culture – Page 26 – One Woman's Quest

Questioning

Every Sunday, dressed in our church clothes (matching dresses that mom had sewn herself) we girls were ushered off to service. Dad rushed us so that he could get a decent parking spot – one that would permit a hasty exit when it was all over. He didn’t want to waste his day hanging around that place any longer than he had to.

At eight years of age, I marvelled at how different everyone was on this day. The crabby old lady from next door, who spent all week terrorizing the children of the neighbourhood, arrived in formal attire, with her little pillbox hat and matching gloves, and sweetness plastered across her face. Another neighbour, who everyone knew drank too much and beat his children, was greeted as if he himself was free of sin. On Sundays, I observed, we all became new people.

I chose to sit in the main church for the sermon as I never quite got the concept of Sunday School. Seemed to me we never learned anything, and most days we just coloured pictures related to some story that made no sense. That’s not to say I understood the sermon either. The minister kept referring to God as He, which would set my mind to wondering. My experience of God existed right back to my earliest memories, and that being was more feminine than masculine. I could not relate to the He the minister kept talking about. Could I have been so wrong? Is it possible that the minister had it wrong?

“What is the point of church, anyway?” I asked my parents one day. “Seems to me it is hypocritical.”

“Sunday is the day that we worship our Lord,” my mother said. “We dress up and show respect in His name.”

“Well, what about the rest of the week? Is it okay to be nasty the rest of the week? Doesn’t God watch us then? Shouldn’t we be living in respect of God all week long?” I didn’t mention the gender thing.

“She makes a good point,” my father added.

“That’s the way it’s always been done,” my mother shrugged.

We stopped going to church, but my quest for spiritual understanding didn’t stop there. I invited myself to my friend’s churches, and discovered stricter creeds, and attitudes of superiority and exclusiveness.

Organized religion, from my perspective, tells one what to believe, rather than encouraging one’s own relationship with the divine. As a child, I had a deep and very real connection with something that was beyond the ordinary – a loving, yet omnipotent power.

Now, I seek a return to the sense of wonder of life, to the simplicity of knowing that there is a presence or meaning that transcends the mundane, and the security of believing in that force. I crave goodness, and a harmonious state of being. I want to know inner peace.

Immortality

Time passes,
shadows shift, waning
light made precious
by beckoning end.

Once believed in forever,
guaranteed tomorrows –
fallacy now shattered
by mortality’s knock.

New souls, born
of promise, eyes hungering
for what shall be, ignite
a fire of hope in me.

Will I be remembered
when life has begot more life
and I am faded ancestry –
will my essence linger?

Flesh rots, memory
fades, but the spirit
has its own calling –
will mine rise again

in trait, or disposition,
or with fresh complexion
and renewed intention –
an immortal circle?

(Image: livingwisdom.kabbalah.com)

Broken Locks

The house we have moved into is old and on closer inspection has many more rooms than we had initially understood. It is a pleasant surprise and I am wondering what we will do with all this extra space, when I notice that the back door is broken: there is a problem with the lock.

I awaken, my heart racing.

“The back door is unlocked again,” I jokingly tell my husband. It has become an ongoing theme in my dreams, and one I fail to grasp.

So what is the back door? Interestingly, we have purchased an older home, and while it doesn’t have extra rooms such as the ones in my dream, it does come with an additional building we had not anticipated: a bomb shelter. It is difficult not to notice the parallel to my dreams. Our new home is one of hope for a better life, security, and maybe one day, retirement.

So, why the difficulty with the back door?

The back door isn’t the entrance that is used by guests or even ourselves, for the most part. It is purely the entrance to the back yard. Our back yard is private. A place where family and friends will gather; a place of solitude and escape.

In terms of the psyche, I always think of the backyard as being what the public doesn’t see – private lives, or maybe even the past.

Aha, I think. No matter how much I move on in life, or tell myself I’ve moved on, it isn’t escape if the back door isn’t secured.

Could it be that my dreams are telling me that the only way to enjoy my present is to find a way to lock out the past?

