woo woo love adventure

OK, so I've discovered that I'm way more of an adventurer at heart than a scientist. The experiment is over, my dear friends, and the true findings are that I love adventures! I've been on something of a marathon of navel-gazing lately and the unlikely news is that all signs, from the enneagram to astrology and numerology, point to me as an adventurer, such as it is, so I'm accepting the truth and getting back on track.

The adventure lately has been getting truly woo woo, folks! I can't stop listening to the Marie Manuchehri radio show and learning more about the cool guests she interviews - just finished a fascinating book by Sue Frederick, called I See Your Dream Job. Listening to Marie and my favorite guest of hers, Dr. Sheila Dunn-Merritt, got me really interested in holistic medicine and I found an amazing chiropractor who I can't believe is right here in Tennessee! His intuitive approach and various chiropractic and other healing techniques have me feeling better than I have in years. And thanks to my dear, amazing sister I'm now a juicing fiend! My current favorite is a celery/green apple/ginger/lemon/baby kale blend - yummy! I'm also totally loving my subscription to Eckhart Tolle TV. And I look forward every week to sitting with the Nashville Insight Meditation Group. Did I mention that I have plans to see the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Pema Chodron this year? Seriously, my life is an embarrassment of riches on the spiritual front these days and I am so, so grateful.

The good news is that I haven't floated off into the ether just yet - we've been hitting the local trails and there's nothing my feet like better than wandering these beautiful hills, especially when there's a lake up ahead...

nourishment adventure

I'm one of those lucky souls who has a great relationship with their siblings. These two amazing people are so dear to my heart it makes me teary on a regular basis. And I had the delightful good fortune to get to spend this past weekend with them, which doesn't happen too often since we're spread all over the globe. Today I'm feeling so full up from time with them and my sister's wonderful family, from time away from the regular bourgeois stresses and strains of my life, and likely from time away from a lot of the technology that distracts me. Once again, I've been in the lovely travel zone of in-the-moment. Plus, I read two Sun magazines and caught up on my sleep. Ah! And now it feels so great to be home with my sweetie. Hooray for travel and hooray for coming home!

stuck adventure

(Photo of my legs by my dear nephew, Tobin)
Sorry for the silence from over here, but I find I'm a bit stuck on the blog front. On the living front there's been lots of activity - a fun trip to see dear family, birthdays, reading and enjoying lots of amazing input from the universe - but when I try to figure out how to express it in a post here, it's eluding me. I guess it's all too big to be summed up - no one heading captures it all.

Fall has traditionally been a hard time for me. I really dread the short days. But lately I've started to see the gift it offers, the invitation to slow down and bring one's energy inward, to take stock of the year's activity and perhaps set an intention for the new year. It can be a time to treasure the more subtle pleasures of life and I must admit I'm ready for that.

One of the lovely gifts this fall has brought to me is Anne Lamott's newest book: Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers. What a jewel - small and packed with classic Annie goodness. And here's a video that dear Camille shared with me - with Cheryl Strayed no less! And one exciting tidbit is that Ms. Strayed (aka Sugar!) is going to be at the library this spring. Truly my cup runneth over!

mindful adventure

Every day
I see or I hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It is what I was born for -
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world -
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagent -
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these -
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean's shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

~ "Mindful" by Mary Oliver, from Why I Wake Early
I hope I can be forgiven for quoting all of "Mindful" here. Normally I would just quote a section of a poem out of respect for the author, but, well, I just couldn't help myself. Plus, it's up all over the web, but whoever put it up first missed the second "I" in "I see or I hear," so they all seem to have it that way, and having heard it the right way on one of Mary Oliver's recordings (and verified it in my copy of Why I Wake Early), I just had to fix that. Seriously, it changes the whole rhythm of that section, right?

