Meg Casey

1. Listen to the wisdom of 4 year olds.

2. Dance freely without worry about what you look like.

3. Curl up on the couch and let someone sing you to sleep.

4. Say yes when you want to and no when you don’t.

5. Go on secret missions with young friends (like my dear John) to leave message of hope around the city with sidewalk chalk.

6. Welcome someone who needs you into your home.

7. Then, let the kitten sleep on your bed (as if you have a choice).

8. Call your cousin (or whoever it is in your life who you know loves you to your toes).

9. Take pictures of everyone you love and the things that fill your heart with gratitude.

10. Drink chai tea.

11. Laugh completely and entirely–don’t hold back, even if you need to lay down on the floor and tears are pouring down your cheeks.

12. Take a long bath followed up with a warm shower.

13. Skinny dip every chance you get.

14. Read out loud. Snuggle long after the little one has fallen asleep.

15. Make guacamole and eat the entire bowl–or save some for lunch. Or eat the entire bowl and then make some more for lunch.

16. Get lost in a book.

17. Take the metro. Take walks.

18. Tell the people you love that you love them–even when, especially when, it might seem like it is coming out of the blue.

19. Get new glasses so that you can see clearly.

20. Clean out the closets. Clean the floors. Clean the bathtub.

21. Head out into the woods and stay there for a few days.

22. Cry when you need to.

23. Play your guitar–loudly (even if its badly). Play only for yourself if you want.

24. Wade in the water’s edge. Let your feet sink into the mud and get all sticky.

25. Move into action even as you sit in stillness.

26. Cook dinner with your dear ones and eat it outside.

27. Go out for icecream and let it drip down your face and get on your nose.

28. Drive to a farm and pick fresh berries, peaches, plums or whatever is in season.

29. Light candles and say prayers just sit silently and hold hard moments for what they are. Trust that “All will be well and all manner of things shall be well.” Whisper it until you believe it.

30. Throw your arms around the people who delight you.

Inspired by the gorgeous Jen Lemen and my dear cousin Leenie both who have reminded me that the only time I am ever unhappy is when I find myself wanting the joy I don’t have and ignoring the crazy joy exploding around me.

The summer has raced by at epic speed. I don’t know why, but I am always amazed and shocked when August announces herself. While I have come to terms with the fleeting qualities of spring, autumn and winter, I never quite believe that summer passes. And when it does I always get a tiny bit frantic.

On Saturday, a friend commented that I had this spazzy energy about me, like a juggler desperately spinning way too many plates. I am sure you know that feeling too. I was spinning way all these plates, while hopping on one foot and, having dropped quite a few, I was dancing around to avoid cutting my tender feet on the shards of the broken ones that lay strewn all around me.

One of the luxuries I have given myself this year is a week of stay-cation, strategically placed the week before we go away and right before school starts again. It is a week to focus on nothing but catching up, cleaning up, looking up, dumping out, digging out, sweeping out, starting fresh, starting over, just getting started. It officially started on Saturday. But my friend knew that I was in no place to start such a week. It was true–I had a bit of deer caught in the headlights kind of look. Too many things to do–too many things on my mind. I would start one project and then look at the dishes piled high in the sink. I would start to clean the dishes but then think I really needed to start a load of laundry to maximize the time. In the first hour or so of my “Week of Productivity”, I thought I would never get through the day, let alone the week at all without making myself crazy.

But then, the answers came.

They came because I was reflecting on the spazzy, plate spinning voices in my head. The ones who keep it all going, my 47 things, for better or worse. These mental to-do list spurting gremlins reminded me of those people at meetings. You know the ones–the ones with really important contributions who insist on being heard at exactly the moment when their idea takes everyone off track. The ones who you love to have in your meetings for their creativity and their persistence, but you hate to have in meetings because they move the meeting farther and farther from its goals.

The key to managing these people (and my gremlins) is I think we all know–acknowledgement. At work, we use the old facilitator’s trick of keeping “a parking lot”–the big piece of paper where we can put the stuff we need to get to–just not right now. There is something magic about writing it down. It creates a kind of peace. We are heard and so we can stay focused.

