What is Essential?

"You know what they call a group of non-essential employees that get together on Sunday? The New York Giants."--Jay Leno

Oxford English Dictionary definition of non-essential: not absolutely necessary. Non-essential is the adjective some are using to describe my husband's employment as a research scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Actually "exempt" is the term used to describe his employment status. Non-essential is a name some commentators have long attached to government employees. This wouldn't be so insulting and scary if the definition of non-essential extended to paying our mortgage, buying groceries and paying our son's college tuition.  

Commentators like libertarian writer Nick Gillespie are pouncing on the furloughs of some 800,000 government employees as evidence of what they've long suspected: "DUH! I've been saying that government workers are non-essential for years!" This is a lame argument. Just repeat something often enough, and it becomes fact. Schoolkids throughout the generations have created similar epidemics of certainty as they almost universally complain about their teachers and going to school in the first place. Yet they learn valuable lessons and meet and learn to work with people from diverse backgrounds with diverse viewpoints. School's a great gig. So is gainful employment.

If the non-essential government shutdown goes on for much longer, my husband and others might be forced to look for other employment. That would be a a good plan, if the overall job market weren't so measly. Many of the so-called replacement jobs are part-time in the service industry, offering low pay and no benefits.String two or even three part-time jobs together and maybe you can scrape together an existence, if not a living. Going on unemployment and food stamps would be cheaper for the government than my husband's salary, but then Mr. Gillespie and others like him, who have so much insight and knowledge into what my husband and other government employees do or do not do and do or do not deserve, would be calling us freeloaders. No win-win in this scenario.

A non-essential pet rock. More than one million sold in six months in 1976.

All this talk of non-essential is confusing. We Americans practically invented the non-essential. Shopping malls are filled with tape stores and redundant boutiques and restaurants, and there is no pretense of a line between need and want. Much of our economy runs on making things that are nonessential, things that are nice to have, but expendable. But these are products, objects of choice and desire, not people and their life's work and livelihood.

I might be imagining things, but the only thing that counts any more are emergencies, real or manufactured, like the way this government shutdown has been manufactured. Only when the house is on fire, or the house under water, are we considered "essential." But as I said, I might be imagining things. There are many representatives in Congress who voted to deny aid to those caught up in the floods and destruction of Hurricane Sandy, including Rep.Cory Gardner, who represents the district in Colorado where Don and I live and have raised our family. Notice his website, still spiffy even during the government shutdown, as opposed to the NOAA website above. Of course, during the recent floods in Boulder Country, Gardner graciously accepted government aid for his constituents, just not for those folks out there in New York City.

The Flatirons in Boulder, frosted in show and swaddled in cloud and mystery, taken last Friday by my friend Andrew Nicholson

I turn away from the rage and the sadness at a government shutdown that has accomplished as little as the 113th Congress is accomplishing, to return to the subject at hand--what is essential? So often it's not the things we buy. It's what we give, what we enjoy, and what we're grateful for. These are essential to me: My family's happiness. Sunlight. Reasonable amounts of rain. Good food prepared with love and shared with people we love. Something to share, a smile, an encouraging word, a caress. A yoga mat. A good pair of walking shoes. Good books. Kindness. Natural beauty revealed, as in Andrew's photo. A giant pumpkin.

Honey and Meditation

Don's beehive earlier this summer, as Buddha looks on

I finished reading "Meditation and the Art of Beekeeping" by Mark Magill. While it was gracefully written and helped me understand beekeeping a little more, I was hoping it would focus more on meditation, and specifically his own meditation practice. For instance, he listed what the great teachers say are the stages of meditation. Never helpful. I find myself trying to fit into one of the stages and can't, so I conclude I'm not making progress at all.

I am always grateful for what others meditators share, because many don't share much. I'm not sure why. Maybe they think it's unseemly to speak of something so personal and so individual. Maybe they thinks the Wisdom Source is so vast that everyone connects to it uniquely, and therefore it's unhelpful to talk about experiences others are not likely to have

In my experience, the early years of meditation are a lot like watching paint dry. Thirty years ago my tai chi teacher Sherry Seidman (now Shoshanna Katzman) addressed the topic of commitment to the practice this way. "It takes a long time to progress in the forms. We Americans are not accustomed to waiting for things. We want them now. When we don't get them we move on to something else that promises more immediate rewards." She went on to say that all good things are worth waiting for, and that after ten years of consistent practice my life would be change in unpredictably wonderful ways. To a twenty-one-year-old, there was little that was consistent in my life, so my practice fell by the wayside more than once over the next ten, and even twenty years. But I always remembered her promise, and it is turning out to be true.

