But for the Grace of God

 

This is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, which may seem off topic, but since I’m studying Buddhism I will tag it under compassion.   But it really came to a head today.

I don’t know why, but I was thinking again about homeless people as I was driving to the gas station from work.  It really bothers me that we have homeless people in my town now.  And it bothers me that it doesn’t seem to bother other people. 

I’ve been told one of them, who has been here for years, is homeless by choice, and his parents live here.  I call him the “Can Man” because he pushes a big cart around and does dumpster diving.  He apparently has a routine, because I’ve seen him several mornings in the dumpster behind a motel or crossing the main street in front of it.  His hair is gray now, but what concerns me is he appears to be dressed  in shorts and/or pajamas.  We just had several days and nights with the coldest temperatures on record.

But for a while now we have had apparently homeless people standing at the end of one of our shopping centers.  And more often than not, they have dogs with them.  It isn’t easy for me to confess that I have wondered if they have dogs because they get more money with them, and that I have asked myself if I am more concerned for the dogs than the people.

We do have homeless shelters; there’s one down the street from me.  But I’m sure it doesn’t take dogs, even though it is in a former veterinary clinic.  I don’t mind giving people money, but I do worry about my safety. 

Tonight as I was at the stoplight before the gas station, I saw two police cars there.  I decided not to go there, although I’m sure there might just have been a car scraping another.  But when I went to the other gas station, a man came up to me and said “Sorry for startling you.  Do you have $3 to help me out?”  I said, “Sorry, no,” and he said  “Thank you” and walked across the street, past the McDonalds, probably to stand on the corner of the shopping center.

I thought about him when I got home.  Would he go hungry?  It’s supposed to be 31 degrees tonight.  I hate that my fear may have caused another human being to suffer.

The cynical probably say that every homeless person is by choice.  But I remember reading about President Lyndon Johnson making a comment to one of his staff or aides about a homeless person.  The associate said something like, all it takes is one thing to go wrong, and that person could be you or me.  It could be loss of a job, a car accident, or a serious illness.

I’m going to call the homeless shelter down the street and ask if they do take pets.    If they do, maybe I’ll make some little sheets with directions to the shelter.  I’m going to ask what I can do to help.

When we used to go down to the Sea of Cortez in Mexico, we passed through the city of Hermosilla.  At the stoplights, children would ask if they could clean your windshield for a dollar.  My brother-in-law said not to give it to them because that was only making them continue to beg.  But a dollar to them meant a whole lot more than it did to me.

The Promise

 One of the reasons I started my spiritual journey was because I have seen that people with faith handle adversity better. 

I have the second bad cold of the season.  I don’t even usually get colds.  And last time, like every time I’ve been sick, I made a promise to myself to take better care of myself.  I bought a bunch of fruit and vegetable juices and swore I would develop better health habits.  Obviously, that did not happen.

My mother used to tell me I should be a nurse, because I could always find a job.  She was right, but she forgot I had a traumatic experience in a hospital when I was 5 years old (plus I’m squeamish at the sight of blood).  I had my appendix taken out after having great pain.  The naval hospital was about 2 hours away from the small Nike Army base where we lived, so they couldn’t visit me every day.  My sisters weren’t allowed to come to my room, so I had to wave at them behind a barrier.  One day a nurse was trying to untangle my hair in the playroom.  She said I looked like a witch, which really upset me.

I have had more operations and several trips to the ER which have made me want to avoid hospitals.  Both my parents died of complications in the hospital, not from the condition they were brought there for.

So I tend to baby myself when I am sick.  You would think it would make me more committed to taking care of myself.  But I get lazy.

This time I am going to try harder, and I will report my progress back here.  I have been studying Buddhist meditation practices to reduce anxiety and stress so I can sleep better.

Here is an interesting article I read today on whether prayer can heal by a doctor.

Ask of the Beasts

“Ask of the beasts and they will teach you the beauty of this earth.” ~St. Francis of Assisi

This morning on our weekly walk we saw a little girl and her mother we have seen at least twice before.  They remembered us, too.  The little girl told her mother she loved puppies and kittens, too.  Then she said she loved animals.  She told her mother there was a show on Nickleodean that showed all the dogs and cats who didn’t have homes.

Her mother told her some people couldn’t have dogs or cats because they lived in an apartment or couldn’t afford them.  I wondered if that was true in their case, which made me sad.  But it was good to hear children’s programming isn’t all noise and flash.

Although I usually prefer solitude on our walks, Cubbie is the opposite.  He has taught me to be more open to people because he loves everyone, especially children.

 A few weeks ago an elderly couple came walking toward us, and the man’s eyes lit up when he saw Cubbie.  He came over to pet him.  His wife, who walked with a cane, was reluctant but petted him also.  Cubbie was so gentle, as if he sensed he needed to be.

I  also think he was brought into my life to teach me patience (I wasn’t looking for another dog at the time).  That is something I have been trying to learn my whole life.  Nature is a great teacher of patience, too.

“But ask the animals, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you; ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you.”  Job 12:7-8

Bringing In the Light

I wanted to write something wonderful and wise for the New Year.  But the words didn’t come.  I thought about showing what wise words other people said, but that was easy enough for everyone to find.

