mind body mama: The Process is the Point

I am part of three feminist process groups right now. If you are someone to whom that sentence does not have significance, suffice it to say that the readers who know exactly what it means are pointing and laughing and saying things like, “Better you than me, sister.”

This experience is giving me an opportunity to exercise the most enduring lesson I learned at Heather Berthoud’s diversity training last summer.***

I boiled this lesson into a mantra which, with a lot of deep breathing, gets me through it all without sticking a fork into one of my own eyes:

“When you work with people who are different than you—which is to say, all people—things will move more slowly than you might expect.”

Heather never actually said, “When you work with people who are different than you—which is to say, all people—things will move more slowly than you might expect.” It’s possible that this was not the take-away she intended. But despite the fact that I’ve been attending diversity trainings for over twenty years—my entire undergraduate experience as a Women’s Studies major at the City University of New York was a protracted diversity training—I understood something new in her class:

When I am thinking: “This would go so much faster/better if we just did everything my way,” people different from me—which is to say, all people—are probably not thinking, “This would go so much faster/better if we just did everything Lynne Marie’s way.”

Go figure.

Apparently, other people might be thinking, “This would go so much faster/better if we just did everything my way.”

Other other people might be thinking, with regard to my own stellar contributions, “What is she trying to do here? This is not the fastest/best way. This is making me very uncomfortable.”

And some other people might not even think “fast” equates with “best.”

(Insert more deep breathing here.)

Now, Heather’s a terrific trainer (see footnote: “genius”). Of course the session explored differences which are often culturally linked—such as values around punctuality or conflict, for example. I do understand that my ideas of “best ways” are inextricably tied to my identity as a white, blue collar/middle class, North American native-English speaker as well as my upbringing in a wealthy East Coast WASPy suburb.

But my mantra defines “people who are different from me” as “all people” because the voice of God that spoke through Heather’s training told me that I have to be more patient—with everyone.

When I get that scritchy, irritable feeling that things should be moving along right about now and why don’t we just do everything my way?—it is time for me to get very quiet. It is time to listen as deeply as I possibly can.

I know my way around a committee meeting. I am not only a lesbian feminist; I’m also a Unitarian Universalist. I know that group process can (will) hit a snag. If I get quiet I might be able to facilitate the snag. Maybe there’s a need for information or it’s time to call a vote. Maybe someone misheard someone else. Maybe we all need a snack.

But what feels like a slow-down might not be a snag at all. I’ll never know unless I try listening to my peers. What feels like delay to me might be an indication that the other members of the group need something—to speak, to listen, to feel, to act. Maybe the solution which is obvious to me is not smacking them upside the head because it’s not the best way for everyone.

Maybe people who are different than me—which is to say, all people—are really different than me. Maybe they are being their true and whole and beautiful selves. As opposed to just slowing everything down by refusing to see things my way.

Maybe being comfortable in a group—having everything happen in a way that feels natural or easy to me—is not the highest success. It can’t be if we value diversity. People who are different than me—which is to say, all people—are going to be maddeningly, infuriatingly, incomprehensibly different than me. A lot of the time they are going to want or need something other than what I want or need. I don’t understand it but it doesn’t mean that they are wrong.

If I’m never unsettled in a group it means that people who are different than me are compromising themselves. There’s a social justice piece to this, of course. As a white person I have to be hyper vigilent. It’s easy for members of the dominant culture to railroad a process according to what’s comfortable to them. That marginalizes the non-dominant members of the group; in common parlance it’s what we call “racism.” Or “sexism,” or “classism”—you get the drift.

It feels like a profound switch, though, to draw my attention to my own scritchiness—and lack there-of—rather than the apparent differences between myself and other group members. Rather than casting an eye around wondering how the straight members, or the African-American members, or the privileged-class members are going to demonstrate their differences from me, I look to myself. When I feel too comfortable I have to wonder, “Who’s not comfortable?” When I feel scritchy and impatient I have to wonder, “To whom am I not yet listening?”


