She Pours Herself Out

In the dark hours of winter and advent, I find some time to sit in the quiet stillness and breath and sit. Thoughts and prayers and hopes and fears weave in and through the stillness. I’ve learned that these times are necessary training to prepare my heart for moments like this……

A picture sent to me on a busy day. A picture of the woman who is the love of my whole life. The woman I love with my life. And she pours herself out for others. When she tells me of her days spent caring for her patients or spent with our kids, I hear her love, her respect for others. I look up to Lauren. When my job seems hard and I don’t have the drive to care more thank is convenient, I think on her and the power of her love. I feel pulled to love like her.

We don’t often get great pictures of her. She is often the one taking the picture. And if she is in the picture she is holding someone or she’s modest and doesn’t like the light of a camera. I understand. But these pics, she’s radiant. trust me, I live with her…. she looks like this most of the time. She is beautiful with a beautiful heart.

We Walked Along the River and Found the Current Soothing.

We walked along the Stones River on the Greenway path. The current was fast but patient. Watched the water curl and swirl and eddy and flow. The river was soothing this morning. We looked at the trees and the bushes and heard all the creatures going about their day. Our walking pace was steady but not hurried. Time in no shortage this day.

As we crested a hill, we stopped to stretch and drink a bit of water. The air was cool but the sunshine warm and bright. We walked along. We talked about all the small things that often are left unsaid for busy schedules and pressing tasks. Out talk was of the small things, the daily things. Of friends and family, of life and living, of joys and sufferings.

We walked along the river and found the current soothing. Sycamores are every where along the river. Passing under a leaning branch, I noticed a herring bone pattern on the underside of the tree where rain had hit the smooth surface of sycamore and run along the underside of following gravity’s pull. The pattern was symmetrical and regular. I had never noticed before.

Every so often my wife would wince of exhale harshly, sometimes putting a hand to her belly which is very swollen with or baby son. She is incredible and I am in awe. I am sure she got tired of me asking if she was all right, if we need to stop or if she was having a contraction. She never seemed annoyed by me.

We talked a lot of family. Ours is soon to be expanded by son, due in the next weeks.  We talked about everything, so it seemed. We talked of art and beauty, of humor and pain. We talked over our preparations for our coming son, of the incredible little girl our daughter has become. We walked along the river and found the current soothing.

We talked and walked along the river and I got the clear and specific understanding that this is our life; walking together, sharing our time, no hurry, watching nature happen around us, breathing in, breathing out and walking along the river. There was nothing extraordinary about the morning. A sunny, beautiful, clear morning toward the end of a cold winter. We find our lives where we are at the moment, and that moment is ordinary and precious and golden.

I so love these times with my wife. I never imagined my life would take the turns and arrive at the place I am today. I could have never planning to be the man I am on this morning. Grateful and humble are not enough to describe my heart. We walked along the river and found the current soothing.

Passing Over and Moving On

This past week I have been helping my in-laws move. Their home has sold and they are wisely downsizing to a smaller home. My wife’s family is letting go of the house where they were a young family. They are doing this with grace and strength. My immediate emotional field is full of themes of  ‘letting go’ and ‘saying goodbye’ and ‘moving on’. With every trip I make to the storage unit, I see the street sign for Davidson road. I think on my friend with that last name who recently passed away after a fight with cancer. This weekend many of my friends gather to remember her.

I wish I could see her dancing at her wedding again. In the seventeen years I knew Becky, that was when I remember her happiest and most in love. My wife and I sat and watched her dance on that warm summer evening in Nashville. She lit the ballroom in her wedding gown, making the chandelier look dim and faded in comparison.

I remember Becky wrapped in her golden curls and smiling a big satisfied grin. Her smile that I remember was a content one. A grin that wants for nothing and needs nothing.

I  remember her voice and the chills she could send through me with the notes she hit. And her laugh. A laugh that made you feel like you are special, made you feel good.  A laugh that made you want to make her laugh again.

These past few years have seen a couple of  passings in my world. My mother a year and a half ago, my best friend’s father just a year ago, and Becky a few weeks ago. In all three of these people, their bodies could no longer contain them. Disease and illness had overcome their ability to resist.

There are many words and thoughts of comfort and condolences that surround us when someone we love is no longer among the living.

