Fearing for your children's future

Tonight in the UU Sangha I attend, we started reading a new book for our dharma study, a book by Thich Nhat Hanh about Fear. So during the discussion period, people began discussing their fears. And I heard several of them express fear for their children or grandchildren.

Debbie, for example, is afraid for her grandchildren because her daughter Mattie, and her son-in-law (Mattie's husband), are such martinets, and always yell at their sons (Debbie's grandchildren). Debbie said she's not afraid of dying for her own sake, but she's afraid of the consequences for her grandsons if one day suddenly she's no longer there for them. (To be clear, there's no imminent threat. Debbie's in her early seventies, and she has various ailments that are consistent with her age, including periodic bouts of long COVID and atrial fibrillation. She also has celiac disease, that seems to be slowly morphing into a more generalized autoimmune sensitivity. But she's not on a timeline, with "X years to live"!)

But then another member is worried about his children, too. (I'm pretty sure I haven't given him a name yet.) His kids—a son and a daughter—are legal adults but just barely. They were both adopted out of a dreadful situation, spent their whole childhood being oppositional, and regularly make terrible decisions. So their lives aren't going well, to nobody's surprise. And he's deeply troubled by this.

I think there was someone else too, but I forget the details.

Of course this is common. At some level, everyone who has kids wants those kids to have a wonderful life, free of the spectres that so routinely blight the lives of Other People. That's why I was so upset at the idea that Wife was going to live with Son 1: I wanted him to be able to have adventures in his life (if he wanted them, of course) and I figured there would be no adventures if he were looking after her. As a secondary concern, I feared that living with Wife would ruin his relationship with Wife, although I figured that he was honorable enough he would never throw her out on the street. (Turns out that I called that secondary concern exactly.) 

Outtakes from a Day of Mindfulness

The UU Sangha that I belong to held a Day of Mindfulness today. Days of Mindfulness are a practice in the Plum Village tradition, which is the tradition founded by Thich Nhat Hanh. Basically we got together for about six hours to practice sitting meditation and walking meditation. We also ate lunch together in silence, and we spent some time talking about what we would like to see from our Sangha in the future. Most of the attendees were regular Sangha members, but the event was open to guests as well, and we had two or four.

My point here is not to tell about the Day of Mindfulness per se, nor yet to talk about the aspirations that people expressed for the future. What I want to capture are a couple of the "outtakes"—moments that had nothing to do with anything else, but that I want to remember. And I guess the best way to remember something is to write it down.

The guest who stopped me was a woman
and not a man; but how can I pass up
the chance to use an engraving by
Gustave Doré?

One moment was sweetly serious. I think. A number of us arrived early to help set up. (In fact, because of technical difficulties with the Zoom link, we started late anyway.) Someone asked me to help set out tables in the other room. And as I was on my way, a woman put her hand on my arm to stop me. I don't know if I'll need to give her a name in the future, but maybe I can call her Laura. 

Laura was a guest, not a regular Sangha member, and a friend of Debbie. I didn't recognize her. But she said she recognized me! (Cue "the curse of the Tanatus.") Where had she seen me? She said she thought there was some kind of UU service I had attended many years ago. That's highly unlikely, but I might have been there for a special occasion. I attended Janet's Celebration of Life last year, for example. I volunteered to do dishes one time long ago when the Sangha was responsible for hosting some UU Congregation event. It might have been one of those occasions.

Why did Laura remember me? Or what was it about me that she recognized? That was the sweet part. She said I had a kind face—in fact, a very kind face. (Or "remarkably kind," or something equally extreme.) She said, in fact, that if we were both sitting on a park bench as strangers, my face is kind enough that she would end up spilling all her deep, dark secrets to me. Oh my heavens, really? Part of my mind wondered how many deep, dark secrets an elderly Unitarian lady could really have? But then I remembered that D regularly dressed in a style that was conservative, prim, and matronly. So maybe appearances aren't everything.

Hmm. If appearances aren't everything, then maybe Laura was misled in attributing all that kindness to me on the basis of my face. Oh well. The thought was nice while it lasted. 

