My heart is touched...

This afternoon my heart is so full and so touched by the responses I received to my last blog post. I have been so fearful of telling people that I am going on this retreat to Auschwitz. I have been afraid of what the reaction would be and I certainly seem to be getting some reaction, but I am also getting some beautiful, loving support from friends. 

I understand that for many people my going to spend five days walking the ground of a concentration camp, in silence at times, meditating, and reciting prayers, reading the names of those who died and performing rituals to honour the people, the space and the time of Auschwitz, may seem morbid and bizarre. For me it feels so right that I am almost lost for words. I have thought about this a lot this week - as the time gets nearer and the reality of what I intend to do gets closer I feel the strength of the rightness of the decision more and more, though I grow increasingly aware that I have no idea of the outcome.

I spoke before about this sense of longing that I am feeling. It is such a crystalline yearning that doesn't seem to have a clear focus, though the feeling is clear. I looked up the meaning of yearning and found the following:

Yearning:

1. Have an intense feeling of loss or lack and longing for something.

2. Be filled with compassion or warm feeling. 

Wow - this really nailed it for me. It is exactly what I am feeling now. The question I have to ask myself is, 'If I am feeling a lack of something, then what is it?' I recognise and accept the feelings of warmth and compassion that are arising in me now, but the lacking is more problematic. It's as if all I want to do is watch soppy old movies that give me a legitimate outlet for tears. Right now film clips of kittens, puppies and babies have me brimming over and I can hardly watch those reality TV shows where they make over some unfortunate family's ramshackle house without winding up sobbing. What is going on?

I think my heart is opening. Does this sound crazy? The longing feels like a word I remember from my studies of philosophy in university – ‘weltschmerz’ – a sense or feeling that the unhealed state of the world is causing us to feel pain. (Boy, I just impressed myself with the pretentiousness of the last sentence!)  This has a quality of what I am feeling right now and it also a little of the feeling that I am bringing with me to my retreat. I am sitting here in wonderment  at the ‘chutpah’ that allows me to even make such a big statement. “What, heart opening? Me, don’t be ridiculous!’

I am also curious about what it will be like to finally be in Poland. My entire family comes from Poland and it will be my first visit. I am looking forward to an experience that I know will be both strange and familiar. I have an inkling of those sensations even when I shop in the tiny little Polish shops that have opened all over London. I scan the shelves and see Polish food labels that have words on them I recognize from my childhood and sometimes I even buy the foods just because I am excited to have a bit of my mother and father’s past in my kitchen. This whole trip, to Krakow and to Auschwitz, is bringing the past into the present for me.

As I accumulate the warm clothing and thermal underwear I will need for my trip I do stop and think about how much I am blessed to have and how little my parents had in that place. I am filled with the warmth and compassion that is also part of yearning for them, for my unnamed family and for all of those who will have walked the grounds of Auschwitz before me.

I am overwhelmed by a prayer said for me by a wonderfully dear friend and can only echo this for me and for all those who face their life journeys with directness and courage:

“May you be safe, may you be in peace and may you be surrounded by love”.

Time flying...

I am sitting here with calendars, flight schedules, work dates and trying to figure out my commitments over the next few months so I can plan trips to the USA for work, dates in London and time for myself. I still have real problems setting my priorities correctly. I put work first, assume I have the stamina of an 18 year old and inevitably wind up exhausted, tearful and anxious.


This time I am determined to do it differently. I will put myself and my needs first and then set up my work schedule. I say that with great confidence now, but my resolve so easily crumbles in the face of client needs. I guess I still have the same old need to be needed that I always had. Some things don't change, but this time... I live in hope.


I returned from the USA both infused with the joy of chanting with wonderful kirtan chanters and exhausted from travelling so much in such a short space of time. Today feels like the first day since my return that my body felt even part way recovered from the mad rushing about - so what did I do? Did I relax and enjoy my body's beginning to return to normal? No! I had to go shopping. Some folks have their drug, alcohol, TV addictions, I have my shopping. I managed to return home just before everything started to hurt again and I consider this an achievement. I am learning to listen to myself a little bit.


The seemingly sudden arrival of autumn has sent me into a bit of a spin. The summer slipped through my fingers before I had a chance to really grab it and now autumn is here. The trees are changing colour and there is that colder feel in the air. Soon the clocks go back and there you are - another winter arriving.


This year is different. In a few weeks I go off on my week long retreat. I am loathe to voice where and why since this feels like an extremely personal journey to the dark side of the planet. Every time I tell someone where I am going for this retreat I get their particular viewpoint. I understand that what I am doing is somewhat extreme, perhaps a bit bizarre and for sure, challenging.  I deeply and completely know that this is the right thing for me to be doing. My history is a present part of me. How to explain this. I've been thinking a lot about this over the past few weeks and I have come to this - at some point in my life I knew that I would visit Auschwitz, the concentration camp that both my parents were in. I also knew that there was no possibility that I would want to visit this unhealed place as part of an afternoon tourist party on a day trip from Krakow. When I saw that there was a retreat to Auschwitz that was being led by a group of Buddhists, with the involvement of all faiths and all nationalities for a week in early November, I realised that this was something I wanted, needed and felt magnetically pulled to do. I need to walk that ground, to explore what there is there for me and to put together some of the fractured pieces of my past in order to live more fully in the present. Sounds wooly, doesn't it? Well, it sort of it. I have no idea what there will be waiting for me in Poland. I trust that whatever it is, is right for me. I will let you know.


Meanwhile I am filled with an autumnal sense of longing. Huh??  Yearning for the missing bits of my life, the warmth of friendships, the joys of small things in the day that I sometimes forget to notice, the meditative times I let slip by. As another summer passes I feel like all the things I love are right here and yet so much is still just out of my reach. Pretty frustrating to know that I have everything I need, want, imagine or desire to make my life and more importantly, my self, complete and that I still watch things pass by, as if in a movie of someone else's life. 


Kindness and compassion towards my self, towards everyone and everything around me seems like the only 'right' action now. I watch my living movie and also welcome the future episodes - this series will run and run. All I have to do is stay still long enough.

Goodbye to an old friend...written on 29 July

As I sit here hiding from the noise of sawing and chopping, I find myself really sad to see the huge tree in front of my house finally go.  This is the tree that has ushered in the changes of season for the 20+ years that I've lived here. Today it is being removed.


This tree, sycamore, I think, has been my friend for a long time. when I was recovering from back surgery and couldn't really get out of bed much, it was the tree that brought spring and summer into my bedroom.  When my parents came to visit one October many years ago, we swept up the autumn leaves that the tree shed. We did it together and I remember all of laughing at how many leaves this one tree had, no sooner had we cleared up one huge lot of leaves, than another huge amount would cover my tiny front garden.


And therein lies the problem - my tiny front garden and the tiny front gardens of our neighbours. The tree had just grown too big and was becoming a danger to our property. Undermining the foundations. So farewell old friend, you've seen me through good times and bad and I already miss the shade of your overhanging branches. I will not miss the leaves you drop every autumn that make a slippery mess and herald the arrival of winter, but I will miss the first sounds of birdsong outside my bedroom window every Spring. 


Thanks for all the blessings and farewell. If you can call a tree a friend, then you have been a stalwart one. Very sad today...