Simple Home, Beautiful Home Part III: Keeping a home and a life

The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful.  Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must be stripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living be laid for a foundation…”  –Henry David Thoreau

“…and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living be laid for a foundation.”

The other day was a rainy one.  I had no particular urgent place to be, no particular desire to be anywhere else but home.  Cleaning the bathroom was on my to-do list and I started out in a usual cleaning pace, dashing around collecting the glass cleaner, the floor cleaner, the tub cleaner, the toilet cleaner and four different rags to use with them–sponge, paper towel, old terry towels, one small, one large. I yanked on my rubber gloves and went at with a vengeance.

Somewhere between the last sparkle on the pedestal sink and the first sweep of the floor, it occurred me that this was the kind of day that I could feasibly spend hours in the bathroom if I wanted to.  I didn’t have race through the chore to get anywhere, as I too often do.  I didn’t even have to race through it in order to get to something fun–what would that be, anyway?  A brain-dead hour in front of the TV?  A visit to the refrigerator to see if there’s any more Friendly’s Fudge Swirl?   I had already determined that this was going to be a slow, uncommitted day.

So, I slowed down, and committed myself to enjoying what I was doing at that moment.  After all, I had just gathered up the pile of dust and dog hair, and had begun swiping the grey-white tiles clean, and the result was beginning to delight me.    I was on my knees, hand-polishing the tiles in the small bathroom, and they were becoming almost mirror-like.  So I downshifted once more, enjoying the movement of the arc of my arm across the tile, the rhythm of my entire body against the immobile, cold floor, the emergence of the hand-wrought shine.

Housework for me is usually a necessary evil; and definitely not as necessary to me as it is to some.   Things have gone undone in my house far too often.  I think that part of the reason is that when the clutter meter starts to ding in my visual field, I mentally disconnect altogether, much like the circuit breaker in my house.  At that point, I simply don’t see what I should see.   At that point, cleaning becomes a low priority, as I involve myself in activities that are more alive in my brain.

But now I’m thinking that oddly enough, maybe Thoreau has something in common with Martha Stewart, or Alexandra Stoddard in his belief that the first step, the foundation of a beautiful home, should be the housekeeping.  Also, the living.  He says that if you are to build your home upon a rock you must keep it well, and you must live well.

In the book Sweeping Changes:  Discovering the Joy of Zen in Everyday Tasks, Gary Thorp described a zen master elevating a mundane task into a spiritual dance:

My first encounter with Zen cleaning was at Zen Center in San Francisco…After meditation and breakfast on Saturday mornings, we had a work period….My favorite part of the work period was observing the manner in which one of our teachers, Katagiri Roshi, tackled his jobs.  It was a joy to see, for example, the energy flowing through him as he applied paste wax to the zendo floor.  How could washing the floor be that important?    Yet, there hw as, devoting himself to this mundane task.  Next came the arduous, amost acrobatic act of polishing, which no one else seemed able to perform with quite the same grace and verve.  Bent over the polishing cloth, Katagiri Roshi would run from one end of the zendo to the other, pause briefly, and then run back.  The movement was graceful, natural, unaffected….’Zen is meditation and sweeping the garden.’

If housekeeping is what matters, it becomes essential.  If housekeeping is what matters, we can turn it into a prayer.  In doing so, rather than being a heinous interruption in our weekend, it can elevate our lives and turn those small acts into the rock, the cinderblock, the foundation of our simply beautiful homes.

Simple Home, Beautiful Home, Part II: Stripping of your life

The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful.  Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must be stripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living be laid for a foundation…”  –Henry David Thoreau

“…and our lives must be stripped,”:

Years ago, I took this picture of my own dining room table when I saw the irony of where the bumper sticker, a gift from my son who had visited Walden, wound up.

If I had a chart that showed the times of my life at its most frenetic, and overlaid it with a chart that showed the times of my life when my house was the least welcoming and the most cluttered, they would line up nicely.   It’s hard, if not impossible, to maintain peace at home, when your life is out of control.

A study, “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness” by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers was recently released and highly publicized in the news.  It showed that despite great strides in the women’s movement, women are actually unhappier today overall.  Why would that be?  We have spent the last thirty years bringing home the bacon and frying it up in the pan.  Does that mean we have time to eat it?