The progress in meditation is so slow, so gradual, our nervous systems so delicate, that I can understand why so many people give up and move on to other things.Yet this is precisely the reason why it takes so long to make progress. We want it, but we are not ready for it on so many levels. I started meditating because I wanted to have transcendent, mystical experiences, where I would be transported from my mundane existence to, I don't know, the Meditation Hall of Fame.

It was not to be.

I have, however, begun to transcend my limited, mundane self through meditation. All I've ever consistently done is put my butt on a cushion for a half hour every morning. It's been like putting half pennies in a piggy bank. The change (please pardon the pun) has been so small you hardly think anything has accrued, until one fine day I noticed I felt calmer, more stable, more present in situations that usually freaked me out. Meditation had gradually become a haven for me, a place I can return to, whether I am harried by life or celebrating it.

Most people are dealing with huge amounts of stress. Stress is in the air, yes, but most of it is self-generated. Martha Graham used to tell her students, "The body does not lie." Neither does the way people drive or push shopping carts or move through amusement park crowds. They may be perfectly lovely people who care for their families, but the way they move betrays the hurry sickness that plagues so many. Power of Now author Eckhart Tolle writes, "Most people treat the present moment as if it were an obstacle that they need to overcome. Since the present moment is Life itself, it is an insane way to live."

When people find out I teach yoga and meditation, they often tell me they've tried to meditate but it doesn't work for them.Perhaps they're right. Perhaps their long-held tensions are different and more intractable than mine. I'm also willing to bet they're not. It seems to me that we hold on to our stress because it differentiates us from others. I'm here to tell you your stress isn't special. It's killing you, just like it's killing everyone else.

When I find myself getting edgy in traffic, my investment in a meditation practice has helped me develop ways to soothe myself. Deep belly breaths are a great way to tame stress. At least ten of them in a row are said to reduce the amount of cortisol in your system. One of the most effective ways is to repeat loving kindness meditation to the driver in Friday afternoon traffic who is weaving in and out of lanes. When I catch myself thinking, What a jerk, who does he think he is anyway? I remind myself that he is trying to be free of the traffic jam, just like the rest of us. So I begin repeating loving kindness, "May he be safe. May he be happy. May he be healthy. May he live with ease." I repeat until I begin to believe that he really needed to be somewhere five minutes ago. Better yet, his compulsion to be first doesn't even enter my mind.anymore.

Wishing for his safety, happiness, health and ease is the very least I can do for him. These are what every person needs. What kind of ogre would I be if I can't offer others these basic goods? If you're not convinced, consider how you hurt yourself when you persist in withholding safety, happiness, health and ease from others, or worse, allow your anger and resentment to wish the worst for them. You know the truth of this as surely as you know that certain foods and habits are bad for you.You know that bowl of grapes is better for you than the bowl of potato chips, and sometimes you just want the chips anyway. Don't beat yourself up, whether you eat the chips or catch yourself hating on that guy in traffic. Just don't let that choice be the last word. I mean, really. Isn't that guy always in traffic? Why are you letting him and his trip yank your chain? This is where a meditation practice comes in to slow you down and keep you in contact with what's best and most real in your life. Start intoning loving kindness, even directing it at yourself. May I be safe. May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I live with ease.

I mentioned earlier how I wanted to have transcendent, mystical experiences in meditation. I'm still waiting, though what I'm receiving is already really good. Occasionally I experience the sweet taste of the Wisdom Source's limitless love and appreciation. Maybe this is a subtext of Mark Magill's book, that the sweetness of honey and of meditation are one and the same. It is enough to keep me coming back for more.

Prepare to Waver

Several times I've started to write about the George Zimmerman case, but I realized I had nothing to add to the conversation, except to say that I do not think justice was served. A 17-year-old boy lies dead, and he is not only accused of using concrete pavement as a weapon, of being a pothead, but of causing his own death. If only he hadn't tried to defend himself against a guy who was following him because he was stranger and he was black. I'll leave it to essayists who have more considered opinions, like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Jelani Cobb.

