Daily Dose (Aug 6 – 9)

TUESDAY AUGUST 6 —

On one morning walk, I asked my friends the Vashon Island sheep, “You guys have this thing—living the present—down, with no anxiety. What’s up with that?”
The answer came in their unruffled demeanor, “It helps to distinguish between big world and small world.”
So. This week we embrace the affirmation that it is in the small world, where we touch, and begin to heal. Where we stay connected to our heart. Where we hug (even virtually) and give and try and love and fall down and get up and repent and cry and embrace and challenge and reconcile and heal. And make sure we tell those not doing so good, “We’ve got you.”

Although, let’s be honest, staying connected to our heart is not easy. Especially in the “big world.” On another walk, during a time when life felt upside down, I asked the sheep, “What happens when you feel disconnected from your heart?”
“Who wants to know?” one of the little ones asks.
“Oh,” I say, “I’m just asking for a friend.”
In the big world, it is so easy to be buried by hurry, disappointment, antagonism, exhaustion from a deafening news cycle, apathy, excess of caution, or even the need to maintain a good reputation. And I know whatever is buried fuels fear, and blinds us to what is available inside. And fear, Hafiz reminds us, is always the smallest room in the house. I would like to see us in better living conditions.
Gratefully, responsible for my life, this is the time to step up. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux’s reminder that “everyone has to drink from his own well.”
So, where do I tether my identity? Where do I hydrate?  A dehydrated soul or spirit takes a toll. How is my well replenished?
This I do know: when I pause to drink deeply from this well, I am enriched and transformed. Yes, connected with my heart.
With care the surgeon reiterates the essentials about the heart surgery to his patient, as the gurney is about to be rolled into the operating room.  Regardless of how many times the surgeon has performed this procedure, he is aware that for each patient the anxiety is firsthand and not easily quelled.  The patient’s mind feels thick (perhaps the drugs), and while the words are understandable, the meaning muddled. Seeing the patient’s fear, the surgeon takes a model heart from a nearby shelf, shows it to the patient and says, “You brought me your heart. I’m going to give you back your heart. And it will be in better shape than the way you brought it to me.”
Not a bad mantra for all human encounters. After all, in the “small world”, we are hearts that touch. Which may sound too sentimental in a real world; where hearts touch and hearts hurt, hearts hope and hearts break, hearts heal and hearts splinter, and blessedly, from those splintered places hearts give again and again and make our world a better place.
Let’s give Louise Erdrich the last word, “Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to fell. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.” 

WEDNESDAY AUGUST 7 —

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are still two months away. However, thinking about this week’s theme of this week we embrace the affirmation that it is in the small world, where we touch, and begin to heal. Where we stay connected to our heart. Where we hug (even virtually) and give and try and love and fall down and get up and repent and cry and embrace and challenge and reconcile and heal. And make sure we tell those not doing so good, “We’ve got you.”
Let us learn from our Jewish brothers and sisters. This is from Rabbi Helen Plotkin.
“On the High Holidays, we read a poem known by its first two words in Hebrew: Unetaneh Tokef—Let Us Cede Power…
Who will be safe and who will be torn? Who will be calm and who will be tormented?
Who will become poor and who will get rich? Who will be made humble and who will be raised up?
But teshuvah and tefillah and tzedakah (return and prayer and righteous acts) deflect the evil of the decree.”
The Rabbi continues, “What difference, then, can teshuvah, tefillah, and tzedakah possibly make? Even if they don’t change the plot of your story, they do change your character. That is, they make you a more worthwhile character in your own story.
Teshuvah—repentence, response, return—is the ability to move, to change course, to come back to center, to reconcile.
Tefillah—prayer—is the ability to let the world take your breath away, to hold onto and to articulate gratitude, hope, and awe.
Tzedakah—righteousness—is the ability to pursue justice and to act from a fountain of generosity.
We take with us the truth that we must cede power, but we don’t cede all of it. Even when we can’t change the plot, it is the strength of our character that can make the story rich and strong. It is not what will happen to you that makes your life meaningful. That power is in your hands, as you cultivate the self to whom it will happen.”
Thank you Rabbi. That does my heart good.

In other words, my spirit moves from “Why even try?” to “Guess what I get to do today?” “Guess what choices I get to make today?”
Think of teshuvah and tefillah and tzedakah not as a pep talk or shame, but as tools for ladder climbing in the small world, where we stay connected to our heart, where we touch, and begin to heal.
So, yes. Today, I have the freedom—and the responsibility—to climb a ladder, to hold to the power of love that I know to be true, and to not allow the “big world” around me to deaden that in myself. 

THURSDAY AUGUST 8 —

Let us hear the invitation to embrace the affirmation to live fully alive in the “small world”, where we touch, and begin to heal. Most importantly, where we stay connected to our heart.
I do know this: In the “big world,” stories unfurl and run frenziedly, and deep down we wonder, what possible difference can I really make?
I can tell you that this whole notion of making a difference churns in me a good bit these days. And I know this for certain, churning is never good for you. No wonder it doesn’t take much to cover our light, with a bushel.
Add to churning, a whole lot of fear and worry and hurry and the need for perfection… that does the job of putting our light under a bushel.
When I have worked with clients it is not infrequent to hear the phrase—about decisions, HR choices, company policy, strategy; “Nothing personal. It’s just business.”
I no longer agree.

So. Let’s pause. And remember we also live in the “small world”. And in that world, what we do, and who we are, touches lives—real people… co-workers, employees, members of the community, customers.
We forget that meaning is never a question of where someone is or rank or which profession; meaning is only a matter of how we fill our space, our circle (sphere of influence). Fulfillment and meaning don’t depend on how great one’s range of action is, but rather only on whether the circle is filled out. And here’s the deal: In every specific life circle, every single human being is irreplaceable and inimitable. (Thank you Victor Frankl)
So. Empathy, compassion, generosity and kindness are the cornerstones to a life of meaning, to making a difference in our small world. “This little light of mine…”
I’m honestly not sure what I will “accomplish” this week, but in any small way I can, I want to build a world where people matter. Where humanity blossoms, permeating inclusion and dignity and mercy and creativity and kindness and magnanimity and hope. Where we walk the earth each day in search of good deeds and acts to carry out.
Because how we live makes a difference.

I do love wandering the garden, drinking in the wisdom and gladness of late summer blossoms and colorations, which never say, “I’m just a flower.” They simply, and wonderfully, bloom.
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Victor Frankl
Amen. And onward together.

Prayer for our week…
For A New Beginning
In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.
It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.
Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.
Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.
Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.
John O’Donohue
“To Bless the Space Between Us” 

Photo… “Hello Terry, There is a music room at the Lighthouse Keepers cottage at Browns Point because in 1903 Oscar Brown arrived to be the lighthouse keeper. He was an accomplished musician and gave piano lessons to the local children. Our grandchildren played the piano during our recent visit. One night I got the nudge from God to take the music stand out on the porch at sunset. And there it was the ‘Music of the night’
You are such a blessing to all of us,” Marguerite Gerontis… Thank you Marguerite… And I’m so grateful for your photos, please send them to [email protected]