Insecurity

  

     

       This is my beautiful demon

       born inside the tenderest injury

       in silence she grew tentacles

       and little baby teeth  

       what she really is

       what she can do

       is excruciating

       the more I tug and scratch at her

       the deeper she’s digging in

       I can only hope she dies in her sleep

Puzzles

                

             On earth as it is in heaven.
             Don't deny what has happened to you.
             What you've done.
             Error and malfunction, let me see you.
             From the beginning we've been locked together.
             You knew where this would end.

 

Recently there has been a theme emerging in my life:  Error revealed.  False premise revealed.  I’ve been lucky that these mistakes were small to medium in size.  I could handle them, or someone could help me fix them.  What I’m noticing is that the number of errors revealed to me increased dramatically within a compressed period of time.  The errors were not all committed in that compressed period of time---some were committed earlier.  But they were all revealed in quick succession.  Perhaps I shouldn’t say all.  There surely are more coming.

At any given time, I am busy either solving or building a puzzle, literally and metaphorically.  I’m hardly the first person to begin to see that life itself is (is like?) a puzzle, and that the grid (my life puzzle is a crossword puzzle) with one or two fixed theme entries existed before I became conscious.   Initially my interaction with the puzzle is as a solver.  I see that something isn’t lining up with choices I’ve made so far.  Some choice isn’t working, isn’t right.  There’s an impossibility or a nonsense that’s bothering me in that corner.  I’m not sure which of the colliding assumptions I’ve made is creating the problem.  When faced with this I can: (a) ignore the error and leave that part of the grid alone, maybe even avoid looking at it, hoping others don’t notice; (b) insist that all my choices have been right and that the grid, with its irrefutable and neutral evidence that something is wrong, is the one lying; (c) blame the pre-existing theme entries (born with certain challenges I had no control over) and absolve myself of any accountability for my own solution attempts, deciding that those fixed entries were so bad to begin with that I can’t solve the puzzle or it’s insolvable---i.e., give up; (d) identify the mistake through open-minded, objective, sometimes painful or difficult self-examination (which sets up a new array of possible actions).

That’s solving.  Now I’m into constructing puzzles.  I see that I have this grid, and that I can more consciously fill it with things I enjoy and want to see in a puzzle, and write the clues!  The empty corners contain infinite possibilities; the filled or partially filled corners contain things I might or might not choose to change.  Isn’t this wonderful?  Here’s the rub.  Whatever energy I bring to the solving process shows up in the building process.  I can build in a mistake and think I’ve created something golden.  I can anchor a lot of good things onto that golden error.  The error must some day be revealed; it can’t stay unnoticed forever, it will bear a strange fruit, and depending on the degree of the error, I’ll be faced with choices I don’t welcome, similar to the choices I faced in solving, only more authority is required of me.  I know I authored that, I can't deny it, and I know I’m the one to answer for it.

So you have a puzzle and you see the error you’ve put into it.  What’s next?  Imagine an ideal version of the puzzle.  That grid exists, and you can build your way to it with good tools and the right energy, just as a number of sculptures exist in a single block of wood or stone.  Understand what energy led to the error, and recognize when it’s back at work in you.  Train your brain to recognize the energy patterns in your life that have not worked and avoid giving them space or fuel.  Keep them out of the grid.  Choose your next entry thoughtfully.  The first premise must be the best; it must be double-checked for truth, it must be genuine, as so much else is built on it: things you value, things that will be hard to give up, generating regret.

This is what’s involved in making something (a puzzle, your life) beautiful: 

• Discipline.  Self-discipline, following best practices, being thorough, being conscious, learning from others, teachers and friends.      

•  Instincts.  Knowing something isn’t right, and paying attention to that.  Knowing something is right, and embracing that, trusting that.

• Honesty.  Acknowledging where you’ve erred or gone off the grid, confessing.

• Work.  Diligence, tirelessness, purpose, working through the tough stuff to get to the good stuff.

• Faith.  Believing that an ideal grid exists and that the puzzle you’re solving or building can be almost that good.  When you lose faith, you become disorganized and sabotage the puzzle.

The ideal grid can be revealed.  It can be nearly realized, or more closely realized.  I can find my way to it.  But this requires: Discipline, trusting my instincts, honesty, hard work and faith.

Behold

             beauty being in the eye

             of the beholder

             I behold you now

             you are beholden to me

             I must hold you

             you know you are beautiful

             in my mind's eye

             that my heart's treasure

             is held in you

Cookies

Daniel came home from baseball in a funk.  The umpire made bad calls.  He got hit with the ball twice, once in the helmet on a bad pitch, once in the cup on a bad bounce.  Their side never got past first base, though they played their best.   He struck out at the end of the game.  After moping about for a good while with this cloud over his head, unwilling to practice piano, feeling put upon by life and high expectations, he came up with a long, furiously delivered list of things he was existentially not happy about.

(1)  There is no fun in games where the rules change in the middle, or where there are no consistent or enforceable rules because there are no officials and everyone just does what they want until there is no possible outcome and everyone disbands.  These games are unjust and a huge disappointment.  [This has been a long-running theme this year: unsatisfactory pick-up games at recess; but somehow that day’s game of baseball became emblematic of the injustice of bad or absent officiating generally.]

