Space of infinite possibility

Today's #UULent word was fear. As a professional writer for 30+ years, I have no fear of the blank page. But blank calendar pages? That's another story.

I'm leaving my current job a week from tomorrow. I gave notice back in November, and my last day is almost here. This photo is of my planner a month from now, the third week of March, a time of the month I've been in production as a magazine editor these past two years. But next month, I'll have no deadline to meet. My successor will be putting her first issue to bed, and I'll be three weeks into not having a paycheck.

My challenge will be this: Can I overcome my fear of having nothing to do ... of hitting up my savings account ... of sitting with the blessed but somewhat scary spaciousness of the independent life?


I had a dream last night. I dreamt I was doing one of those little plastic puzzles we used to get in birthday party goodie bags when I was a kid. You'd slide little tiles around to get the numbers in order, which meant there had to be an empty space so the tiles could slide. But in my dream, there was no empty space, so there was no room to maneuver.

I love my planners, and these past two years, I've used something called the Passion Planner. Its creator, Angelia, is an amazing, inspirational -- and very young -- success story. But I found myself writing "NO" next to her tip of the week last week: "This week, try to fill as many time slots as possible. Schedule out everything from sleep, to meals, to time for yourself." The idea, she continued, is to track where your time is going, "allowing you to assess your productivity and truly be present during each moment."

No.

I've been keeping lists and scheduling my time and and assessing my productivity for decades. I'm at a point in my life where I just want to live. These days, being truly present means putting aside my compulsions to make endless to-do lists and plan every last thing.

There's something else on each page of my 2016 planner, something that resonates much truer for me. It's the Space of Infinite Possibility. Angelia is speaking my language here.

I am confident that, a month from now, these pages won't be blank. But my wish today is that I not fear the open spaces ... that I embrace these spaces of infinite possibility and not be in a rush to fill every last spot on my agenda. Because I have a feeling that it's through sitting in the so-called empty spaces that I will find the work -- and the play and the leisure and the meaning -- that is most true for me.

Hearts full of soul

It's the first Sunday of #UULent. On my Instagram feed, I am posting a photo each day to represent the word of the day. On Sundays, we are called to reflect, embody and enact the word, too. And of course, today's word is love.

I woke up this morning with the famous 1st Corinthians:13 passage in my mind, "Love is patient, love is kind." There's more before and after that, as you've likely heard at many weddings, but really, the first two phrases of that fourth verse say it all.

Love is patient. 
Love is kind. 

The rest is commentary.

I've been in love a few times in my life. Today, my sweetheart, Tom, and I celebrate our third Valentine's Day together. For us, love is patient, kind, frequently passionate, rarely prickly.

Most of all, it's companionable.

This box arrived last year filled with chocolate-covered strawberries. When it was empty, I decided to fill it with memories. It's filled over the brim already, and we're just getting started.

Romantic love is wonderful, but today, I'm also feeling love for my daughter. When I arrived at church, the early service not quite done, I opened the door and saw a mother quietly nursing her baby, just the two of them alone.

"That's true love," I said to her. I mentioned having happy memories of that experience, then noted that my "baby" will be 22 this year.

"They sleep through the night by then, right?" We both laughed.

Maybe not, but it's not for me to know. My daughter is living her life. It's the life I gave her; it's now fully her own, but she'll always be part of me and vice versa.

And there is even more love somewhere. As people gathered for the service, I happened to see -- and talk with -- a half dozen or more people with whom I've shared a bond in our faith community, through a Covenant Group last church year and Wellspring in this one. Shining faces, smiles and waves of recognition. I've only been part of my current congregation for two years, but I feel the love growing there. As usual, the more you give, the more you get.

Love starts within, and it ripples outward. May it ever be so. Meanwhile, got a date ... have to run ... :^)

Own your story

I've been a fan of Austin Kleon since Steal Like an Artist, and I've been having a lot of fun with The Steal Like an Artist Journal, which he released last year. This month, Austin is posting a page a day of people using the journal on his Instagram, so this is my shot at glory, at least among fellow Austin Kleon acolytes.

This post says a lot about me:

I'm up crazy early today. Deadlines.
I'm procrastinating from the work I'm supposed to be doing.
I'm not afraid of much.
Life is good.
A leap is nigh.

Laughing all the way

Every once in a while, you meet someone who feels like a long-lost friend, even if you've never met before. It was like that for me and Caroline. We crossed paths at UU summer camp about five years ago when I sat next to her for a meal. We had some surface things in common, including being at the camp and being moms of teenage daughters. But over the course of our conversation, we learned that she'd grown up in the same small town clear across the country -- Salem, Ohio -- where I had my first newspaper job after college. She'd also lived a while after that in Pittsburgh, where I grew up. By the end of the week, we were doing the Time Warp together in a dining hall flash mob. "We're embarrassing our daughters!" Caroline said gleefully.

A few years later, when Caroline mentioned she'd become a certified laughter leader, I was not surprised. Today, at long last, I got to take her class. What a hoot! Caroline led our group of five in a litany of laughing exercises. (My favorites include the clam-shell laugh, the lawnmower laugh, the nervous lost-in-the-airport laugh and the laugh you do when tearing off those mattress and pillow labels that say, "DO NOT REMOVE THIS LABEL.")

