Month: June 2019

Categories
Mindfulness Politics of Well-Being Self-care Social Connection The Spirit

Politics: Yes, I’m going there

I’m feeling uplifted today. After watching two extended conversations between potential presidential candidates I am pleased that the counterforces to the current hateful political ideology have chosen to step up and speak out. Finally, people are speaking the truth, out loud and in public, and naming the horrors happening around us every day.

People in my profession, apparently, are not supposed to talk publicly about politics. I guess politics is considered unsavory in a spiritual and mindful profession. This makes no sense to me. If we are all made up a physical body, a subtle (energetic, spiritual) body, and a universal body (as I believe we are, at minimum), then how can we justify ignoring such a significant portion our universal body?  

The Universal Body

The “universe” isn’t just the sky, stars, eternal space, and ethereal energetic forces. The “universe” is also material. It’s our neighbors and the parent searching for their child at the border. The universe is the people sleeping in tents along Hiawatha Avenue and those wandering the earth looking for a place to reestablish their roots. The universe is also the pharma executive, the farmer in the fields, and person serving us our lattes. The universe is the person who rations their insulin. The universe is the trees, water, air, birds, turtles, and even rabbits. The universe includes the men who call themselves President of the United States, Prime Minister of India, and President of Russia. Everything, including ourselves, makes up the universal and we ignore it at our peril.

Gratitude

While watching the debates I felt an upsurge of energy that I hadn’t felt in a long time. The United States has been so laden with hate and anxiety over the last few years that I had begun to wonder if that was all there was left in the material political world. Was the answer to simply ignore the universal and retreat from the material into the spiritual?

Seeing the wide variety of individuals stating their philosophies, visions, and ideas I felt a sense of gratitude for these twenty real people who were willing to take on this huge challenge. I was pleased to see at least one candidate stick her neck out and approach issues from an energetic point of view—love versus hate. I nearly jumped up and kissed the TV when one candidate took on an establishment candidate with ferocity—when she made it personal. Hearing a candidate frame the ultimate universal issue of the climate crisis in honest existential terms made my heart sing. And hearing the words “piss” (“should piss us all off and spur us to action”) and asses (Russia has been laughing their asses off”) in a nationally televised debate made me laugh and reminded me that energetic forces may be realigning but I think they have a sense of humor, and I can still laugh.

Insight

This morning, during my meditation I received a helpful insight. Paul Wellstone, the no-longer-with us, beloved, former senator from Minnesota and political mentor and hero to many of us, showed up (as he does on occasion).  He smiled his honest, crooked smile and reminded me that while politics is a material action, it also embodies the spiritual action of creation, dreaming, and imagination: “In the last analysis, politics is not predictions and politics is not observations. Politics is what we do. Politics is what we do, politics is what we create, by what we work for, by what we hope for and what we dare to imagine.”  

“In the last analysis, politics is not predictions and politics is not observations. Politics is what we do. Politics is what we do, politics is what we create, by what we work for, by what we hope for and what we dare to imagine.”  

Paul Wellstone

Paul reminded me that as much as we want to deny and demonize politics, as something engaged in by the evil “them,” the truth is that ultimately, politics is us. It’s how we choose to organize ourselves at a universal level in this material world and it requires the spiritual self to even start the work.  

Let’s engage in some politics.

Categories
Mindfulness Self-care The Spirit

Recognizing the Sacred

My beloved native prairie garden is thriving. I planted this experiment in the most inhospitable of locations a number of years ago. It occupies a strip about 17 feet long by 2 feet deep between my garage and the city alley. That spot takes a beating every winter, facing snow, salt, snow blowers, snow plows, garbage bins, and shovels. In the summer it only receives afternoon sun and contends with vehicles, dogs, and, people who don’t even notice there is a prairie in their midst.

Little Prairie on the Alley.

I became enamored with prairies a number of years ago when I visited Blue Mounds Minnesota State Park in the south western corner of the state while on a pilgrimage to the family South Dakota grave site. I managed to visit in spring when the park’s prairie was in full bloom. I was so mesmerized by the variety and beauty of flora in the prairie that I never even noticed the bison for which the park is known. I couldn’t walk the relatively small prairie without wondering what it must have been like to see the vast mid North American continent before domestic agriculture turned the land into a chemical waste dump.