(Image: brooklynheightsblog.com)

Meditating

“There are several steps to this meditation,” Dora Kunz began, “and with each one, if you hit an obstacle, just set it aside.”

I had come, as had those around me, to learn more from this enlightened soul. Having experienced the sense of renewal that meditation could bring, I was excited to be learning from such an expert. Dora Kunz, co-founder of Therapeutic Touch, had practiced meditation from the age of five, she’d told us. Now in her nineties, she had endless wisdom to impart.

“Take a deep breath in,” she started, “and as you exhale, release any tension in your body.”

I breathed in, noticing that the area between my shoulder blades was knotted in tension. I tried to envision it breaking up with my breath, but it wouldn’t let go.

“If your tension won’t release, just acknowledge it and set it aside.”

I could do that.

“Now, without speaking, affirm to yourself: I am at peace with myself; and allow yourself to feel it.”

Breathe in. I am at peace with myself. Breathe out. A niggling in the pit of stomach said, No you’re not. I knew it wasn’t true. I was not at peace with myself.

“If you feel doubts, set them aside. If you are unable to do that, than act as if you are at peace with yourself.”

It is as if I am at peace with myself. Ah, that felt better. I could imagine as if.

“Now allow yourself to become aware of the person on either side of you, and beyond them to the circle gathered here, and affirm: I am in harmony with those gathered here.”

This was easier to do. We’d come together with a common goal. I inhaled the warmth of our kinship, and felt myself relax a little deeper.

“Continuing to breath deeply, allow your awareness to expand beyond these walls and connect with the nature that surrounds us. State: I am at one with Nature.”

The meditation room was surrounded by nature on all sides. Following her instructions, I imagined myself breathing in the fresh country air, the vivid green of the trees vibrating around me, and the trickling sound of the brook flowing through me. I am at one with Nature, I repeated to myself. With each breath, I felt as if my body and my heart pulsed with the rhythm of nature; everything interconnected. I was now deeply relaxed, surrendering.

“Now pull your awareness back into your own center.”

Focusing on my center, I drew my breath in, the sensation of relaxation filling my belly with a calm strength.

“From this center of calm and strong, connect beyond this room, beyond nature and the world, beyond the galaxy, to a universe of order and compassion.”

Slowly, she spoke her command, and my awareness obliged, expanding and reaching beyond the beyond, feeling that connection, as if a silver cord of consciousness tied me to an eternal, omnipotent intelligence. I connected with order and compassion; and the presence of unconditional love, and in that moment knew that all was as it was supposed to be: life has reason, and purpose, and meaning. I wanted to remain suspended in this realm of knowing: free.

“Now bring your awareness back to your center, maintaining the essence of your experience.”

I felt stronger, somehow, and very calm.

“When you are ready, let your breath bring you back into this room, to the awareness of your body in the chair. Gently move your fingers and toes, allowing yourself to return to full consciousness, renewed and restored, and at your own pace, opening your eyes.”

Reluctantly, I became aware of the room around me, and ever so slightly moved my fingers. With a yawn, I let my body wake up, breathing life back into it and stretching. I felt so good, so alive!

A universe of order and compassion, I thought to myself. What a wonderful idea! If only I could remember it in my day-to-day living.

Tragedy Visits

Something’s happened to Billy!

I shot bolt upright in bed. He had just been here. I saw him standing at the end of my bed, but that was not possible: Billy lived miles away in the country and it was the dead of winter. How could he have gotten here?

I lay back down on my bed trying to piece together what had just happened. Billy had been there, long enough to wake me from a deep sleep.

I’ve come to say good-bye, I remember him saying. Tell everyone we’re okay. That’s right, he wasn’t alone. His little brother and sisters were with him. All of them fading back into the darkness.

I couldn’t shake the vision. Only ten years old, this wasn’t my first night visit, but I never quite knew what to do with them. I dragged myself out from under the comfort of my warm bed, and shivered down the hallway to my parents’ room. The first rays of a new day were starting to break the darkness. The phone rang.

Mom was sitting on the edge of her bed when I entered, listening intently as Dad spoke into the phone. She gestured for me to be quiet.

