Life Is Bittersweet...

I mentioned below that I'm in a strange mood tonight. Stranger still for the decision to blog about it. My mother doesn't understand this "public" sharing that goes on in blogging or Face Book or the other ways we share our thoughts and feelings in this arena. I understand her reservations. I've always been a bit of an open book, however; though at times I fear that that has been my defense mechanism - I have two layers - one the open book layer, where I share more than folks are used to receiving, I tell more intimate stories from my past, I reveal "secrets" to show how "open" I am. Yet the second layer is where the real stuff lies and stays hidden and never gets seen. There's a priest at my church who is big into the Enneagram. In that model I am a "5." link In some versions, a 5 is called "the observer." I believe this is where a lot of my hermity qualities spring from.

So what is my strange mood tonight...it's contemplative, bittersweet, with maybe a touch of sadness, but not depressed or blue in the least. There's even a pinch of giddiness swirling in there as well. This feeling is easily ignored if your life is overfilled or noisy or even shared with another person in the house. However, when you are a secular monastic type you (hopefully) are more into the subtleties of our emotional lives. What is truly interesting about the Internet (esp. Face Book, Twitter, Blogger, etc.) is that in the past I might have read this emotion to be a form of loneliness or boredom - but with my computer link to the world, I sit here knowing PJ is at home in New York doing a crossword puzzle and FBing. Ted is in town here in Marquette awaiting the arrival of his brother. The connection I feel with these people gives me a more defined environment to hold these emotions in my hands as it were and see what they are - I know I'm not lonely and I know I'm not bored so I peel the onion and see what's there.

Bonnie Raitt's song about Louise, the Beatles' song about Eleanor Rigby, supporting characters from movies that I have seen...describing the lonely individual all speak to me for what I have come to believe is that we are all alone in ourselves on this planet. No one ever really understands how we're feeling, no one ever truly knows us. That isolation can be terrifying. Husbands and wives divorce because they expect their spouses to break through the barrier. Individuals will date all sorts of inappropriate men and women to try to smother the feeling. Mothers will give birth to children over and over because the bond between the infant and its mother seems to temporarily break down the isolation - but soon that little one that came out of your body and soul grows and develops and turns into his or her own person and the isolation is back.

Understanding that this is what it means to be a human on this planet is how I live alone. Not WHY I live alone, but how. It's also where my concept of the God that is Love flows from. The only way to transcend this bubble we must live within is to be open to the lives around us. If Lee reads this he will be either angry or sad or both. He won't understand that sometimes enforcing a barrier is the right thing for both individuals. link This link takes you to a piece written by blogger for the Chicago Tribune who belittles Internet social network sites. I think he misses the point or he sees a different use in the younger generation of kids. There's something major going on here in the culture. As we older folks jump on board and reconnect with past friends and schoolmates or communicate with new friends around the globe we are building a new way of relating. The superficiality that he degrades ignores the superficiality that exists in our real world lives. At the hospital where I work there are dozens of people with whom I could have a nice chat or conversation if we could slow down enough to do so - that we only manage to greet each other in the hall or in the cafeteria doesn't discount the relationship because it is superficial. On Face Book I have a full gradation of intimacy with the folks I SuperPoke or give "gifts" to or write messages on their walls. Jenny in New Jersey was someone my baby brother's age who lived next door to us. We live over a thousand miles away and, yet, she's been reading my blog, we've caught up a bit with each other's lives and we now have a way to connect when and if we need to, say if folks will be in town visiting family. Would I ever have picked up the phone to call her even if I had her phone number? No. Should my only contact with people in this world be through my lap top? No. However, remember we are all in our little bubbles of existence and any way we can transcend the isolation to reach out and say, "Hey, man, I love you." is an awesome thing.

Secular Monastic?