There's lots of science that shows the many ways laughing is good for our health. It reduces stress and pain, promotes good sleep and gets the blood pumping. (Caroline's 45-minute class today felt like a good low-impact aerobic workout.) Plus it's just plain fun to goof off and giggle.

Caroline is affiliated with the World Laughter Tour, which has laughter leaders and laughter clubs, plus six daily practices for good-hearted living. A similar organization, Laughter Yoga International, has lots of great resources including laughter clubs held several times a day via Skype. Next on my list: Getting to the weekly laugh-in at Harborview Medical Center here in Seattle, where laughter is good medicine for people at the Northwest's major medical trauma hospital.

(A) few words about prayer

Since September, I've been part of a UU Wellspring class -- and a big point of this post is to say that if you are a Unitarian Universalist interested in spiritual deepening, you may want to consider Wellspring, too.

Last night's topic was prayer. I am not going to say much about the session because in Wellspring, we create circles of trust, and I will invoke that for myself as much as for my fellow Wellspring travelers. I'll say this much: I arrived at the session with a full and somewhat heavy heart, grateful that prayer was the topic.

I pray daily, never kneeling, sometimes with my eyes closed, but more often with them wide open in wonder. And because I spend so much of my life working with words, for me, words in prayer are often beside the point.

So it was harder than I'd have expected when we were asked to take a few minutes and write a prayer during our session. Still, because "I am who I am," I wrote three. The first:

I pray because
I pray because it helps me find the stillness
I pray because I am too much with myself
I pray because I am thankful
I pray because I want to pay attention 
I pray for strength
I pray for peace
I pray because

Looking at that, the poet in me liked the repetition, but the editor in me thought, "too many I's."

My next one:

Spirit of life
give me stillness
give me strength
give me reason
give me love

Then my editor went back and changed the gives to grants. You see how it can be terribly difficult to be an editor, to continually be getting in my own way ... even in prayer, for god's sake.

Here's what I finally came up with:

Prayer is something 
when words fail me
when I finally get out of
my head and into 
my heart.
It's an experience
of gratitude ... and longing
and love.
Sometimes it's my senses
working overtime.
Sometimes it's me sitting still. 
It is marvelous.
It is essential. 
It is enough. 

We took turns reading our prayers. One of the prayers was sung. One had exactly one word.

Wow. 

Exactly.

Amen.


UU Wellspring

https://twitter.com/MUTTScomics/status/668444536121786368

Hospitality

I've loved hummingbirds forever, but it was only a few years ago -- while living in Oakland, with this simple window feeder -- that I was able to successfully lure them. My first two years in Seattle, though, I lived above a noisy corner, with crows perched on streetlamps nearby and a confusing mass of sliding-door and balcony glass. It was a strict hummingbird no-fly zone.

When I moved to my new place in October, I figured I'd wait until spring to try again. But on a walk one chilly December morning in the Wedgwood neighborhood nearby, I saw hummingbirds thronging to a front-yard feeder and decided, what the heck? If it doesn't work, I'm just out a little bit of sugar. So I put up my feeder just before Christmas. To help keep the nectar liquid in the near-freezing temps and also help attract some birds, I topped it with a tie-dye sock in hummer-friendly colors.

My new place is still on a pretty busy street, so I didn't expect much. But on Christmas Eve morning, talking with my daughter as we rearranged some furniture for a gathering that night, I saw a hummer swoop in from around the corner of my building. They'd arrived, the best Christmas ornaments of all, flashing patches of green and magenta. And now, a few days after taking this picture, I'm ready to refill the feeder.

So thanks to the hummingbirds for your beauty and endless cheap entertainment. Thanks to Natalie for the sock. While I'm at it, thanks to Wilco for a great song. And thanks to my brother-in-law Kevin for the feeder. I sadly had to put it away for two whole years, but it's once again a gift that keeps on giving.

Make time for magic

At  the Cineplex Odeon theaters in Canada, they've been showing this short video before feature films. I caught it on a visit to Vancouver last weekend. Take 2 minutes to watch it. You might want to keep a few Kleenex handy.

Beautiful, yes? Thanks to everyone who made this little reminder to take time for things (and people) we love. Special thanks to vocalist Adaline for breathing new life into the classic Genesis song. (Here's a short "making of" clip.)

One of my life's greatest pleasures is going to the movies, and I especially love going with my sweetheart. Last year, we went to 42 movies together. I know because we kept track on a calendar. (Here's part of the page from August.) 

We like smart movies, movies that tell stories, movies where we recognize bits of our better selves, as well as the struggles and heartbreaks -- but mostly the joys -- of being alive.* And while watching movies at home is great, too, there's nothing like sitting in the dark with a bunch of strangers and watching the magic unfold, larger than life. (I also love this clip for the Regal chain, even if it's selling Coke.) 

Here's to magic, and another great year at the movies.

*Some of my favorites from 2015, in alphabetical order: 

The Big Short, Brooklyn, Diary of a Teenage Girl, Dope, The End of the Tour, Grandma, I'll See You in My Dreams, Inside Out,  The Martian,  McFarland, Mistress America, Room, Seoul Searching, Seymour: An Introduction,  Shaun the Sheep, Spotlight, Steve Jobs

(We haven't seen The Force Awakens yet!)