The other story is shorter and funnier. During a break, Laura was talking to one of our regular Sangha members, an elderly woman whom I'll call Lynn. (I'm not sure how old Lynn is, but she must be at least a decade older than I am, and I'm in my mid-sixties.) They started talking about cats (because Laura was wearing cute cat socks) and Laura explained that her cat had recently died. She made a joke out of saying that she was still trying to get all the sympathy she could. Lynn started offering sympathy, when Laura went on to clarify that her cat had reached the age of seventeen years old before dying, a very respectable age among cats and one at which death is no surprise.

Right away Lynn shot back, "Seventeen years? I've never had a partner last that long!"

Umm, gosh. Is it just me, or does that count as TMI for other people too?

Oh well. We were all among friends, right?  

      

How'm I doing?

Every blog goes through cycles. 

There are periods when you find yourself bursting with thoughts. Everything reminds you of something else, and you have to talk about all of it.

And then there are times when you just have nothing to say.

So maybe it's time for me to quote Ed Koch and ask, "How'm I doing?" Not because I need to hear an answer from you—if anybody is out there reading this—but just to put a marker in the ground to let you know how ... in fact ... I am doing. 

Let me look at the blog for a minute. In the last three months—January, February, and March—I have posted five times. The last two times that I show five posts (or fewer) in three months were both in 2018:

• August, 1. September, 3. October, 0
• January, 0. February, 1. March, 4. 

So it has happened before, and I've pulled out of it. Doubtless I'll pull out again, however implausible that might look in the moment.

How AM I doing?

I've been trying to exercise at the beginning of every day. What with other things showing up in my calendar, "every day" seems to mean four or five times a week. After I exercise, I'm wiped out for hours. I take a nap. I sit idly in front of the computer. I can scarcely formulate thoughts. But hey, I exercised.

I'm trying to eat less. Maybe if I exercise and also eat less, I'll lose some weight. It has worked in years past—I know, because I have records. But not now, or at any rate not yet. Maybe I haven't hit the right combination yet. Or maybe there are calories in alcohol, and I should ... you know ... cut down on those calories as well. I do that successfully for a couple days at a time, or even longer. But if I take credit for too much success, then tonight will be an epic failure. 

I'm trying to get more sleep. Not tonight, of course, because I've already spent way too long trying to figure out a trivial formatting issue on this blog. But ... you know ... on other nights.

I have kept up publishing in my professional blog on a weekly basis. Readership goes up and down. One frivolous post a few weeks ago got over 500 pageviews. A piece that I thought might be more useful last week got 30. I have no idea what makes the difference.

I have made zero progress on the book I told you I was writing ... what was that? Five years ago? Six? A long time, in any event.

You know I follow the blog and writings of John Michael Greer. Months ago, some people talked about putting on a convention of Greer's readers this summer, and started a website where individuals could express interest. I expressed interest a month ago and have been trying to contact the principals ever since. Nothing, of course.

I talk to Marie once a week, over Teams. I talk to Debbie once a week, over Zoom. I visit the UU Sangha once a week, in person. That's most of my social interaction right there.

I had lunch today with a guy I used to work with. He was recently laid off when his company closed this office, and he's retirement age. So being out of work doesn't seem to worry him a lot. But he still has his resume out, he is in touch with a bunch of people we both used to work with, and he is trying to line up musical gigs for his band (where he plays bass). He's also actively involved as a trainer for a local organization that helps families who have to deal with mental illness, because his 20-year-old daughter is suffering. Wow, I never knew there WAS such an organization back when I still lived with Wife! It's great to know that my friend is so involved with the community, and with other people. It's great to know that he isn't stuck at home, isolated and socially withdrawn.

I wonder what that must be like?

I try to do a Tarot reading every morning to predict what's going to happen in the day. The idea is that by making predictions and then comparing them with reality, maybe I can get better at it. Well ... sometimes they match and sometimes they don't. I don't know if I'm getting any better. Usually I can predict my day pretty well, but that's because I never do anything unexpected.

The closest thing I have to a daily record of what's going on with me is what I write the next morning when I'm trying to evaluate the cards from the day before. Even then I sometimes miss a few days because I never get around to the reading. I'm pretty sure there are no gems buried in that data that you'd have any interest in hearing about.

What else is there to say? Not a lot, I think. I've just summarized the last several months for you, and it took you only a couple of minutes to read. Efficient, isn't it?

Maybe later I'll think of something else to say.

            

You know not what you say

People really don't think about what they say, do they?

