In A Heartbeat

Joy resides in the heart.  

Today has me thinking a lot about hearts. A few months ago my husband discovered, kind of by a fluke, that his heart was beating too fast, and somewhat irregularly. Rather than getting its signal from the sinus node, which regulates the heartbeat, his ticker was responding to a different impulse. While not imminently dangerous, in the long term it would be good to take care of it.

Today, he did.

His doctor, a cardiac electrophysiologist, put a catheter up into his heart to locate and shut down the misfiring cells. He’s out of surgery, and we will head home tonight with his heart, once again, responding to the beat of the right drum.

I think joy in our hearts is a lot like that.

We are meant to experience joy deep within, and come wired with an internal signal to regulate the quiet, steady heartbeat of joy that can sustain us even in the midst of our most challenging days. But sometimes we let fear and anxiety, anger and resentment, guilt and shame run amok, and suddenly our hearts are out of whack too. In other words, we allow the wrong impulses to regulate the state of our hearts.

Time to locate and shut down the misfiring messages, and allow our hearts to do what they were designed to do.

Beat with the quiet, steady heartbeat of joy. 

Choosing Joy

Entering this third week of Advent and its theme of Joy, I am struggling to unpack this tiny word. It feels so important, and so universal to the longings of our human hearts, and yet it so hard to describe.

It’s kind of like happiness. But not exactly.

Happiness is more like a state of mind, while joy is a state of being.

Happiness happens to us, while joy happens inside of us.

Happiness comes and goes, while joy can take up permanent residence.

Happiness depends on outside circumstances, while joy is an inside job.

Maybe joy is both a choice and a practice. Life is hard, and will always be a mixture of the good, the bad, and the seriously ugly, but in the midst of it all, I am learning that I can choose joy anyway. I can practice joy no matter what.

Rather than try and unpack its meaning, maybe I’ll just wrap my arms around this tiny word and hold on for dear life.

Want to join me?

Tiny Joy Vase: Beanpole Pottery

Beholding Joy

It is the third Sunday in Advent, ushering in the theme of Joy.

Wonder is a doorway to joy.

Peace Lives Close In

Peace lives close in. So close in fact that it lives within our own breath. And with every inhale we come back home.

Sometimes however, we head out way beyond what is under our own agency. We allow our fears to run rampant as we turn out gaze beyond the horizon. We conjure up the worst possible outcomes instead of imagining the best ones and taking steps to make them happen. We listen to the voices with the biggest microphones and neglect the still small voice within.

It is our breath that will bring us back.

Breathe and return to your own jurisdiction.

Breathe and return to the part of the world that is within your reach.

Breathe and do what you can, and let go of what you can’t.

Breathe and do what calls to you.

Breathe and use your gifts.

Breathe and come back home.

Peace At The End Of The Day

Sometimes peace means getting to the end of the day and knowing you’ve done what you could.

You’ve done the very best you could with what you had to work with that day. 

You’ve extended grace to others...and to yourself.  

You’ve managed a little more faith and a little less fear. 

You’ve done what is yours to do, and left others free to do the same. 

Be at peace. You’ve done what you could.

Leave In Peace

One of our daughters and her family are moving into a new home the week before Christmas, and if ever there were something that could be described as the opposite of peaceful, it is moving from one house to another. Chaos reigns supreme as we work to pack up life as we’ve known it, and move it into new digs. It is so daunting that it’s hard to know where to start, much less actually starting. Actually, however, starting is the key to the whole thing. Pick a room and pack it up. Be ruthless about what to keep and what to toss. Label the boxes with what’s inside and where to put them when they arrive at the new location. Keep on keeping on until that room is done, and then move on to the next. 

Today we started with the kitchen, and as the day draws to a close, it’s hard to believe what we’ve accomplished. Our hearts are at rest, not because the job is done, but because it is underway, and room-by-room, come moving day, they will be ready. 

Peace, which by one definition is a state of mental calm, is cultivated in part by taking that first step to address the source of our worry or anxiety. Be it a project, broken relationship, change of course, financial problem, or challenging conversation, once we begin to take action everything gets a little easier.

Peace, as it turns out, isn’t necessarily something we wait for.  It’s just might be something we move toward. 

Passing The Peace

Rumor has it that when Jesus was getting ready to leave the planet, he gathered some of his friends together to give them a farewell gift. It wasn’t a token gift, or a fancy gift. It was the most practical and necessary present that he could leave them as he prepared to leave them behind. He had important work to do and so did they, and to do that work, they would need to draw upon his gift every day.

I like to imagine him looking down, pausing for a moment, gathering his strength in the midst of his own inner angst at what lay ahead, and then locking eyes with each of his friends, one at a time, and saying “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”

He didn’t tell them that peace was something to be hoped for someday, it was to be had right now.  It wasn’t your typical gift that comes with strings attached, it was freely given. The peace he offered was meant to ease their troubled hearts and drop kick the fear right out of them, and when he was gone, they would carry that peace with them wherever they went. 

In our church, at the end of each service, before the final blessing, we turn to one another and do what we call “passing the peace”. We lock eyes and say peace be with you, and respond with the words and also with you. It is a way of remembering that long ago gift, and bringing into the present, and as was originally intended, it is meant to ease our troubled hearts and drop kick the fear right out of them.  

