The work in which he is engaged has the public school teacher as its focus, and rightly so.  Most education in the US is delivered in the public school setting, and it is that venue, with its overworked and underpaid (and, more importantly, underappreciated) staff that the greatest emphasis must lie if we are to sustain a socially vital cadre of people who see their life’s work as a mission and not just a job.  One wonders, however, how some of the concepts might apply to a private school setting such as the one in which I work.

The fundamental question that he asks in his writings about teaching is, “Who is the self that teaches?”, and surely this is a question for each and every teacher to answer for him or herself, irregardless of the circumstances in which they teach, K-12 or college, public or private.  He says that this is a fundamentally difficult question to answer, probably because there is no uniform answer.  Rather, the answer is specific to each individual who enters the profession.  An adequate answer to the question can only result from great introspection, a willingness on the part of all of us who work in the classroom to examine who we are at our core, examine the respect we have for ourselves and what we do, and understand the respect that we wish for our students.  He seems to be saying that, without adequate self-analysis—of our motivations, of our commitment to our own growth and to community–, our efforts to ensure that the educational enterprise will thrive into the future are doomed.

To that end, he examines the teacher’s role, since Palmer’s contention is that the teacher has a huge role in creating conditions that make learning possible:  “I have no question that students who learn, not professors who perform, is what teaching is all about: students who learn are the finest fruit of teachers who teach. . . . I am also clear that in lecture halls, seminar rooms, field settings, labs, and even electronic classrooms—the places where most people receive most of their formal education—teachers possess the power to create conditions that can help students learn a great deal—or keep them from learning much at all. Teaching is the intentional act of creating those conditions, and good teaching requires that we understand the inner sources of both the intent and the act.”—emphasis mine (6).  Notice the final statement:  “good teaching requires that we understand the inner sources of both the intent and the act”.  What is meant by “inner sources”?  I can only assume that the “inner sources of . . . the intent” means what motivates me (as one example of the great mass of teachers nationwide), as an individual with my life circumstances, to engage in teaching as a profession in the first place, and continue to be engaged in teaching over the course of a career (in my case 39 years).  As he goes on to show later, the essential “intent” comes from the heart, and we must understand the heart of the teacher, the emotional and spiritual base of the individual and how teaching and the core values of the individual are in synergy.

Answering the question of intent for myself, personally, I would have to say that I entered teaching in 1970 knowing that I always wanted to be involved in schools because school felt like a safe place, a place where ideas could be played with, a place that had boundaries and structure, a place that was unambiguous, a place that rose above the dehumanization of the “for profit” world where human beings were mere cogs in the wheel of a capitalist ethos that put profit before purpose and earnings above endeavor.  I was, and still am, enthralled by the world of ideas, and can get rapturous when a new thought or a new way of viewing a known reality takes hold of me; it is this same sense of wonder, excitement and rapture that I hope to communicate to my students.  These feelings can evolve out of the simplest of circumstances.  I have delighted at seeing students delight at finally “getting” how to use the two primary past tenses in Spanish and then starting to use them correctly the majority of the time, and this emotion is just as intense as when discussions in a literature class take us down the road of women’s rights, machismo, and the ways in which societies attempt to control desire (a piece I commonly teach in the upper levels is Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba which features all of these themes prominently).

So, if my “intent” is to lead my students to the same level of excitement that I have for whatever it is I am teaching, the “act” must be in line with the intent.  In other words, HOW I go about trying to achieve my goal of excitement and engagement must be consistent with the goal I am seeking to achieve.  This is where I think Palmer is especially ingenious.  If I understand his writing, he seems to be saying that effective teaching is about the “heart in action”.  If I set my intention as getting the students excited about (pick your topic), and I am operating from the heartfelt intent which drove me to teaching in the first place (one of them, at any rate), then how I go about creating the circumstances for my students’ excitement, my “act” must be consistent with my intent.  I am not talking about pedagogy or methodology, necessarily, but rather about how the actions I take in bringing about learning reflect my heart’s desire to help the students understand my excitement, and through it tap into their own potential excitement.

