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Stopping and Resting

I have been reconnecting to mindfulness practise in the past few weeks. I’m a student of Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh and his teachings have, over the past seven years or so, literally saved my life.

But last year I got myself into a pickle. I really, really wanted to dive into belonging to the community of Plum Village

I had studied with their courses in the UK for several years, joined a sangha (online, because travelling can be a challenge) and begun a regular practise of mindful breathing and walking.

But I needed that extra thing, to belong, to receive the Five Mindfulness Trainings, to become One of Us.

Maybe this has its roots in a lifelong feeling of being Other, or outside, maybe in not being allowed to join the popular kids’ games at school, maybe in my astrology or neurodiversity or any one of a hundred other psychological gifts that makes up the unique brain of a human creature.

Whatever it was, the deep desire, the heartfelt aspiration, had been with me for a number of years. I prepared as best I could, I booked onto a retreat where the ceremony to receive the trainings would be offered. I bought appropriate luggage for a somewhat disabled person to carry on a long-ish solo journey. I planned the travel.

In the week before the retreat my symptoms started to flare. I ignored them. I was going. This was my moment. But, as anyone living with long-term health needs knows, when the body knows, it knows.

By the day of the retreat I was really not feeling my best, I could not walk effectively, and was lost as to how I would make a journey of several hundred miles by train, with luggage, alone, to participate. In that moment of fear and loss I sent my apologies. I was angry that my body had (again) “let me down”. I felt that there had been insurmountable obstacles to my participating and belonging, and I was hurt and sad. The hurt and sadness was so deep I stopped my practise, maybe this was just not for me, and it was time to let go.

I don’t know how many times this has to happen before I really listen. I have a sense that Thay would smile at me, and very gently remind me that I was too attached to the idea of the Mindfulness Trainings. That standing up in a ceremony is not what makes a practitioner. What makes a practitioner is, well, practise. That the journey is just that, a journey, not a destination. That we practise every moment we are alive, not just in retreats or sanghas or even on our cushion.

So I am beginning again, smiling at my own rules which tie me in knots (or is that nots) and ever so gently breathing into the gift of stopping and resting.

Breathing in, I know I am breathing in, breathing out, I know I am breathing out.

Breathing in, I allow my body to stop, breathing out I allow my mind to rest.

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The Wheel Turns

White plum blossom on our allotment tree – photo by Fiona Beth

This morning I went to the allotment and the plum blossom was out, bubbling over the bare, grey branches, shocking against a rain streaked sky.

Like the blossom I feel I am emerging from a long winter. Somewhere in 2023 I put myself back in a box I had long been trying to leave behind. It felt comfortable, safe, played to my strengths. And it helped me find my feet, in a new part of the country. Sometimes too much new is overwhelming and that comfy, old shirt that is really past its best is the only thing that will do.

Living with chronic health needs is always an evolution. Eventually, despite loving the people and the knowledge that there was still a lot of work there I could help with, I had to listen to the body’s wisdom. Last week I worked my final day as a primary school teacher. It was a day of gifts. We made a hole in a piece of paper big enough for a teacher to climb through (with many yells of excitement and disbelief), we had a battle to create the longest ever paperchain from a single sheet of A4 (and the kids beat the teacher, more jubilation), and they created supersonic paper planes and helicopters that fell with speed and style.

In between the sunlight and sleet showers, the kind words and goodbye hugs, the knot began to untie. I was crawling under the tables retrieving felt tip pens and stray scraps of paper, when I felt it loosen.

And here I am. Starting a new chapter. The journey so far has been plotted at every step, I have always known what I am going to next, a goodbye was the prelude to new horizons. This time the path is not mapped, as I try a different way to shape life’s pattern. The old one leads to burn out, sickness, limping around with a stick and bed rest on sunny days when I want to be out in the wild.

This one? I know there will be days on the plot, setting seeds and tending crops, and moments of wonder watching the birds and garden wildlife at home. I know there will be walks in the woods to count bees or pick litter. I hope there will be plenty of space for reading, freshly brewed tea and long conversations with kindred spirits.