The lessons of Thich Nhat Hanh are comforting. He teaches looking deeply. He teaches that though the ones we love no longer inhabit a human body, they remain among us . Look deeply at your hads and see you mother and father, their mother and father and all your ancestors. They walk the Earth in your skin. Their blood is yours, their cells are yours.

And for our friends, those we love, looking deeply into our hearts, we can see the places they touched. We can feel the channels that flow differently because our lives collided with such wonderful, brilliant souls. Like Becky’s, though she and I were not close for several years, she touched my life. And my heart is changed because I knew her. And that flows out of me into the world in ways that I cannot track.

But when we consider the loss, my heart settles back to the ground. And I see that Becky and Rick and Kitt are not here. They are not living. I am grateful their bodies are not living. The thoughts and feeling that give us comfort are concerns for the living. The dead no longer suffer such sadness.

As for Becky, I wish I could see her dancing in her wedding dress again, and hear her laugh and sing.

A Narrow Path

I was baptized on my birthday. For many months now I felt in my heart that this was something I wanted to do. I have read and meditated and researched. While I feel that the act if baptism is an outward sign of what had all ready inwardly taken place; the preparation has deepened my understanding of my reality.

The morning of my 33rd birthday, I walked the woods of Camp Marymount, a place I have long called home. I walked around the lake and through the hills. I drank from the spring and walked up to a former sweat lodge site. I continued wandering the forest till I came to the Outdoor Chapel where I was married many years ago. A creek runs along the forest floor and I followed it. I found a deep pool and sat down for a time. Later I found a fallen maple tree lying across the stream. I sat on the tree and prayed and breathed. After some time I wrote in my prayer journal.

I am prepared to walk this Narrow Path: Giving all my Love, all my life away for the love of my people and my family and Earth and Creator, for my reality and to the Spirit. A narrow path, of compassion and forgiveness, of faith, of generosity of commitment. To hold the moment, to live and remain in the moment. Don’t fall to fret or fear for the future, nor lose  power by dwelling in the past.

The Narrow Path: To look ever deeper for more full understanding of reality. The way of emptiness and clarity. To surrender to Spirit and pour out myself for others.

The Way of Christ, the Way of Zen, of Suzuki, of Hanh, of Stalking Wolf and Brown. A claim of my spiritual lineage.

The Narrow path is the way of compassion, of awareness, of openness, of love and always inclusive.

As it is written:  for wide is the path and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many will find it. But narrow is  the path and difficult is the way which leads to life, and  few will find it.

Early that afternoon, my Father and wife and child came out to meet me. It was a cold windy cloudy day. We walked down to the woods together. I carried the Bible that belonged to my mother. I carried a hollow bone of a deer leg and the underside bones of a turtle that I had found on my walk early in the day. Towels also we carried. It was cold.

Reaching the bank of the stream, we said a prayer, I read a Psalm. My wife said some wonderful words and my father read a few passages out of the new testament. I stripped to shorts and my father and I got in the water. I knelt, then sat, then Dad laid me back submerging me in the frigid stream. Cold but exhilarating. I will not share the words to describe how I felt afterwords. That afternoon will be with me always.

Wedding Music of Taylor and Jimbo

Two People with Incredible Love

I attended a beautiful wedding last weekend. Taylor and Jimbo got married. These two have a huge appetite for life. They amplify the lives of others. We have more fun because they are around. This is their medicine. The evening was a smiling taste of old friends, great music, delicious barbecue, excellent home made beer, all in the lush glow of a  late summer evening deep in Tennessee.

A few days later, I picked up a CD my wife got from the reception. The disc said simply “Rock On”. I listened to over and over again. The disc is in my truck right now. Their mix got me remembering the mixes from my wedding.  I got to looking around my CD collections for other people’s wedding mixes we’ve collected over the years. Now it begs the question, what is the alchemy of the wedding mix.

I want to hear everyone’s playlist. If you made a mix for your wedding or if you remember a soundtrack to your wedding…

What songs are there?

What memories do these songs bring to you?

Can we share our playlists?

Thank you Tayor and Jimbo for sharing your marriage, for sharing your love with all of us. May your wedding day be only the beginning. You both love so big and so well. It will only get  better. May your wedding day be the day you love the least. For it will only get bigger and deeper and richer and fuller and heavier and more and more precious. We love you…Rock On…..