Look for more posts about this topic, since I find it fascinating, and Palmer a strikingly cogent writer and thinker.

I was so moved by her, and others’, comments that it caused me to stop and reflect on these issues, and other related concerns.

In this tenuous economic climate, indeed what CAN be trusted?  A constant refrain among those who seemingly know is that real estate is such a stable investment because it has historically always gone up.  In 2006, I bought a condo in Boston as an investment, believing in that premise.  Surprise!!!  The problem with real estate is that people have been treating it like any other investment, and like any other investment, it can go up and down when the circumstances surrounding it that gave it stability in the first place are altered (i.e., when mortgages are handed out like free gifts at a Tupperware party, or bundled and sold like any other investment to speculators who have no intrinsic interest in what stands behind their purchase).   We have been on such a roll over the past 30+ years, with real estate constantly appreciating in value, that we have become impervious to the possibility of its potential for fluctuation, and hence even more panicked when it acts or reacts to market forces like any common stock.

The larger question, however, is the stability of the neighborhoods, towns, cities and regions that have been adversely affected by this one particular meltdown.  When foreclosures start to pop up with the regularity of dandelions, the fabric of a community is dealt a hard blow.  Even against the backdrop of a mobile society, where we take impermanence for granted, this particular type of instability has had the devastating effect of calling into question what is permanent, or more specifically what needs to at least have the semblance of permanence.  We need, as human beings, to know that we can count on the continuing presence of family, or friends, or neighbors.  To see that a neighborhood can dissolve right before our eyes, where people just turn the keys over to the bank because they can’t pay the mortgage any longer and walk away, is unsettling.  A question that must arise for people affected by this, both those who lose their houses and the neighbors who are left with empty neighborhoods and the empty skeletons of discontinued lives is “why should I invest myself in the next people to move in next door or down the street if they might also move away or be forced to leave?”

There is actually a somewhat perverse positive in this set of circumstances.  If we can’t necessarily trust the continuity of neighborhood like we once could, doesn’t it make sense that something would need to arise to take its place?  I would suggest that other institutions, like the church or the school, might serve as a surrogate to the stability of neighborhood.  Similarly, an inward turning, a greater reliance on ones’ self and a seeking of fulfillment from a spiritual bank based on altered external realities may actually result from this crisis.  If indeed the economic woes we are suffering are pointing a finger at a basic spiritual emptiness within our consumer-driven society, where we no longer can afford the seeming “necessities” of before, then what we are left with is a need to seek our fulfillment in those areas that are free to us, where we re-discover the simple pleasures of friends and family, of picnics in the park, or a daily walk with friends, or a free public lecture, or game night with family or friends.  These kinds of activities represent the bonds that we have allowed to be slowly eaten away as we have allowed a consumer mentality, a quick return need to dominate our economic and personal realities.

So, this is the silver lining I see in all of this madness.  As the story of comfort, as Rachel Remen calls it, slowly unravels even further, I believe that we will not allow it to simply reinsert itself into our lives; rather, I feel that we as a society will call into question our assumptions and our stories and re-assert the primacy of the links to friends and family and neighbors that have so sustained us over the centuries.  This is a golden opportunity to shift the axis

I just came back from four days of hiking on the medieval pilgrim trail in northern Spain called the Camino de Santiago (the Way of St. James).  I was leading a group of 25 American and 20 Spanish teenagers down four contiguous stages of this old route, four days up and down some not insignificant hills on rock-strewn paths that wound their way through vineyards and wheat fields and small towns and villages.  Now, you might think I am nuts for undertaking such an adventure; teenagers can be hard enough to deal with under good circumstances, and surely one is plenty, but forty five?  I must be crazy!!!

Actually, quite the reverse is true.  First, teens have this seemingly genetic need to be with each other, and they never seem to run out of things to say, people and situations to talk about, and opinions to dole out.  They actually do a good job taking care of each other and in that sense only need gentle (even if repeated) reminders about what is expected of them.

