Frequency of Fullness

Trust Me

1:30 PM

"Can't Touch This" by Rachael Ibanez

Lately, my days have been more peaceful. My "buttons" get pushed less frequently, and at least some of the time, I am able to claim the space between what happens...and my reaction to what happens. This space is a gift, miraculous, offering the opportunity for me to make choices without slipping on the ice of reactivity, clinging instead to the shore of just-do-the-next-right-thing.

As I string together my beaded chain of aha-moments, I am aware of progress. There are certainly a few more bricks mortared into the foundation of the life I hope to have lived before I’m through, but my experience of that foundation has limits. I still have days when I seem to fall through the center of the Earth and find myself spinning and sinking into an ancient, manufactured reality that only exists in my memory, a memory that is mewed more to subjective perceptions than objective truth. In other words, some days, I forget what’s real, and tumble into old ruts rooted in anxiety.

When I was little, I remember singing the song “Trust and Obey” in church; for me, the song seemed to have a sort of ominous subtext. In my experience, the emphasis settled on OBEY, while TRUST had little substance or meaning. And very little comfort.

We learn about fear when we’re little. We learn it from the things people say and, also, from the things they do. More so, we learn from the way it feels to be in the presence of others.

Our parents take the brunt of it as we observe them more than anyone else. My parents were and are, wonderful loving parents. They were also chronically human. Even though I knew my father liked me, loved me, and would always care for me, his occasional anger when challenged scared me causing me to re-calibrate the trust I had in my own perspective. My mother, lovely and loving, managed four little girls with tenacity and a magical sense of order, but her own inner current of anxiety left me wondering, where’s the fire?

And my concept of God confused me, too.

When I was younger, the god-of-my-understanding seemed to talk out of both sides of his mouth claiming comfort and forgiveness and unconditional love on one side while, according to biblical tradition, threatening and carrying out mass destruction of those who didn’t submit to His will. He also seemed impotent in regard to the suffering of his creation, refusing even to intervene in the death of his own son on the cross. If the Father stood by while Jesus was tortured and killed, how could I trust that he would intervene on behalf of my little interests? And more significantly, why did Jesus seem to accept his fate with so little argument?

It's almost as if he chose to put more emphasis on the life he was living than the way he would pass from one life to the next...

I have mostly made peace with these questions without necessarily resolving them, and I think this trade is a real bargain. I admit that I don’t understand all of the truths woven into the stories, and I accept that it’s more important to trust than to know. At the crux of the issue, however, has been this nagging and unnerving inability to trust myself.

When we arrive here on Earth, the fine print hidden in our agreement includes this isolating truth: I will be required to figure things out for myself, on my own. People I love and lean on will offer input, and they will have strong opinions, but at the end of the day, it’s completely up to me to choose how I will spend my time and resources on the planet. I will have to choose who and what I listen to, as well as who and what I believe. I will be hurt, and I will hurt others unintentionally. This is what freedom looks like.

Second-guessing my intuition, a less-than-productive pattern that has hamstrung my ability to move through the process of making decisions, has plagued my capacity to move forward since I was small. A classic codependent, I learned the art of imagining how others may respond to any move I make, causing me to freeze even when action was acutely necessary. I can’t say this trait has been useful. Decisions, and the consequences that follow, are a powerfully organic force of life, and it’s torment to live at odds with our choices. What ifs burden my thinking, and it hasn’t gotten better as I age; it mostly ebbs and flows.

So, although these issues have stalked me all the way to my 59th year, I have declared my 60th year will be the year I shed the automatic anxiety I have carried all of my life, and learn what it really means to trust.

I called my friend a few days ago, drowning in unbearable crushing worry. I made a good case for it, for the sense that something bad was about to happen, and worse, that I was responsible. I had strong rationale for my own guilt in the situation; this is always the greatest hurdle.

After first asking if apologies for past offenses had been offered, he patiently reminded me that I could use the tools, the only tools, that could start to level the ground under my feet: awareness, and contrary action. In other words, pay attention, and when I experience an emotional trigger, do something entirely different than I normally would in response.

