Present in the midst

FRIDAY
Driving home from Cleveland, I noticed a peaceful patch of woods and longed to be there, out in Nature and away from the artificiality of the hospital. Granted the Cleveland Clinic sways one with its perks – a Starbuck's, Joseph-Beth Bookstore, fitness center, rooftop labyrinth etc. – but it's still  chock full of white coats, needles and sick patients. And those dag-goned florescent lights. For all of the hype about families and healing, why do they still insist on such lousy light. I even read a 2012 study the clinic conducted that touted how much natural light promotes healing. Enough reason to do away with the freaky, green-cast low light. I wasn't sorry to leave it behind.

SATURDAY
I so craved Mother Nature and thanks to the wonderful Artsy Fartsy volunteers who took over for me, I had a free Saturday afternoon to recover from the week. After peaking outside, I knew my recovery meant getting out there. Turns out, I spent the time working myself into a sweat and shedding layers while I methodically raked the front yard. It was so cathartic. I'd considered swimming, but I felt the need to also be productive, not just physical. Raking fit the bill, neatened the yard and burned off the stress.

SUNDAY
I began to feel the fibro effects of the past weeks, so I left for Quaker worship early, early enough to spend an hour-and-a-half in the silence. I sat alone a spell, soaking in the sacredness. I was able to feel God's kingdom here and now. Slowly others trickled in as the regular worship hour drew neat. I heard the musician rustling paper and opening the stand. Others whispered. I grow more centered with my eyes closed. Soon, someone smelling of soap and sausage sat next to me. I was immediately permeated by their energy. The celloist commenced what sounded like a prayer, my prayer. I reluctantly opened my eyes to my friend Patia. "I thought you could use an angel," she said as she kissed my cheek, embraced me and offered her hand. 

MONDAY
Hurriedly walking to yoga, already five minutes late, I happened to glance up and was struck by the crisp, clear and vast sky. Last time I'd noticed was on the rooftop of the Cleveland Clinic. I hadn't given it another thought. Frankly, I haven't given much but my mother another thought in the past two weeks. 

The silken sky reminded me of how much more there is to life than my current obsessions. "Lift me out of my littleness," I murmured as a prayer. It's all too easy to gain that microscopic, myopic view, magnifying our concerns way out of proportion. And forget. Beauty. Nature. Creation. Spirit.

WEDNESDAY
I met my dear friend and first yoga teacher, Renee, to finalize details for a workshop on sacred pain we are planning for March. We agreed to meet somewhere between West Chester and Milford and my Quaker Meetinghouse seemed like the perfect spot. It's affirming and amazing to be on the same page with someone else in the work I am called to. Both of us have struggled for years with chronic pain and both of us desire to help others. She's a yogi and counselor, I'm the artist and minister. We make an awesome duo. I stuck around after Renee left, re-connecting with our minister. I have missed my Meeting, being away for my mother and so involved with my family and studio the past year-and-a-half. Walking joyfully and lightly to the car, I see a voicemail message from my father. He says my mother has been moved out of the ICU. THANK YOU, I sing and dance.

THURSDAY
I sink my teeth back into centering prayer and am struck almost immediately in my brief lectio-divina practice. The Thomas Keating devotional focused on the present moment. I continually try and fail at this discipline. I know it's important, but never discovered why until I savor this reading. The phrase "the end of time" grabs, almost strangles, me. Not end of the world or humanity, as so many interpretations claim, but the end of time. I find it so very freeing. I live so constrained by time. Pushed and rushed. What would it be like to live outside of time? To do and act when Divinely inspired?

The passage speaks of the Second Coming as the end of time and also when we access the eternal within. The Divine, Keating writes, constantly breaks in on linear time and that each moment of chronological time IS a link to the Divine when we are sensitive enough to Spirit. In essence, it said to me, in the present, we can access God. WOW, I think, WOW. That's why there is a practice of the present moment, an opportunity to connect. A place when God reaches us.

