Insight Trails

Thich Nhat Hanh on the Hudson Line

By Jon Berry
I recently began meditating on the commuter train into work. It wasn’t a practice I sought out. But my work situation changed and I'm working in the city again. Rather than give up starting the day with 15 minutes of silence, I decided to see if meditation is transferrable. It is.

While my preferred meditation spots are still my screen porch – where, this time of year, I can look out onto tulips, daffodils, and forsythia, and hear the whistle of birds – or a worn, wooden bench in my Quaker meeting, the “Hudson Line meditation center” carries its own, idiosyncratic benefits.

Putting down the newspaper, tuning out the Blackberry, and turning within, in the midst of a crowded train of rustling newspapers, tap-tapping keyboards, and muffled conversation, has given me a glimpse into things that are obvious to an outsider, but are easy to lose sight of when you do them every day. That I’m in motion. That I’m with other people. That, when I stop my busy-ness, I can see and hear more, and feel grounded -- even when going 60 m.p.h.

I’ve also found anew how porous the boundary is between the spiritual – that great force that breathes life into us – and the rest of life.  In the meanderings of the mind that often accompany the first phase of meditation, my mind wandered one recent morning to an upcoming business trip to California. I thought about what I planned to say in the presentations I’d be giving…then about what was most important to say…then about the issues my clients are facing…then about the human consequences of their companies' success or failure.

This led to thoughts about the people I’d be seeing…how a colleague with small children was doing, and a colleague who grew up in China under Communism and was now here and working for my company…about what a strange and wonderful world we’re living in today. I thought about whether I’d be able to visit a friend whose son has been struggling. I remembered I’d be flying over Indiana, and thought about whether my 82-year-old Dad would be out on his 50-year-old tractor on his centuries-old farm – and I smiled. Then I came back to breath, as always, after my thoughts have carried me momentarily away, and recentered into my meditation.

This idea that the spiritual is always hiding in the non-spiritual parts of our lives is what Thich Nhat Hanh is getting at in the idea that “a dandelion keeps our smile.” The most mundane parts of life, he says, can bring us into “profound communion with life.” Hanh, whom I've been reading on the ride in, writes about waiting in the airport and washing the dishes, but it could as easily be the commuter train or a staff meeting.

To Hanh, spiritual practice begins with breathing and smiling. Like the little revelations that come when we focus consciously on what we’re doing, it’s a deceptively simple idea. We all breathe. We all value moments of joy. This may seem like Buddhism Lite – something Hanh gets occasionally dismissed as. But in context of the practice of engagement in the world that the Vietnamese monk advocates – the “inter-being” that led him and other monks out of their temples during the Vietnam War to attend to the victims of bombings and strive for peace – it is the most serious of spiritual work. I love this quote from his book Peace Is Every Step:

“Our smile affirms our awareness and determination to live in peace and joy. The source of a true smile is an awakened mind.”

I love the words he chooses – “determination” is such a fierce word; the linking of smiles with “an awakened mind,” the decision to live in peace and joy.

If we don’t cultivate a practice of being conscious of our presence in life, the fact of life is like the wonders of the Hudson River that fly by while our noses are buried in the newspaper – there, but not there.

***

“Real strength is not in power, money or weapons but in deep, inner peace.” -- Thich Nhat Hanh

To learn more about Peace Is Every Step, or to buy a copy, please click on this link:

http://www.amazon.com/Peace-Every-Step-Mindfulness-Everyday/dp/0553351397/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208692878&sr=8-1

For more on Thich Nhat Hanh:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thich_Nhat_Hanh

http://www.plumvillage.org/

Q&A: Patricia Donovan-Duff, Director, Bereavement Center of Westchester

By Jon Berry

A GRIEVING HUSBAND LOOPS THROUGH THE CEMETERY on his daily run to visit his wife’s grave. A grandfather who had a decades-long romance with his wife finds after her death that he can love again. A child decorates a pillow commemorating his father with his dad's beloved silk neckties.

    Patricia Donovan-Duff, the founding director of the Bereavement Center of Westchester, in Tuckahoe, NY, has seen people express grief and healing in many ways. Her response is always the same: It’s all OK. There is no one way to mourn.

    Since opening in 1995, the Bereavement Center has provided a safe place for thousands of people to talk about the death of a loved one. They come for eight-week groups for children and their families at the Tree House, the center’s children’s program. They come for groups for adults mourning the loss of children, spouses, parents, or siblings, and for individual counseling. The non-profit organization also offers educational and on-site support programs for schools and communities.

    Donovan-Duff describes it as sacred work. It is done by a staff of social workers and nurses complemented by 70-plus volunteer facilitators trained by the center.   The main requirement, she says, is to be a good listener.

   A registered nurse, Donovan-Duff previously was bereavement coordinator for the Phelps Hospital Hospice Program in Sleepy Hollow, NY. She is a founding board member of the National Alliance for Grieving Children, an organization for the more than 300 grief-support programs. The Bereavement Center is a program of Lawrence Community Health Services, which also operates Jansen Hospice & Palliative Care and Lawrence Home Care.

    I talked with Donovan-Duff about the grief process – a topic that is still relatively new in our culture – and how she came to this calling.

QUESTION: When the Bereavement Center was started, there weren't many programs like it. Did you have a model?

DONOVAN-DUFF: The Dougy Center, in Portland, Oregon. It was started 25 years ago by a nurse working on a pediatric oncology unit. She noticed that kids would come in saying, “What happened to Joey? He isn’t here.” Nobody would tell them that the child had died. They were afraid the kids would be scared that they would die. But guess what? The kids were already afraid. So, the nurse’s approach was, “Let’s talk with them.”

Q: It’s remarkable that this field has grown from that one center in Portland to more than 300 today.

A: It’s a movement.

Q: What is behind it?

A: Elizabeth Kubler-Ross had a great deal to do with it. In her book On Death and Dying, she wrote about the stages of dying, which she later changed to phases – coming to terms with death is not a linear process. When I started in hospice work 24 years ago, it was very hard to talk with doctors about death and dying. Today people use words like “die,” and talk about the needs of dying people, like the need to not be in pain and not be alone. Hospice opened that conversation up. The grief movement, I think, came out of the hospice movement.

    If you talk with someone who went through a death in the family as a child 25-30 years ago, they remember pictures being taken out of the room. The person’s name wasn’t spoken. It was like nothing had happened. We see remnants when our volunteers come in to take training and talk about their experiences. They’ll say nobody ever talked with them. Some weren’t allowed to go to the funeral.

    I think what we do is a very big wellness program. The message is that grief is the natural and normal reaction to a death. It’s painful. It can look like chronic depression, but it's something different. Historically the medical world has treated grief with medication or by telling people to exercise. We say, “Let’s talk. Tell us the story.”

“I think what we do is a very big wellness program. The message is that grief is the natural and normal reaction to a death... We say, 'Let’s talk. Tell us the story.'”

Q: What happens when people don’t talk about their grief?

A: I think it resurfaces when the next death happens. The psyche can do an amazing job of repressing. But the memory is still there. I think a lot of mental health issues are due to losses that weren’t attended to.

Q: What are the biggest concerns of people dealing with the death of a loved one?

A: That they’re going crazy. They don’t understand what they’re going through. Grief can be all-encompassing. People think there’s something wrong with them if, five months after a death, they can’t concentrate at their job. But it’s normal. That’s what we say all the time: Everything’s normal. There is no right way or wrong way to grieve. There’s just your way.

    Grief can be like a roller coaster. You can feel happy, then sad, then happy, then sad. When you’re going through those feelings, you don’t know they’re normal. You feel you should be getting better: better-better-better. But grief is better, not better, better…then you may hit a bottom. The other metaphor is that grief comes in waves: You turn the corner of the A&P, and burst out crying.

"Grief can be like a roller coaster. You can feel happy, then sad, then happy, then sad....You feel you should be getting better: better-better-better. But grief is better, not better, better…then you may hit a bottom."

    People in this work have come to see that there are tasks of grieving. The first task is to accept the reality of what’s happened. I was with a woman yesterday whose husband died on Saturday. She said, “I heard you do bereavement counseling. I think I’m fine, but I might need a group at some point.” She said she hadn’t cried. I asked, “Have you thought that maybe you’re in a little shock, that it hasn’t permeated your body, in every pore, that your husband has died?” And the woman, who was in 60s or 70s, looked at me and said, “Yes, I forget about it sometimes. I woke up this morning, and it took me a minute before I remembered.” The first task is to accept, “OK, it’s happened.”

