In Relation to Myself

This time of day always begets the best kind of light for daydreaming. I love the winter sun. And it always hits my desk just so, calling me to come attend to the quiet part of my self, to mother the creative spark that lives patiently below the family murmur. The one who is so easily forgotten!
I have begun a bit of planning, to that end, here at my cozy desk-space. First step is to keep track of all the things that I love in my life, and see how often I'm really doing them. It's a simple list, beginning with zen and ending with art, with much friendship, exploration and inspiration in-between. At the end of the day, I make a little mark under the items I saw to during the course of the day. And now at the end of the month, I see what I've actually been spending time paying attention to. All-in-all, it's been a very nice experiment with mapping my inner life-- and important as an at-home mama, as I trace the ways I lend care to my self.

Copyright Mark Schumacher, Kannon Photo Tour

For that, homelessness was such a fine teacher. For so long I beleaguered myself for being a zen failure...Imperfect with precepts, faulty with scholarship, inattentive of the feelings of others as I stumbled through my own. This sense was heightened a thousand-fold during this most recent trauma, for invariably each day, my focus was shifted incredibly to myself and my (& my family's) survival. Very basic, very primal, very deeply selfish. And very paradoxically? It was that selfishness that lent me the better sense of seeing the complete inter-connection of things.

As any mama will tell you, the struggle to honor the self so as not to lose the self is part of the heart of the art of raising a child. The koan of it lies in recognizing that honoring the self is actually a very self-less occupation... And now as I see it? It is so that your relationship to all things begins at the very point where you breathe. Cradle this breath, as you would your infant; cradle this infant as you would the soul of the world.

Some Perspective

It was that sort of point in the day when things felt just a little...dreary. Tired from not enough sleep and whatever frustrations had unfolded in the day, I looked doubtfully out my window, aching for a snowstorm--some miracle beauty of nature-- to cheer me up.


Then I heard a little voice speaking up to me, from down by my hips: "Mama! Look at those clouds!!" Hmn? So I ducked down to my boys height, and wonder of wonders...


Moments like this? Ah, so: Children and family are the master teachers. Make no doubt about that! Gassho, Little Bear.

What unsuspected new perspective have you found this week?

What I've Been Up To...

I've been a flutter of activity these long winter days.

flowering
(now, this is a fun idea)

photographing

repurposing
(...an old sweater & my grandmother's button collection)

painting

knitting

...and sitting, most happily, which you may read about here.
Wishing you cozy & bright winter days!

Breaking Bread

This past weekend, inspired by the coziness of my new home and several homey-craftsy blogs that I regularly visit, I decided to bake my first loaf of home-made sandwich bread.
Bread-baking is an excellent exercise in trust, care and tradition. First, you've got to be willing to "let go & let God", as they say, as the ingredients do have a way of mingling as they like, and not as you'd necessarily like them to. (Especially when it's your first time with it, lol.) And so care becomes the second ingredient to success. Careful reading, careful measuring... I did mine guided by a recipe in this excellent book, which has been my kitchen companion since my last birthday. Lastly, when the thing is in the oven and you realize why it took all day for it to rise (as opposed to the 2 hours said book promised)-- I used the wrong kind of yeast-- tradition comes in to play. For truly something lives in our bones, some ancestral whisper that arrives in the mind at just the right moment to say, "Why don't you knead that just a wee bit longer?"
Oh, it all turned out just fine... a beautiful first loaf, as inviting in scent and feel as it is delicious. To see it exist, and to eat it? Very, very satisfying indeed: For there is nothing like creating good food, joining that sacred dance between Earth, seed, sun, farmer, truck-driver, shop-keeper, kitchen-bowl ceramist, oven-manufacturer and natural-gas-provider in a very direct and mindful way.

This is where I'm finding my practice these days. It's something like Dogen's Instructions for the Cook, though I've never read it.

During our homeless travels, I was lucky to crack open the hand-made book some students of my teacher's teacher put together. Kobun's Book, it's called, and it's basically a rough transcript of his Dharma talks loosely bound and crying out for an editor. It was gifted to me by a dear friend as I finished my Okesa sewing practice, and every now and again I turn to it to hear another sort of ancestral whisper.

On this particular day, I read Kobunsama's interpretation of humility: "It's from the same root as hummus, I think," is what I picture him saying with a wink, "of knowing where you come from." And on this particular day I also happened to come across the site where I lived my first two years of life.

Appropriately enough, I suppose, the building is gone now. Hummus, ere I return to hummus... And homeless, returning to no home! It was pretty funny at the time. And that was the morning we got word that we were moving to Boston.

I'm glad to have home once again; I didn't mean for my home-leaving vow to be quite so literal, or guttural. But like baking bread, or losing a necessity, the practice of living deeply turns us back 'round to the connection that has fostered us forever.

True Names

(Thanks, HIT Entertainment, light-of-my-life...)

Well, it's official: we are now fully identifiable as Massachusetts residents, my husband and I.

And as I have in each and every state I've lived in since leaving my childhood behind-- Alabama, New Mexico, Georgia, Colorado, California (...again), Maryland-- I sallied up to the DMV counter when my number was (finally) called and produced a small stack of old passports and legal documents. "I've had my name changed a few times since my birth certificate," I explain apologetically to the clerk. This one looks at me from behind dark, thick-rimmed glasses, perched on the end of her nose. She's not in the mood. But eventually she figures out that I'm OK as these things go, and so we go on with the process of me reading tiny letters and watching for blinking lights, jumping all the usual hoops for a new card in yet another state.

What's in a name? One was a new married name; then came the divorced name with a twist, and an addition of a maternal last name --why should I carry only my father's family name, for pete's sake? Then came another married name, and then a spelling correction from the other...oh, never mind. There's been a few, you see.

I'd always been fascinated with the American Indian tradition of some tribes to name a child at birth, but then assign a new name as that child grew into different aspects of him or herself, throughout his or her life. As well I was intrigued by the Hippy tradition of naming oneself as one saw fit. I was never comfy with my own name, you see, as rumor had it that I was (alternately) named for an ex-girlfriend (thanks, dad) or a baby who lived next door at the time of my conception (thanks, mom). It never really felt like my name. Imagine my consternation, then, when a hippy friend finally did bequeath to me a hippy name: "How 'bout Kris-still, ha ha?" Yeah, Ha Ha, Jaya. You're the one with the cool name, go on wit' yourself...

But that's not all; somehow in my quest to find My Real Name, I've managed to collect a few from the spiritual traditions I studied-- and some quite by accident. Like the Tibetan one I got when I stumbled in to a refuge-taking ceremony in Taos. Or the Indian one during a ceremonial dance...Or the Peruvian name I eventually kept, legally. Or the Dharma name I asked for during my Bodhisattva vow ceremony, or the one that was given to me like a gift at my Tokudo.

I'm known by many names, but before today I must say I had not really heard my True Name.

It came just before naptime, as all good things tend to. My 3-year-old is obsessed with Bob the Builder, you see; Bob, Wendy his assistant, and all the motley crew of his various construction equipment (Lofty, Rolly, &ect) team. Now, sometimes I am (excited voice) Mama, and sometimes (sad voice) mommy; lately I've been a lot of (whiny voice) Mo-om. But today? Today was a Tokudo, of sorts. For today my boy looked at me, smiled earnestly, and paid me such a high compliment:
"Put on your hard hat, Wendy."