2006 In Review

This past year was one of change for me. The year began with me cycling in New Zealand, but that's when I heard I had lost my job. Once I got home, the hospital where I worked for the last 13 years, closed it's doors, and I said too many sad goodbyes to my coworkers. Because of some poor coping skills, I ended up in counseling for a bit.

I followed my boss, Deb, to work at an inner city nursing home which proved more difficult than I could have thought. A few hour work-day became full-time during the summer. It became so stressful both physically and mentally. In November she convinced me to stay on the books 'as needed' instead of quitting. I worked a few days at Christmas, the first in over a month, and it was better.

One thing that got me through the toughest parts of the year was the prospect of a new adventure on the horizon. I had come up with my grandest scheme yet, six months of walking various pilgrim routes through Europe, starting in Santiago, then to Canterbury, and ending in Rome. You can't imagine the myriad of details to take care of when going on a long adventure like that. Plus there's equipment to buy or replace, along with my always present need to design some new gadget to take along.

Guidebooks were bought or ordered, websites bookmarked, files downloaded, language CD's listened to, and emails and letters sent to friends throughout Europe. I am planning on leaving in early April to study Spanish with my friends in Almansa Spain, so as the holidays approached I was working/planning/dreaming at a fevered pace, full of anticipation. I've been having some knee pain lately, but doing rehab exercise to make sure it doesn't stop me.

The year hasn't been a smooth one, . But one bright spot that has helped more than I can measure is my decision to follow the Buddhist path. Besides my continued readings on Buddhist philosophy and beginning a meditation practice, I have been very involved with activities with the Rime Buddhist Center here in Kansas City. All this has helped me put life's ups and downs into a different perspective, and that helps.

So, I'm ending the year with a smile. Planning is going well with my trip to Europe this Spring, I'm not stressed at work, everyone is healthy and whole, my niece Lauren was on the state championship volleyball team as a sophomore, and her sister Andrea finished her first university semester. My niece Pam now works for the same engineering firm that I worked at over 20 years ago. The brothers are all working and healthy. And mom is as busy as ever with her sewing and church projects. I've been blessed with many friends, some new, some that stick with me no matter what, and a few who have be reacquainted. 2007 looks to be a good year.

Let's see, New Years resolutions: loose 40lbs, laugh a lot, accept more, expect less, meditate every day, look at going back to school, come up with another adventure, dream in Spanish, meet Thich Nhat Hanh, and allow loving-kindness to flow both ways in my life.

"Grassroots Zen"

by Manfred B Steger
& Perle Besserman

From the book jacket:
Even though we may not be devout or practicing Buddhists, we share the same hunger for answers to the lifelong questions: "Who am I?" "Why do I have to die?" and "Why do I suffer?" But we don't have to practice traditional religious forms to seek answers to these questions. We need only to sit down and meditate with others like ourselves - practical minded people who share our experience of juggling career, family life, and social responsibility - along with a deep commitment to Zen. Authors Manfred B Steger and Perle Besserman present us with a Zen without hierarchy, Zen without robes - pure Zen.

Grassroots Zen emphasizes gender equality and family practice and recognizes the demands of children, work and social engagement. I can be practiced by any person - religious or not - who is committed to self-realization, and who is willing to make meditation a way of life. Grassroots Zen places responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the individual practitioner, and teaches how to integrate meditation and daily life in the busy world outside of the monastery.

Meaningful quotes:
Only when we realize that the universe is itself nothing but change, and that it's going on all the time, can we begin to experience ourselves as change.

The self at one with change is more like a drop of water flowing over a rock, changing shape and form as it assumes the face of the rock, perhaps stopping from time to time, until it grows dense and is once again pulled down by gravity into the stream from which it came.

Really allowing yourself to become one with change means you no longer think about change. Instead of separating yourself from changing conditions, emotions, experiences, expectations, and goals, you simply disappear into them. They're always new. Life is never boring. Having closed the gap between the changing universe, the moment, and the separate entity you think of as your 'self', you can at last come and go in peace.

When you feel you're pushing yourself, chasing after an imaginary goal or a special moment, just sit back and take a breath. Let everything go. After a few breaths, you'll notice that you're already right in the middle of your special moment...There's no need to chase after it, only to open up to it at any time, 'because it's always here!'

There's no need to sweep away thoughts, merely to unburden yourself of the baggage they carry with them. There's no need to pile them up or collect the, either...Meet everything that comes into your path with an uncluttered mind.

By taking leave of our cluttered lives and entering the path to our 'true home' in every breath, our true home is always with us....It only appears to be beyond our reach when we bury it under a mountain of stale notions. We've got to cut through this mountain in order for our true home to reveal itself.

The antidote to the poison of greed goes to work when we immerse ourselves in the world without objectives, when we simply enjoy life in the grassy field for its own sake.

Hatred is an affirmation of the isolated, alienated self at the expense of everything else. Taking it a step further, hatred is the act of destroying the emerging moment so that the desperately alienated self can run roughshod over everything in its path.

...our minds are in the habit of 'clarifying' by conceptualizing, analyzing, scrutinizing, examining, dissecting, creating distance between ourselves and our questions. The more we engage in this process, the more restless we become.