(His middle name is “Justice”; what did we expect?)

(2)  Why is life all about work and being too busy?  It shouldn’t be that way.  There should be more time for recreation and having real fun.  [Good point.]

(3)  Why does everything cost money?  And why isn’t there ever enough money?  Why is it so hard to get money?  [Good question.]

(4)  We should be able to make people come into our life when we really need them.  [Actually, that does sometimes happen…  but what do you mean?]

(5)  He wishes he had more friends, people to play with.  Really, he wishes he had a sibling.  [True tears were falling.]  With a sibling, when dad and I are too busy to play a game, he’d have someone to play with and not have to hang around being bored all by himself.  [Ouch.]  

So.  Everything I was planning to accomplish last night… making progress on the knitting puzzle, getting the dishes done, rehearsing the song I’m working on, hula-hooping… that whole constellation of things I needed to do…  I swept those off the table and let myself imagine what might actually belong in that space.  

Let’s bake a batch of cookies, shall we?  And so we did.  Daniel interpreted the recipe, did all the measuring and stirring, rolling the balls of dough in sugar and cinnamon, and flattening the balls on the cookie sheet with the bottom of a drinking glass.  I did the prep, used the hand-held mixer on the wet ingredients and removed the hot cookie sheets from the oven.  Dad came in pretending he was going to eat all the cookies before they had sufficiently cooled, and we shooed him away.  Like the old days.  It had been a long, long while, in kid-time, since we’d made cookies together.  

While tucking him in, I spoke the usual endearments and kissed that spot just below his ear, where I also like to be kissed, my favorite spot.  Beautiful boy, mama loves you.  “I liked making cookies,” he sighed.  “And I’m not sad anymore.”  

Same here, kid.

War and peace

In early May I attended an all day Moon Lodge workshop, a women's gathering in the Ojibwe tradition.  One theme of our group study was “choosing not to go to war” in our individual lives and relationships.  What might that look like?  

The leader of the workshop took us through a guided meditation.  At one point she asked us to meditate on the following:

(1) Think of someone who you have felt was “better” than you.

(2) Think of someone whom you felt “better than”.

(3) Think of someone who has hurt or betrayed you, where forgiveness has been difficult.

(4) Think of someone who is your “enemy”, someone you’re in battle with.

(5) Think of someone you love unconditionally and without reservations.  You'd do anything for this person.

Interesting outcomes for me:  I couldn’t find anyone for (4), the enemy.  Nobody came to mind.  I came up with ways that people can behave as my enemy, yes, by holding certain harmful political viewpoints, but not any individual in my daily social interactions nor in my personal history that I would label as an enemy.  More surprisingly, (1) and (2), someone who I felt was better than me and that I was better than, were the same person.  It was during meditation on these painful memories that tears formed, a re-stimulation of feelings I thought I’d moved on from long ago.  After this exercise we made herbal packets that would be invested with whatever attachment we had identified and wanted to release at the fire later.  This burning of the packet turned out to be liberating for me.  I've never had a great respect for rituals.  But I now believe that ritual, when it's connected to something true within your soul and heart, can be transformative and healing, by reinforcing the worth and value and reality of the energy represented.  We got to go to the fire individually in turn, while the group drummed and sang in a circle of support around us.  Men were included in this part of the lodge experience, and they drummed and sang with us.  And when we weren't the one at the fire, we were supporting someone who was.  It started an evolution of inner transformation that I’ve continued and nurtured since then.

Another goal of the gathering was to learn about the phases of the moon we were born under.  I was born on a full moon, which means a number of things.  But there’s another movement of the moon that was new to me:  the moon goes through 13 cycles in a year, not 12, and each of these has a name.  I was born under a blueberry moon (which I think is the 11^th cycle).  Blueberry moon people are pleasure-givers.  The purest expression of this is that we love deeply and have a calling to provide pleasure and comfort to those we love.  The “warning” is that we can get taken advantage of and used.

So I’m in the “berry group”, and there’s an amusing story that goes along with this.  This is a paraphrased version of the story the lodge leader told (I can’t retell it in her inimitable narrative style):   

A respected elder in the tribe had done many great things for the community.  He approached the council for permission to marry more than one wife.  Because he had given unselfishly of his wisdom, skills and energy for the benefit of the group, they agreed that he could add to his household in this way, which he did, marrying in total three wives by the time he was a very old man.  It was widely perceived that he was a happy and wise man, with still a lot of energy and gifts to give the tribe, and so he explained that he had made the wisest possible use of the privilege granted by the council, by marrying women in the proper order: “First, I married a strawberry moon woman.  She gave us children and loved them and raised them well, making for us a happy and loving home.  Next, I married a raspberry moon woman.  She is an efficient manager, handling our affairs, maintaining our household, making sure everything gets done and nothing is wasted, ensuring prosperity, saving resources, and providing peace of mind.  Last, I married a blueberry woman, someone devoted to me, giving me great pleasure, love and comfort in my old age.  And this was the right order of things.”

And I must admit, it resonates.  I'm a blueberry moon woman.