Busy, Busy

Yumiko Fujii doing calligraphy on Ofuda (household tablets) for shrine visitors

After thirty years of hanging around retreat centers, Zen centers, monasteries, churches, and other places of the religious life, and now here at Tsubaki Grand Shrine, I have noticed a great paradox. When a person comes as a guest to these places (as I was a guest at the Snowmass Monastery in December, and wrote about in Snow Idyll), they are refuges and places of renewal. I see people walking the well-swept grounds of Tsubaki, strolling from here to there under the great trees and bowing in front of the exquisite shrines, and I can almost feel the tension melting from their shoulders, the weight that they carry day after day being released in the beauty and quiet. Anyone who has spent time at a retreat center has felt the same thing. I remember watching fellow retreatants at Spirit Rock watching a bird, or even a gopher (generally not admired) their faces alight with appreciation. 

But if you live and/or work at such a place of retreat and renewal...well, that's a different story altogether!! Who keeps everything together? Who cleans your room before you arrive, cooks the food lovingly, does the ceremony, makes the ofuda, dusts the altar, handles the reservations? And are they in a state of relaxed bliss? (I can imagine my friends who have lived at San Francisco Zen Center smiling knowingly as they read this.) Being here has convinced me that this may be a universal phenomenon: to create a place of renewal and ease, you need a bunch of very busy people, working very hard. To have a place of traditional beauty, you need a bunch of people with laptops and copy machines, hidden somewhere out of sight.

The office of Tsubaki Grand Shrine, on a quiet day. No visitor would see this.

Tsubaki Grand Shrine employs about seventy people: twenty Shinto priests of various ranks (male and female: mostly male), miko (shrine maidens), security, people who take care of the guest house where I'm staying, a calligrapher, even a person who makes sure brides don't trip in their traditional shoes walking the uneven paths. And they are working at a dead run for most of the day. Even during the week there are almost continuous ceremonies going on in the haiden, the main hall. Just like Zen Center, the priests officiate in a rotation. Closed circuit television broadcasts the ceremonies into the office. Miko who aren't doing a ceremony stand behind booths of amulets for sale, protective charms for health and safety. 

A few of the many amulets for sale at Tsubaki

Ever since I arrived here, I have been so reminded of first being a guest and then living and working at Green Gulch Farm and Zen Center, which has about fifty people who are non-guests. As a guest, I strolled the exquisite gardens and walked to the beach, my spirit filled with happiness and a sense of peace. As a resident, later, I was one of the people making beds, dusting the guest house, and dealing with what felt like endless waves of guests: "It's Friday, and there are three groups coming in for the weekend...and we need a complete turnover in the guest house, and has anyone set up the meeting room..?" 

It's the same here. Today is Friday, and it's still pretty quiet, except for the college kyudo (archery) group that has been here week, shouting in the distance, and the visitors in twos and threes, but if this weekend is anything like the last one, there will be wedding parties showing up soon, and the office will be filled with frantic looking priests taking ceremonial robes on and off and answering the phones, only to open the sliding door and walk out into the public areas as calm as can be, waving another family in to the purification hall and treating them as if they, and only they, matter, as if the rest of the world, and all those phones, have disappeared utterly. 

This weekend is also the weekend of O-Higan, the Japanese equinox ceremony and festival for those who have died, and since there is a Buddhist temple on the grounds here, there will be a ceremony here, with many people coming. Along with the regular work, then, there is the special work of the special days that punctuate the calendar. 

Sacred sakaki branches in the hallway, with shide (folded paper) waiting to be taken out and used in ceremonies

Is one face of a religious institution more "true" than the other? Is the "busy, busy' and financial realities of running an organization more real than the experience of peace that a visitor has here? Or vice versa? I might have thought so, once. In the years I longed to live in the Zen monasteries I visited, I thought living there was like visiting, and it was only when I lived there that I understood the difference. This can come as quite the shock and disillusionment. 

But now I think that the life of service that is expressed by those who serve in places like this, most perfectly expressed by that morning sweeping here, before anything else-- that life of service, busy as it is, is the counterpoint to the experience of the so beautifully taken-care-of visitor, . They are two sides of the coin, each needing the other. Without guests, no service. In fact, without guests, no Shinto shrine, no Zen Center, no monastery.  And without service, no guests. 

In Chado, the Way of Tea (which I know very little about), and in Zen, there is the idea of guest and host. These ways of being are complementary and sacred. Sometimes we are the guest, sometimes the host. The host serves, the guest receives. But fundamentally they aren't two separate ways of being - they are interconnected and interdependent, "empty" of own-being -- there can't be one without the other. Before we eat a formal meal in Zen, we say: "May we realize the emptiness of the three wheels: giver, receiver, and gift."  

Of course, it's the same as a Unitarian Universalist minister. It's a very full life, but most people who come on Sunday can't imagine what a minister is doing all week. Contemplating the universe, studying quietly, walking around town? But no, most ministers I know are literally on the run from one meeting to another, visiting someone in the hospital, and putting out fires of various sorts, and ministers work an insane number of hours - sixty, seventy hours a week is not uncommon. A friend of mine gave a sermon to her church about "a day in the life of a minister," and people came up to her afterward,  shocked and amazed. They had had no idea.

This degree of work and busyness looked more than a little unhealthy to me, as I was considering going into the ministry, but so far I seem to have found a way to moderate it, at least in my own ministry. My favorite line about ministry is from my favorite book about ministry, Eugene Peterson's, The Contemplative Pastor (I'm paraphrasing here): "To put the modifier "busy" in front of the word "pastor" is like putting "embezzling" in front of "banker" or "adulterous" in front of "spouse!" Strong words, indeed. But I think part of what he is talking about is not how just how many hours a minister works, but how that minister works. As busy as the staff is here, I feel a deep well of calm and kindness in them as well, which I'm sure visitors here feel too. I think that is what Eugene Peterson may have meant. How do you connect with and replenish that well, so that no matter how many fires you are dealing with, each person you meet feels like they are truly at the center of your presence and attention, and not only "feels like" but actually is at the center of your attention?  