(***The other really important thing I learned from diversity training with Heather is that she is a genius. In the event that you are in a position to hire a consultant for your business or non-profit, do not waste time researching her competition—just hire her. Pay her highest per diem, fly her to you business class, and do not send your assistant to pick her up at the airport. Pick her up yourself, because you will want to spend every moment you can learning from her.)

Mind Body Mama: Divine Discontent and Longing

A few days after I wrote "Brighting Out," I went to Macy’s and bought a black dress coat.

The irony did not escape me. I had just completed a meditation on the transformation of my wardrobe from all black to a riot of color, and there I was in the ladies’ coat department purchasing a new black coat.

I shopped for this coat for nearly a year. I knew as soon as I put my hand on it that it was the one I would bring home. It’s a handsome car coat that’s butch enough to wear with jeans and formal enough to wear over a fancy dress. The fabric is a cashmere/wool blend that feels light and springy and very soft. I look very grown up, very serious, in this coat.

I didn’t even consider buying the red one because it was nasty, ketchup colored red. Though the plum was tempting, I know that purple is this year’s “it” color and by next year, it will look tired to my eyes.

Furthermore, the way things are going there is a very good chance that I’ll need to wear this coat to a funeral. Because I buy a new dress coat every fifteen years or so. And as Dusty points out, either one dies young or one spends the balance of their days mourning the loss of others. That’s the condition of this mortal coil.

So I bought the black coat and I felt pretty good about it. But when I went to put it on last weekend, I felt that I’d like to have something to brighten it. I went searching for a scarf that I could wear near my face to break up all that black.

I pawed through the scarf collection I haven’t accessed since I left my office job eight years ago: silk and rayon squares in conservative colors and prints to accessorize the navy and grey and black suits I used to wear. My hand fell upon a piece of silk at the back of the closet. I could tell it was a quality piece of fabric so I tugged it out.

And then I held in my hand something that I’ve always wanted. It’s something that I’ve always had.

It’s a giant square of Indian silk paisley in flaming shades of dark red and orange. I have had this scarf for over twenty years. I think it belonged to my mother’s grandfather, but I’m not sure how or when it came to be mine.

I have always loved this stunning scarf and I have never worn it. From time to time I would look at it and think, “It’s gorgeous, but I don’t wear things like that.” Somehow I thought it didn’t suit me, or my idea of me. I would fold it up wistfully and put it carefully into the back of a drawer thinking, “What would I do with something like that?”

I kept it because I loved it but I didn’t know how to make it fit into my life.

Pulling it out now I thought, “This looks exactly like me!” The dark red matches the gorgeous winter scarf my mother knit me last year (for the second time—some lucky gym member absconded with the first one she knit and she generously replaced it.) The orange matches my groovy windbreaker and my new wool sweater. These are my colors; I wear these colors all the time.

This scarf that I have loved and neglected for two decades exactly matches who I am now.

I am in a phase of “divine discontent and longing,” as Kenneth Grahame’s Mole would put it. I am searching for something in my life and I don’t know what it is. I’m trusting that desire and instinct—blind, insistent, incomprehensible, drawing me forward like a divining rod—will lead me where I need to be. But the wait is anxious and confused and I wonder, “What should I do?” and “Who should I be?” constantly.

What if what I’m looking for is already in my possession, folded lovingly but tucked into a dark corner of the closet?

What if I look upon it with confusion now and then thinking, “I love it, but what am I going to do with something like that?”

How will I ever find it, with my eyes thus clouded?

Mind Body Mama: Practice

The other night, I ran Small a shallow bath so she could soak some of the filth off quickly before bed. I had my back turned to her when she asked, “Mama, can I have a meditation now?” I was taken aback, but I said, “Of course, Small, you can mediate any time you want.”

Small drew her thin legs up under herself criss-cross applesauce style. She bowed her head, and I was surprised to see how long her supple spine is now as it curled forward over the Buddha belly of childhood that she still carries. Six is such a tender mix of baby and girl: Small’s length and grace hint at the teenager, even the woman, that she will soon become, while her sticky hair, round cheeks and pudgy belly echo the sweet baby she was such a short time ago. Her left hand rested in her lap, palm up; her right hand nested in it and her thumbs touched gently, as we practice. As soon as she closed her eyes her breathing slowed and the room felt charged by her sudden, steady focus.

