Rise and Shine

Recently I was lucky enough to spend a week at Rancho La Puerta in Tecate, Baja California, Mexico as a presenter. I was there to talk about the importance of "Trusting Your Own Magnet" - how to sense where life is calling you, and how you might get there.  My youngest daughter  Lauren came with me, and every morning we were up early, sitting out on the veranda with our sacred first cups of French Press coffee and setting our intentions for the day. Not surprisingly, our days unfolded with a sense of ease, space and grace.  It. Was. Glorious.

But when someone is serving you beautiful, organic meals made from vegetables just harvested from the Ranch garden and prepared by people who pray over and bless the food before serving it, making your bed in the morning and turning it down at night, leading you in quiet meditations, massaging and herbal wrapping your body, and serving you just made smoothies... well... if my day didn't go well.... #suckstobeme.

One afternoon fellow presenter Lindsay Sherry, a certified nutritionist and holistic health coach, was sharing 8 Tips for Creating Your Best and Healthiest Life!. Tip number one, numero uno, at the top of the heap? Take time in the morning just for you. Her words rang true. The ones that resonated even more? If we're going to win the day, we have to win the first hour. Period. End of sentence. It's as simple as that, and as hard as it gets. Especially when you're not at a world-class health spa with gracious people attending to your every need.

Back home, in the midst of the magic and the mess that is my real life, with meals to cook and beds to make, laundry to do and bills to pay, relationships to tend to and emails to write, it's a little tricker. And yet those morning hours set the table for the rest of the day. They really do. And if I let the table get set for me (hello depressing news, toxic tweets, social media rabbit holes, hitting the snooze button - again, and fake food for breakfast) I shouldn't be surprised if my daily bread tastes stale. Thankfully I came home from the Ranch committed to becoming committed to winning my first hour. Currently, this is what that looks like:

• Up at 5:30ish, hopefully after at least 7 hours of sleep
• Out on the porch sipping Sleepy Monk French Press coffee out of my favorite  before 6:00
• 20 minutes of meditation (or at least pretending to meditate)
• A little inspirational reading (sometimes only time for a sentence or two)
• Off to the gym for a workout

I wish I could tell you that I got it right every day. But I don't. I wish I could tell you that I was up to an hour of meditation a day and have found inner peace unlike ever before. But I'm lucky to get in that 20 minutes, and inner peace is a total crap shoot. What I can tell you is that I am learning to trust the practice and just get up and do it. I am finding a tiny sliver  of inner calm that I can access a wee bit easier. Rather than react, I'm a tiny bit more able to take a deep breath and a step back. With more time in the gym my energy is increasing as is my muscle tone. My morning practice to win the day is a work in progress, and comparing mine to that of anyone else doesn't help. I seem to be in pretty good company about that. In The Book of Joy, Archbishop Desmond Tutu dismisses his own morning meditation practice when compared to His Holiness the Dalai Lama's of arising at 3:00am for five hours of prayer and meditation. The Archbishop doesn't haul his sorry ass out of bed until 4:00am and then only manages to squeeze in three or four hours of prayer and meditation. Like Teddy Roosevelt said, "Comparison is the Thief of Joy." 

I've been a morning person for as long as I can remember. Apparently I arrived on the planet wired to get up before the sun does. But being an early riser does not a good day make. What we do when our feet hit the floor does. 

How It Works

"There’s no nonstop flight from order to reorder. You’ve got to go through the disorder." 

- Richard Rohr

Order

 

Recently I listened to an episode of On Being, the Peabody Award winning public radio conversation and podcast, hosted by Krista Tippet. Her guest for the episode was Richard Rohr, the Franciscan priest, writer, teacher, and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In the midst of their rich and robust conversation, Fr. Rohr offered a simple metaphor for the path to spiritual transformation. He explained that he tells his students to imagine three boxes:

Order

Disorder

Reorder

That's how it works.