Reading isn't enough; we have to sit down and partake of the clarity that's right here in this unfolding moment.

Our problem isn't so much about floating around in emptiness as it is being suffocated by form. Our minds are increasingly overcrowded; we really have to make an effort to clear them, to provide space for the Dharma to manifest in our karmic activities.

The body is really our first home, our first sense of place. It allows us to realize our true nature, to manifest the whole universe. It's actually a wonderful instrument...It's our responsibility to keep that instrument tuned. We have to pay attention to it, to care for it in the same way we're being told these days to care for our soul. There's no disconnection between body and soul. Cherishing one means you're cherishing both. We have to keep our bodies healthy and treat the wonderful home we occupy as the true manifestation of the Lotus Land. The body is not something to get rid of in order to practice; it's the very instrument of our practice. Without it, there's no realization.

Limitations are our life. There is beauty in constraint, not merely in challenging it, but in becoming one with it...Where is the constraint once you've become one with it?...Instead of trying to fend off limitations, it's better just to become one hundred percent limited. It's not easy, but we can take comfort in the knowledge that the next moment always contains something new.

Symbols of personal and group meaning help us focus unselfconsciously on what we feel good about. But we need a health sense of self to start with, so it helps to create our own rituals. We perform them because they give us pleasure while at the same time relaxing the ego's hold on us. Losing the self in ritual is a prelude to experiencing the sacred in the ordinary.

Life is a very interesting story. But we shouldn't read too much into it, nor should we turn it into a rigid set of rules and regulations. As long as we play, live our our stories with the unself-consciousness of a child embarking on a new adventure, we'll be okay.

Spiritual hunger is a long to finally come home; it's a condition in which the bodymind longs for peace.

...spiritual hunger is only sated by immersion in the moment, with all its perceptions, mental reactions, thoughts, feelings, emotions, colors, sounds, smells, tastes, and so on. Spiritual food is a wondrous patchwork that we call the moment, the world.

We don't know that our spiritual food is right here because we don't live in our everyday moments, and because we take conceptual reality, which is only one side of the picture, for the whole picture. We forget, we don't realize that every concept, idea, and thought dissolves in the the breath.

The problem isn't eradicating (spiritual) hunger so much as it is finding nourishment. To be alive is to be hungry. So there are not intellectual solutions to the problem, only existential ones...we can only feed our spiritual hunger by living, being, doing.

We are suspicious of drifters.

(In practicing) We're becoming one with the active, dynamic living event that is this very moment, whether it's roses or cancer or rainfall. We are motion, but not the mover. We're being receptive without being passive.

Instead of using the intellect to analyze ways in which we can experience interdependence, we allow ourselves to sink into the experience of the moment without thinking about it.

We don't know why the compassion flows or where it's coming from. We simply feel it flowing, taking us in the direction of conserving life, of healing, of stretching out a hand to someone else on the path, a perfect stranger bearing our own face.

Grassroots Zen available at Powells and Amazon

Expanding Opportunities

Well, another holiday season is upon us, and I decided to do something a little different for my card this year. I enlisted the help of my friend Bev Stone at Expanding Opportunities.

After my trip to Kenya in 1987 and the posting of my Kenya journals, I met Bev because of our interests in East Africa. The painting is artwork done by Charles Nganga, one of the feature artists at Aina Moja and Other African Crafts, a project of Expanding Opportunities.

I made a donation in everyone's name so that Expanding Opportunities can continue to make a difference to the neediest of people in Kenya. We all have a lot to be thankful for this Holiday Season. Won't you consider helping Expanding Opportunites continue their much needed work.

EXPANDING OPPORTUNITIES

Kenya:
- Population = 33,829,590
- 50% below the poverty line
- 40% unemployment rate
- 1.2 million living with AIDS
- 43% of the population is ages 0-14
- 1.5 million children orphaned by AIDS

Artisan Support

Aina Moja is Kiswahili. It means "one of a kind." Aina Moja, African Crafts & Art and 1st African Clothing are business ventures developed to further the mission of Expanding Opportunities by increasing the market for African artisans. They are also means of earning funds for the other projects of Expanding Opportunities. They sell African crafts, artwork and clothing.

Sold through craft shows, consignment,
personal showings and the Internet
AinaMoja.com   AfricanCraftsAndArt.com   1stAfricaClothing.com

Books for Kenya

The Books for Kenya project collects new and used textbooks, sells some to collect funds for Kenyan curriculum textbooks and carries some to distribute to schools in Kenya, Africa. Many Kenyan schools do not have enough resources for their teachers and students. Frequently, there is only one textbook per class. There are no photocopiers, overhead projectors or other teaching tools that replicate materials.

Camp Forest

Camp Forest is a wilderness Day Camp for children in Brooks, Maine. Nurturing a love of nature, the children learn indigenous survival skills from around the world.

More info at: campforestmaine.com

STEMS: Success Through Education, Money & Support

STEMS is a small loan project with four loans in repayment. Three are small entrepreneurs in Kenya and one in Uganda. It is also an avenue for individuals to sponsor a student through high school. Families in Kenya must pay for a high school education. Only 34% of eligible students attend high school.