I am whispering what I did this week here to you, just in case, you know, you feel this way too sometimes. I swear its magic.

HOW TO STOP SPINNING PLATES
1. Take one day to drop all the plates. Plan nothing. Let everything fall. Visualize them falling, smashing, it all coming apart. Don’t rush, don’t do on the anything on the “to-do” list unless you must for personal safety of you or your loved ones. This is important to start the reset button. Its OK, I promise.
2. Visit with people you love. Eat good food. Soak in the sunshine.
3. On the next day, take out a piece of paper and a pen. Write down everything you think you need to do, no matter how small, no matter the priority. Don’t edit the list. Don’t categorize. Don’t make it neat. This is the parking lot this is where you place everything that might needle you all day. As you write down each thing, imagine yourself, actually placing it in a basket to be dealt with later. Promise yourself that one by one these things will get done, no matter how long the list. If its here on the list, it is safe.
4. Fold up that piece of paper and put it and your pen in your pocket.
5. Start one thing on your list. When your mind starts in with the to-do list ask yourself if it its already on the list. If it is, tell yourself its on the list, you can let it go. (If its still bugging you write it down again). If its not or you are not sure, take 5 seconds to write it down, imagining it safely going away, out of reach, into the basket to be taken out in due time. Get back to what you were doing.
6. When you are done, cross that thing off and then pick another thing to do.
7. Anytime the “to-do” gremlin comes to call, acknowledge him, write her ideas down quickly, without editing or categorizing and then get back to the issue at hand. Write down anything that comes to mind. Appointments (lab work done Tuesday 8:30), phone calls (call Kaiya, call Erica, call Max’s dr to set up appointment), things to pick up at the store, anything that is distracting (remind Max to find the flashlight when he gets home).
8. When you have no more space on the paper, get a fresh sheet of paper. Write down the things you still have to do. Leave out the things that you have already done. You can get rid of duplicates. You will find that after a day or so, the gremlin has fewer and fewer ideas. If she hasn’t slowed down, thats OK–you can staple another sheet of paper to this one.

So far, this has (I think) made me more productive. More importantly it has made me sane. We will see the final results at the end of the week.

When I was young, just 25 or 26, a flimsy bit of a thing, fresh and new, her desk was next to mine. I could whisper over the insubstantial divider to her when I needed her and she was there. Her gray curly hair pulled up in concentration, she would look at me over the glasses perched just so on her nose, the glasses that hung round her neck and pressed against my heart when she hugged me, and she would laugh or sigh or just listen.

Her voice is like a warm soup to me, a hot steaming mug of tea with honey, exactly what is needed to soothe my broken optimism, my raw and new frustrations. She judges nothing, has heard it all and always always answers my frailty and mistakes with love. We walk our lunch hour away, circling the streets of power, lost in conversation that tumbles like a fast moving river over stones, in her fluent English, in her native Spanish, back and forth, like birdsong. I tell her things I uncover from my heart and she looks at me in amazement…”Que chevre” she says, slow and drawn out and deep inside for the first time I know I am. When we are together I know that I am precious, beloved. I call her my second mama. I drink wine at her home and cook with her, sing revolutionary songs and build circles of sisters.

I buy a house down the street and around the corner from hers. But before we have a chance to be neighbors she rents that house. Heads out on an amazing adventure in organizing that takes her and her husband all over the Western hemisphere. Organizing in South America, Central America, caring for her old ones, welcoming granddaughters. She sends a beautiful handwoven tablecloth for my wedding. She pops by one Christmas to hold my fat baby. But then in the crush of life, she fades away An occasional email, a phone conversation from far away, the everyday and in the moment takes hold of my attention. I let her go without even realizing it. I lose her.

I walk by her house on the way into town and I wonder where she is. “Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego” I sing under my breath as I smile in the direction of the threshold that once promised comfort and silliness. I smile as I think of her, her missions, her work, her goodness touching the far corners of the globe. I think of all the young women who will stitch themselves back together in the circle of her arms. I think they are lucky.

