Christmas Archives - Mindfulness Association

WHY NOT? – Julia Fehrenbacher

Kristine Mackenzie-Janson — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 11:54:32 +0000

If death is inevitable, if it is a sure
thing that this face, these hands,
this body that holds a lifetime of this living,
will, someday, no longer be here,
if you don’t get to take a single thing with you —

then —

why spend a moment more refusing,
worrying about who might disapprove,
measuring every move
as if there is some fixed formula you must
find? Why hold tight to anything?

Why not, instead, love every honeyed drop of yourself,
why not leap into life—belly-laughing
and light, light like the soft kiss of moonlight,
light like the light that you are,
have always been, will always be—

why not take this quickly passing day
by the hand and dance
like there’s no tomorrow? And if you’re too tired
to dance, why not rest lightly here
just as you are?

by Julia Fehrenbacher

I remember as a teenager the Christmas speech of the Dutch queen including the following sentence: “It is the approach of death that makes life even more precious”. It was the first time that this idea landed with me and it hasn’t left me since, although there have been times it’s been more, or less, in the foreground.

Recent events of loved ones being closer to that passage into the great unknown, have brought it very close to home again, and so the poem by the wonderful mindful poet Julia Fehrenbacher struck a clear chord. And the poignancy of the first lines touches my heart directly – it’s real, and it includes absolutely everyone I know and love… It also made me smile to see the link with the poem Fay shared a while ago: The Dakini Speaks. Same theme, different tone of voice, similar invitation: to dance!

Or to rest. And I don’t find it easy to value rest as much as ‘dancing’, or doing in some way… and I think I may not be alone here. Recently I’ve received no less than three recommendations for the book Rest as Resistance by Tricia Hersey, you’d almost think the universe is trying to tell me something! I guess it’s the same principle that leads many people to struggle prioritising practice: it seems like doing nothing, and therefore can’t be much valuable or important. But what if dancing and resting was like the in- and outbreath, and a full, well-lived life included a good balance of both… indeed, why not?!

PS if you’d like to explore how to live well so that in time we can die well, there’s a course on that very topic, you can read more about it here…

Photo by Maksym Kaharlytskyi on Unsplash

Give Up The Fight – Gretchen Haley

Kristine Mackenzie-Janson — Sun, 07 Jan 2024 09:57:42 +0000

Give up the fight
For some other moment
Some other life
Than here, and now
Give up the longing
for some other world
The wishing
for other choices to make
other songs to sing
other bodies, other ages,
other countries, other stakes
Purge the past; forgive the future –
for each come too soon.
Surrender only to this life,
this day, this hour,
not because it does not
constantly break your heart
but because it also beckons
with beauty
startles with delight
if only we keep
waking up
This is the gift
we have been given:
these “body-clothes,”
this heart-break, this pulse
this breath,
this light,
these friends,
this hope.
Here we re-member ourselves
All a part of it all –
Still growing, together.

by Gretchen Haley

There was a lovely conversation about the meaning of surrender, during the Midwinter practice day with the theme of Grace. If grace becomes possible by getting out of the way and opening to something other than what I can conjure up, then surrendering to ‘what is’ seems an important ingredient to me. This poem by the Unitarian Universalist minister Gretchen Haley (more of her poetry can be found here) says it in such a way that hearing the words, I feel the softening and melting happen in my body like sugar dissolving in tea. Such a marked difference with that other possibility, the trying to make stuff happen with gritted teeth!

And giving ourselves permission to ‘give up the fight’ during a practice day can be profound. I was moved to receive an email with the words below from one of the participants, speaking of what she found when deeply listening in that stillness…

A Dream of Winter

Perfect
is
The Ghost of Christmas Past.
In this winter dream
I did not
deck the halls
nor
don my gay apparel.
I did not
strike the harp nor join the chorus.
Instead,
listening to
my heart
and
“the soft animal of my body.”
I fell silent
and still
and rested in grace.

by Karen Lerpiniere

More retreats coming up in the new year, I’m already looking forward to the next!