Beyond that, the path will unfold, in its own time, as I seek to listen to a wilder wisdom.

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Clothes are just clothes

Image created with MS Designer

My eldest child is gender fluid. Being familiar with living in this space, I can tell you it can be more than a little uncomfortable. When your own physical form doesn’t always match the way you relate to yourself…that’s dissonance and then some.

They are seeking to live , in their own words, as authentically as they can. That is, from my perspective, brave.

I didn’t realise, though, how brave until we went out yesterday.

All four of us went early to the retail park, and none of us enjoy crowds, so early is always a shout.

The first instance was in the Lego store where we were perusing the splendour on offer. An older woman did a double take when she saw Tom. Then looked at her daughter, then both laughed, not unkindly, just in a surprised way.

The second was in Greggs, where we stopped for coffee. I was following my eldest to a table and saw a thirty something couple staring at him with an unfriendly gaze. I looked them both in the eye.

Now, I am guessing my eldest must be used to this kind of reaction. They have told me that they have been  called “disgusting” before.

My wondering is, about these people we encountered, what exactly was so shocking or distasteful?

The outfit was a long grey tee with a steam punky  image, a pair of walking boots, thick black tights, and a flared knee-length black skirt. If you swapped the skirt for jeans, no one would have batted an eyelid.

This brings me back to my starting point. Clothes are just clothes. Whether you are assigned male or female at birth, it shouldn’t matter what you wear. When women began wearing trousers more regularly , firstly with the invention of the bicycle, and then more widely during World War 2, it did cause a stir but we got over it…I hope it doesn’t take us as long this  time.

And once again, we see how queerness, in all its forms, unsettles and disturbs people, challenges the status quo. How it calls out complacency and fixed mindsets, how it points to bigger questions about the kind of society we live in, and the kind of society we want to live in.

In light of everything going on in the world right now, having strong opinions about who wears skirts really does seem a waste of energy.

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Last Summer

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

Outside grey drizzling,

Sky erased, bees vanished.

Veg browned and dying,

Drowned.

Flower heads weigh heavy,

bent beneath a weight

of water.

A gulf sits between here and the

oven-baked mainland.

Grabbing a cardy and extra socks

I wait for the sun to wake

Wondering if we have had

The last summer.

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Moon Flight

I begin

With new skin

Stretched sore

Stepping, barefoot

Onto rough ground

Unfound at the edges

Of my own life I am small, spore

Floating into space, disgraced

Disconnected, disenchanted, haunted

Flaunting regrets like medals

Longing to sing-song

Into a new way, new day

Rising, surprising, flying

Moonward,

Cape spread, a wing-thing

Opening around me

Dark flowered.

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Always running

Wild Cherry blossom at Beacon Hill Country Park. Photo by Fiona Phillips.

I wrote last week about the mindfulness class I’m taking with Plum Village UK. I was sitting recently practicing when these words floated into my awareness, “always running.”

They felt different to my usual distractions, like whether I have enough cat food, what someone meant when they said a particular thing two years ago at that meeting, whether I am doing meditation “right” and so forth.

As I was breathing I could see myself fixed in this spot in space and time on my cushion. I could see myself in the past hurtling towards this moment, and I could see how my brain was always busy hurtling me onwards into the future. I was always running. I was either running from something or desperate to get somewhere else. This moment never featured.

I have been working with the ideas of being versus doing now for maybe twenty years, but I still get caught in the habit of doing. When I recently left my job I immediately wanted to know what I would “do” next. People often ask this too, “what are you doing now?” And I feel like I need to have an answer, well, I’m taking that course, or I plan to start up this project, or I am applying for this or that role. It is a hamster-wheel of never ending action.

I began to wonder where this came from. Some of it I can see arises out of my culture and upbringing. But some of it comes from a different place.

Around fifteen years ago I was having some health difficulties. After assorted tests and scans I was told, very directly, that a small part of my brain was dead, most likely as the result of a small stroke.