    The second task is to feel the feelings – experience the pain. That’s the hardest part. It’s when you’re missing the person who’s died. It hurts physically. It hurts emotionally. We ask people to tell their story again and again and again. People need to tell the story of someone’s death more than once. The more you tell it, the more real it becomes, and the more you remember. When I had my babies, I needed to tell people the story of everything that happened over and over again. The same thing needs to happen at the end of life when someone dies.

Q: How do you help people access their feelings?

A: We talk about how you are now. What are you going through? What are your worries and concerns? In talking about what’s going on now, feelings come out. The feelings may be good, but they also may be ones you’re afraid to talk about, like guilt or regrets. Sometimes there’s ambivalence. It might not have been a great relationship.

    Everybody is different. Sometimes families don’t understand the reactions of different children. One child is crying, the other’s not. We’ll ask, what were they like before? You grieve in character. If you were a crier before, you’ll probably be a crier now.

"Sometimes families don’t understand the reactions of different children. One child is crying, the other’s not. We’ll ask, what were they like before? You grieve in character. If you were a crier before, you’ll probably be a crier now."

    The next task is to learn to remember, to commemorate the person who died, in your own way. You might put up a small shrine with pictures and candles. You might have pictures next to your bed. You might go to the cemetery. You might wear a heart necklace with with a photo of the person. Every way is OK.

    One of the beauties of groups is that they normalize. Support groups are wonderful that way. People talk to other people and realize, “I’m not the only one who hasn’t given the clothing away, and it’s been two years.” “I’m not the only one who goes to the cemetery every day.”

    In a group I ran years ago, there was a young widower with little children. Midway through the eight-week group, he felt safe enough to share how he remembered his wife. He said, “I’m a runner, and the cemetery is in my town. Every morning, I run, and I go to the cemetery, and I lie down on her grave.” There was quiet in the room. He looked around the group. He knew he was revealing something that could go either way. Were people going to say he was crazy? And the group said, “Oh, that’s so wonderful.” He had such a sense of relief.

    When somebody dies, there’s a real fear that you’re going to forget them. You’re going to forget their voice, what they look like. In the beginning, when someone has just died, you think, “Where the hell are you? Where did you go?” Even if you believe in heaven, you ask, “Where are you?” One of the goals in grieving is to bring the memory of the person inside your heart. In the beginning the memory’s too painful – you can’t bring that person inside you forever yet. But eventually, they’re just with you.

"When somebody dies, there’s a real fear that you’re going to forget them. You’re going to forget their voice, what they look like. In the beginning, when someone has just died, you think, 'Where the hell are you? Where did you go?'... One of the goals in grieving is to bring the memory of the person inside your heart."

Q: We live in a culture that goes so fast. How do you help people slow down and hear what’s going on inside them?

A: Hopefully they have a certain experience in the group or in individual counseling – a pause that happens when people feel someone is truly listening to them. People going through grief need to surround themselves with people who will listen and be with them. There are a lot of casualties after a death – friends who are not there for you, family members who don’t understand. We ask people who are grieving, “What do you need?” “I need someone to just listen and not tell me what to do or what to feel.” “OK, find that person in the next week. Who can do that for you? That’s a need you have.” “Well, maybe my friend Ann. She’s a good listener.” 

    We say this to kids, too. In our society, adults are not good at listening to sad stories, especially from kids. They don’t want to see sad kids. They want you to be better. They want you to be fixed. People are fine for a little bit, then they say, “OK, we want the old Patty back now.” We tell people to give somebody the job to be your special friend, who you can call up and say, “I just need to cry. I need to remember. Would you let me do that?”

    A lot of this is common sense. But I think in many ways, we as a society have lost our connection with our instincts. We don’t trust ourselves. We tell people, “Trust your gut that you know what you need. If you need to stay home from work one day because you just need to cry or go to the cemetery, do that. It’s OK.” It’s like taking an antibiotic. Attend to your wound. This doesn’t get better by itself. It doesn’t get better with time. It’s what you do with that time.

"We tell people, 'Trust your gut that you know what you need. If you need to stay home from work one day because you just need to cry or go to the cemetery, do that. It’s OK.'...Attend to your wound. This doesn’t get better by itself. It doesn’t get better with time. It’s what you do with that time."

    The next task is to start to reinvest in the world. The focus is less on the person who died and more on you. You learn who you are without this person who died. People are different after a profound death. It changes them. They can become better people. They can learn through that process and grow.

Q: Are there things that people have said, who have come out the other side of mourning,  that have stuck with you?

A: There was one wonderful man who came in after his wife died. They had an amazingly close, storybook relationship. He was grieving her so intensely. He really wanted to die some days. He wasn’t going to do anything with that feeling – he had grandchildren – but that’s how bad his pain was. He went to the cemetery every single day. I never would have imagined that he would have a relationship with another woman, but, today, he does. He’s never going to marry her. His wife was his one true love. In his wildest dreams, he probably never would have envisioned that he would be enjoying life again. He still misses his wife, and always will. But he’s different now.

    We’ve had people who have come back to volunteer at the center because they want to give back. I’m in the middle of a volunteer training right now. It’s amazing. The world just stops: We’re talking about death, dying and grief. There’s such silence and presence.

    Our goal is to teach volunteers how to be present. One of the nights of the training is about sharing a loss that you’ve had. We do a guided meditation, then divide into groups of two. For half an hour, the two people tell their story to each other. We then come back together and talk about what it’s like to have somebody really listen to us. Some people have never experienced anything like it. Our world today is so much about phones and computers and multitasking, we’ve forgotten how to be present for someone. The biggest gift you can give anybody is to let them know that you hear what they’re saying.

"Our goal is to teach volunteers how to be present.... The biggest gift you can give anybody is to let them know that you hear what they’re saying.

Q: What kinds of rituals do you use to help clients open up?

A: Simple rituals. At the beginning of every session, people introduce themselves saying, “Hi, my name is ___, and my mom died.” It’s a ritual of articulating the death and accepting the reality. For children, this can be really hard. They may not want to say it. They can pass. There’s also a checking-in about how the week has been.

    Our rituals are more focused at the end of the group. One of our goals in these eight-week groups is teaching them all, children through adults, how to deal with loss. Hopefully we are planting seeds that they can use in the future.

    We have a goodbye ritual the last night. In the adult group, it might be having stones on a plate. You take a stone, hold it, and say a wish for yourself and a wish for the group. The stone will be passed around, and everyone will touch it and bring it back. It’s a way of saying goodbye to each other.

    In the Tree House, with the kids, we have a ritual at the end called the Memory Pillows. We start with blank canvas pillow cases. We put pictures of the person who died on the pillow case. For the last three weeks, the kids decorate the pillow cases in their own individual way. They draw pictures. They write letters to put inside the pillow. One little boy decorated his with his dad’s neckties; the dad had a magnificent collection of silk ties. Then we put pillows in and close them up. On the last night, we put up a painting of a tree on a big drop cloth. We’ll remember each person who died. The family will come up and hang their pillow on the tree. By the end we have a huge mural. In a very visual way, the kids see that they’re not the only one going through the death of a loved one. They see they’re all different and have done this work in different ways, and it’s all right. It’s good to remember, any way you want to remember.

"In a very visual way, the kids see that they’re not the only one going through the death of a loved one. They see they’re all different and have done this work in different ways."

Q: In what ways is this spiritual work?

A: It connects human beings on such a very, very basic level. I consider that sacred work. I think that’s what this world is about, being present and connecting with people.

Q: How did you get into this field?

A: I became a nurse because I wanted to help people.

Q: When did you first feel that?

A: As a kid. I was raised Catholic. Along with the guilt – which everyone talks about – being raised Catholic made me want to be a better person. I always knew I’d be in a helping profession. I wanted to be a nurse all through high school. I liked healing, the hospitals, the white uniforms. I loved being in the middle of crisis and being with people.

   When I went to college, I majored in nursing. They were just starting nursing degrees. I discovered psychiatric nursing, and thought, “Whoa, this is great.” I loved it. I was drawn to it.

