LESSONS FROM AFAR!

Early this morning I had the opportunity to visit with a son via Skype who is stationed in Kuwait . He is a helicopter pilot in the National Guard. He shared a highlight from his service this past year when he landed his helicopter on an aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea. 

He was a bit anxious about the landing since the sea was quite choppy and the ship was rising up and down. The concern was his landing down as the ship was rising up. A collision is what he wanted to avoid.

However, he found that if he hovered long enough to be in sync with the ship and its natural movements, it was a very easy and smooth transition. His second landing was even better!

I think there is a lesson in that experience for us all. We may come into contact with another person and find ourselves not in sync with them. Hovering means being quiet long enough to allow our breath to take us to this moment in time. Just as this pilot was able to observe the aircraft carrier while hovering over the ship, he was able to sense how the ship breathes in and out, up and down, and he finds harmony and avoids any unneeded collisions and confrontations.

Observing our breath at the tip of our nose allows us to get out of our mind and not listen to the stories that our mind is constantly fabricating. Fear has a way of putting us into confrontations where love brings harmony. When we sense the fear, this is a good time to return to observing our breathing in and out. After we have done this a few times, we can count on more happy landings. It is now easy to see how a helicopter can land on a ship even in stormy weather.

BECOMING BROKEN!

Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

And all the King’s horses and all the King’s men

Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again!

I first heard the term “being broken” from Mark Nepo in an interview he did with Oprah.  He explained that in his struggles with cancer he had become “broken”. As he shared his life experience, I realized that he had come up against something that was greater than him. He realized that he was powerless to overcome his difficulties with the resources at his disposal. Admitting one is powerless over their problems can be a real wake-up call. And this wake-up call is happening all around us.

Admitting our powerlessness changes everything. The roadmap we have been using to run our daily life is no longer relevant. The skills and tools we have previously developed are admittedly not enough. And the things we used before to solve our problems now falls short. For some, this realization can come slowly. For others, this admission takes place in an instant like walking through a door into a different room or picking up the phone and receiving news we were not prepared to hear.

It can come to us in a 1000 different ways and often more than once in our lives. However it happens, this I am convinced of, it happens to all of us. We all become broken. When that awareness finally dawns on us, Mark’s the next observation becomes a powerful insight. That is, “just because one is broken is no reason to see the world as broken.”

So, where does that lead us? I guess we could cling to our old beliefs in choosing to be resilient and say to ourselves “I was handed a lemon therefore I will make lemonade!” Or “Humpty Dumpty is broken therefore I will make an omelet!” I am not convinced that that is an admission of our powerlessness and trusting that there is a force at work in our lives that we can rely on that is beyond our understanding. This is where grace and hope and faith appear and lead us on a new adventure of compassion for everyone we meet today and gratitude for everything that we see all around us.

But I think there is a different direction that leads to a new awakening. By acknowledging our ego and mind cannot overcome our difficulties, we can become “broken open” and allow our heart to lead and direct. The heart becomes our compass and points in what direction we would walk. And the mind then takes its lead from the heart and maps out how we can achieve what the heart can see.

And with the heart listening, we are touched by the songs we hear. And with the heart watching, we see beauty all around us. And with the heart alive, we wake up today realizing that “this” is one incredible moment!

Fighting The Instrument

Often the instruments of change
are not kind or just
and the hardest openness
of all might be
to embrace the change

while not wasting your heart
fighting the instrument.

The storm is not as important
as the path it opens.

The mistreatment in one life
never as crucial as the clearing
it makes in your heart.

This is very difficult to accept.
The hammer or cruel one
is always short-lived
compared to the jewel
in the center of the stone.

By Mark Nepo

Oh Ingrid – – we miss you already!

I first heard of Ingrid from her daughter Carol while visiting my sister in the Puget Sound area. The story that Carol shared of her moxie mother who had overcome so many challenges in her early life with polio were amazing. 

She had been an early patient of Dr. Bernard Jensen the father of Iridology and good eating. This set her on a road of a lifetime of natural foods for her family. Her love of gardening spilled over onto her daughter who raised a wonderful vegetable garden each year.

I didn’t get to meet Ingrid right away. Her husband Jim was bed ridden at the time with chronic illness for a few years. And Ingrid, the caregiver that she is, remained at his side to make his life easier. Ultimately, Jim passed on and Ingrid was released from her lifetime stewardship. She now turned her focus to helping Carol raise a great vegetable garden in the backyard.

Our first meeting was to be for Thanksgiving at my sister’s house. Everyone was helping make dinner and there were about six cooks in the kitchen. And like a butterfly going from flower to flower, Ingrid was there, helping everyone with their dishes and declaring herself the official Thanksgiving taster. I had never met anyone as happy and colorful in a room full of people.

The best part of all was that I loved to tease her and she loved to be teased. Magically, we hit it off from the moment we met. By the end, it was the two of us making turkey gravy for 12 people. As we worked over the stove, she shared a bit of her life story with me. I could see that I was in the presence of one who had overcome many great difficulties in her life. Being broken is no reason to see the world as broken.  And she was not broken but rather broken open and her heart directed her mind.

As she shared the sacrifices and challenges she had made the past couple of years for her dear husband Jim, I decided to pose one of those mysteries of the universe questions that some of us get hung up on. I wanted to know what is the cause of all our suffering. So I asked her, “Ingrid, you and Jim spent a lifetime eating as healthy as you could and were very active. Why do you think Jim came down with cancer?”

Her response amazed me. I could tell she had never even troubled herself with that question. She wasn’t even worried about the cause. She said, “Gosh I don’t know! Maybe it was stress! Maybe it was me!” And then she laughed as she shrugged if off and moved on to this moment in time. The lesson I got from Ingrid is to be careful about troubling ourselves with things that really are nonissues. What was important was the compassion she could give and share in these moments with those around her.

As Thanksgiving drew near this year, I wanted to enjoy another magical Thanksgiving. So we invited ourselves to my sister’s for Thanksgiving. Last year I had teased Ingrid because she wore a pair of ear rings that were parrots and she called them turkeys. I was able to find a real pair of Turkey earrings to give to Ingrid at Thanksgiving. But it was not to be!

The weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, Ingrid started reading all of her old love letters from Jim who had passed on two years previous. On Friday, six days before Thanksgiving, Ingrid read the final love letter from her late companion. The next day Ingrid had a heart attack. And on the day before Thanksgiving Ingrid passed on to be with Jim.

I was never able to give her the Turkey earrings or tease her while working in the kitchen again. But the lessons you taught me will remain.  Thank you Ingrid. You have been a wonderful teacher and friend.