This poem has been wonderful company for me lately. I go through spells of memorizing poetry to try to keep my mind agile, since I'm hopeless at crossword puzzles and electronic brain games make me nervous. Mary Oliver's poems resonate so deeply with my soul, I love to have several memorized to recite when I'm surrounded by beauty, like today on Cheekwood's sculpture trail, or just in my daily wanderings. You can only imagine how excited I am about her new book of poetry, A Thousand Mornings, coming out in October! [Also, if you live in the Boston, NYC, DC, or Milwaukee areas, she's doing readings this fall. I'm keeping my fingers crossed she adds some dates within driving distance of Nashville...]

annie adventure

So the magic continued this week. While at Squam, I received a lot of encouragement from Marie Manuchehri about the role of writing in my life. You may have noticed that I love to go places and do retreats and attend workshops, so of course I spent the first part of my week back Googling different writers and teachers and seeing what classes and workshops they offer. It isn't lost on me that I could have been using that time to actually write, but it was great fun to explore and dream about the Sun magazine writing retreat and Natalie Goldberg and Susan Piver's workshops out west.

And then on Wednesday morning I woke up and couldn't get dear Anne Lamott out of my head, even after I got to work. So I did a quick search just to see what her schedule looks like these days. Imagine my amazement when I saw that she was to speak that very evening in Knoxville, of all unlikely places!

It just seemed unthinkable that she would be in Tennessee and I wouldn't see her, so I called the church that was hosting the event and when they said they had a few tickets left I found myself buying one, cancelling my afternoon obligations, texting Rodg who I was sure would think I'd either been kidnapped or possessed, and figuring out which bus would get me back to my car in time to be in Knoxville by 6:30pm EDT.

If you ever have the opportunity to hear Anne Lamott speak, I strongly encourage you to do whatever it takes to get there. Even a six-hour round trip drive melts away in her presence. Her topic for the evening was the search for meaning, and mixed in with stories about her son and grandson, writing, and Jesus, she talked about the power of letting go of perfectionism, deeply accepting one's own "neurotic, screwy self," and connecting with people to whom you can say anything.

She told a beautiful story about a scene in the documentary From Mao to Mozart (now streaming on Netflix - guess what I'll be watching this weekend) in which Isaac Stern tells a young Chinese girl, "Sing it to me" after hearing her play a piece technically beautifully, but seemingly without emotional connection. I loved her description of the importance of having people in your life that you really honor and trust and who say "Sing it to me." And how you find that you can and that you can pass it on.

The talk ended around 9pm and it seemed like the prudent thing to do would be to skip the booksigning and hit the road, but when I exited the church it was like a Grateful Dead concert had let out - people streaming out to their cars and total gridlock - plus I didn't really know exactly how to get back onto the interstate and was happy to let traffic die down. And, with so many people leaving, all I could picture was Anne Lamott sitting by herself in the church basement. So I called Rodg and he encouraged me to stick around.

It might have been smartest to go look at the line first, but I was high on the experience and relieved there were still books to buy, so I got myself a copy of the classic Bird by Bird, feeling like it would be a good totem for my writing life, even if I think we have another copy somewhere in the house. When I made it to the front of the line, which actually had been quite respectable and Anne was looking pretty exhausted, I told her a quick version of how I'd had her on my mind all morning, found out about the talk, and driven from Nashville on the spur of the moment. In classic Anne Lamott style she replied dryly, "That God is such a show-off."


Thank you Anne! I'm ready to take your advice, to be in the holy moment, to carry a pen with me at all times, to write what I'd like to come upon, and to write badly so I can write something good. I can't wait until you come back to Tennessee again someday!

greatness adventure

While chatting with a fellow participant at the Shambhala Training weekend in Birmingham, I learned about A Touch of Greatness. This documentary came so highly recommended, and I was looking for something about that length to watch on my Kindle Fire back at the hotel anyway, that I decided to give it a try. And it blew me away!

I haven't been able to stop recommending this film to anyone who will listen. Albert Cullum was a teacher in Rye, NY in the late '50s and early '60s who was so present to his students and who so saw in each of them a touch of greatness, that he completely revolutionized education in his grade school classrooms. Amazingly, his friend Robert Downey, Sr. captured this on film - his black and white footage is devastatingly beautiful.

I can't do this film justice. Learn more about it here, watch the trailer here and scenes from it here, and if you're lucky enough to be able to stream it on Netflix, put it at the top of your queue!

purpose adventure

I watched an Eckhart Tolle video about finding one's life purpose last weekend and it really affected how I experienced this past week. Here's the sequence that has stuck with me:



I laughed with complete recognition when he described how most people drink a glass of water. That's definitely how I've lived so much of my life. But I really am starting to feel the violence of that. The more time (and it's a second by second practice for me) I'm spending being present in each moment and seeing that as my purpose, the more whole I feel. It's pretty powerful! And definitely fits with my Less theme for the year.