Secondly, I find that most are up for a challenge, even want one that is different from the typical challenge they face in their academic life, or team sports life back home.  There is something that is both structured and yet unstructured about this kind of walking.  The path is obvious, and in this case well marked, so you never really have much of a chance of getting lost (although five of our girls managed to do so the first day, and even I, in my unfocused enthusiasm on the third morning, managed to miss a trail sign and take a half an hour detour which left me, well, let’s just say somewhat perturbed with myself, fine example I was setting!!)  So, in this sense, there is a structure that mirrors in some fashion something of the life they are used to back home.

However, and this is the beauty of hiking, it frees the mind to go where it will.  The effort isn’t so great that you can think of nothing but the energy involved in the process (as can be the case with running).  The rhythm of walking allows thought to run where it will, follow its own lead, and define its own reality.  Sometimes there is no rational process going on at all, just a series of images floating through a space that has, finally, been decluttered and allowed to find its own level.  Isn’t that what creativity is all about?  So, in that sense, walking is a creative process, one that too often in our overly structured world we are not allowed the luxury to experience.

To watch what each student does with that time and space is rather interesting.  Some prefer the company of larger numbers (groups of four or five); others like walking with just one other person; still others prefer to set their own pace.  We had one lad who was a rocket and just took off down the path, tuned into his own zone, and finished in record time.  One group of girls never separated and just seemed to grow in closeness over the course of four days, each encouraging the other as they all fought through fatigue, allergies, blisters, and strains of a variety of kinds.  That is true companionship and sisterhood.  Others found no point in just walking for four days, getting from one place to the next.  While it may not be obvious now, I am convinced that reflection and maturity will show each of them the broader context in which to view their experience of these past four days, and I can’t help but feel that future challenges and difficulties will be measured, in part at least, against their ability to deal with physical discomfort that doesn’t disappear, with the mental challenge of just moving forward when the rest of your psyche is screaming for you to stop, and with the spiritual discomfort that some felt of the seemingly vast void of miles and miles of empty space (how DO you deal with the fear of aloneness when most of your life you are surrounded by people and civilization).

I can’t help but feel, then, that there is a significant lesson to be learned from what we did over the past four days.  I wish them many more challenges, many more discomforts, and as much time out of their comfort zone as is possible so that their souls can be stretched into the adult they need to be:  someone not afraid to face the unknown, the lonely and hostile stretches of the “Camino” that is their life on this earth.  These “wounds” are the basis of growth.  May they grow and prosper, and I hope that I helped in some small way toward that growth.

I love being a dad, even if it is probably the hardest thing I have ever done.  My two children, now 25 and 20, are a real joy.  As different as night and day, they have each challenged me in different ways.  My son was not especially focused when he was young, and school was somewhat of an adventure, especially in elementary and middle school.  As the son of teachers, it was especially difficult for us to see him be less of the interested student than his mother and I had been when we were younger.  However, as we constantly challenged him to do better and oversaw his homework and projects and the like, he began to see that school could be interesting.  He matured into a curious young man who was guided by the logic and reasoning that was at the heart of so many family discussions and arguments.  Logic became his ally and he used it to grow into a very astute and observant student of whatever was in front of him.  He is also tenacious and can spend hours doing something until it is just the way he wants it.  That was at times maddening when he was younger, and led to a lot of frustration for him.  However, I can now see that this is one of his more admirable qualities, since it allows him not to settle but to see things through until they are “just so”.  And somewhere along the way, he turned into a warm-hearted and sentimental guy.  I thought that that quality might show itself at some point since he had such a close relationship with his mother, but it has manifested itself in spades.  He spares no expense in showering me, and his girlfriend with affection, attention, constancy, and respect, traits I hope he has seen in me, things for sure he got from his mother.