We all have important work to do in order to leave our little corner of the world better than we found it, and in order to do that work we need to draw upon the gift of peace every day.

Peace be with you.  

Pass it on. 

Rest In Peace

“And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.” 
And he replied: 
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.” 

(Excerpt from the poem The Gate of The Year by Minnie Louise Haskins”

The summer before last we got lost on our way down from the summit of Mt. Adams. Originally our intention was to hike down that same day, stopping to pick up the tents and gear we’d left behind at Lunch Counter, a flat area where hikers camp before summiting. But as the day wore on, it was obvious that we would need to spend another night on the mountain. As darkness began to fall and with no camp and no other hikers in sight, it became obvious that our only option was to bivouac. In other words, spend the night outside at 9000 feet in below freezing temperature without a tent or cover. Family and friends were expecting a call to say we’d made it down, but we couldn’t find a spot with cell service.

We found a small flat area surrounded by a crude rock wall that others before us had built, and did our best to settle in for the night. We put on every layer of clothing we had in our packs and pulled an emergency blanket over us. Think laying on your driveway under a big piece of tin foil. It was going to be a long night.

My biggest concern wasn’t that we wouldn’t make it out, but for the people who loved us who were expecting our call. When they didn’t hear from us, I knew they would be scared something had happened to us, but there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

Except maybe pray. Which I did.

Night time is for sleeping, but that night, there was no sleep to be had. But even when back home and in our oh-so-comfortable bed, there are nights when sleep is illusive. What is it about 2am in the morning? Or, in my case, 2:20am to be exact. That is when, if I am going to wake up and fret, it will be then, and nothing seems to be off the table. Money, health concerns, worries about family and friends, the economy, those currently in the White House, climate change, dementia, hearing loss, sagging skin, and the thousands of family photos that need to be organized. The next morning I am always amazed at how much better things look, but in the middle of the night, things can look mighty bleak.

That night on the mountain however, as I lay there alternately worrying about those who were worrying about us, and praying for the whole situation, my attention turned to the night sky. There was nothing I could do about our situation until the morning, but I had a front row seat for the Perseid Meteor Shower, the Big Dipper, Orion’s Belt, and the Milky Way. I’d never spent an entire night watching the magic show on display that goes on whether we see it or not, and the splendor of it all took my shivering breath away.

There is something about being stranded on a mountain, under the heavens that puts everything into perspective, and laying there I remembered the words of Julian of Norwich, “All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.” And somehow, I knew she was right. All was well, and all would be well. Maybe not immediately, but eventually.

Dawn began to appear, and it was time to move our stiff and aching bodies down the mountain. Reaching for my cell phone, I found that where I hadn’t been able to get a signal the night before, a few bars appeared and I was able to make a call to put other’s minds at ease.

All was well.

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

Peace Out

As it turns out, maintaining inner peace is no piece of cake. After writing yesterday about Choosing Peace, I woke up with the best of intentions. I read in my morning book, Into The Magic Shop by James Doty, learning about how to breathe your body into a state of peaceful calm. After that, I spent some time in meditation, got ready to go the gym, and had our sacred morning hug with my husband. As far as I could tell, I was choosing peace, peace, and more peace.

Then it all went to hell in a hand basket.

Over what kind of laundry detergent to purchase.

My husband at one end of the counter with his list of the most effective products à la Consumer Reports, me on the other end listing out my environmental concerns. It wasn’t one of my finer moments when I accused him of being “fastidious” to a fault, and, I had to add, at the expense of our planet, not to mention our daughters who care about such things.

Peace was out, frustration was in.

As far as I could see in that moment either one cared about the environment, or one did not. Which is precisely where the problem lay; either-or-thinking. Once my feet were firmly planted in needing to be right, it became about winning or losing, and it’s hard to find peace in the midst of a battle.

To be clear, maintaining an inner sense of peace doesn’t mean going along to get along, or acting conciliatory to avoid conflict. But peace is a shelter that can be found in the midst of almost any storm, and thankfully, by the time I got home from the gym, I’d found my way back there.

When we resumed our conversation I discovered, as it turns out, that one can both care about the environment and clean laundry.

Peace out.

✌️

Choosing Peace

“Inner peace begins the moment you choose not to allow another person or event to control your emotions.: – Pema Chodron

It is the second Sunday in Advent, ushering in the theme of Peace.

Let’s start with the basics. What is peace?

The dictionary defines it as freedom from disturbance; quiet and tranquility; mental calm. Taken at face value, it would seem that peace is available only in the absence of disruption and in the presence of tranquil circumstances. That, however, doesn’t jive with life as I know it. Peace has to be an inside job, because most of the time life is messy and full of disturbances of all kind. Our cell phone rings, messages ding, email floods our inbox, traffic comes to a halt, the kids get sick, a pipe breaks in the house, we miss our flight, relationships go sideways, and fear mongers control our airwaves. Peace cannot depend on our circumstances, because our circumstances are not dependable.

Peace is a choice.

Peace is an option.

Peace is a decision.

Peace is a practice.

Peace is a habit.

Peace is a perspective.

Peace is a possiblity.

If there is peace to be had, it is up to me to find it, not wait for it to find me.