Seeing each moment as enough and gathering my energy from where it leaks into the past and future has such a good, healthy feeling to it, when I'm there. It also feels great not to have such a sense of striving and to see life as a friend and not a big self-improvement project that I'm responsible for.

At the same time, it's been helpful to remember one of my favorite lojong slogans through all of this: "Abandon any hope of fruition." It's amazing how I can turn even befriending my life and surrendering to the moment as something to strive for. I would love to learn to relax into all of this instead of constantly pushing for it. But I'm encouraged when I read these types of reminders and know I'm not alone.

fearless adventure

I love everything Andrea Scher writes on her blog, but a recent post was especially meaningful to me. In it she shared an experience about how hard it can be to sit with the feeling that someone could be upset with you (and how we often make up the fact that someone is even upset with us in the first place). It's a great post and you should go read it here, probably right now. There's a lot of wisdom in it.

Andrea's post reminded me of a story that Pema Chodron shares in her teachings about being on a three-year retreat and her feeling that another retreatant, who had been a close friend of hers, was very upset with her. One night the situation had gotten so bad that Pema couldn't sleep and went to the meditation hall and just stayed with the raw pain of it. She then saw how much of her personality had been built around wanting to avoid this feeling.

As she writes in Taking the Leap: "I had a completely clear insight that my whole personality, my whole ego structure, was based on not wanting to go to this groundless place. Everything I did, the way I smiled, the way I talked to people, the way I tried to please everybody - it was all to avoid feeling this way. I realized that our whole facade, the little song and dance we all do, is based on trying to avoid the groundlessness that permeates our life. By learning to stay, we become very familiar with this place, and gradually, gradually, it loses its threat." She puts it this way in one of her talks: "You get pretty fearless."

I loved reading Andrea's post and being reminded of Pema's experience because I was in a similar situation recently. I'd been at an event that was pretty far out of my comfort zone and afterwards I could feel myself doing what Pema describes so perfectly as "the little song and dance we all do." In this case, I could feel myself trying to rewrite the experience, which was fine while it was happening, to make myself look better, to take away any possibility that I'd come off looking anything other than totally OK.

And then I caught myself, because isn't most of this type of behavior sort of unconscious, kind of like the background stuff your computer is running while you're doing something else? I saw what I was doing and it felt exhausting. The song and dance rewriting of history was just exhausting. And unnecessary. It was over. People would think what they would. They always do anyway. And what did it matter? I was still here. I was still alive and in another moment.

And with that realization I became a little more fearless, I must admit. I could feel the discomfort of what people might have thought of me and it was something I could live through. It was uncomfortable, but it didn't annihilate me. And isn't that what we fear, really, underneath all the unnecessary singing and dancing? Our time can be used better, trust me.

shadow adventure

My poor sweet husband had to experience my shadow side on Tuesday evening when I melted down after too many six-day work weeks. Knowing that I have several more to come, I re-committed myself to my joy adventure, slowing down and simplifying as much as possible to be able to be present and feel the joy in my very full week. And there was a lot to enjoy:

A trip Cheekwood to see...


the Japanese garden...


where the cherry tree was in full bloom...


and hear an inspiring talk by a truly lovely young French artist, Mathilde Roussel, whose authenticity was so refreshing. No posing, just passion.

[Photo from www.mathilderoussel.com]
Then there was T.C. Boyle's talk/performance at the library, which was a lot like this (down to the yellow blazer):



And bookmaking workshops with an amazing visiting artist from Portland, Oregon, Helen Hiebert:


Truly my cup runneth over. Each of these lovely people did a beautiful job of expressing to me their joy in seeing the world in their own special way and following their bliss. And they're all making the world a better place for it. Message received.

more joy adventure

I think I may be getting the hang of this joy thing! This week my joy adventure included two dinners with good friends, a trip to a local museum with tears at the beautiful art (especially a painting of my favorite skyline), a walk to look at the flowering trees, a massage, an awesome book, a completely delightful movie, an amazing gift of an hour with my dear Mr. Hadley, and a program at work complete with surprise guest performer that was over-the-top fun. Amazing how much happier my life is when I do the things that bring me joy. It's so obvious, but how often do we do it, really? And I loved how the universe got in on the action, too, bringing several of these joyful moments into my life completely unexpectedly. Ah, life, you delight me!














