Monthly Archives: July 2010

Being engaged to be married….

34 Replies

In the main news, I am now an engaged person. Can you see how happy we are?

Lovely readers, meet Kaspa. Kaspalita is his given Buddhist name (he’s a Pureland Buddhist priest) and it means protected by the light. I think his light is protecting me now as well as him. That’s how it feels.
Can you see how happy we are?
You can visit his blog at Purple Clouds – he writes rather brilliantly (although I am biased) on Buddhism, the theatre, books, and sometimes me : )
*
In other news…
Six people a day are still reading my novel Thaw for free online, which is nice. Have you had a look yet?
Annell has written a lovely piece about my free competition to win a coaching session at her blog, Some Things I Think About.
*
I’m off to France for a fortnight with my fiancé (hee hee) on Sunday – to the Buddhist Amida Centre in France, so I won’t be around much online. I hope you all have marvellous first-halves-of-August and I look forward to catching up when I get back. My weekly Planting Seeds newsletter will appear here as if by magic.
Time for breakfast. Hurray for ordinary things. And extraordinary things. Like engagements. : )

Planting Seeds: Self-discipline or surrender?

5 Replies

I have a dilemma. And it is as familiar to me as the ring I’ve worn on my finger since I was thirteen years old.

I’ve been struggling recently to do spiritual practise in the morning. I used to affiliate myself with Zen Buddhism, which meant sitting up straight on my zafu for twenty minutes and noticing my breath (I never managed to make it any longer) and then I could forget about it completely and get on with my day.
Now I’m a Pureland Buddhist, it doesn’t seem that simple any more. When we practise, we chant, sit quietly, walk in meditation, read out texts, make prostrations. Not only that, but when I speak to my mentor about practice he talks about it as being a way of expressing our gratitude, not as ‘a route to enlightenment’ or something we ought to do to be good spiritual beings.
My old practice seemed to be about ‘doing my duty’ as a Zen practitioner, but now I’m being asked (or rather I’m asking myself) to do something very different. And I find myself not knowing how to do it, and not wanting to do it.
My dilemma – do I ‘force myself’ to do some practice every morning, or do I allow myself to start practising again when I feel the urge?
Self-discipline or surrender?
I know what would happen if I wrote whenever I felt the urge, whenever I felt like it. I would never have finished a single chapter, never mind four novels.
But I do want to leave space for myself, to feel my way with this new practice, to see what emerges.
I’ve decided to do ten minutes of chanting every morning – the same chant, which is designed to connect me to something bigger than my little self. I will sit and chant quietly, whether I feel like it or not, and then we’ll see what happens.
Things to be curious about:
Choose an area of your life that you’re struggling with. Would it benefit from a smidgeon of discipline? How could you support yourself to make a new (modest) commitment in this area?
Quotes:
For an interest to be rewarding, one must pay in discipline and dedication, especially through the difficult or boring stages which are inevitably encountered.
Mira Komarovsky

We are made to persist. That’s how we find out who we are.
Tobias Wolff
*
This post is from my weekly newsletter which was delivered into people’s inboxes yesterday morning. If you’d like to sign up, put your email in the sign-up box on the right and tick ‘Planting Seeds’. Don’t forget about the competition to win one of three coaching sessions as part of my Planting Seeds coaching practice.

Being alone and waiting for my love

Leave a reply

“This is a snail shell, round, full, and glossy as a horse chestnut. Comfortable and compact, it sits curled up like a cat in the hollow of my hand. Now it is the moon, solitary in the sky, full and round, replete with power. Now it is an island, set in ever-widening circles of waves, alone, self-contained, serene.”