My daughter was a real daddy’s girl when she was little.  She was the apple of my eye from the moment she came into our lives off of the plane from abroad (she was adopted at nine months).  We shared many special moments, and I loved it when she wanted piggyback rides, or begged to be picked up, or wanted me to read to her, over and over, the same story.  She was an easy child, but with an iron will that you could see even at age one.  I can remember one night when she fell asleep at the table over a plate of scrambled eggs that she refused to eat.  That moment is iconic, a harbinger of what was to come.  She gravitated much more to her mother when she turned the corner into adolescence, a natural thing, but I longed for the simpler times when I was the go-to parent and not just the guy who didn’t understand.  Unfortunately for her, my wife’s sickness and death and her adolescence, compounded by adoption issues, came together at the same time, and she has had to navigate some choppy personal waters as we have tried to put our personal relationship back together over the course of the past three years.  I am pleased at the determined young woman I see in front of me, and am happy that she took so much determination and refusal to back down from her mother, character strengths that will serve her well in the long run.   Eventually, I think, she will see and appreciate the softness that is the flipside of my at times, at least in her eyes,  too stern and responsibility-driven personality.

We give to our children.  We never quite know what they will take and what they will leave.  We make an indelible mark on them, for good and for bad, and hope that we haven’t screwed them up too much.  Sure, they will spend the rest of their lives sorting through our legacy to them, but we are blessedly reminded, even if only on one day a year, that this child carries on our legacy, just as they create their own.

Happy Father’s Day.

I post for your enjoyment the following pearls of wisdom that was forwarded to me by my son. This is not original to him, but seems to have been a column in the Cleveland Plain Dealer a number of years ago that was recently reprinted (written By Regina Brett, 90 years old, of The Plain Dealer, Cleveland , Ohio: “To celebrate growing older, I once wrote the 45 lessons life taught me. It is the most requested column I’ve ever written. My odometer rolled over to 90 in August, so here is the column once more”).

Find yourself in these comments. Take the wisdom and run with it. Apply just one tenet and you will likely feel better and appreciate more. Enjoy!!

1. Life isn’t fair, but it’s still good.

2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.

3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.

4. Your job won’t take care of you when you are sick.
Your friends and parents will. Stay in touch.

5. Pay off your credit cards every month.

6. You don’t have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.

7. Cry with someone. It’s more healing than crying alone.

8. It’s OK to get angry with God. He can take it.

9. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.

10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.

11. Make peace with your past so it won’t screw up the present.

12. It’s OK to let your children see you cry.

13. Don’t compare your life to others. You have no idea what their
journey is all about.

14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn’t be in it.

15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don’t worry; God never blinks.

16. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.

17. Get rid of anything that isn’t useful, beautiful or joyful.

18. Whatever doesn’t kill you really does make you stronger.

19. It’s never too late to have a happy childhood. But the second one is up to you and no one else.

20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don’t take no
for an answer.

21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don’t save it for a special occasion. Today is special.

22. Over prepare, then go with the flow.

23. Be eccentric now. Don’t wait for old age to wear purple.

24. The most important sex organ is the brain.

25. No one is in charge of your happiness but you.

26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words ‘In five years,
will this matter?’

27. Always choose life.

28. Forgive everyone everything.

29. What other people think of you is none of your business.

30. Time heals almost everything. Give time time.

31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.

32. Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.

33. Believe in miracles.

34. God loves you because of who God is, not because of
anything you did or didn’t do.

35. Don’t audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.

36. Growing old beats the alternative — dying young.

37. Your children get only one childhood.

38. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.

39. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.

40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone
else’s, we’d grab ours back.

41. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.

42. The best is yet to come.

43. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.