For me, part of the way to replenish the well is to take joy in the service, whatever that service is. The calligrapher here put it well this morning, "I am so grateful for the chance to be here, making these Ofuda for people, putting my prayers into each one as I brush the characters." I feel joy, sweeping the paths for the visitors. I feel joy back home writing a sermon, providing a few moments on Sunday morning for people to connect with a larger understanding, to learn and to sing and sometimes to cry. That is how my own experience of spirituality has changed, over the years. As much as I appreciate times of retreat and inwardness, I also  love being on this side now, the side with the broom, the side making the place where others can find a moment of peace in the midst of the difficulties of a human life.

Snow Idyll

From Thomas Merton: “There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”

Years ago my friend Ruth Ozeki told me about a famous Japanese book from the 14^th century, Essays in Idleness (or The Harvest of Leisure), written by a  Japanese Buddhist monk. I suppose she thought I would appreciate the book because of my own forays into the country of idleness, or, as I said for a few years, “gainful unemployment.” Now I am gainfully and happily employed in the work of ministry, which is a 24/7 sort of job (maybe I’m making up for my years of idleness!), but I find that times of idleness are even more important, not less, in this life I have now.

And so I found myself here in a stone hermitage at St.Benedict’s monastery, otherwise known as Snowmass Monastery, for five solo days in the heart of winter, starting Christmas Eve, because, luckily for me, my current Colorado congregation celebrates Winter Solstice rather than Christmas, and so my winter holiday obligations were officially over. This Trappist monastery on nearly 4,000 acres of land, up above Snowmass in the Colorado Rockies, home of Father Thomas Keating, maintains a few small hermitages, offered freely, in the Benedictine spirit of hospitality.

I’ve been in seminary and trying to learn the art of ministry for years now, so this kind of open time has just not been possible for a long time. As I drove the snowy roads on Christmas Eve from my house in the valley up into the wild open mountains, I wondered, “Will I remember how to just be? Will I be frantically trying to study something, just out of habit? Will I feel guilty that I am not answering emails?”

I did remember how to be idle! I suppose it’s not surprising, given how much of my life I’ve spent in silent retreat. I turned into the mile-long road to the monastery, sitting at 8,000 feet in a snowy bowl surrounded by high ridges, and felt the deep familiarity of entering sacred space; drove up the hill to the hermitages and felt something in my heart ease. 

I parked and walked up the snowy path to my little octagonal hut, rabbits (more on rabbits later) scattering this way and that under the trees, and I felt home in the silence. And so for five days I  drifted, dreamed, sat in zazen, slept, watched sky, watched snow fall, read poetry, wondered, wandered, opened, breathed.

I found a phrase from a dream about process theology, dreamt more than a year ago, in my journal – the journal I have barely written in this past year - “Everything brimming over with divinity.” That’s what it was like. On Christmas Day is began to snow, and it snowed and snowed, all day, all night, the light crystalline snow of western Colorado, like feathers and sugar combined, glittering in the light, everything covered up with snow, mountains hidden, and I remembered Norman Fischer’s story of being a young Zen student and wandering in the snow reciting the Heart Sutra, around and around in a sort of joyful delirium. A rabbit came and peered in at me, its paws on the glass door,  then hopped away into the storm.

In the afternoon of Christmas Day I put on my big warm winter boots and my warm down jacket and headed out in the snow, my car already buried. It seemed like I was the only one here. I found the path down to the main retreat house, through the Gambel oak, and kicked my way down through the deep powdery snow. Half way there I could just make out the outlines of a bench, completely covered. I unburied an edge of it and sat down, warm, the only sound the delicate sound of snowflakes landing on me – my hat, my eyelashes, my jacket, my boots. I was so still for so long that a rabbit (I told you would be hearing more about rabbits) came right up alongside me, looked at me, and hopped way.

The next day was clear, a blindingly blue sky and snow sort of day. I shoveled out my path and around the car (greeting the rabbits, of course), helped a monk dig out his plow, which had nearly been swallowed up by snow, and then sat and read and thought and drank tea.  

I thought my heart might burst with happiness and gratitude. And that night I walked the mile or so down the road through the open fields to the main monastery for vespers, the air so cold it was nearly frightening, despite my layers and the thermos of tea in my pack. 

In the dark the monks sang songs to the Holy Family and to Mary, and afterwards I walked back, only now the full moon had risen over the hills, and miles of snowy mountains were illuminated with its brilliance.

And so it went. Ordinary moments -- making meals and eating, brushing teeth, shoveling snow. Sleepy moments. Waking to moonlight. Moments of tears, of gratitude, of laughter. Taking off the armor, re-acquainting myself with my life and my practice, remembering why I am doing the work I am doing, and what matters. 

It is such a privilege, to be able to take time out from work and ordinary life for this plunge into beauty and solitude. If I had fewer resources, if I had a family to care for, if the great generosity of the donors to this place had not manifested in a way that makes being there affordable.....so many causes and conditions had to come together to make this possible. I never take for granted how much silence and depth have been part of my life, and what a blessing they have been. 

May all who need idleness find a way to it.   

  

Zen Priest Goes to Seminary

A Buddha in New Mexico

The spiral above the main doorway to Starr King School for the Ministry. Photo by Jim Lewis

Over the last year my life has made a dramatic – and for some people, somewhat mysterious – turn. I am, for the first time in twenty-five years, back in school, in the Master of Divinity program at a Unitarian Universalist seminary in Berkeley, California: Starr King School for the Ministry, which is part of the nine-seminary Graduate Theological Union.

People ask me, with some concern, “Does this mean that you aren’t a Buddhist any more? What about your path as a Zen priest?”

The short answer is: “I am as much of a Buddhist as ever, and this is an integral part of my path as a Zen priest and my path as a human being.” This post is a deeper exploration of what I mean.

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First, a bit about Unitarian Universalism, or "UU," as it’s known to its friends. (If you already know this history, feel free to scroll down).

UU is a merging of two American liberal denominations, with separate histories until the 1960s:  Unitarianism and Universalism. American Unitarianism was born in Massachusetts just before and during a time of cultural flowering in the first half of the 1800s. This was the time and place of fabulous thinkers and writers like Emerson, Thoreau, the Alcotts, Margaret Fuller, the young Whitman, and a host of others.

Massachusetts had been dominated by a particularly rigid and vicious form of American Calvinism since the 1600s. Only a few were the “elect” and destined for heaven, and the rest of us poor shlubs were headed for eternal damnation by a judging and unforgiving God. Those who suggested alternative views, like the Quakers, were publicly executed. By the early 1800s this system was beginning to crack at the seams. The water inside these cracks were some radical ministers, and one of them was a brilliant preacher who drew crowds of hundreds, William Ellery Channing.