Photo by another participant of that day, the talented photographer Fiona Dodd on Unsplash

Grace of Snow – Orla Beaton

Fay Adams — Wed, 27 Dec 2023 22:00:11 +0000

There is such beauty
In the way that the grass
Gracefully accepts the snow
And the snow gracefully accepts
The soft landing place of
The grass
They are entirely at ease
With each other’s presence
Outside the world
Of weather warnings and
Closed bridges
There is a grace right here
Right now each flake
Whirling and dancing
Each blade
Gracefully welcoming
Like an old friend
The miraculous arrival of snow

by Orla Beaton

What feelings and images does this poem evoke in you? For me it brings a peaceful acceptance. Along with this feeling there’s a longing, a longing to be more completely and long-lastingly embraced in the grace of this beautiful quality.

I feel that the poet Orla Beaton (for more of her poetry see her blog here) speaks of a grace that can befall us in an instant. The grace of a mind that turns a corner and after a long tussle with turbulent thoughts, all-of-a-sudden, feels outside of thought and in an open landscape of light, ease, clarity and serenity.
Grace for me is something impossible to conjure, manufacture or get. It is a gift, it comes according to a timing and mystery that is beyond me. My most alive connection to grace is in the longing for it.

Perhaps there is a grace in this longing?

But maybe there are some ways we can make ourselves more available for grace to find us. Maybe we can clear space, empty ourselves a little and set ourselves down receptively, like a vessel ready to be filled. Letting the ‘weather warnings and closed bridges’ of the outside world be a world away for a while. Maybe grace may actually arise from a partnership between ‘the beyond’ (whatever we think that is), and ourselves, if we place ourselves in an inner posture of opening, asking, receiving and accepting.

Between Christmas and New Year, we have a special opportunity for you to spend some time opening to grace through mindfulness and compassion practice. Join us for a practice day on Friday 29th from 10am – 4pm.

Ps. Orla Beaton is a yoga and mindfulness teacher and poet living in Fife, Scotland. She’s published a collection of poetry called My Magpie Mind.

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

by Orla Beaton

Perhaps there is a grace in this longing?

Ps. Orla Beaton is a yoga and mindfulness teacher and poet living in Fife, Scotland. She’s published a collection of poetry called My Magpie Mind.

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Bone – Mary Oliver

Fay Adams — Mon, 12 Dec 2022 08:53:43 +0000

Understand, I am always trying to figure out

what the soul is,

and where hidden,

and what shape —

and so, last week,

when I found on the beach

the ear bone

of a pilot whale that may have died

hundreds of years ago, I thought

maybe I was close

to discovering something —

for the ear bone

is the portion that lasts longest

in any of us, man or whale; shaped

like a squat spoon

with a pink scoop where

once, in the lively swimmer’s head,

it joined its two sisters

in the house of hearing,

it was only

two inches long —

and thought: the soul

might be like this —

so hard, so necessary —

yet almost nothing.

Beside me

the gray sea

was opening and shutting its wave-doors,

unfolding over and over

its time-ridiculing roar;

I looked but I couldn’t see anything

through its dark-knit glare;

yet don’t we all know, the golden sand

is there at the bottom,

though our eyes have never seen it,

nor can our hands ever catch it

lest we would sift it down

into fractions, and facts —

certainties —

and what the soul is, also

I believe I will never quite know.

Though I play at the edges of knowing,

truly I know

our part is not knowing,

but looking, and touching, and loving,

which is the way I walked on,

softly,

through the pale-pink morning light.

by Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver often makes mindfulness seem so luminous in her poems. Through her perceptions of the vivid realities of nature, and through her deep experiencing, she lets a mindful way of being speak to her and then to us.

Apparently, she is one of the best loved poets of our time (according to the shop-keeper of my local poetry bookshop in Hay-on-Wye). This suggests that in this ever more complex world, there is a longing for the natural simplicity, beauty and aliveness that she gives us in her words.