“Carl and Maureen? Are they alright?” My father spoke with deep concern. I knew it was tragic. “No, no. Oh my God.” He listened, shaking his head and tutting. “Oh my God. Well, thank you for calling, and please, keep us posted.”

“They’re both alive, but they’ve had quite the ordeal,” my father said to my mother as he hung up the phone, then turning to me, he pulled me closer, sitting on the edge of the bed beside my mother so that we were all at eye level.

“There has been a fire,” he started, “at your cousin’s house. I’m afraid it’s quite tragic.”

“I know, Dad,” I reassured him. “Billy came to see me. Just now. He said they’re okay.”

My parents exchanged that look; the one they always did when they didn’t know how to take me.

“Well, your cousin didn’t make it out of the fire. None of the kids did. All four……gone.”

The news that night showed the pictures. The house had been reduced to a rubble of ashes, and from those ashes men were carrying away four small stretchers bearing the remains. The remains of my cousins. I had never been this close to tragedy, and I really didn’t know what to do. That afternoon, in school, I’d broken down crying when the story we were reading talked about a fire. All I could picture was Billy and the little ones being burnt alive. The teacher had called my mother to come and get me.

“Come away from the TV,” my father commanded. “Damn them for showing those pictures! Can’t a family have privacy?!”

We turned off the set, but the images remained etched in my mind.

Billy’s parents weren’t at the funeral; they were still in the hospital recovering. It was just as well, I thought, this was one sad place. A single coffin sat at the front of the church, bearing the bodies of all four children who ranged in ages from two to ten. Billy had been the oldest, just two weeks younger than me. A line of sobbing people extended from the coffin and out into the cold February day.

I had no right to be there, so I shrunk back from the crowd, hoping no one would notice me. We always fought, Billy and I. He was full of mischief, with deep brown eyes that twinkled with trouble. He just had to look at me to fill me with rage. It was only two Sundays ago when we’d had our last fight. I wish you were dead! I’d told him. And now he was. I hadn’t said it quietly, either. I’d yelled it in front of all my other cousins and my aunts and uncles. I was sure they all knew it was my fault.

After the funeral and burial, we all gathered at another aunt’s house. While the adults drank tea and coffee and ate tiny sandwiches with no crusts, the cousins removed themselves to an upstairs bedroom.

“It’s just awful,” my cousin Kate exclaimed. “Can you believe it happened?”

“He’s okay,” I blurted. “I saw him, and he said he’s okay.” I explained my nocturnal visit.

“Why would he come to you and not to me?” Kate and Billy were closer, and actually got along.
“I loved him. You didn’t.”

“I loved him, too,” I protested, “It’s just that he made me so mad.”

We all fell silent. They knew what I meant. Billy was a tease, and could be a total pain.

I didn’t really want him dead, I thought. I just wanted him to stop pestering me.

The horror of our loss hung in the room between us, as cold as the icicles visible through the frosted pane.

“I wish I’d seen him,” Kate said quietly. “Then I’d be able to believe he’s okay.”

I had seen him, but I wasn’t sure that made it any better. The sorrow was still pretty raw. He was still gone from our lives, and every time we got together, his absence would be a huge black hole. Billy, who’d been so full of life, so wild, and energetic, was now dead. It just didn’t seem possible.

It was the winter of ’69 that I first learned that even though life exists beyond death, it doesn’t minimize the depth of sorrow felt at the loss of a loved one.

A Cup of Tea

My husband and I recently returned from a trip to the US, and as usual, the first thing I wanted on return was a cup of tea. It is the one thing – next to my own bed- that I miss the most when I am away.

What is it about a cup of tea?

Raised by a Brit, tea is part of my heritage. Growing up, we started every day with a cup of tea, and quite often ended each day with one also. I especially remember that as teenagers, my siblings and I would convene at the end of a night out and share stories over a late night cup of tea. Every dinner would end with someone putting the kettle on.

My children’s father was also a Brit, and he introduced me to tea time – a ritual cup every day at four o’clock, always accompanied by a sweet or biscuit.