Channing was convinced of the perfectibility, rationality, and innate goodness of all people, believed in a loving God, and questioned the divinity of Jesus. Ironically, a “Unitarian” was one of the worst things you could be called at the time. The “Unitarian heresy,” rejected and punished by Catholics and Protestants alike since the 4^th century, denied the theological concept of the Trinity in favor of a whole-hearted commitment to the unity of God. This might seem like a small theological difference, but believers in Unitarianism were martyred with a passion in Europe for hundreds of years.

Unitarians, both in Europe and America, were also believers in the tremendous importance of religious freedom, freedom of thought, and the absolute separation of church and state. Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin held many of the views of Unitarians, and these ideas found their way into the documents that formed the U.S. Constitution.

Had Channing been preaching a hundred years before, he probably would have ended up a martyr himself, but by the early 1800s, even Massachusetts had to grudgingly support religious freedom. They could, however, try to deny him, and other liberal ministers, the right to speak from their pulpits.

Unfortunately for the old guard, Channing and others were speaking to the spirit of the times, and the structure of the churches in New England were such that a congregation could vote on their minister and the teachings. Congregation after congregation voted in favor of the liberal ministers, with the losing minority forced to leave the church. Eventually, Channing and others embraced the slur that had been thrown at them, and even now, “Unitarians” occupy many of the oldest and most beautiful churches in New England, preaching social justice, activism, and freedom of thought from pulpits that once taught near-universal damnation.

First Parish Church (Unitarian Univeralist) of Ashby, MA

I learned some of this history as a child, because my mother came from a long line of liberals, knew her Unitarian history well, and even spent part of her young adulthood as a Unitarian minister’s wife. I went to Sunday School at the UU Fellowship in my home town in Indiana, and can say, “Oh yes, I was raised by one of those liberal feminist secular humanists that the Moral Majority worries so much about!”

Unitarianism and liberalism runs deep in my family. My mother’s family came from a small town in northwestern Iowa, called Cherokee. In 1890 my great-great-great grandfather John Potter, great-great grandmother Julia Cowles, and great-grandmother Hattie Allison, along with other liberals in Cherokee, formed a Unitarian church and invited two of the leading woman ministers in Iowa, Mary Safford and Eleanor Gordon, to be the first ministers of the church. This was at a time where virtually no denomination in America allowed women ministers. Over the next few decades, the church had other women ministers too. I feel proud of my family and their commitment to both a radical form of religious practice and to women’s rights and freedoms while living in rural, Midwestern America. It feels like the ideals of Unitarianism are in my blood.

I knew less, growing up, about Universalism, which merged with Unitarianism in the early 1960s. Universalism was also largely an American denomination, dedicated to the belief in another heresy (still considered a heresy by most Christian churches): the universal salvation of all people. In other words, no one goes to Hell. Universalists say, quite reasonably (I think): “How could a loving creator God commit so many of his/her creations to damnation?” This American Life did a beautiful radio show about a contemporary evangelical minister who had a deep insight into his own universalism, and what happened to him because of it:   http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/304/heretics

       

So these two radical “heresies,” with Protestant roots, both dedicated to freedom and social justice, came together in about 1961 to form an even more radical form of religion, one which embraces absolute freedom of religious belief, up to and including atheism. UU has become a place where gays and lesbians, transgender people, pagans, atheists, Christians, humanists, agnostics, and yes, Buddhists, can all be part of religious community with one another. In fact, that’s the point.

In a way, I see UU as an ongoing exploration of a deep koan: is it possible to create a loving community which genuinely embraces difference of all kinds, and works together for a better and more just world?

There are many gay and lesbian UU ministers. There are atheist and agnostic UU ministers. There are pagan UU ministers. And yes, there are Buddhist UU ministers. The most well-known is James Ishmael Ford, who is also a writer and Zen Buddhist priest and teacher (and has been a generous resource for me on this path). James Ford works as a minister but is also an active Zen teacher, with a large community of students throughout the Northeast. To read more from James Ford, click here:    http://www.uuworld.org/about/authors/jamesishmaelford.shtml.

To read more about my own exploration of the mutual history and issues of UU and American Buddhism, click here:  https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-dP04hdh78WU1Y5Z2trT1BtUkE/edit?usp=sharing

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So this brings us back to the original question: why am I, a Soto Zen priest and field botanist, attending a Unitarian Universalist seminary? Well, the beginnings are probably back there in the 1890s in Cherokee, but more personally, I think it starts just south of the Grand Canyon...

I was living in Flagstaff, Arizona, about five years ago. A chronic illness flared up, and I found myself in pain and in bed much of the time. I gravitated toward the small UU church in town, where the lesbian minister read beautiful poetry from the pulpit. The first time I went, I sat in the back row and cried. I often cry in UU services, and I think it’s because I grew up in such a conservative part of the country. It’s still amazing and moving to me to encounter a "church" so determined to love and care for the world and each other.

California had just legalized gay marriage (briefly) and every week there were members of the congregation coming back from California wreathed in smiles, and getting up during the “joys and sorrows” part of the service to announce that after 10 or 20 or 30 years of loving one another, they were married. The whole congregation would break into cheers and clapping.

A sweet woman, who is still a friend, heard that I was ill and immediately offered the help of the church “caring circle.” I didn’t need physical caring, exactly, but I did need community, so I joined the caring circle myself, and felt like I had a place and something I could do, even while sick myself. I started a gratitude circle, and joined the weekly meditation group. And I started thinking about ministry, and had my first conversations with James Ford, whom I knew through the Buddhist community.

I began to have the feeling, stronger over the years, that as much as I love botanical work, something else wanted to happen in my work life. It was a strange feeling, as if something was growing in me, without my will, and something else was going dormant, ready to be quiet and underground. I’ve taught myself to pay attention to these things, and so I was paying attention, wondering what it was that needed to happen.

Then, last spring, suddenly, almost overnight, it was completely clear. And as soon as it was clear, everything fell into place, and it’s been like that ever since. Doors and opportunities opening, people around me affirming this path, and a deep sense of “this is where I need to be.”