I’ll admit I was mesmerized. I had been walking out of the room to fold laundry when she caught me by this pose and I stood in the door, staring.

Small opened her eyes and looked up at me. “It’s easier to meditate when you’re not looking at me,” she said pointedly. I apologized and made to leave but she said, “No, it’s OK, I was done.” I asked her what made her think to mediate just then, and she said it was the warm water, it felt so good. “I don’t like to mediate at the dojo,” she said distastefully. “The floor is too hard!” And then, the bath, with all its silliness and ritual.

I’ve so long wondered if I was at all succeeding in showing Small the spiritual heart of my life. It is true that she gestated at the karate school, kicking me from the inside as my classmates kicked me on the outside. She was born in November and at Solstice I wore her on my chest as we punched a thousand times in the candle-lit darkness. We kept a Boppy at the dojo and I would lay her into it as if it were a throne so she could lay back and watch me prepare for my brown belt test. She was so small, to nestle into that pillow, and she gazed up at me with such enormous eyes. This year she became a Power Girl and began studying the art herself, with a lot of playfulness and exuberance and affection for her teachers.

But how could I know if she saw the heart of the practice, the stillness and compassion and peace that lies at the center of the work? How could I know if she would share the strength that I’ve drawn from sitting on that hard floor, or others like it, for twenty one years? We are not Christian. We do not pray. We do not name our practice as being connected to some movement bigger than ourselves—Buddhism, Islam, Judaism. We just breathe, and love each other, and hope that will be enough. And in the hardest times—birth, death—the practice of presence proves itself.

But I am a worrier, so I worried that I would not know how to convey the experience of calm and inner resources that comes from having a personal spiritual practice. Most of all I worried that Small’s daily life with me would be such an anti-thesis of mindfulness—To do lists! Timers! Schedules! Plans!— that she’d never know to go to that simple present breath to find peace.

Small is so much wiser than I am. I worry no more.

Worship: Readings to Accompany Fear and Grace

My family lit the chalice for this service, and Alice recited the chalice-lighting words from memory, because she is an odd and fabulous little kid. They are from the Sufi mystic poet Jelalludin Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks:

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

For the opening words (read responsively) I chose a excerpt from the Reverend Victoria Safford’s meditation Map of the Journey in Progress, from her book Walking Towards Morning:

Here is where I found my voice and chose to be brave.

This is the place where I said NO, more loudly than I’d ever thought I could, and everybody stared, but I said NO loudly anyway, because I knew it must be said, and those staring settled down into harmless, ineffective grumbling, and over me they had no power anymore.

Here’s a time, and here’s another, when I laid down my fear and walked right on into it, right up to my neck into that roiling water.

Here’s a place, a murky puddle, where I have stumbled more than once and fallen. I don’t know yet what to learn there.

On this site I was outraged and the rage sustains me still, it clarifies my seeing.

Here is where I began to look with my own eyes and listen with my own ears and sing my own song, shakey as it is.

The first of the two readings was a story from the Buddhist writer Pema Chodron from her book When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times.

Once there was a young warrior. Her teacher told her that she had to do battle with Fear. She didn’t want to do that. It seemed too aggressive; it was scary; it seemed unfriendly. But the teacher said she had to do it and gave her instructions for the battle. The day arrived. The student warrior stood on one side, and Fear stood on the other. The warrior was feeling very small, and Fear was looking big and wrathful. They both had their weapons. The young warrior roused herself and went toward Fear, bowed three times, and asked, “May I have permission to go into battle with you?” Fear said, “Thank you for showing me so much respect that you ask permission.” Then the young warrior said, “How can I defeat you?” Fear replied, “My weapons are that I talk fast, and I get very close to your face. Then you get completely unnerved, and you do whatever I say. If you don’t do what I tell you, I have no power. You can listen to me, and you can have respect for me. You can even be convinced by me. But if you don’t do what I say, I have no power.” In that way the student warrior learned how to act, not controlled by Fear, but with an understanding of Fear that leads to greater respect and compassion for oneself and others.