    I think I was also drawn to death. I was scared of death when I was young. There were no big deaths in my family. But my best friend died when I was six. She and I had measles at the same time. This was before the vaccine. I recovered, but she died. I have this memory of being in a dark room – when you had measles they kept you in a dark room – and emerging and asking, “Where’s Mary Elizabeth?” “Oh, she died.” I didn’t go to the church for the service.

    I’ve always been the kind of person that, when I’m afraid of something, I don’t run away from it. I go to it. I want to figure it out, so I won’t be so afraid of it. When I graduated from college, before becoming a psychiatric nurse, I worked for a year on an oncology ward of a hospital. Patients died every day, alone, in pain, in a very sterile setting. I remember going into the med room and just crying.

"I’ve always been the kind of person that, when I’m afraid of something, I don’t run away from it. I go to it. I want to figure it out..."

Q: Did you think you’d wind up where you are now?

A: No. Never. It’s been a process. Two big things that I’ve learned in the work that I’ve been doing the past 12 years – and I’m a different person because of it, I believe that – are the value of being totally present to the moment and that life is a process. Grief is a process, and life is a process.

    In a way, I feel everything has led me to this. I was a psychiatric nurse for years. One day, when I was working at St. Josephs Hospital in Yonkers, I was having a conversation with the social worker, and he said, “You know, my wife’s starting a hospice program at Phelps Hospital. Are you interested in a job there? They need a nurse.” It was pure coincidence. That year on the oncology ward was so horrible. Part of me thought I would go back to that and try to help make it better. 

    I interviewed and everything fell into place. It was the infancy of hospice. It was all very grassroots. It was wonderful. We relied on volunteers. We had a chaplain. We brought in visiting nurses. I learned how to work with volunteers. I learned how to work on an interdisciplinary team. It taught me a lot about starting a program. I took a break at one point to spend more time at home, but continued to work with the hospice. Then Phelps asked me back to start a bereavement program to support families of hospice patients.

    We networked with other bereavement programs. One day I went to a talk at Jansen Memorial Hospice, and the chaplain approached me and asked, would you like to be a director of a new program for children and adults? They saw a need to bring bereavement work not just to people with loved ones going through hospice, but to the community at large. They felt there was a lot of unattended-to grief in the community. I thought about it long and hard. I never aspired to be a director of a non-profit, with the fund-raising and administration. But I took the job. It’s been an incredible growth process to build something from nothing.

Q: Do you have things you that you do for yourself spiritually?

A: I do yoga. Not as much as I want to, but I love it. When I get up in the morning, I have a semi-meditation to try to center myself. I get my cup of coffee and sit in my living room and try to be still for five or 10 minutes.

Q: And you get spiritual experiences in your work.

A: Absolutely. Usually every day there’s a moment – we call them moments – when we’re working with people, or working with volunteers, and you make a connection. It’s a gift.

Q: Has this work changed your relationship with death?

A: In a way, I think I’ve befriended it. I don’t want to die, but I now know I don’t have to die in pain, that I don’t have to die alone, and that millions of people have been through it. We don’t know what is on the other side, but I have faith that there is something.

Q: How do you avoid burnout?

A: I try to keep a sense of balance in my life. A stable home life has helped me a lot. It helps me turn work off when I leave here. The times that are hard are when there’s not balance. Something is happening at home and my equilibrium is off.

    I have worked with incredible, amazing people with sad, sad stories. But I find that when I’m right there with them, things come into focus. It becomes clear that what a grieving person needs is someone to just sit with them and listen to them. What we do is very simple. We’re not trying to fix people. We don’t have the pressure of trying to make things better. We offer our presence. We listen and validate. We try to help people not feel so alone; there’s a healing when that happens.

"What we do is very simple. We’re not trying to fix people. We don’t have the pressure of trying to make things better. We offer our presence. We listen and validate. We try to help people not feel so alone; there’s a healing when that happens."

    I don’t think everybody can do this work, just like not everybody can be a social worker or a doctor or nurse. But those people who can do it, and do it for a long time, can have a very full life. This is work that makes you pause and appreciate what’s important. The best part is to see someone when they are so fragile and so raw, and then see them a year later and they are so different. That’s why I don’t get burned out. I see the resilience of life, that people do go on.

That’s I.T.

For more on the Bereavement Center of Westchester, including programs, information on how to make a donation to the center, and links to more information on grieving, please visit:
www.thebereavementcenter.org

For videotaped interviews with Patricia Donovan-Duff on the grief process, please see:
http://suntimes.healthology.com/caregiving/video1944.htm
and
http://www.healthline.com/hgy-transcripts/grieving-and-going-back-to-work

The Dougy Center of Portland, OR, also has a rich website with resources for learning more about the grief process:
http://www.dougy.org/

Practice: Recognizing Opportunity

By Jon Berry
IN THE 1950s, LOU CASSOTTA DECIDED TO LEAVE HIS JOB as an electrical engineer and become a psychologist. He was accepted into New York University’s Ph.D. program, and began taking classes at night as a part-time student, continuing to work during the day. He knew at some point he’d have a problem: When he started his internship, he’d have to give up his day job. His income, in turn, would drop precipitously. But he resolved to deal with that day when it came.

    “I had a feeling that, if you commit yourself to something, and you’re really open, things happen that you don’t expect,” recalls Lou (pictured above).

    And they did. One night, a friend invited him over to see her new prized possession – a radio tape recorder that she’d won in a contest. To demonstrate, she put on a tape she’d made of her therapist talking about a research project involving the new technology of computers. As Lou listened, a light bulb went off in his head: “I’m an engineer and a psychology student. I know computers. That guy’s got to want me.” He wrote a letter, the man wrote back, and within a few months, Lou was offered a position on the project. The flexible hours enabled him to go to school full-time. The project kept him on salary while he was on his internship. The work became the subject of his thesis.

    Coincidences like Lou’s are rare gifts. But many of us have had moments when, in a term from early Quakers, “way opens.” A door appears that we weren’t aware of. Such moments of recognition have been a theme in my interviews so far in Insight Trails interviews. Some of the stories sound like examples of synchronicity, Jung’s “meaningful coincidence.” But many are simply realizations that opportunity has knocked – moments of inspiration. Joe Kelly’s wife, Nancy Gruver, had such a moment when the idea for New Moon magazine sprang fully formed into her mind. George Russell had a more gradual realization of his skills as a healer when his fellow dancers started asking him to do bodywork on them, then making appointments, then giving him money.

    In an ideal world, opportunities would come to us in the form of burning bushes – preferably, a burning bush that talks to us. In their absence, we must develop a practice of learning to recognize opportunity.

A lot comes down to two ideas that Lou Cassotta intuited as a young man: commitment and openness.

    A lot, I think, comes down to two ideas that Lou intuited as a young man: commitment and openness. “If you make a bold move, it changes your life,” says Lou. “It changes your view. Things come up that you can’t foresee.” Lou, a golfer (photo), compares the phenomenon to athletes who are in “the zone”: Time slows down (an approaching baseball) so that what to do becomes clear. The athlete is simultaneously focused (“hit the ball”) and open to input that will help reach the goal (“the rotation of the seams means…curve ball”).

    To be open, we need to be able to listen. A conflict resolution manual published by the Mennonites that I read years ago said something that has always stayed with me. Listening, the book said, is more than a tool to help someone feel heard. It’s “opening ourselves to the possibility of being changed.” Meditation is, essentially, deep, transformative listening (a meditation exercise on attuning ourselves to our environment follows this essay).

    Commitment to a cause can change those around us, too. Ellen Baker’s friends helped her set up her bookkeeping business, offering encouragement, creating ads, designing her business cards, even bringing her clients. Kristen Laine says people around her took her more seriously after she began to thinking of herself as a writer. “You recognize it in someone,” says Kristen. “I think something actually, physically changes in people, in how they hold themselves, when they’re committed to a path.” 

My mom, I think, got the gist of it in one of her favorite sayings: “You make the bed you lay in.”

Mom Was Right. Those who have read or seen the New Age best-seller The Secret might call “opportunity knocks” moments examples of the law of attraction – you attract what you think. But the idea is much older and more widespread. It’s the Hindu concept of karma – our actions create our fate. It’s in the phrase Ellen Baker heard in 12-step meetings: “You get back what you put out.” A lot of practical, common-sense advice passed down from generation to generation is about the messages we send to the world.