When asked why I am in seminary, what I say is, “This world needs people who are dedicated and trained to be of service to the tender spirits of others, especially as we enter a frightening and uncertain time globally. I want to bring my years of dharma practice and marry that deep bodily steadiness with skills that will help me be more present with others. I want to keep growing up, and I think this is a way.”

Symbol of the Unitarian Universalist Buddhist Fellowship

That doesn’t mean that it isn’t scary, at times, to be doing something so far from what I’ve known, or such a big commitment. That doesn’t mean that I don’t wonder, at times, if and how I will integrate my Buddhist practice and commitment with practice as a minister in a Judeo-Christian tradition, however radical. I trust that I will know, as I walk along.

What I do know is that being in seminary is tremendous. I’m in classes at the Graduate Theological Union with brilliant, deep-thinking teachers and the most diverse group of people I’ve ever experienced: a Mexican Catholic nun, an ex-Marine studying for military chaplaincy, a Latina transgender woman, a Chinese Buddhist monk, a Jodo Shinshu Buddhist minister, a woman working with homeless people in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, an Episcopal priest, a young Muslim, a young gay Filipino man….each person unique, wise, and extraordinary. This makes me very happy. I’m learning how to be present with another’s pain, about my own ageism, about how I might respond to the climate change crisis in a soulful way, about how to best companion a grieving person, and many other things.

I can feel myself stretching and growing, intellectually and spiritually. I can see possibilities of integrating many parts of who I am: the writer, the environmental advocate, the pagan, the radical, Zen priest, the Unitarian liberal, the compassionate listener, the believer in the equality and dignity of each person.

During the orientation and entering ceremony for seminary, the group of us who were beginning spent one afternoon with the president of the school, Rev. Dr. Rebecca Parker, and the dean of faculty, Rev. Dr. Gabriella Lettini. They did a ritual with us, where each one of us went forward and the two of them washed and dried our hands, then held our hands in their own and blessed our hands to ”do the work of love.”

I’m traveling from San Francisco to Baltimore, with a stop in Dallas overnight, on my way to a convocation of the Unitarian Universalist Buddhist Fellowship. I rode a shuttle last night to the hotel. When I can, I like to talk to shuttle drivers, to catch a glimpse of their world, which is almost a world of immigrants. Last night the van driver was a young Hispanic man. My assumption, based on past conversations with shuttle drivers, was that he would be working three jobs, struggling to survive and take care of a family. But no. He is in his first year of a seven-year architecture and interior design degree at the University of Texas, after graduating from high school with a 4.0 GPA. So much for assumptions.

On the way back to the airport this morning by taxi, the driver was an African man, with a beautiful lilting African accent. I asked him where he was from originally, and he said, “Nigeria.” We talked for a quite a while after the taxi arrived at the airport, the meter off. He had left Nigeria ten years before, with his wife and child, after twice being attacked by rebels and finding himself on the ground with a gun to his head. He is a trained pilot, and a Christian. He told me about the politics of Nigeria, the role of the British in creating a divided country, the Muslim north, and his desire to go back someday and help bring something better to his country.

When I think of ministry, or the pastoral vocation, these conversations seem like a piece of it. To meet whoever is in front of me, to learn from them, to see through my own assumptions and prejudices, and to love. Most of all, to love, to do the work of love.

A Buddha of Aynak, an imperiled ancient Buddhist site in Afghanistan 

Final Shuso Note: Perfect In Our Imperfection

It's been almost a week since the shuso ceremony - and the end of the Everyday Zen fall practice period - on Sunday the 28th of October. The image I have, when I think of the ceremony now, is of a brightly colored, flower-bedecked boat full of revelers, gradually receding toward the horizon, the music growing fainter with each day. I have feelings of poignancy, amazement, and gratitude, slowly fading as I take on what's next in my life. I'm in Santa Fe, New Mexico now, about to help a dharma friend lead his first seven-day retreat, sitting at an old wood desk in an adobe house surrounded by pinon pines and junipers, a long way from the California coast and the my dear companions on the path there.

I thought I would try, for those of you who have never seen a shuso ceremony,to describe it, as best I can, though some of what it is won't fit in words. The ceremony is the culmination of a traditional Zen practice period, or ango, a time of intensive practice and training. It is also the culmination of a time of training of the person who has been chosen as shuso, or head student, for the practice period. It is a doorway, an initiation, and an intimate dance between the shuso and the people in the practice period. What is required of the shuso during the ceremony seems, from the outside, to be nearly impossibly difficult. Not only does the ceremony require elaborate choreography, intense concentration and memorization, but the shuso must also :show up" authentically and spontaneously in response to deep and searching questions.

Our ceremony with Everyday Zen was held at the beautiful Marin Headlands, north of the Golden Gate bridge, at the end of a day of meditation. We rent space on an old military base just above the ocean beach. All day long you can hear the waves and birds and foghorns.

The ceremony is exceedingly formal and intricate.It starts with a procession into the hall, led by a person ringing a small, high-toned bell, then the teacher, who is walking with an immense black staff, then the teacher's attendant, then the shuso, carrying an ornate Japanese fan, then the benji (more on the benji later) who carries a smaller staff and a book wrapped in cloth, then a person at the end with a pair of wooden clappers. As they walk, there is an impressive set of sounds: the "ding" of the little bell, a pause, the "clack!" of the clappers, a pause, and then an answering deep "boom" of a drum from within the meditation hall. All punctuated by the sound of the teacher's staff as it hits the ground.

I've sat in the meditation hall as a student for many shuso ceremonies, and hearing the approach of the procession is an awesome experience. You know the shuso is walking toward something frightening and wonderful, and that he or she is in the procession, arriving, arriving....

In the hall, all the people in the practice period are seated in a tight block, their cushions or chairs right up against one another. On the other side of the hall is another block of people: former shusos, all of whom have been invited by the current shuso to the ceremony. In my case, the former shusos were senior people from Everyday Zen and from The San Francisco Zen Center, people I have lived with and practiced with over decades. In addition, other friends came from around the country to witness the ceremony. On either side of the altar is a cushion: on the left of the altar, the teacher's cushion; on the right, the shuso's.