(Wow, this is going to take a lot of background before I can even begin to explain what someone said tonight that hit me so wrong. I guess I better get started.)

The Setting 

You know that I attend a Buddhist Sangha once a week, practicing in the Plum Village Tradition of Thích Nhất Hạnh (or "Thầy" for short) and affiliated with a local Unitarian Church. (I have regularly called it "the UU Sangha" and I wrote about it recently here.) Typically we practice sitting meditation, a little walking meditation, and then we read a text or watch a video and discuss it for dharma study. 

For the past several months, we have been reading Thay's book Fragrant Palm Leaves: Journals 1962–1966. It's a good book in a number of ways, among them that it shows what Thay was like when he was a young monk, before he had acquired the aura of the World-Famous Great Teacher that surrounded him for much of his life. Tonight's reading finished the next-to-last chapter, and included the following story by Thay.

Last year I went to the British Museum. I was fascinated by the preserved remains of a human body buried five thousand years ago.... Every detail of the man's body had been preserved. I could see strands of hair, his ankles, each intact finger and toe. He had been buried in that position five thousand years ago in the desert. The heat of the sands had dried and preserved his body.... A little girl, about eight years old, stood beside me and asked in a worried voice, "Will that happen to me?"

I trembled and looked at this tender flower of humanity, this vulnerable child without any means to defend herself, and I said, "No, this will never happen to you." Having comforted her, I walked with her into a different room. I lied about something that Chandaka, the Buddha's charioteer, never lied about to Siddhartha.* [If you don't know the story of Siddhartha and his charioteer, you can find it here.] 

The Remark

After we finished our reading, we discussed it. One of our newer members—he joined just a few months ago—is a retired UU minister. I guess for now I'll call him The Reverend. He had already delivered himself of a short speech when we were all checking in, about the bombing of Iran on March 1. He explained that he opposed bombing other countries and that he considered his role now to be one of public opposition and activism.** When we came to discuss the reading, the Reverend immediately referred back to the story of Thay comforting the little girl in the British Museum. Then he said, "I want to take this as the text that I live by, from here going forward." He talked about how Thay spent so much time around small children: helping them, supporting them, comforting them, and encouraging them to see the beauty and the love in the world. And he concluded by quoting the very end of this chapter (a few pages later), where Thay writes:

I want to tell Steve not to worry about a thing. Tomorrow when peace returns to Vietnam, he will be able to visit Phuong Boi. Phuong Boi taught us what this love is, and Phuong Boi will share it with Steve in the language of wildflowers and grasses.... Flowers don't know how to hate. We will return to the circle of life as flowers, grasses, birds, or clouds to bring people the message of eternal love. Like the village children who, even in this time of war, sing:

"We will love others forever and ever, hand holding hand. We will love others forever."***

As the discussion progressed, many people said they found the Reverend's words inspiring. 

On not disappearing against the wallpaper

I don't know how to tag this post properly. The reference in the title is to a post from seventeen years ago (yes, really!) where I wrote, in part:

I always start new jobs as The Quiet Guy ... you know, the one who tries his best to disappear against the wallpaper? Despite this, it always happens -- at every job I have ever held -- that one day I am introduced to somebody who says, "Oh, so you're Hosea. I've heard so much about you."

This post isn't about a new job. It isn't about new circumstances, or being around strangers, or anything like that. It's just a rueful reflection on my relationship with leadership.

Sometime in the middle of 2021, right around the time my salary and benefits ended from my closed work, the elected Chair disappeared from our local section of the professional society I belong to. I don't think she "disappeared" in any sense requiring the police, but at any rate she stopped showing up to meetings or answering emails. And I was asked to step in: "Hosea, you're a nice guy and you come to all our meetings anyway ... can you take over as Chair?"

Be careful whom you help. I'm still the Chair of that section today, over four years later, notwithstanding a society rule that you can only be Chair for two consecutive one-year terms before you become ineligible. But nobody else wanted the job, and our Regional Director said it's better to overshoot the term limits than to have no Chair. Anyway I have been trying—this year in particular—to get someone else to take on the job for next year.

Fine, that's nice, but so what?

Another death

There's been another death this year, a woman I've known for a dozen years though not deeply. But for most of those years, I saw her regularly, once a week. I'll call her Janet, which wasn't her name in real life.

