The Quilters of Gee's Bend

What is it like to be dormant for your whole life, in poverty, with no access to a larger life, and no hope of anything more occurring? What is it like to live like this for years and then have the world come to your door, wanting what your heart and soul created during those dormant years? What is it like to suddenly be noticed and be paid large sums of money for doing the simple things you’ve always done: keeping your kids warm and warming your own heart with the creation of colors and shape into form? What is it like to go from quilting in Gee’s Bend, Alabama to having articles written about you in The New York Times and having your quilts shown in The Whitney Museum and soon at the MFA in Boston? This journey of women, descendants of slaves, who live in a in a small town whose poverty sounds like the kind those of us brought up in a gentler world run away from was written up in The Boston Globe on Sunday. Their story is not my story, and yet it resonated with my story, or maybe the universal story of being hidden, lost, unseen and then the mythic coming visible, becoming known. What is it that allows that to happen? How do we journey from that kind of dark, insular world to one in which the world is large, bountiful, and gracious? What transformations are necessary inside in order to allow that kind of opening? Reading the story I read my heart's hope that life does allow for miraculous unfolding. But why? Why for some and not for others? What creates the space for the dynamic intersection of individual desires and global generosity? And do we have to live for generations in the dark before the world opens its doors? Or, is Kafka right when he wrote, You don't need to do anything. Remain seated at your table and listen. You don't even need to listen, just wait. You don't even need to wait, become still, quiet and solitary And the world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

Ashes and Snow Exhibit

Gregory Colbert is exhibiting his extraordinary Ashes and Snow show at the Nomadic Museum in New York. The exhibit is housed in this nondescript building on the West Side piers. From the outside it’s nothing. On the inside, it’s like a minimalist cathedral. Sublime photos of people and animals line the aisle while a video beacons you from the front.

The photos are entrancing. The juxtaposition of animal and human and the sensitive interplay between them is beguiling. Most of the humans in the photos have their eyes closed inviting me into a shared meditation. Their stillness reminds me to surrender. Contentment swelled inside me as I saw the bodies relaxing as they were nestled against the elephants or the whales.

The video installation played while Colbert read from his letters. At one point his words wrapped around my heart and opened it. “My heart is like a book that hasn’t been opened in a very long time.”

I’m surprised at the general state of shut down I’ve lived in as I focused on my profession. How did that happen? How did I live with my heart open to such a little degree? The journey I am on in writing this blog is an exploration of coming from an open heart regardless of the situation. As I make that the focus of my inquiry I see how often, and how easily, the door to my heart narrows every more. Without tending, it closes like those pneumatic hinges that close softly behind me.

I'm grateful for the shift in my focus, away from the hurly burly of life into a grander inquiry. Moments like these during the Ashes and Snow exhibit I appreciate those like Gregory Colbert that take their time to invite me into a tender embrace of life.

Let Me Meet You Somewhere Today

Today I met with a nun (I'll call her L) who told me how she starts every day. Before her feet touch the ground she says a statement, "Lord, let me meet you somewhere today." Then she told me some stories of how, and who she met during the day. People who felt loved by being with her, without her needing to do anything. The quality of her care communicated everything. I felt it in the moment of her telling me as well. Tears sprang to my eyes and fell. How lovely. What a wonderful way to prepave the day, let me meet you somewhere today.

I'm struck by the simple expectation that I will meet you today. Not the presenting part of you, not the social part that knows how to interact in the necessary necessities of every day, but the You, the part of you that is connected to God, to Love, to Source energy. Whatever word we use to call upon that -- how that opens my heart and prepares me to meet the best in you. It's as though those words call forth the best in you.

Recently the Boston Globe ran an article about Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, the spiritual teacher of Shambala who ran the Boston Marathon this past month. The article caught my eye. I was curious about a Tibetan lama running, getting sweaty and out of breath. It seems like an oxymoron. The running part of the article was interesting, but a quote intrigued me more. "Every human being is born with basic goodness, a quality inherent even in unpleasant individuals."

Part of my need (?) to write this blog was to reconnect to that awareness, that each and every one of us is basically good. It seems like I've been through a period of negativity, being more critical than I like to be. I found a bitterness in me that was beginning to gnaw on my heart. Hearing these words from this nun full of Love and then reading the article of the Rinpoche reminded me, redirected me to where I want to go.

Rinpoche continued in the article, 'An example is the sky," he said. "It's always blue but there can be clouds. Sometimes you think you're a cloud, but in reality, you're the sky. Through meditation, you can stabilize the mind and not be so carried away by your thoughts. What you do in life allows you to bring that basic goodness out."

How simple, and yet so complicated it is to shift from those cut off states back to a place of love, back to a state where the basic goodness naturally arises.

And how wonderful for me, that I met the presence of Love today through the gift of L. May I live in that expectation every day.