Perhaps a correlation could be made in a book about another paradox, “The Paradox of Choice” by Barry Schwartz, which makes the case that too many options does not create feelings of well-being; on the contrary, too much choice winds up being overload for our psyches.  So, the myriad of options that opened up for women in the last few decades has actually left us wondering, “What now?” in a way that is disconcerting and confusing.  And for society in general, we are simply overwhelmed.

Thoreau tells us to strip down our lives, which can be taken to mean, choose!  ”Let your affairs be of two or three, not of a hundred,” he wrote.  Choose your value system, choose your day, choose your desires, and leave the rest alone.   Richard Foster, in his book “The Freedom of Simplicity” tells us that the first step is the most important:  ”First seek God’s kingdom.”  Seems easy, but what does that mean?

Maybe we can learn from the choices made by some of the more spiritually evolved.   St. Francis sold everything in order rebuild the church.  That was how he sought God’s kingdom.   In one of my posts, “Decluttering, Purging, and Peace Pilgrim,” I talked about the woman who made her life’s work walking across the country time and again for peace.  That was how she sought God’s kingdom.    I was lucky enough last week to see the Zen Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh at the Beacon Theatre.  He has made it his life’s work to teach people to be compassionate through mindfulness.  That is how he sought God’s kingdom.  I’ll bet that none of these people have spent an inordinate amount of time wondering whether to buy the LG flat screen TV or the Samsung; whether they should go to Cancun or Paris on vacation; whether they should stay in their marriage or leave.  If you’ve ever owned a good SLR camera, when you focus on something through the viewfinder, the rest blurs out of sight.  I imagine that’s what seeking God’s kingdom is like.

I’m not sure how to begin the life stripping-down process, but here’s a little brainstorming:

• Let go:  of stuff, of worry, of anxiety, of things you can’t control.
• Stop being a people-pleaser:  Say no once in a while.
• Be happy with what you have:  Cut the coveting.
• Don’t go it alone:  Ask for help, hired or otherwise, to share your burden.
• Recognize that’s it’s impossible to have it all.  What are you trading off for your life?
• Be easy on yourself.

Finally, the other night, Thich Nhat Hanh told the sell-out crowd that the kingdom of God is right here.

My dining room table today

Right now.  Right now you can only be in one place.  Right now you can only do one thing.  Right now you can only think one thought. Be present right here, right now in this beautiful moment and you have found the kingdom of God.

For me, that’s where the stripping down starts.

Simple Home, Beautiful Home: Part I

The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful.  Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must be stripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living be laid for a foundation…”  –Henry David Thoreau

I think there are about three blog entries that the above quote can be a springboard for, but let me start with a little visual inspiration.

“…the walls must be stripped…”

One of my favorite books is Peaceful Spaces by Alice Whately. The pictures above are all from this book.  I keep it out on one of my living room tables.  Every picture in it is inspiration for serenity and simplicity in the environment of the home.   Sometimes it’s hard to tear myself away from the picture to read the advice:

On Space Clearing:  “By questioning the purpose of everything you own, you will quickly realize that it is you, rather than the stuff that surrounds you, that must take center stage in the home.”

On Balance and Form:  “To achieve harmony in the home, it is vital to create a balance between form and function.  This concept derives from the Zen aesthetic of yin and yang, or in layman’s terms, opposing forces which, when equally represented, create a harmonious balance of energy.”

On Living Spaces:  “Opting for an uncontrived palette allows for the display of different furnishing styles and for the introduction of pattern and discreet touches of luxury.”

On Sleeping: “Keep your sleeping space simple.  Reduce furniture to the bare minimum, adopt a cohesive color scheme and rely on space, light, and texture to create a sensory haven.”

On Eating: “As long as your eating and cooking space remains warm and clutter-free, it is possible to create a feeling of wellbeing through the creation of two very different styles.  If you’re the efficient type, the clean-cut minimalist look is best.  If you’re earthier and more relaxed, the modern rustic look is likely to be more appropriate.”

The stripping-down theme that Thoreau suggested long ago is put into practical terms by Alice Whately.   My husband and I recently refinished our living room floors.  Actually, “living room” in our house is a misnomer.  Like most people whose homes were built in the 70s and 80s, our “living” is done everywhere in the house BUT the living room.  We spend most of our time in the family room.  Now, of course, the newer homes have evolved the concept of living rooms and family rooms  into “great rooms” where the living spaces include the kitchen.

