Category: Sunday Letters

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

The temperatures here this week have been in the teens and single digits, keeping me mainly inside. My only certain excursions are my trip to retrieve the mail from the box at the far end of my driveway—an adventure in itself—and a few trips to the big, flat rocks atop the retaining wall where I put the sunflower seeds for the birds.

The birds have become a source of fascination. Not only do they entertain me and teach me, but they touch me with their seeming vulnerability. It amazes me that they can endure such cold, and survive when every source of water is frozen and their main sources of food are buried beneath what, to them, must seem to be mountains of snow.

They kindle my sense of wonder and awe at the way the world works, at how things are woven together in complex and beautiful ways meant to benefit every living creature. Even us. Even when we have a hard time seeing how everything we encounter sustains and grows us. Even when life seems anything but beautiful.

I don’t think the birds digging in the snow for hidden seeds think how amazing it is that their feet don’t freeze, or that mere feathers are enough to keep their little bodies warm. They take such things for granted. We take for granted the things that keep us going, too. Our hearts beat, our lungs breathe, our wounds heal without our giving them a thought or thinking that we ought to be in charge. We laugh and love without asking how it can be that we do such things. And yet, aren’t they miraculous?

In some ways, I’ve noticed, the birds seem smarter than us. I don’t think they grumble about the cold, or about the work involved in digging with tiny feet through deep snow to find a little morsel of food. They don’t waste time in worry or complaining or fear. They just go about their business and get things done. They spread the word to others when they discover a decent eatery and share their table with birds of every shape and color and size. They don’t pick fights. They learn who the bullies are and simply keep their distance. And most of the time, they just seem so downright happy to be birds being birds. It’s kind of wonderful really.

If the weather hadn’t driven me to spend my days inside, peering out my window for signs of life, I would have missed all these little lessons and observations. It’s just one more example of the way that life weaves things together in such beneficial ways. As my neighbor often says as he points his finger skyward, “It kind of makes you think Someone’s watching out for us, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” I tell him, smiling. “It certainly does.”

Wishing you a week of beautiful moments.

Warmly,
Susan