Tag: peace in relationship

Shoving My Snark Elsewhere

Posted on by KM Huber in #LongerView, Consciousness, Cooper and EmmaRose, Inspiration, Spirituality, Zen

There was a time I whittled my wits for social media, a kind of  “computer warrior” as a friend calls them. I sought battles that may have not been there. Seizing on one word or phrase and letting go of context.

Snark. You know the drill. I wasn’t any good at it. Zen showed me how bad I was. Embarrassing, actually.

I haven’t given up on social media. Just the opposite. Rather than preparing for battle, I just take a stand when or if it is necessary. Awareness is my armor and suits me better than snark ever did.

I’m wondering if worldwide connection is changing battle and its field. Connection is changing everything else. There is no absence of compassion but in its lack evil lurks, more patient than any of us might credit.

Awareness reveals evil as easily as compassion and in comparison, evil withers, kind of like snark, unable to stand the long light of day. Scrutiny. Either way, we are revealed; our hearts clench and open in response.

We’re seeking the security of the steadfast but awareness is shaky ground, ever shifting. And that is tiring. So why not throw some shade. Maybe give up for a while. Nothing seems to last because nothing does.

I think social media makes that clearer than any doctrine. All of life is an experience, one after another, the coming to and going from any one moment–all on shaky ground.

We’re like tectonic plates, and sometimes there’s an earthquake. And still, there is existence in spite of it all. In that, I am in awe.

So why not, as Pema Chödrön says, “be generous with your joy.”* Why not, indeed. Joy does so much with so little. Sort of like snark in that regard but joy is never-ending. Snark is more of a single position and like evil it evaporates for there is always more joy, and it comes from unusual places.

Just this past week I received a mint plant whose roots were all but bursting from the top and bottom of its plastic pot. Some strands had found their way through air holes. Life searching to stay.

I have not “shared” my apartment since feline EmmaRose left. There are fewer and fewer insects but I celebrate those who pass through. “We are always in relationship” Pema Chödrön once remarked regarding the insect in the room.

And now, it is a mint plant with rust on its leaves and a few shoots struggling for life.

I asked neighbor Grace for her expert assistance. What she teaches me about flora and fauna is such a gift. Within 24 hours, we visited the nursery where Grace once worked to select the proper potting soil, drainage rocks, pot, and tray.

It was a celebration of Grace and her years tending the native plants and the friendships of her life. She gave me the complete tour, including the goldfish pond.

When was the last time I knew such joy in the morning amid native species that somehow make room for me and my kind. Only they know why.

And that is what we brought home to the mint. With the care that comes with years of living, Grace aerated the soil around the squared roots, opening up more life, as we provided the breath of carbon dioxide.

Offering life for life. It’s existence, this joy.

*The idea of being generous with joy is from Pema Chödrön’s The Compassion Book: Teachings for Awakening the Heart, page IX.

 

The First Peace in Relationship is Life Anew

Posted on by KM Huber in Cooper and EmmaRose, Inspiration

This past Monday, feline EmmaRose and I experienced the imperative inherent in impermanence. One being can never know another completely, which is as it should be. The richness of relationship, its mystery, keeps us curious and often, in awe.

In her sun 0413As a cat, EmmaRose is ever present. Routine is her preference for that means food and shelter—her sense of security—is not threatened.  For the three and a half years she has lived with me not even the furniture has been rearranged. It seems she appreciated this more than I knew.

We spend most of our time in the bedroom, which doubles as my work area. I work from an adjustable Tempurpedic bed complete with laptop and bed table. EmmaRose is quite partial to sleeping on the Internet router, especially in winter, or near/on my lap while I write.

Our living room has never had much furniture. There is still a lovely antique, wooden rocker with a padded seat. It is more comfortable than it looks. Also, there is a large, rust-colored ottoman suitable for human and feline window gazing.

There WAS a twin bed box springs and mattress that I tried to disguise as a sofa-daybed. For me it was ugly, uncomfortable, an unpleasant reminder of another time. From time to time, however, I would find EmmaRose curled up and asleep on it.

That I regularly removed accumulated cat hair from its quilt cover should have told me that this was a nocturnal sleeping place. Did we not once watch a possum in moonlight from the sofa-daybed?

Staying with Familiar 0614

In hindsight, it is obvious that a good deal on a used loveseat and recliner changed our relationship. In fact, EmmaRose seemed to sense imminent change the moment we heard the knock on our front door.

She did not watch the daybed leave the apartment, preferring the familiarity of the bedroom to wait for the moving in and moving out to cease. Only then did she return to the living room.

Although she is only five and a half pounds, she has an immense presence, especially when she communicates. We don’t focus on the actual meow or word. Rather, we pay attention to tone, and her feelings regarding the loveseat and recliner were quite clear.

Here we were in the reality of impermanence. The known furniture was gone and the unknown leather furniture was here. Accepting loss precedes learning to live with what is. Becoming once again secure in one’s world is unique to each being–there is no set amount of time.

KMHuberImage; Meditation Cat;

We can immerse ourselves into the newness of our world or we can skirt the change for awhile. Regardless, it is up to us to seek that first peace so integral to relationship, which is precisely what EmmaRose did three days and four nights later.

It was during the opalescent hours, as one day becomes another, that EmmaRose beckoned me to the loveseat for window gazing. In the light of the waning crescent moon, I glimpsed an occasional firefly but soon the purr of EmmaRose brought me, too, to sleep.

 

Thursday Tidbits: Peace in Relationship and Dystopia

Posted on by KM Huber in Inspiration, Thursday Tidbits, Writing

forpeace6This week, Thursday Tidbits considers peace in terms of our relationships, as the June post for Bloggers for Peace. I am reminded of Pema Chödrön’s observation that we are always in relationship, even if the only other being in the room is an insect.

We are always in relationship, and the first is with ourselves. Whatever that relationship, it flies as our banner, the basis of our relationship with reality, peaceful or no.

“When you enter deeply into this moment, you see the nature
of reality, and this insight liberates you from suffering and confusion. Peace is already there to some extent: the problem
is whether we know how to touch it.”

~Thich Nhat Hanh~

Our day-to-day relationships are mostly peaceful but not always, for we are human and do not always lead with compassion. Yet, by entering deeply into each moment, we are able to try again, perhaps even to meet one another in acceptance, if not in agreement. Is that not the threshold of peace?

Just recently, I read Piper Bayard’s dystopian thriller, Firelands, a fine novel that raises question after question regarding our relationship with our world.

A cautionary tale, Firelands is as unpredictable as the nature of relationship for we are taken down paths that prove not to be what they seemed but like any master storyteller, Bayard allows her characters to reveal themselves for all that they are and are not.Firelands 0613

I am not a frequent reader of post-apocalyptic fiction but as I read Firelands, I was reminded of a favorite Mignon McLaughlin quote:  “The hardest learned lesson [is] that people have only their kind of love to give, not our kind.” Bayard’s vision is not a pessimistic one. Rather, it is refreshingly realistic.

In the theocracy of Firelands, we see what a faction-weary world can become for such a world, like ours today, “desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers and lovers of all kinds” (Dalai Lama).

Storyteller Bayard affords us a glimpse into one possibility for our future and offers us the opportunity to look at ourselves now, in our present. But mostly, she takes us to the threshold of peace by reminding us that our story is one of relationship and always will be; to touch the peace within ourselves is to extend it in relationship in any world that comes to pass.

Although this is Piper Bayard’s first book with StoneGate Ink, we can look forward to more fine writing, including a seven-book series written with Jay Holmes. I am a constant reader of their blog, Bayard & Holmes, for their posts are thoughtful and thought-provoking. Often, they reveal a perspective I had not considered.

Thursday Tidbits are weekly posts that offer choice bits of information to celebrate our oneness with one another through our unique perspectives. It is how we connect, how we have always connected but in the 21st century, the connection is a global one.