Category: Sunday Letters

For some reason, I see the old guy down the road as someone Norman Rockwell would have painted, sitting there with his dog, talking to him.

You’re probably not old enough to remember finding a new issue of The Saturday Evening Post in your mailbox every week with a Rockwell illustration on its cover. But if you are, I bet you’re smiling right now as you think about it. Maybe you even have a Rockwell favorite or two. I do. But that’s a different story.

This story is how every now and then I’m lucky enough to see things through Norman Rockwell’s eyes. He saw things true. He didn’t try to pretty things up. He stayed away from the worst sides of things. For the most part, he just saw plain, ordinary people doing ordinary things. Some were touching, some funny, some heroic. And you could relate with them. And because Rockwell saw people through eyes of humor and love, you liked the part of you that related with his characters, you accepted your humanity with a little more lightness and grace.

What a gift, hey? To be able to draw people so truly that looking at them made you like yourself more?

What if we could do that for ourselves? What if we could look at the reflection in our bathroom mirrors with eyes of welcome and happiness and, oh, such deep appreciation—despite the flaws and faults and traces of sin. Appreciation means you see all that and it doesn’t matter or detract from the truth of you in any way. It means you’re seen and forgiven. I think that’s how Rockwell looked at people. His love and appreciation was so tender and deep that he found even the flaws endearing.

I suppose it’s asking a lot to be able to see all of that in the mirror. I don’t think that I could try it without laughing. But maybe laughter is exactly what I’d need. Maybe it would let me see that character in the mirror as somebody I knew, and forgave, and appreciated, and loved. I’ll try it. Only me and the face in the mirror will know.

Maybe I’ll be lucky enough to imagine that Norman Rockwell is standing behind me, smiling at me with his artist’s eyes. Maybe you could imagine that, too. Might be fun to try, hey? Maybe you’ll catch him winking at you. You never know.

Wishing you a week of brim-full appreciation, starting with that face in the mirror.

Warmly,
Susan

My Dear Friend,

I can’t, of course, put the whole experience into today’s one bottle. The temperature and moisture of the air alone would take up probably a third of it and there’s still the lake and pines and sky. The best I can do is tuck in a couple glimpses. So that’s what I do. It takes more than the hour I thought I’d spend when the whole thing began. But every minute of it is rich, given that it’s a gift of love.

I leave it in the hands of the universe to get it to its final destination, to those who need exactly what it brings. My only job is to make sure I send something, that I choose what to enclose in the love note each day. To be honest, I’m not even sure I’m really the one who does the choosing. It feels more like listening for a hunch sometimes and going with that.

I like hunches. I like their spontaneity. They’re like a small bell ringing, right over there in the clearing, or like a kid tugging at your shirt tail. It’s easy to disregard them, to brush them off. It took me years to learn that hunches almost always take me to the exactly right place. Now I turn where they direct with a kind of eager anticipation to see how things will turn out.

Sometimes you have to make a leap of faith in order to follow a hunch. It can feel scary to do something you’ve never done before, to take a turn down an unfamiliar road. But if you have no faith, you miss out on a lot of life’s fun and adventure, to say the least.

Besides, the same agency that sends out the hunches sends out alarms if the risk is something you need to weigh with a measure of care. Over time you learn what level of risk you’re willing and confident enough to take. It’s a kind of skill you develop with experience.

When I’m out taking photos, for instance, I get a hunch that if I stood over that way about ten feet, the angle would be fabulous. But then an alarm goes off and cautions me to note the slippery mud on the rocks and to test their stability as I make my way along.

From a certain point of view, all of life is a risk/reward proposition. You take the risk of drawing your first breath, letting out your first scream, and you’re on your way. Everything from there on is a reward, even if it takes you a few lifetimes to see how that can be. It’s all a gift. It’s all benevolent in the long run. Even the parts that hurt.

Next Saturday, good Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise, I’ll complete my 100 day challenge. It’s been interesting to see how it’s evolved. It’s an established habit for me now, finding something to send out, in love, every day. I think I’m just getting started.

And next Sunday, you’ll have another letter from me, sharing whatever observations my hunches lead me to find.

I’m so glad that you’re along for the journey.

Warmly,
Susan

I posted a photo earlier that I took of a sky filled with dark storm-tossed clouds and light. I wrote about how the sky tries to wake us from our dreams with such drama, to remind us that we’re in a real world, that we’re alive.

