not so fast

The world is made so that speed and flash often cause trouble. As a maxim might say, “that which is done in haste will result in poverty or pain”. I’ve been reminded of a valuable lesson. It is a modification of the old tortoise and the hare parable. Not that slow and steady wins the race, but rather survive by moving slowly, deliberate and with mindfulness.

I was invited to help the doctor collect the honey from his bee hives. To use the correct terms, we were robbing the hive and spinning the honey. I didn’t realize until I got there that he meant actually put on the suit and net and everything and get face to face with the bees. I was thrilled. Once suited up and protected, we uncovered the hives. Each white box called a super contains a dozen or so frames, like hanging shelves where the bees store their honey. The doctor used a clamp tool to free the first few then handed the tool to me. They were stuck together by wax and it took some muscle to free them. The first one I lifted, I did so rather abruptly. “Slow and easy” he told me, “no sudden movement”. I should have known this. So often we forget the basics when trying new things. We finished robbing the hives and the bees were markedly calmer when our movements were slow and deliberate. I thought of all the images in my head of bee charmers. They move with careful grace where each movement has no definite beginning or end, and they proceed controlling their fear.

I learned this lesson long ago. It was taught to me by the greatest of all teachers, Nature. The natural world can often be understood as a mirror into your own Spirit. If your heart is in turmoil, animals flee from you, bush and bramble stand defiant in your path and the very ground seems to shift to throw off your balance. If on the other hand your heart is calm and still, animals don’t seem to notice you, and each step…. “like a prayer blessing the Earth”. Really all that is a difference in intention and balance but speed is a symptom and by product of both. With all things, if you want to learn a skill to mastery do it over and over very slowly until your muscles can preform without thought. And to put out the calm cool and collected vibe to other people, move slowly, relaxed and steady. And the opposite is true. You want to make a person unsteady and nervous, move with short fast clipped motion and watch their distrust and stress level rise.

This is a life lesson. I am always learning it. As a small child I remember watching my father and the slow, calm deliberate steps he would walk going into the grocery or walking on the beach shore, or even from the back gate to the back door of the house. I find myself as a grown man walking with the same calm and mindful speed.
There are many qualifiers to this speed thing to. Quick decisions are not always fast ones and impulsiveness is not always careless…..too far perhaps.

As if to literally drive the point home, on my way home from the doctor/beekeeper’s house, my thoughts were on the lesson of the beesand treir delisious honey  when I fell prey to a speed trap on the highway. I didn’t get a ticket but I got a very real and golden warning……”slow down and make it home”.

Wild

As my friend Mr. Scott is fond of saying,”people are wild”. I suppose this has always been true from the hunter gatherer times but it is still very true today. Our wildness has some strange ways of surfacing these days.

The past few weeks I have been watching the conventions of the political parties. I had watched them in past years but never noticed the look the attendants have in their eyes. They’re ferocious.  I think of the Yeats poem The Second Coming:

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity

The people seem to believe every syllable uttered from the lips of those leaders reading words from a teleprompter. I understand from history that these conventions were once an event when all the members of a political party met in the same place the elect a candidate, to vote a representative. But now they are little more than a pep rally or as PBS phrases it, “a four day infomercial for the party”.

And still, the crowd chants scripted replies to slogans handed out to then on cardboard plackards. The speakers are more like rock stars slinging words and rhetoric rater that guitar riffs. The faces of the crowds are in love with the ideas, they seem to believe the person they are cheering for will solve all our problems. Many of the speakers can hardly finish a sentence for the crowd drowning them out with generic planned cheers for God, country and candidate. How strange a ceremony we’ve adopted.

And true that the these political fanatics so full of wild passionate intensity for ideas that will likely never form into reality nor touch their lives with any policy. More likely that the children or grand children will owe the debt we accrue. Nor see a shift from the illusion of choice and the myth of a government that will not change itself. Their eyes wild with belief and anger and hope.

fix this

Siting still without acting upon the world is often the most difficult of tasks. As children we are taught that every problem can and should be fixed. On TV, all problems and conflicts are solved in a half hour. In medicine, each pain, discomfort or hiccup as a drug and health regimen to stop it. It would seem we are never past mending. We are too thin, too fat, too tall, too lazy, too motivated, the list is unending. It would seem we are always about a problem and a plan to fix.

