February 14th, 2017

February 14th, 2017


Affirmation: I am playful and competent.


Word of the Day: billet-doux (n):

1. a love letter

Love's Confusing Joy

If you want what visible reality
can give, you are an employee.

If you want the unseen world,
you are not living with your truth.

Both wishes are foolish,
but you'll be forgiven for forgetting
that what you really want is
love's confusing joy.

____


Traditions and Rituals

I was debating about whether or not to write a Valentine's Day themed post because I don't want it to come across as cliche or contrived or like some sort of love post written out of a sense of obligation.

So I decided to write about love this Valentine's Day specifically in the context of tradition and ritual.

Growing up, my family did not have any traditions. With my extended family scattered across the globe and my nuclear family seemingly always in flux, we never had rituals or commemorations of any kind. To be honest, even if everything were stable, my parents are also just not tradition type of people. And that's ok.

I, on the other hand, love tradition. Traditions are sacred to me. They foster a sense of mindfulness and active meditation. I find comfort, solace, connection, and peace in ritual. Through tradition, I am invited to slow down and savor moments, to ground and re-align myself with my value, my Self, others, and the world around me.

Traditions aren't unilaterally benevolent, of course. When rituals turn into rules - and into "ought to's" and "should's" and "have to's," they lose their divinity. When a tradition becomes filled with dread and stress, it loses it sacredness. Traditions often have to be re-assessed and we can outgrow traditions depending on the seasons of our lives and embrace new ones.

At their best, however, I believe that traditions are sacred and invite us to be more present and connected in the moment.

So on this Valentine's day, I want to take the time to reflect upon love and what it means to me. I want to meditate on the role of love in my life and what I would like it's role to be moving forward. Here are some journal prompts that I will be working with that I invite you to contemplate and journal about as well:

- What is the biggest source of love in your life right now?

- How are love and passion different and alike in your life?

- How do you love yourself? How do you best like being loved?

- How do you love others?

- What is your "love language" (there are many quizzes you can take online for figuring out your love language)? How has this impacted your relationships?

- What manifestations of love would you like to invite into your life? Be as specific as possible?

- What does the following Rumi quote (one of my favorites!) bring up for you?:

"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."

What barriers have you built against love? What function do these barriers serve?

- What belief about love do you need to let go of?

- What belied about love do you need to adopt?

- What does love mean to you? What does love feel like to you?

- What love tradition would you like to invite into your life?

- Write a love poem or love letter to yourself and one other person.

In closing, I would like to share a story about love that my mother sent to me. I hope that it touches your heart the way it did mine and, as always, feel free to share your thoughts or anything that came up for you while journaling!

This took place in Seattle, Washington. A 52-year old Tibetan refugee named Tenzin was diagnosed with lymphoma, admitted to a hospital and received chemo, but then he became extremely agitated, angry, and upset. He pulled the IV out of his arm and refused to cooperate. It turns out that he had been a political prisoner of the Chinese for 17 years. They’d killed his first wife and had tortured and brutalized him through his imprisonment, and something about the hospital rules and the chemotherapy was triggering flashbacks. 
 
“I know you mean to help him,” his wife said, “but he feels tortured by your treatments. They are causing him to feel hatred inside just like he felt towards the Chinese. He needs to be able to pray and cleanse his heart.” So they discharged him and they sent him home and they gave him a hospice team to work with.  
 
So here is the story is coming through the hospice person who first looked for some ideas on how to work with him. She was told by Amnesty International to just help talk it through.  
 
“This person has lost his trust in humanity. If you are able to help him, you have to be able to give him some hope that he can connect.”  
 
So, she encouraged Tenzin to talk about his experiences and he held up his hand and stopped her. She writes: 
 
“…he said, ‘I must learn to love again if I am to heal my heart. Your job is not to ask me questions, your job is to teach me to love again.’ It’s quite an assignment for a hospice worker. I took a deep breath. ‘So how can I help you to love again?’ Tenzin replied immediately: ‘Sit down and drink my tea and eat my cookies.’”  
 
Now, just so that you know, Tibetan tea is black tea laced with yak butter and salt, but she did it. . . for several weeks, they sat together and drank tea.  
 
She continues: 
 
“We also worked with his doctors to find ways to treat his physical pain, but it was his spiritual pain that seemed to be lessening. Each time I arrived Tenzin was sitting crossed-legged on his bed reciting prayers from his books. As time went on, he and his wife hung more and more colorful thangkas (that’s Buddhist Tibetan banners) on the walls. The room was fast becoming a beautiful religious shrine.  
 
When the spring came, I asked Tenzin, ‘What do Tibetans do when they are ill in the spring?’ He smiled brightly. He said, ‘We sit downwind from flowers.’ I 
thought he must be speaking poetically, but Tenzin’s words were quite literal. He told me Tibetans sit downwind so that they can be dusted with the new blossoms of pollen that float on the spring breeze. They feel that pollen is a strong medicine.  
 
At first, finding enough blossoms seemed a bit daunting. Then one of my friends suggested that Tenzin visit some of the local flower nurseries. I called the manager of one of the nurseries and explained the situation. The manager’s initial response was, ‘You want to do what?’ But when I explained the request, he agreed. And the next afternoon, I picked up Tenzin and his wife with their provisions – black tea, butter, salt, cups, cookies, prayer beats and prayer books. I dropped them off at the nursery and assured them I’d return at 5. The following week, Tenzin and his wife visited another nursery. The third weekend, they went to yet another. And the fourth week, I began to get calls from the nurseries inviting Tenzin and his wife to come again. One of the managers said, ‘We’ve got a new shipment of Nicotia coming in and some wonderful Fuchsias and, ah yes, some great Daphnia. I know they’ll love the scent of that Daphnia. And I almost forgot! We have some new lawn furniture that Tenzin and his wife might enjoy.’ Later that day I got a call from another nursery saying they had colorful wind socks that would help Tenzin predict where the wind was blowing. Pretty soon, nurseries were competing for Tenzin’s visits. People were beginning to know and care about the Tibetan couple. The nursery employees started setting out lawn furniture in the direction of the wind. Others would bring out fresh hot water for their tea. Some of the regular customers would leave their wagons of flowers near the two of them. It seemed that a community was growing around Tenzin and his wife.  
 
At the end of the summer Tenzin returned to his doctor for another CT scan to determine the extent of the spread of the cancer. But the doctor could find no evidence of cancer at all. He was dumbfounded. He told Tenzin he just couldn’t explain it. Tenzin smiled back and said, ‘I know why the cancer has gone away. It could no longer live in a body so filled with love. When I began to feel all the compassion from the hospice people, from the nursery employees — all those people who wanted to know about me — I started to change inside. I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to heal in this way. Doctor, please remember your medicine is not the only cure. Sometimes love can heal as well.’”   The message of this story is not that when we bring deep attention to our connectedness that the cancer will necessarily go away. It’s that it brings us home to a deep sense of well-being — a well-being that can hold us as we are dying and hold others. A well-being that is bigger than the comings and goings of this life.