I was thirty five years old at the time, with two young children. It was the first time I had ever had reason to believe I was mortal. For some time after a stroke your risk of a second attack is high. I spent several years living with a lot of fear. I was determined to make the most of my life, to live it as fully as possible, to “make a contribution” to do something worthwhile. I would like to say that this was rewarding and nourishing, but, if it were possible, I became even more driven than I had been before. The clock was ticking, and now I could hear it!

This sense of death shadowing my steps has persisted through a decade and a half. While I told myself that of course none of us know the day or hour we will cease this form of existence, and that life is precious and brief, this didn’t help me to live with greater joy. I saw, in my meditation, that I had set off running, in two directions at once. I was running away, as fast as I could, from the idea of my own demise and health issues. And I was running as fast as I could to this unknown outcome of achieving my “life’s purpose”.

This is an exhausting state to live in. I have not known much peace during these years, fearing missing the as yet identified boat of my life’s work and dying with this elusive thing unknown or unachieved.

Mindfulness has given me a gift; it has shown me that there is another way, and I am allowed to stop running! There isn’t anywhere to get from, and there isn’t anywhere to get to. I am already here. As Thay says, “I have arrived, I am home.”

This has been an enormous shift.

And I find for the first time in many years, that I have genuine moments of peace.

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Learning to Walk

I started taking the Be Calm, Be Happy class with Plum Village UK this week. In the first class we received some input on walking meditation.

I have tried this before but realise after some instruction that I have been going way to fast!

Yesterday morning, like a good student, I set off to a local park to practice. This park is small and has a long loop of winding path perfect for some mindful steps. It was strange to be there with other people, children on their way to school, early morning dog walkers. I felt a bit self conscious (mindful moment!).

I worked with trying to time my steps to my breath. The minute I thought about breathing it seemed very slow, my steps too, were therefore very slow. In the class I had noticed that once I thought about walking, once I focused on it in a conscious way, my steps became very unsteady, I was unbalanced and wobbly, like a toddler. It seems that when I walk to get somewhere momentum carries me without the wobble. When I think about my steps, though,the whole process becomes much more complex.

Of course sometimes I would begin to think, wondering if people were wondering what I was doing, thankful that Simon had come with me so I didn’t feel like a complete loon…then I would catch myself and return to the breath. In, out, left foot, right foot.

Time slowed down and it felt like I had, on some level, been walking forever. I walked in the drizzly, cold morning, noticing the bird song, and gradually enjoying the process, the steady flow of breath, step, breath, step. There was a gentle rhythm that felt soothing.

I had to slow right down. And take very small steps.

Which feels like a metaphor for life.

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Spring Travels

In a new landscape I find the seasons are different. Back “down South” the daffodils would be out by the city walls by the last week in February. I would watch the green spikes emerging from the bus as it passed and await their blooms as the key moment when winter gave way to spring.

Photo credit Fiona Phillips 24 March 2023 – Blossom by the canal

We are now in the last week in March, the daffodils are out here in full force, a bank of them backlit by early morning sun when we walked past the train station yesterday. Along the edge of the golf course, too, the fabled golden host glowing against still-bare trees.

This week the blossom is emerging, blackthorn and flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum). Grape hyacinth are out in the garden and the first bumblebee queens have emerged, on the prowl for nest sites. Three years ago bumblebee queens were humming about on a day trip to London on my birthday in mid-February.

Photo credit Fiona Phillips 24 March 2023 – Flowering Currant

These events have coincided with the spring equinox, which I will use as my benchmark for the “start of spring” when we reach the new calendar year.

So how fast does spring travel? According to this article from 2015 at around 2 miles per hour. I can visualise a time lapse map of the country, greening and blossoming as the season unfolds! I am now wondering if you could walk with the season as it unfolds (apparently from South West to North East).

This year not only are we in a new landscape but we also have a new garden. The soil here is heavier than the chalk uplands where I’ve lived for most of the past forty years. We have begun the process of clearing the ground of tenacious ivy (while leaving some because it is beneficial for many creatures) and are waiting to see what emerges as the ground warms in the coming weeks. I have planted some shrubs which will hopefully give blossom and berries for the birds and bees in coming years, and set some wildflower seeds. I’m also creating a rock pile and a wood pile for the creepy crawlies.