The only way to transformation is through each of the three boxes. And as much as most of us cling to the desire for order, often clawing and fighting to keep things neat, orderly, and all buttoned up, we can't leapfrog from order to reorder. That's not how it works. Disorder is part and parcel of the path to transformation. For a deeper dive into Fr. Rohr's wisdom on the subject, I highly recommend listening to the entire On Being episode, as well as reading his thought provoking Falling Upward: A Spirituality For The Two Halves of Life.

Reflecting on his three box metaphor, and juxtaposing it with life as I've come to understand it, his words ring true. It also dawns on me that we are presented with an abundance of opportunities, both grand and small, to practice walking the transformative path. As individuals, partners, families, communities, societies, and even as a species. Some of those opportunities are ours by choice. Most of them are not.

We recently had our great room and kitchen repainted. In the course of just one day, as we moved every single thing from the areas to be painted out onto the deck, we went from order to disorder. Anyone driving up to the house that day would have thought that whoever lived there must have died, and an estate sale was in progress. A week later, new paint on the walls and the painter paid, we began the process of reorder. It was sort of a fun-but-royal pain in the ass. It was also a subtle kick in the ass to arrange life differently. To take the time to put back only those things we love and that serve us well. A couple of  trips to the dump and the Goodwill later, our home is in the process of a beautiful transformation. A transformation made possible by the chaos that came before it. Prior to living amidst the disorder, we were unable to see the overcrowded forest for the familiar trees.

Disorder

The good news is that disorder is always an invitation to put life together differently. When we chose to repaint our walls, we also chose to invite disorder into our lives.

The bad new is, that's not how it usually works. We don't choose disorder. Disorder is thrust upon us.   

The landlord informs us that she has decided to sell the house we're renting, and we have 30 days to move. 

We fall into bed, desperate for a good night of sleep, and then our baby throws up, spikes a fever, and we are on the phone with the advice nurse at 2am.

At a routine check up, our doctor finds a suspicious lump.

Headed to a crucial meeting, we miss our connecting flight.

We wake up one morning to find that our car has been stolen.

On an evening walk we get hit over the head with the fact that we have been using wine as a coping mechanism for years. 

A conversation we thought would turn left, takes a sharp turn to the right.

We suddenly lose a beloved member of our family.

The financial rug gets pulled out from beneath our feet.

We cast our vote on Election Day, and wake up the day after.

Order

Disorder

Reorder

That's how it works.  

Time to get to work.

Reorder

MARGINS

Today is my sister's birthday. This post is shared with gratitude for the best sister a girl could ask for. Thank you for teaching me about the need for margins. They make all the difference. And... Happy Birthday Margie!! Where would we all be without you?

The Need For Space

Imagine a book in which the pages have no margins, or a photo where the image fills the frame with no space in which to sit.  The empty space is as important as the rest.  For it is the emptiness in which the words fill the page, the art the canvas, the photo the wall.  Without it the power of the words and beauty of the image is lost. Or at best, diminished. In order to be fully there, they have need of some  space.  So do we.  We have need of margins in which our lives can reside.

And yet.

The urge to fill my time with doing feels relentless, the willingness to simply stop and rest like a foreign language. Doing means I am getting somewhere. Doesn’t it?  Or in the constant going am I spinning my wheels, and in the doing am I coming undone. The ancient text says there is a time to work and a time to rest.

And yet.

How to find time in the midst of days that seem too short, calendars too full, the very real needs that press upon us, and the list that never ends? Like most things, it starts with one thing. Getting up thirty minutes earlier so as to linger over that first sacred sip of coffee.  (A no brainer.) Arranging my days more carefully. (Effort required) Shutting the door for thirty minutes of solitude in between meetings. (Often impossible)  Or maybe just five. (Usually doable)  Saying ‘no’ just once. (Scary at first, f-ing liberating as skill develops)  Not answering the phone just because it rings. (That’s an option?) Disconnecting from the internet so as to log on to my inner one. (Learning to surf all over again)

In order to write our stories well, to make something lovely of the lives we have, space is required. Margins can be as expansive as a silent retreat or sabbatical, as far away as a remote island, as close as a walk around the block, or as brief as a deep breath.

Where might a bit of space exist that is there for the taking?

Photo by Tom Pierson

First posted in September 2014 on Matters That Matter