Janet and Debbie co-founded the UU Sangha that I attend regularly. During all the years up through when we suspended meeting because of COVID-19 in 2020, Janet facilitated every meeting, every week, except for the handful of times that she traveled to visit family. By the time we resumed meeting—first remotely, and then in a hybrid manner—her treatments for ovarian cancer had started taking a toll. So she was rarely there, and no longer led. Still, she was in everyone's hearts. This year Debbie traveled here (to Beautiful City, where I live) several times to visit with Janet and her family; and finally, five weeks ago, Janet died.

This is just some random UU congregation on the Internet, and not the one
Janet belonged to. But her Celebration of Life was easily this crowded.

The Sangha did an adapted Buddhist ceremony for the dead at our next meeting, and we are doing an abbreviated ceremony by Zoom once a week for the seven weeks thereafter. (Tonight is number five.) Last weekend the UU Church that hosts us (of which Janet was also an active member) held a Celebration of Life for her. In fact, Janet herself designed the Celebration of Life ceremony. There was a little Buddhist input, when the Sangha came up to the front to chant "The Three Refuges." And there was a walk through her life, with lots of photos. Several people stood up to talk about what she had meant in their lives. And there was lots of food. It was a lovely service.

Already some of the other members of the Sangha have started to think about their own deaths. (None of us is exactly young.) One woman has said she wants her service to look just like Janet's, and so she has started writing her life because nobody here knows anything about it.

Where does this leave me?

People are funny

As I left my UU Sangha this evening, I waved to one of the women there and said, "See you next week."

She replied "Inshallah." (One look at her will tell you without doubt that her ancestors must have been English and Scandinavian.)

Then she caught up with me and explained. She has an Iranian neighbor, you see, and so she and her neighbor got in the habit of saying "Inshallah" to each other years ago. Today it's something they find totally natural.

Only she realizes that nowadays, with all the political turmoil in the Middle East, some people get very sensitive about using any conventional phrases from Arabic. So now she feels like she has to watch herself, to avoid saying something that will bother people.

I suggested that she could always just translate it to English as "God willing."

But no, she balked at that. I think it's because she's a Unitarian, and so feels squeamish talking about God.

Even though she clearly has no problem saying "Inshallah," … which is an abbreviation of "in shāʾ Allāh" … which literally means "if God wills" or "God willing."

So why is she willing to talk to God in Arabic, but not in English? (Note that she doesn't speak Arabic or Farsi, or not more than her neighbor taught her.) I think it is for the same reason that profanity never sounds as bad in a foreign language. I have known Germans who are perfectly willing to exclaim "Shit!" but who are far too inhibited to yell "Scheiße!" just as loud. And I've known Americans who feel the same way but in reverse. It's probably the same thing going on here.

People are funny.  

Marie receives the Five Mindfulness Trainings

A day I never thought I'd see.

I've mentioned that sometimes—fitfully and irregularly—Marie will visit by Zoom the UU Sangha that I attend regularly here in town. She tells me she enjoys it, but she'll skip if she thinks she hasn't been living up to Buddhist principles lately. (Wait, isn't that like saying you won't go to church as long as you are still sinning? But I'm sure most churches would tell you that's exactly the time you should show up!)

The last few weeks we've had a guest joining us while he's temporarily in town, who is a Certified Dharma Teacher in the Plum Village tradition of Thích Nhất Hạnh. This means that—among other things—he has the authority to transmit the Five Mindfulness Trainings to aspirants who want to receive them formally. (This ritual isn't quite the one he used, but close enough.) "Receiving the Five Mindfulness Trainings" sounds simple enough. But it commits you to recite or repeat them once a month, and to live by them as far as you can. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago he announced that he would be willing to transmit the Trainings while he was in town, if anyone was interested. Last week we watched a video about living with them, and tonight was scheduled for the ceremony of transmission.

I didn't really expect Marie to take up the offer, but she was interested. So we talked about it a little: what's the difference between formally receiving the Trainings and just knowing about them? I pointed out that when you receive the Trainings formally, you accept an obligation to repeat them once a month—preferably in company with a sangha—and to try to live by them, although it is understood that your compliance may not be 100%. How much difference does the commitment make? I reminded her of the conversation between Elrond and Gimli, during the Council of Elrond, as they assemble the group of Nine Walkers who will accompany the Ring south. Elrond says that everyone is going freely, and no one has any oath laid upon him except only Frodo (not to give up the Ring to the Enemy). Right away, Gimli objects:

‘Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens,’ said Gimli.

