Be somewhere else later. Is that so hard? — Jewish Zen saying*

While working with Spirit Moxie and generally just living and dreaming and avoiding things I “should do,” I have found myself drawn again and again to yet another “little thing” that changes the world. And like some other little things, this one seems impossible and not so little, except of course when it is easy. This little thing is the importance, the freedom, of being present.

Have I lost you yet? Every day, we’re surrounded by story, which is the spin we put on what is going on around us. “Why has my landlord stopped paying his assessment to the co-op? Will I get evicted? Could I pay it and get a rent rebate? I wonder what price he’d ask for if I wanted to buy the apartment? But I don’t want to buy the apartment. However, there’s no where else I want to move to right now; I mean I’ve fallen in love with the view. And all my pictures are hung. Oh, I hate packing, so…”

This was my internal conversation for just an hour or so yesterday. Usually, when I have a new topic to write about for the Spirit Moxie conversation, I get challenged by that topic, and after practicing being present for months — living in the moment, after I decided I really, really wanted to share this with you, apparent problems such as my living status appeared. Reacting to instinct (flight or fight; lizard brain; or just ornery), my mind went whirling off until I got dizzy from it.

So, I took a nap. The facts are that I received a copy of a letter addressed to the owner of my apartment saying I can’t use the common areas of the building until he pays his assessments. I’m not sure how that affects him, and if one of you reading this is a real estate lawyer, I’d appreciate you letting me know how this affects me legally. In practical terms, the letter told the apartment’s owner that I can’t use the laundry room, but for now, thanks to my hosts in New York over Christmas, everything is clean, anyway. And I’ve been saying for awhile that I think maybe I’m supposed to leave Cincinnati.

But not today.

Because of the freedom of being present, what I’m coming to learn is that doing what’s in front of me, quite apart from the “what ifs” and “if onlys,” and experiencing the “now” is life changing. And this has changed my relationship to my day-to-day life.

There are several areas where this shows up: time, health, finance, joy. But maybe the one that speaks the loudest in today’s society is simply getting things done. Easily. In less time. With less hassle. And no deadlines.

Somehow when I’m in this space of now, everything happens. I’m actually unpacked from my Christmas trip. (I’m one of those who can pack in ten minutes and take days to regroup when I get home.) The kitchen has been cleaned. The library book due tomorrow has been finished, but also renewed in case I don’t get downtown. All the apartment hassles are just there and my worrying about them won’t do any good at all, and one call to the people who manage the apartment put the hassle on someone else’s desk.

The important bit is that the cheese I’m bringing to a party tonight is on the kitchen counter so it will be at full flavor. It was the apparent hassle of not being able to schedule a Christmas get-together with my son who lives locally and suddenly finding myself thinking of a plan, sending a text, not getting an answer, but finding myself buying the right meat anyway, and, when I finally did get an answer four hours ahead of their arrival, getting everything cooked in plenty of time — even with a two-hour meeting in another part of town during that four hour period. As long as I just “did” and “was,” things were prepared and both the preparation and the gathering was somehow peaceful and joyous all at once. Oh, and the meal was great too.

So how do you get, and stay, if only for a few seconds, in now? For me it began with my
asking, “What am I supposed to be doing?” Because I usually remember to ask this when I am driving my car, the answer is pretty easy. Continuing to drive is really the only option! But somehow this reassures me.

More recently, I’ve learned some other aids. Having some idea of the day’s agenda helps. So now I end my morning meditation with a quick mental run through of the day and at least glance at the calendar on my phone. Today the day was to include a hair appointment, but a text woke me asking if we could reschedule, so instead I got more unplanned writing time. Maybe I’ll dance for exercise as part of that time too. The day also included putting way the clothes from my trip and getting the cheese out of the refrigerator and onto the counter, both of which just sort of happened.

Another aid is to notice, which happens more often, when my mind goes into planning and story mode: “What if?” “Why?” “Maybe I should…” When these questions start badgering me, I concentrate on the people near me, the road (why does driving make my brain scatter?), or what I can see or smell. Another aid is to ask, when things look like they will go wrong, “I wonder what is supposed to happen now?” I’ve also learned to ask, “What should I be doing now?” when I’m not driving!

No, it isn’t always a wild joy, but it is always a joyous calm. And from that place of calm miraculous things happen. Things that when you try to explain them may sound ordinary, but you know that that many perfect ordinary things never happen together. Until they do.

In mid-March some of us will gather at an Ohio conference center near Columbus to explore being present from a spiritual perspective. I’d love for you to be part of of this! Information and registration can be found here.

