Reckonings: a journal of justice, hope and history

The Layers: for Joshua

Tomorrow, June 23, 2018, I shall travel to Portland, Oregon, to join the Boettiger clan in celebrating the graduation of my son Joshua at the end of his two-year MFA program in poetry at Pacific University. Though better known as a rabbi (currently at Temple Emek Shalom in Ashland, Oregon) than as a poet, he is now bi-vocational. He has always brought his gifts as a poet to his rabbinical presence, but I'm confident that the truly wonderful growth of his poetic craft in the last two years will become known to a much wider audience in its own right. As soon as he shares his final thesis, including his poems, with his dad, I look forward to sharing my experience of his work with readers of Reckonings. More of his work will surely be published.

Stanley Kunitz's poem, "The Layers," is my best gift to Joshua at this time, as it is the first and longest-standing of the poems the two of us have shared, among the fruits of our chavruta. Its character is expressive of what he and I have cherished over many years. 

 

The Layers

By Stanley Kunitz

 

 

I have walked through many lives, 

some of them my own,

and I am not who I was,

though some principle of being

abides, from which I struggle

not to stray.

When I look behind,

as I am compelled to look

before I can gather strength

to proceed on my journey,

I see the milestones dwindling

toward the horizon

and the slow fires trailing

from the abandoned camp-sites,

over which scavenger angels

wheel on heavy wings.

Oh, I have made myself a tribe

out of my true affections,

and my tribe is scattered!

How shall the heart be reconciled

to its feast of losses?

In a rising wind

the manic dust of my friends,

those who fell along the way,

bitterly stings my face.

Yet I turn, I turn,

exulting somewhat,

with my will intact to go

wherever I need to go,

and every stone on the road

precious to me.

In my darkest night,

when the moon was covered

and I roamed through wreckage,

a nimbus-clouded voice

directed me:

“Live in the layers,

not on the litter.”

Though I lack the art

to decipher it,

no doubt the next chapter

in my book of transformations

is already written.

I am not done with my changes.

 

Sometimes the U.S. Park Service gets it right

A report from The New York Times about innovation in Yosemite National Park, and our own equally overcrowded gem, Muir Woods:

 

They paved paradise and put up a lot of parking lots. That was the way some national parks coped with the surge in visitors in recent decades. We published an article this week on a project that did the reverse — restored the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias in Yosemite National Park partly by tearing up a lot of asphalt and hauling it away.

The Muir Woods National Monument, the grove of centuries-old coastal redwoods in Marin County, is undergoing a similar multimillion-dollar transformation, albeit more gradually. In January the park instituted a mandatory parking reservation system to mitigate overcrowding. A shuttle bus from other parking areas also requires reservations.

The result has been a 20 percent reduction in the number of visitors to Muir Woods, which is across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. Visitors numbered 72,790 in April this year compared with 92,589 during the same month last year, according to the Park Service.

Next summer the park will begin tearing up parking lots, relocating and renovating them, possibly using a more natural material than asphalt.

“At the end of the day that is the goal — a smaller footprint and more that is natural and vegetative,” said Mia Monroe, a community liaison ranger at Muir Woods who has helped lead the restoration. “We are trying to move all of our infrastructure out of sensitive areas.”

The park will relocate wastewater pipes, renovate paths and footbridges, help restore salmon populations in the Redwood Creek by removing boulders and replacing them with a more fish-friendly habitat.

A decade ago Muir Woods became the first national park to have a quiet zone. Visitors to the Cathedral Grove, home to the park’s oldest tree (around 750 years old), are asked to talk quietly (children included!) and to avoid using cellphones.

“This isn’t a wilderness area that is way off the beaten path. It’s so close to urban San Francisco,” Emily Burns, science director for the Save the Redwoods League, a century-old group that advocates for preserving redwood and sequoia forests. “But the Park Service is figuring out innovative ways to provide as close to a wilderness experience as you could get that close to an urban center.”