Shuso fan, photo by Wendy Lewis

After the usual Zen bows, everyone sits down and the teacher's attendant carries the book all the way around the blocks of people from the teacher to the shuso, walking very, very slowly, while the Heart Sutra is chanted. When he or she arrives in front of the shuso, they bow together and the shuso takes the book (still holding the fan in one hand: the fan is never put down for the duration of the ceremony). Traditionally, the first koan from the Blue Cliff Record record is read, "Bodhidharma's Vast Emptiness," but in Everyday Zen we read another koan from the Record of the Gateless Gate  (this isn't the translation we use, but is the closest one I could find online):

Zhaozhou asked Nanquan, “What is the Way?”  Nanquan said, “Ordinary mind is the Way.” Zhaozhou said, “Shall I try to direct myself toward it?” Nanquan said, “If you try to direct yourself toward it, you will move away from it.” Zhaozhou said, “If I don’t try, how will I know it is the way?” Nanquan said, “The way is not concerned with knowing or not knowing.  Knowing is illusion; not knowing is blank consciousness.  If you truly arrive at the Great Way of no trying, it will be like great emptiness, vast and clear.  How can we speak of it in terms of affirming or negating?”

Zhaozhou immediately realized the profound teaching.

Then the shuso gets up and slowly, slowly walks, carrying the book, the other way all the way around the hall, around the blocks of people, to the teacher (there are a lot of these long slow walks during the ceremony). The teacher and shuso exchange bows, the shuso bows to the people in the hall, and then the teacher hands the shuso a long wooden staff, the teaching staff. Once again, slowly, slowly, the shuso walks with the staff held horizontally in both hands at eye level (trying desperately not to hit anyone in the head) all the way back around the room to the shuso's seat.

The benji, who is a person in the community who has been side-by-side with the shuso through the whole practice period,stands up and reads an original poem to start the question and answer for the ceremony. My friend Anne Connolly read her poem:

a wandering monk returns to these shores
in the gathering fall light
shakes her sleeves — “empty!” — she says,
and then in a neat dharma trick pulls out
mirrors brooms imposters fools
centuries of women ancestors tumbling forth
with curves like you’ve never seen on form and emptiness
and fierce compassion offered for our awakening.

Now let us hear the shuso!

Then I recited some memorized verses, while sitting and holding the staff horizontally: 

This is the dharma staff, five feet long. Once a black snake on Vulture Peak, it became the Udumbara flower. Sometimes it is a dragon, swallowing heaven and earth; sometimes a vajra sword, giving and taking life. This staff is now in my hands. Though just a mosquito biting an iron bull, I cannot give it away. Dragons and elephants, let us call forth the dharma! Give me your questions! (And the shuso turns the staff vertically and pounds it on the floor: bang!)

Then, starting with the benji, each person in the practice period (in our case, about 50 people) asks a dharma question, and the shuso responds. The dharma question is short, but is meant to be a real question, from the person's own life and practice. And the shuso has to respond, with heart and authenticity. At the end of each question, the shuso hits the staff on the floor. It is all very dramatic. After the practice period asks questions, then all the former shusos ask a question. Altogether, about 75 people asked me a question in the ceremony.

This is where I learned the most important thing from the ceremony. Answering these questions is impossible. How could any person know "the answer" to someone's deepest question? How could the shuso show up completely for person after person after person? There's no way anyone can do it. But here's what I learned, the great secret: "I" couldn't do it, not on my own. The only way I could do it was with the help of everyone in the room and in the container of the ritual. In a sense, we all did it, though maybe, if someone was a casual observer, it might appear that "I", Florence, did it. There was this tremendous flow of mutual support and love in the room, and in that field this impossible thing was possible. It was like enacting a miracle, or, as Norman Fischer wrote once, "like a group poem." Everyone making something very beautiful, together.

After the questions, there were more walks around the room, more bows, more handing of objects back and forth, and then congratulatory statements from various people, the former shusos, the teacher, and, in my case, my other teachers: Bruce Fortin, who is my current Zen teacher; Jeff Kitzes, my long-timer therapist and a Zen Master in the Korean Kwan Um Zen school; and James Baraz, one of the founders of Spirit Rock, a vipassana teacher, and my very first teacher when I began practicing in the 80s. Having Bruce, Jeff, and James there was extraordinarily sweet. All three of them are men who lead with their hearts. 

And of course, the teacher of the practice period, my teacher for more than twenty years, Norman Fischer, without whom I would never have found the path of Zen, never ordained, and never had a chance to be shuso. Norman and I have been through so much over these many years: the years he, as a relatively new teacher, came up to lead retreats in the Pacific Northwest; his time as abbot of Zen Center; my divorce and illness; the beginnings of the Everyday Zen sanghas; misunderstandings, working together, mutual support, mutual frustration, my needing to step away from the formal role as his student, his forgiveness of me, my forgiveness of him.... Somehow, the practice period and the ceremony was big enough to hold all of what we have been over so many years, with grace and clarity. 

Near the end of the ceremony, the shuso says these words, after profuse apologies for all the mistakes he or she has made:

"Let us continue to practice together in this lifetime and times to come, perfect in our imperfection. 

Isn't that just it, in all relationships, in life itself? "Perfect in our imperfection"? It's in moments like the end of the shuso ceremony, and in these words, that I remember, vividly, clearly, why I am a student of Zen. Humble, wild, poetic, connected, and full of heart - that's the Zen that called me more than two decades ago, and that still calls me, every morning, to the black cushion and the ongoing mystery of the path.

Anne C., Sue M, Norman Fischer, me, ARobin O., Mary Ann S, just after the ceremony. Photo by Ren Bunce.

Finally, I just have to say to anyone reading this who was part of the Fall 2012 Everyday Zen Practice Period: Thank you for your practice, for your support, for your love, and for walking the path with me. I will be grateful to you for the rest of my life. "May we continue to practice together in this lifetime and times to come!"

Shuso Notes: Cookies, mothers, bodhisattvas, codependents

Once again, these are my musings on what is arising for me right now, as shuso (head student) of the practice period.

Here's a koan for you: What is the difference between a bodhisattva and a codependent?

(Thanks, Bruce Fortin, for this. A great koan from a therapist/Zen teacher!)

This post is my personal exploration and reflection on this wonderful -- and at least to me -- very funny modern koan. I'm not sure why it's so funny, but I keep waiting for the punchline ("A bodhisattva and a codependent walked into a bar...") If someone can come up with a good punchline, please add it to the post comments!

