Today marks the 119th anniversary of my maternal grandmother's birth. I just finished my first guided meditation with the poet David Keplinger. What an amazing gift. Israel is preparing to invade Gaza, and there is so much pain and suffering in this world, but also so much beauty and love. The poem that Keplinger read and discussed was Milton’s Sonnet 19 “When I consider how my light is spent…” and David talked about a friend of his in her 90s who said to him of the troubles in the world something like, “At my age, what is one to do but know?” What can I do but know, and in some cases, just be. Just wait, as Milton suggests. I am self-propelled to act, always. Busy and productive. But the year is coming to a darker, colder time, when it is appropriate to be still. I will learn to pause my body, to allow my thoughts, to have a different relationship to my feelings. I am hobbled by an underlying shame and guilt that does not serve me. I suppose it could easily stem from a childhood where one parent encouraged choices that the other would have considered “wrong” or which society, and myself by extension, would have judged as shameful. November is coming, and with it Nanowrimo. Is there anything that warrants 50,000 words of writing in terms of my time and energy? A novel? A memoir? The sky is lightening and there is one bright star or planet (is it Jupiter? I must check - see? the push to act, always) high in the sky, and very big and bright, even as the silhouette of the trees that remain surfaces against the gray horizon. I believe I shall rise before 6 every morning and meditate. It will change my life. Let my efforts be in sitting, in being and experiencing a deeper understanding and compassion for myself and the world, rather than in doing. Always doing.