All part of seeking to create a wildlife friendly corner in these times of habitat depletion in our #wildisles !

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Coming Home

I am a restless soul. No sooner do I arrive somewhere than I want to be on to the next place. I have spent my whole life feeling out of place and longing to find a sense of home.

When I was younger I longed for travel, I thought that somewhere out there (cue song lyrics) was that mythical place where I would belong.

Life unfolds, often unexpectedly. As a young mother in my twenties I wished the weeks away, believing that at some point the time could come when I would find the job or place that felt like a fit. It is a sadness now that I was not more “with” that time, I did not know at the time how young I was.

On and on we go, through career studies and professional life. Each place had something to give, some gift to be treasured, a moment of clarity, the joy of sharing a good piece of work. My children grew up, my marriage ended, I found a new love. On and on.

In the past five years we have been on the move both literally and metaphorically. Moving from the home where I raised the children, into my parents home to tend to my Mum in her final years, on to our first home for “just us”, reliving the student vibes in a second floor apartment. Last October we made a giant leap out of my native Kent and here to Warwickshire.

Still that niggle remains, the longing to belong, the desire to be “at home”.

Today I was reading a talk by Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh. Thay invites us to come home to ourselves. To recognise our body as our first home.

I am not a friend to my body. I look after it, grudgingly, because this makes sense, but I do not love it. I have never felt comfortable inside this skin. Could this be the answer to my restless yearnings. To finally make friends with this oldest friend. The animal self waiting for acceptance. To breathe into the whole self and allow the earth to hold me?

I wonder if this work will bring me comfort, and finally, bring me home?

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Starfish Story

Tiny blue flowers by the car park at work

We moved last October. This was a big one for us. Nearly 200 miles north west into the Midlands. We left my dad and two sons back in Kent, along with good friends and forty years of life and personal history

Arriving in late autumn gives a bleak introduction to a place… dank, damp and dark is the theme for much of British wintertime. The middle of the country is also murkier, grey skies more frequent.

Despite this we have found a good deal of beauty and begun the process of settling. It seems that by taking it one day at a time it’s possible to adjust to a new world. Baby steps.

The biggest shift for me has been in my work life. I found a job in our first month here and started work at a local care centre as activities coordinator. A background in teaching and admin has been a godsend.

You may have read that social care is a challenging sector to work in. I can vouch for that. For me there have been challenges around learning what the role entails, being a worker not a manager (I’ve been at the “top” of my previous profession for several years as an independent education consultant and specialist teacher). There have been challenges around being employed rather than self employed (turns out I have difficulty taking direction, who knew?) And around physical capacity in a job which needs you to be active and mobile for the majority of the day.

I have found it challenging that there is so much need, the end of life can be very hard. There are moments of joy and laughter too but some days the witnessing of pain feels overwhelming.

I have wanted to run away more than once, bury my head under a duvet and give in to gloom. What’s the point?

A story I read the other night is helping me see that there’s a different way to measure my success and effectiveness in this brave new world.

One day a man heads down to the beach for his daily walk. Down by the shore he sees a person dancing near the surf. As he draws nearer he sees it isn’t someone dancing after all but a young man who is picking up starfish from the sand and throwing them into the sea.

“What are you doing, friend?” Says the man. “Well the sun is rising, and the tide is turning, and soon these starfish will be stranded and they will dry out and die. I am throwing them back into the sea.”

“How foolish!” Said the man. “This beach goes on for miles and you can see there are hundreds, thousands, of starfish. You will never succeed! How can you make a difference to the power of the tide?”

The young man picked up another starfish and hurled it back into the sea. “Well I made a difference to that one.”

I may have told it wrong but you get the idea. Life is messy. Often we have to make impossible and life changing decisions. We feel powerless in the face of circumstances, we are so small and the forces around us so vast and impersonal.

But. The belief that we can create change, making a difference in small but meaningful ways.

This is the power of hope.