Signs of New Life
April 7, 2013Oh yes, I know that spring is finally coming to the Prairie! I can see it in the daylight sun, even if it’s not yet reflected back through leaves or color here in Minnesota.
Mostly, I can see it in the trash in my yard, which has emerged yet again from another winter leaving me in wonder.
I live on a corner, so it’s not inconceivable that people come by and drop stuff my way, but every year I am dumbfounded by the sheer variety and quantity.
This year, besides my own yard signs which froze into the ground (in violation of MN law, which would have you remove them directly after elections so you don’t tick off your neighbors through a long miserable winter), I have an endless variety of random items. I’m not talking about candy wrappers or colorful bags of other people’s dog crap—yawn. Or the unbagged piles of other people’s dog’s crap either. No, I’m talking about things that really make you wonder.
A Barbie doll’s head, for instance, one year. Did some angry kid rip that off of their sibling’s beloved doll and heave it through a passing car window, leaving only a tiny hole in the snow where it fell, making it impossible for the family to find even if they came back and tried? Wouldn’t Barbie’s long blond hair have stuck up defiantly out of the snow as a flag—here I am!? Perhaps it was an angry mother at wit’s end on a horrific February day: “What, you forgot your mittens AGAIN? I’m taking down Barbie!”
Or a tennis shoe, looking like it belonged to an adolescent male. Again, I’m left with nothing but my speculations: was my house the location for a fight between kids as they walked home? Was this revenge? Did a mean bully throw the beloved shoe of some sweet innocent kid? Or did some kid hate these shoes so much that he (I’m presuming gender here) wanted to be able to get home and say he’d lost a shoe and needed new ones? There is no phone wire over my house that someone was trying to throw it onto. So I’m bewildered.
I love imagining stories that account for weird trash items. Since I don’t know a thing, the story is all I have, and wondering about them gives me something to do as I clean the yard. I’ve found items less intriguing—a wallet, with no cash or credit cards, but library card and other things with a name on them, which I turned into the police station. Used condoms—WHAT!?!? My YARD!?!?!? On a CORNER!??!
This year, from the looks of it, the trash is mostly mundane—my own plastic pots from seedlings, that must have blown around after I stacked them neatly in the corner; gum wrappers and cigarette butts from passer-by. (Last year, a healthy cannabis plant that emerged in garden told me that someone had thrown another kind of butt into my yard!)
Here’s the thing: I’m so excited for spring, for access to my yard and garden again, that even the trash is a welcome site. Today’s task is to pick it up and get rid of it, but not in a spirit of anger or resentment. More like, “Hey! It must be spring!”
Yesterday, in a heart meditation session, I saw that my long-neglected practice had resulted in my heart looking similar to my yard: Though I could see healthy green growth and even some flowers when I looked closely in there, I could also see brambles of dead thorny branches which needed to be cut away before I could access the growth without hurting myself. For once, I was kind. For once, I put on heavy gloves in my mind’s eye before reaching in to remove those thorns. For once, I could see that the thorns were just an easily removable obstacle, and that the growth, the health, the vitality was right there beckoning to me. Clearing away the brambles I visualized in my mind’s eye became a blessing, a labyrinth leading me to the clearing.
When it’s been a long hard winter, even the trash, even the brambles, in our real and metaphoric gardens can be seen as a gift. The clearing away can be done with joy and gratitude, eagerness and optimism, when we know that spring is coming.
When we’ve been away from spiritual practice, even clearing away the rubble to get us back there can become a joy. May our spiritual practices allow us to see even ‘yard pick up day’ as a blessing, greeted with gratitude after a long cold winter. With longing for new life in our eye, may all manner of things become beautiful!
What a Day for a Daydream!
December 30, 2012It turns out I’m not as good at daydreaming as I used to be. When I was about nine, my mother would have to physically rouse me from my bed, not because I was sleeping, but because I was spending happy hours imagining my life as Mrs. Paul McCartney.
My fantasies involved boats, castles, me on stage at Beatles concerts—that is, ‘me’ bearing no physical resemblance to any adult I might ever grow up and become. I was devastated when, one day, somehow, I let my dream slip out and my older brother said scornfully, “Why would Paul McCartney marry a nine year old in Akron, Ohio?”
After that I got more realistic. I moved on to George Harrison, the youngest Beatle. Perhaps that first ‘realistic’ decision was the beginning of the demise of my fantasizing prowess.
Because these days, it turns out, I’m no good at daydreaming at all. Over the years I’ve gotten much better at planning, and actually executing plans. I’ve moved across country, switched jobs, launched projects, had a wedding, adopted a kid—done all kinds of other things that took hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny acts and choices, promptly scratched off my to-do list. But somewhere in there, daydreaming fell off the table.
I didn’t know how bad I’d gotten at it until my spiritual teacher gave me an assignment this week. Take time each day, she said. Stare into space. Daydream. Imagine what would be most fulfilling, delicious, inspiring, to do and to be. It doesn’t matter if you’ll never do it, if no one ever could. Just see what you imagine! Find your young self, see through her eyes!
What once would have been a breeze is now really hard. Back then, along with being tall and willowy and beautiful, and marrying a Beatle, I had every intention of being super-wealthy, being a famous writer, traveling to the most exotic places. Now my rational mind jumps right in. Super-wealthy? I say? You want to be part of the one percent? And instead of enjoying, even for a moment, some delicious luxury vacation, or even the philanthropist I might become, I am fuming about the ‘fiscal cliff’ and drafting imaginary letters to Congress. Word by word.
I think what my spiritual teacher is pointing me to (though she is a bit cryptic and never says why she gives me the particular assignments she does) is to find joy in the longing itself. To allow the imagining to take on a life of its own, but primarily to allow that quality of desire and longing to truly take root in me, until I remember what my young self knew—that we are made to dream, as well as to act.
So, here’s what I’ll do, needing structure to help me out. I’m piling up all of the magazines, random bits of ribbon or paper and 2012 calendars in the house, which I would otherwise be recycling as I clean up the holiday wreckage. I picture looking through all of the materials with one focus—to find items which evoke longing in me, which provoke desire, even if I’m not sure exactly why!
After I gather up images, words, whatever I want—ribbons, sheets of color, fabrics, who knows? I’ll piece them together to see how they fit, to see what shapes they make.
And then, at the end of the day, I’ll have—I don’t know what!!! A jumbled mess? A picture of young Paul McCartney, back when he was cuter than a puppy? What I hope to have is a little bit of a snapshot about what longing feels like in me, so that I can begin to recognize its voice when it whispers in my ear. So that I can become a respectful vessel for my heart’s deepest longings. So I get better at this again.
On New Years’ Day, I plan to go through my usual practice, with friends, of making gratitude boards for the year that’s over, and a vision board for the year that’s coming—same process of cutting and pasting, but with a very different focus as I look through my materials. This time, celebrating 2012 and envisioning things I actually hope and plan to do in 2013.
I’m going to be really curious to see what effect, if any, my extra session of fantasizing has on the visioning process. The fun thing about creative experiments is that you can never guess their results!
However you see in 2013, however you imagine it and live it, may it be full of blessings for you and yours. See you next year!
About
Quest for Meaning is a program of the Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLF).
As a Unitarian Universalist congregation with no geographical boundary, the CLF creates global spiritual community, rooted in profound love, which cultivates wonder, imagination, and the courage to act.