And when she's not showing affection with kisses and words, she's bringing me home flowers hand-picked fresh from her grandmother's garden including these that sit just beside my laptop as I write this morning.
Being so fortunate to have these daily experiences with my daughter has often left me thinking about this poem by Pulitzer Prize winning American poet Galway Kinnell (1927-2014).
Saint Francis and the Sow
The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.
Gorgeous.
You see, I am one of those people who is still awakening from "the trance of unworthiness," a concept developed by Buddhist teacher, author and psychologist Tara Brach.
And paradoxically, motherhood has been the rich fertile ground that I have most directly confronted this delusion and where the universe has equally most directly confronted me.
This confrontation came to a head when I was 7 months pregnant with my daughter, and just before delivery (because she decided to make her entrance into the world just 4 weeks later!) I had a flood of insecurities about my own worthiness to parent a child.
In fact, the flood was so great, that I asked to speak with the minister of my Unitarian Universalist Church to get some help with these overwhelming feelings of inadequacy.
Now, I did already have my son at the time, and for certain those feelings of unworthiness were present when I was pregnant with him as well nearly 5 years before.
But what was different was, with my son, I was still too deep in the trance (or delusion) of unworthiness to even begin to notice it. I had not yet woken up enough to even begin to talk about it.
I see that now.
Which is why I like what Tara Brach has to say in her book Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha, about the process of awakening to our own "loveliness."
Although the trance of feeling separate and unworthy is an inherent part of our conditioning as humans, so too is our capacity to awaken. We free ourselves from the prison of trance as we stop the war against ourselves and, instead, learn to related to our lives with a wise and compassionate heart...Like waking up from a bad dream, when we can see our prison, we also see our potential.
I also like to think of this religious parable each time my daughter slaps another juice-box-kiss on my cheek, or hands me another dandelion from the yard with the words "I love you" immediately to follow.
A very religious man was once caught in rising floodwaters.
He climbed onto the roof of his house and trusted God to rescue him.
A neighbor came by in a canoe and said, “The waters will soon be above your house. Hop in and we’ll paddle to safety.”
“No thanks” replied the religious man. “I’ve prayed to God and I’m sure he will save me”
A short time later the police came by in a boat. “The waters will soon be above your house. Hop in and we’ll take you to safety.”
“No thanks” replied the religious man. “I’ve prayed to God and I’m sure he will save me”
A little time later a rescue services helicopter hovered overhead, let down a rope ladder and said.
“The waters will soon be above your house. Climb the ladder and we’ll fly you to safety.”
“No thanks” replied the religious man. “I’ve prayed to God and I’m sure he will save me”
All this time the floodwaters continued to rise, until soon they reached above the roof and the religious man drowned. When he arrived at heaven he demanded an audience with God. Ushered into God’s throne room he said, “God, why am I here in heaven? I prayed for you to save me, I trusted you to save me from that flood.”
“Yes you did my child” replied God. “And I sent you a canoe, a boat and a helicopter. But you never got in.”
I have always liked this parable.
However now, unlike the man in the parable, I can see that the "canoe, boat and helicopter" (aka my daughter) are right in front of me to help me re-learn my own loveliness, and now I plan to step in.
May it be so.
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