 

 

Modum Bad: A Resource for Healing and Renewal

The paper to which I direct readers below was published by Modum Bad, a remarkable healing community and psychiatric hospital whose campus is nestled among forest and fields typical of southern Norway, just above the beautiful inland lake of Turifjord and the village of Vikersund, little more than an hour's drive north of Oslo.

I completed the paper in May 2007, after my wife Leigh and I had returned to our home in Dedham, Massachusetts, having completed two visits, each of several months, at Modum Bad as guest psychologists. Most of the research upon which the paper is based was completed on those visits, and early drafts were shared with members of Modum Bad's clinical staff, whose responses were generous and enormously valuable.

Leigh and I knew that we would return to Modum Bad, she as director of its Research Institute, I as lecturer and consultant to staff and patients. That next stage of our Modum Bad life was cut short by the illness that was to take Leigh's life in 2012. That is another story, one that someday I may be able to write, but for the time being, I'll simply add that my own relationship with Modum Bad continues, with a moving memorial service after Leigh's death, and occasional editorial work on papers written by Modum Bad staff.

My high regard for Modum Bad has only grown with time. The admiration and promise that weave through the 2007 paper continue, and I would not change my overall assessment. At the same time, I need to be clear that while the spirit of Modum Bad lives on, much of the specific content of the paper is dated. Many papers of Modum Bad staff continue to be published in prominent English-language journals. I am hopeful that my friend Ole Johan Sandvand, who retired last year as Modum Bad's director, will undertake a more current assessment of Modum Bad's life in the years since 1957. It remains an important international source of accomplishment and continuing innovation in mental health and human development and deserves the international attention of psychological and psychiatric practitioners and students worldwide.

 

Modum Bad: A Resource for Healing and Renewal

 

 

 

 

A Good Night's Sleep

From the current issue of Wired magazine:

"Everyone knows the importance of a good night's sleep. But do you really? If Golden State Warriors forward Andre Igoudala is any indication, many people drastically underestimate just how powerful good sleep hygiene can be. For 10 years, Igoudala had been sleeping terribly: late nights playing video games and afternoon naps threw off his sleep cycle and hampered his performance on the court. But then he met Cheri Mah, a physician-scientist at UC San Francisco's Human Performance Center. And, as science writer Robbie Gonzalez reports, everything changed.

"Mah has been studying the relationship between sleep and athletic performance for more than a decade, and she put Iguodala on a new regimen, overhauling everything from the timing of his sleep to his caffeine intake and nutrition. The results were astounding. His three-point-shot percentage doubled; his turnover and foul rates plummeted; he started earning 29 percent more points per minute; and he won the 2015 NBA Finals MVP award , after the Golden State Warriors won the series. And to Mah, the role sleep played in that transformation can't be underestimated. 'The comparison most of us make, when talking about the importance of sleep, is to performance-enhancing drugs,' Mah says. 'All these athletes are looking for that extra 1 percent boost in performance. But when you look at the research, it suggests a solid foundation of rest and recovery is worth way more than 1 percent.'"

How to Be a Friend Until the End - Frank Ostaseski

One of the joys of having good friends, particularly friends who share common commitments and interests, is that they have their eyes open and alert for topics and representations of common commitments I may otherwise have missed. Such is often the case with Al Braidwood. In this instance he and I and all of our meditation circle at The Redwoods had the deeply engaging experience of sharing the reading of Frank Ostaseski's remarkable book, Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully. 

Al sent me more recently an essay Frank wrote in the May 2018 issue of the Buddhist journal, Lion's Roar. Not a substitute for but an extension of Frank's book, the essay focuses more particularly on the unusual and often treasured, often painful friendship that can, if all to briefly, develop between those in the last days of their lives and those whose privilege it is to care for them during that time. The vigiling (VALE) program we have developed at The Redwoods has offered a few of us, including Al and me, the opportunity of that experience. In his own introductory reflections on Frank's essay, Al puts that opportunity into remarkably insightful context:

