Maya Angelou & Other Marys

In the hospital where I work, I keep a frame in the reception area with a quote for patients to contemplate as they await treatment.  Not one specific quote, I actually change it several times a week.  Most recently I displayed a quote by poet, writer, activist and performer Dr. Maya Angelou.  It is a quote that you hear Oprah Winfrey citing on her shows in which Dr. Angelou says:“I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.”  

I really like this quote because of what it implies--a gentle understanding that we are all works in progress who are doing our best--but more so because it is Dr. Angelou who is saying it. A woman who spoke multiple languages, wrote 36 books, had 50 honorary degrees, worked with Civil Rights Leaders like Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor in 2010 by President Obama. This same woman, said she had made mistakes, struggled and acted from ignorance because she just hadn’t gained that bit of wisdom yet.

I desperately need people like this in my life.  But not just people, women.  I need wise women to guide me. To model for me the art of living.  Now, Dr. Angelou is deceased (May 28, 2014), and I obviously did not know her personally, but her life and words stand as an example for me just the same.  Women need other women, past and present, who can model how to navigate this journey we call life, but who do it in a warm, humble and compassionate way as Dr. Angelou’s words suggest. Women who are sturdy and solid in who they are, that to stretch themselves to make way for other women is actually no stretch at all.

I think of these women as “Marys,” as in variations of Mother Mary, La Virgen de Guadalupe, the Divine Mother, the Goddess, the feminine energy of god, or what have you.  As I’ve said before, to me, the name is just a label, just a word, a symbol; already something way too small and too human to represent something so enormous and vast.  But alas, words are what we have…

I see Marys as sages who walk among us, or who’s footsteps preceded us; women who are so grand that we can be held in their shadow alone.

I particularly need Marys at this time of year.  Not because she is on my mind per se with all of the singing about the birth of her son Jesus, but because I tend to have trouble Thanksgiving through Christmas. The holidays. I know I am not at all unusual in this way, and it actually wasn’t always this way for me. I have some really wonderful childhood memories of the holidays- however romanticized they may be now.  But the tendency toward the blues still seems to knock at my door each December just the same, and I long for a Mary to hold me, figuratively speaking of course. 

One of the ways I meet the need for this longing is I read the words of the real life women, like Dr. Angelou, who help me embody the compassionate but strong image that my Marys represent.  I try to close my eyes and draw into my heart the wisdom gained through generations of women who have struggled through adversity and came out, not on top, but with dignity, self-worth and kindness.

Another famous Dr. Angelou quote: "When you get, give. When you learn, teach" reminds me of one of my absolute favorite sayings that is an African American proverb: lift as you climb. It was the motto of the National Association of Colored Women founded in 1896. When I imagine one of the women I admire, I pull from that image.  It is not an image of a saintly perfectionist.  She is a real human being.  Who through blood, sweat and tears evolved and grew enlightened.  It is that image, that woman, who has room on her coat tails to pull you and me "onward and upward” (as my own mother used to say).  Even through the holiday blues.

Which Marys do you model your courage after today?  To name a few...

Letting Go of Judgment

I said to my husband yesterday that former catholics remind me of recovering smokers.  Now, before I offend my Catholic readers and my readers who used to smoke, though I may be too late for that, I must tell you that nearly all of my favorite people, including my children's god mothers were both raised Catholic and are former smokers. I realize I sound like a Seinfeld episode (my best friend is...) but it is still true.

My remark to my husband came after a baptism of our good friends' son held at a beautiful, if somewhat modern, Catholic Church last Sunday. We were driving out of the parking lot and I, the non-Catholic, was commenting on all the pieces of the ceremony and the church that I found personally moving and meaningful. But my husband, who was raised Catholic, was boo-hooing the ceremony with minor things like the clichéd long length of the service. Which makes sense, who knows how many long-winded priests he had to listen to while growing up. But it still seemed critical. Similar, in my experience, to how critical former smokers are of current smokers- far more critical than I who never smoked.

I think it can be hard to pull out the threads of an experience that are helpful and let go of the rest. It certainly is for me. And I've had to work at it for many (many!) years. But, I have to give myself credit and say, I've gotten better.

On Sunday at the baptism I certainly heard the part of the ceremony where the priest spoke about "baptized babies go to heaven" and when he asked the families to say in chorus that they "reject satan." Two ideas I personally reject. But I was also able to appreciate this gorgeous statue of Jesus Christ behind the priest in which his chest was turned upward toward the sky, his arms were thrown backward, and his head tilting back.  It reminded me of all the open-hearted yoga poses I have ever learned, and if nothing else, Jesus was open-hearted from everything I've heard.

I also enjoyed the elderly priest's sense of humor and found it quite intriguing to hear he had been a marine in an earlier life. Learning that tip of the iceberg forced me to avoid pigeon-holing the priest into one small box just because it is the easy thing to do when we are in a judgmental stance or mindset.