First, I can become more aware when my chest is tightening, and my breathing becomes more shallow. At moments when this is going on in my body, my mind is usually racing around in circles, too, so I want to notice any familiar patterns there. Then, I can do something different from my habitual pattern. Avoid the rut, and go another direction. Go on a walk, write about it, help someone who needs a hand.

Maybe, I can’t “know,” but I can believe that I am loved and led, and that it’s going to be all right.

This is the choice. This is the path.

space

Ex.pect.ant

9:21 AM

This morning, the snow is falling in buoyant wet, chunks, and I sacrifice my normal routine of meditating on a pillow in a softly-lit space for sitting on my bed, watching the snow fall gently on the trees, just feet away from my gentle perch.

I know. Radical move.

Spring snow produces a rain/snow mix, wet and burdensome for the branches straining to support its weight. I see this happening just beyond the bench underneath my window, and it breaks my heart a little. It's not the weight of the snow, or the strain on the trees...it's the beauty of it.

Life as I often experience it is so full, so busy, so distracting, that a simple exercise like sitting by a window to observe the falling snow is foreign, and emotional. Given quiet moments like this one, my normal pattern would be to allow thoughts of the day, needs of others around me, household duties, or the list of benign to-dos to pour into the space and time available like concrete, either weighing me down or leading into urgent or frenzied activity. Or worse, I could be compelled to fixate on a pool of ever-available anxious thoughts and work myself into a sense of powerlessness, or sadness.

Snow like this, slanted, fat and rhythmically consistent, is one of Nature's favorite magic tricks, slowing down what on warmer days would just be rain, so we can watch it falling in slow motion. Special effects. I slow down with it, gently led into the spiritual, mystical act of observing the world I've been born into.

Frenzy doesn't seem to fit into a moment like this one, but, truthfully, the sadness is here even now, mixed in with awe and wonder at the resilience, the provision written into Nature's magical blueprints. Like the whipped frosting snow clumps building into mounds on the branches outside my window, beauty, like this, is often weighted with its fragility, its temporal nature. At the very same moment we experience the loveliness of something like snow, we are also aware of the melting. Is it even possible to enjoy the moment without anticipating its end?

I don't want to challenge my feelings, but the slow motion encourages me to be an observer, to pay attention. To see and feel everything that's right here, with me, right now. Space.

Feeling something like I do today, I wrote "Expectant" Thanksgiving Day, 2015, in appreciation of the expansion that quiet moments offer, especially moments inspired by something greater, bigger, than just my own thoughts.

Ex.pect.ant - having or showing an excited feeling that something is about to happen, especially something pleasant and interesting. Synonyms: eager...psyched...hopeful

Ex.pect.ant

Slanted snow presses against the atmosphere

broadening the stakes of my tent

tapping at the horizon

with icy stimulation

spontaneous urgency

when it dawns on me that

we are all pregnant with goodness, expectant

and voluptuous with warmth and wonder

dumping mental clutter

Miscellania and deliberate dumping

2:02 PM

Filtering flotsam and other debris, Part 2

Yesterday, needing to verify my legal name as it lives on my passport, I tiptoed into our smallish extra bedroom we use as a crowded “home office.” I moved gingerly, making cautious moves toward the file cabinet while avoiding the rash of piles, more than 20 stacks of miscellania claiming a semi-permanent position on the floor, and I carefully extracted the passport.

It takes time to build up this much clutter; in our case, it has gradually accumulated over our 9 years together in this house. I can’t remember the exact moment when it happened, but at some point, we started to just avoid the room and keep the door closed.

I’ve heard mystics say that our natural world is a reflection of our invisible world, and if this is true, then it would imply that a room like the one I’ve just described must be connected to a mental/emotional counterpart.

This topic reminds me of the film Poltergeist (1982) in which a house, unfortunately found to be built on top of a cemetery filled with unhappy angry souls, is visited by a sweet but firm ghostbuster who does the work of releasing the house from its tormentors. Just after the climax of the film, the diminutive ghost whisperer says, triumphantly, “This house is cleared.”

Yes, please. And I’m not talking about the home office.

