Nov 16, 2013 – Journal of An Auspicious Day

What an auspicious day. We woke and the early-freeze was gone. The mercury jumped 20 degrees, sun shining like good fortune itself. The animals are thrilled. Birds and frogs are warming up for an orchestra in the forest. The cowherd over the fence is uncharacteristically gossipy. Roosters and dogs are relaying important news between the farms. Even a Red Tail hawk circled the property a few times screeching when we came outside as if to say “Hello Sabrina, the world salutes you with this good day, you glorious being you.” I know what you’re thinking. I’m not biased just because it’s my birthday.

In morning practice I hit my 144^th Qigong practice. (I’ve been tracking my progress towards this goal by making a beaded necklace, see “Bead by Bead”). Today I earned the final bead – a big piece of silvery flower-carved hippie bling. I tied it off, and ceremoniously put it around my neck, “Ooooh look at me! Well done, Sab!” Fearless, the stray cat who does sitting meditation with me each morning in the space-cabin, looked up at me and nodded his approval.

Fearless & I

Okay so I may’ve “accidently” overslept and skipped a few days of Qigong this week so that this momentous occasion could fall on my birthday. But as I explained to Fearless, sometimes you have to massage good fortune a little – you rub my back and I’ll rub yours kinda thing. Maybe I think fortune has feelings too.

 

Hungry from this eventful morning session, I went inside to find a display of crystals and little birthday gifts around a plate of French toast with real maple syrup, toasted walnuts and warm berries. Frankie had read my mind and made my most wished for birthday breakfast.

My beloved magic elf genie.

Okay so maybe my detailed list of birthday ‘wishes’ on the fridge helped. I could’ve enjoyed my meals with warm gratitude – to have a partner so lovingly meet my princessy request, but no. Instead I relished in the belief that my partner is a psychic genie and delighted in the ‘miracle’ so that every bite was taken with an ecstatic smile.

Thirty-five journeys around that beloved sun out there. 

In here, rather.

We’ve become so ‘rational’ that going inward in search of the sun almost seems like insanity, doesn’t it? Yesterday I finished reading Thich Nhat Hanh’s Love Letter to the Earth. Poetry and physics, compassion and chemistry - he basically repeats the same message of inter-being a hundred different ways until you suddenly realize you’ve been sucker punched in the gut chakra and feel the sun and the stars, the earth and the rain inside there. It happened for me a few days ago, at page 102:

"Dear Mother Earth, …Sometimes I forget . Lost in the confusions and worries of daily life, I forget that my body is your body, and sometimes even forget that I have a body at all. Unaware of the presence of my body and the beautiful planet around me and within me, I’m unable to cherish and celebrate the precious gift of life you have given me."

So here I am smack dab in the middle of my 9 month sabbatical and finally I’ve receive a succinct sentence to sum up my mission. Thank you Thich Nhat Hanh! Page 104:

“Dear Mother Earth,

My deep wish is to wake up to the miracle of life. I promise to train myself to be present for myself, my life, and for you in every moment.”

This ‘training’ is ideally something we can turn towards in the midst of ‘real life’:

academic study,

student debt,

career path,

earn cash,

think,

plan,

do

These have had the better part of me for… gosh, a good 30years now.

I’ve been slowly working other personal developments around the edges of my ‘normal’ life. But it's hard that way because most of this growth requires little daily habits done consistently over time. So now I’ve given myself this gift - to step out of the busy life for 9 months, to bring to the fore those heart-body-spirit aspects of myself that’ve been relegated to the backburner so long*. Time to:

write

awaken my soul

learn how to pray

learn an instrument

use my hands creatively

find my lost sense of wonder

cleanse & strengthen my body

practice theatre of the oppressed methods

deepen bonds with beloveds & community

develop and commit to a regular morning practice

& discern the trajectory of my destiny, to know where to go next.

The ‘self-training’ portion of my sabbatical is wrapping up. (See “Farm Wife Photo Essay”!) In two weeks I leave the sanctuary of Frankie’s farm to begin guided training on the more esoteric pursuits: Shalom Retreat leadership training, one week each month December until March; and a two-year program of Sufi Studies at Suluk Academy (eight intensive weeks spread out over the two years).