So, the shuso's tasks are many. One is organizing and attending "shuso teas" with members of the practice period. What that means in Everyday Zen is organizing teas in four separate parts of the Bay Area -- San Francisco, Marin, Sonoma, East Bay -- and a tea during the sesshin. This is a very sweet and personal part of the practice period. A group gathers at someone's house, sips tea, munches on cookies, and each person has a chance to say something about how the practice period is unfolding in his or her life.

Now, you'd think that finding people to host the teas, coordinating dates, sending out invitations to the practice period participants, receiving RSVP's, sending out directions, and then actually showing up to and facilitating five different teas in a two month period would be enough. But no, Florence has to take it one step further. She has to bake cookies. Homemade, from-scratch cookies.

In my defense, I really wanted to bake cookies for the teas. No one was forcing me, even though I hardly ever bake - I probably haven't baked cookies more than once or twice since I was ten years old and Susan Canon and I made chocolate chip cookies together, singing, "A baby monster cookie for a baby cookie monster," laughing hysterically. I just liked the idea of doing something with my hands and feeding my friends. But I also recognize that this project was every so slightly in the over-achieving realm. This is where we get back to the koan at the top of the post. What, exactly, were my motivations? Bodhisattva? Mother? (After all, mother's bake cookies, right?) Codependent? A little of all three?

Every Monday for the past several years I have joined in a meditation group with a circle of mothers. I've written about this before, in this post for Mother's Day. It has been a tremendous education. Mostly, I've been in awe of what it takes to be a mother: the blood, sweat, and tears of it.

I have identified myself as the "token non-mother" of the group, but invariably someone else will say,"Well, that isn't really true. You're the mother to lots of people!" And I think that's true, to some degree. By not having children myself, my energy is freed up to care for many people, and for the world. On another level it's baloney: I know perfectly well that my life is way easier and way freer than the lives of the mothers I knows. No matter how many people I care for, I generally get to come home (wherever home is at any time), make myself a pot of tea and read a book all night if I want to, without interruptions. They don't have that option.

Anyway, during the practice period I have been looking at my desires in relation to others, whether  motherly, bodhisattva-like, codependent, or something in between. There is a way that the position of the shuso is like being a mother for a whole practice period, and I'm ripe for the task. I see others' suffering - maybe because I know my own so well - and have tremendous desires to ease it, if I can. I have tremendous desires to serve and to nurture (see "cookies," above). I am inspired by others' willingness to wake up to their lives; discouraged when someone seems to making a choice away from waking up, toward the forces of habit and despair. All these desires and inspirations are lovely, in their way, and also tricky. Very, very tricky.

After Bruce brought up the wonderful koan, I had to go look up the definition of codependency in Wikipedia. It's a term that has entered our vocabulary from the recovery community, and I think most people have a vague sense of its meaning. It was helpful for me to look at it more closely. It's interesting to me that one of the first discussions about codependency in Wikipedia is about its similarities to and important differences from healthy mothering. After all, mothers are dedicated to caring for others, to an immense, often self-sacrificing extent. But I think I would say, from what I've gleaned from my reading, that codependents, who are nearly always people who grew up in difficult or alcoholic families, have a compulsive need to be in a caretaker role, are identified with that role, and avoid or displace their own needs for the needs of others.

Some psychologist has even developed a series of questions related to codependency, and I'm afraid I ranked pretty high. So between that, the cookie making, and a few other ways I've been in the practice period, I'm more than a little suspicious that my inner bodhisattva and inner codependent are, shall we say, up to some hanky-panky together.

And all this matters, because the bodhisattva path (the path of awakening, and dedication to helping others to awaken), and the development of bodhicitta (the desire to awaken for the benefit of others) are at the heart of Mahayana Buddhist practice. But wouldn't it be awful if all the time you thought you were training in becoming a bodhisattva, you were actually enacting deep conditioned patterns of codependency? Ack!!!! And it seems that the bodhisattva ideal could be very seductive for people who tend toward codependency, because, like motherhood and codependency, the differences are not as obvious as one might think.

So how can you know? How can I know? Well, these is my working hypotheses, based on observation of yours truly and her behaviors, and bound to be partly wrong, but I share them with you anyway, as a work in progress.

• If I feel resentment or disappointment toward anyone I think I'm "helping," there's a good chance that I have some vested interest in being "the helper." Not a good sign.
• But if my heart is wide open, aware, compassionate, and respectful of the other person, not needing them to be a particular way, not needing myself to be a particular way, then the bodhisattva is stepping forward.
• If I feel any compulsion to be kind, giving, etc, especially beyond my own capacity or willingness, rather than freely responding from warmth and love, I may be enacting some old pattern.
• Being "good," being well-behaved, or being uncomplaining may not be true bodhisattva activity, even if it looks good. Sometimes bodhisattvas are fierce, like Manjushri, with his sword of wisdom. Sometimes they say "no" or "enough." 
• If I'm willing to be hurt, willing to cry, willing to be vulnerable, and willing to lose others, that's the bodhisattva. Bodhisattvas definitely cry....some are even born from tears.
• If I'm willing to respect the suffering of another, and know that it's not my job to fix them, but simply to love them as they are, the bodhisattva is peeking through.

My sense of myself is of a kind of flickering in and out of the bodhisattva and the codependent, from one moment to the next, and my job is to pay attention and notice what it feels like when one is in the ascendant, and when the other is. It feels very important not to judge myself for enacting old patterns, and to understand that "bodhisattva" does not belong to me; it's just the goodness of the universe stepping forward through me.

I think my job is to get out of the way of the bodhisattva and not attach to any idea of who or what I am, and the best way I know to do that is through basic mindfulness, basic awareness, and basic compassion for this mixed-up, imperfect, confused, but sincerely-trying-to-wake-up person, and for all her friends and fellow humans in the same boat: bodhisattvas, mothers, and codependents all together on a stormy sea.

Let's go eat some cookies!

Photo by Lulu Wong, EDZ sesshin cookies, 2012

Here's my cookie recipe, adapted from one on the back of Coach's Oats (available at Costco, I believe). My friend Alison gave me a big bag right before practice period. I think you could use quick-cooking steel-cut or Irish oats as an alternative to Coach's Oats. I did this whole thing with a wooden spoon and they came out just fine.