The second was a definition of grace from Christian author Anne Lamott found in her book Travelling Mercies:

…grace in the theological sense… [is] the force that infuses our lives and keeps letting us off the hook. It is unearned love—the love that goes before, that greets us on the way. It’s the help you receive when you have no bright ideas left, when you are empty and desperate and have discovered that your best thinking and most charming charm have failed you. Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there.

For the closing words, I used a meditation written by Alice:

Courage Instructions

Make the wisdom of your hope.
Don’t be afraid.
Help yourself to whatever you must do.
Help the world and do your best.

Sermon: Fear and Grace: Lessons from the Martial Arts

Sermon delivered at the Our House of Worship, July 13, 2008.

“The first principle of a warrior is not being afraid of who you are.”

Several months ago this congregation had a meeting to discuss the Society’s budget, as we often do. A proposal had been put forth about which I knew I had very strong feelings. My partner and I talked about the proposal at great and dramatic length (the word “ranting” comes to mind); I fell asleep or woke up more than once thinking about the issue; I sometimes talked to myself about it when I was driving alone in my car. But I didn’t really know how strong my feelings were until I got up to speak at the meeting. When I started to talk, I discovered that I was terrified. And adding to the simple challenge of speaking clearly to a complex issue, I was also crying. I honestly can’t recall any words going through my mind as I realized that I was going to weep through my entire turn at the microphone, but I can sum up the familiar feeling of tenacious surrender with this phrase: “Oh well, here we go again.”

This summer I will celebrate my twentieth anniversary as a student of Okinawan martial arts, and a month later, my 40th birthday. My martial arts practice is, in a very real sense, the story of my adult life. It is the place where—among many, many lessons— I learned to accept Fear as the great teacher that it is. And it is where I experience, again and again, the incredible Grace that comes of being present to Fear, of walking “into those roiling waters,” and coming out whole.

It might be reasonable to presume that the scariest thing about being a martial artist is the fighting part—the “getting hit” part, and maybe also the “hitting other people” part. The recent growth of the extremely violent spectacle that calls itself “mixed martial arts”—which I hesitate to even call a sport—enhances the perception that martial arts practice is about the exchange of body-damaging blows. My practice could not be more unlike this brutal combat activity. In practical terms, the two karate schools at which I have studied practice ju kumite or “soft sparring.” Light contact and control of one’s own body are respected skills which students work hard to master. Sparring practice is playful, joyous and often full of laughter. What then, is there to be afraid of? In a word—everything.

Karate practice asks us to be present—in the stillness of the meditations which begin and end classes, in the learning, mastery and repetition of movements which are simple but rarely easy, and in the partner work where we witness one another’s human, physical vulnerabilities. Karate practice requires that we inhabit our own bodies more fully than mainstream culture ever allows, in ways that few adults remember how to enjoy. And karate practice can be very, very quiet—the rituals of bowing and standing and following instructions leave lots of space for what the author and life coach Martha Beck calls “squirrel brain”—that relentlessly nattering self talk so richly fueled by Fear—to get completely out of control.

For the very confused and sad 19-year-old that I was when I began my karate training at a feminist dojo (the Japanese word for “training hall”) in Brooklyn, NY, this call to be present was nearly unbearable. I couldn’t have told you then, but I understand now, that the dominant fact of my life at that time was Fear. My life terrified me. I was trying to come to grips with being a lesbian, I was trying to go to college—the first in my family to do so—I was trying to grow up, find my way out of a painful and lonely adolescence. On the street, the roar of my own Fear was drowned by the New York City din; the racing of my pulse and my squirrelly thoughts were matched by the City’s relentless pace. But when I entered the quietude of the dojo, I was alone with my internal brew. And I—a classic overachiever, a stereotypical Virgo who loves order and ritual and rules—could not handle the simple routines of a beginner karate class. The first year I studied, I cried in every single class. I rarely lasted for an entire session and I always left abruptly, failing to bow to partners or teachers as I tore out of the building. This didn’t lead to me feeling terribly successful about myself as a karate-ka, a practitioner of the art. Despite the admonition that “each of us is on our own path,” I constantly compared myself to the other students. I realize now that most of them were only in their middle twenties, but they seemed so old and poised and sure of themselves at the time. They asked questions, they never cried, they practiced karate at home. I just came to class and wept. But: I kept coming back.