And then, suddenly, she is there. In her yard. After more than 10 years and three continents, moving boxes back home. And suddenly she is there walking through the door to come to dinner, kissing the fat babies who have grown into lean kids. Suddenly she is there, her warm smile as radiant as the Puerto Rican sun that birthed her. “OK girls…tell me…” she says and I wonder how we cover 10 years over dinner. But when you speak the language of a heart, just a few words are all that is necessary, stories can be told with knowing looks and a sentence, data transmits almost instantaenously and we are, in a heartbeat, caught up and giggle as though that long pause had never transpired, as though she had held my hand (and I hers) through the journeys of the last 12 years.

Her hands are like butterflies that flit about as we laugh and tell stories, thrilling me when the land for a moment on my hand, my shoulder, my face. She has come home. And so have I.

Yesterday I was rear-ended. I was on my way from taking Max to hockey camp, on my way into work. A little bit ahead of schedule but still later than I liked. I drove the route that I thought would involve the least amount of traffic, the one that would be me there the quickest. I was ready to turn onto the road that would carry me in the direction of work. I was stopped, waiting for the cars to pass me when it happened.

I was jolted, a bit addled, not entirely sure what had happened, momentarily confused. I sat for a moment that felt like a lifetime before getting out of my car. I checked my bumper I wandered back to my car. I sat down. Still in a fog, not entirely sure what to do.

The stranger who hit me got out of her car and came running. “I am so sorry” she said. “Are you OK?” I swallowed my initial instinct to wave her off with assurances that I was fine. I wasn’t entirely. “I am a bit wigged out” I admitted. She was near tears. And pregnant. “Me too” she said and I noticed how frail she looked, how shocked and sad . We moved our cars out of the intersection and into a church parking lot.

When I stepped out of my car, that second time, as my head and heart cleared I knew the only response to this situation was gentle kindness. She was OK. I was OK. We were both scared, both shaken. We both needed nothing but understanding. The only response was to wrap my arms around this stranger, hug her hard and tell her it was all OK, that all would be well. To soothe and be soothed.

We fumbled for our information, talked about her baby to be born, begged each other to go to a doctor. We hugged some more and talked about how pregnancy will make you cry. We consoled one another and spoke our gratitude for being OK. There was no accusations about sudden stops or not paying attention. There was no defensiveness. We both instinctively knew that it would help neither of us to rehash what had happened with a goal of assigning blame. The accident was over. Now there were just two people in a messy moment, with each other on the side of the road, in a moment of confusion and fear, in full realization that kindness is the only thing that would fix the situation.

Later in the day we called each other’s cell phones. “What did the doctor say?” we asked. “How are you feeling?” We were happy to learn that all was well, continued to speak words of kindness and empathy. I hung up feeling warmed and cared for and not at all hit.

How often do we bump into people, only to inflate like puffer fish, spiky and defensive, fearfully protecting ourselves from the wrath that might come in response to our mistake? How often are we bumped into and lash out–out of fear, out of hurt? How is violence simply an outgrowth of that–our hurt, our fear, our need to protect ourselves, spiraling out of control?

What would happen if we instead shifted out of defensiveness and into kindness, even when we are slammed from behind unexpectedly. Even when we make a mistake that could cost us? What if we forgot all our fears at the moment and just breathed out kindness. What miracles could occur? I can’t stop thinking about how our world might be different.

As I stood on the side of the road with my arms around a stranger I thought how lucky I was to be given the gift of connection that day. Here was a beautiful human being, vulnerable and rushed and a mama just like me. We might never have met, might never have realized that the person driving behind me on that busy road was so kind. I might never have been tapped on the shoulder to be reminded how kindness changes everything.

Every connection starts with a bump, some harder than others. Human connection starts with a touch–how we chose to react will determine whether we destroy or care for one another, will determine the fate of our tribe.

Its an important lesson to learn.

I am in the passenger seat, driving from Gary Indiana back to Chicago. A song I love is on a short loop over and over. It greeted me in the morning too–when I sprung out of Midway and into the car, when I threw my arms around my sweet friend. The air is hot and heavy but the sky is so so blue. There is so much to do but nothing to do about it so we ride along and listen to the music and talk about arranged marriages and a life that seems so far away and lunch plans and where to stop and how can you possibly measure happiness.