44. Yield.

45. Life isn’t tied with a bow, but it’s still a gift.

One boy, sitting in the back of the room by the window, is very bright but horribly disorganized. He often looks as though he hasn’t had a shower in a week, his complexion and the look in his eyes would suggest that he eats poorly, and he regularly forgets to bring his books or a pencil to write with or a notebook. He is earning a grade one full grade-level below what he could earn if he were a more assiduous “student” (i.e., the careful type who always gets his homework done, crosses every I and dots every T, and asks multiple clarifying questions on a test to make sure he is doing things right. You know the type). However, he frequently contributes little tidbits of information gleaned from his own travels, or that he remembers from his history class, or something from music history. These kinds of comments enrich a class, but also show me that he is thinking, associating, making connections among bodies of knowledge, and it is this kind of activity that will grow his brain and make him someone, ultimately, who will enrich the world of those around him because he is letting himself be led by his curiosity and his interests. We are all better off when what moves people or what they are passionate about is what they pursue. I feel my classes were enriched by these bits of information that this student brought to all of us. In terms of how we structure a class, then, this suggests that students will do their best work when we give them broader, as opposed to more narrowly defined, themes to investigate.

I have evidence of this from the previous years of teaching when I have had kids do projects to present orally to the whole class. The best projects are the ones they defined based on a broad topic. For example, a theme this year was festivals of the Dominican Republic. Each kid who gave this presentation (there were two of them, one in each section of the second year class) structured the presentation a little differently. One focused primarily on Carnival, while the other gave a more panoramic view of the variety of festivals that populate the Dominican yearly calendar. Of course, the structure may have been generated by the particular documents that served as their information, but the point is that they felt empowered to pursue the topic from their own point of view and interest. Content was communicated and language was used to communicate that content, and the presenters felt that they had control over their own destinies.

This now brings me back to the original point. By the very fact that they are here, having pushed themselves to seek out an educational situation for themselves that they thought would serve them better, these students have already shown a level of creativity, daring, curiosity and courage that shows their true character. Young people can be especially foolhardy and do lots of things without thinking which shows, in part, their willingness to just let go and go do it, and which also shows their lack of understanding of consequences for their actions. At other times, however, kids get so focused on “the right move”, doing “the right thing” that they get paralyzed, their creativity gets stunted, and they can only see themselves as part of some vast continuum that demands that they get it right the first time or pay the consequences forever. What I hope they can walk away with in their interaction with me is the sense that there are many ways to the top of the mountain, that their creativity will be rewarded. But, even the ones who don’t do so well, and there will be those as well, they have shown themselves to be daring just in being willing to submit themselves to the rigors we impose in our curriculum and the creative ways we go about learning and teaching. They need to know that they have the intellectual vigor and the drive to go out and do things, to shake up their own lives and try to recast reality. These types are winners, even if they don’t get into Harvard. That would only be confirmation of the fact that they have learned the “student game” very well, and really nothing else. For my part, I will continue to develop projects and ways of learning that will spark their interest and tap into the creativity that is there already.

That blew me away, as you might expect.  I have long believed in reincarnation and the soul’s perfectability, and have come to think of our multiple lives as the process of the soul perfecting itself on its road to enlightenment.  If Nirvana or Heaven are anything they are a state of enlightenment.  Jesus and the Buddha, the current Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa are all humans whom I would call enlightened beings since they have come to transcend the human condition even as they participate in it.  Getting to that stage is the soul’s on-going work, and the people in our worlds are the teachers we need at that moment to help us along the way.

Wow!!  That to me was a mind-bending concept.  I made me stop and wonder if there was any commonality among my mother, my father, my in-laws, my wife, my children, my fiancé, and the seemingly random people who pass through my world.

As I looked at all of these people, I certainly see that one of the threads is patience and dedication.  My wife was a very dedicated person.  She could spend hours, days, weeks at a task, doggedly working with incredible patience at the minute details of whatever project she had in front of her.  You could always count on the fact that if she put her mind to something, she was going to learn how to do it, and the product of what she did would be solid and worthwhile.  That’s what made her an excellent trainer:  she could sit for hours and pick apart a computer software program, understand how it worked, and then put that understanding together into a learning package that really helped others understand what it was and how it worked and how it would be useful to them.  She had a gift for detail and for clear teaching.

