@marydtp518

#jellyfish #letgo #gowiththeflow

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Fourteen years ago this month, I wrote my very first Life Lines column. It focused on my then-4-year-old son, Noah, and a summer nature program we had attended together and how in his own little way Noah was forcing me out of my comfort zone and teaching me new things about myself and the world around me.

This is what I wrote back then:

“Fish net in hand, Noah waded into the water without hesitation and caught a frog within seconds. After gently placing it in the appointed green bucket, he bounded off toward a small waterfall, slipping and sliding the whole way, wet up to his armpits—although the water was only ankle deep.

“I, on the other hand, was doing my best impersonation of a nature lover. I tentatively stepped from one wobbly stone to another, hoping to make it though the morning without putting my foot down into the murky unknown. Then Noah called out to me, in awe of some minnows that had just flashed by his leg. ‘Let’s turn over a rock,’ he said. I held my breath and stepped off my dry perch. As I bent down to help Noah move a rock aside, a bright green frog darted out and Noah squealed with delight. Before I knew it, we were both racing down the stream, water splashing around us and mud sticking to our legs.

“It’s amazing to me how my kids always seem to give me the mental shove I need when I’ve been standing in the same place for too long.”

I dug that column out of a storage bin under my bed when it came time to write this month’s column because I knew in some odd way the two were tied together. Noah, now 18, is still pushing me out of my comfort zone in all the best ways. Not that my girls don’t do the same, but Noah, my first-born, has a special knack for making me face new unknowns before I think I’m ready.

When I wrote that first column, the unknowns were wrapped up in new-mom worries about whether I was doing everything I should be doing to keep him healthy and hitting all the appropriate milestones along the way. Organic snacks and limited screen time, daily crafts and constant reading. And I remember moms of older children telling me that, despite how it felt at the time, I was in the easy years of parenthood. The teenage years would be much harder, they warned. And now, with the first of three children on the brink of young adulthood, I know what they mean.

As Noah headed off to Le Moyne College in Syracuse, I fought back tears, not because I don’t want him to be out on his own and away from home but because for the first time in my life as a parent I am no longer the one at the controls. (I realize I’m never really the one at the controls, but that’s a column for another day.)

Talk about taking a step off my safe little island into the murky unknown. Even as I sit here writing this column, I can feel the tears starting to well up as I begin to run through a mental list of all the possible “What ifs…” Noah might encounter without me around to grab onto him—literally and figuratively—and pull him back to safety.

And yet I know there are so many rocks for him to turn over, so many wonderful surprises waiting for him just out of sight, only this time I won’t get to splash through the stream alongside him. I’ll be watching from afar, wistful and a little nervous but proud and excited, knowing that every small step we took together throughout his childhood has led to the giant leap he takes into young adulthood today.

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“Creation is not a property, which we can rule over at will; or, even less, is the property of only a few: Creation is a gift, it is a wonderful gift that God has given us, so that we care for it and we use it for the benefit of all, always with great respect and gratitude.“The second incorrect attitude is the temptation to limit ourselves to creatures, as if they can provide the answer to all our expectations. With the gift of knowledge, the Holy Spirit helps us not to give in to all of this…but I would like to return to the first wrong path…Custodians Creation, not Masters of Creation it is a gift that the Lord has given us, to us! We are Custodians of Creation. But when we exploit Creation we destroy the sign of God’s love for us, in destroying Creation we are saying to God: ‘I don’t like it!. This is not good!’ ‘So what do you like?’ ‘I like myself!’ – Here, this is sin! Do you see? Custody of Creation is custody of God’s gift to us and it is also a way of saying thank you to God. I am the master of Creation but to carry it forward I will never destroy your gift. And this should be our attitude towards Creation. Safeguard Creation. Because if we destroy Creation, Creation will destroy us! Never forget this!

