Pocket Guide to Grace: Lesson 28.3

Step one:  Create a to-do list.

Step two:  Add a few things at the end that you've already done.

Step three: Cross those things you've already done off.  Good Job!

Step four: Proceed with life (as in go ahead and get distracted)

Step five:  Lose your to-do list.  Just fucking lose it.

Step six:  Forgive yourself for losing your to-do list.  Really.  Fuck it.  

Step seven: Proceed with your day.  

Step eight: Catch yourself getting pissed at yourself for the things you didn't do.

Step nine: Forgive yourself again.  This may help:  "What are you going to get an award in Heaven for doing everything perfectly?  No!  So then, fuck it!"  (thanks, Tesia, for that one.)

Step ten: Proceed to bed time.  Go to bed. (I know that's two steps, but, again, fuck it. We're done honoring rules of to-do lists here)

Step eleven: Oops, you're thinking of those things again.  

Step twelve:  Let it go.  No one is perfect.  Isn't that great?  You're supposed to be, well, flawed.  Good Job!

Step thirteen: Let it go again.

Step fourteen: Again

Step fifteen: Repeat steps twelve through thirteen until drifting into a very peaceful rest.

Good Night.  Peace out.

The animals feed themselves.

I quit the farm.

After Thanksgiving Dinner, my aunts and cousins told me I had to start playing Farmville, a virtual-farming game that is available through Facebook.

"We can give each other gifts," Jessie said.  "I gave Ang and Tom reindeer this morning."  She was snickering.  They know it's silly, but they're all doing it anyway.

"I really can't, guys.  I don't have cable or a gaming system for a reason, I get hooked on that shit and then I don't do what I'm supposed to do in real life.  I have way too much on my plate right now to take up another addiction."

"You can spend as much or as little time as you want" Auntie Lori says, "You have to get a farm!"

"I can spend as much or as little time as I want on Facebook, but somehow I always spend way more time than I want.  Really, I don't need one more reason to be online, I got to like pay bills and eat meals and stuff."

By the end of the night I agreed to get a farm.  Fuck it.  It's just a silly Facebook game.

By Christmas I had a very sweet farm.  I had more crops and animals and "points" than most of my family. Jessica sent me an e-mail just a few days before Christmas.  "Can't wait to see you.  Nice farm.  What's your secret?  I'd like to know"

I e-mailed back:   "Insomnia's my secret."

Which was half the truth.  I had spent many a late night farming when I was too sleep deprived to do much else.  You just point and click.  Point and click.  Point and click.  Then you buy barns and houses and pretty little decorations.  My excuse for farming during daytime hours was that "I needed something mindless," and it sure was.  I even had some free child-labor via the exploitation of my niece, who loved the game.

There was another, much dirtier truth.  I was competing with my most recent ex-boyfriend.

I spent HOURS working on a virtual farm almost entirely to make mine cooler and better than his.  He was competing with me, too.  I knew it.   I could see it in his crop circles.

"The truth shall set you free."  Well... What is the truth really?  That it was a waste of time?  That it was childish and petty?  That that game is totally stupid?

I like this truth: Once upon a time I had a virtual-farm habit.  It was short lived, in the scheme of things, and it's over now.  


I left a sign on my "farm" that says "I've skipped town.  Don't worry, the animals feed themselves."  This was over a week ago.

That same evening, Tesia and I stopped at her plot in the Northampton community gardens.  It was one of the first nights of the year that we could be outside without shivering, and neither of us had been to her garden all winter.  We pulled the car right up to the edge, and used the headlights as lanterns as we went to inspect what the winter had done.

We wandered around the dark plot.  She was looking for garlic and I was just dancing.  Really.  Skipping and jumping and then, just like a little kid, hollered "It's here!  It's here!  It's really Spring."  As Tesia moves into the light from the car I say "I want to farm.  Real farming.  Real gardening.  Real life."

I looked down at the clumpy dirt, waiting to be tilled and fertilized and loved, and could imagine a very very sweet garden.

(photo by Micheal R. Mosall  www.mosallphotography.com)

Viva St. Patrick's Day

Yes.  I'm wearing green.  So is my Mostly-Polish-American house mate.

I was hoping to get to work and find the three year old that I nanny for dressed in his snake shirt, just to be ironic.

No one knows a thing about St. Patrick, except that he wasn't Irish.  The story is that he was English, during the Roman Empire, which made him a Roman.  The Roman's had ignored that silly little island with those odd Celts for quite some time, but finally, they decided to convert the people.  Thus enters St. Patrick.  Or so the story goes.

