It was a joy to be interviewed by @GeorgianBenta on The Gratitude Podcast as we spoke about being In Awe Of Nature's Mysteries. Listen here and enjoy!
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In the evenings these days I ride my exercise bike faster and faster as I listen to my cable news pundits deliver a flood of chaotic information coming from our nation’s center and around the world. I ride and ride, and as I push the pedals faster and faster I feel I’m just trying to get to the end of the news program faster it seems! Why do this, you might ask? Why subject yourself to the torrent of unpleasant, deeply disturbing news that makes your heart hurt? I’m doing it because there’s a compulsion in me dating back to my solitary child life amongst oblivious alcoholics to learn the truth of things.
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I had the good fortune to grow up in the midst of those who were “elder.” I was an only child with a mother who was both indifferent and terrified of being a mother, and she needed all the help she could get. Two grandmothers, one from each side of the family, moved in to see what they could do to provide support and comfort for this young girl with the cherubic face, strawberry blond curls, and bright blue eyes. They helped pay for my wardrobe, provided their beautiful houses where I could come and be treated royally, showered me with presents on all the right occasions, taught me some etiquette, and ultimately paid for my private school education.
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“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear…”
Martin Luther King spoke those words and his life was an embodiment of this sentiment. King died in 1968, the year my younger daughter was born, which now feels like eons of time ago. But the thing about wise words is that they never become dated or tired or irrelevant….Their message is universal, touching all of humanity. King believed in the universal right and wrong, just and unjust. When I came to Buddhist practice over 20 years ago I remember being touched by these words: “hatred never ceases by hatred but by love alone…”. Words from Gotama Buddha from over 2500 years ago. Clearly King was a brother to the Buddha, as he was to India’s Mahatma Gandhi.
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Ok… so this is a perhaps overused topic … and I am choosing it nevertheless because all the other subjects that arise in my mind these days — loneliness in winter, mortality and vulnerability, fear of the unknown, our harsh and cruel social/political landscape — seem too weighty and sad. I have been traveling through what feels like difficult territory lately, complete with post book publication “blues,” health concerns, and despair at our culture’s polarization and animosity, and I would frankly rather talk about what I see as possible in this moment. That is all we have, after all. So, I offer you some of my deeply felt intentions that call to me now, “resolutions” that seem to be workable as I look at the path ahead…. I hope you hear their call as well.
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What am I grateful for on this eve of Thanksgiving? There is almost too much to think of…. My amazing and tragic mother who brought me into the world, …my grandmother who nurtured my heart and mind…. and ultimately my own children and grandchildren who taught me about family…
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