“Once I was in the countryside and I heard a saying from a simple person who loved flowers and he nurtured these flowers and he said we must nurture these beautiful things that God has given us. Creation is for us to use well, not exploit to nurture…because do you know father, God always forgives – Yes it is true God always forgives…We men, women, we forgive sometimes – Yes sometimes we forgive, not always …But father Creation never forgives! And if you don’t custody Creation it will never forgive you.” — Pope Francis, May 21, 2014

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The first moon shot over there on the left was taken as I was leaving a speaking event for the Wilmington, Delaware, chapter of Legatus. It was hanging over the country club as I headed back to the hotel. Great evening with the Legatus folks — Rosary, Mass, great dinner. My topic was “Broken, Beautiful, and Beloved: Learning to See Ourselves Through God’s Eyes,” one of my favorite speaking topics.

Last night, the moon pictured below jumped out at me as Dennis and I were driving home from a date night at The Merry Monk pub in Albany. Two-for-one mussels night at the Monk, so it was hard to pass up for Dennis. As we rounded the bend on the highway, I gasped at the giant moon peaking out between the flyovers. Dennis pulled the car into the parking lot of the Solid Rock Church, just about a half-mile from our house, so I could get a better view of my beloved moon. And this was the shot. I love the cross glowing alongside the moon. You can click on the photo to see it slightly larger.

As St. Francis would say: “Be praised, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars; in the heavens You have made them bright, precious and beautiful…”

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“We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of Infinity. Life is Eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in Eternity.”

Beautiful, right? Everywhere I looked online this quote was credited to Paulo Coelho’s book The Alchemist. So on the power of that one quote, I ordered the book immediately and took it on vacation with me. And I read. And read. And read, waiting for the moment when that beautiful quote would be put into context. Every time our intrepid protagonist met someone new, I thought: This is it.

When I finished the last line of the epilogue without ever finding this most wonderful quote, I figured I’d finally lost every last brain cell in my head. I mean, how could I buy a book for a singular quote, read the whole thing and not even notice it passing by? Wow, good thing I don’t have to go through college at this age. So I skimmed through the entire book a second time. I was obsessed. Nothing.

Upon returning from vacation, I started doing more Google searches. Over and over, Paulo Coehlo’s name came up. The Alchemist was credited everywhere for this line of poetry meets philosophy meets prose. But the journalist in me would not rest. I needed to know the real deal. This quote was not in that book, so where did it come from?

Finally, deep in the bowels of my Google search, I found a thread where someone equally obsessed put the question out there: “Where is this quote in this book? I can’t find it.” Aha! So I’m not crazy after all. And little by little, after wasting too much work time on something totally unnecessary, I found one little reference to Deepak Chopra. Bingo. Switching gears, I began my search anew and found something that said this quote was really from Chopra’s book The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. So I requested the book from my library and waited.

I’m holding it in my hands now. Turned to the very last page and there it was, not  the exact quote in the exact form I found online and first fell in love with, but there nonetheless. It belongs to Deepak Chopra, inspired by Buddha. Amazing how the internet can lead us so far astray and transfer “ownership” of those words from one famous author to another.

Here’s the full quote from Chopra’s book:

“We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of Infinity. Life is Eternal. But the expressions of life are ephemeral, momentary, transient. Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism once said,

‘This existence of ours is as transient as autumn clouds. To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance. A lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky, rushing by like a torrent down a steep mountain.’

We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment, but it is transient. It is a little parenthesis in eternity. If we share with caring, lightheartedness, and love, we will create abundance and joy for each other. And then this moment will have been worthwhile.” — Deepak Chopra, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success

There. Now I can finally rest. But in the end it all comes back to this one beautiful thought: We are travelers on a cosmic journey and this moment is just a little parenthesis in eternity.

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Maybe the breeze at dawn was just trying to tell me a secret. Here you go. Oh, and the photo is one of my favorite Jersey Shore sunrises from this August. Big red sun. 

The breeze at dawn

has secrets to tell you.

Don’t go back to sleep.

You must ask

for what you really want.

Don’t go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth

across the doorsill

where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.

