for Pema
Less than fifty years ago, when I was camping on the shore of Fernandina Island in the Galapagos, I awoke at dawn each day to a sky mobbed with birds: blue-footed and masked boobies, pelicans, frigate birds. On the rocks, tropical penguins jostled with flightless cormorants for diving space, everyone gobbling up breakfast from the fish-filled sea.
I remember thinking, This is what the world once looked like.
Today, walking down by the Marina, I could count on one hand the number of morning birds out there. I’ve tried to pretend that they’re migrating, that if I’d gotten there earlier… but I know better. I’ve been taking morning walks here for years, and the sky has never been this empty.
I am in mourning, as if for family.
I’ve always wondered how long it would take us to wake up to the reality of an ‘ending time’ – the Great Turning, as Joanna Macy calls it – being like frogs in the boiling pot, not getting the message until it was almost too late.
I know I’m being one of those frogs when I cannot find things, and this morning was just such a ditsy morning.
Where did I put my glasses? Where’d the notebook I want to write in about the forgetfulness of aging go? Why can’t I find the novel I want to spend the morning reading – re-reading, actually? I need to melt into the calming world of Elizabeth Goudge on this chilly Sunday morning, curled up in bed as the world goes crazy, and I cannot put my hand on the darned book!
It’s laughable, really, but I take it hard.
I am reminded of a conversation I had with Pema Chodron many years ago, long before she was Pema. We’d known one another as teenagers on the other side of the country, completely lost contact and then surprised each other in Berkeley at the neighborhood playground, each with kids in tow. It just so happened that we both lived near the Tot Lot, that our children were close in age and that we were both students of Buddhism – she in the Tibetan tradition, me in Zen – so we had lots to talk about. In our twenties and both pretty adorable – she certainly was, at least – we exchanged news of men and marriage, motherhood, and all the juicy gossip that was going around in the Buddhist community.
This was the early 60s when everyone was experimenting with everything, especially in Berkeley, and we compared notes about it all, including our families’ mystification of this meditation ‘thing’ we were both into. She told me about a relative who objected to her short-cropped hair and insulted her by calling her ‘ugly.’
“What’d you say back to her?” I asked.
“I went over to the mirror, took a good look at myself and said, ‘By golly, you’re right! Now what should we talk about?’”
We broke up laughing and ran to rescue a child hanging by her ankles from the swing.
I keep remembering that wonderful line now, whenever we – the Democrats especially – act shocked by the President’s latest inanities, even though it is clear he is what he is – an out-of-control two-year old with power. Anyone who has ever parented a two-year old knows that you keep your cool when he screams and demands to play with the hammer, hand him his Teddy to distract him and calmly go back to baking the cookies. That’s how we set limits for him – by being the adults in the room and letting him learn how far he can go without hurting himself – not to mention all the rest of us.
That’s our job. And his job is to make us do our job. Obama tried hard to get us to do our job, but we mostly relaxed on his watch. Now we’ve been forced to take on the work because if we don’t, it’s curtains!
So now what should we talk about?
Maya Angelou says, “We need to remember that we are created creative, and can invent new scenarios as frequently as they are needed.”
I think it’s time that we all invent those new scenarios together, getting very creative, very specific and very visionary. I believe it has to start with each one of us delving deep into our own wounds and being willing to do the work of healing ourselves, for starters.
Pema and I, in those early years, were both hurt dreamers. We knew that our practices had to start with our own masked confusions: our fears, our hurt places, our stories. We questioned our assumptions of white privilege; we looked for the gems hiding in our deep shadows; we tried to make our unconsciousness conscious.
Meditating helped calm us, we agreed, but it was hard because it showed us who we really were, and that did not always look pretty. But we knew that, however messy the process was, we had no choice because the alternative was way too bleak.
“I’ll just make the same mistakes over and over again,” she confessed one day.
Me too.
And then she went on to help half the world do the deep work that she personally took on. I bow to her.
I took the householder path – the ‘monk’ as wife and mother – carrying water and chopping wood in every ordinary way – and then in some not-so ordinary ways.
We’ve been preparing for this time in the world for ages whether we’ve known it or not, getting ready for the almost-boiling point when we’d have to hop out of the pot or get cooked. We’d be naïve to pretend that the pot has just started cooking with this election. It’s been heating up for a long, long time – longer than we’ve been around. Since the Industrial Revolution? Since colonization? Since Abraham walked the earth?
Maybe we’re slow learners, but however we want to think about it, the time has more than come for us to change course.
Hopping out of the pot may be just a matter of getting to know ourselves so deeply and honestly that we have the courage to open up and love, no matter what. It may be just that simple and that hard.
Loving, we mysteriously spread a high vibration wherever we go. Without even trying, we become contagious with kindness, spreading it around like fairy dust and magically attracting to us everything we need. I have no idea exactly how it works, but I do know it works, and that it is what ultimately changes the world.
Yes, we’re going through the eye of the needle now, but how else do we make the big changes that have to be made? Meditation is just one way, but there are many. My personal preference is dancing and singing and becoming aware of how I really feel – body, mind and spirit. I know this is all our birthrights.
Easy or hard, when the pot heats up our only choice is to make a move. And then learn all over again how to walk.
Now what should we talk about?
Well, last evening at sunset I went back down to the Bay. The birds were there! Gulls, cormorants, ducks. A few pelicans.
Not in droves, no, but the birds were there.
Breathe…
