem speaks to me about the fear of unseen things and the challenge of our new reality — and how fast it all seemed to arrive (although let’s be real– scientists have been sounding alarms for a long time…while we’ve collectively oscillated somewhere between denial, worry and distraction). 

It speaks to me about going inside. Inside ourselves. Where the only real change happens. Our collective reality is but a reflection of our collective inner lives. 

It speaks to me about waking up to what we’ve been focused on, what our inner lives are about, what we’ve been giving our lives to. What’s really important? Death, and the threat of death, have the effect of putting into stark relief what matters most to us. And helps us re-order our priorities, if we let it be our teacher. 

And the poem underscores hope. “…our future, that at the very least, I’m pretty sure will be more honest, maybe even wiser…perhaps compassionate.”

May it be so.

Be well. Wash your hands. Stay connected. 

— Lisa 

 
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