Don’t go back to sleep.  — Rumi

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When we open ourselves up to the movement of the Spirit, we really do become more receptive to things going on around us, energy moving through the universe. I know, it sounds too weird, but it’s true. Trust me. I experienced it this weekend and even now, days later.

Before I left for retreat, I was laying the groundwork, asking people to send me prayer requests, asking for prayers for myself. At one point, when I was talking with a priest I know about some issues I needed to grapple with on retreat, he made a comment about being like a butterfly, and I responded: “I’m so not a butterfly; I’m more of a dragonfly.” And that was that, a comment made in jest without much thought.

Then I went downstairs to find some things to bring for my personal sacred space. I was digging through a box, looking for a religious icon, but instead I found a notecard from a dear — and very holy — woman who died more than a year ago. It had a beautiful watercolor dragonfly painted on the front of it. I had kept it not only because of the artwork but because I wanted to keep a reminder of Maureen close by, but I had forgotten about it after our basement flooded and I packed it up in a box. So I knew the dragonfly (and Maureen) had to come with me on retreat.

When I got to the retreat center, I put my bags in my room and decided to spend some time sitting quietly and getting in the right mindset before dinner. I sat down in an Adirondack chair and within 30 seconds a giant dragonfly landed in the grass right in front of me. A few minutes later, another one zoomed by. As I went to my car later that evening to get something, a dragonfly buzzed right in front of me in the parking lot. And I smiled every time.

Finally, when I was sitting in my favorite prayer spot on Saturday afternoon, having a really deep heart-to-heart silent conversation with God, I reached a point of peace, an interior place where I posed a question, accepted that I had to let it go, and then asked God to please take care of it. And within five seconds a dragonfly landed on the dock right next to my chair. It was the only one I saw that day, but it showed up at the exact right time. Dragonflies, my new favorite thing. Their ability to reflect the light around them, move in all directions, and fly with a lightness that almost makes them seem like they are being carried along by the wind seems perfectly suited to where I am right now. (That’s a backyard dragonfly in the photo below, by the way, not a retreat dragonfly.)

Dragonflies weren’t the only odd convergence for me. Despite a four-page list of prayer requests I received from friends on Facebook, certain people kept jumping to the front of my mind, and not the obvious people. One or two people I have not seen or spoken to in years (decades) were powerfully present, so much so that they felt physically present. And that to me was a wonderful reminder of how we can be connected to another human being when we are willing to open ourselves up to a different kind of relationship, a meeting that doesn’t occur in the traditional way but perhaps in an even more powerful and lasting way. And those people who showed up on my retreat are lingering in my prayers. I’m carrying them with me.

The cosmic connections didn’t end when I returned home. Just yesterday, I opened my mail and found a note from my retreat director along with a prayer card. I assumed that, based on our time of spiritual direction, he figured the words would lift me up and maybe give me something to chew on as I face my spiritual issues. The front of the card was nice enough, but then I turned it over and read the prayer and said, “That sounds like me!” And I read it again and I knew it was mine. So I went down to my computer files just to be sure I wasn’t imagining it or looking for a weird connection where there was none. Nope. It was mine for sure. I had written the prayer for a client last year. It doesn’t have my name on it, so no one but me would ever know it was mine. And yet somehow Walt chose that particular prayer card to send to me. Kind of powerful when your own words are used to show you the way out of your struggle.

Sit in silence, open yourself up to receive, and you’ll be amazed by what comes your way.

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It’s really too much to put in a single blog post. I don’t have it in me to write that, and, trust me, you won’t have it in you to read it. So, instead, every day this week I’ll try to share one short reflection on my retreat with a photo or two. But before I do that today, let me just urge you to try a silent retreat. Some day. It is a powerful, powerful experience, especially if you can do it in a place of such incredible beauty, as I was blessed to do this weekend.