Isn’t it something that we have to be reminded! We live in a world of stories and dreams that flow past so fast we can hardly keep up with them, let alone remember that they’re stories and dreams. That’s why nature creates drama from time to time. A thunderclap here, a bolt of lightning there, a color-drenched sunrise, a little bird’s song. Anything, just to get our attention, just to give us a chance to remember that we are alive and real and right here.

Sometimes, when I wake suddenly from my own daydreams and imaginings, I feel a little disoriented. But I have a wonderful little practice that immediately centers me. Want to know what it is? I call it “The Three Questions.” And it’s just that. I ask myself : Where am I? Who am I? What was I doing?

Say those over and over to yourself a few times. (Where am I? Who am I? What was I doing?) Then tuck them in your pocket for when you need ‘em. They’re especially good for multi-taskers and dreamers. And if you’re both, God bless you. Anyway, memorize them. Try them out for fun. You’ll get hooked. They work that well.

The reason I wanted to share them is that being present is such a powerful, exquisite experience. I collect ways to remind myself to be awake, aware, and appreciative. It’s kind of a hobby, one of the tools of the Joy Warrior’s trade. I’m taking the liberty of assuming that you, too, find value in being aware of being in the present. It’s where everything is happening, after all. For each of us, it’s the very center of the matterium as we experience it. It’s the place and time that we think of as real, the only place and time when we can choose and think and act.

“Where am I?” I ask as I snap awake from a dream. “Oh. Here. Writing my Sunday Letter to my dear friends.” That answers who I am and what I was doing, too, without my even having to ask. I remember that I wanted to tell you that I’m only two weeks away from the finish-line in my 100-day challenge to add daily to these pages. When I started it, I thought of it as rolling up a love letter, sealing it in a bottle, and sending it into the world to land wherever it was meant to land. I still think of it that way, as the act of creating a love letter to send out into the world. Every day it teaches me something new. I hope you’ll drop by from time to time to take a peek.

Try those “Three Questions,” hey? They’re kind of fun. You’ll see.

Wishing you a most glorious week.

Warmly,
Susan

This is the week that the clocks leaped ahead and the first flowers of the season burst on the scene. Spring has come at last, and I am downright giddy over its arrival. A small crocus opens in my garden. Along the roadside, the first coltsfoot beams up at me. A robin arrives to sit in that tree, right there.

I don’t know why—for a lot of reasons, I suppose—but I am deeply moved by all of this. Maybe it’s the contrast with the ice that was so recently here. Maybe its the emergence of color and birdsong after a long night of darkness and silence. Whatever the cause, I am moved by these small graces, these restorers of hope.

It’s not that life doesn’t place stars in the darkest nights. We’re never without at least pinpoints of light. And I clung to them all throughout the winter, believe me, and gave thanks that they were there. But now! So suddenly, it is spring, and I am overwhelmed with the world’s overnight transformation,

Maybe it’s a sign, I say to myself, smiling at how I reach for the wisdom of superstition, Maybe it’s like waking to find yourself inside a giant, luminous rainbow. How would that be for a sign?

I stand in the warm sun listening. The birds are returning, and from the creek such a chorus of frogs! Small graces. Priceless ones.

I lifted layers of oak leaves from the flower gardens and pulled out the tiny weeds. The soil smelled moist and rich, and the thick, green sprouts reaching up from it stood eager and proud. I think it wouldn’t hurt to put out some hummingbird nectar this week. You never know. They might fly in and need a good drink.

Sometimes I stop in my tracks and look around in wonder. “I get to be here,” I whisper to the spring air. “I get to be here.”

And so do you! I wish you Happy Spring, my friend.

May small graces bless your week and fill your heart with gentle joy.

Warmly,

Susan

I was visiting with a circle of close friends and Patricia said something about feeling contentment. “Oh!” I exclaimed, “That’s my very favorite positive emotion. If I had to pick just one, contentment would be it.”

Patricia said how she much preferred it to happiness or joy, which, to her, sounded airy and frivolous somehow, superficial. She shimmied her upraised hands in the air and we laughed.

I told her I understood exactly what she meant. It’s hard to take joy or happiness seriously; they’re so lightly portrayed. But contentment, yeah, you can settle right in with that. Let it ooze up all around you, all peaceful and warm.

