Vanity

Young Beauty and Old Beauty

Walking toward a protest on the Common downtown last Friday, i was following two elderly couples walking at a relaxed pace. Both women limped slightly, though in different ways.

Get out of my way! i thought. I'm in a hurry. Then i realized i knew all four of those people, and they are my age!

When we are young and our bodies work like they are supposed to, we don't have much patience for ambling, limping bodies that have lost their beauty and flexibility. It's a form of vanity. It's a form of self-hatred toward our future selves, our very own future ambling, limping bodies.

Let Your Light Shine

Our hospice thrift store has a "quarter shelf"--everything (that has been in the shop for over a month) for a quarter. Last week, i found a used pillar candle, hand-painted with roses and lilacs. I tried to talk myself out of it since i'm not that fond of pillar candles, but then i talked myself into it. After all, it was only a quarter. Also, the hospice shop is one place you cannot have second thoughts--if you come back the next day to buy that thing you liked, it will be gone. Gone. And there aren't any more like it.

I like the candle. Now that i'm using it on the kitchen table on these dark evenings, i like it even more.

We each have one unique and only life. Choose the life you have. Let your light shine, even in the darkness.

Spiritual Friend

I'm in Olympia, Washington for a couple of days, visiting a spiritual friend. We are on different paths--she's a Quaker; i'm a Buddhist--but i love our deep conversations. Plus, i'm in the Pacific Northwest, which grows beautiful roses.

Spiritual friends. Life doesn't get any better than this, no matter how free-wheeling our conversations.

Who is your spiritual friend?

A Dog Who Loves Flowers

Luke
a poem by Mary Oliver


I had a dog
who loved flowers.
Briskly she went
through the fields,

yet paused
for the honeysuckle
or the rose,
her dark head

and her wet nose
touching
the face
of every one

with its petals
of silk
with its fragrance
rising

into the air
where the bees,
their bodies
heavy with pollen

hovered -
and easily
she adored
every blossom

not in the serious
careful way
that we choose
this blossom or that blossom

the way we praise or don't praise -
the way we love
or don't love -
but the way

we long to be -
that happy
in the heaven of earth -
that wild, that loving.

A Florist & Cafe

While we were in Marfa, Texas, we had breakfast at Buns 'n Roses--cafe & florist. Now that is my type of cafe. Being Texas, the cafe/florist shared its place of business with a welding and wrecker service.

The breakfast was delicious, and the decor inside the cafe in the quonset hut was a florist's refrigerator, a table of potted plants, and a wall of vases and gifts.

Although i think immediately of the Joan Baez song Bread and Roses, I suppose the name of the cafe is a nod to the hard rock band Guns N' Roses. How do we reconcile the use of guns to kill people, with the roses that decorate a funeral casket? Perhaps we are trying to come to terms with the use of really big guns to bomb Syria, the resulting loss of lives, and the very disabling results of nerve gas among the survivors.

Fear drives defensiveness. To act fearlessly does not mean that we are entirely vulnerable. Now is the time to act from our heart--a beautiful rose, which nevertheless protects itself with thorns. Now is the time to respond with non-violence.

Fear has two meanings.  

Forget everything and run 

or 

Face everything and rise.

--  Zig Ziglar 

Rose Petals

I took the wilted rose out of my birthday bouquet. The bouquet of mums and a fragrant star-gazer lily still looks beautiful even though it's missing a member.

Isn't this the mystery of death? Life goes on even though we feel a loss, an emptiness. Wait a minute! we may want to scream. My loved one is gone! Don't you see? Can't you pause for a minute? Here you are going on, as if nothing has happened. But something important has happened. My loved one is missing. S/he isn't here anymore. I'm crying. We should all be crying.

Life rolls on, just as it always has.We took our refuge in the seeming unchangingness of our loved one.  But, alas, they were changing too all along. Everything is changing, and i'm not ready. Stop. Stop. I want what was. I don't want what is.

Change. Impermanence. The impermanence of the rose. The impermanence of each and every one of us.

I placed the wilted rose petals in a bowl. Their brief fragrance infuses my breath. Lovely.

Wilting Rose

My sweetie gave me a bouquet of flowers for my birthday last week. Already the rose is wilting and drooping.

Another reminder. Everything changes.

As Mary Oliver writes:
Doesn't everything die,
at last
and too soon?

Oh, do you have to go so soon?

Too soon for me, but maybe not for the rose, which is unwinding according to the conditions of its life.

Friends on the Same Path

Every weekday morning, a meditation friend, Rose, and i carpool 40 minutes to the hospital in Keene, New Hampshire for our radiation treatments. This is Rose's fourth bout with lymphoma. After 9 months of monthly chemotherapy, and, now, 5 weeks of radiation, her hair is growing back, so softly. Spending a couple of hours every day with my spiritual friend Rose is a godsend. The Buddha said that our spiritual friends are the entire spiritual path.

A certain camaraderie develops in the radiation waiting room, even though we're all sharing only small talk. Ron lives on the other side of New Hampshire, and i pass him every morning in the dressing room because his appointment is right after mine.

Yesterday was Ron's last day of radiation, and he brought a bucket of alstromeria for the 6 radiation technicians. He also gave a rose to Rose (ahem :) and a rose to me. Who better to share the joy of the end of radiation treatment than your radiation comrades? They KNOW, viscerally, what you're going through.

Research shows that people in cancer support groups live longer. This is an example of the value of friendship, the kind of friendship where you can talk about your deepest fears and deepest longings, and the other person KNOWS.

What's your deepest longing? What's your deepest fear? Spend some time with a spiritual friend today.