In the last post, "Filtering flotsam and other debris," I borrowed the terms flotsam and jetsam as symbolic imagery standing in for "the miscellaneous items floating about in my stream of consciousness,” focusing mostly on flotsam as unintentionally lost “bits and pieces of our constructed selves we lose track of along the way, pieces we never really mean to discard,” and have every right to reclaim.

Flotsam and jetsam that we don’t attend to, like cold case files stacked in the basement of huge government warehouses, take up space and weigh heavily on our hearts and minds. When we set our awareness and our attention toward this “floating debris,” like focusing our attention on the piles on the home office floor, we can begin to make choices about what stays, and what goes...what serves, and what doesn’t. By all means, capture permanently the truths that will forever ground you to your heritage, your faith, your family and your true self by carving out a place in your forever home. Likewise, setting your attention on floating bodies that take up space in your mind but no longer serve you can help you release them once and for all, and bury them at sea.

Jetsam, derived from the word jettison, describes debris that has been deliberately dumped, possibly by a vessel in distress.

Simply put, if you threw something overboard in the interest of survival, it isn’t yours anymore.

Jetsam represents the burdens that we intentionally castaway, acknowledging we can no longer carry them after weighing the benefits against the deficits; the ship can’t sail with these items still on board. However, experience tells me that castaway mental and emotional debris may have some odd appeal when floating about just out of reach. After all, these memes or practices were at one time baked into the cake of my life experience. Familiarity can have a sort of gravitational pull.

For example, growing up a child of celebrity in a family that promoted strong faith-based beliefs brewed some anxiety over keeping up appearances for me. As a young wife and mother, I struggled to maintain equilibrium keeping up the appearance of personal and familial stability even though mine was anything but. After decades of trying to create a peaceful outward expression in a chaotic, hidden environment, the lights eventually came on, and I threw this fallacy overboard; if it isn't right, you can't make it right by changing the way it looks.

Once in awhile, I am tempted to fixate on an unsightly flaw in my personal life or family, and just polish the turd instead of extricating myself of the offending stench. Inner change is what works, and the attempt to keep up appearances has never fulfilled its promise. When this notion bobs around in my mind's periphery, it pays to remember that I let that one go a long time ago; it isn't mine anymore.

Jetsam pops up mostly when it's quiet. I'll sense ghosts pinging around in my head, begging to move back in and take up residence: the attachment to material possessions, along with the I'm-only-worth-what-I-earn syndrome...the fixation on body-image from my 20s and 30s that wasted my time and energy and butchered my self esteem...and my tight grip on certain fixed beliefs that lead to a very confused spiritual paradigm.

Psychically, we may need a visual aid to help us avoid the re-incarnation of old patterns of behavior. Some folks use a "God box" created to hold onto a note or a symbol representing the items that they've surrendered; it's supposed to help with letting go, and I use this practice when it fits. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change.

For the work of putting deeply ingrained, ancient jetsam to rest once and for all, and to reinforce the finality of each decision to let go, I like to imagine attaching an anvil to a wooden crate filled with the beliefs, practices and values that I have identified as dead weight, and drop it like a rock. I don't want any of it back, so picturing the crate buried at sea helps me to let it rest in peace.

Copyright © 2016 Laury Boone Browning

Image from Quantum Bits, December 23, 2016, https://quantumnittygritty.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/sea.jpg

awareness and mental clutter

Filtering flotsam and other debris

8:09 PM

Photo credit: Sara Browning

When I was in my thirties, I dreamt a lot. Maybe it was because I was parenting young children, and sleep was often interrupted, giving me an opportunity to catch a glimpse of those in-between twilight moments, the seconds that exist as a transition between the conscious and the unconscious mind. I love when that happens.

In one of my favorite dream moments, I lay on a sun-drenched rock out in the ocean, maybe 50 yards from shore in a Caribbean style bay, with gulls flying overhead and ocean spray on my face. Perfect.

I jump into the water, taking a deep dip downward, only to come up completely dry, my hair blowing in the soft breeze. A boat drifts slowly by as I climb back up on my flat rock, and a stranger greets me.