I thought about our conversation later and about the book Authentic Happiness that was popularized when the study of positive psychology came into vogue. Its purpose was to differentiate the happiness and joy that we associate with giddiness and delight from the soul-deep happiness that dwells in the core of our being.

Why I hold contentment as my favorite emotion is that it’s filled with such a profound acceptance, even welcoming, of everything that floats through our awareness. Get there, and you’ll know the taste of true joy. The deeper you go, the more beautiful it becomes.

I thought about this as I ventured out into the cold, windy morning to feed the birds and get a couple photos. I must admit it wasn’t something I was happy about doing. I’ve been smitten with a serious case of spring fever and I am more than ready to see winter go. But the poor birds needed breakfast, given the two inches of fresh snow, and I needed photos.

I tell the tale of my venture into the cold and the lessons that it brought me in the piece I wrote after I came in and got warm. It’s called The Snow Today. It has pictures, too.

It’s actually the “Day 72” piece for my 100-Day Challenge to add to my blog every day. Remember? I’ll reach the three-quarter mark this week and I think I’m starting to hit my stride. I like how it’s evolving. I like what I’m learning as I go along, and I’m having a blast. This week, one of my faithful readers said the countdown was making her a bit sad. She didn’t want to see it end. I told her nobody said I had to quit at 100. I’m just starting to have fun!

With all the turmoil and suffering in this old world, it’s wise to have an hour or so set aside every day to do something that will hold your attention, let you develop a skill, put you in the flow state for a bit. It helps keep you sane. It places you into a different parcel of reality for a while. It’s kind of like a fine, mental vacation. At least that’s how my daily challenge feels to me, for what it’s worth. I thought you might enjoy an update.

Whatever works. That’s my motto. Sometimes this works; sometimes that. Sometimes you get to do some inventing. The key, though, is to keep moving toward that state of contentment, that utterly full and completely easy acceptance of everything, just as it is. Because that’s just a beautiful place to be.

Joy smiles beaming your way.

Warmly,
Susan

I saw a poster this week that pictured a guy standing in a field with the outline of a city in the distance. “The world you grew up in,” it said, “doesn’t exist any more.”

“You got that right!” I said right out loud as I read those words. Heck, the worlds we lived in three weeks ago have vanished, never mind the worlds of our childhood. And you know what? As much as we might want them to, they’re never coming back.

You know what else? We get to take all the good parts of our former worlds with us, and all the things we learned from the parts that weren’t so good. They’re all right here, inside us, and nothing and no one can take them away. Every experience we’ve ever had is an integral part of who we are now.

I heard a story once where a little girl asked her grandmother, “Grandma, is everybody like this?”
“Like what?” asked the grandmother.
“Bigger on the inside than on the outside,” the little girl said.

That’s a pretty cool thing for a little kid to realize. Inside, we’re as big as all our memories and imaginings put together. All the people who have touched our lives are there, all the places we’ve been, all the things we’ve done, all the dreams we’ve dreamed.

And it took every one of those things to bring us exactly to where we are now, cruising down time’s river, seeing the sights, planning what we’ll make and do when we get to the next shore.

We can draw on all that we are to choose how we want to be as we go into the river’s next bend. We can see the parts that didn’t serve us, or others, well and drop them in the waters. We can let the parts that brought us joy and love and satisfaction serve as our compass when the river offers us choices between this way or that.

We can remind ourselves to be calm when the waters get rough, knowing we’ve come through storms before. We know how to keep faith when darkness falls, knowing that light will follow.

There’s no reason to fear that we might be lost, because we’re always right here, breathing in the ever-changing now as it slides by.

Yesterdays go where yesterdays go, and we keep them inside us forever.

So be at peace. Be here. And let yourself appreciate the ride

Warmly,
Susan

When I was a kid, one of the favorite games my pals and I played was “Hide and Go Seek.” The person who was the seeker in the game had to face a tree, close her eyes, cover he face with her hands and loudly, slowly count down from ten to one. While she was counting, the rest of the kids would run and hide, “Three . . . Two . . . One . . .” the seeker would shout, “Ready or not, here I come!” Then she would open her eyes and go hunting for her pals and not stop until she found the last one.

I thought of that when I named my goal to complete a 100-day challenge of adding something to my blog here for 100 days. I wasn’t at all sure I could stick with it. 100 days sounded like an awfully long time. Anything could happen between now and the 100^th day, after all.