These are Anne Morrow Lingbergh’s words, from Gift from the Sea (read it if you haven’t, especially if you’re a woman). I need to hear them today.
“We are all, in the last analysis, alone. And this basic state of solitude is not something we have any choice about. It is, as the poet Rilke says, “not something that one can take or leave. We are solitary. How much better it is to realize that we are so, yes, even to begin by assuming it. Naturally,” he goes on to say, “we will turn giddy.”"
I have been waiting for my love to return from France. Today is day 20, of 20. This day is stretching out ahead of me like an endless motorway, that disappears off the edge of the horizon.
“For a full day and two nights I have been alone. I lay on the beach under the stars at night alone. I made my breakfast alone. Alone I watched the gulls at the end of the pier, dip and wheel and dive for the scraps I threw them. A morning’s work at my desk, and then, a late picnic lunch alone on the beach. And it seemed to me, separated from my own species, that I was nearer to others: the shy willet, nesting in the ragged tide-wash behind me; the sand-piper running in little unfrightened steps down the shining beach rim ahead of me; the slowly flapping pelicans over my head, coasting down the wind.”
Words always bring me back to myself. When I am brought back to myself, I can be there for others. I can be there for others more wholly. More holy.
“Yes, I felt closer to my fellow men too, even in my solitude. For it is not physical solitude that actually separates one from other men, not physical isolation, but spiritual isolation. … When one is a stranger to oneself then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others.”
Later, I will be with my love. For now, I will be myself alone. But now I remember. I had to find myself before I remembered, I had to listen to Anne Morrow Lindbergh.
He is already here.

Beautiful walk in tub

1 Reply

Here’s a piece of junk mail I received this week:

*
Easily step in and out of a walk in tub

Safe. Comfortable. Beautiful.

Pamper yourself with a beautiful new walk in tub
*
Pure poetry. Even the spaces before the first phrase and the random use of full stops is charming.
And I hope you enjoy the accompanying photo, where you can see a lovely lady easily step in and out – not sure why she’s wearing her dressing gown in the tub, but maybe it’s just as well she is.
If we look closely enough, beauty is all around.
What can you find today?

My old comrade May Sarton (enjoying what is offered)

2 Replies

I seem to have lost my mind. I’m a fierce minimalist, but I usually get rid of the unnecessary, the extra, the half-loved. But this morning I can’t find my May Sarton books!

I love May Sarton’s journals, especially Journal of a Solitude and The House by the Sea, for their plain descriptions of how Sarton fashioned a writing life for herself – the difficulty of her relationships, the comforts of arranging flowers into simple posies.
This morning she is reminding me of how difficult it is to make the most of our time, even when we know we SHOULD be making the most of every 24 hours we are lucky enough to have allotted to us.
How can we enjoy what is offered?
Easier to spend our days thinking ‘if only THIS was offered, then I’d be happy’. Plotting, manipulating. It doesn’t help. We enjoy what we are offered – find what we need to find, learn what we need to learn – or we skip whole days, whole years. We won’t get them back.
How are you going to enjoy this day?
Until I re-order Sarton’s books, I shall have to make do with what I can find on the good old internet, although what I really wanted to do was open a page at random and read you something. If anyone has any of her books, maybe you could do that for me in the comments section.
Each day, and the living of it, has to be a conscious creation in which discipline and order are relieved with some play and pure foolishness.

Help us to be ever faithful gardeners of the spirit, who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth, and without light nothing flowers.

Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.

Most people have to talk so they won’t hear.

No partner in a love relationship… should feel that he has to give up an essential part of himself to make it viable.

The minute one utters a certainty, the opposite comes to mind.

There is only one real deprivation… and that is not to be able to give one’s gifts to those one loves most.

True feeling justifies whatever it may cost.

We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.

Planting Seeds: Straying from the path

2 Replies

A few weekends ago, my love and I opened a book of local walks and chose one in Silchester, a small village close to here.

We oriented ourselves and followed the route through some woods, past a teensy museum, along a track by some cottages, and out into fields where a roman wall stretched off into the distance.
After stopping to make friends with some cows (their rough tongues licking the salt from our palms), we spotted a tiny church off the route. We meandered over and stepped from the sunshine and birdsong into the cool dark space.
It was a small and humble church, left open so people like us could wander inside and take refuge. I felt glad that we were trusted not to take the booklets that were for sale without dropping money into the collection box. I felt glad that we could investigate the font and sit on the narrow pews.
On the alter was a Christ, made from wood and metals. I fell in love with it. It was made by Peter Eugene Ball, and when I got home I looked up his site and told him so (and got his kind permission to use a photo of his work here).
“He works with found objects, predominantly wood, often embellished with beaten metals such as copper, pewter or gold leaf, and his sculpture is mainly figurative. It has a crudity and simplicity which allow him to clearly express himself, with no self–conscious element and no concession to fashion or superficial values. The majority of his work is idiosyncratic and uncompromising.”
No concession to fashion or superficial values. No self-consciousness. This is how the best art is made – when we can get completely out of the way and let the work stream through us.
Our reverential moments with this Christ in a humble church in Silchester. This is how the most wonderful moments find us, when we stray from the path and open ourselves up.
Things to be curious about:
When do you have the opportunity to stray from your usual path? Do you give yourself the time and the permission to follow your nose? How do your most wonderful moments find you? How can you create the space for more of them?
Quotes:
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Above all the grace and the gifts that Christ gives to his beloved is that of overcoming self.
Francis of Assisi
*
This post was sent out yesterday on email as my Planting Seeds newsletter – if you’d like to sign up and get next weeks in your inbox on Monday, put your email into the ‘join my mailing list’ box on the right hand side and tick ‘Planting Seeds’. And if you want a free sample of emailing or telephone coaching with me then drop me a line.

