THE SHIMMERING OF THE LEAVES

Apprenticeship to Love, Chapter 245, August 10, 2024

• Today’s questions: Is your life orderly, structured, purposeful? Or is it sometimes crumbling, a shambles, looking for direction? And either way, What do you DO with this awareness?
• Today's suggested practice: to sit with your own resistance to learning what you already know & receive as love... (see my "Short Practice,” below)
• My practice today: 3am, asanas, segmented breath practice, Heart Hum Meditation

TODAY'S MEDITATION

I broke something after my second marriage ended the second time.

Or: I refused to let something —my heart— break. Instead, I "pushed through," as they say. To not grieve what needed grieving.

Who suffered for this failure to grieve. Well, me. Of course. But before I woke to my need to grieve I visited my protected and hardened heart on women who deserved better. Who offered better. One of these, well... She sacrificed her vulnerability and commitment and her dreams of what our marriage might be on the altar of this hardened and protected heart. To what end? That I would, eventually, know I needed to grieve. That I would, eventually, awaken to the possibility of love again. To live again.

It's a hard thing, to regret this hardening of my heart, my failure to allow myself to break. An even harder thing to acknowledge how much my beloved had to hurt, that I might feel love.

...

What is my usefulness? What is my necessity? These words and these questions cross my mind frequently in these, the worst days of the year, for me. The heat and the brightness leave me no place to hide. And I do want to hide.

And so I ask: What use am I? What need do I answer?

...

I listened to a woman recently telling me about a difficult time that she was only now coming out of. A time of death. Of the beginnings of menopause. Of the overwhelm of life suddently too much for her, after years of heroically answer the overwhelm with energy and spirit. And telling me how her husband is at hand. He holds her. He listens to her litany of unhappiness. He is with her. Together.

I envy this man this appreciation. I envy him his commitment. This is hard husbandry he practices.

Or, maybe I don't envy this man. Maybe I too am appreciated, if I take a moment to listen and breathe in what I am receiving. I too am committed. I too am practising, so much better than before, this work and this art of hard husbandry.

...

I am, this morning, in the front garden. I've abandoned the back garden to the builders and their machinery on this morning for the quiet I find here. It is a garden of seeming neglect. But here too my husbandry is at work. The déshabille of August is not random. I do not undo or undress the drifts of foxglove and rose and lilac and field mallow or the "wild lawn." But I do give it form. And now, as She loosens Herself from the delicious demands of blossoming She stands —or lays— spent. Languid.

I've pulled my feet from my shoes and I feel the soft and cool of the moss in this shadow of the cedars. A car goes by. The dogs are dug into the shade under the hedge behind me. We are all craving and enjoying this moment of cool and soft.

Small white butterflies flutter through the summer-ravished garden. A turkey vulture drifts overhead. Death is always with us. And these days I am thinking of death often.

...

What use am I?

Or: How much more do I need to be told that I am appreciated to begin to believe in my own usefulness and purpose?

...

I am grieving. I know this. Still, I am caught unawares by it. The tiredness. The done-ness with it all. Listless.

What use am I?

I am grieving for my dear and wise and departed friend, whose absence becomes more acute as the days and weeks go by. His birthday approaches. My birthday approaches. I'm feeling hollowed. Self-pitying. Wanting to be held. To be seen. To be allowed to crumble and to told that I am, in my crumbling, becoming the man I am. This is what I want from him, but now have to do for myself. And I am not wanting to do this for myself. I am weak. Needy.

I am bad company for anyone. Even the dogs think me a poor sort. I've lost the will to go for the long walks that we —me and they— need to get through these terrible and hot and bright days.

...

I was, once upon a time, rescued from what I'll call "early adult ennui" by fatherhood. At 28 I had purpose and usefulness thrust on me by the birth of my first child. Then a second. No shortage of reasons to be then.

Now I am rescued from what I'll call "late middle-age adult ennui" by grandfatherhood.