Revered amongst a drinking nation and highly honored in the cities across America where the drunken ancestors of the mostly-oppressed mostly-drunken-Irish immigrants settled and multiplied (and multiplied and multiplied), the reportedly-English St. Patrick has somehow become the hero of Irish culture even to the people who's families have not set foot in a Catholic Church in generations.  He's so loved that Americans of all heritages pretend to be Irish for his special day.  They're all, of course, jealous of the beer and whiskey.

The Irish are an excepting people, they'll let anyone drink with them, then move in. (well, this is true for the Catholics, I don't know about those Protestants)  The Irish-American Catholics have held onto this welcoming drunken spirit.  I do adore it so.

Really, I am Irish.  Don't even try to tell me otherwise.  I know, I know, you say "You're American, idiot".  And well, it's true, I'm American, but my family is SO Irish.  We're not even really conscious about it. ("We're Irish right?" my older cousin asks.  "Yes, more than anything else," I reply) We're all about family pride.  And drinking.  And pushiness and persistence.  And adopting any person with a Christmas dinner under 10 to join our crew, and bring their family (and hell, why not their friends, too?) I mean, what's Christmas without serving yourself from an buffet of dishes strewn over every surface and then searching for a seat?

We were talking about a different Holiday, though, won't we? (or wasn't I?, rather)

My only 100% Irish friend told me that he had heard somewhere that St. Patrick may have been Scottish, and though it wasn't Irish, it eased his mind just a little to think perhaps he at least wasn't English.  He then told me that his mother was having six people stay at her home this coming weekend so that they could attend the parade.

I went to an Irish Catholic school where we didn't even have classes on March 17th.  We just partied (sans Guinness or Jameson, of course) I don't know if they celebrate St. Patrick's day in public schools these days.  They certainly celebrate St. Valentine's day, but given that his name is now archaic and novel, it is easy to drop the "Saint" from the day.  And hearts! Chocolate! Of course the schools are fine with this.  How do we get kids exited about regular old clovers that don't even have four leaves? Or little scary men in odd suits that lie and tell you there's pots of gold at the end of the rainbow?  What's up with those pots?  No kid has ever seen a pot like that.  And how do we get them excited about stout?  Or Irish whiskey?

Well, they'll learn the wonders of pretending to be Irish-Catholic for a day in their own time, I suppose.

I'm not Atheist, I just find this pretty funny:

No worries.  I'm not bah humbugging this wonderful holiday.  I'll be drinking Guinness and eating Dubliner cheddar, this evening.   I was raised Irish-Catholic.  I have my pride.

The Revolution

“No revolution in outer things is possible without prior revolution in one's inner way of being. Whatever change you aspire to … must be preceded by a change in heart.” (yet another I Ching translation)


"I'm starting a revolution" I say, while pacing the dining room.


Tesia is sitting at her desk, illustrating."Oh great! I've been waiting for this." She turns and smiles at me. "Will it be televised?"



As the oppressive New England February was coming to it's end, I was ready to put an end to the internal oppressor.  I made up my mind to find my way back to to being me.  The fear that had crept in and taken stronghold had to go.  I would usurp.  I just had to figure out how.    


Little acts of civil disobedience had already taken place.  I started this blog.  I drove past the liquor store countless times without buying a jug of whiskey, and opted to return to the casual one or two beers here-and-there.  I was meditating, taking yoga classes, going for long walks, and even though a cold stole my voice for most of the month, I was still working on songs and playing guitar.  My virtual farm, an endless source of time-waisting, was left unharvested and withered.


Then one night, February 27th, to be precise, these and other little sparks lit a small fire.  I felt warm, and damnit I was going to stay warm.


"No. I don't think it'll be televised, but I'm sure it'll be all over facebook."  I smirk at Tesia.  I am still wandering the dining room looking for something.  "I've learned to be a little more guarded while feeling vulnerable. I'm feeling vulnerable, and I will not let the TV crews in."


I continue to look about, but my pace is slower than usual. More focused. My eyes do not dart, but steadily move from one surface to another.


"I've lost my phone again. But right now, instead of hating myself for losing my phone for a second time this evening, I am instead going to begin with this revolution. I am not going to go through the typical patterns of being mean to myself while pacing around ineffectively 'looking' for my phone.  I'm just going to be calm. I'm just going to breath and say 'yes, i've lost my phone again, and it's okay. it's here somewhere.'  Because, in actuality, losing my phone does not make me a fucking idiot, and thinking what a fucking idiot I am certainly wont help me find my phone.  Being right here, right now, will."


Within just a few seconds my phone is in my hand. 


"I like this." Tesia says.  She's helped me look for more than a few missing objects.  She's also been right here with me, a sister, through a very different and challenging time of my life.


"I like it too"


---


The next morning I wake up with the same cold I've had for weeks.  The back of my nose is painfully clogged, my throat hurts, my head is pounding with sinus pressure and my body is rejecting the idea of waking, and also rejecting the idea of falling back to sleep.