‘Maybe,’ said Elrond, ‘but let him not vow to walk in the dark, who has not seen the nightfall.’

‘Yet sworn word may strengthen quaking heart,’ said Gimli.

‘Or break it,’ said Elrond. 'Look not too far ahead.'

Debbie is in town

Debbie has been in my state since the 12th, visiting family and friends. She has been here in Beautiful City since a week later, arriving the evening of the 19th. 

Whenever Debbie and I see each other, I always notify Marie ahead of time. But this time I somehow forgot to say anything until we texted each other the morning of the 20th about getting together later in the day. Then I suddenly thought, "Oh shit!" and sent Marie a quick email with all the plans that I knew about up till then.

Hey love,

Just a note that I forgot to mention before. Debbie's visiting [this state] for a couple weeks. She was in [another city] for a while, and last night drove all the way [here], where she's staying in the house of some of her friends from [the UU church that hosts our Sangha]. I have not seen her yet. 

I got a text from her this morning, and she has come down with a cold (ugh) but is testing negative for COVID. So we might have dinner or something, if we can find a place with tables outside. I forget how long she is in town, but this is not her last stop. (Sometime next week she'll go on retreat with a Buddhist Fellowship that she's connected to, down in Big City.) But I think she's here for a few days.

As I say, I didn't think about it when you and I were talking, because it was driven clean out of my head by our exciting discussion of [your current writing project]. (Actually I mean that seriously!) But when I got her text a few minutes ago, I remembered that I should drop you a note before seeing her. (And as noted, if we can find a suitable set of tables that probably means dinner-time.)

So far, so good. And all of it was true, as of the time I sent it. Marie replied briefly.

Oh, thank you for keeping me posted, love!!!

Very considerate of you.  I hope you do get the opportunity!

Cheer up! We're all going to die!

Tonight at the UU Sangha I attend, we started a discussion about fear, and politics, and how to talk about them both. That is to say, our Dharma study was a reading of the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings, and after we read them one member of the group started to discuss the Ninth one:

Aware that words can create happiness or suffering, we are committed to learning to speak truthfully, lovingly and constructively. We will use only words that inspire joy, confidence and hope as well as promote reconciliation and peace in ourselves and among other people. We will speak and listen in a way that can help ourselves and others to transform suffering and see the way out of difficult situations. We are determined not to say untruthful things for the sake of personal interest or to impress people, nor to utter words that might cause division or hatred. We will protect the happiness and harmony of our Sangha by refraining from speaking about the faults of other persons in their absence and always ask ourselves whether our perceptions are correct. We will speak only with the intention to understand and help transform the situation. We will not spread rumours nor criticise or condemn things of which we are not sure. We will do our best to speak out about situations of injustice, even when doing so may make difficulties for us or threaten our safety.

I'll call this woman Lisa, which is certainly not her real name. Anyway, Lisa said she knows she has trouble with this precept, because whenever she talks about politics (for example) her words never "inspire joy, confidence [or] hope." In fact, her hairdresser recently told her, "You always bring division, antagonism, and negativity with you whenever you come here." [The quote might not be exact.] Then she went on to say that she knows exactly why she talks this way—namely, that she is afraid. Lisa believes the worst about the political currents or possibilities in our country and world today, and she is afraid of all of them. (If you hadn't guessed, she is for example afraid of climate change and Donald Trump.) And this fear causes her to speak in very negative ways.

Then another woman—whom I'll call Liza (also not her real name, but her real name is very close to Lisa's)—said basically the same thing about herself, too. A third member of the group—a man, this time—got us off the theme of politics (thanks be to God!) but expressed a lot of anxiety about how his kids are turning out. His kids are 18 and 21, and only in the last couple of weeks have I started to hear any of the story. Admittedly it sounds grim, but I won't go into it now.

As I listened to all this, I was struggling with whether to say anything of my own. What I wanted to do was to teach, to instruct, to lecture. (You know, the kind of thing I do here so often and so effortlessly.) 

Maybe we can all be outsiders together

There is probably no point to this post. Probably if I were sober I'd think of something better to write about. (Although I was sober all day up till now, and didn't write a word except on Twitter. So maybe not.) I guess you can read it and let me know.