Oh, and here's a cool video!

hadley adventure

(Photo of dear Albert Hadley from Elle Decor, Feb/Mar 2000; Fernando Bengoechea photographer)

It was such an honor to work on the Albert Hadley exhibit. I wanted to share some images with you, my dear friends and family who've been on this journey with me. Thank you all for your kind support!

style adventure

These women just completely delight and inspire me! I'm no clothes horse - yes, that's putting it mildly for those of you who know me well - I fall into the minimalist, clothes as uniform category. But the freedom that comes through here is palpable. Soak it up!

dark adventure

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God.

~T. S. Eliot

This has not, historically, been my favorite time of year. I get really worried about ice and snow. I've been known to go into a manic frenzy of gift making, trying to ensure everything is Holiday Perfect. But as I share in this guest post on lovely Steph's blog, Creative Living Experiment, I think I'm starting to make my peace with the shorter days of December. I'm so honored to have been included in this series of reflections on the Solstice!

This week, as I was catching up on my Sun magazine reading (up to November, folks!), I had one of those perfect-thing-at-the-perfect-time moments reading an interview with Michael Meade. Holy moly! It totally knocked me out:

"When I was growing up, I liked big questions: What is life all about? Why are we here? Eventually I learned that the key question involves the meaning seeded within each individual life.

"Almost all cultures have the notion that there is a judgement when we die. Some kind of accounting has to be made of one's life. I believe God - and to me 'God' is just shorthand for the ineffable divine presence - has only one question for us at the end: 'Did you become yourself?' We have a seeded self that begins to germinate at birth. Our true goal in life is to become that self.

"There's an African proverb: 'When death finds you, may it find you alive.' Alive means living your own damn life, not the life that your parents wanted, or the life some cultural group or political party wanted, but the life that your own soul wants to live. That's the way to evaluate whether you are an authentic person or not."

Yes, yes, YES!!! Now we're talking. And the amazing thing is that when you read this, don't you know exactly what self he's talking about? Isn't this incredibly liberating? Perhaps you're already living that life, and if so, hooray for you - keep going. But for the rest of us who secretly know who we are, but still look to the outside world for approval and encouragement and thus are constantly thrown off the path, doesn't this just feel like the best manifesto ever? I can't tell you how inspired I am to live my own damn life:) Hell yeah! Now this, my friend, this is the God who is waiting for me in the dark.

If all of this rings your bell the same way it does mine, you might also enjoy these videos: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. Plus you get some Very Dramatic Music.

[Also, I just watched an amazing John O'Donohue video from Sounds True right along these lines. Can't help but share!]

Other good things rocking my December world have been this incredible episode of This American Life (continuing the theme of the listening adventure), which really basically cracked me open in the best possible way. Also, super excited to have received the first crate of our local Community Supported Art program. It includes five amazing pieces of artwork by local artists, including (delightfully enough) my totally fabulous dentist's son!

listening adventure

I love listening to people talk about things they're passionate about. And some of the best conversations I've heard lately have been on "Insights at the Edge," Sounds True's weekly podcasts with Tami Simon. I especially enjoyed "Difficult Times and Liberation" with Jack Kornfield and "Coleman Barks: Rumi, Grace, and Human Friendship". They're such good company and especially welcome in the car. Perhaps you might enjoy checking them out?

kinship adventure

Photo from Buck Brannaman's website

"I've started horses since I was twelve years old and have been bit, kicked, bucked off and run over. I've tried every physical means to contain my horse in an effort to keep from getting myself killed.

"I started to realize that things would come much easier for me once I learned why a horse does what he does. The method works well for me because of the kinship that develops between horse and rider."

~Buck Brannaman

I know, first no movie recommendations, and now I can't stop, but I watched Buck this morning and was blown away by his pragmatic, compassionate wisdom. For me, it was a major lesson in the care and keeping of one's soul. May you be attentive and gentle with your own this week.

shining adventure

I love this organization, as you well know:) It's full of wonderful people like this sweet friend: