a note from Erin:
One of my favorite things about living in my neighborhood is walking in the nearby graveyard. It exists on 120 acres and is dotted with graves from the 1840s onwards. A fantastic bird-watching spot, it is filled with abundant trees sheltering old and new graves. I’ve walked here regularly over the past 25 years, and even after all these years, I still discover old gravestones I hadn’t noticed before.
I have certain favorites – the Maori chief buried in Salt Lake City in the 1800s. Can you even imagine his life story? The children’s section on the grassy hillside which contains many weather-worn graves from children who’ve been dead more than 100 years. The Chinese section where for the past few years we’ve watched baby great-horned owls fledge from the branches above. I’m fascinated by the graves that list all the sister wives in polygamist families. I pause to do the math on the age difference between the oldest and youngest wives. What must that have been like for them? I love the Japanese section with the large vertical stone graced by elegant kanji characters and the English translation below: “Dedicated to the unknown dead.” A dear friend and I have a shared adoration of the heart-rock gravestone of a woman about my age who died a few decades ago and whose stone reads, “Grateful for a life worth missing.” I like to see the offerings people leave – sometimes plastic flowers, or live mums in a plastic pot, but also the unique ones. There’s one where bottles of Miller Genuine Draft are regularly placed in front of a teenage boy’s gravestone. The image on the stone depicts a long-haired young skateboarder. I wonder who leaves the beers.
There’s something about walking in the graveyard that I trust.
It breaks my heart open every time.
Honestly, I don’t feel right with myself if my heart isn’t at least a little broken.
And oh, my heart is broken today, not just by a stroll in the graveyard, but by Iraq. Bangladesh. Alton Sterling. Philando Castile. Orlando. On and on. Countless other tragedies, large and small, happening right this moment. Countless beautiful miracles are unfolding as well, right this moment. I believe I must open in both directions.
A few months ago I was walking downhill in the graveyard and I saw a patch of rough dirt in the sea of green grass – a grave recently filled in. Something caught my eye so I approached to see what it was. I saw a small mylar heart-shaped balloon attached to a 2-foot long plastic stick, stuck into the dirt. As I got closer, I saw that the plastic stick was piercing a piece of paper. I squatted down to peek and burst into tears. I saw the wonky handwriting of a child in orange marker saying,”Happy birthday, Mom. I miss you tons.” It was covered with little stickers and drawings. I’m crying now as I write this.
Life is so precious, even when it sucks. I love Glennon Doyle Melton’s word “brutiful.” It is indeed a brutal-beautiful world.
It’s a delicate balance, this broken heartedness. If I fall too far to the side of despair, I can’t help anything at all. I’ll wallow.
If I numb out to the tragedies or choose to ignore them, and turn my white-priveleged head in another direction, that doesn’t help either.
I don’t want to live in a cocoon. I also don’t want to wallow in despair.
I want a heart just broken enough to see the preciousness and precariousness of these lives we have. To see the tragedies and the miracles and live a life of benefit in some humble way.
As the line of a song says so gorgeously,
“This is it, more or less, and who would ever guess?
This is the best of times. This is the worst of times.
And it’s passing. Pay attention. Pay attention.”
Pay attention.
As Mary Oliver says, it’s our endless and proper work.
Rumi reminds us, “Don’t go back to sleep.”
Can we not avert our eyes, even though sometimes it is so terrible to look?
This morning, I’m thinking of the Zen Peacemakers. I have deep respect for their approach. From their website:
Three Tenets of a Zen Peacemaker
Taking refuge in The Three Treasures, I vow to live a life of:
- Not-Knowing, by giving up fixed ideas about ourselves and the universe
- Bearing Witness to the joy and suffering of the world
- Taking Action that arises from Not-Knowing and Bearing Witness
“Not-knowing is the first tenet of the Zen Peacemakers. Not-Knowing is entering a situation without being attached to any opinion, idea or concept. This means total openness to the situation, deep listening to the situation.
It is the role of the Bodhisattva to bear witness. The Buddha can stay in the realm of not-knowing, the realm of blissful non-attachment. The Bodhisattva vows to save the world, and therefore to live in the world of attachment, for that is also the world of empathy, passion, and compassion. Ultimately, she accepts all the difficult feelings and experiences that arise as part of every-day life as nothing but ways of revelation, each pointing to the present moment as the moment of enlightenment.
Bearing witness gives birth to a deep and powerful intelligence that does not depend on study or action, but on presence.
We bear witness to the joy and suffering that we encounter. Rather than observing the situation, we become the situation. We became intimate with whatever it is – disease, war, poverty, death. When you bear witness you’re simply there, you don’t flee.
Loving Actions are those actions that arise naturally when one enters a situation in the state of not-knowing and then bears witness to that situation. It has nothing to do with the one’s opinions or other’s opinions as to whether it is loving action or not.”
Last year, psychologist and teacher Tara Brach gave a talk on “sacred community” and examined the topic of racism. She happened to be giving the talk right at the moment of the tragic shooting at a church in Charleston, SC. During the talk, she shared part of a letter written by an African American community member who was writing about another of last year’s tragic shootings of innocent black men by police and how it was impacting her and her family. She said something to this effect: “In our Buddhist meditation community, people aren’t often so active in political situations, or protesting this event.” I expected the woman to say something shaming about this tendency. Instead, what she said pierced my heart. She said simply, “Your voice is missed.”
So I want to raise my voice. And I don’t know what to say but I cannot say nothing.
I’m heartbroken. I’ve cried several times today reading the news. I made myself watch the videos.
I don’t know what to do to help.
I want to share something my friend Jack Kinley wrote today on Facebook. It captures something of my own sentiments in a beautiful way.
“I am fully aware that I grieve differently than my black friends today. Because while I grieve, I still get to be safe and white.
I haven’t been as outspoken as I should be about the murders of so many black men, if I’m being honest. That is not permission. It is not fear. It is learning. It is listening. And yes, it is white privilege.
Eventually, I hope, all of us will have learned enough and heard enough to speak up for the black men in this country who deserve to be safe.
What I learned when my people were murdered in Orlando and the world didn’t seem to echo the depth of my anger, pain and sorrow is that the echo of outrage is healing.
The outpouring of anger, sorrow, and fear made me feel less alone. Whenever a straight person stood up and said that they too were upset – it meant a little more to me. It meant that it’s not just the queers against the world—that our common humanity was still intact. That I didn’t have to have the strength to rail against injustice alone. That today I could sit down and be sad. That the work would get done and I could take a minute to really feel the magnitude of the atrocity against my people.
No, I won’t feel grief over the murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castille the same way my black friends do. And my white support of the right thing to do should carry no more weight than any black person who is outraged right now.
But my humanity is connected to yours and I grieve these murder victims with you. I grieve a worldwhere black men are unsafe and systematically disenfranchised and cut off from the American dream at every turn.
I think that my little nod of recognition, awareness, support and love matters. To my black friends and family, I am listening. I am working against injustice. I am grieving.
The only way forward is together.”
– Jack Kinley
In closure, I want to share this beautiful poem that somehow seems right to me today in the midst of it all– illnesses, love, losses, kindnesses, tragedies and miracles.
It’s written by a poet I’m so delighted to call my friend, Brooke McNamara. It’s from her exquisite book, “Feed Your Vow.” Thank you, Brooke, for sharing your gifts. (I highly recommend her work!)
Blush
I must begin with what I really want.
I want to let the mess be. I want you
to show me your world. I want to push
the weight of my real body into your world
and feel the impact. I want to show you
my naked electric power and watch you fall
to your knees in worship. Enter my kingdom
so I may be peopled with life. Show me the one
in you that makes me shimmer between fear
and awe. Give me the white heat of loss
to carve me down. Trip me over traps I’ve set
to remind me this is just a dream. Pain, come
reveal again this dream is also real. Dreams, be each night
of Chogyam Trunpa Rinpoche, and wake me to a new mind.
I want to train your perception
to encounter how achingly erotic
that tree being swayed by the breeze is.
I want to train your breath
to move that holy arousal into your true purpose
and aim it like an arrow at my lies.
I want you to shut up and come close
and let me taste your tears.
——————————
Let’s support each other as we do the courageous work of keeping our eyes, ears, and hearts open.
Let’s offer blessings as we taste each other’s tears.
xo
Erin
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