Meanwhile, what are your thoughts, experiences, and questions on being here? Now!

*quoted in Outrageous Openness: Letting the Divine Take the Lead by Tosha Silver

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Picture credits from the top:

Time: Union Terminal — Suzanne York
Pictures Hung — Spirit Moxie
An Apartment Nook — Spirit Moxie

One of my dreams for Spirit Moxie is to challenge the events we attend. When I was at the Wild Goose Festival, my mental challenge to them was to dance. When I shared this with some friends, there was confusion, but I was clear this was the right word. At the 2013 Wild Goose Festival people literally didn’t dance all that much. But “dancing” was required for the 2014 event to be the inclusive weekend they envisioned. That is, dancing by partnering with unlikely companions, dancing by playing with words, dancing by just letting go. And, of course, by simply dancing to the great music at the event.

It’s a popular image these days. A friend just challenged on Facebook, “Today, are you dancing on the precipice of chaos or swooning for the cradle of order?” Most people who responded to him opted for “both.” But why? What is it in us that resists dancing or makes us qualify it? Do we fear the feeling of letting go? Are we concerned that it demands something we don’t understand? We seem to crave order. Why? What is it about “dance as if no one is watching” that makes us say, yes, let’s do that — and then not dance at all?

For the record I love to dance. But in high school and college I felt that I didn’t dare.  From my perspective dancing involved doing set moves that felt like a test, sort of like line dancing does for me now. Dancing then brought out all my awkwardness and poor body image. Remember The Monkey and The Mashed Potato? For some reason I can still do an OK Twist.

But then, suddenly, toward the end of my college years it became acceptable – or maybe I just learned — to dance just by moving. Now this I can do, as long as it doesn’t involve serious ballroom moves. So I now deal with the different dance challenges of inconsistent music, no partners, and limited opportunities. And I watch sadly as even more people seem to just sit still when dance music is on.

For example I couldn’t get my younger son to dance with me at a recent wedding (no, not his). He just simply said he didn’t dance. Period. I see women dance together a bit more often nowadays and sometimes join in. But I know this isn’t some sort of female lament. Recent Facebook posts from male friends lamented the lack of dance music (or danceable music and dancers?) at a recent festival. And a friend allowed as how she should take me out with them because her husband would keep dancing long after her energy gave out.

Last week I was privileged to hear some African American drumming. Only about four people (out of a couple hundred) seemed to be moving at all. How could they sit still?

I think that not dancing, not daring to move, has become a social norm. We might look silly. We might, as my teen aged self thought, get it wrong. And we’ve forgotten how! Watch a small child hearing a song with a serious beat. It’s related to our heart — we literally carry a beat. Dancing is built into us. So if you don’t dance, why not? Seriously, I’d like to know and am having trouble getting answers when I ask.

A couple of days ago I asked a friend who is a drummer about this. I’m pretty sure drumming is all he thinks about. My first question was “Why do bands like it when people dance?” “That’s easy,” he answered. “When people are up and dancing they’re being entertained, and we want to entertain.” “So why don’t people dance?,” I then asked. “That’s easy, too. Good pulse is often missing from music these days.”

Hmmm. He went on to suggest watching King Sunny Adé or Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. When I searched I found various cultural mixes of modern and African and this beautiful, non-verbal flirtation and seduction between Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse: Dancing in the Dark in the Central Park. 

But again why bother even talking about it? We watch “Dancing with the Stars” and “So You Think You Can Dance.” We go to our school prom and then send our teenagers off to theirs. Perhaps we support ballet or groups like the challenging, creative ArtBark or the Dance Theatre of Harlem, You might have heard of Twila Twarp, who has reclaimed “modern” dance as true dance and as relevant to all. You probably haven’t heard of Misa Kelly, who challenges the dance scene in California and beyond (I met her in Brooklyn). Both hold dance as a way to express who we are and where we might go.

It’s even more basic than that. Gabrielle Roth said, “In many shamanic societies, if you came to a medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed . . . [they would ask] one of four questions. When did you stop dancing? . . . .” It’s even gotten scientific. For instance dancing has been shown to be much more effective in preventing dementia than that crossword puzzle you do a few times a week. So it would seem that in a disheartened world and our personal world of worries of “I’m afraid,” dancing might be the way to a more positive, joyous place.

Besides, while we might not physically dance, we do use dance as metaphor. We talk about dancing around an issue as a way of avoidance, but perhaps we avoid the issues as a way to keep from dancing. It is in letting go that possibility comes to the fore. So next time you’re confronted by uncertainty or avoidance, invite the issue into the dance. Dance with the challenge. Invite yourself in, too. And let go. Perhaps engaging and dancing with our world will heal us all. How might this work for you?