    My mom, I think, got the gist of it in one of her favorite sayings: “You make the bed you lay in.” As a kid, I used to chafe at the notion: What about all the children born into poverty? Did they make that bed? But my parents, who grew up in the Great Depression, saw a gritty truth in it and a corollary saying my Mom also invoked, “You make your heaven and hell on earth.” To them, being focused, resourceful, and mindful of others – “keep your eye on the ball,” “make hay while the sun shines,” and remember the Golden Rule (“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”), in other sayings of their day – increase your chances of getting the life you want. If we want a meaningful life, we need to put our thoughts and actions into creating a meaningful life.

    My dad’s parents are legendary in our family for their resourcefulness. Grandpa Don learned to repair his farm equipment; this, in turn, got him work repairing machines in the factories in town. When rural electrification came, he wired many of the farms in the area. He knew plumbing, built houses, and was barber to local kids. My grandpa and Grandma Clara, with their four sons, raised much of their own food. They cured their own ham.

 Their ingenuity was in service of what meant most to them: their family and farm. At a time when many Americans lost their farms, my grandparents held onto theirs – “the little place,” as they called it – throughout the Depression. When prosperity returned in the 1950s, they parlayed it into a larger farm on better ground up the road. That farm remains in our family (photos). Whether my grandparents “attracted” abundance, or were following a maxim of their day (“God helps those who help themselves”) is, to me, semantics. They were committed and open to what life presented.

That’s I.T.

“5-4-3-2-1 meditation.” This is a great exercise for tuning in and opening up to the world around us. I learned it in a workshop led by Arizona psychologist John Dore. Start by closing your eyes in meditation. Keep them closed for several minutes. When you open your eyes, make a mental list of five things you see; five things you hear; and five things you’re feeling. Then close your eyes for several minutes; open them, and tick off four things you see; four things you hear; and four things you’re feeling. Close your eyes and repeat the exercise for three things you see, hear, and feel; then two; then one. I’ve tried this meditation to start the day, and before writing, speeches, and important meetings – and think I’ve just tapped the surface of its potential. 

To read the following Insight Trails interviews, click on the links below:

Ellen Baker

http://www.insighttrails.com/blog/2008/01/qa-ellen-baker.html

Joe Kelly

http://www.insighttrails.com/blog/2007/09/qa-joe-kelly-da.html

Kristen Laine

http://www.insighttrails.com/blog/2007/11/qa-kristen-lain.html

George Russell

http://www.insighttrails.com/blog/2007/10/dr-george-russe.html

 

Practice: Cultivating Silence

By Jon Berry
WHEN I WAS A YOUNG, ASPIRING NEWSPAPER REPORTER, a gruff, old journalist taught me something I never forgot. It wasn’t about writing a lede, developing sources, or other tools of the trade. It was the importance of cultivating silence.

    Whenever he hit a wall in a story or in life, the journalist went off to a corner of his house where he wouldn’t be disturbed, lit a candle, and spent a half-hour in complete quiet. He always came back, he said, with a new perspective.

    A business executive once expressed the same idea in a different way to a friend of mine. “Everyone,” he said, “needs some ceiling time.” He meant that everyone, even busy executives, needs time to meditate. His own daily meditation was to gaze up at the ceiling – the one space in his office that didn’t carry a reminder of work.

    Silence can be uncomfortable. We’ve all had the experience of being asked to observe a moment of silence in a ballgame, dinner, or meeting, when the leader leaps onto the next sentence before the word “silence” has barely been said. We live in a culture of taking action. Slowing down is disruptive. It’s disturbing.

    And it leads to good things. I see it in the people I’ve interviewed so far for Insight Trails. They practice it in different ways – walks in the woods, meditation, prayer, quieting down in religious or spiritual setting. But all have silence as part of their life.

   I experience the power of cultivating silence in the spiritual communities that I’m part of. In the Quaker meeting I go to on Sunday mornings, the hour of silence yields insights, connections, and a sense of calm unlike anything in my day-to-day life.

   I’ve opened meetings in non-spiritual settings – including workplaces – with a brief silence. Sometimes it’s a minute. Mostly it’s just one or two full, deep breaths. I don’t identify the request as spiritual as such – saying instead something like, “first, let’s take a deep breath and think about what we want from this meeting…” This moment of reflection can do wonders for focusing the group’s attention.

    Early Quakers identified the experience of discomfort that we have in silence as the first step in spiritual awakening. They believed that we all have within us an “Inward Light” that impels us toward truth, including uncomfortable truths. The experience brings us fresh points of view and deeper perspectives – in Friends’ terms, closer to God. Within it is the potential to transform, refresh, and heal.

    How does one begin? Recent readings have deepened my appreciation of the process of Quaker silence. Taking these books and pamphlets together, certain themes come through:

    Center Down. This old Quaker term literally means what it says. Quaker worship begins with turning inward, to our center, and focusing down, to get out of our heads. The goal, says J. Brant Bill in Holy Silence, a good, book-length primer on Quaker worship, is to “create a space for God to work within us.” It’s not easy. Cares of the week bubble up. Sounds crowd in – someone coughing, cars going by, children whispering. Some Friends respond by returning to centering down. Others turn the disruptions into prayer – reminders to pray for people’s health, safe travels, and children – “pray the distractions directly into the prayer,” as Douglas Steere puts it in his pamphlet Friends and Worship.

    Deeper Silence. At a certain point, the busyness gives way to a deeper quiet. Bill puts it nicely. Having “cast off from the shore” and made our way “around the edge of the spiritual sea,” we are drawn to “launch out to the depths,” to a place that is “deeper spiritually” and “higher emotionally” than “any place we normally live.” The busyness of the first phase of centering drifts away. It’s as if we’ve stepped outside time.

    Opening up. In this deeper silence, things happen. Life opens up. The controls that we clamp onto day-to-day life – that often keep us from experiencing life – fade away. Some people experience a welling up of gratitude that isn’t accessible to them in everyday experience, from the divine mystery of life to simple beauties around them – birds at the birdfeeder, children on the playground, bicyclists going by.

 Answers. Early Quakers found another, important thing occurred in this deeper state: Answers came to them. Many times they were elusive – an image, a feeling, or a snippet of a phrase. But they resonated as true.

    Rex Ambler, who recreated the process of early Friends’ worship experience in his brief book Light to Live by, writes about the words “be real” coming “out of the blue” to him while meditating on a troubled relationship. He “understood immediately,” he writes, that he had “been acting a part” in his life, with the result that he didn’t know himself or how to be in a relationship. It would take courage and acceptance, but – if he could be true to himself – he had a way through his problem.

    This notion of letting in answers separates the Quakers from other kinds of meditation that emphasize continual letting go. The concept has been integrated into therapeutic practice. “Focusing,” a six-step technique developed by Eugene Gendlin, a psychologist who attended Quaker meetings as a child, is premised on the idea that truth resides in each of us (as opposed to an external authority); that this truth can be experienced; and that it often lies deeper than words or other symbolic expressions. Our inner truths often have corollaries in our bodies – “felt senses” in the chest, gut, or elsewhere. Focusing doesn’t solve the problem. But, in the words of one writer, it can lead to “the beginnings of clarity about changes I need to make in my life.”

    These moments of clarity can also be accompanied by physical effects – sighs, tears, deep feelings of relief. I’ve seen all of these, as well, in Friends’ Meetings for Worship.

 Transformation. Cultivating a practice of sailing into the deep waters of silence, and listening to the deeper truths available there, can be risky business. Early Friends describe being “ripped apart” by the experience. But they also found that opening themselves up in silence changed them in powerful ways. Exposing the old, uncomfortable truths, says Ambler, can lead to “the birth of a new, truer self.” 

    This transformation can spur further changes. It sends us back into the world with a new energy. It’s the underlying idea, I believe, in the often-quoted line from William Penn (founder of Pennsylvania) that “true goodliness does not turn men out of the world, but enables them to live better in it and excites their endeavors to mend it.” It keeps us focused on the big picture and big questions, forcing us, as Bill says, to ask “what does God want?” rather than “our usual ‘what do I want?’” It helps us be with others; a deep, shared silence can be more helpful than any words to a friend in need of comfort. It gives us “strength and power to allay all storms and tempests,” in the words of George Fox, the early leader of Quakerism. Done communally, as in Friends Meetings, it can harmonize us with those around us and open us to wisdom that others possess. Fox counseled his followers to always “carry around some quiet inside thee.”