Well, the question was finally raised - what do I mean when I refer to myself as a "secular monastic." I am looking forward to my good cyber friend, Maria, to see what comments she may have to add as the term resonated for her as well. A good friend who is now an ordained priest in the Episcopal Church was also once a Benedictine monk. After many conversations about how I choose to live my life, he looked at me and stated, "Well, you're a secular monastic." What does this mean to me? The question was raised by a new Face Book/Twitter Friend and this will be my attempt at an answer. Point 1: Solitude. I highly value my solitude, I live alone, in the woods, with my four dogs and two rabbits, and bird feeders. I do not have television and only a small alarm clock radio. I do, however, have my lap top, hence the image above left. I have an enormous library of books, DVDs and music. Quite often, though, my house is filled with blessed silence. In the summer, I sit in my hammock chair - "my meditation chair," I call it - and swing in the breeze on my porch and watch the birds and hear the wind blow through the trees. Point 2: Simplicity. I am appalled at the out of control consumer culture in which we all live and participate. Although I admit to valuing my things - you need to understand that the bulk of the furniture in my home belonged to my paternal grandmother - the bedroom set they purchased in 1937 when they were married, her dining room set/hutch, etc. I try to spend less and less each year - though I admit books, DVDs and music are still a weakness, but I think splurging a bit on a personal library isn't all bad. I also try to eat whole foods and local as much as possible. The farm from which I get most of my meat and vegetables is just a mile or so down the road. Point 3: Celibacy. I lived a rather debauched youth in my 20's & early 30's - I have no shame for it, I think we over emphasize sex from both directions -as a consumer selling tool and as a taboo puritanical no-no. Sex just is. That said, I have reached a point in my life where I choose to be no longer sexually active. Sex is complicated so in the spirit of Point 2, keep life simple. Point 4: Prayer. This is more tricky and a definite shift from some of the definitions of secular monasticism that I have Googled tonight. I do not pray daily orders. For me prayer is a state of mind - a being aware of the presence of God - and for me the presence of God is pure Love in the present moment always. The key then is to live in the moment, live in the now. I work very hard to refrain from waiting for the future to happen or from wallowing in the past. The only reality is the now - everything else is in our heads as subjective memory or anticipatory future. BE with the beings around you and feel the Love that is God that exists between all living things. I find it easiest to be this way now in my state of being "Happily Single." That state of being free from the pull of romantic desire, longing after the other or pining over a lost other bundles up the Love and hoards it for that elusive other - the all encompassing love fades in comparison and we miss the Love that is all around. The Peace of the Lord Be With You Always. Amen.

For Those Who Love Their Dogs

My mom found this when she was dealing with Gracie's slow death from renal failure: "I found this through a list I joined online. I don't know the profession of the person who wrote it, but it is beautiful. "

I don't subscribe to the idea that dogs "will let us know when it's time", at least not in any conscious sense on their part. For one thing, I've found in my years of counseling folks who have ill pets and often accompanying them through the euthanasia process, that this notion is often interpreted in a way that puts a lot of pressure on people when they're already stressed and grief-stricken.

"What if I miss the signs? He looked miserable yesterday but not today. What if I act too soon or not soon enough? How could he ever let on that he wants it to end? But maybe I'm deluding myself that he feels better than he does."

Dogs are not people. We lovingly anthropomorphize our dogs during our time together and there's no harm in that, even quite a bit of reward for both them and us. But the bottom line is that they are not people and they don't think in the way people think. (Many of us would argue that that speaks to the superiority of dogs.) These amazing beings love us and trust us implicitly. It just isn't part of their awareness that they should need to telegraph anything to us in order for their needs to be met or their well-being ensured. They are quite sure that we, as their pack leaders, operate only in their best interest at all times.

Emotional selfishness is not a concept in dogdom and they don't know how hard we sometimes have to fight against it ourselves. Dogs also have no mindset for emotional surrender or giving up. They have no awareness of the inevitability of death as we do and they have no fear of it. It is fear that so often influences and aggravates our perceptions when we are sick or dying and it becomes impossible to separate the fear out from the actual illness after a while. But that's not the case with dogs.

Whatever we observe to be wrong with our sick dogs, it's all illness. And we don't even see the full impact of that until it's at a very advanced point, because it's a dog's nature to endure and to sustain the norm at all costs. If that includes pain, then that's the way it is. Unlike us, they have never learned that letting pain show, or reporting on it, may generate relief or aid. So they endure, assuming in their deepest doggy subconscious that whatever we abide for them is what is to be abided.

If there is a "look in the eye", or an indication of giving up, that we think we see from our beloved dogs, it isn't a conscious attitude on their part or a decision to communicate something to us. It's just an indication of how tired and depleted they are. But they don't know there's any option other than struggling on, so that's what they do. We must assume that the discomfort we see is much less than the discomfort they really feel. And we do know of other options and it is entirely our obligation to always offer them the best option for that moment, be it further intervention, or none, or the gift of rest.

From the moment we embrace these animals when they first grace our lives, every day is one day closer to the day they must abandon their very temporary and faulty bodies and return to the state of total perfection and rapture they have always deserved. We march along one day at a time, watching and weighing and continuing to embrace and respect each stage as it comes. Today is a good day. Perhaps tomorrow will be, too, and perhaps next week and the weeks or months after.