“Hey there! What are you doing out here?”

Without skipping a beat, I answer, smiling joyfully, “I’m diving for enigmas.”

I know, it’s just a dream, but the thing is, for whatever reason, I had yet to become acquainted at that point with the word, enigma. I remember looking it up later to solve the mystery. Ironic.

Enigma: something hard to explain or understand (Merriam Webster) A mystery.

Somewhere in the deep blue waters of my subconscious mind, I knew what it meant.

I am spiritually curious, and there’s nothing that interests me more than stumbling over something both mysterious and illuminating. Ironically, however, I usually need to spend some quiet time praying in the murky dark in order to make room for the light to do its work.

Prayer, meditation and journaling has afforded me decades of opportunity for casting my net into spiritual waters, and lately, a job shift has poured out even more time than ever before to take mental snapshots of the flotsam and jetsam that I find floating out in the deep, writing and sorting what I find to enrich my personal journey, and perhaps, add layers of understanding.

So, what is flotsam, anyway, and why does it matter?

Simply put, the terms flosam and jetsam serve as metaphors for the miscellaneous items floating about in my stream of consciousness. I looked these terms up recently, diving for the enigmata I hoped to find under the surface. Apparently, human-created debris is always associated with ships in distress and classified by the method through which it finds its way into the ocean.

Flotsam, from the French word for floter, is named for debris that, although discarded, was not intentionally thrown overboard, and can therefore be reclaimed by its owner. I would liken it to the bits and pieces of our constructed selves we lose track of along the way, pieces we never really mean to discard. But out of sight isn’t necessarily out of mind. In moments of awareness, perhaps it’s best to sift through our own floating debris, identifying which memes, thoughts or values belong back on board, and which deserve a burial at sea.

I find myself filtering flotsam and other debris when I am still and quiet, when thoughts pop up like duck decoys in a shooting arcade often attached to the subjunctive, like shoulds or could haves. Mental clutter has quiet but profound impact, causing angst or anxiety whether something can be done or not.

“I should have saved more.”

“I could have worked-out instead of reading that blog post.”

In particular, internal self-badgering about my lack of exercise recently grabbed my attention, reminding me that it isn't just about unnecessary guilt. It bugs me because I need full-body, heart-challenging activity; it's healthy and genuinely grounding. I have often opted for an hour of Netflix and almond-butter-on-an-apple instead of time on the elliptical, but ultimately, noticing my exercise regret has brought me to identify intentional movement as one of those important pieces of who I am, a piece that simply has to stay on board for the ship to sail steady. The draw toward active movement and exercise, embodied by my highly energetic and athletic father, has re-emerged as flotsam worth recovering.

A similar discovery has come from filtering through the sense of loss and regret I feel when I don't make room for poetry and thoughtful prose.

The writing I abandoned in my twenties, and renewed somewhere in my thirties, is a tool for processing emotions and spiritual clutter. Although I don’t always pay attention to the sometimes-gentle, sometimes-urgent impulse to capture the ideas that drift through my awareness, writing offers a mystical connection to the Divine, making it the cream-of-the-flotsam, salvaging very best and truest bridge to my better self and to the God of my understanding.

Although free-floating flotsam can present itself like flies buzzing around my head when I’m trying to grab a quiet moment, I find it pays to give it some attention...to sift through the mental fluff and debris, identifying what’s useful and what isn’t. The cool thing about flotsam is that it can be recovered once we become aware that we have left it behind. We just refocus on the bits and pieces we want back in our lives, we write them in ink into the calendar, and start reclaiming the odds and ends, one at a time.

And what about jetsam, the bits and pieces that have been intentionally jettisoned in the interest of safe passage? I suppose some debris needs to be permanently discarded, clearing the clutter once and for all.

But...I think I'll save that for the next post.

seeking the greater good

On Elections and Peaceful Resolution

4:04 PM

(Written during the 2016 election process which, incidentally, dragged on for a decade.)

My Facebook page has offered a bizarre snapshot of the polarization our nation has been tolerating, or perhaps, incubating, and although my Facebook page is something I have created, a collection of the comments and opinions thrown down by the people I like and love, it does offer a representation of the deep issues being weighed, and resented, in our ever-changing national conversation out there.