    Early Friends considered silence to be a direct path to God, the Christ Within. This was a radical idea in its time. Giving up dependence on doctrines, rituals, preachers, and the other accoutrements of the church, and turning inward to find the Eternal, put the Quakers at odds with the establishment.

    Silence remains a radical idea today. In our culture of Blackberries, cell phones, the Internet, high-definition televisions, and continual bombardment of advertising, cultivating silence – as opposed to consuming products – is a radical idea. But it can connect us to – and keep us on – the path we’re supposed to be on.

That’s I.T.
 
J. Brent Bill’s book Holy Silence is a fine introduction to Quaker practice, with guidelines for starting an individual practice or going to a Quaker meeting. For more information, visit Brent’s website:
http://www.brentbill.com/
To purchase a copy of Holy Silence, click here:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1557254206/qid=1113445622/sr=8-6/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i6_xgl14/103-6882526-5818259?v=glance&s=books&n=507846 

Rex Ambler’s great little book Light to Live by chronicles Ambler’s study of early Friends’ approach and step-by-step distillation of it for individual and group meditations.  To purchase a copy, click here:
http://www.quakerbooks.org/search

To read Douglas Steere’s Friends and Worship, a classic introduction to Quaker meeting, please click on this link:
http://www.fgcquaker.org/library/welcome/fa-worship.html

 Nancy Saunders’ article “Focusing on the Light: A Modest Proposal,” is a good introduction to Eugene Gendlin’s technique of Focusing and its links to Quakerism: http://www.focusing.org/focusing_on_the_light.html

For more information on Focusing, click on this link:
http://www.focusing.org/

The website Quakerfinder can help you find a Friends meeting near you:
http://www.quakerfinder.org/

Friends Journal is an excellent resource for learning more about contemporary Quakerism (full disclosure: I serve on the board of this publication, in addition to being a big fan of it.):
http://www.friendsjournal.org/

The image of the Quaker meetinghouse is of Live Oaks Meeting in Houston, Tx. The meeting room features a "skyspace" ceiling window that opens to the sky. For more, see:  http://www.friendshouston.org/

 

Q&A: Ellen Baker: Being Who You Are

By Jon Berry, Insight Trails

MAHATMA GANDHI'S SECRETARY WAS ONCE ASKED HOW Gandhi could speak so profoundly, for so long, without preparation, prompting, or notes. “What Gandhi thinks, what he feels, what he says, and what he does are all the same,” the secretary replied. “You and I, we think one thing, feel another, say a third, and do a fourth, so we need notes and files to keep track.”

    We can’t all be Gandhi. But we can strive to be authentic – the same person in what we think, feel, say, and do.

    I was reminded of this insight when I interviewed Ellen Baker. Ellen has multiple spiritual outlets. With her husband, James Sweeney, and four other parishioners, she recently started a church. The congregation, part of a movement breaking away from the Roman Catholic Church, meets every Saturday evening in their home in suburban New York.

    With James, Ellen is studying Buddhism through a three-year program at a Buddhist monastery in upstate New York. She also is a lay associate of an order of Catholic nuns, and has participated in Catholic ministries. She is active in Al-Anon, the 12-step program for family and friends of alcoholics. Ellen views her work as a bookkeeper – she has had an independent practice for 17 years – as an expression of her spirituality as well.

     Her beliefs have sometimes led to confrontations. Her decision to leave the Roman Catholic Church is one example. She once was fired from a job after standing up for what she believed.

    Listening to Ellen talk, the different aspects of her life are reflections of one of the core truths she’s learned – to “to be honest and who you are.”

    I talked with Ellen about her spiritual pursuits, her work, and her journey.

QUESTION: You’re starting a church. Can you tell me about it?

ELLEN BAKER: It’s a brand-new, fledgling parish, and it’s exciting. It’s called the Church for All People. And it is. Nobody’s excluded. Women can be ordained. Gays can get married. Those are two of the big issues we’ve had with the Roman Catholic Church.

     It’s part of the Catholic Apostolic Church in North America (CACINA), which is a movement that started back in the 1940s with priests who left the Roman Catholic Church and started a Vatican-free Catholic Church.

     Right now we have six parishioners. The priest who started our mother church in Brooklyn comes up on Saturdays for the services.

"It’s called the Church for All People. And it is. Nobody’s excluded. Women can be ordained. Gays can get married."

Q: How is it exciting?

A: It’s like we’re astronauts going to visit another planet. If you’re a Catholic, you live your life so locked into tradition. Giving it up is like giving up my citizenship. But at the same time, my heart hasn’t been fully in it.

     Both James and I were out of the church for decades. When we returned, there were always questions in the back of our minds. The Catholic Church’s sex scandal put it over the edge. It was a struggle every time we went to church. We felt like we were wearing two faces. We loved the people and loved our ministries. But when it came to the priests and the hierarchy of the church, we felt like hypocrites. We went through a lot of struggle and discernment, and finally decided we couldn’t do it anymore.

Q: How is the new church different?

A: The laity are involved in all the decisions. We decide the prayers. We take turns being the Eucharistic Minister. It’s what I think of the Catholic Church being like in the early days, when it was a new community, everybody was on equal footing, and services were held in people’s homes. It feels much more natural.

“It’s what I think of the Catholic Church being like in the early days, when it was a new community, everybody was on equal footing, and services were held in people’s homes.”

    I feel like I’m in the place where I’m supposed to be. On Christmas morning, Joe, our priest [the Rev. Joseph Diele, a priest in the Roman Catholic Church for two decades before starting the Church for All People], did a special Liturgy. He asked us where we see God working in our lives. Almost everybody touched on this new community. We didn’t know at first what it would be about. But it’s become a big impetus for all of us. It was a leap of faith. I feel I’m in a community that is all in this together, trusting its instincts and moving forward.

     Every morning during the week, we have a conference call. We get on the phone at a quarter to seven, for five to ten minutes. One person opens it with a prayer for the day. I’m absolutely amazed by what they say. They’re beautiful prayers. Then we have petitions where we pray for specific things, like people who are sick. Then we say the Lord’s Prayer and a short closing. I like it a lot.

Q: What are your relationships like in your former parish?

A: It’s been fine. A number of people feel the same way, but can’t bring themselves to move. They have been in the church all of their adult lives. They cling to the belief that the church is the people, and that it’s important to stay in there and fight. I admire that. I really do. But I’m not that kind of person. I need to get something out of this while I’m here. I’m not here to fight for what’s going to happen in 50 years.

Q: How does the Buddhist study factor in?

A: There are so many similarities between Buddhism and Christianity. Many times what we talked about on Saturday morning in the Buddhism classes turns out to be what comes up that night in the Scripture readings.

Q: Which similarities strike you most?

A: The obvious one is the message. Christ’s message is peace, compassion, and loving your neighbor. That’s basically the Buddha’s message, too – peace, compassion, loving-kindness, no killing, no violence. The life of the Buddha and the life of Jesus have a lot of similarities. Many of the stories in the sacred texts are also similar.

     I had always had a theory that Jesus was the Western Buddha. I could never buy that God would send his Son down to one small group of people and say this is just for you and nobody else. To see this happening, 500 years apart, on two sides of the world, makes a lot more sense to me.

"Christ’s message is peace, compassion, and loving your neighbor. That’s basically the Buddha’s message, too – peace, compassion, loving-kindness, no killing, no violence."

Q: And Al-Anon?

A: 12-step is the umbrella over all my spirituality. Without Al-Anon, I never would have discovered my spirituality. It’s where I learned to have a relationship with my Higher Power, and where I learned to see that Higher Power working in my life. It helped me learn to let go of outcomes and “what if’s.” My other activities are, in a sense, the natural consequence of the awakening I’ve had in Al-Anon. It made me want to connect with like-minded people, learn more, and keep growing.

Q: Going back to when you were a kid, did you always have a large spiritual component in your life?

A: Nothing. We were strict Roman Catholics. But it was all about religion and nothing about spirituality. It was pray, pay, and obey: Do the prayers they tell you to do, pay your donation every Sunday, and do whatever they tell you. I went to Catholic school all the way, right through college. Mass every Sunday. Confession. Sacraments. First Communion. Confirmation. But I never really got it. I didn’t feel anything when I was in church.