Yet, I really love this particular room, which I’ll simply call my “living quietly room” because rather than making it a museum-like space for the occasional visitor, I use it as a creative space.  There are bookshelves in it, and a piano, and parsons chairs by the windows where I can sit in the light and look out on the world, and a table for writing, or eating or sharing tea with a friend.

The point is, to refinish the floors we had to remove all the furniture.  At the same time we decided to paint the walls, so we took down all the pictures and window treatments.

When it came time to put the stuff back, I made a conscious decision to put back ONLY what was necessary, rather than try to find a place for all the stuff that I had–which was a paradigm shift for me.   It made all the difference in how I feel when I’m in that room, surrounded only by things that have a purpose, whether functional, or aesthetic, or both.

The other thing that made a big difference was simply in the literal stripping down of the floor and the repainting of the walls.  When the foundation is clean and pristine, you don’t need to cover up flaws with stuff.  Before my floors were refinished, I had them covered up with inexpensive rugs.  But once they were gleaming, I was able to eliminate the rugs.  So, Thoreau’s admonition to strip the walls should be taken literally, if beauty is to be found within.

When rooms are suited to our spirits, they become our temples.  I, for one, prefer a simple chapel such as the one I frequently visit up at the Weston Priory in Vermont, with its neutral walls, flagstone floors, bare altar, and long windows from which you can watch the sun rise over their pond during matins at daybreak.

Those elements of bringing the outside in and creating a space for the soul can be adapted by anyone–you don’t need to live in a monastery.  As Pablo Picasso famously said, “Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.”  So, all you really have to do is start eliminating.

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Teeing it up: It all works out

My son told a funny story at brunch at a lovely restaurant in the West Village the other day–it was so funny that we found ourselves being “shushed” from neighboring tables because we were laughing so hard.

The story is this:  Once upon a time Jim was really in a tough spot financially.  He wasn’t going to be able to make his rent.  He had no food.  He had no income on the horizon.  All he had were the hopes of winning a golf tournament that he was presently engaged in.   This was the kind of golf tournament that most people do for fun, but he was playing for a mission:  to win the prize money and pay his rent.  Others were joking around, drinking from the bar cart–Jim was laser-focused on one thing–winning that money.

After the banquet, they were giving out the prizes, and the first prize went to the person with the second lowest score.  He was the kind that participates in golf tournaments as a diversion–not because he, like Jim at that moment, had a driving need to pay bills.  No, au contraire, he was a golf philanthropist, and as such, when he was awarded the prize money, he walked up to the microphone and said, “I don’t want to forget who we are doing this for,” and he motioned towards the young disabled children lining the stage.  ”Therefore, I want to give this back,” and he handed the envelope with the prize money to the M.C. amid applause and cheers of the audience.

“The next prize goes to the guy with the lowest score,” said the M.C., and he proceeded to announce my son’s name.  With that announcement, my son, Jim, saw a million worries flitting away… saw his short-term financial crisis being put to rest.  He imagined a worry-free night of sleep.  But when he got to the podium, and accepted the cash-filled envelope, a person’s voice from the crowd rang out:   “Give it back!!”  ”Yeah!” said another.  ”Give it back!”

There was my son, torn between his rent and a chorus line of needy kids, and the pressure of the previous winner’s generosity.  So he approached the mic, and, not for entirely altruistic reasons, buckled under the pressure and said, “I’d like to give this back to the kids.”

Whistles and cheers followed… But I’m not sure that at that moment they made up for the prospect of the looming late rent check in my son’s mind.   But it was done.

So, in telling this story, after we had been shushed and wiped the tears of laughter from our cheeks, my son said, “You know, it worked out.  It seems like when you think about the times when you didn’t think things are going to work out, no matter what it they may be, they really do in the end.”

I don’t know how Jim paid his rent that month.  But he’s still among us, laughing and sharing our company.

He’s up-to-date with this rent today.

A worthy organization is slightly better off.

It all works out.

Transition: A Moment in Autumn

Whenever you’re feeling lonely or sad, try going to the loft on a beautiful day and looking outside.  Not at the houses or the rooftops, but the sky.  As long as you can look fearlessly at the sky, you’ll know that you’re pure within and will find happiness once more.”  –Anne Frank

The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early as in the spring.–Thoreau

It’s September 21st and therefore unofficially, or perhaps officially, fall.   Here in the Northeast there are very few signs–few red leaves sticking out like the lone grey hair on the head of a forty-year old–but the calendar says it’s fall.  The early a.m. says it’s fall, because a chill has replaced the steamy summer mornings.

