4 cats, 2 dogs, a book and a gazebo

Maybe that is the next blog name or perhaps a movie...  That is how many are in the gazebo this afternoon. Mind you this is not abnormal at all. It seems as if, when I am home alone, I am never really alone and that is perfectly ok with me. There is a sacred rhythm that a cat's head nudge or a dog at your feet brings. The sacredness of companionship without words.  

We have this sometimes with friends, family, our significant other. Sometimes it comes while sitting in the same space, in that lovely silence where one does not feel compelled to fill it with talk. Sometimes it is on a walk where the falling leaves are the only voice needed. It is in the rise and fall of a baby chest during nap. It is in the hospital room with the bbrrr of the machines that guard life. It is all around us.  The thing is, sometimes I just don't allow myself to slow down to hear it. Sometimes the silence feels scary because i get thinking about things that brings anxiety. 

Over the past months, I have been learning to pay attention to those things that bring anxiety.  In fact, I have been learning to let anxiety be my teacher and in that, I have also found that I can enjoy the silence. I can let the silence speak it's own message. The silence brings great wisdom and healing, if only I take the time to listen.

The gazebo seems a bit quiet today. However, if I lean into the silence this is what i hear: children's laughter, 4 or 5 different birds chirping, a purring cat and a snoring dog, the breeze blowing through the trees, the guy up the road getting his race car ready for tonights race. In reality, silence isn't a vacuum of noise, rather it is listening to life on a different level than we are accustomed. There are a lot of exciting surprises at this level.   

good group guidelines

We used these group guidelines during during my graduate work. I also use them in all the groups that I facilitate. Several have asked for a copy, so here they are!

They can be attributed Parker Palmer.



To create a spirit of respect, curiosity, and dialogue, we will...

- Presume welcome and extend welcome.
- Refrain from fixing, saving or setting straight others in the group.
- When interaction gets tricky, turn to inquiry rather than advocacy. (wonder about something instead of defending something) Pay attention to the distinction between dialogue (which begins with a question) and debate ( which begins with an answer).
- Make sure your questions are real questions, not ones intended to make a point, demonstrate prior knowledge or communicate a hidden agenda.
- Observe confidentiality, especially regarding material shared by other participants.

Tears of August

I cried a lot the month of August.  Sometimes it was one of those body shaking sobs, sometimes it was just a single tear at the edge of my eye. Tears arrived in the middle of a meeting, at the end of lunch, in the morning as I drank my coffee and in the evening while watching a sitcom.  The tears seemed to have a rhythm of their own, showing up in the darnedest places and the most inconvenient times. And, I allowed them to be. 

I allowed my joy live with my sadness.

The events at the end of August were probably some of the biggest transitions points of my life.  I said good-bye to some folks who probably know me better than most. They were a holding place for me over this past year, as I explored a number of deep soul areas: for this I am eternally grateful.  Second, my daughter headed to college, which of course carries with it joy and sadness all wrapped up together. I don't mention these for any reason other than to give you context for what I am going to say next.

I was present for the joys.  I was present for the sadness.

I was thinking the other day about how I learned to deal with difficult emotional situations.  Somehow, somewhere, and probably from many different teachers, I learned to run from them, distract myself so as not to feel them. I learned to fear them.  I think most of us learn this in some way or another. In fact, it is how part of our brain actually works.  We perceive threat of some sort and our brain's survival system is activated and we fight, fight, freeze or head to our preferred addiction. this might seem helpful in the short term, but we are not created to live in this part of our brain...but that is another discussion.  

In a sense, it is a bit like seeing a traffic jam ahead on the highway. We can get off the highway in order to avoid the traffic back up.  That might work well for a traffic jam, but we often take the exit ramp of of of our own lives in order to bypass the traffic jam of difficult feelings. The hard emotions never seem to go away if we try to go around them, so we tend to get stuck under the bridges, never re-entering our life and experience all that it is meant to be. It is as if we creep back up the ramp to see if the traffic has cleared, only to find out it is still there.  We are desperate to experience relief so we stick with our distractions. However, truly relief does not come until we able to get back up on the highway and travel through the difficult emotions from which we have been trying to hide. This is the process of a life time.

So, back to that earlier note: I was present for the joys, and present for the sadness of August. I was compassionate toward my sadness and I let it be. Part of this past year's process has been allowing myself to be present and aware of what was going on inside of me, to lean into whatever it was and to consider it all gift.  It is really hard work. Often times situations do not feel like a gift until later when we find out how strong we (or another) are, or how resilient, or how brave... It is what we discover about our own self and each other: that is gift.  

I no longer find it helpful to exit my life, to live under the bridges, rather I find it much more rewarding to work through the emotional traffic jams. It is still hard work. Over the past month I have experienced some of the rewards of doing so.  I can experience the joy more fully when I attend to the sadness. I learn when I allow the sadness to come, it will not over take me rather it can transform me.  It isn't sadness for sadness sake. It is sadness that shows me more of who I am, and what I value. And in it all, I can experience joy more fully. I find out I am stronger than I thought.  It is the transformation of suffering. In all of this: is gift.