The Erased Blog and How Loving Yourself Blesses the World

I had written this one blogpost and posted it the day after Thanksgiving.  I loved the post - it felt very satisfying to me, as if I said just exactly what I wanted to say and  I was on the phone with my mom later that evening and we were talking about it.  She said, "I don't think it's as heartfelt as your usual."   (Do you have a mom that just will not sugar coat things for you?  Because mine doesn't.)  Undeterred, I said, "That's so weird.  I loved that one  - it meant a lot to me."  And I pulled it up on my phone to look it over.  I pressed some button and the whole damn thing erased.  

Oh well.  

My mom said, "I'm so sorry!", but it reminds me that our egos can't be so connected to stuff.

I wrote a thing.  I'll write another thing.  

Maybe this one will say what I want to say even more than the pretty, first version.  But what a re-write gives me the chance to do is tell the story that I was trying to tell in a different way.

I started the Erased Blog with a poem that I love, which I am including again below.  

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53677/the-blessing-of-the-old-woman-the-tulip-and-the-dog

The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog

BY ALICIA OSTRIKER

To be blessed 

said the old woman 

is to live and work 

so hard 

God’s love 

washes right through you 

like milk through a cow

To be blessed 

said the dark red tulip 

is to knock their eyes out 

with the slug of lust 

implied by 

your up-ended skirt

To be blessed 

said the dog 

is to have a pinch 

of God 

inside you 

and all the other 

dogs can smell it

****************

And here is what I was trying to say in the Erased Blog...YOU have a pinch of God in you.
I am not kidding.  I want you to take a minute and feel that.  

And when you know this and feel it, you will love the world and the world will love you and everything that is petty will be put in it's fitting place.

I was thinking about this particularly as we head into a 'season of giving.'  I was thinking about this when I looked at how and why we are thankful.  I was thinking about this when I listened to the news and heard so many stories of sexual harassment and assault that are being told and wondering why people are cruel to one another.

Pema Chodron is a Buddhist nun and author - one of her books, The Places That Scare You, I read on my solo trip to Sedona, AZ, and it was a time in my life that I was very afraid.  I believe it's in that book that she describes a meditation, which  I will try to recreate more or less below - though I don't have the book in my library anymore, and I know I am getting details wrong.  If you are a nitpicker, please don't look this up.    

Sit in a quiet place and 'meditate' - think and breathe and focus on deeply loving yourself.  Feeling compassion for yourself and beloved.  Appreciate your very being.  Just know and experience knowing that you don't have to do anything special - your existence is beloved in the universe.  Do this meditation every day for a month.

Spend the next month, doing that same meditation for someone who is easy for you to love - your child, your best friend, your brother.  Just experience loving them unconditionally and basking in that.

Spend the next month, doing the same for someone who is more difficult to love for you - a picky boss, a bossy friend, a grouchy mother.  Feel that love for and about them - that compassion for their existence.  

Now, the same for the world.

Finally, for someone very difficult in your life.  Someone you've found impossible to love.  See... you, have to work up to that one.

But, I think the key is mostly about the first step.  

My daughter, reading over my shoulder, just asked me, "What if you love yourself TOO much?"  I said "If you love with the kind of love I'm talking about, it can't be too much."  What I mean is, we could easily feel gratitude or lucky or even a little pat on the back, or surface level love because, "I have a great job, so I love myself."  "I am a great mom, so I love myself."  "My house looks beautiful, I love myself."  "I made a meal for that dad with cancer, I love myself."  NO.  This is not the love I am talking about.

You don't have to do anything or be anything.  You just are.  You are just loved.  

Take the time to quiet and even overcome all the voices that we hear in our heads that argue or excuse or say, 'yet, but'... and in that space of listening and feeling, we  know deep compassion and joy and love for our selves.  

This is what I do on my daily walks and runs - I am not a sit down and meditator, so this is my mindfulness time.  Most often in that 1/2 hour or so, I love - love myself, yes.  But what so easily happens is that that love and compassion swells like a wave.  I feel joy that spreads to all I see, the people in my heart, the colors of the trees, my neighbors, the grey cat ready to pounce on a chipmunk by the train tracks, my children, my friends, the color blue in the sky.  Nobody has to do anything.  I don't have to do anything, except let myself be aware of the beauty that is.    

I am no Buddhist nun - I am not a perfect specimen of compassion and love for every sentient being on this planet.  But, I know that when the love starts from inside it will transform everything you feel, do and say.  And this is the blessing - it is already there.  That's what I was trying to say in my previous blogpost (the Erased One).  That is what Alicia Ostriker is saying in her beautiful poem.  

Whether you let yourself feel it or not - there's a pinch of God in you and there's nothing you can do about it.  

Oops!