Interestingly, in the evening, I attend a Quaker Quest in-reach session at my Meeting. It's been such a long time since I showed up to be with people outside of worship when I'm not facilitating. It proves to be such a joy to sit with people I've just met,  others I've know for years and explore what God, Jesus and Scripture mean to us. No right or wrong answers. This session gets interrupted by a series of texts and voicemails from family members trying to arrange for my mother's return.

FRIDAY
My youngest wakes up sick and I get a little anxious as I am supposed to return to Cleveland with my dad next week to bring mom back to rehab. Yes, I want her home. Now. But not if I give her something. I talk myself into NOT skipping yoga and am rewarded with a giant hug from a longtime Meeting buddy whose work has kept her away a few years. It's a wonderful reunion. I get a good workout, run a few errands, check on my sickie and head to the studio. And the anxiety mounts. I remind myself that I've had a few terrific days in getting back to my work and making spiritual connections. That I have felt God present and that she will figure all of this out. The burden is not mine.

Oh yeah, I remember.

• How do I remain centered when the world is moving ahead?
• When circumstances are tough?
• How does Nature rejuvenate me?
• How does worship nurture me?
• What spiritual practices connect me with Spirit?


A semi week of normalcy
amid the broken
trips to the clinic

my 16-year-old
wants to cuddle
and watch movies

who am I to say no?

my 13-year-old
calls me in dire
pain as I direct
her to an ibuprofen
until I get home

my husband's
out the door
to a convention
tomorrow

and my mother's
still far away
recovering

almost too much

until God
breaks in, which
I am pretty sure she
is doing continually

it's just that I am
being present

Listen to this post:

Who says worship's only for church?

[Recording located at end of post]

Imagine a place where kindness is the norm. Where people smile, hold doors and let those with crutches and in wheelchairs go first. Where employees ask what they may do to be helpful and mean it. Where all walks of life meet, mostly in unsettling circumstances. Where Zen-like instrumentals waft through uncluttered, futuristic passageways, a daily schedule of art and music is posted, large-scale paintings, sculpture and photography adorn the stunning architecture of the campus. Where Parisian sweets and simple sushi are available. Where ego seems to take a backseat to need.

In a hospital of all places. My visit this week with my parents to the Cleveland Clinic astounded me. Especially when compared to my mother's last-summer stint in a local hospital that was doomed from the moment we entered the ER room as someone was vomiting all over the corridor and no one wanted to clean it up. As a matter of fact, no employee, save a few nurses, wanted to do much of anything for anyone, let alone the patient, the last person on their totem pole of pecking order.

That experience reveals everything wrong with healthcare, but the Cleveland Clinic is a bright example of how business can get it right. Very right.

Just the idea that an experience typically anxious and angst-ridden could be calmed by a quiet, interwoven attitude of care, nurturing, listening and serving on all levels was so invigorating and heartening. Prior to our visit, anyone who'd ever been to the Cleveland Clinic raved about it. I tended not to truly believe it. After all, a hospital is a hospital; at least from my perspective.

We weren't made to wait more than five minutes for any scheduled procedure (of course, we showed up at 7 a.m., so being first was a bonus) or even for the top heart specialist, who spent a good chunk of time talking to and listening to my parents, treating them as relevant. I was sickened last summer at the condescending attitude toward older people at the local hospital. The consulting physician told me several times that he didn't think my parents understood what he said and that my mother kept asking him the same question. I know it's because he never answered her. Ohhh, that still burns me. He also relayed many other things founded on ego and not truth.

The reverence of kindness at the clinic lingered in the hallways long after patients and staff had passed. I don't think I've ever been anywhere so large and institutional when the population was so congenial. More surprising given the nature of why people were there.

There is a culture of kindness at the Cleveland clinic that, for me, began when I approached desk A-17 a eight-til-seven in the morning as Stephanie was disinfecting her seat and warming up her computer. I told her I'd give her time to catch her breath as I knew we had arrived early. She worked to finish more quickly and began the admission before her official starting time.

Perhaps, the smiling, though chilly young man opening our car doors as we arrived on a steely cold morning should have been a clue. All we had to do was toss him the keys and walk in, which was good for my mother, who does not tolerate dropping temperatures.