Meanwhile, if you really are going dancing give me a call. I’d love to come along.

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Photo credits from top:
ADaPT Fest 2013 — Beth Megill
Dance in Mother Nature’s Embrace — Misa Kelly
The Office — Lance Robbins
Promo photo of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire — Public Domain
Stephen & Misa Kelly — Stephen Sherrill
No Strings Attached Dance Company — Kathee Miller

“…and letting people in.” I was having my favorite conversation, and asking. “What little things could people do to help the world work better? To help it change.” And my new friend, who became the 162nd Facebook like, explained, “you know, like letting a car into traffic or letting someone to go ahead of you in the checkout line at the grocery store.”

So of course ever since I’ve been thinking about what she said! I’ve become aware of the car exiting the gas station that needed to cut across two lanes of traffic to go the other way when I was stopped at a light. I left him room to pull out when I could have easily blocked the gas station driveway.

And there was the person who for whatever reason insisted he wasn’t in a hurry and I should go ahead of him in line at the grocery. There was the time we all effortlessly merged into one lane of traffic at a highway construction site, when one greedy person could have stuck us all in place for half an hour or so. (That’s one way traffic jams happen—just so you know.) Or the person who let me into the right lane when I was sure I was going to miss an exit and was already planning route B. Oh, yes, and the slow vehicle that pulled over so I could get around him going up a hill.

It’s the wave of thanks you get when you let someone in, which means just slowing down a little so they can edge in ahead of you.

You have those stories too. It’s related to our earlier conversation, Open Doors, and essential to the idea of taking turns so beloved of adults supervising playgrounds.

Perhaps it is related to confronting bullies. Bullying is another way of shutting people out because we don’t understand or agree with someone’s way of dealing with the world or even how they appear to the world. The alternative, the way to make the world work better, is to allow them in —or dare to accept their invitation to join them in their world, if only for a moment.*

Or is it about inviting someone unexpected to be part of a group, at least for a day. Or accepting an invitation, just once, that you’re not really sure about.

Finally it may be about not shutting ourselves in. Allowing others to help us. Being vulnerable. Accepting gifts. No, not indiscriminately — we’ve talking about being a tad suspicious too.

But on the whole, allowing someone in, letting someone else in means we’re changing the world together. We can’t change the world and make it work a little better by ourselves alone. Certainly, just navigating through the day is easier when we let people in and they let us in. There are even bigger possibilities, too. What have you seen? It is through these interconnections that the world can be more whole.

*Bullying is also about feeling insecure, but that’s a different conversation.

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Photo credits from top:
162nd Facebook like: Belinda Banks Frykman — William Frykman
Train, stuck in traffic — eddie welker
Pedestrians and traffic near Wall Street — Spirit Moxie
Quick – to merge, or not to merge — Gary Stevens

Eva, age three, and I smiled at each other in delight and then looked again at the firefly poised at the end of her finger. Where is a camera when you need one? But it flew off before that thought even made it to consciousness.  

As a child I spent a lot of evenings catching fireflies, but I never had one land on me, much less pose. We had jars with holes carefully poked in them and ran through the yard after the winking lights.  And we actually caught three or five and looked with awe as they winked on and off before we let them fly free. I don’t think we ever tried to keep them overnight. A couple of weeks ago, while house and dog sitting, I sat in velvety dark with “my” (for a week or so) black lab watching the lights dart through the tree tops and glow in the grass and lamented just a bit that I really didn’t feel up to running after them. But my heart could still be glad. And a few days later could share delight with Eva, who tried for awhile to coax another onto her hand.

It’s summer. We drink lemonade, water, and wine – and beer. We seek out air conditioning, at least in the United States. If we play it right, we get tomatoes that taste like tomatoes and corn still sweet from the field. Some of us have gardens or visit farmers’ markets. We talk seriously of the chemicals in our food and how whole wheat has been engineered so it’s no longer healthy and promotes celiac disease. We seldom run laughing through the grass after bugs.

One of the ways to change the world, make it work just a little better, is to at least wish we were running after fireflies or, as they are also called, lightning bugs. Consider. This offers a time of complete silliness. When was the last time you were simply silly?

Chasing fireflies offers innocence and awe in their simple unlikeliness.

And feeds curiosity. Lightening bugs are, simply, and literally, cool. How marvelous to have something that produces light without heat. That blinks on and off in some pattern of communication — sometimes apparently in courtship, sometimes in commonality, sometimes, I guess, just to say “hi.” Apparently there are lots of different kinds that do this in lots of different ways.