Whatever dreams I had that night are chased out of my head by a stampede of soldiers, or thoughts, rather, designed to keep me "safe".  "Why didn't I take more vitamins?" "I should have bought a humidifier." "I killed my own immune system, if I could just learn to freaking SLEEP." "Am I going to be able to work tomorrow?" "I'm so sad that I missed my Grandma and cousins' birthday party." "I miss so many things because I'm sick." "I'm so unreliable" and on and on.  An army of thoughts, marching in, relentless.


I take a deep breath.  In.  Out.  I remember that there is a revolution beginning.

It's Sunday morning.  I can hear Tesia making tea.  I keep breathing.  I am here.


One of my dearest friends, Nathan, leads a Buddhist Sangha from time to time.  I remember him referencing a mystical man, Mooji, during one of these Sangha's.   He teaches that your thoughts are like migrant workers.  They are not self-employed.  You can choose to pick them up and give them work, or just notice that they are there and pass on by.


Breathe In.  Breathe Out.  And...here I am.  


If you buy a piece of land, and decide to build a house, the context of the land, in your mind, transforms from just land to "where the house will be."  The trees, grass, shubs, dirt, rocks, and little life forms turn into "plot." They are "not-yet-the-house-and-yard."


One morning, not too long ago, I woke up and said, "What a mess I've made," and BAM, just like that, simple objects and happenings transformed to mess. I said "I'm going to simplify" and then everything occurred as incredible tangled and complicated.  This is an old pattern.  It's just now the slightly updated version, fit for 2010.


If you dig down deep inna that soul of yours and find sutten you'd forgotten to cook up and now it's all rotten, take that shit out and compost it.


Breathe In.  Breathe Out.


I love how songs will just come to mind like little gifts, sometimes they're my own, sometimes they're someone else's.  A lyric line comes to mind, and it's just perfect.


"You know they never really owned you. You just carried them around with you. Then one day you put them down and found your hands were free."  


I stretch.  I sigh.  I drink the water at my bedside table.  I slowly get up and walk calmly to the dining room, where Tesia is already up and dressed and creating at her desk.


"Spring has sprung early.  There are new beginnings all over the place, Tesia."
She smiles. "Is it part of the revolution?"


Tesia has been having her own revolution.  She is my house mate, my sister, my partner in crime.  We are the resistance, which comes in no resistance.  We are sharpening our "Love Warrior" swords.  We are out to make a difference in this world, and we know that begins right in our very own selves.  Let the cynics scowl. Let the fearful talk and whisper.  Let the soldiers stand there, their weapons useless against our indifference.


Freedom does not actually exist in the act of putting everything down and walking away.  It exists simply in knowing that one truly could. When all the weights and ties are seen for exactly what they are- imaginary- the incredible space that is created leaves so much room for love.  There's no need to run or revolt. This is me. That's the world.  


This is the revolution. It's happening now, while nothing is happening.


"Oh, this is absolutely the revolution, T.  We should have banner."  
"Yes.  We should totally make a banner," Tesia laughs.

*Yes, I quoted Ani, and yes, we know the banner is not grammatically correct in any language

reasons

"Everything happens for a reason."

You've heard this before.

I usually respond to this comment with,

"No, everything does not happen for a reason. People just say that to try to justify the shitty things that happen in their shitty lives."

Then this happened.

(Forgive the blury image, that's my right middle finger that's as blue as my jeans)

This happened for a reason. I was not paying attention to what I was doing, and I slammed my finger into the sliding closet door. The reason for my blue finger nail is my lack of mindfulness at that precise moment.

Yes. It hurt. I was nauseous and a little bit faint. Finger nails are weird like that. Your whole body responds to the pain. You probably already know about finger nails and torture...

I've had another response, recently, to "Everything happens for a reason." This response is for those people who want the reason to be in the future as opposed to the past. It is,

"You make up the reason."

So I have this blue fingernail, and it hurts. Today I was actually making a point to be mindful. Yesterday I was remarkably stressed out by many of lives circumstances, and found myself a blubbering fool. I woke up this morning and thought "Today I will be calm. Today I will do whatever I need to do to have peace." I began the day by meditating. I haven't meditated upon waking in many many years.

During one of the very few moments that I was not "mindful" today, I slammed my finger in a sliding door. Not all of the causes to their effects are so easily and immediately identified.

So I have this blue finger nail, on my right hand. It will probably be there a while. I can make up a really good reason for it. It's a reminder, right there on my prominent hand, to be mindful.

To pay attention.

To be vigilant.

I've been running from me for quite some time... It's a habit. To break a habit requires vigilance and attention.

And here's a nice little reminder, all bright and blue on my right hand.

The only place I want to run is "home", to exactly where I belong.

Really, I don't even need to run there. I'm here. Right now. Hello.