The temperature is no longer an enemy–as in the summer when you barricade the doors shut and turn up (down?) the air conditioning.  Our air conditioner has been broken for three years now, so we’ve just partnered with the summer heat, pulling in the evening’s dousing of the day’s sun with a simple electric fan.

One of the many reasons I quit my job was because I was getting angry when seasons sped past in a blur.  Because I was in a typical climate-controlled office building, I lost the feeling that I was one with the winter, spring, summer or fall.  I’d rush out of my office building and into my car, also climate controlled, and then rush to make dinner in my house, also climate controlled, and then relied on the television to tell me how hot it was going to be the next day, although it didn’t matter really because I interacted with the weather maybe 30 minutes a day, at most.

So, now I sit outside briefly every day, so the days don’t escape me.  ”Just stop right there!”  I tell the afternoon sun.  ”You’re not disappearing on MY watch!”  And I take in the long shadows, the wafts of the evening breeze, the cool blades of grass.

The quotes above by Thoreau and Anne Frank tell us how lucky we are simply to be able to soak up a dram of nature, and doing so liberates us from any prison we happen to be in.  It frees us, indeed.  Thoreau’s quote speaks of being in an almshouse, yet being able to see the sky; Anne Frank’s quote is written as she is buried within four walls protecting her from a brutish political world from which she cannot escape.  Yet, the  mere sight of the sky gives her joy–the mere hope that one day, the sun will warm her again.

I would share my own experience outside today, because if I wanted to I could upload a short video, but if I’m concerned with preserving the moment, I miss the point of living in it.  I don’t want you to see my moment second hand, so there are no pictures in this post.   It would be better for you to look outside your own office window right now, or go outside into your own backyard, and mark the transition to this new season, today, this hour, this moment–before it’s too late.

Hair: Then and Now

Jane Asher

Dorothy Hamill

Julia Roberts

Me: Jane Asher wannabe

Me: Dorothy Hamill wannabe

Me: Julia Roberts wannabe (dream on, honey)

A revival of the 60s’ seminal American tribal rock musical, “Hair,” is currently on Broadway.

Farrah Fawcett died last month.

Those two seemingly unrelated events got me thinking about hair in general, and how we take it for granted.   We style it, or we cap it, or we blow it, or tie it, or flat-iron it, but it’s usually nothing more than a part of our total grooming routine.  For some, it might be a 30-second part.  For others, it might 30 minutes.  But I know that no matter what, having it, or not having it, matters.

I love the story my cousin told me.  My cousin is a political journalist for a cable news channel in Boston.  She’s interviewed political candidates on national debates.  She’s a solid journalist.  But when she was earning her stripes, she was given the chance to anchor a news show.  She prepared, she was nervous, she stared into the camera and gave it all she got.  When the cameras stopped rolling, she was sent to her boss’s office.  She sat down, and thinking she was going to get accolades for her brilliant, on-point work, she asked, “Well, how was it?  Did I deliver OK?  Were the stories relevant?”  And her boss brushed her aside and said, “Oh, yeah, all that was fine, but what was with your hair??”

My mother had beautiful platinum blonde hair and was known for it.  She never bought a box of hair dye in her life–although many were skeptical, it was so blonde, so pure.  Who was actually born with hair that color?

When she was 50, she was scheduled for brain surgery, to repair two looming aneurysms in her brain.  Before the nurses came in for the pre-op hair shaving routine, she had already done it herself–leaving piles of spun platinum gold on her hospital tray–she was OK with having her skull opened up, but the thought of losing her hair devastated her.  Of course, many victims of the side effects of chemotherapy would attest to the emotional toll of losing one’s hair.

And that’s not just a woman’s issue.  Men aren’t crazy about losing their hair either.  It seems that these days there are more and more shiny heads out there–men who intentionally have gone for the hairless look, rather than to appear to be in the process of losing it involuntarily.  Or maybe it’s about control, and maybe the choice-to-be-bald is the same as my mother’s choice to take the scissors to her own head.  It’s OK if YOU are the Master of Your Pate and shave it all off, but to have nature thumb its nose at you… that’s just not acceptable.