This manifests all over the place. Our culture obsesses over the instant gratification and the quick fix. We see babies obese because whenever they cry, they are fed; customer service run amok with the belief that the customer is always right and must at all cost have their problem fixed.

Being a Man in this culture I feel a heavy pressure to always find the solution, solve the problem and help fix people. No where is this more palpable than in relationships with other people. While it is true that sometimes people will ask you to act,  most of the time advise is not their greatest need.  When difficult times arise, there is often nothing to fix. Not every problem has a solution to find. So often I hear the pain in friends words and when I offer advise it is like I had never said a word, the words of pain just go on. Most of the time I think we just need to share our pain and have it acknowledged.

We talk with a friend or loved one about a problem not because we need them to fix but because we want company while we sit with it. And this is wisdom, finding a dilemma and siting with it until an answer presents itself. All else seems to be struggle. A story I once heard says  the Earth has all the cures to all the diseases. Like a puzzle, there is a match for every piece. I think most of our emotional difficulties or relationship problems are similar. Somewhere in our being we are equipped with everything we need to be the brilliant spirits we were made to be. A nice thought……

i do this, not that

I’ve found it best to be a difficult person to categorize. As long as I can remember I urged myself to be the exception to the rule. As a young man I associated myself with many social groups, never attaching too deeply into any one circle of friends. I tried to stay as diverse as possible. Over the years I have dwelled in variety, feeling at times like a chameleon. Though I look like I belong to others, really I am camouflaged into established patterns. I have walked the path of many paths; sampling but never fully devoting my identity. In the past few months however, I have found power and strength that comes with standing out from the pattern with intention. Let me tell you how I found it.

In June I was honored by my Sensei, Mr. James McLain. He took me and three of my karate brothers to the USKK International Tournament in Peoria IL. Present at the tournament were several different styles of karate; goju ryu, shorin ryu, shuri ryu and other shorin ryu divisions. Our school is rather small, at most we have 5 or 6 full time students but we are very close. On the first night there was a seminar being held as a sort of meet and greet for the start of the weekend. The seminar was taught by a head of a style of karate, rather obscure. I noticed that the other more advanced students treated it like a buffet line, sampling this and that, trying to eat a little bit of everything. I tried to use the techniques presented and figure out what my Sensei would have me do. I did karate the way my Sensei has taught me. He teaches shuri ryu or shorei ryu, similar but distinctly different from that of the seminar’s leader. I found strength in the distinction and confidence in my chosen style. I was sure I wouldn’t blend in, and that is just fine. I could with honesty of heart declare who I am and what I am doing. The rest of the tournament (another story) served to deepen and reinforce the lesson from the first night. Even now I find difficulty expressing that lesson fully.

I stopped going through the buffet line and started eating one dish. In my past I would have been intimidated by the diversity. I would doubt and not trust in myself. I found the power behind the decisive declaration of place and person and purpose. The strength in person that comes with decision and intention.

It helped that my Sensei is the man in elevated karate circles, one of the venerable founders of American karate and a great teacher.

Since the tournament I have found a sense of strength with being confident with your identity. I am not sure it has much to do with self esteem, it seems simpler that that. It is more a feeling of comfort and confidence that the way you are and the way you do is just fine and just right.

At some point each of us must walk the path of many paths. Important time must be spent sampling teachers, styles, habits, ceremonies, religions and philosophies. And one’s fear and doubt will always be present listening to the voices saying “you are not enough”, or “my way is so much better than yours”. But a solid foundation yields a strong pillar. Incredible power and strength can be found by strongly, confidently declaring a path, a school, a way. And not to the exclusion of other knowledge. This is not a nod for ignorance or arrogance. Really we are all on paths leading mostly the same place. Knowing which path you are on gives your ego somewhere to land. I feels right to say, “this is the path I am on” and it feels great to know this is the right one (for me) and I don’t have to worry about anyone else’s. In short I suppose follow your heart and believe in yourself. more

for Lauren’s ceremony

Last night, I took care of a small child. She had begun to refuse to walk. When her mother tried to put her down, she would cry, wail, fold her legs in and collapse on the floor. While her small child mouth just cried, but her body language said “don’t abandon me, don’t stop loving me”. Her legs were fine. I have read recently that the mind and body are necessarily connected. the mind moves the body. It seems her mind body connection had ceased to allow for walking though her legs were strong. During her iv start she arched her body from the heels and kick the bed in fear and fury. Her legs worked fine, but her mind would not let her walk. It seems this family was in the middle of a move, the father had been away from home a lot and the child was made to stay at the grandparents much more often than usual. Whether her problem is behavior or medical, mental or physical, I don’t know. We all this have this problem sometimes but usually, like the child, we are picked up.

