Strawberries and Plums

At the funeral on Wednesday the priest shared this Buddhist parable:

A man walking across a field encounters a tiger. The man runs and the tiger chases him. Coming to a cliff, the man caught hold of a wild vine and swung himself over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Terrified, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger had come, waiting to eat him. Then two mice, one white and one black, little by little began to gnaw away at the vine. Realizing his situation the man looks around and sees nearby a luscious strawberry. Grasping the vine in one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other, and popped it in his mouth. How sweet it tasted!

We are that man. Lots of tigers. Lots of mice. And if we look around, lots of ripe strawberries.

This reminder to taste the fruit of life brought to mind the poem, “This is Just to Say” by
William Carlos Williams:

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.

Evening Gatha

In Zen Buddhism a gatha is a song or hymn that is chanted as part of one’s practice. This evening gatha was a gift from a friend. It hangs in my bathroom.

Evening Gatha:

Let me respectfully remind you~
Life and death are of supreme importance~
Time swiftly passes by, and opportunity is lost~
Each of us should strive to awaken…..
.....awaken
Take heed. Do not squander your life.

The Swan

On Saturday I’ll read this poem at the memorial service for our friend Will. I did not know the poem before his wife asked me to read it. And now I am in love with this image of ungainly, ungraceful swan that lumbers and is awkward. That’s not what we picture when we think, “Swan.” But the one in the water, the one we see gliding, regal. And now Rilke says that is like us and I think, “Yeah, this is why I like poets—they can put words to this feeling and this fear of my own bumbling, rope tied, tripping over to-do lists life.



"This clumsy living that moves lumbering
as if in ropes through what is not done,
reminds us of the awkward way the swan walks.
And to die, which is the letting go
of the ground we stand on
and cling to every day,
is like the swan,
when he nervously lets himself down into the water,
which receives him gaily
and which flows joyfully under
and after him, wave after wave, while the swan,
unmoving and marvelously calm,
is pleased to be carried, each moment more fully grown,
more like a king, further and further on."



The Swan, by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Robert Bly

The Glorious Debris

“Every one of us is called upon, probably a few times, to start a new life. A frightening diagnosis, a marriage, a move, loss of a job…

And onward full tilt we go, pitched and wrecked and absurdly resolute, driven in spite of everything to make good on a new shore. To be hopeful, to embrace one possibility after another—-that surely is the basic instinct…..Crying out: High tide!

Time to move out into the glorious debris. Time to take this life for what it is.”



--Barbara Kingsolver, from High Tide in Tucson

Sexual Healing

I do believe that sex is life giving. It is for me. Maybe I overestimate the power of sex or my own sexual power but there are moments when I think, “Every time he has an orgasm I am saving his life.” Ok, maybe that’s a kind of a ramped up, X-rated Florence Nightingale but there is something to it. Libido is life force. An orgasm is “le petit mort”—a little death. Sex is a little life and a little death.

Learning to Fall

So much falling in this “love in the time of cancer” story: Falling in love, falling apart, falling down in grief, falling down in laughter.

Last week my friend Stephen recommended a book called “Learning to Fall” by Philip Simmons. I got the book from the library and within minutes I was scribbling in the book. That’s always my clue that it’s a book I need to own so I ordered a copy for me and copies for friends too.

Simmons was 35 years old when he was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) in 1993. That disease causes falls so the metaphor became clear at once. But his most eloquent writing is about all the other kinds of falls we take when we face life head on.

This is one of those books that you’ll want to copy out pages to give to friends or pass out at work so just go buy a copy now.

Here is just a taste from page 8 speaking about life problems:

“And here is where we go wrong, for at its deepest level life is not a problem but a mystery…Problems are to be solved, true mysteries are not. At one time or another each of us confronts an experience so powerful, bewildering, joyous, or terrifying that all our efforts to see it as a “problem” are futile. …What does mystery ask of us? Only that we be in its presence, that we fully, consciously, hand ourselves over."

I like this idea of seeing challenges not as problems to be solved but as mysteries to  wonder at. It doesn’t make it easier, and Simmons is clear on that too.

I think this is like the difference between happiness and joy. Happiness depends on certain positive conditions but joy is ever possible even in the hardest, saddest most challenging times.

Celebrate This Day!

Years ago I was a student at Marywood College in Scranton, Pennsylvania. It was then a small women’s school, today it’s a University. I went there as a ‘returning” student. I was “older” in my twenties and I devoured the curriculum. Yes, one of those sit in the front and ask for more assignment types who frustrated the other students but who delighted the faculty. I was hungry to learn. That never went away.

A memorable teacher and class: the nun, Sister Rosemarie, who taught “Marriage and Family” addressed our class frequently on one topic: enjoy this day. She told us that any time you had occasion to celebrate you should. She said—attention on the younger women I think—that there will be so many occasions for tears in your life that any occasion that is good deserves celebration.

That has stayed with me.

As we head into this week with worry over doctor's appointments and sadness for the death of a friend's baby and struggle with so many losses buried in gains of this relationship. I hear Sister Rosemarie saying, “Celebrate!”