Ten Thousand Days

Photo: Harli Marten

Day 2672 – Day 2782

It’s been a minute since my last post. One hundred and ten days, it seems.  That seems like an auspicious number so it’s time to write.

I have been writing weekly for those who subscribe to my email list, and that is about all I can muster at the moment.   If you’d like to read what I have to say then you can subscribe here.

I’ve also not been writing much here because there is someone who has trolled me for quite awhile – someone who I picked up on YouTube.  I enjoy being an inspiration to people, and I have now had to come to terms that this may mean that my content shows up as their content.  What I’m loathe to do is to provide a glimpse into my personal life to this person, during my time of mourning.  

But, I do not want to ignore my loyal readers and it is time to return to the land of the living.  I want to let you know I’m doing fine.  I’m dealing with life just the same as everyone.  Some days are wonderful and some days are catastrophic.  But on all days, if I haven’t yet done it, I count my blessings before I go to bed.  When the world seems to be falling apart and catching fire, being grateful is what keeps my head above water.

I have learned something about myself in this quiet.  I’ve spent most of my life in large cities where I am constantly able to have intellectual and artistic stimulation.  I went to an Ivy League school with some of the brightest minds in the world.  Right now, I feel completely stifled and bored.  Yes, I think we are all bored after 2 years of a pandemic, but the level of boredom I have reached has me feeling like I am in a coma.  This doesn’t mean that my life is without love, busyness or companionship.  I just need more intellectual and creative stimulation and to use my talents in more challenging work.  This is a problem I have lately identified and it is something on which I need to work.  There is nothing worse than  having a gift and not being able to use it.  And, lately, I feel like I’m becoming more and more stupid, as the world around me has been so dumbed down.  At the ego level, this is something I need to address because it will add to my happiness and challenging oneself is a great way to add more flow moments into one’s life.  I hope that you are identifying and addressing those things that are limiting your happiness.

I do enjoy writing about my personal life and so, I’m going to turn to the personal letter form.  I’m looking forward to surprising someone this weekend with a short dispatch from my life.

There is no doubt that beyond our personal lives, the world is deeply troubled.  Lies and misinformation seem to be the order of the day.  I have found that not knowing what to believe can leave me feeling paranoid – perhaps this is why we see so many conspiracy theorists out there today.  Instead, I have turned to what I do know – which is an inner knowing – that of my faith. 

I have a great bible study group and unfortunately I can usually only drop in on weekends (I used to go every day but the time of meeting has changed) because of my work schedule, but they have become “fam.”  I don’t agree with all of their interpretation of the bible but I love having an opportunity to focus on spiritual life together,  every single day (or as often as I can make it).  We have time for prayer together and this fortifies.  Gratitude and the cultivation of all the practices that I’ve talked about over the years has been a lifesaver.  Spiritual Oneness is an essential part of that.  I have another group that gathers around the teachings of my living spiritual teacher and we meet every second week for prayer, meditation and fellowship and I’ve found that invaluable as well.  My groups help keep my focus on Oneness. 

Meditation and stillness is important, perhaps even more so, now that the world seems to be teetering on chaos.  I’m not a great meditator although I know that my path in this lifetime is to meditate.  I go for a walking meditation every day, at the same time that my spiritual community is meditating, globally.  I feel that in the inner stillness, we are doing some good work on cultivating Oneness, together.

This month, on my email list, we have been placing our focus on Oneness and I have been advocating for stillness.  We all want to do something but we need to get our egos out of the way and the best way I know how to do this is through meditation.  We also need empathy for others and the humility that an awareness of Oneness brings.  I believe that the easiest gateway into all of these qualities arises in stillness.  And so, in a chaotic world, I am working still to be still.  I hope you will join me.  In a world of chaos and suffering, one of the greatest services we can provide is to actively be a witness to the suffering and in the stillness, bear all that the experience entails.

For what are you most grateful, today?

Photo: Sage Friedman

Day 2587 – Day 2671

It has been a long time since I’ve written here.  So much has been going on and this year has been a tribulation.  I feel that I’ve been tested over and over again and if I have not failed the tests, it is owing to my faith and to my practice of gratitude.  

I have been silent and in the stillness, I not only preserve, but I also find my strength.  Prayer and meditation are useful tools for the grieving.  I highly recommend them, in these challenging times.

I’ve been taking a lot of sleep and engaging in positive distractions and I’ve taken a few walks, but less than I’ve wanted to take.  Our weather has had a lot to do with that.  We’ve had horrendous storms that have caused floods and destruction of biblical proportions.  There has been a lot of grief in the witnessing.

It is appropriate that I am coming to the end of this year of practices (most of which is on YouTube, with the exception of the final quarter of the year, which I will create and post in 2022, when I feel I am ready to leave this period of mourning) with soulfulness, faith, hope, love and soul-work.  If you are part of my email list, you will have been getting weekly guidance on a month of practices.  Soulfulness seems the culmination of all we’ve done so far this year.  In the face of adversity, only the soul can make sense of things.  