An excellent demonstration of Salamba Sirsasana, Headstand

Every writing teacher I've ever had has advised me to stick to writing about what I know. Who'd a thunk I'd  ever be more qualified to talk about standing on my head than about criminal justice? For years I've been tentative about headstand, known as the king of the yoga postures. Headstand has wonderful benefits: clearing and calming the mind and strengthening the arms, shoulders, neck, spine and abdominals. In yoga we balance on our feet, sometimes on only one, on our sitting bones, our hands and knees, our forearms, and the backs of our shoulders. All of these seem very doable. I might not be great in arm balances, but I knew if I got stronger through my arms and abs I'd be able to do them.

But balancing on my head? I had the idea that only people who had attained some kind of physical empowerment could do it. My teacher Shar Lee teaches headstand between two chairs. Below is a very good demo of the technique, similar to Shar's.

I've done it this way many times because it puts no strain on the neck and head. But then another teacher pointed out you don't get the crown chakra stimulation that only Headstand and Rabbit provide. Sirsasana was one of the poses I learned in teacher training. There I learned it without props. To my amazement I was able to get into the posture, under my teacher's careful direction and observation. She correctly pointed out that success in Headstand is predicated on pressing the forearms into the floor so that the crown of the head is only very lightly touching. Stabilizing the shoulders and engaging the abdominals is also part of the formula. Put them all together, and you have lift-off.

I haven't felt comfortable doing it in my practice until recently. It kept calling to me. Primarily I've had to work on overcoming my fear. I was afraid of falling and breaking my neck. That is a legitimate, material fear. My underlying fear was more subtle. I discovered I just can't stand instability, and headstand is all about finding equilibrium within instability.

I don't know anyone who loves instability. I'm not alone in wanting to know where my next meal is coming from, where my next kiss is coming from. I like knowing where I stand with the people I care for most. I like knowing that the Earth is spinning on its axis, and the earth is solid beneath my feet.

What I'm discovering in my current explorations of headstand is that stability is at best a wavering presence. Stability can't last, though it is a field we can play in.When I'm in Sirsasana, it's a constant interplay between swaying and stabilizing. Just as your mind never completely stills in meditation or at any other time, your body never stops moving. In the posture, I'm continually reminding myself to press my foreams more firmly into the floor. As soon as I do that, the structure stabilizes. But then I have a slight form break somewhere else, either in my side waists or in my shoulder blades. Then it's back to lengthening through my sides, and sending my shoulder blades toward my sacrum. Some days I can't stabilize at all.

Achieving stability, in Sirsasana or in life, is not a market to corner or a deal to nail down. It's very much about practicing skills and making adjustments that support your being, whether you're upside down and balancing on your head, or right side up and giving your children their independence.

Which Dog Do You Feed?

The puppies next door, Packer and Harley

I love animals, cats (we have two), gerbils (we have one), dogs (none yet, but I think I'm wearing my husband down :D), cows, horses. Even these guys (sorry, Jo Hansen, may you rest in peace, but I'm still crazy about raccoons):

Awww--isn't he cute?

Everyone in my family thinks I'm crazy to spend time watching the puppy cams on explore.com. Watching puppies grow up and receive training to become service dogs for wounded veterans opens my heart. I overdose on their cuteness.

Unfortunately, some of the puppy lovers bring along their ambivalent attitudes about human beings. I admit to this myself. Some days I like animals better than people. It's easy to love someone who doesn't talk back, and who looks at you with huge, soulful eyes. A few of the commenters on Dog Bless You have forgotten that the primary attraction is the pups and their moms. Instead they want to make unflattering comparisons between the different organizations Explore features on its website. I find that as offensive as comparing the child-rearing abilities of parents. Raising young things is the most creative work people can do. There are better practices than others, for sure. But if you're going to appoint yourself judge and jury, make sure that you're seeing and hearing everything in 3-D, not from a computer screen, before you make any decisions.

When people on the Dog Bless You comment section call out the critical folks, they reply that they have the right to express their opinion. OK, fine. So open up a Blogger or Wordpress account and express away. But don't bother me and the others who simply want to love on the pups and the people, many of them volunteers, who are raising the babies with your critical, unflattering comparisons. No one who's watching a computer screen can seriously believe that they can see the whole of the operation, and therefore have the right to express an uninformed opinion. Because they don't. This is rife in political discourse as well. People go straight to trash talk before they even have a clue about the subject. This highlights one of the reasons I sometimes prefer animals to people--an unattractive tendency to seek, and to inevitably find, what is wrong in any given scenario.