She was a Taurus, a determined person ruled by Venus, the goddess of beauty.  When work is looked at through this lens, it is clear that “beauty” is in the finely-crafted product with all of its attendant details.  As I have come to understand myself better, I realize that my basic Cancerian personality, with its emphasis on home and comfort, is also controlled by Gemini rising, where flightiness and airiness and a tendency to flit from thing to thing is a controlling force.  And surely, my life has had plenty of that as I have too often looked elsewhere for my happiness, thinking that something is what I wanted only to attain it and find it unfulfilling and ultimately move on to something else.  This spiritual wanderlust made for some very unsettling times.  How my wife put up with me for too many years as I seemed to constantly be looking elsewhere for my happiness (maybe a new job would be the one; surely living in Massachusetts would be better than living in West Virginia, etc;) I’ll never know.

So, why did she come into my life?  Most likely to teach me perseverance, the beauty in the finely-crafted thing.  It took a long time, and I am still fighting with that tendency, but so much less than I used to.  Janis, bless you for giving me that gift, for helping me to appreciate the beauty of this moment and of the job well-done  over time, and the patience to focus on the task and not let it go until I was comfortable with the fact that it was the best I could make it.

As part of a continuum of that teaching and learning, I feel that my fiancé has those same things to learn.  It became eerily clear to me that I was a conduit in some kind of celestial psychic process when I came to understand her personality and her strengths and weaknesses, and saw that the sticktoitiveness and perseverance that I had learned from my wife (a form of patience) was something that was going to benefit my fiancé, just as the calm tranquility she demonstrates in the face of challenge is something that will benefit me (since I tend to fly off the handle into an overtly emotional reaction to challenge).  I see similar processes at work in my relationship with my daughter, who interestingly is adopted (there is a suggestion I have heard that even adoptive kids “choose” their parents).  My daughter obviously has lessons to learn related to loss (she lost her biological mother when she was given up for adoption, then lost her adoptive mother who died three years ago) and other things that I’m not sure of.  Exactly where I fit into this equation isn’t quite clear to me yet (even after 20 years of living with her), however I’m sure that the loss of my wife/her mother is part of the learning plan for both of us, probably having to do with appreciation for what we see in front of us, the beauty of the here and now and for the world that is immediately around us.

May the Spirit that holds us all together help to guide you in your understanding of the people who have chosen to walk your journey with you.  Learn from them; you are becoming the person you were meant to become.

Namaste.

But why must I be “ahead of the curve”?  What’s wrong with watching the Bruins or the Celtics on any given evening, or following a couple of on-line blogs that I like of an evening, or do some fooling around with my household budget to see how I can go about saving some money?  In and of themselves, each of these activities is fine and noble and surely has a place in a person’s life.  I think part of the problem is that taken together none of these activities seems to fit a pattern of being, and that seems to frustrate me.  They all seem like random events in a sea of randomness that I call my life.

But wait, let’s look at these things a little more closely.  Sports define who I am in part.  I played sports since I was little.  I still remember being on my first little league team (the Cubs—we were as bad as they were back in the 50’s).  And after that it was soccer, lacrosse, running, biking, hiking.  And I have always watched sports on TV and never felt bad about it.  It just defines the fabric of seasons, years, and decades.  The rhythm of the various sports seasons define the rhythm of my life, and I love the way that feels since I feel connected with something that is a vital and palpable unifying force in the life of this and other countries.  So, my brother, have at it with your Celtics and Red Sox and Patriots and Bruins, and apologize for nothing.

It seems sometimes that reading a blog is a monumental waste of time.  As I sit and read the musings of some unknown person who might be sitting at his kitchen table in his underwear wondering why HE is doing that and why isn’t HE spending HIS time more productively, I sit an wonder the same thing.  What, are we two lonely people working at some random task (he writing, I reading) with nothing specific to show for our efforts.  Well, actually, he has the concrete post he has written and put out there.  And I?  Well, I have the ideas.  And be they concrete (like the blog that has the $1000 savings challenge that I will impose on myself this month to see if it really IS possible for me to save $1000 by cutting back on my monthly budget), or somewhat more esoteric (like the blog video post about mindfulness, which I actually found enlightening), I always come away from them energized with some new project.