I have just given a presentation in a broken down convention center–where everything was locked and empty and falling apart. While we wandered around trying to find space for ourselves we followed signs to the “arena” to see what what once must have been the hottest place to place but now looks more like a mummy, a relic, bones of a life that was once so much more full but is now just an echo, strains of a song playing in the background of a memory.

I am in a taxi, nauseous from exhaustion having woken up at 4:30 am to make this trip in one day. Sick from my efforts to hurtle through the skies twice. I am heading home to my boy, to my house to my garden and as though an angel touches me on the shoulder I fall deep deep into a silent sleep. Then suddenly it sounds as if a bomb goes off and the blue sky is grey and swirling and the wind is pushing the taxi but the driver holds it steady and I am amazed at how suddenly everything changes.

The storm has held up all the flights. I wander up and down and explore Midway, an airport that is different from the last time I was here. I never fly here–always choose O’Hare but this time the proximity to Gary made me a pioneer and kicked me from routine. Everything is new, not familiar. Everything is shiny and different and exciting and the three hours delay practically disappears.

So so tired. Unable to find a comfortable position. Air blowing directly on me. Three hours on the tarmac but everyone has been so kind. But sleep. Sleep is not kind. There is no telling when the airport will open, if we will make it home. There is nothing to do but close eyes and be tired and sing songs in my head to Max and hope they will put him to sleep.

I stumble through a door, some 22 hours later after I crossed its threshhold last, a song still playing on a short loop in my head, a song I sing as I smooth his sweaty head and whisper “mama’s home”.

Day of brightest light, of biggest wishes, of round mango suns. Day of promises coming true.

This day, this sticky heat, this sweet sweet sunshine pouring in. Welcome. I lift my arms to the sky, try to wrap them around you, you golden orb rising.

I will make my altars anew this day, so full of life. I will whisper shout my prayers to the heavens. I will light fires and eat tomatoes from the garden, let their juice spill down my chin. I will face south and sing alleluia. So much light, so much love, so much joy.

The Sun
By Mary Oliver

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?

I have a big dream I have been holding deep in my heart. Over the last year or so I have been holding the possibility of that dream coming true. I have been getting used to the fact that maybe, just maybe, it will all work out afterall and that my story about dreams this big being for other people will finally get blown to smithereens.

This year has been one of deep rest. After declaring my dream and putting some things in motion, I have mostly been in a lull. There are lots of reasons for that lull–some logical and some that look stubbornly like fear. But mostly, my life has needed tending in the way that my overgrown garden needed tending this week. And also, even more importantly, I have needed to learn about mystery.

I am a planner. Every project I tackle with ferocity and strategy. I break things down into doable steps–I make lists. I throw myself in knowing full well how the completion of each step leads to the successful engagement with the next one. But somehow, when it comes to figuring out how I am going to rearrange my life and my finances to follow my path and learn how to heal, I have been at nothing short of a loss.

For much of the last year, this stuckness has been a source of frustration for me. I wish I could explain how many tears I cried for lack of knowledge of what to do next. How I beat myself up for my lack of movement. How I bemoaned my own stuckness. Like a horse tethered to a post for the first time I bucked and pulled and kicked and wore myself out. Until one moment, when frustrated and exhausted from all the suffering I was broken and just gave up–or maybe I gave in.

Something deep inside me, my inner wise woman, my intuition, tells me that this process is part of the curriculum. That maybe, just maybe, the lesson here for me is about not knowing what comes next and be willing to surrender everything, even the dream itself to faith that everything is unfolding exactly as it should. The learning how to “not know how” is the lesson.

I have a meditation which I have been settling into. I imagine myself climbing up on top of my mountain and sitting peacefully with a bowl in my lap. And I imagine that everything I need to know, or find, or discover will appear in my bowl unbidden.