Abortion or choice? Do we need gun law reform or protection of the 2^nd amendment? Does “Obama Care” need to be destroyed or just tweaked? Is America great now, or do our policies slam the door on true democracy? Regarding immigration, do we actually have to choose between an open door policy or a giant wall?

One thing is for sure; I don’t like conflict. I like conversations to follow my rules, to support my values. What do I value? I want everyone to be heard, and I want the discussion to be civil and respectful, ending in either agreement or resolution.

So in terms of our election season and the monologue-like shots fired out into the internet from biased, carefully-spun editorialized media sources (there’s a poll out there for everyone)…we’re speaking our own truths full force, but we aren’t listening.

Why is the current discourse so negative, so judgmental? Why can’t pro-lifers and pro-choicers converse, or even compromise? Why can’t we protect the 2^nd Ammendment while discussing safety issues? Even though these are literally life and death issues, and even though I myself have forged deeply treasured, value-based opinions of my own, it's obvious that in a majority-based system, conflict and compromise is sometimes the only way to flush the governmental pipes to keep from living in a state of dysfunction or worse, unresolved tension.

Some of the tension may be due to a general distrust regarding our mostly-democratic system. In certain political circles, the term general distrust understates something more like an absolute belief that government is comprised more of corruption and hidden evil agenda than public service. As citizens and voters, we don’t really get to drive the bus all by ourselves.

We’re frustrated. We’re frustrated when our representatives in Washington don’t actually hit the target as we see it, and it’s heartbreaking to observe abuse of power, corruption or even just run-of-the-mill-yet-significant congressional inefficiency. I’m not sure how much corruption has infiltrated our political operations, but I prefer to make judgments based on what I know instead of what I suspect. Whatever it is we boldy post from the rooftops, and whatever we think we know, there is no denying that compromise is often the way forward, and it is more often the only road to peaceful resolution.

A couple of decades ago when I was trying to negotiate my way through a marriage with more conflict than I could eventually tolerate, my therapist put it this way: building a wall is the first act of aggression. Our national discourse won’t lead to resolution unless we can lower our defenses with each other long enough to build an environment of respect...long enough to converse effectively.

All of this is particularly ironic in light of the “discussion” Aaron and I had this morning as I barged angrily out the door, anxious to sit at a coffee shop and write deeply about politics and unity. (Pause for comedic effect.)We fought, and I yelled an expletive into the void (the garage, technically) as I stormed out the door. Why were we so polarized in our positions that the conversation was reduced to explosive reactivity?

In that moment, what had become of my values concerning the rules of effective discourse?

It's easy to figure out. I thought I was right, and incidentally, so did Aaron.

Ultimately, the discourse continued peacefully when my husband insisted (accurately) he hadn’t been heard, and when I stopped defending my position long enough to listen. And he listened to me long enough to compromise and forge a way through the conflict, together.

The complexity involved in trying to achieve peaceful resolution as a nation is daunting, but what are our options? We can keep fighting tooth and nail, slinging mud and leaving devastation in our wake. We can concede while massaging a seed (or a mountain) of loss and resentment. We can compromise, surrendering some of what we believe to be so very right and true in order to achieve what might evolve into a...different good.

No one ever said that achieving peace is easy or simple; each one of us has to decide for ourselves what peaceful resolution is worth.

“Peace is not placidity; peace is

The power to endure the megatron of pain

With joy, the silent thunder of release,

The ordering of love. Peace is the atom's start,

The primal image: God within the heart."

Madeleine L'Engle

lessons from Camp Gold Arrow

Another Day at Camp

1:33 PM

When I was a youngun’, my parents made it possible for me to go to camp, and not just any camp. This was a fantasy-style adventure at Camp Gold Arrow, a luxury getaway for children.

Once a year, my fiercely organized mama packed trunks for each of her four girls, complete with dried snacks, bandanas, military grade canteens and rolled sleeping bags, and we sisters spent a whole month in the Sierra Nevada mountains, engaged in hiking, canoe-paddling, sailing, horseback-riding, and campfire enhanced story-telling. Amazing.