  • Prairie smoke, one of the original plantings, is an early bloomer.
  • I saw cacti in the Blue Mounds prairie and was inspired.

Leave it alone

I’ve learned that the trick for helping a native prairie thrive (once it’s established) is to just leave it alone. Fertilizer will kill it. So, I try to follow directions and just let it be (although I do some weeding of random invaders, pick up the trash that appears, and add plants periodically). This year, the two newcomer plants (planted last year) are thriving: the sacred prairie sage is glorious and the life-giving milkweed is doing just fine, thank you.

  • This milkweed is a newcomer. I bought it at the Bloomington Garden Club plant sale last year. Once they get established, milkweeds are pretty self-sufficient members of the prairie community.
  • Prairie Sage is considered sacred by the native peoples of this continent. This was the first plant entrusted to the care of humans by the creator.

Once, a few years ago, when I was cleaning out the prairie, a distant neighbor asked me “why bother?” to work on a garden on the alley in a city. I was stunned. All I could sputter out was “because it’s beautiful!” He just glared at me and walked away. I felt sad for that guy.  

The world is an ugly place these days, there is no doubt about it. I cannot ignore the ugliness or suffering will increase astronomically and I will be complicit. At the same time, I cannot ignore the sacred and beautiful or I will lose my sense of purpose. And without purpose, the question, “Why bother?” becomes a valid question with no answer.

I cannot not ignore the sacred and beautiful or I will lose my sense of purpose. And without purpose, the question, “Why bother?” becomes a valid question with no answer.

Categories
Mindfulness Self-care Social Connection The Spirit

Letting Go

Seeds Letting go

I let go of my record album collection several years ago. Of all the items I’ve let go of, my beloved albums were the most difficult. They defined a good portion of my life. From my very first Beatles album (Something New) to my favorite Beatles album (Revolver) to my musical mentor Joni Mitchell, to the eclectic sounds of Frasier and Debolt, to the intense beauty of John Coltrane. Each album described a piece of my life.

My first and my favorite.

I procrastinated for years about these albums. I couldn’t imagine life without them. Never mind that I hadn’t listened a single one of them for many years. In fact, I hadn’t owned a working turn table since well before the turn of the century!

My first record player, a Barbie record player, was my prized possession.

The realization

The final motivation for this purge came when I decided I needed to clear space in my house. I was headed into bi-lateral knee replacement surgery and everything—I mean EVERYTHING (I tend to go to extremes)—needed to be cleared out so I could use a walker in my house (even though my album collection was tucked away in a closet!).

It was an arduous job. Just dragging those heavy crates out of the closet and into the light of day required muscle. I reviewed, sorted, reminisced, and cried over them but eventually was able to lug them, small container by small container, into the back of my car for distribution. It took me several months to go through this process. I sold what had monetary value and donated the remainder.

The payoff

Several young people at the donation-station were very excited to see Beatle albums (so worn that the record store didn’t want them). They gathered around my boxes of albums to ooo and ahh at all this “vintage” music.  I felt like quite the sage-music-guru, for that brief moment.

And guess what happened. I went home and felt lighter, fresher, and happier than I’d felt in a long time. I put something that was important to me out into the universe, let it go, passed it on and, in this case, received instant gratification (who doesn’t want to be a sage-music-guru).

Who doesn’t want to be a wise sage?

The work

Today, as I’m noticing how I’m feeling refreshed (finally) after a two-week heavy metal dietary cleanse (started about a month ago), I see how helpful it can be for me to let go. Not all the time, but when the time is right. Just like our minds have difficulty letting go, so our bodies do. But once that letting go happens, what a delight it is. I’m beginning to see that I cannot control how that delight happens, nor can I control when. I just need to create the fertile ground for the delight to germinate. And, my experience tells me that I must pay attention, or I will miss that moment.

Seeds Letting go
Our job is to let go.

This brings to mind a portion of a prayer, I, and many of my like-minded friends, say when we find ourselves grasping for stuff, control, and outcome: “Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do thy will…”

Our job is to let go. The rest takes care of itself.