So, I guess I should feel pretty good about what I do on a regular basis since it is the fabric of the life that keeps me happy.  Randomness is actually progress down my path since I do things that make me happy, or I pick up useful bits of information, or I find sources of challenge for my mind and my spirit.  In reality, these little challenges and these small delights are the very stuff of life lived from one moment to the next.  They keep me focused and whole and willing to move forward.  So, there, randomness is good.

I’ve been thinking more and more about being mindful, being in the present, the here-and-now.  When the potential of your own mortality is staring you right in the face, it forces you to look at how you view each moment you live and how present you are to your routines, or how you take for granted so many things in your daily life.

I think that the greatest gift I have been giving myself of late is to do one thing at a time.  I think I was as bad as anyone else when it came to trying to do multiple things at once.  When I was in administration in my school, I found that too many things were competing for my attention at once, and I gave each one of those things its space at the same time.  Never fully completing something was a source of constant annoyance, discomfort, and concern.  It meant that my plate was never empty because I gave each thing a space on the plate.  I have become quite adept at compartmentalizing and only allowing one thing to occupy my attention at a time.  And in those moments when I put off attending to that thing that is especially clamoring for my attention (because it should be completed within a certain time frame), I pay the price of depression and malaise.

To do one thing at a time is to be mindful, to give yourself over to it completely.  Mindfulness needs cultivation and practice, but it is amazing how you can derive joy from the practice of anything as long as you are one with that thing you are doing.  A perfect example is what I am writing at this moment; I am totally mindful to what I am saying and the words are literally flying out of my fingers.  This is much less a process of rational thought than it is of the heart speaking through words, since it is the heart that is seeing these concepts and projecting them out of me and onto this space.  Nothing else is with me at present, nothing work-related, related to my relationships or dreams or to-do lists.  There is an energy that I feel as I write this because I am totally at one with these thoughts and these words and these feelings.

Have you ever made the bed, or raked leaves, or cleaned out the car, or played with your children, or listened to a friend and been in the flow of that moment, letting it be what it is, bringing no judgment or expectation to it.  That is what I mean about being in the moment, about being mindful.  I remember once playing with my daughter when she was about five.  I can remember often being annoyed by her insistence that I play with her, because there always seemed to be other things I should have been doing, other things for which I was responsible that this “play date” would compromise.  I remember one day, however, just giving myself to it, and as I did, I felt like I was flowing, and I felt like a child again because I could delight in the sheer joy of the fantasy and the make-believe that was where her mind was.  As we played with the dolls and lived in that reality, everything else just went away for me.  I was that activity.  My daughter was so real to me, and it was as if I was the joy she was feeling.  I don’t think I’ve recaptured that since, but I keep trying.  And I work more and more at surrendering to reality these days since that is what ultimately will set me free, what will ultimately set my imagination free to roam where it will.  When I come to that state of wonder as my basic way of being I will then know that I am truly liberated.

Please watch the following video in which Thich Nhat Hanh speaks about being present and being mindful.  The mere gentleness of his voice, the acceptance of his demeanor is a powerful statement of the power of mindfulness for transforming us.  Our go-go, drive-through lifestyle needs a powerful set of mentors like Mr. Hanh to transform our world, one person at a time.  I also suggest that you read “The Mindfulness Guide for the Super Busy” by Leo Babauta (@www.zenhabits.net) where I found this lovely video in the first place.

Namaste,

My favorites, in no particular order are:

1.  A Christmas Carol. I’m talking the black and white 1951 version with Alistair Sim.  Somehow the lack of color makes mid-19th century London look especially dreary, hostile, and yet homey and inviting.  Bob Cratchett’s little house is so cute.  And the pudding, oh the pudding! (Inside joke; if you’ve seen the movie you’ll know what I’m talking about).

2.  All the Star Wars movies.  Actually, my favorites were the original three with Harrison Ford and Mark Hamel.  I especially liked #5 (#2 in the original airing–The Empire Strikes Back. It was so laden with mythological overtones that you had to love it.  You can’t run away from your shadow, can you?