I am certain, there are blights on the Cleveland Clinic's sterling reputation, but it is such a breath of fresh air and such a contradiction to most health-care settings I have witnessed.

It gives me hope. Hope that this is a better model for how health care can be done; not dictated by egos and insurance companies. Hope that people can make the best out of difficult circumstances when given an example. Hope that kindness can rule, even become the norm.

Of course, I don't want to become sick, but I'd sure like to visit the Cleveland Clinic again -- just to check that what I experienced was real. It'a so much easier to go back out into the cold world warmed by the experience and bring it to the people and places I will touch.

• When was the last time I was touched by human compassion?
• What difference have I observed a thread of kindness making?
• Especially within an institutional setting?
• How does a common experience, especially a difficult one, trigger compassion in us?
• Where have I witnessed Spirit at work in a typically secular venue?


whipping in on
an icy swirl
from the lake

unsure and
reluctant

going as
the dutiful
daughter

understanding
my vulnerability
in places of disease

then being
totally surprised
as Spirit's 

form shone
in accommodating
faces, friendly
gestures and
genuine caring

who says
worship's only
for church?

http://my.clevelandclinic.org

Listen to this post:

Through God's touch

Listen to this post:

It was a smaller affair, which may have sharpened the lens of perspective. So often, we tumbled out of the house, food in hand, kids in tow and arrived a few minutes late for Thanksgiving at my parents'. This year, we were ahead of schedule with the exception of my husband driving back a half hour later to pick up our 15-year-old after her outfit was out of the dryer.

Mine were the only children: my nieces grown up and onto their own lives, my out-of-town sister making the trip at Christmas.

And yet, my mother had polished the silver, laid out the family china, cooked a turkey, made two kinds of dressing (one gluten free just for me), boiled the potatoes and arranged appetizers ... all the while on oxygen. She struggled with the long, green snake trailing her for 50 feet as she flowed between the dining room and kitchen. She was most concerned someone else would trip.

Just last week, as I was out of town on a trip planned for months, she, my father and twin sister traipsed to the Cleveland Clinic to get more definitive answers on what, specifically, could be done for her two weakened heart valves. Essentially, she was told they'd have to get her lung pressure down before they could do anything invasive, hence the full-time oxygen. I remember when she came home from a long hospital stay this summer and talked her primary-care doc out of the full-time air. He made her take a healthy walk without and agreed she could cut the day-time cord. I also remember her, two days home, green snake in hand, riding her stationery bicycle: I want to get in as good a shape as I can, she said at the time. She was sick of having been in a hospital bed for 10 days.

Wednesday evening as my mother and I were making last-minute food decisions, we talked about her cardiologist appointment earlier in the day. She said that doc calculated she'd be having her heart surgery in a few months. How's that? I asked because it didn't seem to square with what she heard in Cleveland. Oh, she said, we misinterpreted the surgery risk. What we'd thought was risk of survival, which looked pretty low, was risk of failure!

When I discussed this yesterday with my sister, she had not misunderstood the risk as we had, but it wasn't good enough yet for Cleveland.

If anybody can beat those odds I know it's my mom. She never ceases to amaze me with her positive attitude, hard-work ethic, sense of humor and deep faith that she is where God wants her.

We've had some pretty amazing talks about death lately, a subject that I welcome because it is so little spoken about. Hasn't hurt that I worked in the funeral industry a few years. Turns out neither of us, my mother or me, is afraid of what comes after life. It occurs to me that we have been heavily influenced by my mom's baby sister who died of breast cancer, but with such a rare and glowing grace that you could palpably feel God's touch. You just knew she wasn't alone.

That comforts me as I know my mom's time is limited here, as it is for all of us.

• Who have been my examples of faith?
• What lessons have those encounters imparted?
• What are my feelings about death?
• In general? For someone I love? For myself?
• How can I witness God's presence even in death?


flurrying about,
from the fridge to the
dining-room table

only aware of
the shiny green
tail lest it trip
up someone else

gracious in her
hospitable way
of welcoming
us into her
home and heart

where we we
always remain

and she in ours,

this day a fond
memory in
distant times

when we feel
her through
God's touch