While this birthday marks the halfway point of my sabbatical on the calendar, the climax still lies ahead, with lots of psycho-spiritual climbing before me (not to mention traveling on a shoe-string budget). 

Maybe I will suck at leading the Shalom retreat process. Maybe I won’t find god. Maybe I will end up in debt, lost and disillusioned with myself. Maybe people will say I was being lazy all year and no one will ever hire me again… But I won’t follow the river of these fears. This is the day I blow wind into the sails of my own heart leaping after what it wants.

I can feel the full moon rising up towards the horizon to meet me. Soon it will dazzle the whole farm, a final portent for a good year ahead. To top it off, my blood started an hour ago, lending a sense of moon-earth-tide-me attunement that I choose to believe will make my full moon birthday wishes even more powerful. Maybe success will only be as true as I make it by the force of my own believing.

So say it again Sab.

What an auspicious day!

~me

In a space-cabin on Frankie’s farm, somewhere North of Siler City, NC

*Medicine Wheel teachings I have been exposed to and Integral Theory (especially related to lines of development) both instruct that healing and growth require some degree of balance between development of various aspects of self. My sabbatical is also following Steven Covey’s advice to ‘put first things first’ and prioritize what is ‘not urgent but most import

Bead by Bead

When my nephew was getting trained to use the toilet my sister hung a piece of construction paper in the bathroom. He loves stickers, so he got a little happy face sticker for a pee and a big sparkly happy face or a fire truck sticker for a poop. My grown up, productivity oriented mind first saw this and thought – well you’re tricking him! There’s no cumulative value in it! Shouldn’t he get an actual firetruck after 100 stickers or something?

I was ready to start union negotiations for him when my wise younger sister explained to me that at two and a half years old he was so ‘in the now’ that a delighted ‘now’ was the best thing he could think of. The promise of something tomorrow held little interest.

This teaching stuck with me a few months, and became the answer to my own problem. Last spring when I was in full workaholic swing, I was struggling to maintain a 15-minute morning practice of Qigong, to cleanse my energy flow. I was convinced this 15 minutes would over time change the quality of my days but I couldn’t seem to consistently find the motivation or discipline.

Borrowing the sticker idea, I asked myself, “What small, cheap but precious thing would genuinely give me a rush of excitement and bring some celebration to each session of practice?...” From what I knew of learning theories, I felt it needed to be something small enough not to become an external reward. It needed that ‘sticker’ not ‘firetruck’ quality, since intrinsic rewards stick better in the long run.

The next day I stopped in the window of the bead shop on my block in Montreal. I’d eyed the pretty displays every day, but with no time for an active crafting habit I’d had no excuses to buy any. I walked in and dropped $40 on an assortment of shiny blingy things including a strand of turquoise, one big special final bead to work towards and some red thread that seemed… auspicious.

I placed the basket of little beads and the big bead on my altar as shiny motivation to my inner raven, an offering prayer to help me with discipline instead of tricking me away from my goal. I’d heard that after 100, or some say 120 times, doing something new it becomes a habit. I like round numbers and decided to overshoot just to be sure, so I vowed to get to 12 x 12 beads (with every twelfth bead being an extra special one.)

Slowly but surely, some weeks more than others, bead by bead I’ve been doing my Qigong practice. Finally on my birthday November 16^th 2013, I hit my 144th Qigong practice goal!

The 144 beads, strung one by one, remind me of every tiny moment of discipline. It just occured to me looking back that this is at least 2160 minutes spent dong Qigong! The final necklace is heavy and sparkly, just like the grounded delight of my beloved practice. These days when I skip Qigong something feels missing in my day.

I’ve especially noticed in the last few days since I finished the necklace, that the practice seems more intimately connected to me now. As if when I tied the necklace off my relationship with Qigong was sealed.

Now there is no shiny bead at the end of the practice, but we’re beyond that. At this point it’s almost as natural as sitting on a porcelain bowl instead of pooping my pants. Sure I could skip it and wait for somebody else to come along and clean me up, but I don’t really want to anymore.

~sab

my space-cabin, NC

Farm Wife Photo Essay

Some folks have been asking for pictures, 

so let me offer you a little voyeurism into my sabbatical life here 

on Frankie's farm in North Carolina. 

My day starts with Qigong on the hill in the centre of the property.

Then meditatiooooooooooooon.