In this poem she reflects on what the soul is, letting a whale bone be a messenger. Then the ocean speaks to her of the eternal, and she senses the presence of the golden sand beneath its darkness, hidden far out of sight. In the end she finds her way into the mystery of existence by letting herself not know what the soul is, yet play at the edge of knowing, which lands her into the wonder of the now – into ‘looking and touching and loving’, which in the end feels like the point of it all.

The process she goes through feels familiar to me. I try to grasp at knowing the meaning of life and the spiritual truth of existence, fail to get anywhere, and land back into the sheerness of the moment, my own sentience being the ultimate gift to be lived and shared.

Ps. Join us for the Wonder of the Everyday course which begins after Christmas. The constant project to get to somewhere better can cause a rejection of our own precious life, causing us to miss out and feel unfulfilled. The intention for this course is to start the new year by finding the wonder that is present in our own imperfect life as it is.

Photo by Lorenzo Spoleti on Unsplash

Kindling Contentment

Kristine Mackenzie-Janson — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 17:45:37 +0000

For some reason, I vividly remember a conversation I had with a friend when I was about 16 years old, where we discussed contentment. Tevredenheid in Dutch, and considering that word now, I can still taste the flavour of contempt we had for it. “Who would be satisfied with that?!” we wondered out loud. Wouldn’t it be terrible sad to settle (or worse still, to aim for tevredenheid), when the world was so full of bliss and terror, excitement and drama?! In comparison, contentment felt like consenting to bland mediocracy, and not reaching for more and better.

Twenty-five years later, I have got a different view.

How wonderful to actually be content with what’s here, what freedom and possibility lies in the ability to start from a place of enough and of being happy with one’s situation in life! Maybe, like acceptance, this doesn’t mean you may not also want to change things. But if the change comes from a place of contentment rather than from lack and frustration, it may come much more joyfully.

But although I now see the value in contentment, that doesn’t mean it’s as present in my life as I’d like. In Buddhism, much attention is given to the three main mind poisons: greed, hatred and ignorance. On reflection, we may find that one of these subtly (or not so subtly) dominates our life. Perhaps we’re always reaching for something more and different… Or maybe we live with a habitual sense of aversion and dislike for what’s here… Or we may find there’s a basic disinterest and boredom towards whatever is happening. It’s clear to me that my main tendency is around the first of the three: this forward leaning, restless desire for the next and better moment.

We may all have our own sense of what contentment means for us. These days, for me it means coming to a place of balance – not reaching towards or leaning away from. It means actually being right in the middle of what’s here – and finding it alright. Growing this quality and kindling its flame further, seemed like a good ambition for 2023 and therefore, a nice theme to practice with on a retreat day between Christmas and New Year. (And yes, the irony of aiming to be content, or practising being more content, is not lost on me!)

So, in preparation of the day, I rummaged through my growing selection of poetry to see what it may offer in terms of contentment, of happily being with the good of what’s here (which of course doesn’t mean we’re not actively caring for the almost inevitable difficulties that are also here!). And I came across the poem below, and reading it I felt an immediate softening and sense of ease in the invitation of it. Let’s see what it would be like to let that this invitation take centre stage for a while…

The Cure for it All

Go gently today, don’t hurry
or think about the next thing. Walk
with the quiet trees, can you believe
how brave they are—how kind? Model your life
after theirs. Blow kisses
at yourself in the mirror
especially when
you think you’ve messed up. Forgive
yourself for not meeting your unreasonable
expectations. You are human, not
God—don’t be so arrogant.

Praise fresh air
clean water, good dogs. Spin
something from joy. Open
a window, even if
it’s cold outside. Sit. Close
your eyes. Breathe. Allow
the river
of it all to pulse
through eyelashes
fingertips, bare toes. Breathe in
breathe out. Breathe until
you feel
your bigness, until the sun
rises in your veins. Breathe
until you stop needing
anything
to be different.

by Julia Fehrenbacher

Wishing you a contented, joyful festive season…

You can find the details for Kristine’s Kindling Contentment Retreat day on 28 December HERE.

Online retreat days and practice days cost £30 – begin at 10am and finish at 4pm.