Hello Bouncing Into Graceland Friends - I accidentally erased my last post.  Since I don't draft on a word document, I have to re-write the latest blogpost.  Sorry for the confusion...More to come tomorrow.
Thanks!
Katy

It's OK To Laugh - Especially at Yourself or Death (and Sex) Part Two

By age 90, my grandmother, not infrequently, was asked, "What's the secret to living a long life."  I remember her saying, "You've got to have a sense of humor and faith in God."

Myself, I'm a big believer in listening to old people.  Not because oldness makes people necessarily wise, but they have a potentially better shot at being wise.  (But that makes me think of a young client I once worked with - when I asked her something like, "Is it one of your hopes to gain wisdom?"  She replied, "Not really.")

I don't tend to analyze humor, but I often have to answer the question, "Isn't your job depressing?"  And I am then forced to think about why my job isn't depressing and why I think my clients don't find meeting with me depressing, and I think it's because I try to have a sense of humor.

My friend and colleague, Heather Raznick and I gave a presentation a few years back on using humor and play as therapeutic interventions in sex therapy and grief therapy.  We had the best time looking for video clips to illustrate how humor gets to something true in both of these areas where people often feel so heavy and serious.  Here's my favorite video clip about grief from an old episode of Roseanne (thanks to my friend, Ellen, for directing me to this).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FtfUKR1b0E

There is a lot of heavy stuff going on in the world, and it's the whole shebang - personal, political, sociological, psychological, scientific.  It's oppression, disease, abuse, death, violence, fear, war.

I know many people who are 'fighting the good fight' to try to leave the world kinder, safer, and more free than when they got here.  I also know many people who are fighting the good fight just in their own lives- trying to suss through deteriorating relationships, dealing with a child with special needs, coping with a medical diagnosis, grieving the death of the person they love most.  In all of this, I notice that some people keep a sense of humor and some people don't.  Maybe some people never had it to begin with.  Some people can laugh, but they can't laugh at themselves.

Several weeks ago, Saturday Night Live satirized this impulse in a HILARIOUS (to me) 'advertisement' for Levi's Woke Jeans. Levi's Woke

The longer I live, the more I am suspecting that a key to a happier life is the ability to genuinely laugh at yourself and not take yourself too seriously.  I don't mean being self-deprecating.  I mean cultivating a way to hold in your brain two opposing things at the same time:  You are important, you are meaningful, you are beloved AND you are one thread in the fabric of a vast universe.

Basically, you and I are totally awesome and totally absurd at the same time.  I think that's why the Roseanne clip is so funny - the absurdity of Jackie yelling into the phone "Dad's dead!"  It's so jarring and true and the fact that she couldn't make herself understood!

Absurdity is it!  Have you ever explained to your child 'where babies come from?'  Then you know exactly what I mean - that's why sex is so often funny.  The fact that babies are made from a penis going in a vagina is totally weird.  And when kids learn this fact, they get it immediately.  The thing they don't understand fully and maybe we adults don't often let ourselves get it either, is that it's totally miraculous too - it feels good and you can MAKE A HUMAN LIFE.  Holy shit!  That's so amazing and weird.  And to my point...just like us. 

I remember one of my hospice patients, Hattie.  An African-American lady in her 80s with a strong faith and sense of humor.  Her biggest complaint about dealing with her late stage cancer, was her constipation, which caused her pain.  She said she was not afraid to die and I believed her (I didn't believe many people when they said that...and not many people said it.)

When I would meet with her, she would sit on her bedside commode, totally unashamed.  She'd try to poop and she'd hand me a can of Glade air freshener and we would talk.  When she farted she would giggle and order me to "Spray.  Spray."  We laughed together.  It was absurd and necessary and tender and true to be together in such an intimate way.

I know another lady who doesn't take herself too seriously, but who is seriously awesome.  She is in her mid 70s and has completed two pilgrimages in the past two years - hundreds of miles trekking through Europe.  She told me the story of a years ago road trip with her daughter to Indiana.  They are from Missouri and they spoke in Southern accents the whole way.  Switching between a Georgia drawl and a Tennessee twang.  When she told me this story, we laughed so hard!  This is exactly something I would do with my kids too.

I have a part of me that is sorta Buddhist.  My sorta Buddhist part knows that a lot of our seriousness is ego.  In my experience our egos lead us to many un-truths where we get stuck - our ego tells us things like: 1) I am the one that has to do x, y, or z; 2) This person's actions are about me; 3) I am the problem; 4) I know the way things are supposed to be.  Try talking in a Southern accent or British.  I think you might find it helps put your ego in perspective.

Ok, folks.  It's Friday.  We've witnessed another week of news - the aftermath of another mass shooting, an election, more revelations about famous men abusing women and men with less power.  We've worried about our kids, our parents, our marriages.  We've had tough conversations.  We've been disappointed.  We've been pleased.  People have done surprising and kind things in our lives.  We have given hugs and celebrated birthdays.  This is life.  It is big and it is little.  We are important and we are silly.  May we do serious work and hold it all with a little lighter touch.