Meet the Ruckus Pack - 4 great bitches.
(L to R: Bean, Sophie, Mishkami, Pearl)  

After breakfast we take them for training in the play yard.

Who is training who is often the question.

Then I head to work in the space-cabin. I try to write 1000 words a day.

The desk easily converts to a reading backrest. Here I am studying up on theatre games for an upcoming Theatre of the Oppressed workshop.

Everyday I improve at 'rural chic' fashion.

At least once a day Jacquie, one of the rescued cats, gets a massage.

It took several weeks to get over my fear of the chickens. Now sometimes I even help tend to them a bit! Here I am holding Millie the Mighty.

About once every week or two we go driving into town for errands.
 I like to stop and chat with the locals as much as possible.

A few times we've taken the ruckus pack on longer outings.
This was on our camping trip to the South Carolina coast, pretty, long beaches.

I've experimented with tons of new recipes, aiming to use as few processed foods as possible. I've been falling even more in love with my slow cooker.
 I usually cook four big meals from scratch each week and a dip and salad dressing. Most fun is getting to include Frankie's garden produce now that's it's all getting big.

I'd love to say I run everyday, but I haven't done as well with this goal. Some weeks I'll go a few times, then other weeks zip. Better some than none though!

Pretty hard to beat this trail, often it's my main motivation. Frankie inspired me by making creative trails through the fields. Around sunset these west facing trees are always a beautiful glow, and check out that moon!

In the late afternoon or evening I practice my new instrument - the recorder.

Sometimes I'll do another session of writing at night when I'm feeling inspired. 
Or I'll do crafts in the house, (sorry no pic) - I'm learning felting and zine-making right now. 

These photos serve to paint my idealized day for you, of course the actual path is up and down, explorations in self-will, reprogramming some desires and following others into their depths. It's amazing how much stress and resistance can emerge when you remove the external barriers and there are no excuses left. There are no pictures of the conflicts inner and outer... but this vision for the backbone of a day is what has been guiding me through the fall.

Peace to you in your days,

~sab

Learning to See Where I Am: my crash course on the Civil Rights Movement & slavery in the USA

An hour up the highway from where I sit writing this in my space-cabin, four college students walked into the Woolworth lunch cafeteria in Greensboro, North Carolina, sat at the counter and asked for coffee and pie. The coffee was five cents, and the cherry pie was ten cents. Being young black men, they were refused counter service and instructed to order from the carry-out counter. They politely refused to leave, and thus sparked a wildfire of sit-ins in public restaurants around the south. That was February 1, 1960.

Things have changed so much in such a short time, that time itself gets tricky. Fifty-three years later coffee will run you between two and six dollars and an African-American man is President of the United States. In some ways this change is notable advancement – there is some evidence of a new generation of children who literally do not see things the same way. I like to think I am one of them. And yet, the old hatreds still dance behind new stories of racial equality and desegregation. Systems of oppression take a long time to truly change and the great harms done will take generations to heal.

In the spirit of learning how to be in solidarity with such healing Frankie and I are visitors at the International Civil Rights Museum, built around the very site of the old Woolworth's cafeteria. Our tour guide Anita Johnson is telling us with hands thrown in the air, “Look! Look around you. Right here it happened!” Dramatically she walks us over to the lunch counter, “You see these four chairs? These right here, these are the very seats they sat in.” She goes on to tell us how she remembers coming to this very cafeteria herself as a little girl with her mother, after shopping. She jokes, “Nowadays everybody wants take-out, but back then it was an insult!”

Getting more personal, Anita explains how her mother would make them drink water and go to the washroom twice before leaving home, because she refused to let them use the segregated washrooms and water fountains at the department store – not just on principal, but because they were rarely cleaned and grossly unhygienic. Now here she is, all grown up and telling the story in a museum.

But backing up, our lesson actually began in a field in 1926. For Frankie’s birthday a couple weeks before the museum visit, I said “Let’s go to the city and see a movie. Your choice!”. They chose The Butler. I had no idea what it was even about, but within a few minutes of the fade-to-black we were standing amongst a group of indentured servants in a cotton field, in the southern USA. Therein we witnessed some of the harsh injustices of the day, in this case at the hands of the white antagonist – a drunken plantation owner’s son who rapes the mama of the butler-to-be and kills his father when he tries to intervene. “Oh,” I whispered grabbing Frankie’s arm, “This is it, this is the feeling.”

