Spiritual Unfolding in Motherhood

During motherhood I unexpectedly began a spiritual unfolding. It was nothing I planned for, nor sought out.  In fact, you could easily argue the opposite, that it would have taken a bolt of lightning for a secular girl like me to have had a spiritual experience. Before motherhood I had already gone to an ashram in India, traveled from Mexico to the Silk Road of Uzbekistan, volunteered in service in the Peace Corps, taken myself to Kripalu Yoga and Wellness Center for retreats, spent years in a twelve-step program and attended a Unitarian Universalist Church for Sunday sermons, and in none of these experiences was I seeking a spiritual experience nor having a spiritual experience. It was not until I was 6 months pregnant with my son when I joined a church for the first time.  I was 31 years-old.

My experience was not to be an Eat, Pray, Love experience where a woman shares her spiritual awakening while traveling the world. This was not to be a Devotion experience where a mother chronicles her steps towards an authentic spiritual life for her and her son. Mine was, well, rather inconvenient timing to tell you the truth.  I was knee deep in scared-out-of-my-mind first-time (and unexpected!) motherhood.  How the heck was I supposed to fit in a spiritual journey too?

Well, if I’ve learned anything in these last 7 years it is this: I have yet to meet a person, including myself, who was actually able to pick out the day, time and life stage to meet god.  In our overly calculated, strategic and fundamentally control-freaky American society, this is just one life experience that we do not get to schedule in our iPhone.

I’ve been asked if I at least had a tug inside of me.  Some sort of emptiness or void that manifested as a restlessness to be full-filled. No. I’d say, no.  Probably because I had no spiritual or religious life growing up, I had no idea that anything was amiss or absent.  I did not feel judgmental about my secular life. I did not feel sad, angry or fearful about my secular life.  This was my normal.  I had no other reality to compare or contrast it to. I was not even an agnostic or an atheist.  Both of these positions suggest someone has a conviction about god and the spiritual life. I didn’t.  It was just a non-issue for me.

Not that I didn’t have an introspective life or interest.  I did.  I certainly did.  From childhood I always kept a journal and my family and friends would tell you I was often found quiet and reserved, off by myself in deep thought.  I was caught in a paradox though.  I could be contentedly both with myself and by myself for oddly long periods of time--kind of like one of my favorite childhood books Ferdinand the Bull.  At the same time, I was incredibly lonely.  As I got older, one-to-one deep conversations with complex people captivated me, and ultimately led me to my career path as a clinical social worker who practices psychotherapy. 

You could argue, maybe, that these earlier introspective experiences hard-wired me or primed me for what was to come.  But even if someone had fore-told it to me, I wouldn’t have believed them.  I think this is because 1.) I'm stubborn and 2.) You don’t know how rigid your interior life is, even a completely secular one, until it gets torn down.  It is not until you are standing there naked and exposed, when you know going back to how things used to be is not even an option, and yet you have no idea what is next that you catch on to what is unfolding. When you are brought to your knees in vulnerability—my least favorite of the human experiences—that you acknowledge your life is changing in a completely unexpected direction.  Enter, god.

So that is a little piece about the origins of my spiritual awakening.  How about yours? I would love to hear.

Meditative Blogs

If you are like me, and countless others, when you feel lost or restless, you may find yourself surfing the web.  My husband, he likes channel surfing the television with the remote control.  But that is not really my cup of tea.   I prefer to waste countless minutes (hours…) online in a quasi-vegetable-like state going from website to website looking for god-knows-what- please note the sarcasm!

I really don’t do this often.  I don’t have time to do it often.  But, undoubtedly sometimes I do go right down the internet rabbit hole.  This may sound strange coming from someone who writes a blog.  And as I write this, I would have to agree.  Alas, here we are…

But I have found some websites, specifically blog sites, that I can go to if I must be online.  If I must get my fix. In fact, just today I finished a post called “Meditation Yields Joy,” and then turned to Buddhist teacher and writer Jack Kornfield’s blog only to see him write nearly the very same sentiment just this month: “The aim of spiritual life is to awaken a joyful freedom, a benevolent and compassionate heart in spite of everything.”

So I picked several blog sites here that you may like too.  All are quality reading material.  Many of them “the greats,” in my humble opinion, who contribute to our meditation community through their wise words put to, not paper anymore, but techno-space.

1.)    Tara Brach: Buddhist teacher, writer, psychotherapist

blog.tarabrach.com

2.)    Stephen Cope: Scholar in Residence at Kripalu, writer, psychotherapist

http://kripalu.org/blog

3.)    Dani Shapiro: Writer

www.danishapiro.com

4.)    Jack Kornfield: Leading western Buddhist teacher and writer

jackkornfield.com/category/blog

5.)    Sharon Salzberg: Leading western Buddhist teacher and writer

sharonsalzberg.com

6.)    Brother David Steindl-Rast: Not a blog, but has many articles and word of the day

gratefulness.org

7.)    On-Being NPR Radio Show: Blogs written by host Krista Tippet and her staff

www.onbeing.org/blog

8.)    Unitarian Universalist Association: a Round-up of UU-friendly bloggers

http://bloguuworld.org/web/

9.)    Sylvia Boorstein: Not a blog, but does have many of her articles on Buddhism

sylviaboorstein.com/articles
10.) Karen Maezen-Miller: Mother, Zen Priest, Author of 3 books
karenmaezenmiller.com/blog/
11.) Kate Braestrup: UU minister and Author
www.katebraestrup.com/blog/

This list is in no particular order, and I’m sure there are many others.  If you have other blog sites you would recommend to me and others, please forward them on!  Some folks use Facebook and Twitter to get some guidance from their favorite gurus, but I find those sites too slippery to navigate, and instead stick to blogs. 