When I was in teacher training, one of my professors was fond of pointing out how no one needs any training to notice students' disruptive behaviors. Looking for these same students' positive behaviors, or as he called it, "to catch 'em being good," requires much more finesse. Some students are conditioned to act out because they consistently receive attention for it, whereas their good deeds are taken for granted. "Which behavior do you want to reinforce?" he would ask.

To put it more poetically, here is a bit of Native American wisdom: "Inside of me are two dogs. The Black Dog is mean and angry; the White Dog is good and kind. The Black Dog fights the White Dog all day. Which one wins? The one I feed the most."

Becoming like Water

          
Now that it's spring here in the Colorado Rockies, I hear the song of the western meadowlark every time I'm in the wide open spaces. Their song sounds like flowing water to me. It feels like they're praising its sound in song.

In my yoga classes, I often speak of building the poses from the ground up, whether one is balancing on their seat, their feet, or their tete. Or their front, back and side. Building speaks of solidity, of structure, even of permanence. It's very important to have that sense of structure, of container. Eventually I contradict myself and tell them to become soft and fluid, to pour themselves into the posture.

It's all George Hernandez' fault. George was my tai chi and wing chun teacher. He would tell students we were painstakingly learning the forms, only to throw them out once we mastered them, in five or ten years, depending on how willful we were. Every time he'd say that I'd think to myself, What's the use of learning something we're only going to throw out? He would explain that you would never go into a fight using a form. You'd not only be an easy target, you'd be a laughingstock. You adapt your form and your movements to your opponents' and gain the advantage. Through dedicated practice, your lens becomes bigger than the forms and postures can contain. You see openings, and you thread your punches through them. You're certainly drawing from what you learned in choreographed fights, but the biggest thing you're really learning from them is awareness and improvisation.

Bruce Lee. What a specimen.

The exact same, except for the punches, is true of yoga. It would seem that martial arts and yoga are polar opposites, but they both work with energy, chi, prana, ki, or whatever your tradition calls it. Martial arts and yoga make the best use of the energy each practice generates, for different ends. Wing chun master Bruce Lee famously said, "You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend." It's about inhabiting space to the fullest extent, and being able to move from one space to the next. In both yoga and martial arts, the breath is the catalyst for filling space.

I often feel that certain problems are solid and intractable. Sometimes I dream that the solution to the problem was right in front of me all along. My mind was making it hard. I am not alone in this. I see it in my yoga students' bodies. The chips on their shoulders. Defiant posture. Defeatist posture. Being too hard on themselves. Less often, in go-go, bad-ass American culture, being too easy on themselves. Non-responsiveness. Non-awareness of the unnecessary, soul-sucking tension they carry within their beings. I touch their shoulders, the backs of their necks, their backs, inviting them to let breath and awareness melt the solidity, to find the softness and fluidity that is just beneath, like water beneath hard ground.

I don't claim to know what enlightenment is. It feels like water, letting water carry me where it will, rather than where I will. If I could sing like a bird, I'd sing the meadowlark's song. Yoga is practical enlightenment, in the sense that you are gradually letting go of burdens you never needed to carry in the first place.

                          

"I Need Something to Change Your Mind"

Shortly after voters approved a bond for our local school district in 2002, the school board announced a $13.8 million budget shortfall. District accountants had forgotten to factor in staff salaries for the new schools built in one of the fastest-growing districts in the state.

Around this time I ran into someone I know from church, a physical therapist who contracted with the school district. When the subject of the budget deficit came up, she shrugged. "At least we got a few things we'd really needed for a long time."

Uh-huh. But really? Why were we putting essentials on the credit card? If the district could afford to build schools, and there were more taxpayers moving into the area, why were we in this pickle? My own best, and probably woefully underinformed guess, is that the state's history of skimping on tax collection had finally caught up with itself. There was no evidence of criminal malfeasance on the part of the district accountant. He wasn't embezzling money, but he got fired for incompetence. Chalk it up to human error. SNAFU is another explanation. Mainly because I like to say SNAFU.

The community came through in a big way, as did the state, and the school district eventually climbed out of debt in 2007. Over the last ten years, voters also have voted in favor of two mill levies, something that had never happened in the district's history. People in this community had changed their minds. We got stuff we'd needed for a long time, and not even a budget crisis could stop that from happening. Maybe there's hope for other crises this country faces.