I have been a karate teacher for a long, long time now and I am still in awe of my first teachers’ incredible depth of compassion and acceptance for the girl who couldn’t last a single hour without tears. Beginners are hard enough to teach. I appreciate now the comedy of knowing with certainty that one of your students is going to flee— but getting to be surprised each time by the exact moment that she does. My teachers, and through their example, my sister students, held a space for me where I could be present with my Fear. Some exercises puffed Fear up and made it seem even bigger and more powerful—the “hitting each other” parts were tough for me, despite our focus on control and contact, as were the “falling onto the ground” parts. But as I found power and skill and happiness in my own body, much of my practice helped Fear to quiet and move away. Kicking has always felt to me as close as the human body can come to flying—it is purely joyful. Although I think this word is overused, it is true in the most profound way to say that I was empowered by the brand of self-defense training I received—which is rooted in an anti-violent, anti-racist, anti-homophobic, socialist feminist polemic of great practicality and deep moral purpose. The moving meditation of simple karate strikes, blocks and kicks taught me to access reserves of calm from within myself— reserves that then became available to me as I moved through the challenge of “getting a life.”

It was a great relief to outgrow the screaming terror of my late teens and early karate training, and settle down as an adult growing into greater happiness and serenity. This process was incredibly gradual and of course, totally incomplete—“squirrel-brain” never really goes away, and Fear is always lurking just around the next life change, big or small. After twelve years in New York City and ten years at the dojo, the time came to move on. When my partner Liz and I decided to move to the Valley we knew two important things: there was vibrant Unitarian congregation, and a well known women’s dojo. It was clearly a reasonable place to live.

Now, I want to stop a moment and tell you what we mean when we talk about “styles” of martial arts. One of the summer reality shows I enjoy watching recruits dancers, most of who are trained in a specific style of dance such as hip-hop, ballroom or tap, and challenges them to compete in dances completely different from the ones that they know. I love this show; I really can’t get enough of it. As a viewer, you know that the hip-hop dancer who’s trying to do Latin dance is much, much, much better than you would ever be. Their training in form and rhythm and choreography is immediately useful as they learn the new dance. And yet, to the Latin dancer on the judging panel—it’s just not quite right.

This is how it is with martial arts. My New York school and my Valley school teach two different styles. Both come from Okinawa, and share influences of both Chinese and Japanese martial arts history. We like to say the styles are “cousins” and that two schools are “sister schools.” But like the hip-hop dancer trying to do a perfect Rumba, the student who switches styles is going to be “not quite right” a good amount of the time.

This is the challenge I faced when I arrived here in 1998. When we first moved I thought I would take some time off from karate, explore other types of moment and recreation, or just eat dinner at 6:00 like normal people instead of being at the dojo until 8 or later. But only two weeks after moving here I showed up at the dojo for a visit, and felt so immediately at home that my commitment to training there was inevitable. After a few months of being a welcome guest, I tied on a white belt and began the process of training through the ranks of a new style.

One of my new training sisters, a newly minted black belt at that time, said to me then, “I don’t think I could do what you’re doing.” I think she meant the re-learning, the willingness to be “not quite right” so much of the time, after ten years of dutiful study, of having been a teacher myself and having earned a black belt rank. And my friend expanded the compliment by saying, “And you do it with so much grace.”

I recall thinking at the time: “Is this woman nuts?” Because just like my first first year of karate training, I felt anything but graceful. Grace, I thought, meant cool self assurance, poise, reserve. All those things I thought I had seen in the older, wiser, twenty-something beginners of my first go-round. Grace must be the Virgo part of me, the part who could smile serenely, arrive on time, and follow instructions. I didn’t run out of quite as many classes the second time around, but I did sit in the car and weep instead of going into the dojo to practice when the enormity of loss and change was unbearable. And I was crabby a good bit of the time, with dashes of bitter and sullen thrown in for good measure, and my squirrel-brain was having a field day.