There was a shadow upon me, a feeling I couldn’t define.  Sting’s song “Fields of Gold” kept playing in my mind.  The writer of the song died of cancer.

Then, on Saturday, January 8th, the massacre in Tucson happened.  Six people dead, our Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords shot in the head and clinging to life, and 13 more people injured.  In some ways it was like 9/11 again, with the same scenes played over and over on the television news.  I kept thinking to myself, “This doesn’t happen in this country.”

I really don’t like politics, and quite honestly I only voted for Ms. Giffords because her opponent was so unacceptable.  I have written her several letters concerning the Bureau of Land Management’s mismanagement of wild horses (“Management to Extinction” it has been called) and have never received a response.  But I certainly didn’t wish her dead.

As the reporters said, Tucson is a city of over a million people, but people know and care about each other.  This was certainly shown by those who risked their lives to stop the gunman and care for other people.  Although we are 75 miles away, we shop and eat there, and fly from Tucson, so it’s almost like we are part of the neighborhood.

I’m not psychic, nor would I want to be.  A very selfish part of me feels grateful that my feelings of dread did not result in any harm to my family or me.  But I hope that everyone can learn something from this tragedy, especially as it seems it could have been prevented, although the blame is being thrown everywhere.

even if it's not possible
to start completely over,
there is still this:
the day, opening into itself
and you, parting the curtains,
seeing all that light come in.

– Maya Stein

 

Making Peace With Christmas

That may seem like a strange title, but this year I felt the need to bring more joy into the holidays.  I did all of my shopping and mailing early, so I did feel less stressed, but I also had a strange feeling of not being invited to the party since I was not out there rushing around like everyone else.  But crowded stores really bother me now, and I almost felt like I was going to have a panic attack standing in line in the crowded post office.

I also wanted to explore the meaning of Christmas traditions to bring more meaning and less commercialism to my Christmas this year, since I was staying home.  I made an Advent wreath, found a wonderful Advent calendar, and did some reading and research.  I was amazed to learn many of the Christian traditions are based on pagan ones.  It did make the season more special.

That isn’t to say I did not spend too much money.  There really is so much pressure to buy, and of course I had to have some presents to open “from my dog.” Those were books and CD books, and I have sworn never to buy more.  But they give me more pleasure than anything else, and I found some real treasures this year.  I decided I would read them and in some cases pass them on if I felt someone else could benefit, unless they are something I mark for future reading.  I used to not want to make marks in my books, but I realized that was ridiculous.  It does not ruin the book; it only shows how loved it is.

I did decide to reduce my Christmas CD collection.  I usually added one a year, so I decided it was too large because I never played them all.  I kept the ones I really loved, and I gave the others to a woman who adopted three families for Christmas and a young military wife whose husband is deployed.  She was thrilled because I also added some children’s DVDs I had bought for when my nephew comes to visit, but he has outgrown them.  I’ll spare you a cliche on that, but it did feel good.  And I will make my Advent wreath on something less tacky than tin foil next year.

The Wisdom of Trees

Last week as we were walking towards my favorite trees, I noticed their leaves were finally starting to fall.  The other trees were almost bare already, but these trees shed their leaves last.  As I stood in the grove, I felt a sadness knowing they would soon be bare and it meant winter was coming.

Then I realized, they aren’t sad, and they aren’t resisting.  The falling leaves made a whispering sound as they gently glided down through the branches.  

“Winter embraces the land, and trees surrender their leaves in an act of holy supplication, extending their arms upward in prayer. I see in those bare branches, the beauty of things brought back to their essence,” wrote Christine Valters Paintner on her beautiful web site, abbeyofthearts.com.

Trees have always seemed strong and wise to me.  I come from a logging town, and when I went back there it broke my heart to see the logging trucks constantly roaring down the highway in back of my grandmother’s house.  Once there was a picture in the paper of a lumberjack who had cut down the first tree in a stand that was over 100 years old.  He was grinning like he had just climbed Mount Everest.

“I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.”~~Willa Cather

 

 The older I get, the more I resist change, which is futile.  Especially in these times, I need to remember to live in the seasons, not in the past.

 

 

Entering Our Dreams

“I did not fail at being a basketball player nor did poetry fail me.  More accurately, my inwardness evolved with enough life experience, so that moving bodily in the air evolved into the poet’s dance of feeling which then evolved into the spirit’s grace of being.  I no more failed in my desire to be a basketball player than the cocoon fails the butterfly, though the form of the dream was painful to lose.

 “Living up to a dream is rarely as important as entering it for all it has to teach.”

~~Mark Nepo, “The Book of Awakening”

Reading those words this morning made my heart sing.  Lately I have been so full of regret for the dreams that I let go, and even have been trying to bring them back.  He goes on to give a list of questions to ask yourself about the dream(s).  This will be so helpful as I sort out what to let go of and what to pursue again, perhaps in a different manner.

I almost didn’t buy this book, which is supposedly on Oprah’s nightstand.  I thought it might be over my head.  But the more I read it, the more I realize it’s going to be another daybook I read over and over (like “Simple Abundance” by Sarah Ban Breathnach and “The Awe-Manac” by Jill Badonsky).   I want to create my own daybook for my personal use, because I have been collecting quotes for many years.  I decided I want it to have my own photographs, so that will take some time, but it will be fun and a way of preserving what speaks to me.