The photo above was my favorite “resting” spot during retreat. To get to it, I had to hike up a small hill, past the chapel, and then down a hill to a little dock that was isolated from everything else. I would sit in this chair and stare at the changing colors of the sky, the swirling clouds moving so close overhead they felt like they were within reach, the shimmering water that reflected the light so dramatically that sometimes it looked like it was raining when it wasn’t and sometimes it looked like a swarm of small birds was hovering just over the surface when they weren’t. But more than anything else, what was I found here was such incredible peace, for hours at a time, so peaceful sometimes I found it difficult to leave when I knew I had to head to the dining hall for a meal.

One of the things that really struck me on this weekend experience of nature at its finest was how different it was from my recent vacation to the equally beautiful Jersey Shore. There I woke every morning and ran down to the beach to watch the sunrise, and I took photo after photo of the most spectacular scenes. Every day was different, everyday left me in awe and sometimes in tears. And I wanted to share it and post it and record it.

But here the sunrise was so subtle that you’d easily miss it if you weren’t paying very close attention. Unlike at the ocean, the sun itself was hidden from view, so there was no Aha! moment. It was more of a slow burn. Like I didn’t realize it was coming, almost thought maybe it was too cloudy for a visible sunrise, and then suddenly I’d notice the clouds getting a pinkish hue to them. Slowly, slowly the pink deepened and spread and it was obvious that behind that mountain a sunrise was occurring, but all I could see was the reflection of it. And for the briefest moment I thought, “I wish I’d brought my camera,” and then I remembered what this weekend was all about. I wasn’t there to capture the sunrise. I was there to let the sunrise capture me.

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This will be the second time I attend the Merton in the Mountains silent contemplative retreat at Pyramid Life Center in Paradox, N.Y. It’s a beautiful place. The photo above is from when I was there five years ago. I will enter the silence tonight and be back to reality on Sunday afternoon. Not nearly long enough to really, truly get acclimated to the quiet, but I’m hoping even this little taste of silence will be enough to help me get a little more centered, reacquainted with regular deep prayer, and less inclined to distraction when I get home. That’s a tall order for a weekend retreat, but based on past experience, it is possible.

On top of that, this peace-focused retreat will coincide with Pope Francis’ call for a day of prayer and fasting for peace in Syria, the Middle East, and throughout the world on Saturday, so I’m sure we will be joining our silent prayers with the prayers of millions around the world. No more war.

I’ll be back next week to talk about this retreat experience. Until then, just know that I will be praying for all of my NSS readers and Facebook friends. If you could say a quick prayer for me at some point this weekend, I would really appreciate it. Peace and blessings!

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Once you put a thought out into the universe, however, you never know what might happen. Sometimes, if you’re really lucky and paying close attention, the thing you put out there as a wish comes back to you as a reality. Happened when I said I wanted to go to Italy a few years ago, and now it happened in the form of a kayak. So be careful what you put out into the universe people. Make it something good or fun.

Just a few days ago, out of the clear blue sky, I received a Facebook message from my neighbor: “Do you guys want a free kayak? It’s an 8-footer and broadbased so it’s good for kids. One person – very light. If you want it, come get it. Red!”

It took me about five seconds to respond, “Yes!” Even though I don’t have a roof rack or a life vest or even the slightest idea how to get into the thing without tipping myself over and going head first into the lake, thereby losing my new blue glasses. But minor details have never stopped me from plowing ahead willy nilly with a crazy scheme.

I thought kayak thoughts and a kayak showed up. You don’t say “no” to that. And now, when I look out my kitchen window as I cook dinner, the sight of the bright red kayak and lemon yellow paddle makes me smile because it means I’m bound to find an adventure somewhere around the bend, and life is so much more fun when there’s an adventure in the offing and when we push out of our comfort zone, even if, in this case, that means no more than pushing off the sandy shore of an upstate lake.

So local friends, if you’ve got a kayak or want to kayak or have ever even considered for half a second that you might some day want to try to kayak, send me a message. We will paddle our way toward something spectacular. And I’ll be sure to wear my back-up glasses just in case.

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