My recollection of this recursive experience is a bit patchy, a mental mural of sensory experiences. I can pull up a mix of sights, smells and sounds: pine-needle-covered pathways, hay-stuffed archery targets, capsized sailboats manned only by children, and weekend trips to the little country store where I bought candy and Archie comic books to get me through the coming week without cartoons.

It was particularly thrilling to hear the call to line up in order of cabin numbers for the assignment of activities, once in the morning and again in the afternoon. The suspense was gripping. I was giddy when we were assigned as a cabin to water ski, or toboggan. Whoo-Hoo!!!! On the other hand, It was deflating to be assigned something benign or lame for a tomboy… like crafts. Of course, there were no choices in these matters.

We all had chores, and if we were expected to wash the dishes on a given day, there would be no process for challenging the decision. We would do the dirty work, and another cabin would deal with that assignment next time.

The most emotionally charged and therefore memorable moment at camp was always the electrifying Capture the Flag game that was the climactic event every summer. The camp was divided into two teams, and the teams were assigned a fort, topped by each team’s flag and colors. The terrain between the two forts consisted of mountain-side trees, rocks, utility cabins and mysterious caves with challenging visibility for nine and ten year old campers. All the little soldiers were given a certain number of flour-stuffed ammunition packs which amounted to Kleenex tissue covering ½ a cup of flour that, when hurled at an opposing team-member, would stain them and force them to be captured, or be counted (virtually) as “deceased.”

The heightened emotion of running from a 9 year old opposing assassin is funny in retrospect. I told myself, C’mon Laury, it’s just a game, but the amped-up adrenalin in my body worked like a loud speaker, screaming at me to run for my life, so I did! I would even feel something like real grief when a team mate would be “shot” or taken, but most of the time, to my shame, I would abandon my friends to save myself! (Give me a break…I was 10.) The temptation to avoid the battle and self-protect would always be there, but the true heroes of the game would go after their captured friends, the wounded warriors held behind “bars” in the dungeons of the other team.

After all, the whole point of the exercise was to sneak into the fort, capture the flag of the oppressors, and release the captives.

I don’t remember how many years I went to camp, or how many Capture the Flag games I played at Camp Gold Arrow throughout my childhood, but I can still access some of the emotions I negotiated as a very small child, learning to experience the independence camp offered. For one month each year, retreating to the dependent relationship I had with my parents wasn’t an option, so I dealt with my frustrations, fears and disappointments on my own; it was a safe place to experience life outside the nest.

I often reflect on my camp experience, and it’s become a daydream-like metaphor for the day-to-day operations as an adult; there are quite a few takeaway tips I can glean from camp memories that are useful in my so-called-grown-up routine. It’s all just another day at camp.

First, assignment of the daily cabin activity is a collective operation. You aren’t only receiving individual assignments; even when you aren’t aware of it, you are part of a group

You are assigned the group, or culture, within which you find your origin of experience, say, like a family, or childhood geographical environment. You don’t get to choose your "cabin," but you can choose to accept and embrace it

Every activity is temporary and only lasts for a few hours. You aren’t stuck here, and lanyard weaving isn’t your life; it’s just your morning. You can expect this to change 100% of the time, and another activity is on the horizon

Like a Capture the Flag game, your experience will be impacted by the people you pair off with. Don’t embark on a quest with people who just want to mess things up or run away. You want to work with the ones who pay attention, the creative problem solvers, negotiators, investigators and inventors. They make things happen.

Don’t argue with the camp managers. They create your experience, and you may as well accept that experience as yours for the day. Period. Your attitude is your business.

If you pay attention, surrendering to life-camp adventures might give you a great way to find out who you are. So you aren’t great at archery…you kick ass at slalom skiing, and this begins to give you an awareness of where to put your life energy.

Finally, and most significantly… inertia and self-protection can occasionally offer an appealing way to stumble through life. But the goal of the game is to plow forward, energized with purpose, unbridled by self-interests. To fearlessly capture the flag, and when you can, be a part of releasing the prisoners.