Earlier this week, at the meeting of the UU Sangha I attend, our Dharma study was to read an essay by Ruth King about her experience of being Buddhist While Black. Then we discussed our reactions to the piece.

Becalmed, 2

Tuesday evening, the UU Sangha that I join was reading from Thich Nhat Hanh's posthumous Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet for our dharma study. (Yes, we were reading the same book six months ago. Good catch. We usually read pretty slowly.) And as we read it, I began to feel like the book was echoing themes from my earlier post of this name, but treating them differently. I began to feel like I should re-read the passage and think about it or meditate on it, because it might help me.

Of course I didn't actually do that. After Sangha was over I spent the rest of the evening far less productively. But my scribbled note to myself is still sitting on my desk, scowling at me. Maybe I should give it a try.

Day 6: More hiking and a GREAT conversation in a pub

The plan for today was to hike from Tyndrum to the Bridge of Orchy, and then take a taxi back to spend a second night in Tyndrum (since all the accommodations in Bridge of Orchy were already full).

The hike wasn't difficult, not the way Day 2 or Day 4 had been. Mostly the route followed an old military road from a couple of centuries before, so it was rocky and closed to cars but pretty much straightforward. But my feet still hurt from the day before, and after an hour I told Debbie I was giving up and going back to the hotel. (Of course the walk back took another hour.) The first thing I did when I got back was to take a nap. After that, I know I spent part of my day writing up notes on the trip so far. I forget if I ever bothered to get lunch.

Debbie called me early in the afternoon to say that she had already reached the Bridge of Orchy, and didn't really feel like sitting around for a few hours until the taxi was scheduled to pick her up. So she hiked on another two miles from the Bridge of Orchy as far as the Inveroran Hotel. Then she called the taxi company to let them know where she was, and to ask for a ride back to Tyndrum whenever it would be convenient.

Milestone Sangha?

We just wrapped up our weekly Sangha Zoom meeting less than an hour ago. (This is the UU Sangha that I attended for years before COVID-19, and which later started reconvening over Zoom.) Marie has joined us for the last couple of sessions. I forget whether I mentioned it, but way back when she and I were first getting back together I talked to her about meditation, and at the time she found a Buddhist sangha in her area that she attended for a while. But then after a while she stopped going—maybe it was because of COVID-19, or maybe it was something else. And she told me she missed it. On the other hand, until very recently she has had a commitment on Tuesday nights, so she hasn't joined our UU Sangha Zoom meetings before now.

There were a couple of times back when the Sangha used to meet in person that Marie happened to be in town visiting me on a night that Sangha met, and so she came along with me. But that was quite a few years ago. Most of the Sangha membership has rolled over since then. (Wow, does that make me one of the old-timers already? Scary thought.)

Anyway, tonight was a milestone in my mind, though I don't know if anyone else thought of it that way or even noticed. Tonight Marie was in the Zoom call, and so was Debbie. So far as I can remember, this is the first time they have ever seen each other or communicated at all in any way except indirectly through me.

And so I wonder: Were they watching each other? Were they sizing each other up? What were they thinking?

Debbie is discontent

A couple days ago I had a phone call with Debbie. She is discontent with her situation at home, and we talked about that. But over dinner that evening I made notes to try to remember what we had discussed, so I could write it up here, and I realized the conversation connects to a number of other topics I could talk about independently. So this single post here may end up spawning up to four others. Let's see how much stamina I have.

As background, remember that Debbie is currently living in a house that she bought for her daughter Mattie, along with Mattie's husband and their two sons (Debbie's grandsons). The idea is that now, while the boys are little, she can help with them as a live-in grandmother. (And wow, let me second the idea that parenthood is too much work for two people, so additional help with young children is always a blessing!) And in the future, so runs the plan, when Debbie is getting old and frail, Mattie and husband can offer her their help in return. It's clear and logical.

Only now she is having second thoughts.

Death of a Buddha

You may have seen in the news already that Thích Nhất Hạnh died today. This afternoon I got an email addressed to the UU Sangha that I used to attend back before COVID-19, spreading the word. Then in the early evening I logged in for my regular weekly Zoom call with Debbie. She was watching the tail end of a memorial service for him at a Zen retreat center in another state, and I said it would be fine for her to share her screen so we could watch it together.