“It was all about religion and nothing about spirituality. It was pray, pay, and obey: Do the prayers they tell you to do, pay your donation every Sunday, and do whatever they tell you.”

Q: You wound up on Wall Street. How did that happen?

A: Really, by default. I started college at Elizabeth Seton College in Yonkers, then transferred to Catholic University in Washington. But I dropped out at the end of my junior year. I came back to New York and got a job as a secretary.

     My first job was for the national headquarters of the Girl Scouts. I really liked it. I wanted to work in something that was intrinsically good. I was a hippie, basically. I graduated from high school in 1969. Peace, love, justice and non-violence were definitely part of my life.

     But working for a nonprofit, I wasn’t making a lot of money. Eventually money won out, and I got a job as a secretary for a big Wall Street firm. I worked five years at that firm, then got a job at another Wall Street firm. I started out working for the chairman of the board. I was at the top of the level of being a secretary.

    But the whole time I was on Wall Street, I was bored with the business. I didn’t think I could do anything but type and take shorthand. I didn’t really understand the financial world. I was never out to make a lot of money. Everybody around me was excited about what they were doing. I thought there was something wrong with me. My self-esteem was so low that I felt I couldn’t ask anybody for help. I thought they’d fire me.

Q: When you’re in that type of a hole, it’s hard to work your way out.

A: Plus I was married to an alcoholic. I just thought there was something wrong with me. My husband at the time was in the movie industry, and he got a job in Hollywood. So we picked up and relocated. I was starting to get “sick and tired of being sick and tired,” as people say in Al-Anon. But I went. To some extent, I think I saw it as a chance to break free of my old life and get out of the Wall Street scene.

     We lived in California 14-15 months. I started to make my own friends. I also discovered Taoism. I started having acupuncture. My acupuncturist’s father was a Taoist master. I started reading about Taoism. I didn’t understand any of it but there was something about it that so wonderful and so peaceful. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it was something I wanted.

“I started reading about Taoism. I didn’t understand any of it but there was something about it that so wonderful and so peaceful... I knew it was something I wanted.”

Q: What happened to change things?

A: My husband lost his job and decided to go back to New York. His addictions were getting worse. In the back of my mind, I was starting to give up on the marriage. I came close to saying go back without me, but I felt I couldn’t give up that easily. We’d been married almost 10 years. I had to give it another shot. So I went back with him.

     The marriage continued to disintegrate. I got a job through a mutual friend working for an interior designer. He was automating his office, putting it all on computer. I could wear my jeans to work, and that really appealed to me. (It still does!) One of the areas I had to automate was the accounting department. I began to see how accounting worked. I realized I was good at it, and liked it. I like everything in neat little piles and wrapped up nicely. That’s my personality.

     I went to a work for a friend of mine who was starting a business. She asked me if I could come in a couple days a week to pay the bills and reconcile the bank statement. That morphed into a full-time job. By then, my husband and I had separated. I wound up doing all the finance and administration for her business. I started going back to school, and took accounting classes to supplement what I didn’t know.

     She had a lot of freelancers working for her – designers, writers. They really liked me. I would pay their bills the same week they would turn them in.

     I guess this is where some of the spirituality started. Most bills we put on a 30-day rotation. But I knew these people. This was their bread and butter. I wasn’t going to make them wait 30 days.

Q: What was spiritual about that?

A: You don’t withhold somebody’s money from them. To me, that’s part of my spirituality. It’s the right thing to do.

“You don’t withhold somebody’s money from them. To me, that’s part of my spirituality. It’s the right thing to do.”

Q: When did your spiritual shift began?

A: It really started when I went into Al-Anon. My husband and I had split up and I was having a really hard time with my mother. A couple people had suggested I go to Al-Anon. I had the classic response: “What do I need to go for? I’m not the one who’s sick.” But they continued to suggest it, so I went.

     About the same time, I started my bookkeeping business. The writers and designers I was working with started coming to me with their questions about money. They’d come into my office with a 1099 and say, can you help me out? I’d explain it, and they’d say, thank you so much for taking the time to tell me this stuff. They started telling me, “You should hang out your own shingle.” Things were getting bad in my job. I wasn’t happy there anymore. So I decided to leave. They helped me. One designed my business card. One helped me write ads to put into trade magazines. Through them, I started to get clients.

Q: Do you think there’s a connection between your starting to go to Al-Anon and starting your own company in the same period?

A: When the student is ready, the teacher appears. When I went to Al-Anon, the thing that first struck me was to hear people talk about how God was working in their life. I didn’t see those things happening to me. I was scared. I was single. My marriage was over. I was starting my own business. I had a mortgage to pay. I had a co-op. But I was listening. I began to realize that if things were going to change, it had to start with me. The first three steps in 12-step programs talk about relying on God and turning your will over. I realized I really didn’t have much choice. I had to do it.

     I started praying again. But it was totally different from when I was young. I didn’t say a Hail Mary. I basically just talked to God: “Show me what to do here. Help me out. Am I doing the right thing?” Going back to the rooms, week after week – I was going to three meetings a week, consistently, for the first five years I was in program – bit by bit, I started seeing things working in my life.

“I was scared. I was single. My marriage was over. I was starting my own business. I had a mortgage to pay. I had a co-op. But I was listening. I began to realize that if things were going to change, it had to start with me.”

Q: Do you remember an a-ha moment?

A: I was still working three days a week at the company while starting my business. I was asked to do something I wasn’t comfortable with. I didn’t think it was ethical. I called a friend who was an accountant, and he said, don’t do it. It was Friday. I left a note on my boss’ desk, saying I can’t do this. When I came back the next week, I was fired. All of a sudden a lot of my income was gone. I never saw it coming. I had no idea. That was a real a-ha!

     I was starting to integrate what I was hearing in Al-Anon – say what you mean and mean what you say. Don’t play games. Do the right thing. I did it, and, whoa, I got fired.

     I realized the power of being ethical in business. It was scary. But it was also kind of cool. I was relieved to be out of there. In Al-Anon, you start learning to throw off all the lies and all the trappings, and to be honest and be who you are. That was the beginning of it, and felt good.

“I realized the power of being ethical in business. It was scary. But it was also kind of cool. I was relieved to be out of there. In Al Anon, you start learning to throw off all the lies and all the trappings, and to be honest and be who you are.”

Q: People could go several ways in that situation. You could have said, “I did the right thing and it got me fired. I won’t do that again.”

A: That never occurred to me. I never questioned whether I was doing the right thing. There was one thing I learned from my mother. She never let anyone push her around. From a very early age, I would never let anyone push me around.

     There had been another, earlier incident. When I was on Wall Street, I was asked to lie to my boss by one of his underlings. There was a big political mess going on in my company at the time. I refused to do it. These corporate types just went crazy. They couldn’t believe this secretary wouldn’t do this. I was completely alienated and ostracized by the muckety-mucks.

Q: What was the difference between the two events?

A: The first time, the fact they asked me to do it just frightened me. I thought, “Oh my God, I’m in one those Michael Douglas movies about the Wall Street tycoon who’s trying to get everybody do something illegal.” I had worked in Wall Street firms at the time when they were having major scandals. I remember sitting next to a guy who was on the front page of the paper the next day being taken out in handcuffs. I had seen that kind of stuff happen, but I had never been asked to do anything.

Q: How did having a spiritual community make it different the second time?

A: I wasn’t alone. I had a community, a group of people who understood me. I could go to an Al-Anon meeting the next day and talk about it. I had people who would support me. The first time, I didn’t have that. I couldn’t go to anybody in the company and tell them. I didn’t have a 12-step group. I could tell my husband, and he was sympathetic. He said you did the right thing. But that was it.

Q: You’ve touched a number of times on doing the right thing. How do you know what the right thing to do is?

A: I ask what my gut tells me. I also ask the Christian question, what would Jesus do? It’s a cliché, but it works. And I try to think about what I’m putting out. It’s a concept I learned early on in the 12-step program: You get back what you put out. It’s the idea of karma. If I do the wrong thing, it will come back to haunt me, in my soul.

“You get back what you put out. It’s the idea of karma. If I do the wrong thing, it will come back to haunt me, in my soul.”

Q: Coming back to the present, what are the connections between your work and spiritual life today?