15% of adult males and 21% of adult females
in Kenya can not read or write.

Friends Across the Ocean

The Travel Courses are designed to assist US students and adults gain first-hand experience of life in Kenya. Call or visit the web site to plan your journey with your class.

The Service Journeys are designed individually for you to share your self and your experience.

The Tag-a-Long allows you to immerse in the culture as you live and work with us.

The Pen Pal Project matches students from Kenya and US students who then correspond to share cultural experiences.

Distance Learning Centers

Goal: To assist community groups in developing a learning center which provides basic literacy, vocational and post-secondary education to local communities in Kenya through on site and internet classes.

The five public and 10 private universities in Kenya can only accommodate less than half of those seeking post-secondary education.

The Computer Society of Kenya estimates a ratio of one computer for every 2,000 Kenyans. The national power grid serves less than 15% of the population.

Street Children Fund

Supporting a home environment for 8 street children in Kenya

- Educating these children
- Providing clothing and counseling
- Feeding additional children in Kenya
- Building The Joseph Waweru Home School for 32 street children where they can live in a home environment and learn reading, writing, math and a vocational skill.

A little goes a long way-

$1 feeds 1 child on the street one meal

$40 per month feeds a growing boy at the Joseph Waweru Home School

$70 per month fully supports one child in the Joseph Waweru Home School

$560 per month fully supports 8 children at the Joseph Waweru Home School

You can make a difference in the life of a child.
Give to the Street Children Fund.


Will you help us have a future? Give and be enriched.

Donations

Donations are tax deductible & can be made by:
- Credit card or PayPal by visiting www.exop.org
- Check to Expanding Opportunities, 84 Payson Rd, Brooks, ME 04921
- Call toll free 1-888-760-7943 or 207-722-3708

'Momma Zen'

Walking the
Crooked Path of Motherhood"
by Karen Maezen Miller

I was able to hear Karen Maezen Miller give a talk entitled "Dharma Life As Practice" about recognizing the practice opportunities in the everyday upheavals of family life. Maezen is a mother, wife, writer and Zen Buddhist priest at the Hazy Moon Zen Center in Los Angeles. I was touched by her words, so much so that I bought the book. When I told her that I was not married and had no children, she wrote inside the cover, "Everyone can be a new mother!"

From the book jacket:

Drawing on her experience as a first-time mother, and on her years of Zen meditation and study, Karen Maezen Miller explores how the daily challenges of parenthood can become the most profound spiritual journey of our lives.

This compelling and wise memoir follows the timeline of early motherhood from pregnancy through toddlerhood. Miller takes readers on a transformative journey, charting a mother's growth beyond naive expectations and disorientation to finding fulfillment in ordinary tasks, developing greater self-awareness and self-acceptance - to the gradual discovery of 'maternal bliss', a state abiding happiness and ease that, she explains, is available to us all.

Quotes I found meaningful:

Yes, this crying-out-loud life is your crooked path, whose bumps and bends cannot be negotiated through mere reasoning. Time and again, you'll be stripped of your preconceptions, judgments, ideas, theories, and opinions...and left to go straight on through the inexplicable experience itself. These gulfs of incomprehension bring the opportunity for spiritual growth and self-acceptance.

"Kind speech has the power to turn the destiny of a nation." Dogen Zenji

Life keeps going. It keeps going within us. When we're not attentive, it keeps on going without us.

"My life is one continuous mistake." Dogen Zenji

"Don't push the river. Let the future come to you." unknown

...thinking is not at all the same as being.

...for the light to reach any depth at all, you have to stop thinking so much.

"Nevery hurt yourself with the thought that you will fail." unknown

You don't have to work so hard at this. You don't have to do so much. You don't have to endeavor to be natural, normal, and good. It happens by itself when you least expect it. If you are confused about what you should be doing, try this. Stop what you are doing. Take care of what is in front of you, when it is in front of you, and the confusion will pass. This is called the effort of no effort. No effort is what powers the universe.
    With time, your roots grow deep and your branches long. You lean a little less backward in fear and a little less forward in doubt, resting solidly right where you are. When the wind blows, you bend. When it stop, you straighten. Your boughs provide shelter and shade. Your strength supports the sky. Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes and the grass grows by itself.

Your life is a garden. And you are the only gardener.

My practice is to see that nothing ever gets in the way of anything else. More to the point, my practice is to recognize that no one else is ever pushing me forward, and no one is ever holding me back.

Happy now? Yes, I would snap awake, realizing in that moment, that I could choose and change. And by changing my attitude, change everything.

And yet there is such a thing as happiness. There is such a place as bliss when you drop your expectations, lose your selfishness, forget your grievances, give up your worries, abandon the plan, stop your striving, let it out, let it go, let things pass, take a breath, take a break, quiet down, be still, empty your mind, open your heart, and come alive. What else is there to be but happy?

This is your new spiritual practice: cracking a smile.

Momma Zen available at Powells and Amazon

Links:
MommaZen.com
Hazy Moon Zen Buddhist Center