This runs counter to everything I have always believed about how one makes their dreams come true, this slow, trusting, almost passive way of waiting. Its a lot like being pregnant. You take your vitamins, you eat well and drink your water, you sleep a lot and you wait to birth a miracle. It feels like nothing is happening and yet everything is happening efficiently and without conscious effort.

This weekend I have some steps to take. I have forms to fill out, even though I am not sure that they really matter. I have some shots to get, even though I am not sure I will actually need them. I am taking these steps because they are in front of me without any attachment that they will lead anywhere and without any knowledge of what comes next. I will do them simply because I am not sure what else to do and I am willing to just do what I can and surrender to whatever comes next, even if that is more waiting or profound disappointment or maybe just maybe a blossoming in the most unexpected way.

4 boxes of Kleenex. (Wishing I bought more now)
3 blankets and pillows
4 bottles of bubbles to blow out the windows if we get stuck in traffic (or bored…or anxious…or tired)
Strawberries, bananas and grapes
Bread and cheese and maybe a little ham in the cooler–the better to nurture weary travelers on the way home
Crackers and chips and a bag of pretzels
A 12 pack of Orange Fanta and a lot of bottled water
Chocolate in every form
Art supplies for the long long wait.
DVDs for when everyone needs to crash and stop talking.
Hope and love and comfortable shoes for waiting and pacing and waiting some more.

This morning I will drop Max off to school and then walk up the street with all this loot to my friend Dave’s house. There we will load the van and along with Shuttersister Stephanie Roberts, we will pick up the guest of honor, my dear friend Odette. We will drive the 5 hours to New York City, to JFK, to the international terminal where we will pick up her daughters, accompanied home by the gorgeous and unstoppable Jen Lemen.

It is such an honor to be allowed to witness this dream coming true. The night Odette first moved in with us almost 3 years ago, we talked all night about her girls. For the last four years, since she was forced to leave them on a crazy journey, my sister Odette has held their coming to join her in the US up as her truest dream. When her oldest daughter got sick, and she was unable to go home to tend to her, our friend Jen made the journey and has never looked back.

This journey has been the harder than I ever imagined possible. I kept thinking that there was no way it would ever come true. It seemed as though it was doomed to failure from the start, and it simultaneously made me sick to my stomach and hopeful at the same time.

Yesterday, I kept calling Odette on the phone and screaming, “They are coming!” “I know!!!” she screamed back and we would both laugh and jump up and down. It finally hit us both yesterday though it all fell into place last Friday. And today she will hold them in her arms in New York City rush hour traffic, while I blow bubbles out the car window, believing in miracles all over again.

Yesterday, on Easter morn, we did not go to church.

Several years ago, I left the church where I was raised–driven out by disgust over sex scandals and hypocrisy. My faith in God was fully intact but my faith in the institution had crumbled. I needed a new home. After years of searching, I think we are settling in somewhere. But as lovely as that Quaker community is, we are slow to settle and have still not become regulars. Max hasn’t officially joined the Sunday school. At the end of Meeting for Worship, when it is time for visitors to stand and introduce themselves, there are always a few who look our way. We are settling in but we are still not home.

And it was with that in mind that I chose not to go to church. I remember how growing up, the priest used to admonish the casual visitors on Easter Sunday and Christmas. How the casual visitors, while theoretically welcomed, also annoyed the regulars by clogging up the parking lot and taking all the seats. The big parties of Easter and Christmas I have always thought are special times, community times and until I can become a regular, I will take a pass from the big events.

But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t go to worship.

No, Easter morning found me in my garden, attending to the miracle of resurrection playing out in my own yard. It doesn’t matter how many years I do it, each time I roll the stones and dead leaves away I am delighted and in awe to find that where once were only dead dried stalks stood, fiddleheads were raising their miraculous heads to the sun. Where there were once just withering vines, sweet woodruff was peaking up through.

Resurrection is a drama that plays out every spring, each time equally miraculous. It is the most magical and wonderous experience to see. In the fall we grieve the leaves, we let go of all that was life sustaining. The winter is cold. We witness the light die. We slow down. Buried in feet of snow, surrounded by howling winds we wonder if life will ever return. But it does. It always does. It is God’s promise to us. And yet, it requires faith beyond measure.