My granddaughters, as my daughters and then my sons once did, tie me to the moment of being with them. I am exhausted by it. As I was exhausted by fatherhood. But I am redeemed. And this is the honest exhaustion of service, of having no purpose greater than the listening and the wondering and the holding of their moments safe. Sacred. It is the calling I felt as a father. A truth about who I am as a man. An answer to all of the questions that had plagued me. Now I feel it again, this answering.

...

A man with adult children recently complained to me that he is still parenting. What a blessing! To not have exhausted this holy purpose by some trick of the calendar and an arbitrary end to the mission of being a father. There is, I said to him, no end to it —and, I continued, I am grateful for it, that I still have this purpose, this usefulness to offer.

The problem is that so many of us do not see that we are, even if not appreciated or listened to or attended to, still useful. Perhaps more so than ever. And I recognize myself in this failure to understand that my utility cannot be gauged by whether others acknowledge it. The acknowledging is nice. But it is a pretty bow that disracts me from the work that goes unnoticed and that, when I consider it, gives me what I really need: self awareness, self worth, self confidence, a capacity to hold myself. And especially when I cannot have my mentors and especially my dear wise and departed friend to hold me.

...

The things that used to matter... And now, I look beyond my garden to the tall trees in the distance —poplars? aspens?— and I am tearful at the shimmering of their leaves in the breeze. I need to be slow and melancholic to see life alive around me. I need to be a witness, and then to share, to teach about how to receive these gifts, this magic of life.

...

The hardest work of husbandry is the work of faith. Trusting myself when I feel most useless and inconsequential.

Today I turned, as I so often do, to my rituals. My physical and breath and sound and meditation and writing practices. The things that help me to break open and receive. The things that help the tears to fall as the leaves shimmer in the distance.

TODAY'S INSPIRATIONS

🌀I didn’t really know what I was capable of… and it was time I started learning. (Stephen Jenkinson, my notes on his “undeclared apprenticeship”)

🌀You deserve nothing. (Kendra Cunov)

🌀 Our prayer is that you see yourself as "elite" . . . of the light; that you’re "entitled as a ruler" to be measured up to; that you’re a "guide" for life with confidence, and give the "advantage" of great vision to everyone now. (Guru Singh & Guruperkarma Kaur, emphasis mine)

🌀Thank you. I appreciate you. (My beloved, she who must be seen and held and known, ravished, by my powerful and unwavering presence)

TODAY'S SUGGESTED SHORT PRACTICE

Today's practice, to breathe and feel the confusion of life —the tension, pressure, friction, and stress that makes everything possible— and then allowing this confusion to become more beautiful than you can possibly imagine:
Please read through first, then ...

• Set two alarms, for times of the day when you have a five-10 minutes to become conscious of who and how you are in this day.
• When the alarm sounds, wherever and however you are, take a few moments and:
  • Ask yourself: Is your life orderly, structured, purposeful? Or is it sometimes crumbling, a shambles, looking for direction? And either way, What do you DO with this awareness?
  • Then, follow the short practice here:
    • Stand, or sit, or lay yourself down, and bring your attention to your body.
    • Feel the ground beneath you. Allow the earth to hold you with gravity. Feel how dense and heavy you are. Feel also how lightly you sit or stand or lay on the earth. Feel yourself between the pull of earth's gravity and the subtle but persistent pull of the sun, the stars.
    • Slow your breathing so that it is long and deep into your belly. Slow the inhale to a count of four or six. Slow your exhale to a count of six or eight or ten. Repeat three to five cycles of breathing, going a little slower with each cycle. Continuing to notice yourself held by the earth, raised by the sun and stars and sky above. Feel the subtle tension and pressure and friction and stress that allows you to be and rest and move in this body.
• When you’re done, take another minute or two, breathing gently, slowly filling and emptying your belly. Here, as you breathe into your fullness, ask yourself, Do I feel right? Am I in alignment with the man or woman I am? Do I even have an inkling what that might feel like? Do I even have an inkling of what it feels like to be out of alignment with myself?
• Notice if your body-mind feels somehow changed. And whether you notice a change or not, be content with yourself, exactly as you are in this moment.
• Continue with your day until the next alarm sounds, and repeat.