‘The feeling’ had been discomforting me since I facilitated a workshop at the ReWeaving conference a few weeks earlier. I had noticed that the tone and norms around race relations felt different somehow to me here in the southern USA than I was used to facilitating in Canada. I had the growing awareness that my ‘whiteness’ feels different here. And there it was on the screen, a potent and horrific mirror showing me – this is the legacy you wear when you walk the south in white skin.

Growing up in Canada, and specifically on the West Coast, I realize I didn’t actually learn that much about African-American history. Of course, I stand witness to other atrocious histories, e.g. confronting my settler identity as I learned the true history of the theft of British Columbia from Indigenous peoples. But there were no monuments to a civil war against slavery, no historic settlements of freed slaves, no cafeteria’s preserved where a wildfire of non-violent civil disobedience erupted and helped to change the attitudes of a nation.

It was as if I had to be here on this land before I could truly begin to feel the stories. I slunk down in my plush theatre chair an inch, recalling how I had walked into the conference so very 'white woman' to lead an embodied discussion on economy, with only cursory awareness of the history on this land before me. I recalled the potent moment at the conference when an African-American woman had beseeched a presenter speaking about the history of banking, “How can you talk about the old economy without talking about slavery?!" I walked away from the conference with discomfort tugging at my guts. After the movie, the discomfort became louder and more clear. It whispered me onwards -  Learn the stories. Go beyond fact finding. You need to see it, hear it, feel it. 

Thus, I spent the better part of October ravenously following one link to the next, listening to speeches and interviews on youtube and planned our visit to the Civil Rights museum. Through this research I would hear the names and learn the details of many key events but in the movie they roll by quickly - jumping states and events, an unending, shape-shifting assault against the African-American peoples… Jim Crow laws and lynch mobs, segregation and then violent attacks against peaceful sit-ins, a right-to-vote granted but with impossible criteria in practice, fire-bombings of the freedom rides, police dogs and fire hoses turned on unarmed protesters, the military holding back mobs while a tiny little girl climbs the steps to her new school…And the myriad ways and tactics that people serve(d) as warriors against all this brutal injustice.

My crash course in trans-Atlantic slavery and the American Civil Rights Movement has honed my social justice lens just a little bit more, making me perhaps slightly less blind than I was before, to where I am, who is around me and who I am as I stand here. I hope this will help my facilitation, being more aware of some of the histories carried into the room; and certainly it has called me to do more research on Canadian civil rights history.

In the end I am reminded how much learning and change can come when I pull uncomfortable feelings around privilege and oppression closer rather than push them away; and I wonder now if that discomfort is not the voice of grace itself guiding our hearts along the path of co-liberation.

~sab

from my space-cabin on a farm in the southern USA

A Post-Script on Peacefire

One interesting storyline I followed in my research through several sources started with the question, where did Martin Luther King Jr.’s non-violent principles come from? The answer caused not only time, but space to shrink before me. First stop - a port in South Africa in 1893.

Gandhi had landed as a new lawyer fresh from Britain to work for the rights of indentured Indians. However, almost immediately after he disembarked the boat, Gandhi encountered the dehumanizing treatment of apartheid by the authorities who considered him ‘black’. It was far worse than he had experienced as a wellborn Indian man, even under colonial rule. While in South Africa, Gandhi devised his Satygraha (non-violence) philosophy based on his inherited religious background, in particular teachings of Jainism, Hinduism and Buddhism. Of course we know Gandhi went on to lead his country to independence with almost brutal moral conviction (known to fast for weeks in repentance when mobs would resort to direct violence against the British!)

A few years after Gandhi’s assassination King was exposed to these eastern concepts by a teacher in his seminary college. He was so taken with Gandhi’s writing he began translating them to the language of the Christian faith, and finding alignments with biblical teachings. Not long after, fresh from seminary school, he was thus ready to seize upon Rosa Parks’ moment of truth in 1955, and mobilize the Montgomery bus boycott, another great spark in the Civil Rights movement.

So from Africa to India to Montgomery to Greensboro, from Jainism to Christianity to a Woolworth’s lunchroom… change spreads truly like sparks from the wildfire burning from one bold heart to the next to the next. May that fire continue to spread until we are all free.