I don’t have much to say, today.  But people have been reaching out to me because I have been so silent.  My hope has been to be an example and an encouragement to others, but sometimes, in being that example, it is necessary to model self care and for me, right now, that is stillness.  I just wanted to drop in and let you know that I’m still here, still profoundly grateful, and still faithful to this work.  Although its simple, I want to encourage you to find the good in every day.  Every day, no matter how trying, there is something good.  If you can’t find it, be silent and listen to what arises, in the stillness.

For what are you most grateful, today?

Photo: Brian Erickson

Day 2543 – Day 2586

I’ve been intentionally practicing gratitude every day for over seven years and still, sometimes I forget how glorious life is – all the time.  Right now, my heart feels heavy all the time and that is how it is going to be, for awhile.  

The weather echoes my mood.  For the rest of the week (most likely the month), it will rain, and the clouds descended into the Valley this morning.  The amount of rain in the PNW is enough to give anyone Seasonal Affective Disorder and so in winter, I return to the festival of colour that is my artwork. Despite the dull pallor that surrounds me, I am immersed and engaged in life whenever I am Painting.  Visual art – whether painting or photography –  is like making music or writing poetry in that it expresses the ineffable.  Some things need colour, tone, rhythm and texture to be understood by the heart and known by the mind.

I stopped at the intersection that leads to my workplace this morning, and I felt myself on the verge of tears again.  I looked for approaching traffic (there is never any).  In a defiant last stand of summer, the sky glowed behind Mt Baker.  I reached for my phone to capture the image but the eye of the camera doesn’t capture light in the same way as the human eye.  And the heart captures it in an entirely different way: the only way that the beauty, love and death can be lived as one. 

The sky was emblazoned in glorious hues of yellow as the sun disappeared behind layers of cloud. Moments of beauty.  This is what enkindles our hearts.  Much like love. 

Winter is the forfeit of summer as grief is the forfeit of love.

For what are you most grateful, today?

Photo of Windsor Castle by King’s Church International

Day 2433 – Day 2436

I will be up in the wee hours of the morning to “attend” the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh.  The Queen is the monarch of my adopted country and the head of state of the country of my birth.  But the royal family are – as Russel Brand called them – totems as well.  The highs and lows of their lives have marked my own humble passages.

When I was young, I thought my mother was on the money.  She was beautiful, dark haired, and regal like the Queen.  The Queen was my Power-animal Mum and she wasn’t a totemic-grandma to me until later in life, when my own mother and grandmothers passed away.  Being the youngest in an enormous Catholic family means that many of your relatives die when you are a child.  But the Queen’s enduring presence is, in a way, a comfort to me, because I get to see what my mother might have looked like, and what she would have endured, had she lived.

When Diana and Charles married, my mother and I rose at some silly hour and watched their wedding from my mother’s home in Florida.  Both of us were romantics but life proved to be disappointing to us both in that regard.  Sadly, it proved to be disappointing for Diana, as well.

The death of Diana marked a period in my life where I was grappling with separating from family, too.  Individuation and emancipation didn’t come with balloons, banners and a raise but with a healthy dose of punishment, too.

When I moved to London, it was on the Queen’s land at the Windsor Castle estate that I was initiated into a weekend intensive to launch my post graduate coursework.  Coming home on a dreary day from classes, I rounded the corner to enter my student housing in London to find myself 50 feet from Her Majesty the Queen who was visiting a primary school on my street, as if reminding me of the importance of education and tradition.

When William married Kate, I “attended” their royal wedding in Hyde park where visitors were treated to big screen televisions, an official wedding programme/order of service and a live band in the park who played the hymns.  We all stood and sang together and prayed together and cheered together.  I attended the wedding with the man I came closest to marrying, but by then we both knew that we would never be married and were learning to live with the disappointment of the decision that was never really a decision but became the inevitable.

And in a few hours, I will awaken and “attend” the funeral of HRH The Duke of Edinburgh and rehearse the emotions and the protocols that I know will soon befall me, as I bid farewell, inevitably, to my own 90-year-old father.

As I ponder and work on my own altruism this month, I am in wonder at the devoted life of Service that Elizabeth II and HRH The Duke of Edinburgh have each given to the Commonwealth and to me, as my totem.  Goodnight, Sir.

I am grateful to the royal family for being a symbol throughout my life for they have given me stability in a family that lacked it and an ideal on earth to which I could affirm my allegiance, when my own life lacked personal mentors and role models.  They have been an emblem of home, no matter where I have roamed and I’m grateful for their constancy.  People living in a republic will never know the blessings of having lived under the reign of the longest reigning monarch.  Whatever may happen to the institution of the monarchy when Her Majesty the Queen passes away, she and her family have been a part of the great task of meaning-making in my life.

Send her victorious, happy and glorious, long to reign over us.

God Save the Queen!

For what are you most grateful, today?