Rushing or... not

I think I may have said that I am reading a couple of new books which seem to be related though that wasn't necessarily my intention. The first book is called 'In Praise of Slowness' by Carl Honore and the second is called 'Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking' by Susan Cain.

The one that interests me as I write this is the Slowness book because the whole issue of why I and others rush through life has been vexing me for a while. I think I mentioned a while ago that until I entered the monastery I felt as if I was totally living my life at speed, on the surface. Skimming.

The other day I was at a meeting and met someone who brought this home to me. I was chatting with the woman sitting next to me. We discovered fairly quickly that we both lived in the Beach area of Toronto. Now the Beach is a wonderful place to live in this city. In five minutes I can be down at the Lake (Ontario) walking along the Boardwalk or through the park or just sitting watching the many faces of the lake. It is utterly beautiful in all weather and I come home refreshed, relaxed and hugely grateful. Just east of me there are also wonderful shops - little shops, pleasant shops. There are as well, an enormous number of restaurants, cafes where you can sit out in good weather and watch the world go by. 

So that is the area. There is a friendly, almost small town atmosphere.

As this woman and I were speaking I was raving on about the wonders of the Beach and how I love exploring it. She turned to me and said she had lived in the area for 30 years and never went to the lake and never investigated the stores. Later in the conversation she pulled out from her purse an enormous appointment book. Every page seemed to be crammed with things she was booked to do. I thought then of all that Carl Honore is trying to say about slowness and about how our lives improve immensely when we slow down, breathe deeply and live.  He makes very clear that this can't always be the case but that we can work towards it. He says we will be happier and healthier in the process.

What are we doing to ourselves?! What are we missing in the world around us? Who are we missing in the people around us? Why are we inclined to feel guilty when we aren't doing something? Where are we rushing to? 

There we are! Just put yourself in the picture and rest.

Compassion

I don't know if I have mentioned Karen Armstrong's Charter for Compassion before but if I have, then here I am again with it. 

The idea of the Charter is for all of us to commit ourselves to trying to live more compassionately. That compassion is a wonderful quality no one would deny (I hope) but I think what the Charter is trying to say is that it is missing in much of the political and even personal discourse of our day. 

You can see Armstrong speaking about it at TED's website or on You tube. I think the essence is twofold: 1) Compassion is not about pity as many of us think but about trying to put yourself in someone else's shoes. Doing this helps us to broaden our thinking beyond ourselves and leads to bridging gaps of hostility and fear that exist between us. 2) This is closely related of course and it is a version of the Golden Rule which all religions believe in. It says: Do not do to others what you would not want done to you. 

If we really think about and renew our efforts to try to live both of these they could surely be transforming for our world. They could bring back a sense of community and care that I hope we do not want to lose. It could begin to relieve the isolation that many feel these days. You can read more about the Charter at http://charterforcompassion.org/share/the-charter/.


 A second thought that has been floating around my head (does that imply lots of empty space there?) is about meaning. What do you feel gives your life meaning? What is your life all about? Can you share that ?



                                    And here is a photo to cheer up a February day.

Living in depth and beauty

Because I am now reading Carl Honore's book In Praise of Slowness my mind is still on the subject of how deeply (or not) we live each moment. Early in his book he speaks about a cartoon he once saw. Two little girls are standing at the school bus stop, each clutching a personal planner.One says to the other, 'Okay, I'll move ballet back an hour, reschedule gymnastics, and cancel piano...you shift your violin lesson to Thursday and skip soccer practice ... that gives us from 3:15 to 3:45 on Wednesday the 16th to play'.

Does that sound too far fetched? Maybe it isn't anymore. Maybe even many of our children have their lives so highly planned that there is no time to just be - to just be children, to just discover and explore with imagination and freedom. And does it have to be that we adults live in the same pressured lifestyle? It is costly in many ways to change, but at least maybe it is worth starting in small ways, with little moments of time and see how much better we feel.

Which train of thought leads me to what seems to me at least, our increasingly odd sense of beauty. Just look at the billboards around town advertising all the beautiful products that are ours for the having (with help from our credit card and bank manager). Even people who are thought to be the beautiful people - the celebrities I was talking about before, might be thought to have a certain physical beauty but is there depth of beauty there? Goodness. Kindness. Compassion. Maybe there is but on the surface at least it seems often that what we are asked to consider beautiful is yes, the surface. 

Here are some people and things and situations that seem beautiful to me:

This flower just is. That is all it can be. And it gives infinite pleasure

This is Mary Jo - 92 years old. Isn't her face wonderful?