Oatmeal Coconut Cookies
....with a little bit of chocolate

1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup butter
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 Tbsp milk
1 cup all purpose flour (I used unbleached)
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup rolled oats
3/4 cup Coach's Oats or quick steel-cut oats
1 cup shredded coconut
1/4 cup or more of shaved dark chocolate, your choice

Put the chocolate in the freezer overnight for easier shaving. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream together butter and sugars, add egg, vanilla, and milk, and mix just until smooth. In a separate bowl, sift flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt, and add to wet ingredients. Add oats and coconut, then shave chocolate and add, mix until combined. Drop by large teaspoons on to an ungreased cookie sheet (I used parchment paper) and bake for 12-15 minutes. Makes 3 dozen cookies, or enough for one practice period tea with some left over to give to neighbors and to take on a hike.

Love,

Florence

Shuso Notes: Zen and Life and Posture

This last week I've been contemplating posture. I notice in myself, as I write the word "posture", a whole cascade of negative associations, and these associations have no doubt contributed to my own slouchy, unimpressive habitual posture. Somewhere in my head is the idea that to sit or stand with a straight back is to be stiff, formal, unfriendly, affected, a Victorian graduate of etiquette school. This despite my more than twenty years of Soto Zen practice, with its deep teachings about the power of posture and uprightness!

In my school of Zen, when its 13th c. founder, Eihei Dogen, was asked what he learned about Zen during his four years in China, he said, "All I have is this: eyes horizontal, nose vertical." There are some Japanese (and maybe some American) Soto Zen teachers who teach meditation solely through posture. To sit in the posture of Buddha, legs crossed, back straight, eyes half-closed, is to fully manifest Buddha. What is happening in your head is inconsequential. I'm not sure I entirely agree with this, but I appreciate its simplicity and faith.

I also very much appreciate the dignity of Zen posture in the meditation hall, but have never been able to quite understand why it might matter in daily life. Thanks to an extraordinary movie, I'm starting to have a new sense of the raw power and beauty of posture, the way posture is an expression of fundamental human strength and resilience -- a long way from Victorian etiquette school, and tremendously encouraging and exciting in my own life.

For those of you who have not been able to see Beasts of the Southern Wild, I say, respectfully, do whatever you can to see it. I have seen it twice, once right before the practice period started, and once last week (here's a link for finding where it's playing: here.) It won best first feature film at the Cannes Film Festival, and it's a masterpiece. The first time I was so overcome by emotion by the end, weeping in my red plush chair in the theater, that I knew I would have to see it again just to catch the finer details. The second time what I saw was what you can see in these stills from the film: the grand, unaffected, proud posture of the five year old girl, Hushpuppy, who is at the center of the film.

Hushpuppy (who looks a lot like an older version of my beautiful niece Ellie) and her father, Wink, live in The Bathtub, an impoverished community hemmed in by levees south of New Orleans. They live in a kind of poverty that is almost unimaginable to most of us, even before a storm destroys what little they have. Her father and a few others refuse to leave before the storm, and so they hang on in a devastated place, a little band of drunks and motherless children. But what they have is in their bodies, in their standing upright in the face of terror and loss. None of the "actors" in the film are professionally trained: they all come from places much like the The Bathtub, so what they show in their posture is not learned: it's who they are.

Ever since I watched Beasts for the second time, I've been feeling differently in my body. Instead of thinking of Victorian ladies in hats when I straighten my back, I think of Hushpuppy and Miss Bathsheba (a wild-haired, straight-talking schoolteacher and herbalist who lives in a floating house filled with plants). I think of their genuine dignity and strength and grace: dignity and strength and grace I would hope to have if my world came apart at the seams, as their's does.

This afternoon I watched a talk by Zentatsu Richard Baker on the 50th anniversary of the founding of San Francisco Zen Center (skip ahead in video to about the thirty minute mark. There is a second video for the second half of the talk). He was one of Suzuki Roshi's earliest western students. He talked about the "mental posture" that he learned from Suzuki Roshi, and he said something that really struck me:

"Practice is not so much a matter of understanding as of incubation."

By that I think part of what he means is that Zen practice is not a matter of just the mind; it is a matter of the whole being steeped in the practice....mind, body, heart, and something even subtler: our attitude, how we move and live in the world. This can't be learned from books; this can only be learned from the long living of it, just as the actress who plays Hushpuppy couldn't be taught her dignity by acting coaches - it comes from her life, the life of her family, the life of her whole community.

From the beginning of the practice period I have been moving more slowly, and noticing with amazement how it changes my sense of everything - myself, the world around me, time, how I feel about others. Now, thanks to Hushpuppy and Miss Bathsheba, I seem to be getting over my prejudices about posture. Perhaps posture is what is needed to genuinely face the sufferings of the world. Maybe that's why the hundreds of thousands of Buddha statues are nearly all of Buddha sitting or standing upright. The Buddha knew all about suffering, and yet there he is, smiling, sitting straight and tall and dignified.

I never met the late Katagiri Roshi, who was one of the JJapanese pioneers who bravely brought Zren to the West, but I know that he too knew about suffering, and he embodied the sweetness and dignity of Zen practice, through and through. I came across this photo of Katagiri, and offer it to you as inspiration, side by side with Hushpuppy Roshi.

May we all find the courage in our bodies to be truly upright, through joy and through tribulation, whatever our life circumstances.

 Love,

Florence

In the Deep Midwinter

We all have our ways of celebrating the winter holidays. Some ways are more eccentric than others, I'll admit. This year I spent the day after Christmas looking for birds from dawn to dusk. The next day, the 27th of December, I spent the whole day in a silent retreat led by a Theravadan Buddhist nun. I've been thinking about these two days and how, mysteriously, they reflect one another. Each was a day of silence, of careful awareness, of gratitude, and of giving.

My bird-watching day was no random event: I was participating in the Christmas Bird Count, a census of birds in the western hemisphere that has been conducted annually over a few weeks in mid-winter by the Audubon Society for more than a hundred years.

According to the Audubon website, the count was begun in 1900 by an early bird conservationist, Frank Chapman, as an alternative to Christmas "side hunts" where hunters competed against each other in teams for the largest number of birds killed in a day. Now more than 50,000 volunteers in 17 countries participate in the count, and the results are used by ornithologists and conservation organizations to monitor the health of bird populations in their winter ranges.