"l have always perceived friendship as the highest form of relationship because it is entirely volitional and has no built-in 'a priori' set of obligations or expectations except those which spontaneously arise and form in the course of the friendship itself. The Japanese use the word kenzoku (literally meaning 'family') to describe a bond between people who have made similar choices in life and who presumably share a similar destiny. Since we live in community at The Redwoods, we may have people here with whom we feel that beautiful bond implied by the word kenzoku. In the Celtic tradition, there is in use an old Gaelic term for 'soul friend,'  'anam cara.' The term was popularized by the Irish priest, philosopher and poet John O’Donohue in his 1997 book Anam Cara about Celtic spirituality. In that tradition, 'soul friends' are considered an essential part of one’s spiritual development. Commenting on this friendship, Donohue explains, “you are joined in an ancient and eternal union with humanity that cuts across all barriers of time, convention, philosophy and definition. When you are blessed with an anam cara, you have arrived at that most sacred place: home.'"

 

Here is Frank Ostaseski's essay:

 

How to Be a Friend Until the End
MAY 29, 2018 | LION’S ROAR

A friend or family member shares the news of a life-threatening diagnosis or we see them stumble on a curb or over their words, and in that moment we realize that we’re about to become a companion to someone facing death. Perhaps it’s a conscious choice. Maybe we feel we have no choice.

It’s important in the beginning to remember that we already know how to care. We’ve extended a helping hand hundreds of times in a thousand meaningful and loving ways. Caring is a natural expression of our humanity. We can trust our good hearts to be reliable guides.

Offering care is like meditation, there’s no one right way, but some basic guidelines and practice can help.

Embrace Impermanence

Recognition of the transience of life is a central tenet of Buddhism. Impermanence is an essential truth woven into the very fabric of existence. It’s inescapable and perfectly natural. How we meet that truth makes a world of difference.

One of the most exquisite of Japanese terms, mono no aware, expresses an aesthetic sensibility that’s challenging to translate. It speaks to a gentle sadness—to being deeply moved by the transient, finite nature of things. It doesn’t deny loss or bypass grief but reminds us that the beauty of things and our appreciation of those dear to us is heightened by our awareness of their ephemeral nature.

Isn’t it the fragility and brevity of the cherry blossom, or morning light, or cresting wave that captivates us and invites us into wonder and gratitude?

Enter Mindfully

In the Zen tradition, we have the practice of dokusan, a face-to-face meeting with the teacher. The student is instructed to wait outside the teacher’s door and gather herself. She has no idea what’s waiting for her on the other side of the door. She has no idea what the teacher will ask, or perhaps even what she most needs. She does her best to be ready, flexible, and open.

Going into the room of someone who’s ill or dying is like going for dokusan. Empty your mind, open your heart, and enter with fresh eyes. Once in the room, sit down, talk less, and listen more. Touch when appropriate.

Be a Calm Presence

When we’re caring for someone who’s sick, we lend them our body. We use the strength of our backs and arms to move them from the bed to the commode. In the same way, we can also lend them the strength of our mind. We can help to create a calm and accepting environment. We can be a reminder of stability and concentration. We can expand our heart in such a way that it can inspire the individual who’s dying to expand theirs. One calm person in the room can ease the entire experience for everybody.

You Are Enough

We’re always messing with ourselves—telling ourselves what we should be experiencing, trying hard to be someone special, hoping we’re doing it all in the right way. Often in spiritual practice and in caregiving, we set some goal of where we think we ought to be and then use that to not be where we are.

I’m guided by the counsel of Carl Rogers, the great humanistic psychologist:

“Before every session, I take a moment to remember my humanity. There is no experience that this man, this woman has that I cannot share with him, no fear that I cannot understand, no suffering that I cannot care about, because I too am human. No matter how deep his wound, he does not need to be ashamed in front of me. I too am vulnerable. And because of this, I am enough. Whatever his story, he no longer needs to be alone with it. This is what will allow his healing to begin.”

No Advice

Some of us reach too quickly for our version of a prescription pad, doling out unsolicited advice. While our intentions may be genuine, we can be blissfully insensitive to the way we impact others. The attachment to the role of helper runs deep for most of us. If we’re not careful, it will imprison us and those we serve. Let’s face it: if I am going to be a helper, then somebody has to be helpless.