A: Almost all of my clients are doing something that’s making the world a better place. Most of them are in creative work. Their politics and values are similar to mine. Most of them are spiritual. I can bring my spirituality into the workplace very easily. I don’t have to worry like I did when I was on Wall Street that I can’t go in and speak my mind and be honest about how I feel about something.

     We talk openly and honestly. When you’re dealing with money, you have to be honest. I’ll force them to take an active role and pay attention to their books. And I always set everything up so that if I walk out at lunchtime and get hit by a bus they can go back in and figure out exactly what I was doing. There are not going to be any mysteries.

     That’s who I am. That’s bringing my spirituality into the workplace. It’s all one now. I’m one person. I don’t have a work persona and a non-work persona.

“It’s all one now. I’m one person. I don’t have a work persona and a non-work persona.”

 Q: How long after Al-Anon did other spiritual activities come in?
 
A: I began feeling I wanted to start connecting to a specifically spiritual community. I had been out of the church for 20 years. My mother came up for Christmas, and said she’d really like to go to Christmas mass. When we went in, I was just overwhelmed. They were singing Adeste Fidelis in the old Latin. I just started crying. It was such a good feeling. I wanted to experience this all the time. So I started going back. And it was great. I heard everything with different ears.

That's I.t.!

***

You can learn more about the Church for All People by visiting their new Website:
www.thechurchforallpeople.com

To learn more about the Catholic Apostolic Church in North America (CACINA), click on this link:
http://www.cacina.org/

To learn more about Al-Anon, click on this link: 
http://www.al-anon.alateen.org/english.html

To learn more about the Buddhist Association of the United States, click on this link: http://www.baus.org/baus/index.html

Wikipedia is also a good resource on Al-Anon, Buddhism, and religion and spirituality generally: www.wikipedia.org
 

Q&A: Kristen Laine, Author, "American Band"

By Jon Berry, Insight Trails

SOME YEARS AGO, AT A HIGH SCHOOL REUNION in Richmond, Indiana, Kristen Laine found herself in a group of friends from her marching band days, talking about what was really going on in their lives in high school. They shared the back stories they’d kept from each other of family crises, financial hardships, and other pains. Band, they all agreed, got them through it.

 The evening stayed with Laine, eventually becoming the germ of an idea for a book: to immerse herself for a year in a high school band and uncover the stories of a new generation of teenagers. In 2004, she acted on the dream, moving with her husband and children to Elkhart, Indiana, home of the reigning state champion high school marching band, the Concord High School Marching Minutemen.

    It was a risky move. Although she had been published in magazines and had become a an essayist for Vermont Public Radio, Laine had never written a book. She didn’t have a contract with a publishing house or an agent to shop the idea.

 But the gamble paid off. The resulting book, American Band: Music, Dreams, and Coming of Age in the Heartland, published this fall by Gotham Books, has made waves in narrative non-fiction, one of the hot spots of the publishing industry. It has landed Laine interviews with NPR’s Talk of the Nation and other top radio programs, and has won praise from major publications as “a touching story superbly told” (Library Journal) with “novel-like richness” (The Wall Street Journal) and “a driving narrative” (The Chicago Tribune).

 The book is layered with unexpected twists. The band’s hard-driving, clean-cut band director cares as much about developing leaders as winning trophies (sample wisdom: “If you work as hard as I want you to, you’re going to have a great marriage, a great career, and a great life”). The trumpeter who is the acknowledged leader of the band sees his perfect life come undone by a series of tragedies in his family, and manages to soldier on. The classic story of the new kid in town who finds a home in the band – a story Laine, the daughter of a corporate executive, saw in herself a generation ago – concerns a Hispanic immigrant. The evangelical Christianity that suffuses much of  heartland America today plays a significant, and sometimes surprising, role in many of the stories.

 I have known Kristen Laine since high school, and for many years have been impressed by her personal journey. It has taken her through a series of leaps, from small-town Indiana to college at Harvard, then to the West Coast, where she worked at Microsoft in the go-go years of high-tech and, for several years, devoted herself to rock climbing, before coming to her current life in New England.

 I talked with her about American Band, becoming a writer, and the lessons she’s along the way, from the apprenticeship in risk-taking that she gained from rock climbing to the advice she was given by the poet Gary Snyder.

QUESTION: As much as a story of a high school band, American Band is a book about growing up and the interior struggles of finding identity and making sense of the world. Did you go into the book looking for this theme?

KRISTEN LAINE: I went into the book thinking of band as a transformative, life-changing experience, because it had been that for me. But I wasn’t sure what I would find. What I found was remarkable and wonderful. Each of the students I focused on moved closer to who they needed to become as an adult.

Q: Many adults find it excruciatingly difficult to talk to teenagers. How did you get them to open up?

A: I wanted them to feel they could be themselves with me. I remembered from when I was a teenager that teenagers have many faces. I didn’t want them to just present the face to me that they present to their teachers. I didn’t want them to be playing a role. I was sincerely interested in who they were, what they were thinking about, and why they mad the choices that they made.

 I didn’t talk down to them. I interacted with them in their own questions. I remembered that when I was a teenager, I was grappling with big questions. So when they brought up their questions, like “How does God interact in the world?” I didn’t act as if I had all the answers and that they would come to those answers down the road. I engaged them, and asked them questions: What did they think? Why were they were thinking about this? Who did they talk to about these questions? I wasn’t trying to look at teenage culture. For me teenage culture is just the surface. Underneath the surface is where the interesting stuff is.

"I remembered that when I was a teenager, I was grappling with big questions. So when they brought up their questions, like “How does God interact in the world?” I didn’t act as if I had all the answers. I engaged them, and asked them questions: What did they think?"

Q: What did you learn about kids and growing up today that you didn’t appreciate before the book?

A: Before going to Elkhart, I knew some teenagers, but not many. I think I’d accepted the media image that kids today are disengaged mall rats and very focused on what college they’re going to get into or how much money they’re going to make. Although I assumed that band kids would be a little different from that, I was surprised by how far they were from those stereotypes.

     What I found was a lot of kids who weren’t focused much on college and money at all. Instead they were focused on their relationship with God.

    That was a huge surprise. I grew up in the era of Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell. The Jesus Christ I thought of was countercultural and antiestablishment. In the 30 years since I’d left the state, Indiana, like a lot of the middle of the country, had become more conservative. I’d read about the change, but didn’t fully appreciate until I got there that I was going behind the lines of red state America. The culture wars were real. I’d been on one side of them, and I was now seeing the other side.

"I didn’t fully appreciate until I got there that I was going behind the lines of red state America. The culture wars were real. I’d been on one side of them, and I was now seeing the other side."

    If I was going to take on these kids’ lives in full, it meant dealing with their questions about religion and their relationship with God. They’d been brought up in a culture that had clearly defined things I saw positively as negative – that feminism was the work of the devil; that homosexuality was the work of the devil. I was truly the first person some of these kids had talked to who was a feminist, a Democrat, and a liberal. I had to try to look at them empathetically. I had to understand that they were trying to make sense of the world they’d been taught.

    Some of the students felt very clear about right and wrong. But many were trying to figure things out. Like teenagers everywhere, they had a view of the adult world that’s from underneath the adults. They saw hypocrisies between what adults say and do. They read the Bible, and listened to what their pastors said, but made their own assessments. In doing so they started to chart a path that was very different from the generation teaching them. They talked a lot about tolerance. Something they kept saying to me is, it’s not up to me to say what God decides. It’s up to me to love everybody as God would want me to love them. Not love the person/hate the sin, but simply love them.

"Something they kept saying to me is, it’s not up to me to say what God decides. It’s up to me to love everybody as God would want me to love them. Not love the person/hate the sin, but simply love them."

 From what I saw, I believe this generation of evangelicals will remain devout Christians. But I think they’re going to be different in the political realm, more politically diverse and more interested in social issues like homelessness. That was one of the encouraging pieces for me. In my worldview, thinking for yourself is key. I believe that God wants us to find our own way, and not simply do what we’re told.

Q: Many people think about taking a leap of faith to pursue a dream. You did it, going to Indiana to research the book, before you had an agent or contract. How did you do it?