We talked about him for a long time. Thầy — that's an affectionate nickname for Thich Nhat Hanh and means "Teacher" — is or was the founder and spiritual leader of the tradition Debbie follows. When I mentioned back in 2013 that she was ordained into a lay order, that meant that she had formally received the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings which ordained her into Thầy's Order of Interbeing. 

She talked about times she had been privileged to hear Thay speak in person. I added that I had seen and heard him in person exactly once, because he was there on the occasion of Debbie's ordination, formally officiating. Then afterwards he gave a dharma talk and took questions for a long time from the group as a whole. Some of the questions came from pretty far out in left field, but Thay answered them all: carefully, respectfully, simply, and compassionately. He was remarkably skillful. Debbie said at one point, "I truly believe he was the Buddha for our day."    

Later she said that all week she had been contemplating one of Thay's poems, "No coming, No going," and that it had helped her come to peace with his death. She added that even though he is physically dead as of today, she can feel his presence around her through his teachings. So in one way she was sad, of course, but in another way not. She was in any event profoundly moved.

After a long while we began to talk about the rest of her week. It has been a tough one. She works as an occupational health nurse, for a clinic system where close to 10% of the staff are sick at home with COVID-19, even as cases among the public in her area are spiking. She has to connect with every staff member who is out sick, and check on their progress, so the clinics can figure out how to reassign staff to maintain their coverage. And she told me, not only was the workload heavy but the emotional weight of it was just as heavy, because so many of her colleagues are sick and suffering, or have family members who are sick and suffering. One was a grandmother, who contracted the disease from her grandson; the grandmother was weathering it well enough, all things considered, but the grandson was in the hospital and intubated. Debbie asked if the grandmother would accept prayer for her grandson, and the grandmother grasped at the offer gratefully. By the time that phone call finished, Debbie added, both she and the grandmother were weeping openly.

She added one other thing, which did not surprise me a bit. One by one, her coworkers have been talking to the president of the clinic system, telling him how grateful they are for Debbie's unstinting help and deep compassion. She told me this only by the way, only to say how grateful she was that she had been able to help them so much. She explicitly rejected the idea that it reflected anything special on her. But — as I say — I wasn't a bit surprised. Debbie's compassion really is almost boundless. It's one of the things I love about her. She would rebuke me sharply for putting it this way, but she is a bit of a saint.

So she talked. I listened, reflected back to her what I heard her saying, and tried to console where I could. I remarked that hard weeks like this are even harder when you can't meet anyone in person, to offer a hug or even hold a hand. (The thought came to me because there were so many times during our call that I just wanted to hold her.) She agreed, and pretty clearly understood what I was saying. When we wrapped up the call, she looked straight into the camera and said:

"You know I love you."

I nodded and replied:

"I love you too. I will always love you."

And I will. Of course I knew it and she knew it anyway. But sometimes it's nice to say the words out loud.

            

A visit from Debbie, part 2

So the third night that she was in town, Debbie joined us at Sangha and the whole normal dharma study was suspended. (We still did our normal meditation, though.) Debbie was there partly as just one more meditator but also unavoidably as the Founder-and-visiting-VIP; and the woman who normally leads us had gotten her to agree just to talk to us about what she had been doing spiritually and professionally since she left town in mid-2013. And then people had questions, but it meant that she talked a lot about her meditation practice, its ups and downs, and what she was getting out of it. And it was really interesting. She’s been practicing a lot longer and a lot more diligently than I have, so there’s a lot that she can talk about — some of it was about how in the long run meditation really did make her mind more stable and less subject to hair-trigger emotions, and some of it was about how she thought it was going to solve all her problems and make life smooth and easy only to find out that ... no, it really didn’t do that. In fact when there were ugly things lurking inside her somewhere, meditation stripped away all the stories and excuses they usually hid behind to leave them ever more visible. (Oops.) 

I wrote some of this to Marie afterwards, who replied,

I suspect if I'd been to your sangha, I would have been fighting feelings of inferiority as I listened... which would, mind you, be its own spiritual exercise. But it would also have been interesting....  

Wait, meditating won't solve all my life problems?  Or eliminate everything about myself I dislike???  WAAH!  Okay, I'm never doing it again!  Heck, I'll stop eating healthily too, because veggies don't solve all my health problems.  All or nothing!