This is being human. Experiencing pain, discomfort, agony. For it is not the absence of suffering that reminds us that we are human but the presence of it. And pain whether physical emotional or spiritual is required for growth and understanding. And it need not be a dramatic anguish. Often the teaching pain comes as a silent uncomfortable unknowing, a boring demotivated paralysis of will and emotion and creative energy; helpless, tiny, foolish and thoroughly untalented and undeserving of love.
In many ways this type of pain and suffering is worse than a stab wound because we can pretend it is not there. We can fool ourselves to thinking we’ve begun to feel better when we haven’t touched the source of the pain.
And to touch the source is not an easy task. To find the root of these things often requires slow careful work with a chisel and a brush rather than fast and reckless action with a sledge hammer. The root source is where the teaching lies. There is the sunshine that will fuel our growth and bring us into the fullness of the human experience. But we mush first feel abandoned. We must first wail in loss.

So this is our work. Let us not be like the mother and child above. The child cried and wailed when her mother stopped holding her, refusing to stand on her feet, her mother picked her back up each time so the child will never fully understand the depth of her own darkness, and thus never comprehend the depth of her own soul. Let us all allow each other to experience the discomfort without moving to fix it. Sometimes we need friends and family to sit with us in the darkness rather than lifting us out each time. Sometimes love is just that, being with your companion while they cry and wail on the floor without moving to fix them. This is allowing each other to be human and grow.

serioulsy

We have all learned to be serious. But many have forgotten to laugh.

I take care of sick and injured people for a living. People take their health and the health of their loved ones very seriously and so do I. In the past months I’ve taken care of two people who’s stories I’d like to tell. These two people were not serious at all.

One was a middle aged man. He was from out of town, a business man, an executive who had passed out during a lunch break between executive meetings. He wore nice clothes, his shoes were polished and his watch was shiny and thick. His friends had all but forced him to come to the hospital. There was concern for a heart attack, he had some symptoms and some risk factors. Although he seriously answered my questions, he and his friends never stopped smiling and laughing. After some tests, we found he had minimal but significant muscular damage to his heart. This man was not sick however. As it turned out he had passed out because he was laughing so hard. He did have some very funny companions. They continued joking, cutting up, goofing off throughout their visit. Even as his wife arrived and spoke with genuine concern, the humor and jocularity never left the room. He wasn’t a fool, on the contrary this group had something figured out. Their good humor was contagious. No one came out of that room feeling anything but light and happy, rather unusual feeling for an emergency room.

The second person had cancer. She came in one evening feeling like crap. Being off her chemo treatment for a few weeks there was no reason she should be vomiting, feeling dizzy and weak. As is often the case with cancer patients, they speak with gentleness. Her fatigue showed in here eyes, a furoughed brow beneath a bald head, thick skin with poor color after so much poison. Her family and friend were never negative. When I went in and out of the room they were telling stories about friends and family. The stories were good; funny and humorous but not really comical. I embarrassed one friend as i walked in the room at the end of a joke where the friend had a piece of tape from her nose to her forehead. Again, no one left their room with negative feelings. After a few hours, some nausea medicine and some iv fluids she felt better, “like a million bucks,” she said. I gave her the discharge note and she looked at me worried. “I think we are going out to dinner,” she said, “do you think it is all right for me to get a beer”. She smiled and I told her to enjoy herself. Health has a different meaning to her.

Anyway, most of the people I see are sick but often they are diseased with frustration, hopelessness, despair, anger, sadness and loneliness. These diseases are epidemic. It is a poverty that we call all of this depression. We don’t make drugs for these, but there is medicine. We can cure them but not alone and not in a visit to the ER. The two people whose stories are above had found a way out of that. Their health is contagious.

As a Memory

Our bodies have millions of memories we don’t know.

I trained alone in the dojo last week for karate class. I worked out for the better part of an hour ending with punches and kicks on a heavy bag. Toward the end of my workout, Sensei came and stood by the door watching me. After a moment he stepped in to correct my technique, specifically, a backfist. He was talking about closing distance while sparring and as usual he demonstrated on the student. He doesn’t hit, but rather, touches the hair on my sideburns with his left knuckle and pulls his fist back so fast that if you had blinked, you would have not known he moved at all. This is nothing new, he does it all the time. I am always in awe of his speed, power, strength etc.