Hair is an easy way to make a statement–after all, it’s right on top of your head, and you’re always wearing it.  If you’re not into the tattoo as personal bumper sticker, you can still talk with your hair.  Lady Godiva did it, hiding her nudity behind her long locks.  The more progressive women of the 20s did it by letting down their pinned hair and bobbing it.   And of course, no one has to ask why young people of the 60s wanted hair that was “long, straight, curly, fuzzy, snaggy, shaggy, ratty, matty.”  It was to differentiate themselves from the crew-cut wearing, Bryl Cream gleaming, bouffant-do-ing, pin-curling parents.   Chopping one’s locks can also be a spiritual ritual.  I still remember watching Franco Zefferelli’s movie “Brother Sun, Sister Moon” back in the early ’60s and the scene in which Saint Claire started a religious order and cut off her luxurious long hair was just as compelling to me as when St. Francis was struck with the stigmata.

I recently asked my hairdresser what the latest ‘do is, and she said that Katie Holmes is calling the coif shots now–now that her hair is short, people are flooding the salons to chop their hair off.   From Clara Bow, to Marilyn, to Dorothy Hamill, to Farrah, to Jennifer Aniston, to Katie Holmes, every now and then someone comes along with something as simple as a haircut to define a generation.

5 Ways to Work Less and Love It

 

Is this how your job makes you feel?

Work is love made visible.  –Kahlil Gibran

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation –Henry David Thoreau

I just got back from vacation in Vermont.  It’s our annual family vacation, and we all crave the time that we can get together up there, chill out, have fun, relax.  

One of my favorite things to do in Vermont is to read.  While perusing the books that were left in the house we were renting, I found The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss.  I’ve seen that book all over, of course, since it’s a business best-seller, but the title had always put me off because of its “too good to be true” title.  But, I brought out to the Adirondack chair on the deck overlooking the lawn and dirt road, and started reading.

 

Another book that I really, really like–reading it was actually the straw that broke the camel’s back to my own freedom from the Golden Handcuffs of corporate life–is Work Less, Make More by Jennifer White.   At the time I read it, I was feeling that working in my job was like being out of sync with my personal values.  It wasn’t a bad job–in fact I’m very grateful for it because there I was able to acquire skills that gave me confidence to break out on my own.  And I loved the people I worked with, I had great benefits, and was highly respected and rewarded in the company.  

So what was the problem?

The treadmill.   The feeling that I had no choice but to put in 70 hour work weeks–either to meet my boss’s expectations, or my own.  We were short-staffed, and I fell into that trap in which I felt that if the work was going to be done right, I was going to have to be the one to do it.

Of course, that was all self-imposed bull.  I had other colleagues who were able to manage others, delegate, and get the work done and still leave their Blackberry at home for a two-week vacation (boy, did that bug me!).  

But I also felt like I was a product of the Peter Principle–I had been promoted to my own level of incompetence.  I loved my job–the JOB part of it, not the management part of it.  I wanted to do what I was truly good at.   When all was said and done, I realized, with some surprise, that I wanted to be the DOER, not the teacher, mentor,  or manager.  

Plus, the money part is not a big reason for my working.  I do not aspire to Prada bags or BMWs.   Money, as my uncle said, is a means of exchange, nothing more.  So why work 70 hours a week chasing it?

So, I took the leap and quit my job.  I DO work less and make more now.  I DO feel fulfilled in my job.   Yet, I still have a lot to learn from Tim Ferriss and Jennifer White, and I am grateful to them.

Here is a compilation of some of their lessons in five points:

1. CHANGE YOUR THINKING:  Many of us operate on outdated values from the past built on post-Depression-era industry, career-long loyalty to one company, having to give your all, and more, to the company store.  But there are new values today.  Can you innovate?  Can you communicate?  Can you produce results?  These are the things that matter now.  Doesn’t matter whether it takes you 4 hours a week or 40 or 60.
2. ELIMINATE:  You can have more time for yourself in direct proportion to the stuff you can off-load.  Systems and routine are important.  White says to focus on what you do best, and delegate the rest.  Ferriss says to find virtual assistants online–either in North America or India–to get rid of tedium and any other stuff someone else can do.  You do the rest.   Pay attention to the 80/20 Rule.  Both Ferriss and White invoke the Pareto Principle, which says that 80% of results come from 20% of the causes or tasks.    So, in a nutshell, use this rule to figure out the 20% that’s working for you and delegate or abandon the rest.
3. BE BOLD:  Just do it.  Quitting your job, or changing the parameters of your existing one, is like deciding to have children.  There’s never a “right” time, so you might as well go for it–especially if you’re not happy!  Why give your happiness over to the status quo if it’s not working for you?
4. EXAMINE YOUR RELATIONSHIP TO MONEY:  Money is often the culprit that gets us in these traps.   What are you afraid of?   That you won’t be able to get your kids through college?  That you’ll wind up a bag lady?  That you won’t be able to keep up with your friends’ latest status symbols?   The funny thing is, you become what you fear.  Many of those who have pushed through those fears discover they are unfounded–they find that they do what they want to do and wind up with the money for all those things that are important to them.   That is part of the Law of Attraction, and there are many, many books that can give you the courage to overcome that barrier.  Try old masters like Napoleon Hill or Catherine Ponder, or newer Law of Attraction gurus like Wayne Dyer or Rhonda Byrne.
5. FOLLOW YOUR GUT:  This is my own rule, although White and Ferriss also imply it.  There are books to get us from Point A to Point B and help us to Find Our Bliss, Discover Our Passion, Color Our Parachute.  But sometimes life takes us down roads that we have not mapped out, and, surprise! we wind up at Emerald City. When you are trying to figure out what is going to provide fulfillment, don’t think too hard, don’t analyze too much, and most of all, get your ego out of the way.  If there’s any tinge of pride in your decisions, you taint them.    On the other hand, if you open yourself up to the Universe and vow to honor it with your good works, it will all come back atcha.

Let It Be and Know that I am God

Paul McCartney has begun his 2009 US tour.  I saw him on his tour here in 2005–the $750 seats were a gift I gave to my child within.  Or, the absolutely crazy Beatlemaniacal teenage girl within.  I was 12 when I first heard of the Beatles.  ”I Want to Hold Your Hand” was playing on the radio as my friend’s mother drove us to school.  ”That’s the Beatles,” my friend Joannie said.  ”Who are the Beatles?” I asked.  She looked at me as if I had just asked her who President Kennedy was.  ”You’ve NEVER heard of THE BEATLES???”  she asked.  She did have an advantage over me.  She had four older, very cool, sisters from whom she learned everything you needed to know to be as cool as they were.  They knew everything in that department, as far as I could tell.

In any case, I’m happy that I recall the very moment I heard their name, and their sound, because nothing was the same for me after that.  

My fave Beatle was Paul, and my fave Paul song became “Let it Be.”  Still is.  I still find such solace in the message and the music, with the title mantra encouraging us to not worry.  It will all work out.  So says someone from beyond who reassures us gently.  

Coincidentally, I was thinking of the topic of simply “being” for my blog post this week, and then I recalled that Paul McCartney was probably singing the perfect theme song for a post like this somewhere that very night to a sell-out crowd.  

***

I ordered a book this week from Amazon by the famed contemplative, Bernadette Roberts.  Her books on the path to no-self are classic, and I was very interested in what she had to say.  When the book arrived, I opened it, and thought to myself, “Oh, heck, this book is filled with WORDS!”  As if I expected anything different.    And it really wasn’t a thought at all, it was a feeling that while I was drawn to the idea of moving towards unity with God and ultimately the experience of no-self, just words weren’t going to get me there.

I’m looking to learn, and hopefully to grow, but suddenly I’m tired of the traditional ways of learning.  Analyzing, synthesizing, rationalizing, justifying… been there done that.  What should I do now?  

What I feel compelled to do is to just be still and listen.  Be still and let go.   Let it all just be.  After reading the likes of Thomas Merton and Thomas Aquinas, St. Theresa of Avila and St. Theresa of Lisieux,  Richard Foster and Richard Rohr, to use Bernadette Roberts’ phrase, I’ve grown weary of learning “above the neck.”  Now I feel a need for my learning to be “below the neck.”    There will be an answer.  Let it be.

My pastor had a really interesting way to close a sermon on the Biblical injunction, Be still and know that I am God (Psalm 46:10), and I use it frequently in meditation.  It goes like this:

Be still and know that I am God.

Be still and know that I am.

Be still and know.

Be still.

Be.

Enough said.