And lest we not forget, the stained glass windows. I love stained glass windows. I carried my one year-old daughter to them and she made her "this is amazing" face with her mouth hanging open and big round eyes. She reached out her hand to touch the colored, cool glass. The esthetic beauty of a Catholic Church reminded me of a saying I had heard once.  I was told, though I never confirmed it myself, in the Koran it is written: "god loves beauty. God is beauty." Having sat in the sterile Congregational Church for several years in childhood, I have always found the attention to the senses (visual, touch, taste, smell, hearing) in a Catholic mass and a Cathedral much more stimulating and worthy- a word that is the basis of "worship."

So how do we train ourselves to be nonjudgmental as we walk through our lives? So that we don't rule out or filter out a potentially meaningful experience just based on the little bit we can see or know on the outset? According to Mindfulness guru Jon Kabat-Zinn, taking a nonjudgmental stance is critically important and is something we can train in to get better at through mindfulness.

Twentieth century monastic Thomas Merton said true freedom, which would include freedom from our own viewpoints and narrow opinions, comes when we follow god's will. Now, "god's will" is still a term that I am trying to wrap my brain around- though I haven't yet...But I think it is fully participating in your own life and reality as it unfolds before you. The good. The bad. And the ugly.

One more way I've read recently to combat the magnetic pull of judgment is "Radical Openness."  I read this turn of phrase in a book I have referred to often in this blog: "One Buddha is not Enough."  A compilation of chapters written by monastics and lay people who follow the teachings of Vietnamese Buddhist Thich Nhat Hahn. When I read these words: radical openness, I felt something shift inside of me. Almost like a voice inside of me quietly said a drawn out "Yyyyeeeesss."  A deep resonating. With the word "radical" meaning fully and completely. A letting go of all resistance, mental filters, preconceived notions, expectations, and prejudices. So powerful. So hard to practice.

This weekend, I challenge you to let go of the judgments that make you unable to see the fuller picture in which there is a piece of meaning waiting for you. I will try to do the same.

God Signs

Saw this on my drive to work and had to see it as a sign...

When lost, return to Pema

I'll just say it, I love Pema.  Love her.  I am referring of course to Pema Chodron, the American Buddhist nun who is the director of a Buddhist monastery in Nova Scotia and a writer of I don't know how many books.  I re-read a passage from her book The Wisdom of No Escape this morning.

I've been posting lately, maybe for a month or so, that I have drifted far away from the spiritual practices that had been nearly daily.  Practices that I have found essential for maintaining any sort of bare minimum sanity.  And without them, it has led to me feeling a bit lost.

So this morning, a Saturday when I don't have to head into work and get my son off to school, after nursing my daughter at 5 a.m. (her preferred time this morning, not mine!) rather than going  back to sleep because my mind felt too awake already (you know when the thoughts are already moving above the speed limit) I opted to pull Pema off of my bookshelf.

Now, The Wisdom of No Escape sits next to another Pema Chodron favorite on my bookshelf in the living room, The Places That Scare You.  This book, a paperback,  is so beat-up at this point from casual reading, furious reading, desperate reading that it has become sacred to me.

Yes, I used the word "sacred," but if you are wary of religious language from early childhood nonsecular scars, do not fret.  Though I may be a Pema groupie, I am not someone who turns humans into idols or gods.  Humans are just too human for that.  Having said that, I have found that some people seem to just have gained more wisdom in their single lifetime (to my knowledge...) than the rest of us.  People we all know about like Jesus Christ, the Buddha, Mohamed, Maya Angelou, Mahatma Ghandi, Mother Teresa, Dr. Martin Luther King, Aberham Lincoln, Anne Frank, Rosa Parks, Cesar Chavez, Ruby Bridges, Eleanor Roosevelt, & Thich Nhat Hanh to name a few.  But also people only some of us know about in our own very personal lives like my Great Aunt Bunny who died in October of this year.  For me, Pema Chodron is on this list.  Someone I can reliably go to for wisdom when I am feeling like the ground is moving beneath me and I need a hand to hold so I don't fall over.

This morning she was discussing a sign she had read on a bulletin board: "be open and accept all situations and people."  And the famous words of Zen Master Dogen who said "to know yourself or study yourself is to forget yourself, and if you forget yourself then you become enlightened by all things."

I had read this chapter in her book before, but I find that doesn't seem to matter at all. I simply take in her words and move into my meditation practice.  And with her discussion of openness and acceptance I decided to sit with my palms open and up rather than folded  in my lap which is how I usually sit. A symbolic gesture of sorts.

So today, as I go through my day, feeling alternately lost then found then lost again, I will come back to Pema Chodron. Her presence. Her words. The life she embodies, to find my footing once again- and again.

Today,  who can you turn to when you feel lost?