A: I think my life has trained me to take risks. Partly it’s from my family – my three brothers and I were brought up to think of ourselves as special. But a lot of it was books. I was a bookish kid. I loved reading, and read a lot of myths and fairy tales. I often think I’ve gone through my life thinking of myself in mythological terms, looking at my life as a series of quests, with obstacles in my way. I’m always looking for the magical dust or the implement or sword that’s going to help me get through the obstacle to my goal. I think I did that when I came to Richmond. Through being in band, I reinvented myself from a girl who was picked on all the time to someone more poised and socially comfortable. Moving around so much when I was growing up – we moved every 2-plus years – in a sense, also helped. It taught me I could make big moves.

"I often think I’ve gone through my life thinking of myself in mythological terms, looking at my life as a series of quests, with obstacles in my way. I’m always looking for the magical dust or the implement or sword that’s going to help me get through the obstacle to my goal."

Q: How did rock-climbing come into the picture?

A: It started, ironically, with going to Harvard. I had this idea that Harvard was a place where people tried to find truth and beauty. When I got there, I saw that it was more a training ground for people to become investment bankers, lawyers, or doctors. It was the beginning of the yuppy era. I didn’t want to join the status quo. After graduation, what I wanted to do was go to Alaska. I’d just read John McPhee’s Coming into the Country.

    I couldn’t find a job in Alaska, so I got one in San Francisco. Through a friend from Harvard, I met a guy who was a climber. I thought, I’d like to try that. He got all the gear and ropes and hung them on me – they weigh a lot, about 30 pounds – and said, “Do you really want to do this?” as in “Why would you want to do this, you little girl?” That made me mad.

    I moved up to Tacoma (Washington) to do college admissions work for the University of Puget Sound. My travel area was California. Once, on a trip there, I saw this rock. I got out of my car and, in my tennis shoes, started climbing up the rock. I got almost to the top, and my leg started shaking. I got scared and grasped the rock – the wrong move, any climber will tell you – and fell to the ground, into some bushes. Luckily, I wasn’t injured.

    After I fell, I could have said, "I don’t want to do this." But instead I said, “I need lessons.” I wanted to do it, so I learned how to do it. And I liked it. I loved it, in fact. I lived out my dream to be an explorer and adventurer. For several years, in my 20s, I became a climbing bum. It was not an easy life. I lived without a car and really close to the bone. But I had really great adventures.

"After I fell, I could have said, 'I don’t want to do this.' But instead I said, 'I need lessons.' I wanted to do it, so I learned how to do it. And I liked it. I loved it, in fact."

Q: What did you like about climbing?

A: Climbing got me outside myself. It requires absolute focus, something I think I crave. I loved the feel of rocks. I loved the smells. I loved the people I got to know. I learned a lot from the other climbers I was around. They were people who were, literally, not taking the easy way. Many of them had very interesting lives. It was an apprenticeship for me in risk-taking, not only in going up a rock but in all of life.

Q: What did you learn about risk-taking?

A: Climbers I knew died. It’s one of the sad truths about climbing. Climbing magazine always has an obituaries column. So death became part of what I learned about. I learned that life is short. Even if you live to be 95, there’s not an infinite length of time. To hold back from what I most want to do is a crime.

    Over time, I learned that the climbers who were less likely to die were the ones who prepared very carefully. They were risk-takers, but they prepared themselves well. I’ve drawn on that lesson many, many times.

    Then, in the simple, physical act of climbing, I learned what it means to go for it. There are lots of climbing moves that you can’t do if you hold back.

"Over time, I learned that the climbers who were less likely to die were the ones who prepared very carefully. They were risk-takers, but they prepared themselves well. I've drawn on that lesson many, many times."

Q: Take me through one of those moves.

A: The standard climbing rule is you need three points of contact with the rock. Three points make you stable. It’s best if it’s your two feet and one hand. But there are times that you have to make a dynamic move, where you have only one point of stability, the point you’re pushing off from, to grab hold of a rock or ledge. To reach a point of safety, you have to go past a point of no safety. You have to have faith. Many of these moves also take you past a point of no return. You can’t backtrack and reverse a leap.

    When I think about the leap that we took to do the book, we had to go past a point of no return. We actually went past a couple of them.

"The standard climbing rule is you need three points of contact with the rock. But there are times where you have only one point of stability, the point you’re pushing off from. To reach a point of safety, you have to go past a point of no safety. You have to have faith."  

Q: What were the points of no return for you with the book?

A: I knew that I was unlikely to get an agent or a contract before we went to Indiana. I was too much of an unknown. The only way we were likely to pull this off was to take a risk. Once I got to that point it was an easy question. I believed in the book.

    That’s another thing I’ve learned: to trust my instincts. When I have strong leadings, they’re usually right. I had a strong sense this was going to be a good book. There hadn’t been one like it. I had the background to write it. I felt it was a reasonable risk.

Q: How were you able to take the risk of pulling up stakes and going to Indiana to research the book?

A: I owe a lot to my husband, Jim [Jim Collins, also a writer, author of The Last Best League, on the Cape Cod summer baseball league]. There was no way I could have researched and written this book without the sacrifices Jim made, moving with me to Indiana and taking care of our children, so that I could focus on the book. I spent a long time as a single woman asking the men I dated, would you ever stay home with children? It’s really hard for women in my generation to find that. And then I met Jim. He wanted to be fully engaged as a parent, and to have a real partner in his life. Jim knows the excitement of sharing an intellectual life and career, and wanted that in his marriage.

Q: How did you manage financially?

A: We had come into our marriage with money from my being in the high tech business. We used most of it for Jim’s book, and figured we would spend the rest for my book. As it turned out, we needed to spend that money by the time we came back from Indiana, before I started writing. We sold off some stock and a life insurance policy. Then we borrowed money from one of my brothers.

    We were right at the point of saying, “If I don’t get an agent by next week, we’re going to have to find other jobs,” when things shifted. That was on a Sunday. By Friday, the agent I’d wanted from the beginning, Robert Shepard, told me wanted to represent the book. That was good news: Robert wouldn’t have taken the book unless he knew there was a good chance of being able to sell it. From there, my story went beyond fairy tale. Not only did I get enough money to write the book, but I got a lot of money for a first-time author. Jim didn’t have to work, so he could totally take care of the kids while I finished the book.

Q: It’s striking to me how often coincidence comes up in the interviews I've done for Insight Trails – when people put themselves out there, things happen.

A: A number of years ago, at a writers conference in Squaw Valley, I went on a hike with the poet Gary Snyder. On the hike, I asked him, “How do I make a living at writing?” He turned around, in midstride, while bounding up these rocks – he’s truly like a mountain goat – and said, “You just do it.” It was a very simple idea. You just do it.

    It took me a long time to get rid of my anxiety about money. But once I made the leap mentally, people took me more seriously. You recognize it in someone. I think something actually, physically changes in people, in how they hold themselves, when they’re committed to a path.

"I think something actually, physically changes in people, in how they hold themselves, when they’re committed to a path."

Q: What else have you learned about risk-taking?

A: That you have to be fully invested. For a while in my early 30s, I got so used to taking risks that I would just leap. The last job I had at Microsoft was entirely the wrong leap. I took it because I thought it was going to look good. I forgot to ask myself if I really wanted it. It turned out that I didn’t. I got fired. I failed. Moving up the corporate ladder turned out not to be meaningful enough to me for me to take that big a risk. I didn’t want it badly enough to do all it required.

 In contrast, writing this book was something I’d wanted my whole life. I was so determined to do it. It was the first time in work that I’ve ever had the feeling that I’d had climbing, of absolute investment.

Q: When did you decide you wanted to be a writer?

A: I first said I wanted to be a writer when I was five years old. I had other dreams as well. When I was seven, I wanted to be a missionary. I wanted to go to China, and I thought being a missionary was how you got to China. I was reading a lot of 19^th-Century books at the time! I also wanted to be an explorer. I remember reading about Marco Polo and being unhappy that there were no more continents to be discover – then reading Kon-Tiki [Thor Heyerdahl’s book about crossing the Pacific by raft] and thinking, there are other ways to be an explorer. When I think about the passions I’ve had in my life – words and books, having adventures, and trying to make the world a better place – nothing has changed! (Laughs)

"For many years, I think I was waiting to be anointed, like the girl at the soda fountain who gets tapped to be a movie star. I had this idea that writers were picked. Now I realize that writing is not a divine gift. It's a craft. If you want to do it, you get an apprenticeship."

Q: How close is where you’ve wound up to where you thou