Light without fire or electricity or solar power or …. Hmmmm. Possibilities? What would you add? How do silliness, joy, innocence, curiosity, and awe change things? How do fireflies?

Earlier this summer I was sitting outside with one of my more cynical friends. “Look!” he said, “the first fireflies of the season!” They were high in the trees so out of chasing range. Maybe next time.

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Photo credits from the top:
Firefly — Mike Lewinski
fireflies in a jar — jamelah e.
Fireflies – The Morning After: Be Free Little Lightning Bug. Be Free.— Jeff Turner

“I don’t like the word ‘suspicious,’” my friend said while reviewing my list of “little things that can change the world.” “Use ‘be discerning’ or ‘filter.’” “‘Suspicious’ is too negative.”

But I’ve been thinking about it and a healthy dose of suspicion seems right. We’ve already looked at this in terms of ourselves. “Be willing to be wrong.” Maybe the idea, or, in this case, the word ‘suspicious,’ is wrong. Maybe wanting to make suspicion sound better helps us avoid dealing with it. In my mind if I’m being discerning, I’m making good choices. Suspicious?  I can’t take myself that seriously. Perhaps that choice, idea, or action is just ridiculous or, simply, wrong.

It’s easier, and perhaps more useful, to see how this works in the world around us. We are inundated with information these days. But when radio and newspapers were our main sources, it was clear that facts were often wrong. And on the Internet anyone can publish anything. And do. All you need is one instance of knowing the facts. Perhaps it’s an article about you. “But, but, I never lived in New Jersey. I just have friends there.” “Sedgwick Glues Shakespeare”  [true title of a newspaper article]. Well, I may have jokingly said that, but the whole piece was a little more grandiose than the facts.

I’ve been introduced with titles I’ve never had. (The number of places I’ve been the “director” when I wasn’t or one place where I was and was called the office assistant…) And we’ve all seen things on Facebook incorrectly identified. None of which matter. But they were wrong. Period. For example on Facebook there are petitions to sign that are years old and therefore not relevant. And then there are the stories that make us angry and, if we dare investigate, are simply not true. Or have only a thread of truth in a complicated woven fabric of misrepresentations.

The website Snopes has saved many a reputation when someone was suspicious about the facts and checked. Of course there are also suspicions about Snopes, especially when the apparent truth isn’t what someone wants it to be, which is usually when politics is involved. And then there is the fact that the online source of all information Wikipedia  requests new facts and updates and is apparently written by anyone willing to write. That information too can be simply wrong or misleading when one knows the facts.

With print or media, news often seems geared to what sounds sensational rather than to what’s actually happening. For example I knew people who were participating in a major peace conference in Southern Africa where all the media reports talked about how the process had fallen apart, people had walked out, and tension abounded. Yes, a few people representing major countries walked out. But those who remained, including people affiliated with those who “walked out,”  had an incredibly productive and peaceful event—something that the press people covering the event on location finally told the participants their bosses wouldn’t print or broadcast even though they dutifully sent in the stories. The news was the walk-out and the fact the major world event was actually meeting its goals was not going to be shared.

Look at trying to untangle the truth in politics. Sometimes one has copies of speeches, but even then it is hard to verify the events and facts the speeches cite. Accusations are shared whether based on fact or not. But all of this is printed, broadcast, retweeted, and shared by those who want it to be true or are afraid it might be.

Finally look at your own life and history.

Could there be another reason Sue didn’t return your call besides because you told her she doesn’t look great in green? Might that cute girl not be ignoring you because you don’t look fit, but because you look interesting and she’s afraid? And what about that ad you almost didn’t open that turned out to be a scholarship offer [true story]?

Is your version of the Sunday afternoon at the beach, which you remember vividly and so assume is true, the same as your partner’s or child’s? I’d bet not. Maybe I just have a bad memory, but I hear all the time of events shared and places I’ve been that I don’t remember at all and different details about the events I do.

Suspicious. Suspicion. The challenge here is not to give up or even to question everything, but to be healthily skeptical. Do it, perhaps, as a game when people seem to be taking things very seriously or not seriously enough, in your opinion. If something seems like gossip, for example, and it matters to you to know, find out. Shoot, go ask. Is something too good to be true? Check it out. For it is your world that is being filtered here. And how we protect ourselves and present ourselves impacts the whole.

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Photo credits from the top:
Ipswich, Waterfront, Ipswich Campus, The Big Question Mark Sculpture — Martin Pettitt
Movie poster — source unknown
Magnifying glass on lock — Spirit Moxie (with thanks to Sherry Runyon of Kontras)