The secret, not practiced in many restaurants, is in the preparation: the pot must be warmed first, and the boiling water added to the tea and not the other way around. In our family, the milk went in the cup first, with just the right amount of sweetener to offset any bitterness.

Special tea, a concoction of mostly warm milk and honey, with a splash of tea, is a family recipe for curing childhood ailments.

I don’t drink tea in the afternoon anymore as the caffeine keeps me up at night, and I have replaced the milk with non-dairy alternatives, but I still have a sense that all is not well unless I’ve started the day with that one lingering cup of tea, prepared just the way I like it.

Ahhh, the simple luxuries of home.

(Image: officemum.blogspot.com)

When Looking for Answers

The call came just as I was falling into a deep sleep, which didn’t help my mood. Neither my husband nor I recognized the number. After the usual formalities, Thor handed me the phone. It was a man who had tracked me down earlier in the year, looking for psychic counselling. Although I don’t practice anymore, I had made an exception for him.

“I need your advice,” he started. “I feel like things are shifting, and I have a new woman in my life. I think she is my soulmate.”

“You are not going to like what I have to say,” I interrupted. “I don’t believe in ‘soul mates’.”

“You don’t believe in reincarnation?”

“Yes, but not that there is only one person for us.” I really didn’t want to get into this right now.

“I think I have been downloaded several times.”

“Are you still there?”

“I don’t know what that means.” The conversation was becoming very irritating. ‘Downloaded’ was a new one to me, but I had heard lots – ‘walk-ins’, ‘star children’, among others.

“I am very pragmatic.” I warned. “If the idea or information is not practical, I avoid it.”

I cut the conversation short.

I understand the drive to find answers to life’s mysteries. I myself spent many years exploring different philosophies and theories, looking for one that would help me understand and feel in control. Truth is, none exist. No matter what we believe, or think we know, life is full of uncertainty, and yes, risk.

This caller, like many before him, wants to know that the choices he is making will lead to happiness and a better life. He wants to avoid pain and heartache, and above all, loneliness. He wants to believe in magic over common sense.

Whatever answers we seek, we need to be able to weigh them against some practical form of measurement. We need guidance for living a good life, not a promise that we will meet a ‘soul mate’ who will fulfill us, nor a foolproof plan for ensuring eternal bliss. Sound advice for slogging through the hard stuff, simplifying our lives, and being true to ourselves are the answers we should be seeking.

(Image: macpeanut.wordpress.com)

The Fourth Bun

The significance of the fourth bun comes from a story about a fool, who upon discovering it takes four buns to satisfy hunger, thinks that she can skip the first three and just eat the fourth with the same result.

I have been that fool.

* * * * *

“Why are you here?”

We are an eclectic group of first year psychology students: ten of us that have been appointed to this group facilitator. Meeting twice a week and doing “group therapy” is a requirement of the course.

“Because we have to be?” one student jests. Nervous giggles all around.

“No, really. Think about it? Are you here to fulfill your destiny, or are you here because that is what expected of you? Are you pleasing your parents?”

I knew I wasn’t pleasing my parents, well, at least not my mother. She didn’t see the point in women having an education. I was interested in psychology, but not yet sure that was the path I wanted to follow. Why was I here?

The question haunted me. What was I looking for? What did I hope to achieve?

The answers had nothing to do with education. On my own since seventeen, I had an intangible hunger that I sought to satisfy. I felt as if I was swimming in murky waters, unaware of the dangers beneath the surface, and just treading water on top. Trying to achieve my education, while having to work full-time to support myself was not easy. At some level, I knew that education held promise for the future, but the immediacy of my hunger overshadowed any rationality.

I wanted security: the kind of security offered by a stable home. I wanted to feel loved and supported, and not like I was clawing my way through life in order to survive. I wanted to not always have to be so strong and independent, and I wanted an end to this feeling of being so alone.

The first bun would have been to finish my education; two, to find a career; three would have given me time to establish my independence; and four to marry and create a family. Young and impulsive, I skipped to four.

Now I understand why I never found the satisfaction I was looking for. It took a long time for the hunger to subside.

(Image: leitesculinaria.com)

Mindfulness

“Can you consistently eat when you eat, and sleep when you sleep?” asks Derek Lin in “The Tao of Joy Every Day”.

Therapeutic Touch is a practice which teaches how to stay fully present and centered in the moment. Practitioners learn how to set aside all distractions so that they can focus completely on the treatment itself. Like many others, I struggled with this concept in the beginning. I would quiet my mind, focus on my breathing, and then remember I had forgotten to change the laundry over, or return my mother’s call. My mind, I discovered loves to travel in multiple directions at once.

To train myself, I would pick random times during the day and “check-in” on myself. The first thing I discovered was that I was driving without actually being aware of what I was doing. Behind the wheel, I felt an inexplicable need to be in front of the traffic, weaving in and out, tailgating, and exceeding the speed limit. I decided to replace this behaviour with mindful breathing, always bringing my awareness back to what I was actually doing. Instead of passing the car in front of me, I would take deep breaths, and will myself to stay aware. It didn’t take long before I began to notice other drivers like myself, driving aggressively. Ironically, I noticed that many of those drivers did not gain a lot of ground, having to stop for the same lights, and succumb to traffic. Remaining conscientious and choosing to drive mindfully, I knew myself to be a lot less stressed than those other drivers. It was an aha moment.

I learned how to bring my full attention to my clients, effectively able to sense the subtleties and different patterns they presented. I felt I had mastered this art.

Yet, in response to Lin’s question, I have to confess that I usually eat as an aside to whatever else I am doing, and when I sleep I toss and turn with thoughts of what was undone from the day before, or what needs to be done tomorrow.

I can’t help but think that if I could just focus on eating as a solo activity, I would be more conscious of the taste of the food and the response of my body, and maybe, just maybe, not eat to excess. I would have to turn off the t.v., and the computer, close the book, and just eat. It is a effort worth exploring.

As for sleeping, well, that is another matter. How does one clear the mind enough to just sleep?

(Image: healthyhappyhumanbeings.com)

Abuse and Money

I arrived home from school one day to find my mother sitting in a corner trembling, her face face blotched red and swollen from crying. “Mom?”

The eyes that stared back at me were distant. This was not my mother. I took stock of the situation. It was 3:15. My little sister would be home from school in half an hour. Dad would be home at 4:30 and expect dinner on the table. Nothing had been started yet. I dropped my books and got down to business.

“Mom. You need to talk to me. D is going to be home soon, and we have to get dinner on. What’s going on?”

She nodded slightly. “I can’t do it anymore. Your father……..” Her voice trailed off, but she didn’t need to say anything. I knew how brutal my father could be. I heard daily how stupid she was, and how she never cooked anything properly, even though that was her only job. I wanted her to leave him, too.

“I’ll do whatever I can, Mom. In two years, I can quit school, and get a job. I’ll support us.”

Was that a faint smile?

“We’ll make it work, Mom. We’ve got each other.”

Reaching for the pots and pans, I added, “Now what can we get started for dinner?” There would be hell to pay if dinner wasn’t on the table the moment my dad walked in.

* * *

At twelve years of age, I learned that money was what kept my mother in an abusive relationship. It never occurred to me that she had the option of getting a job; she was a stay at home mom. Five years later, we would go through a similar scenario, only then I was already living on my own, and had enough sense to get her to a lawyer. In the end, my father convinced her to stay.

Years later, I would find myself a stay at home mom, with a husband who controlled the purse strings. Like my mother, I felt powerless, and inferior. Unlike my mother, I left anyway. I braved poverty in order to find my worth. Nevertheless, I struggled, seldom able to give my children the material things they craved. I felt guilty, worthless, inadequate. After six years, I had a serious talk with God.

“God,” I said, “I want to make a difference in the world, but I can’t do it if I don’t even know where the next meal is coming from.”

I tried affirmations: All my needs are always met; there is enough for everyone.

Eventually, things turned around. Yet, my relationship with money has not yet healed. I want to be able to say the money’s the money, the way my new husband does. I want to be able to see money as a means to an end, and not the end of my means.

My attitude towards money still needs work, but I am ready for change.

(Image: empoweringparents.com)