The week of April 15-19 was one of the saddest I can remember. The Boston Marathon bombings. The fertilizer plant explosion in Texas. The Senate's epic fail to do even one thing about gun violence, despite the public's overwhelming support for a variety of measures to address it. This last is the one that hurts the most, because 30,000 people die in gun violence every year in this country.

Twenty kids, six educators, and the shooter's mother dead doesn't change them. Not even one of their own getting shot in the head changes their mind about their position on gun violence.It's all NRA, all the time. SNAFU doesn't even begin to describe the whole sad, pathetic situation.

It brings to mind a Talking Heads song, "Mind," from the band's 1979 Album.

The salient line: "I need something to change your mind," because nothing so far has done it. Not time, money, drugs, religion, or science.

None of it has changed New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte's mind. She voted against instituting background checks and other gun control measures. Watch this exchange between Sen. Ayotte and Erica Lafferty, the daughter of slain Sandy Hook Elementary principal Dawn Hochstrung:

I'm not going to congratulate Sen Ayotte was doing her job to host Ms. Lafferty in her office. Ayotte's votes on the Senate gun control measures were obviously a slap in the face to Erica Lafferty and others who have been affected by gun violence. Sen. Ayotte brings up mental health, as have many other in public life, including NRA veep Wayne LaPierre, who has proposed a national registry for the mentally ill, but God forbid there should be a national registry for gun owners.

I believe they're as serious about addressing the crisis in mental health care as they are about addressing gun violence. Not a single Republican in the Congress voted for Obamacare, which includes provisons for mental health care reform. Congressional Republicans have voted unsuccessfully to void Obamacare more than 30 times in three years. Given their history of obstructionism on health care and so many other issues, reforming mental health care in this country would be a lot more difficult than passing laws that restrict who has access to guns.

Which leads me to the question--What will change their minds about gun violence? What has to happen that is worse than a Congresswoman with a life-changing gunshot wound or 20 dead first-graders? This question, to quote David Byrne, "comes directly from my heart to you."

Poor in Spirit

Brennan Manning, author photo in his book, All Is Grace

When Brennan Manning died last Friday, the world lost a champion for the poor in spirit. Though he was a Franciscan priest, a gifted teacher, and the writer of a treasure trove of spiritual books, he would have called himself poor of spirit. His long struggle with alcoholism took him far beyond the holy hush of his vows to the depths of hell on earth. A kind stranger peeled him off the pavement in New Orleans, a step in a process of recovery that lasted the rest of his life. The first beatitude says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." May he be so blessed.

Brennan after his stroke, with All Is Grace co-author John Blase. People who smile that openly, that joyfully, are usually children.

 I would say he earned his place, but there's no earning the kingdom of heaven, no matter what most of the Christian churches in this country and beyond try to tell you. There is only the unconditional surrender of your heart, and I like to think Brennan succeeded. I like the idea of succeeding rather than earning.



Few want to be poor in spirit, or poor in any way. Most want to bless the world with their achievements, their generosity, their sheer awesomeness. The poor in spirit confess their multiple deficiencies without being the least bit proud of them, or even ashamed of them. It is then that the spiritual blessings begin to transfuse in, mostly so slowly they don't notice.

Anuvittasana. This is a tough pose to do well. The model could stand to initiate the pose through lengthening her spine upward and lifting her heart, rather than leaning back and initiating the bend from the low back.

My first and most beloved yoga teacher, Shar Lee, exhorts students to give up their hearts to God in back bends. That's a natural teaching for me, as I often experience emotion and insight through physical exertion. In Anuvittasana, Standing Back Bend, Shar invites students to initiate the back bend through the lifting of the heart and the ribcage, rather than through the low back and hips. For me, this pose is the physical expression of surrendering the heart, and a baby step in the process at that. Through this pose, I gain insight into the technical difficulty of surrender.

Brennan Manning was a master at the art of surrender. He made no claim of being chosen. He acknowledged the difficulty of life, his own and those of all the other ragamuffins he loved and wrote about. Ragamuffins couldn't gussy themselves up in furs and perfumes to go before their Maker even if they wanted to. They come to the feast as they are.

Leonard Cohen says it well, in "Anthem:" "Every heart, every heart/to love will come/but like a refugee."

I highly recommend this book. I love the cover photo. It invites readers to offer themselves, even in pieces.

In "Anthem," Leonard Cohen also sings:

"Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in."

Rest in peace, Brennan.