Image: Girl Scouts http://www.girlscoutsofmaine.org/en/camp/free-camp-challenge.html

compassion

Expansion

12:00 PM

Like every other Monday through Friday, I get to watch over my two-year-old grandson Finn, and our aging-but-debonair 13 year old golden retriever, Keller.

Keller, a fortunate “only child” of a dog is accustomed to taking three walks a day to complete his rounds and accomplish his business. The noon day walk is usually handled by Finn and Lala, as we are mostly home during the day, and we’re up for an outing almost anytime. But today, something went haywire with our Keller.

On the first walk of the day, my husband Aaron and I usually take Finn and Keller out together, but this morning, before Aaron was out the door of the garage with the leash that frankly, he never uses anyway, Keller bolted around the corner, faster than Finn and I could catch him. It was alarming to watch Keller tearing down the street like a wild child; I wasn’t sure, pushing Finn in a stroller, I could intercept him. We tackled Keller five houses west of ours, and I reminded Aaron that Keller just isn’t safe off leash any more.

Later, Finn and I put Keller on leash to offer him his afternoon constitution, and it turned into a full scale chaotic fiasco.

I tried to walk Keller on leash, but one-eyed and mostly blind in his spare eye, the poor guy kept straying right into Finn’s stroller, jumping in surprise every time he did it. I decided to let him off leash a while so he could wander around and find a good spot to relieve himself, but he has also lost most of his hearing, so he ran ahead enthusiastically, but he couldn’t hear us calling for him to slow down or stop.

After a wild chase to catch up with him, and after strangers on bikes who sensed the drama of the struggle offered to help, I cried “uncle,” and put him back on leash. He had a crazed look in his eye that implied he might be suffering, and I knew I was powerless to help him. Walking alongside this sweet golden, possibly facing his final weeks or months of life as he knows it, I felt torn and inept.

Attempting to negotiate the passenger-less stroller with one hand while keeping up with an energetic Finn, now “hiking” on foot, I tried to keep Keller out from under the wheels with the other hand. Finn was beckoning us to come when I got tangled one too many times, feeling myself tempted to collapse into tears on the sidewalk. I heard myself whine, “I can’t be compassionate and attentive to both of them at the same time!”

And that’s when I felt myself expand just a little. A small but significant stretch.

Gathering Keller’s leash a bit tighter, drawing him closer to me to avoid the wheels of the stroller, I praised Finn for walking close to us. I also laughed a little, something I am learning to do to shift out of the familiar grip of fear, or self incrimination. And I paused to ask myself, why do I think I can’t focus on these two precious but dependent beings at the same time? Granted, it’s challenging. I am feeling anxious, and my default-driven brain tells me I have to let go of one to care for the other.

But what if that just isn’t true?

More importantly, is this moment uncovering the tip of a love-limiting iceberg?

Although my prayer life has on occasion been focused on just keeping my own shit together, I do have an overarching, lifelong prayer: I want to learn how to love beyond my inner circle.

Today, tempted to abandon one loved one to care for another, I found myself being tricked into another mini-surrender. What if learning to love bigger means that I will need to accept that frustration, feelings of incompetence, and rate-limiting anxiety are just part of the deal...at least while we’re learning?

Maybe, when we don’t have enough hands, or resources in general, we accept the chaotic nature of a walk that is awkward and clumsy, but driven by compassion and care for others.

We’ve all played the lifeboat game at one point or another, right?

Who would you choose to care for if an anxiety-challenged grandmother, a toddler, and a handicapped, elderly dog were on a sinking ship, and there were only two seats left in the life-boat?

Well, clearly, we're gonna need a bigger boat.

"I think what I need to learn is an almost infinite tolerance and compassion...if we can just prepare a compassionate and receptive soil for the future, we will have done a great work. I feel at least that this is the turn my own life ought to take."
Thomas Merton, The Hidden Ground of Love

Pages

Trust Me

Ex.pect.ant

Miscellania and deliberate dumping

Filtering flotsam and other debris

On Elections and Peaceful Resolution

Another Day at Camp

Expansion

Laury Browning

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