Is what you want to say true? Is it helpful? Is it the right time?
Wise speech is a mindfulness practice. Words can heal or harm. Before speaking, pause. Silence has the benefit of slowing things down. Ask yourself, is what you want to say true? Is it helpful? Is it the right time? And, maybe most important, is it wanted? If the other person doesn’t want to hear it, you may not need to say it. But at times we do need to speak whether the other person likes it or not. In such situations it’s more likely to go well if you follow the other guidelines covered in this article.

Turn Toward Suffering

An integral part of healing is letting go. But there’s no letting go until there’s letting in. As James Baldwin once wrote, “Not everything that can be faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed that is not faced.”

Suffering is exacerbated by avoidance. Our attempts at self-protection cause us to live in a cramped corner of our lives. We accept a limited perspective of the situation and a restricted view of ourselves. We cling to what’s familiar in order to reassert control, thinking we can fend off what we fear will be intolerable. When we push back, hoping to get rid of a difficult experience, we’re actually encapsulating it. In short, what we resist persists.

Suffering will only be removed by wisdom cultivated through inquiry, not by drenching it in sunshine or attempting to bury it in a dark basement. Compassion manifests through the medium of fearless receptivity.

Love Heals

The boundlessness of love is made evident when the veils between this world and the invisible world are thinnest. At birth and death, love can melt division, allowing us to move beyond what we thought possible.

When someone is sick, when their body is ravaged by illness, when they can no longer function in their familiar roles, when their identity is shifting daily, many people feel unloveable. When someone believes they’re beyond love, you cannot convince them to love themselves. But you can show them that they’re loved.

When someone is sick or suffering, love them. Just love them. Love them until they can remember to love themselves again.

 

ABOUT FRANK OSTASESKI:

 

In addition to his book, Five Invitations, Frank Ostaseski is the founder of the Metta Institute, co-founder of the Zen Hospice Project, and a coordinating teacher for a new multiyear training program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center called Heavenly Messengers: Awakening Through Illness, Aging, and Death. Frank is the 2018 recipient of the Humanities Award from the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine.

 

Stillness and the practice of silence

A good friend in my community, Al Braidwood, will lead our meditation circle in its practice this coming Saturday, June 9. In his preparatory letter to the members of the group, Al invoked the words of two well-known practitioners in the Christian contemplative tradition, Ronald Rolheiser and Thomas Merton. I want to share Al's letter with readers of Reckonings because I found it moving and instructive.

____________________

 

Dear friends of the Meditation Circle —

This Saturday, June 9, the subject is going to be the practice of silence — and I’m drawing my source material mostly from contemplative Christian sources. The invitation to “be still and know God in our inner beings” is at the heart of what is being called forth today more than ever. It is perhaps even more crucial in these shadowy, tumultuous times when it sometimes seems that the only thing between us and utter chaos is the awakened soul. To give you a foretaste, I append for your review and reflection two outstanding quotations from men whom I have no hesitation in calling Christian mystics. They are short passages excerpted from their designated books whose words are of the highest significance in this connection. We will discuss this more deeply when we gather on Saturday.

Ronald Rolheiser ~ from Against an Infinite Horizon:
The one journey that ultimately matters is the journey into the place of stillness deep within one’s self. To reach that place is to be at home; to fail to reach it is to be forever restless. There is something inherently compelling about this: not to reach inner stillness is to be forever restless. The journey inward, to that quiet center, that central silence where one’s own life and spirit are united with the life and spirit of the cosmos, may be long and arduous. But this is the pilgrimage of silence that each of us is invited to undertake.

Thomas Merton ~ from The Road to Joy:
Words stand between silence and silence: between the silence of things and the silence of our own being. Between the silence of the world and the silence of God. When we have really met and known the world in silence, words do not separate us from the world nor from other men, nor from God, nor from ourselves because we no longer trust entirely in language to contain reality.

I look forward to seeing you on Saturday morning. Thank you.

Om Shanti,
Al