3.  Casablanca.  Was Bogey cool or what?  Kind of made me want to rent a white tux, just like Rick.  And if anyone could make smoking look glamorous, it was Bogart.  “Play it again.”

4.  The Rocky Horror Picture Show.  I’ve probably seen it 27 times in a movie theater, and most of those were Saturday midnight shows in Madison, Wisconsin, when I was in graduate school.  It was so cool with the whole audience shouting all of the lines at the screen.  I think most everyone was stoned.  I should have tried it.

5.  Wild Strawberries.  This Bergman classic is sweet and gentle in its melancholy way.  The old professor seemed like such a lost soul, and what a wonderful trip through memory and longing and loss the journey to Upsaala was for him.  An early “road” flick!

6.  Field of Dreams.  I credit this film with rekindling my love of baseball.  Before it came out, baseball was kind of there in my life, but not really.  Burt Lancaster as the old doctor was just magical when he talked about the joys of baseball, looking up into a sky so bright your eyes hurt, staring down the pitcher and just when he was getting ready to throw, wink at him like you knew something he didn’t.  And the moment that James Earl Jones talked about baseball as a metaphor for everything that is simple and good was almost mythical.  Sure, the sport is troubled with steroids, etc., but there was something innocent and moving.  I still get choked up every time I watch it.

7.  You’ve Got Mail.  Don’t look down your nose at me for this one!!!  This is a sweet, cute movie.   Meg Ryan has never been lovelier; such a girl next door.  There is one scene in the movie that really hits home for me.  She is closing up the book shop for the last time and looks back at the empty space in the penumbra.  She can see herself and her mother (from whom she inherited the shop) dancing together in the back of the store.  I swear the first time I saw that scene I felt as if my own mother, who had died seven years earlier, was there in the living room with me.  I cried like a baby.  And when Tom Hanks comes up the path calling after his dog, Barkley, with “Somewhere over the rainbow” playing as a sound track for the moment, well that just about sealed the deal on the sweetness.

8.  Momma Mia. What can I say.  I LOVE ABBA.  And Meryl Streep was sensational.  I’d never have guessed that she had such a great voice.  AND THE SCENERY!!!!!!!!!!  I wanted to chuck it all and move to a Greek island after that.

9.  Chariots of Fire.  I think in a previous life I must have been an English aristocrat, because anything about upper-class England at the turn of the century fascinates me.  I also like this film for the sport, the values of competition and the joy they took in finding themselves.  And I am haunted still by what has to be one of the great movies songs, playing as it does against the opening scene of the team running along the beach in southern England.  That was one of the great perfect scenes in movie history, I think.

10.  The Wizard of Oz.  When I was a kid, they would put it on TV once a year, and I lived for that time.  Of course, it was wonderful to see it in color when I finally had a color set.  Margaret Hamilton was as good a witch as you’ll ever find.

11.  Robin Hood.  Great despite Kevin Costner’s accent.

12.  Dances with Wolves.  Hmmm, I just realize that this is the third time that Kevin Costner has made the list.  The buffalo hunt was amazing.

13.  American Graffitti. Talk about the sound track of your life!!!  Granted, it means more to someone my age who grew up in the 50′s and 60′s, since that was my music and I could associate with some of the realities being portrayed (cruising on Saturday night seems so innocent, doesn’t it?).  And the doo wop music playing when the geeky guy is trying to make the blonde fluzzie, with the moonlight and the backseat of the car was like a clip out of my life.  Such nostalgia.

14.  Any of the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies.  They used to play them on TV on Saturday nights late.  I watched them all over and over.  I loved the brilliant mind, the ability to take a clue and make something of it.  Holmes was brilliant, Watson an affable foil.

15.  All three of the Lord of the Rings movies.  The recreation of Middle Earth was mind-blowing.  I sat with my mouth open.  I loved the hobbit town, and Rivendale was stunning.  A powerful, mythic journey.

I could go on incessantly, and maybe I will continue soon.  What are your favs.  Drop a comment.  TTFN