But there will eventually be a winding down. And we must not let that part of the cycle become our enemy. When I am faced with the ultimate decision about how I can best serve the animal I love so much, I try to set aside all the complications and rationales of what I may or may not understand medically and I try to clear my mind of any of the confusions and ups and downs that are so much a part of caring for a terminally ill pet. This is hard to do, because for months and often years we have been in this mode of weighing hard data, labs, food, how many ounces did he drink, should he have his rabies shot or not, etc.

But at some point it's time to put all of that in the academic folder and open the spiritual folder instead. At that point we are wise to ask ourselves the question: "Does he want to be here today, to experience this day in this way, as much as I want him to?"

Remember, dogs are not afraid, they are not carrying anxiety and fear of the unknown. So for them it's only about whether this day holds enough companionship and ease and routine so that they would choose to have those things more than anything else and that they are able to focus on those things beyond any discomfort or pain or frustration they may feel. How great is his burden of illness this day, and does he want/need to live through this day with this burden of illness as much as I want/need him to? If I honestly believe that his condition is such, his pleasures sufficient, that he would choose to persevere, then that's the answer and we press on.

If, on the other hand, I can look honestly and bravely at the situation and admit that he, with none of the fear or sadness that cripples me, would choose instead to rest, then my obligation is clear.

Because he needs to know in his giant heart, beyond any doubt, that I will have the courage to make the hard decisions on his behalf, that I will always put his peace before my own, and that I am able to love him as unselfishly as he has loved me. After many years, and so very many loved ones now living on joyously in their forever home in my heart, this is the view I take.

As my veterinarian, who is a good and loving friend, injects my precious one with that freedom elixir, I always place my hand on top of his hand that holds the syringe. He has chosen a life of healing animals and I know how terribly hard it is for him to give up on one. So I want to shoulder that burden with him so he's not alone. The law of my state says the veterinarian is the one licensed to administer the shot, not me.

But a much higher law says this is my ultimate gift to my dog and the responsibility that I undertook on the day I welcomed that dog into my life forever.

Circles, Cycles, Seasons

I'm thinking about circles today - circles, cycles, seasons, spinning around and around - today is a good day for such thinking. Recently I had lunch with a good friend and we were discussing depression and anxiety. I take Lexapro to help me with both with good results. He posited that one way of thinking about the two is to associate depression with obsessing over the past and anxiety with obsessing over the future. Now this isn't necessarily a complete way of understanding these two, but it's a good start for pondering today and the expectations we place on New Year's Eve/Day. As someone who also has a tendency towards obsessing, I have worked hard to live in the moment. One of my favorite songs from Rent - "There's only us, there's only this, forget regret or life is yours to miss, no other road, no other way, no day but today." I know so many people who spend most of their time replaying the past and/or worrying about the future - they are missing out on what is happening in the now - and the now is all that is real.

So why circles? Our European-American cultural tradition has always emphasized a linear understanding of time - like one big ruler that we walk along marking out minutes, hours, days, years. How many of you wear watches? I stopped wearing watches because they enabled the measuring instinct. If you move through your day thinking about the next hour, the next destination, the next project...I gave up the watch. When I am delayed in traffic, when a bus or train is late, when I catch myself waiting for the future - I stop and look around and experience the moment. Native cultures thought of time in terms of cycles and circles and those seasons of change revolve around today - around the now. The other time "direction" we obsess about - the past - encourages us to hoard and save - know anyone who takes hundreds of photos of everything all the time? It's an attempt to grab and hold onto yesterday - but yesterday eludes us - the more time you spend saving, documenting, photographing - once again, the less time you are really being in the now - savoring the moment. I love having mementos of the past, they help keep things in my memory banks so I can remember and cherish what has gone before - but you still have to let it go. Children will grow up, loved ones will die, our situations will change - it will happen and all the saving and collecting in the world won't stop that. For that reason I gave up owning a camera, I went through old boxes of photos and only kept the ones that had images of people I loved - all those panoramic shots we take on vacation - over the years they have no meaning. So why these thoughts today? Today is the day we all make "resolutions" - we take stock, we look back and we look forward. This is a day for CHANGE - or so we think. Most resolutions don't last much past February. The wonderful thing about circles, cycles, seasons revolving around and around is that any day can be about change. Live in the now - change your shirt if you don't like what you're wearing-I won't have a drink today--Today I am going for a walk--one day at a time. Too much focus on resolutions drifts into obsessing over the past and future. So on this day, in reality just another 24 hour period on the 365 day wheel - I will have a wonderful time with the animals and with my friends, Georgie and Mary. There's another song (I can't remember the title or artist), "If you can't be with the one you love, honey, love the one you're with." The sentiments I have discussed are there in that snippet of lyric. Peace and love be yours always on this day and every day and Happy New Year!