None of us can know the future

B - What's needed here?

B - What is it you need in this moment of despair? What do you need to bring into this moment Patty?

P - Hope. I need Hope.

B (whispers) - Hope. Yeah.


B - There is absolute Hope, Patty. None of us can know the future and what that means is that there is HOPE. That by itself means there is hope. The unknown isn't your enemy. It's just not lived in yet. So breathe into that unknown. Breathe into that future. What would it look like? What would it feel like if you could allow this peace to come?

Beginning

I am floundering again. But I trust that it is good. The whole thing of who and what I am. What I think, what I've done all that is melting away. I am trusting that I am the ice who by nature is water. I am dissolving to who I truly am (not). Today's link from the Tricycle Blog was just what I needed. An actknowledgement of how I am feeling and then a way to work with it. The teacher or spiritual friend is important at this point. I am hoping Bill will be that but I must look at the Sangha more I feel. My isolation must end if I am to move further on this journey.

Fear is what happens when reality collides with our personal fiction. Our practice is based on expectations—expectations about who we are, why we are practicing, and what our practice should be. As our hope disintegrates, it may be replaced by fear. Our characteristics, personality, all of our beautiful plans and ideas are like snowflakes about to fall on the hot stone of our meditation practice.
-Lama Tsony, "Facing Fear," from the Fall 2006 Tricycle. Read the complete article.

The Gifts of Easter Sunday

Morning meditation and prayer.

A run in the park and communing with the space.

A walk with Lynton. Warm talking and friendship in nature.

An amazing email from Bill that affirmed both Buddhist and Christian traditions in a way for me to embrace whole heartily.

An afternoon with the ladies complete with Easter Egg hunt and potluck.

Sweet intimacy with Bear

Popcorn

Evening Meditation & Prayer

It doesn't get any better than this

Thank you.

What happened to the sniper?

This question awoke me from dead sleep at some point early in the morning hours when dream teachers most often wake me. Loud and clear. What happened to the sniper? I must have been dreaming about Bill and his Vietnam experience.

In 1969 he had been shot in the jaw while trying to rescue some guys who were down. His buddy and fellow medic was reaching to bandage his wound when he was shot through the eye by the same sniper. Bill laid there in and out of consciousness and over the course of an hour listened to Mike die. Then he proceeded to get up and crawl to help the two he originally was trying to save in the first place. During that crawl he got shot two more times.

I often think about his ordeal especially now that Bill has shaved his beard. He claims so people won't automatically assume he is old enough to get the senior discount. I want to touch his face. I can see the scar on his chin and the surgical scars on his neck. I want to touch him to feel he is okay and here and real. I want to touch him and have him tell me the whole story and for him to know that I hear him and feel his light.

So what does the dream teacher want me to learn? What happened to the sniper? I began to think and wanted to get up and email Bill the question. Was he killed? Was he incinerated in a bomb blast? Was he a Father? Was she a Mother? Was it a Child? What was the sniper thinking? Was she afraid? Was he afraid for his family that the American GI's would kill them? What atrocities had the sniper seen? I wondered what Bill thought about the sniper.

Then the next question came. What happened to Bill's molester? I wanted to know what that man thought that pushed him to sodomize Bill when he was such a young boy? What happened to the molester to make him do those things?

And then the question came for me. What happened to Herb? My molester?

Why don't I care what happened to him?

God! Please take me now!

I cried and went to sleep asking God to take me.

Bill Larsen

Bill is my sage. He is a wounded healer. He specializes in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder with a personal knowledge of sexual abuse and Vietnam war. He uses meditation as a healing tool for me. Here are some of his words to me in email back and forth:

Staying in contact with yourself is the key,

and anytime it starts to get too uncomfortable,

or starting to snowball emotionally,

let it go.

Mindfulness and self-compassion

in the moment is the key,

I'd say.

Henry David Thoreau

Reflecting on my session with my therapist and the emotions that came with a follow-up email from him, this mornings meditation brought the memory of when I first heard the words of Thoreau. I was a junior in high school. I'm not sure if my grandmother had died yet or not but it was the first time I heard the truth about how I was feeling. It was the first time I read it in black and white. The thoughts that were crawling through my teenage brain suddenly were affirmed. What if the hokey pokey is all it is about?

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation."

~Walden (1854), Henry David Thoreau

The comments post email communications between my therapist and myself over the course of some pretty emotional days for me.