Up the Down Staircase to Happiness

There was a popular book by Bel Kaufman in the 60s, followed by the movie with Sandy Dennis, called Up the Down Staircase–about a new, struggling teacher who made the mistake of climbing the staircase in the school that was used for “down” traffic in order to go up.  She found herself, struggling, pushing against the tide of students pressing down on her as she fought her way to the top.

It was a great metaphor for a self-imposed struggle to getting somewhere, unaware that you are headed in the wrong direction–persisting in the struggle instead of simply finding the right path.   Instead of “going with the flow” you fight it and wind up further from your destination.

There is an article in Time Magazine this week called “Yes I Suck:  The Power of Negative Thinking,” and it highlights a study just published in the journal Psychological Science which says trying to get people to think more positively can actually have the opposite effect: it can simply highlight how unhappy they are.

The study’s authors, Joanne Wood and John Lee of the University of Waterloo and Elaine Perunovic of the University of New Brunswick, begin with a common-sense proposition: when people hear something they don’t believe, they are not only often skeptical but adhere even more strongly to their original position…

And so we constantly argue with ourselves. Many of us are reluctant to revise our self-judgment, especially for the better. In 1994, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology published a paper showing that when people get feedback that they believe is overly positive, they actually feel worse, not better. If you try to tell your dim friend that he has the potential of an Einstein, he won’t think he’s any smarter; he will probably just disbelieve your contradictory theory, hew more closely to his own self-assessment and, in the end, feel even dumber. In one fascinating 1990s experiment demonstrating this effect — called cognitive dissonance in official terms — a team including psychologist Joel Cooper of Princeton asked participants to write hard-hearted essays opposing funding for the disabled. When these participants were later told they were compassionate, they felt even worse about what they had written.
Wood, Lee and Perunovic conclude that unfavorable thoughts about ourselves intrude very easily, especially among those of us with low self-esteem — so easily and so persistently that even when a positive alternative is presented, it just underlines how awful we believe we are.
The paper provides support for newer forms of psychotherapy that urge people to accept their negative thoughts and feelings rather than try to reject and fight them. In the fighting, we not only often fail but can also make things worse. Mindfulness and meditation techniques, in contrast, can teach people to put their shortcomings into a larger, more realistic perspective. Call it the power of negative thinking.

When it comes to seeking happiness, steering your focus on finding happiness or self-worth to the exclusion of activities that will actually make you happier or feel better about yourself is a case of going up the down staircase.   Forcing the issue by constantly affirming to yourself, like Stuart Smalley, that “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and, doggone it, people like me!” may actually sentence you to never-ending struggle to get to the top of the happiness staircase.

Wise people have told us, in many different ways, that the minute we stop focusing on ourselves, the struggles stop and the door to happiness appears.  All the theories about ego-consciousness points to this (read Eckhart Tolle).   Tolstoy told us this in the parable of the Emporer’s Three Questions.  All the wisdom of the saints tells us this.  That famous peace prayer attributed to St. Francis tells us that in order to get, we don’t strive to get, we give.   In finding love, we don’t demand it, we simply perform acts of love towards others.   We don’t beg others to understand us, we listen to them and we seek to understand them.

In one of my favorite Dick and Jane stories from my grammar school reader, a dad gives his son and his daughter their own gardens, and tells them it is theirs to tend.  Each of them starts with the same number of seeds, and soon both gardens are blooming.  The boy starts giving his flowers away–to the elderly neighbor next door, to his teacher, to a sick friend.  The girl refuses to cut off her beautiful blooms, preferring to keep the beauty to herself.

If you are a gardener, you can guess the end of the story–the boy’s garden flourished because when you cut one bloom, you get two back.  On the other hand, within a few weeks, the girl’s garden had spent its blooms and sat there, lifeless and sparse.

I subscribe to Self-improvement ebooks, and they recently sent me an article on “The Secret of Abounding Happiness.”  The recipe, in short:

As you rise above the sorded self; as you break, one after another, the chains that bind you, you will realize the joy of giving, as distinguished from the misery of grasping–giving of your substance; giving of your intellect; giving of the love and light that are growing within you.  You will then understand that it is indeed ‘more blessed to give than to receive.’

Lose yourself in the welfare of others; forget yourself in all that you do; this is the secret of abounding happiness.”

So instead of running to your therapist, run to your local food bank and volunteer.  Instead of buying stuff you don’t need to make you happy, give away stuff you don’t need.  Instead of looking down into the depths of your own unhappiness, get off that DOWN staircase, find the UP one and ascend with ease.