After class I was closing the dojo door when he said to hold on, he’d left his weedwhacker in the yard and wanted to put it inside. A moment later he asked me to help him in the yard. It seems a small black metal piece had fallen off the weedwhacker and he couldn’t find it. He looked briefly around the ground but to no avail. I saw the thing in an instant and reached down to the ground a few feet away and picked up the grass stained piece of black metal. He said thanks and put the thing inside.

Now, I know Sensei wears glasses to read. However the same 63 year old man that missed a metal handle in the yard can also punch me in the face as fast as a light switch turns on and only touch my beard and not my face. That ability is more than a learned trait or habit.

I know of muscle memory. We all have it. But think we have cell memory too. Cell memory is like a reflex but for a deeper, larger reason. Like when a baby grips whatever is put in its hands, very old people do the same. The natural tendencies is to hug when we are embraced even when it may be uncomfortable. When we encounter a perceived danger our senses become intensely keen. Yes these are all reflexes, but reflexes are really proof of a deeper, older greater knowing.

The first time I stated a fire with a hand drill, my body felt great because it had done something that it was made to do. I felt the same way as a child when i would climb all the way up a tree or swing on a rope swing. I mean the feeling of being “in your element”.

When we make an action we were made for, our bodies scream with pleasure and excitement. It is different for us all. Some run very fast, or shoot with incredible aim. Others put numbers together with giddiness or put down policy with passion. Each is different and necessary. Many of our skills are learned but somewhere, also remembered.

Each muscle and cell remembering what it was made to do.

Connection

I feel like writing something about making connections. And feeling connections.

I step away or perhaps I take a knee to feel a connection to the Earth and the things that come from the Earth that make up my body. It is effortless to know that my body and the Earth are one. Both are made of the same stardust, share the same space, and need the same nourishment. The intellectual step to oneness is not difficult. Spiritual integration moment to moment can be challenging. We’ve not been trained to think and feel so deeply. I realize too that living in this oneness  can take a lifetime and many wise and profound spirits have committed their lives work to feeling it. Shamen, Priests, Zen Masters, Yogis many will speak of this oneness as if it is to be acheived. I think it is more like lifting a veil or making a choice, but what do I know….. I feel like writing about making connections……

First the common ones. I am connected when a patient tells me they hurt and I say sorry for the pain and try to take it away. I am connected when a child looks into my eyes and I smile with my heart and the child giggles. I am connected when I hug my mother or my sister or grandmother, when I talk to my brother on the phone or cuddle to my wife asleep. I feel connected when I see an old friend who I’ve not seen for some time. I feel a connection when I block a technique and when I land a punch. All of these…….connections like when you skip a rock on still water and forever break a mirrored surface till the stone stops and sinks, connection to know that stone will stay at the bottom of the water for a very long time and it was because of your throw where it landed. That place, the water, the stone and you all connected.

And connections are made when we don’t even mean to. Spirits are sometimes very touched and hearts are moved by things you don’t even remember saying. Connections are made by actions we don’t remember doing, stories we don’t remember listening to, gestures we don’t remember making.

These things are part of a bigger connection, a fabric of thought and heart holding everything together. The Spirit that Moves Through All Things, The Force, Chi or Ki, The Holy Spirit, all the same. This Connection can be seen when a flock of birds at once change direction without a leader, when animals flee an area days before a storm devestates the landscape, when a vine reaches across a wide gap to reach a branch and climb. We as humans are part of all that too even though, esspecially though we don’t realize. It is a connection you don’t have to realize, you don’t even have to believe. More learned people uses consoiusness, but I like connection don’t you? It feels closer.

The connection I am thinking of tonight is a touchable one, a connection between hand and heart. Tom Brown describes it as “when every step is like a blessing to the Earth, and the Earth blesses every step”. Fools Crow called this the way of the Hollow Bone. As the Sioux said Mitakuye Oyasin “All my Relations”.

A connection like this: selecting a loaf of bread in the supermarket and feeling the wheat in the field where it was sewn. Drinking wine and feeling, seeing and smelling the beautiful vineyard where the grapes grew. Pulling the plastic away from the flesh of an animal and knowing its sacrifice that you might have its energy. And not for guilt but gratefulness. Carving on a piece of wood and feeling the years of weather and wind. Connection to the years that you might feel new and refreshed in spring, young and playful in the summer, reaped and worn in the autumn and introspective, quiet and still in the winter. These do not require mediation, spiritual practice or great effort. This connection only needs imagination and a desire to know more fully the world and thus yourself.