My reply to her was a little long:

“Fighting feelings of inferiority”? If I was reading tone of voice correctly during Sangha, I think you wouldn’t have been the only one. It seemed to me that a couple of the other members were reacting much the same way, and that the feeling was mellowed only by their knowing Debbie for years as an old friend. But still ... when your old friend wins the Nobel Peace Prize and you’re still puttering around in the garden and shooing kids off your lawn, it’s hard not to notice the difference. 

That’s a deliberate exaggeration, of course. But envy can be a funny thing.

At the same time, though, Debbie strongly resists being put up on a pedestal. I remember early on when we were together saying something fond and doting about how exemplary she was, and she almost snapped at me. In any event she shut me down very brusquely. She made it clear that she did not want to hear such talk, and that she felt it was unhealthy in a relationship. You may remember in your first email to me back around New Year’s Day 2016, you told me to stop idealizing you, and I replied that yes, I knew I had a bit of a problem with that but was trying to work on it. This is why. 

And if you listen to Debbie long enough, she can unravel a story that makes everything she has done and learned look like a simple, natural reaction to problems she was having, as if anyone in the same pickle would have done the same thing. She volunteered to lead meditation groups in urban prisons because students in her M. Div. program were required to put in a certain number of hours in pastoral service of some kind. She was in that program in the first place because she had learned over the years she wasn’t very skillful at the core nursing tasks of giving shots or changing bedpans, but she had a knack for talking to grieving families. She was in nursing at all because she felt like her earlier career (which was where I met her) wasn’t personally fulfilling at a values level, and at that point her husband was making so much money she didn’t have to work to pay the bills. Hell, she got into that earlier career through a friend of her mother’s, and it beat her previous job which was as a salesgirl at the jewelry counter at some department store. She started meditating because her mind and emotions used to jump around too much; she started following Thich Nhat Hanh because he so directly addressed the kinds of suffering she was trying to get out of (related not only to whatever was going on at the time but to her childhood growing up around alcohol and abuse); she founded our sangha here — and then more recently the sangha at her current UU church where she lives now — for selfish reasons, because she needed other people to practice with. And so on. On and on. It all makes sense, it all hangs together as a story, and when she tells it no single step seems particularly remarkable. And yet here we are. 

Maybe there are a couple of ways to confront these kinds of feelings. One is the meditative approach, which is first to notice them; and then to remind yourself that fame and blame are both pretty random and fundamentally meaningless, and that you already have more than enough conditions to be happy. Another approach is to critique the feelings intellectually. Recognize that everyone spends their time on something, and that after you spend 10,000 hours on something you start to get good at it. Debbie has spent her time on this spiritual work. The rest of us spend it wherever we spend it. To make that observation a little less abstract, consider that I started writing poetry again when I was writing poems to send to D. She would send me in turn poems that she had read somewhere and particularly liked. When I got together with Debbie, I was thrilled — thrilled! — that over the course of several months she sent me three haikus that she had actually composed herself. Now remind me, sweetness — how many poems have you written and sent me?

Well, then. 

Of course none of this is a competition, not really. But ... well, then. 

Also I recognize that it is always a lot harder to see achievements in oneself than in others. And while I am deeply fond of Debbie and credit her with a lot, I find it easy to believe that she doesn’t see herself as clearly as we see her from the outside because she knows the less attractive parts all too well. Same as any of us. When I said (a couple of paragraphs above) that she could tell a story that made all these things she has done seem natural and obvious, I assume that the words “tell a story” chimed inside your head, and that you thereby understood that her discomfort with excessive praise might have an element of story-itis about it. Not saying that for sure, but it’s possible. And truly it is harder to see achievements in yourself. To me your literary achievements are obvious; but I have to strain hard to realize that not everyone can do the things I do at work, or raise children, or calm hysterical women (a skill which clearly I no longer need, and boy am I grateful!). But I wouldn’t be surprised if you have a story to tell that pretends your literary ability is nothing much. Just for the record that story is wrong, but you might believe it anyway. It’s hard to see achievements in oneself.   

The next morning, Debbie left town after breakfast to head back to her mother's house, from which -- a few days later -- she returned home. But it was a very pleasant visit, and the two of us seem to be settling into a confortable kind of post-romance friendship. I'm glad.