Madison

 

Me, sitting on the steps of the cottage

“If I died and found myself at Madison, I’d know that I’d made it to heaven.”

That’s what I said in my early 20s, speaking of the spot on the Connecticut shore where I had spent my childhood summers.   My mother sent me there to stay with two great-aunts and my grandmother for a few weeks every summer from the time I was about five .  She had spent her summers there, too, so she must have wanted me to have that special experience.  The cottage had been built by my greatuncle and greataunt in 1910.  It was a true cottage, with no insulation, and no heat.  The framing was exposed on the inside, and it had a rustic stone fireplace and Arts and Crafts-style windows.  It was a regal, cedar-shingled 4 bedroom home, sitting back from the beach road, atop a slight incline, where the beach breezes swooped on up and kept the place much cooler than the waterfront cottages across the street.

It was a safe haven.  My own mother had her hands full with four young kids and my alcoholic father.  Life at home was pretty chaotic, and I never knew what each day would bring.  Would I be able to have friends over, or would Dad be drunk?  Would Dad show me how to oil paint the way he did so well, or would he slur insults from the dark corner of the living room?

But at Madison, nothing ever changed.  The “bowl-o-beauty” rose paperweight sat on the same corner of the living room table year after year.  It didn’t move.  The kitchen beams were lined with linaments and oils that had probably been ordered from the Sears catalog in the 1920s.   My aunt could be relied upon to tell the same stories every year–stories about her marriage to her beloved Edwin that always ended with a chuckle.  All her stories had happy endings.  The only story that didn’t have a happy ending was the one she never told–about her son, John, who died of pneumonia when he was three, after it had taken her nine painful years to conceive.  I only knew about John from the sepia photograph of the small boy with the bowl cut and crisp white shirt on her dressing table.

 

Aunt Florence, knitting. She was always embarrassed because the wing chair was frayed, so she would drape her sweater over it.

The daily routine was… well, routine.  And at that time, I hated it.  I’ve grown to appreciate the luxury of rising at the same time every day, spending the better part of the morning preparing breakfast, served on a six-piece place setting of Victorian rose china.  Then performing the clean-up.   Then taking the trip “up town” to buy groceries and produce.  Then going right into lunch–a large midday meal.  Then again the clean-up.  Then, and ONLY then, did I get to meet my friends at the beach.  That routine probably saved me from skin cancer, because I never got to the beach before 2 p.m., and of the few things that frustrated me about Madison, that was #1.  

 

Oh, I could say so much more about Madison, but it wouldn’t be interesting to anyone who hadn’t lived it.   It sounds mundane to hear about my evening walks down to the stone pier with a book or a camera or drawing pad with which to watch the sun go down.   It’s not too thrilling to hear about the afternoons which, when they were not spent at the beach, were spent learning how to sew on Aunt Florence’s old black Singer, or stretched across my bed, reading, while raindrops pitter-patted in a magnified way because of the lack of insulation in the ceiling.  Or who would care about the delight of blueberries and cream with sugar sprinkled on top, or slices of summer-ripe cantaloupe.  Or the aroma of salt-laced timber, or enamel pans filled with Ivory Snow and Aunt Florence’s soft, silky slips.

It all seems other-wordly, but at Madison, I was not completely isolated from the world.  When I was young, I was given the privilege of watching As the World Turns with the great-aunts, although they didn’t 100% approve because of the “risque” story lines.  At 17, I watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon–the same moon that was reflecting in the waters off the Connecticut coast right outside our door.  In 1973, the “Summer of Judgement,” Aunt Florence and I sat glued to the Watergate hearings. 

Sometimes I become obsessed with Madison.  I wish I could go back.  I suspect my memories are hopelessly romantic, and thus, perhaps skewed.   I tend to dream about it when my own life becomes chaos-infested and unsure, and I remember that safe haven and want to go back.  

Yet, I’m not sure I’d want to go back, because the Bowl-o-Beauty would no longer be there, nor the pink Victorian china.   And Aunt Florence’s presence would only be there in ghost-like form.  I’m not the same anymore, either, nor should I be.  But perhaps I can bring a little bit of Madison to my life today–a little of the routine, the simple joys, the beauty.   I can find the Aunt Florence within–calm, and orderly, and cheerful.  If I can do that, then I can create that little bit of heaven, right here, right now.