Spacious Solidarity Blog: Day 59

I wake up and immediately realise that what I was planning to teach this morning isn’t right for this group at this point in the retreat. What wants to be shared now are the themes around non-violence I was contemplating a few days ago.

I want to speak of grace. How sometimes it comes like a softness in the belly as I move through the kitchen making breakfast. How it’s not about being graceful. It’s more about what it feels like to be full of grace.

To walk on the earth as someone who belongs to it. Not bracing against gravity or reality.

I want to share with them this beautiful poem from Raymond Carver called Late Fragment:

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

I want to talk to them about the work of undoing habits of separation, coercion, dominance, objectification and utilitarianism in the ways in which we relate to ourselves and others.

I want to bring in my own vulnerability and encourage them to open to and lovingly meet all the different parts of themselves, wanted, unwanted and unknown, that are showing up in the space of practice.

I want to move my body, stretching, shaking and breathing deeply into the stuck parts, open parts, and numb parts before sitting down to look deep inside.

I do a bit of work and then it’s time for the session. I say everything I’ve wanted to say but forget to record it. Oh well. Later one of my friends who is supporting me on the retreat says it will come out even better next time.

We do some mindful movement and then I lead them in a loving-kindness practice.

Afterwards one of the retreatants asks how we know when it’s better to turn towards and be with our experience or when it might be more helpful to distract ourselves, particularly when our experience feels hard to be with.

I say I can’t give her an answer, that it will be different for each of us. What I can say is that over time she’ll practice her way into the answer and I encourage her to be patient with herself in the process.

After the session I have some lunch, leftover Spanish tortilla with salad and toast. I keep noticing the urge to want to get on my ipad and scroll through Facebook. Rather than directly resisting the urge, I gently turn towards the sensations in my mouth.

The crispiness of the lettuce and juiciness of the tomatoes, the sweetness of onions, mixed with the smokiness of potatoes and eggs. I notice the complexity and richness of the textures and flavours in my mouth. For a moment I’ve forgotten all about my ipad.

Then it comes back, the subtle urge to distract. I gently return to my mouth.

I continue in this vein until I’ve finished my lunch. It was yummy and I was there to enjoy the whole thing in all its glory from beginning to end.

I get back to work. I’ve been thinking about putting on another week-long retreat and I’m ready to plan it and get it up on my website. I get completely absorbed.

All of a sudden something jolts me to attention. I check my phone. It’s 1:50pm. My friend who I thought I was speaking to at 2pm has texted me a couple of times saying she’s ready to talk and then saying she’s going to go for a walk soon if she doesn’t hear back from me.

I call her immediately and apologise profusely. We were supposed to speak at 1:30pm but for some reason I had 2pm in my mind.

We have a quick hello and then it’s straight down to business. She’s agreed to lead tonglen this Friday during my online drop-in meditation class and we’re going to give all the donations from the class to a charity doing work in India, supporting people hit hardest by coronavirus.  

After we talk I immediately get on it, setting up a donation page on Facebook and inviting all my friends to give.

There is a woman from India on the retreat I’ve been running and today she shared a bit about how hard it is living in a caste-based society. How she has to work hard with negative mental states like hatred when she’s treated as less than by those who look down upon her.

It’s such a privilege to witness her in her process of trying not to take on the same destructive mental states as those who have oppressed her and her family for generations. I tell her how sorry I am for her experience and that her reaction sounds understandable.

I encourage her to try and stay with the part of her that is hurting in response to how she’s been treated. That love begins right here, in our relationship with our own pain. I worry that it will sound glib, but she smiles big and thanks me, saying that what I’ve suggested is a really helpful way forward.

In the late afternoon I do a series of meditation reviews and then it’s time for a walk. I put a pan of veg in the oven and we head out the door.

The first thing we notice when we get to the park is the people playing basketball. We haven’t seen anyone playing basketball since the beginning of the lockdown.

We head east along the row of tall plane trees before rounding the edge of the park and heading back, past our favourite spot, through the football field, and towards the orchard.

The orchard is a small patch of long grass and a handful of small fruit trees planted in 2008 by the Tree Muskateers. There’s an old man wearing a vest that says “Tree Muskateers” on it. He’s got large water bottles in a wheelbarrow and is about to water the trees.

There’s also a little girl, no older than 5 or 6, in a wonder woman outfit, bright, red, shiny cape and all, hiding in the tall grass. She’s whispering to a small boy in a tuft of grass about two metres from her.

He can’t hear her as he’s wearing a helmet and distracted by the adults on the other side of the orchard. He starts to run and she hops up, chasing after him. She moves so gracefully through the tall grass, her cape flowing behind her, that she almost looks as though she’s flying.

We get home, eat dinner, and then it’s time for my partner to get on Zoom with their counseling clients. I go into the bedroom and do a bit of writing and watching another episode of Dead to Me, which is actually getting better.

There’s a developing lesbian love story and the actresses are believably into each other. There’s chemistry and everything. Rare on TV.

And then there’s a twist.

One of the women is being investigated by a local detective who also happens to be her new love interest’s ex-girlfriend and they just happen to still be living together so, you know, lesbian drama.

There’s something about being represented, even in a silly Netflix black comedy, that is so affirming. You don’t even know you needed it until you get it and then you realise what you’ve been missing.

And then you never want to go back.