An instrument of grace

Leave a reply

I’ve just eaten the most delicious veggie breakfast – cheese and leek glamorgan sausage, white toast and butter, baked beans, fried mushrooms, fried egg, and hash browns. Of course. You can’t have a veggie breakfast without hash browns.

It’s windy and cold-looking out there, so I’m not going anywhere – a good day to get lots done and be a hermit. But if it wasn’t so horrible and if I had a garden of my own (which I hope might be happening later in the year) I’d be following May Sarton’s advice and getting out there with my trowel.

Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace. - May Sarton

What will you allow to slow you down today? Whatever you’re doing, I wish your Sunday to be slow and full of grace.


What do you think? And a free competition

3 Replies

So, dear readers. I’m wondering how you feel about this coaching lark. Have you ever tried it? Do you know anyone who has? What good things or bad things have you heard? I’d be really interested in your experiences.

Obviously, I’m completely biased, but have faith in the power of conversations to change lives. I work as a therapist and as a coach. For me, psychotherapy is good at the kind of deep-deep-down change that gets at our very foundations and means travelling into the dark together for some time. Coaching is good at helping people to build different structures in their life and (finally) get things done. Both kinds of support have been invaluable to me over my lifetime.

Of course, group work is wonderful too. And there’s no substitute for the conversations you can have with a significant other, or close friends, or fantastic books, or with your journal, or walking in the forest alone. All of these wonderful support structures around us. The scary thing is using them. The scary thing is realising that we can be different if we want to be, that we can open where we’ve been closed, that we can go forwards where we’ve been hesitating for twenty years.

Anyway, as you know I offer free twenty minute tasters of coaching conversations (or email coaching), so if you’re ready for your adventure then let me know. And I’m also running a competition to win three free coaching sessions (including a copy of A Year of Questions) – just email me with ‘gift session’ as the title before the 12th of September and I’ll put you in the hat. Here are the different sessions you can choose from. Have lovely weekends, lovely readers.

Get Balanced. Do you find it difficult to balance the different areas that are important to you in your life? Do you find it hard to keep strong boundaries at work? What would you like to make more of a priority?

Get Creative. Is there a creative project you’ve struggled to get going on, or complete? Would you like to find a way to fit your creative work into your daily routine? Would you like to find a new creative outlet?

Get Working. Are you dissatisfied with your current work? Would you like to learn how to enjoy work more, or would you like to think about a change in career? Do you have a particular issue at work?

Get Going. Have you been stuck on a particular issue? Is there a project you’d like to finish? Would you like a fresh perspective on what you could do next?

This morning’s offerings (cookie, mouse, love)

Leave a reply

First, an oreo cookie. Hey, what the hell, have three (I just did). I’ll give you the ones without a bite taken out of them.

Next, a short film about a poem that floated up into my head yesterday. Bleak but, in my humble opinion (and a perfect accompaniment to melancholy), quite beautiful.
(That seems to be happening more and more recently – all the poems I took into my heart in the past twenty years keep coming back to haunt me. It’s very lovely.)
Here’s the film, and the poem is below.
And thirdly, a little quote by a lovely book I’ve just finished, ‘ten poems to open your heart’ by Roger Housden. I could open it anywhere and find something wise and luscious to give you, and in fact that’s what I’m going to do right now.
Ah, here we are. Good old Rilke. I might open the book again a few times, but here’s the gift today is offering you.
“Love is at first not anything that means merging, giving over, and uniting with another… It is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world to himself for another’s sake.” Rainer Maria Rilke
*
And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass

Ezra Pound