Children know this too. Children see shapes in the clouds without trying, they see a bird soaring and imagine flying, they hear the ocean in shells. Feeling these connections takes only imagination and intention. As Bruce Lee said” we need emotional content”. We need added power to the connections or I feel they will diminish.

For all things are connected. And while my pulse cannot be felt on the other side of our Planet, the sun knows my face. And in the morning it warms a boy’s body in China, as I lie under the moon at night.

Golden Spirits

One morning our radio alarm went off and we heard the news as our eyes opened to the start of a new day. The story caught our attention. We lay awake listening slowly comprehending what the story was about. A soft female voice spoke of the origins of Gold.

It seems Gold is made during a supernova, when a very old heavy star explodes. As the stars contents are blasted into space, neutrons bang iron creating Gold. All the Gold on Earth comes from the hearts of dying stars.

Wow…..Gold was formed in the core of dying stars. Our species has always sought this stuff. We know it as sacred or precious or valuable. Every culture knows its value. Every culture seeks Gold. What is it we really seek about the Gold? Certainly it is beautiful. Its color reminds us of the sun, of the light. It makes us think of God. We look for objects like Gold to make us happy, to fulfill our needs. But take it further. We look for God in things and when we It, we surround ourselves with God, around our fingers, from our ears, our nose, around our toes, from the walls, on our doors and use it to make statues of God……everywhere we can find to use things that we think contain a bit of God. Where else is Gold found?

We have a Golden core. Its said we all have a bright shining unique soul that is golden. I don’t want to steal an idea that I heard from Micheal Meade but here goes….(whenever someone says “no to commit plagiarism”, they are about to steal like a politician)…. We know the Earth and our bodies are made from the same elements that once floated through space and came together to form all we see. In other words, stardust. The Earth was created from stardust and in our deep relationship to the earth, we are little planets. In our bodies we share elements with our Planet. In the center of both is Fire. We came from space, just like the Earth and like the Earth we are on fire, 98.6 degrees usually. You could say that our Spirits flying through space banged into our bodies and created Gold.

What do we really seek when we seek Gold / God….. fulfillment. A teacher of mine told me once that all we really seek is love, purpose, joy and peace. None of those can be found outside of ourselves. The Gold we seek is within us and we should know the physical gold is only a reflection and a reminder of the Golden spirit within.

Brother’s Question

Before new years, my brother asked me my point of view on family. Really he asked me what I thought made for a good brother. I have been thinking for an answer since that night and while I’ve not come to any conclusions or epiphanies, I can at least say something.

A sibling.. a brother , a sister is placed into your life from the beginning and like it or not their lives are wrapped around yours. Should the lives never intersect again, they are still bound to each other by virtue of their beginning. There is a knowing, an understanding of how we grew up that no one else could possibly obtain. I think that understanding creates a solid unbreakable bond. There is a knowing of self too, a knowing of blood. And that knowing reaches beyond me to those I literally share blood with. So if I know and understand my blood, I can’t help but know and understand some of theirs. No one else could ever know and that blood and bond makes one’s siblings most important.

While I have met many people in my life I consider my brother or sister, none will ever really be. In truth I am connected to all things……the rain, the air, the soil, all things, the gutter water, the pollution, the Spirit…sorry tangent…While I know I am connected to all things and thus brother and sister to all, it is not quite the same is it? different parts of the same whole.

I am not connected to other things like I am my actual blood. Perhaps this is a minor difference but for this life, it is serious, a real line is drawn. I am related to him and her very strongly and my love for them runs deep, back to my first memories in fact.

My brother’s question is for today though. What makes a good brother?….well brother I don’t know. I accept and love both of them for who they are, no conditions, no requirements. I don’t expect much either except for them to be true to themselves and their own hearts. I know my blood and so I know theirs, “there will be rain if God wills it”.

I have some hopes for them, some wishes. That we may communicate as best and as often as we can, that we keep strong and close our relationships, that we hold our family together when it is most difficult and when the responsibility for the holding is only ours. that we may be excellent aunts and uncles, teaching the children that which a parent cannot.

While we can always do better and sometimes much better, we do all right. We are close, we do love and I have an excellent brother and sister.