It was while I was wrestling with my doubts that I remembered the advice of one of my most productive friends. The way to get things done, she told me, is to start. As soon as you make the decision that it’s something you want to accomplish, start it. Then just don’t quit until you’re done. Even if you don’t know what you’re doing. Just do something every single day.

She was right of course. That really is the secret. You have to break through the inertia, and you do that by taking the first step, however tentative it might be. So I took my decision to make daily additions to these pages, pinned it to the my mental bulletin board and said to it in the firmest voice I could muster, “Ready or not, here I come!”

Well, I’m pleased to tell you that this week I passed the half-way mark to my goal. Today I made my 51st entry. I can’t say it hasn’t been a struggle on some days. But it’s like that game of hide and seek. You can’t let Mary Lou stay hidden just because she’s been really sneaky and hard to find. You have to keep looking until you find her. Those are the rules. So I persevered. And now I find that I get curious as each day unfolds to see what will end up on my blog’s pages next. It turns out I’ve put some good stuff there, if I do say so myself.

Then, two weeks ago, I got a whim to start a drawing. I make these things I call scribble drawings. They’re doodles of sorts, often decorated with patterns I discovered when I ran across zen doodles a couple of years ago. So I made my scribble on this 8 1/2” x 11” sheet of paper and started to fill it it. It turned out that it was a much more complex project than I thought it was going to be when I began it. It took me the whole two weeks to complete. But I did it. See, right after starting, the most important thing you have to do to reach your goal is to keep on keeping on.

So if you have a notion that you want to accomplish something, now you know what to do. Get started, whether you’re ready or not, and then just don’t give up ‘til you’re done.

Wishing you a week of creative productivity!

Warmly,
Susan

I was browsing through my quotations files this week in search of some inspiration. In this part of the country, winter can seem to be hanging around way too long by the time we get to the middle of February. On the whole, we’re done with it. We suffer from miserable cases of cabin fever, where all we want is to go out and play without having to deal with snow and slush and ice and cold.

That ground hog came along and said we still had six more weeks of this to slog through. And even if Valentine’s Day brings some of us hugs and flowers and trinkets of joy, it’s still winter when it’s done.

Besides, these days the whole world seems to be upside down and getting messier and more confusing every day.

The bottom line is many of us are downright grumpy. And we plan to stay that way until the crocuses pop up waving their glorious petals. Or at least until we hear a robin sing.

So I was going through these quotations and I happened on a folder labeled “Compassion Quotes.” Its title grabbed me immediately and I opened it to find some lines by Sharon Salzberg, one of my favorite teachers of loving-kindness practices.

She was offering a meditation for caregivers who were feeling frustration over having their ministrations met by unexpected anger, accusations or tears. As I read through it, I felt my own frustration easing, then melting away. I thought I’d share the last few phrases of the meditation with you, in case you need a bit of soothing, too. Here’s what Sharon said:

• May I offer love, knowing that I cannot control the course of life, suffering, or death.
• May I remain in peace, and let go of expectations.
• May I see my limits compassionately, just as I view the suffering of others.

I especially found comfort in that last line, although all three hold true wisdom.

Sometimes you just have to view yourself as you’d view a tired, miserable little child and give yourself a hug. Accept that you can’t have all you want or be all you want, and that those constraints make us sad and mad. And that’s okay. It’s part of the human package. We all want to see our personal visions of perfection unfold in our lives. We all want to live free of suffering in a world that’s full of comfort, and peace, and happiness for all.

But that’s not how things work here. February happens. And sometimes it seems to stretch on and on and on, until we think we can’t bear it for another single day. That’s when we need to turn to ourselves in compassion, to recognize that our patience and endurance have their limits and that we have arrived at them. We’re in pain. This is anguish. And it’s something that is common to us all. As Tara Brach says, “This is suffering. Everybody suffers. May I be kind.”

Indeed. May we be kind. First of all, may we be kind to ourselves, wrapping ourselves in the same healing tenderness we would offer a wounded child. Then may we offer our kindnesses to our fellow beings, for they suffer, too.

In the end, Springtime will come. The darkest of nights is met by sunrise. And the crocuses will burst up through the soil and unfurl their glad petals.

Hold on.

Warmly,
Susan