But what if doing something “with grace” doesn’t necessarily mean doing it “gracefully”? When I looked up definitions of grace I found words like “acceptance” and “approval” or (this one I especially like): “unmerited divine assistance.” Unmerited: which is to say, unconditional—like the compassion extended to me by my teachers and sisters at both dojos. There’s certainly room in unconditional for crying, and for squirrel-brain; for Fear, for clumsiness, for self doubt. Or how about Anne Lamott’s definition of grace as “the force that infuses our lives and keeps letting us off the hook. It is unearned love—the love that goes before, that greets us on the way.” The martial arts come to us from cultures which honor ancestors, and we call our teachers, “those who have come before.” It has been my great good fortune to practice in schools where the teachers who come before us offer great love to their students, unearned, that we might learn to extend the same kindness to ourselves and our students in turn. To rise to a challenge with this kind of grace is just to show up.

And this is the secret core of my karate practice: there is no secret, I just show up. I am tenacious in the work of karate, and not just in the hard sweaty practice of it, which I also really love. From the beginning I somehow knew that karate required surrender—not to Fear itself, but to the presence of Fear. Any time I’m at the dojo, there is a possibility that I’ll leave in tears— but I have every tomorrow to try showing up again. What I knew from the beginning is still true: to do karate, all you have to do is do karate. I just keep putting myself in it, and some days it will flow like poetry, and other days it will stick like mud, but it will always be the same path.

I keep hoping that Fear will leave me alone, and Fear keeps coming around. A few years back, when I was in the home stretch toward earning my second black belt, I wished for a smooth and graceful path, but it kept getting interrupted by physical illness, insomnia, and moments of irrational, ungrounded terror. Trying to pull myself together, I recalled the night before I went into labor with my daughter Alice, when I got lost in the maze of Holyoke Hospital and sank right down against a wall and cried. When grace, in the guise of caring professionals, brought my partner and my midwife to me, the midwife—a member of this congregation—said, “If you weren’t freaking out right now, I’d be worried. You’ve got to freak out if you’re going to do this thing.” This is awfully close to what another member of this congregation said to me when I told her how scared I was to be delivering this sermon (this is the clean version): “It would be screwed up if you weren’t scared.”

I really needed to deliver exactly this sermon, exactly this weekend. Because staring down my fortieth birthday has stirred up a whole new bout of squirrel-brain, and new irrational terror about the next chapter of my life. Once again, I find myself pretty scared, pretty much most of the time. But this time I know Fear for what it is: a travelling companion, a some-time opponent, a teacher, a party to the human journey. I can respect it, I can even listen to it—but if I don’t do what it says, I’ll be fine. And I know who my people are, the community who will help me find my next chapter—they’re the friends who say to me in word and deed, “It would be screwed up if you weren’t scared.”

For years I longed for a stronger connection to this congregation, a sense of undeniable belonging. And wouldn’t you know that crying in front of a room full of Society members at that budget meeting did more to create that connection than anything I had tried before. Committee meetings, small group ministry, making coffee—too easy. I had to love this place, and its members, and my family’s home here so deeply that it frightened me, and then I had to step into the roiling waters of that Fear and tell you all about it.

When I birthed my baby, tenacious surrender in the face of Fear turned out to be my greatest strength. I didn’t fight what my body was trying to do, and only because I had wept and raged the night before. Maybe grace requires that acting out, maybe grace can’t be achieved gracefully. I wish the spiritual path, the martial path, the path to greater connection with this community, the path to my brilliant mid-life transformation, could be walked with decorum and order, maybe with a little light piano music in the background and without ever falling down or crying. But, like childbirth or earning a black belt, the path toward grace is often scary and messy, with long stretches of hard, hard work and a pile of dirty laundry afterward. Fear’s not going anywhere soon, and I’m resigned to its squirrelly incarnations. My path, in the dojo and outside, has shown me that grace abides on the far side of Fear, if not as gracefully as we hope, as abundantly as we ever need.