So instead of singing my Alleluias from a pew, I dug into the earth. Attended by Max and Kuro the wonder dog, altar boys of the garden, we raised our voices in joy, of discovering new life returning. Each hyacith, and hosta, and iris leaf wothy of an amen.

Six summers ago our babysitter went away to Central America for three weeks. Juan and I were short on cash and so we could neither afford a vacation away nor could he take the time away from his fledgling business. It was just Max and me for three weeks. We spent lots of time in the parks and library and when he would lay his toddler head down for a nap, I discovered the joy of “mindful cleaning”.

My life was in chaos at that time. I was working too long and too hard. Motherhood was overwhelming. My marriage was disintegrating and I was tired, anxious and not sleeping. My house, I have learned, is often a mirror of my heart and so it is no surprise that at the time, my living space looked and felt like a bomb went off in it.

I am not much of a housekeeper, even in the best of times. Just ask my mother, Juan or my college roommate (sorry Cindy for those four years I buried you in squalor!). Somehow, the art of keeping my space in order feels like I mystery I may never crack. I have never quite figured that organization thing out. Over the years, I outsourced a lot of that work–to cleaning services, to my husband, to my mother who would frantically scrub each time she visited. While in some years it has been better than others, I gave up on housekeeping because as the ultimate achiever I felt the calm, tidy peace of my mother’s home was something I would never achieve. A clean, orderly space might momentarily be mine, but as a rule it eluded me. The idea of spending energy on something I would never accomplish just struck me as silly. I was driven by the finished product and this was one I never would obtain, so why bother?

But that summer, when Max would sleep, I would sit. My mind would whirl and spin with worries of how everything was falling apart. Then around day 3, after a good long cry I fell quiet for once. And in that quiet, a wisdom rose: You have to take care of your life.

I didn’t know how to fix my broken marriage. I wasn’t ready to face what was making me struggle at work. I had no idea how to tackle the lack that filled me like a canyon. But I knew how to do laundry. And there was so much of it piled up. I knew how to clean windows and I had many that were dirty and streaky in the summer sun. I knew how to dust and there were inches of hidden grey dust piled up on the tops of cabinets and shelves.

So, I started to clean, not in order to arrive at a picture perfect home, but simply because it needed to be done and I needed to quiet my mind. Around this time, my friend Anne had told me about mindful eating, a practice she had started after a trip to Kripalu. She said its principles could be applied to anything. I wondered if it could apply to cleaning.

I treated myself with a small bag of new cleaning products–Mrs Meyers I think it was in geranium or lavender or some other delicious scent. I used the mid-day hours when Max would sleep to scrub and clean solely because 1) it needed to be done and 2) because it gave me a relief from the constant thinking I was doing–about my marriage, my career, my “failure” as a mother. For three weeks I cleaned, bit by bit.

The house did look better at the end of that month, but to be honest, I never did quite achieve utter sparkle. The mystery of complete cleanliness and order would remain a mystery. But at the end of the three weeks I had found some peace. In my heart there was more quiet. And I also knew that without having to solve any big problems, I was stroke by stroke, taking care of my life.

I have often returned to this exercise when life gets at its most overwhelming. This winter, all crabby I had a moment where I felt unnourished, depleted and wholly uncelebrated. “I take care of everyone!” I whined to myself. “There is no one to take care of me!” But that deep wisdom got bossy with my complaining mind. “Just breathe and take care of your life” it said. So I put down my computer, my guitar, my books and my worries and picked up the laundry basket, the mop and the spray bottle. Not with any goals other that simple deep loving care of myself and my son.

I have thought of this story often as I have seen bits and pieces leak out of Karen Maezen Miller’s new book, Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life. I am a little girl waiting for Christmas, anticipating its arrival, joyously loading the dishwasher while I wait. You can read an excerpt of it here. You can hear Karen’s beautiful soothing voice reading a selection of it here. And you can start your search for peace of mind in here, in your own laundry room or kitchen with nothing more than than your willing hands.