The Summer of Soggy Shorts

Last weekend I hung a new rope swing in our backyard. This new one has a wooden plank for a seat. It is wide enough for about two butts to sit. The branch is high and the swing goes wide. My daughter loves her new swing.  I sit in the old rope swing which is just a double loop. My feet rest on the wooden seat of the new swing and my daughter sits in it holding onto the ropes on either side. We swing “two swings”. She squeals in laughter when we swing high. Her short blonde hair brushes her young cheeks. Her small hands squeeze a sure tight grip on the smooth nylon rope.  She is fearless, ignorant and strong.

The summer has been hot. We’ve had months of record temperatures. In Tennessee the humidity becomes a thick heavy shroud coating all creation in a warm gossamer blanket of wetness. But these past weeks, the shroud has lifted. The rains have come and cooled the land. These days have been cooler. We’ve been sleeping with the windows open and the air conditioner off. The Summer is ending.

Autumn approaches and I feel the temporary nature of this time spent swinging with my toddler daughter. She will not be a toddler for long. All ready she is becoming more of a little kid. As we swing back and forth, I become aware of the impermanence of this time. All of  this is only “for now”. She will never be a small child again.

The “Summer of 2012”, “the Summer of the Split Tomatoes”, “the Summer of Soggy Shorts”, the “Summer of the Two Week Beach Trip” is ending and there will never be another summer of its kind.

This is not a sad thought. Growth is not something to regret. The swing comes still and she runs to the garden. We eat okra off the stalk and she pretends to share bits with her baby doll. We share a laugh over the feeling a ripe okra seed popping between your teeth. They explode in tasty goo. My wife joins us in the yard. Her schooling is done now and the Autumn will see her getting the jobs she wants. Our little girl offers her a bit of raw okra and she takes it. A wonderful moment. My heart in our garden with my wife and child. Then, the mockingbird calls from the roof. An airplane flie overhead. Time takes another step.

I breath deeply and try to release any regret for experiences not had. Instead have faith that life will unexpected and surprising. This season is over and another will come. And another will follow. And another will follow.

Congratulations Laudie

My wife has finished her nursing school. She ends three years of difficult schooling. They have been challenging years for all of us, but mostly for her. I am very proud of her. I’d like to write about why.

She never quit. Nursing school is often about being given situations you might not be totally equiped to handle. She was placed in highly challenging situations both academically and clinically. She told me often that what she was dealing with was overwhelming. She was scared. And she doubted herself. But  she never quit. She worked harder. She woke up and got dressed and went to clinical. She drove our daughter across town, dropped her off and went to class. She kept going and never gave up. She was overwhelmed but she overcame.

She let me sleep. I work nights. I often work four nights a week. I have been blessed with a woman who understands the chaotic time kaliescope that life becomes when work hours all end in AM. She lets me go to sleep when I get home. She makes a strong effort to take our daughter to family’s house so I can sleep. The past three years I have worked nights, I have stayed healthy and mostly sane because my wife lets me sleep.

She keeps her heart with our family. I know she misses time with me and time with our daughter. She has never pushed us away or railed against us because of frustration or stress. She always turns toward us . She finds the time to spend with us. Even when she is exhausted; her patience, her attention, her hugs and her kisses are never in shortage.

Her heart overflows with compassion for the world. Each time she spoke with me about her patients and her clinicals and her fellow students and her instructors, she approached them with a open heart and a genlte hand. She sought to understand before being understood. She comes with the heart of a healer. She is able to weep for her patients without pity. She is able to hold a person in vulnerability without condescending. She cares. She cares with genuine compassion and honesty.

Not many people have the energy to care. Many do not have a capacity for such love. Many simply do not know how to love so openly. My wife does this without noise. She seems not to exert much effort. Her love appears effortless. This is the heart of a healer. The ability to be a bridge. The ability to give your gift. The people she works with, the people she cares for, the instructors she learns from,  her family; we are all better for her touch. We are richer for her love. Our lives are better because she is in them. She gives us all so much of herself.

The thing I love the most….this is who she is. She doesn’t have to try to do all this. She doesn’t wake up in the morning and decide to touch our lives. She blesses us by her being herself. She increases our love by acting out her own nature. A vine spread tendrils outward. Whatever it finds it holds tightly to and supports while yet being supported. That is like my life with her. Wrapped together in hearts and bones and compassion and regard. We could do little else because this is who we are.

She cares for the world so truly, her compassion spreads everywhere. I do, love her so.

Congratulations Laudie, excellent job.