Just a small family watching a parade. But the mother's care is beautiful.

Some of my friends at l"Arche in Vancouver. Every single one is beauty in depth it seems to me.

I imagine in your life there is a great deal of beauty - it is surely worth cherishing and I would think we will see so much more if we live each moment as these authors I have mentioned the last few times, propose we do. 

Plans and living now

'So, what are your plans then?' This question came from a friend some time ago after I had been back in Canada after my 30 years of monastic life in England. I found myself quite taken aback. What were my plans? Then, oddly - or so it seemed to me - I said, 'I don't have any'. 


'I don't have any plans'. There, I have said it. Almost immediately I can feel that little tug of guilt in my head. Shouldn't I have plans? Shouldn't I be setting out to DO something? Well, I am doing something - or trying to do something. I am  trying to live just now. Here. This moment. And seeing what happens.


I am soon going to be 75 years old ( I almost wrote 'odd' there instead of 'old' - hmmm.) and this life, this particular manifestation of me is sooner rather than later, going to end, so why not try to cherish each moment. So that is what I am trying to do and it is really quite amazing that in the process of that all sorts of lovely things happen. 


I sometimes think back to a younger me and recall the moment when I realized that I had lived almost the whole of my life until I entered the monastery, on the surface. I had not ever tasted anything really deeply. Isn't that a waste? Now, I know better what I want to do and what I think perhaps most people want to do but find themselves too busy to do. I want to live now - just now - because when you ponder it, that is absolutely all there is. That for me, is something to think about.


I am reminded of all this by two things I  have recently read. Once again the Buddhist writer/philosopher thich nhat hanh writing more about mindfulness: Mindful living is an art. You do not have to be a monk or live in a monastery to practice mindfulness. ... when you do the dishes [for instance] ..do not feel you have to rush. If you hurry , you waste the time of dish washing. The time you spend washing dishes and doing all your other everyday tasks is precious. It is time for being alive. When you practice mindful living, peace will bloom during your daily activities.
Well, who would have thought that such mundane things could be so precious but just try it!


The second quote is from a book by Mary Jo Leddy called Radical Gratitude. Consider date books, their shape and size and color, how they are used and why. Not only are they helpful, but they are also a sign of identity and maybe even purpose in life.  You can tell a person, or so they say, by his or her date book. The fuller it is the more important you must be, the more meaningful your life- or so it would seem. You sense your true insignificance when someone merely  pencils you in...no crisis seems worse than losing your date book, because then you wouldn't know what you were supposed to do or when. Yet, would you still know why? That is the question. Is there any thread of meaning, any sense of direction and purpose that flows through all those pages of a date book? Are the pages of our days held together by anything more than a cover?


Now that too, is worth pondering isn't it?

People who are gifts and the present fully lived

 
I haven't written for a little over a week. I feel as if I have abandoned my thinking process for what?.. daily life? busyness? laziness? Am not sure. But I have been pondering and I have been reading so maybe I can share some bits and pieces.

First of all, I was speaking about Geraldine and Iris in my last posting and wanted you to see them but alas I did not have accessible photos of them. But here are three other wonderful people from
l'Arche  who have changed my life. There at the top is Arthur. Arthur and I are the same age and I am profoundly aware of how different our lives have been. But my life would not have been nearly so good had he not been a part of it. In the middle is Craig who was definitely a one-off human being. There was no one else quite like him and again, he was a gift to all whose lives he touched. And finally, there is Jean Vanier the founder of l'Arche without whom none of us would have met or been so enriched by the very special friendships that are part of that particular community living. I will try and find photos of the Geraldine and Iris and post them too.

Another photo, taken just the other day at the lake on the boardwalk. I was struck by the striding forth of the man. Was he just walking? Was he exercising? Was he noticing how beautiful it was? Was he present to what he was experiencing? Those questions fit in a bit with a couple of  books I am now reading. There were a couple of quotes that struck me as thought-provoking here. The first quote is from someone I have mentioned before, the Buddhist thich nhat hanh:  
The heart of Buddhist practice is to generate our own presence in such a way that we can touch deeply the life that is here and now and available in every moment. We have to be here for ourselves; we have to be here for the people we love; we have to be here for life with all its wonders.

The second quote is from Caryll Houselander, a spiritual writer from the 1940's: 

If we are afraid to know ourselves for what we are, it is because we have not the least idea of what that is. It is because we have not the least idea of the miracle of life-giving love that we are.