I did the count with a friend, and we were assigned to an area of about one by seven miles in the hills above Bolinas Lagoon, out on the outer coast just north of San Francisco. Our day began at about 5:15 am - hours before either of us normally wakes up - followed by a groggy breakfast and a drive in the dark across the hills to the coast.

We're relative neophytes, so we were paired with two more experienced birders - an ecologist and an ornithologist - whom we met just before dawn in a muddy parking lot near the lagoon.

After minimal introductions, we headed up into the hills in silence, all four of us listening intently to the tweets and chirps and little sounds all around us in the dim woodland, though really only two of us (guess which two?) knew what they were hearing. Every few minutes someone would see something and we would all be peering into the tangle with our binoculars, trying to see a sparrow or a towhee or whatever might be lurking there, keeping a count of how many birds of each species we saw or - in the case of our companions - heard.

And so the day went, mostly in silence, hiking on or off trail through the canyons filled with coast live oak (and poison oak) or willow and bay, sometimes up in the chaparral or grassland of the open hills, sometimes all four of us together and sometimes split apart, each one of us completely intent on seeing and counting, eyes and ears and senses fully engaged, not stopping to eat or chat or even sit down. It was cold and gray, and in the afternoon it started to rain, first gently and then with determination, and we kept working as long as we could, until the rain came down so heavily in the early dusk that we were blinded and the birds were essentially invisible.

Part of what I loved about the day was the way that EACH BIRD MATTERED. In ordinary birdwatching, when I see one kinglet, I'm pleased, but the next one I see doesn't matter so much, and by the tenth I'm usually oblivious. But in the Christmas Bird Count, each raven, each crow, each jay matters, no matter how common, no matter how many have been seen before. Ah, if only we treated everything this way!

After a nine hour day in the cold and rain and muck, We drove back across the foggy slopes of Mt. Tamalpais to a warm cafe where we sat and drank hot chocolate, still in our wet jackets, still completely focused on the count. We added up what we had seen: sixty-three species, about average for a Christmas Bird Count in this area.

For each species our leader added up our individual counts, "Robins?" he would say, "how many robins?", and each of us would peer at our wet notebooks and scribbled, pencilled, nearly illegible numbers. "Sixteen, no, wait a minute, that's twenty, with those four I saw near the farmhouse," remembering the bright birds high up in the trees like so many orange Christmas ornaments. "Kestrels?" and we would get into a brief discussion about whether MY two kestrels were the same or different birds than the ones someone else had seen hovering like tiny kites above the hills.

Then we all shook hands and went our separate ways out into the dark. Our little count will be added to the count for all of southern Marin County, and that will be added to counts all across the hemisphere, and someday someone might comb through the data, noticing that this year, like the last few, no oak titmice were seen on the Marin coast, another population winked out, or our fleeting glimpse of a peregrine might tell a researcher that peregrines still hunt the flocks of ducks out in Bolinas Lagoon, a conservation victory after the birds came so close to extinction.

Strange to know that what felt so inconsequential - our day of effort counting robins and chickadees - would be added into a grand continental pattern created by thousands of people and hundreds of thousands of birds, a tapestry across time and space and the usual barriers between species. Even now as I write this there are people out with binoculars and spotting scopes, perhaps in your neighborhood, looking up into the trees, recording the often unnoticed life that fills the air with song and flight.

***************************

The next morning I woke up early again and drove to Spirit Rock Meditation Center, part way back toward the coast. Another gray, foggy day. The grassy hills of Spirit Rock were lost in the cold fog, but inside the meditation hall a hundred people or more sat quietly on chairs or cushions. At the front of the room were two striking women, both with shaved heads, one in brown robes, one in white: Ajahn (which means teacher) Anandabodhi and a novice nun, Anagarika Santussika.

Ajahn Anandabodhi and two other siladharas (nuns that take ten precepts, including celibacy, not handling money, depending entirely on alms, and eating only once per day) just arrived in San Francisco to start the first Buddhist nun's community in North America (Saranaloka).

Photo from Saranaloka website

The nuns, who are British, come from a monastery in Great Britain, the only one I know of in the west that trains nuns as well as monks. Although a women's order of nuns has been part of the Buddhist world since the time of the Buddha, the history of women renunciants is a history of marginalization. In many parts of Asia the women's order has died out altogether; in other areas women practice as nuns but in desperate poverty, not supported by lay people in the same ways that monks are, and often not empowered to teach.

As a consequence of this sad history, in all my years of meditation practice with many teachers, I had never been taught by a Buddhist nun before this midwinter day. I sat down near the front and listened as the Ajahn gave basic meditation instructions, struck by her clarity and steadiness. Then the hall settled into silence, silent sitting alternating with silent walking out under the dripping trees.

Usually at one day retreats each person brings their own bag lunch, but for this event, which was also offered without charge (monks and nuns cannot charge for the teachings), we were invited to bring something to share and to offer to the nuns, since they can only eat what is explicitly offered. At about 11 AM, when the nuns eat their one meal for the day, Ajahn Anandabodhi came and received the individual dishes from those of us who had brought an offering, gently taking the dish from our hands and placing it on the tables. Then she and her novice nun offered a meal blessing. Afterward we all went through the line, sharing the bounty of a hundred gifts to one another.

I've written before of how moved I am when I see the power of generosity, and this day I felt it very deeply, almost to tears, seeing both the radical trust of these women's lives, and the tremendous kindness of my fellow retreatants. It was particularly poignant to know that after two thousand years of being pushed aside, ordained women could now step forward with their gifts and be appreciated, even celebrated.

This is the best of us as human beings, I think, this generosity, just as the generosity and caring of the Christmas Bird Count represents the best of us - crazy people willing to go out in all weather in the depth of winter while their friends and relatives are at the mall or in front of the television, all for the sake of the birds of our world.

I spent the rest of the afternoon in silence and attention, just as I had the day before, though my attention was on breath and silence itself, rather than birdsong and movement, and I was grateful to be drier (!). When I walked outside, once again I saw each crow, each jay, each black phoebe, and almost without thinking found myself counting them, amused and glad at the way that my vision had been clarified by the day before.

These two worlds are both my worlds - the world of inner attention and the world of birds and trees and fog....I am so grateful for both of them, and for the people who share my love for them.

In the depths of winter, nourishment and renewal.