Happy reading!

Meditation Yields Joy

This past week I felt moments of a deep penetrating joy even though I was scouring my house for lice and experiencing holiday blues. How is this possible you ask? I would say, unquestionably, through practicing meditation.

Now you may be thinking, it sounds like this girl has been drinking the cool aid! And maybe I have been.  Maybe I have become a believer of sorts in the benefits of millennia-old practices in meditation. But hey, if it ain’t broke…

Some of you know, I recently went through the Jon Kabat-Zinn, UMASS-based, Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction 8-week training this past fall. In the class, the teacher, Kate, said several nuggets of wisdom about meditation practice that are still working their way through me. 

One piece that I was reminded of in these last several days while I had time off from work and was spending time with my children, is that a meditation practice is like weaving a parachute. Each day you sit down and weave for 5 minutes, 30 minutes, one hour.  Any amount of weaving, any amount of meditation, contributes to a larger whole that leads to a greater sense of equanimity. This equanimity, or parachute, allows you to experience joy at times you would otherwise have been distracted by the external minutia that often overwhelms us.  Like, for example, doing loads and loads of laundry, changing bedding and bagging stuffed animals because my 5 year-old somehow got lice the day after Christmas.  Or, moving through the feelings associated with loss that show up each year at the holidays for me.  In the past, I am certain I would have been unable to notice that grounding joy inside me because my focus would have been elsewhere.

I have to say, I find this recent awareness about meditation very encouraging because it helps me increase my motivation and commitment (otherwise known as discipline) to continue a meditation practice even though sometimes it can feel like just one more thing to do in my already very busy schedule as a working mother.

Now for me, meditation practice has two other components: mindfulness and god.  I know it does not for everyone, as there is no one way to meditate.  But for me, this triad creates the whole.  Some people might call this “whole” a contemplative practice.

I first learned about contemplative practice from author Sue Monk Kidd. I was reading her book (one of my favorites!) When the Heart Waits, in which Ms. Kidd shares her earlier spiritual journey based in Christian Mysticism.  Recently, Oprah Winfrey re-aired her interview with Sue Monk Kidd on her show Super Soul Sunday, and she quoted from this same book: 

“There have been moments in my life when I sat in the utter quietness of a deserted room and had the noise of a firework show going on inside me.  And there have been rare times when I stood in a crowd of noisy people and tapped into a deep inner silence.  It is this interior quietness, a silence within us that is a door through which God can come to us.”

The past several days I was certainly not in the “utter quietness of a deserted room.”  My 5 year-old and 1 year-old were loud, my house was a mess from Christmas and lice-decontamination, and we had multiple gatherings to attend with the holidays.  But here’s the miracle, “the miracle of mindfulness” as Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh says, at times, I still felt quiet inside.

I have heard Buddhist teacher and nun Pema Chodron use the analogy of leather shoes to describe the benefits of meditation practice.  She says we could choose to try to protect ourselves from the suffering of the world and our own emotions like fear and anger by exerting lots of effort to stay inside our little bubble of comfort as to avoid vulnerability.  Or, through meditation, we can cover our vulnerability, our feet, with leather shoes so that we can go out into the world and embrace our difficult feelings with the knowledge that we can tolerate it. We can handle it.  I’m coming to believe this too.

I’m also coming to believe that joy and happiness are two very different experiences. For me, joy is an ability to hold a deeper connection to what is most true and important in our lives (our children, our earth, our dignity, our own personal ethics, the fact that we are all here in this life for a relatively brief stay) no matter what else is going on around us.  Happiness, on the other hand, is a fleeting emotion.  Like sadness, fear, anger, boredom.  It comes.  It goes.  It comes again.  Meditation has also helped me to distinguish the differences between joy and happiness too.

The goal, then, for me becomes two-fold.  One, continue to meditate. Continue to weave my parachute- with as much frequency and regularity as I can muster.  And two, continue to notice the way mindfulness and god manifest as joy in my everyday comings and goings, whatever they may be.

I will conclude with this quote that sits atop author Dani Shapiro’s blogsite, and seems all together fitting this morning:

“Every day includes much more non-being than being. This is always so. One walks, eats, sees things, deals with what has to be done; the broken vacuum cleaner; ordering dinner; washing; cooking dinner. When it is a bad day the proportion of non-being is much larger.”

– Virginia Woolf

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...