Tag: Frank Ostaseski

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The Season is Now

annacitrino

Sandhill Cranes, Staten Island, California

Now is the season to know
everything you do
is sacred.

–Hafiz

Recently, I traveled to Staten Island in California’s Central Valley near Lodi, California. An important wintering spot for migratory waterbirds, the Central Valley supports 60% of wintering waterfowl in the Pacific Flyway and 20% of the winter waterfowl in the whole of the US. According to the Audubon website, “The four Central Valley regions hosted approximately 65 million migratory land birds in the spring and 48 million in the fall.” My purpose in the visit was to see the sandhill cranes. Since the cranes like marshes, bogs, agricultural lands, river valleys, and open prairie, California’s Central Valley is a perfect wintering location for the birds.

The largest gathering in the world of sandhill cranes is in Nebraska, where over a quarter million sandhill cranes gather in spring on the Platte River. Witnessing the multitude of bird life gathered in that location, the air filled with their wing-flutter, their voices calling to each other across fields, and the enormous energy of their life-force could carry one into a state of awe. The Nature Conservancy’s excellent short video of the sandhill cranes’ spring presence in the Platte River Valley enables people to visit the spectacle vicariously. Viewing the film brought me into sharper awareness of the myriad worlds that occur simultaneously alongside our human one. 

Sandhill Cranes, Staten Island, California

At least 3,000 years ago bird migration patterns were noticed in various cultures of the Pacific islands as well as in ancient Greece, and are also referred to in the Bible in the books of Job and Jeremiah (Wikipedia). While humans are out traversing the highways, working in fields, gathering in buildings, or sitting in around the dinner table discussing who to vote for in upcoming elections, sandhill cranes and other migratory birds have their own motivations and are flying by the thousands upon thousands to locations they’ve gathered at for millennia. 

While we move through our day unaware of nature’s larger rhythms, a great cycle of being is unfolding all around us and we are part of it. Like an Indian raga, the movements of animals flow in cyclic rhythms of time across the globe in circuitous routes, increasing in volume, size, and energy at different locations, then quieting down and moving on as seasons change, only to be repeated again the following season. Flyways and the myriad patterns of many other animals moving across the globe–leatherback turtles, whales, monarch butterflies, bats, salmon, pronghorn deer, each following ancient rhythms, can be seen on interactive maps like this one, as well as this video of global animal movements.

Geese flying above Staten Island, California

The whole of creation is in a state of continuous change. Though trees are rooted, Chelsea Steinaur-Scudder and Jeremy Seifert, in their article in Emergence Magazine, “They Carry Us With Them: The Great Tree Migration,” describe tree migrations that have occurred over millennia, and that are presently taking place as a result of a variety of factors not as yet totally clear, but including “changes in climate, past and present land use and management, the proliferation of native pests and plants, the introduction of non-native species, and the built landscape.”

A big part of my reason for wanting to see the sandhill cranes is because many of my great aunts and uncles were born in Nebraska. I’ve been writing about them, and want to experience more of the landscape they inhabited to better imagine their voices and to sense how the land there might have shaped their lives. Though they lived at Nebraska’s western edge and not in the Platte River Valley, they may well have experienced the cranes’ migration, and I like the idea of my life intersecting with a vision of these birds that may have also been a vision they had. My ancestors migrated from the eastern US states to Nebraska. I never met most of them because by the time I was born, my parents had migrated to California. My great grandparents, as well as several of my great aunts and uncles, died before I was able to meet them.

Geese, Staten Island, California

In Western culture we like to think of time as linear and often depict history on timelines. A different way of looking at existence is to imagine it as circular or a great spiral–the spiraled twist of DNA helix, the chambered nautilus’s fibonacci whorl, the swirled currents of wind and water, and the cosmic curled tail of our galaxy. We are all part of the great movement of becoming. In our migrations, we say goodbye to what was and reach toward what will renew and nurture us in body or spirit. To live is to be part of the great cycle of birth and death. There are many deaths and births before we let go of our bodies.

Humans generally like firmness and solidity. We live in a certain location or in a particular period of time. Nevertheless, it’s also true that humans have been migrating since the dawn of their existence, as this National Geographic map shows. Many times, people move from their birthplace to other locations. According to the UN, “more people than ever live in a country other than the one in which they were born.” When we choose to move elsewhere, we generally hope the move will carry us to an environment we perceive is better than the one we left behind. These maps depict human migration in recent times, making it clear not everyone migrates out of choice. Whether people migrate from their own choice or not, letting go of one’s former life carries with it a kind of grief.

Gail Rudd Entrekin‘s poem “Finally,” (used with her permission) found in her excellent book of poems, Walking Each Other Home, takes a close look at what it’s like to come face to face with losses we don’t necessarily expect during the migration of our lives as we move from birth toward maturity.

Finally

Every morning now it’s the big girl pants
and they are not black silk with lace, but cotton
voluminous and white. You’ve seen them
hanging on clothes lines back in the day,
functional pants for women who mean
business. They mean to get things done
no allowance for pain, don’t mean to spend
a single minute caressing their losses. These
women look straight ahead and forget to smile
at children, forget to touch their husbands’ hands,
their old husbands wandering like children,
these men who were supposed to be gods
and fell unable in their duty to protect, left
these women to drop their peacock feather earrings,
chop off their long thick hair, toss their wild
photos into an old shoe box, and take charge,
grow up, finally, grow all the way up.

The poem brings us into the world of navigating inside those difficult migrations life inevitably brings our way. The underwear described in the poem aren’t black silk with lace. They are “functional,” the kind perhaps our grandmother or great grandmother might have worn, women so busy trying to survive they didn’t take time to soothe themselves regarding what they lost. We need dear ones close by to help steady us but for various reasons, we don’t always have the support we need.

Often times when entering into difficult life passages, we recognize the journey’s challenges and find ourselves needing to turn serious and grow practical. Entrekin’s poem describes these women, they who no longer do such things as wear their lovely peacock feather earrings. They cut their thick hair, and toss the photos of their wilder days in an old shoe box. In confronting hardship, they’ve let go their adornments and spontaneity. Out of necessity they “take charge, / grow up, finally, grow all the way up.” There is such sobering responsibility and finality embedded in those words. Courage and bravery too. I read the lines and think of people I know right now who are having to do just that as they confront various difficulties.

There’s also a sadness there, a sorrow in this letting go of a former self in order to “take charge.” Things that have delighted and brought us joy are important touchstones to memories that helped shape and give texture to our lives. Even if out of necessity, we don’t want to stuff them away in a shoebox never to be seen again. We need the things that give us beauty and joy in order to keep going. Nevertheless, eventually, as we approach our life’s last days, everything we’ve held so precious will need to be set aside. We will need to let go of everything we’ve ever held dear.

Egret, Staten Island, California

Entrekin titles her poem “Finally.” When we retire from work we felt dedicated to for years, or when someone dear to us becomes seriously ill or dies, we leave one world behind for another. These situations and circumstances require us to leave behind a familiar reality for a different one and are a kind of interior migration as well as a death of a former way of living.

The arrival of bodily death is the ultimate finality. Contemplating our death can help us recognize what it is that truly matters. To help us do this, Buddhists recommend people practice reading or reciting what they call the Five Remembrances:

  • I am of the nature to grow old. I cannot escape old age.
  • I am of the nature to grow ill. I cannot escape sickness.
  • I am of the nature to die. I cannot escape death.
  • I will be separated from everything and everyone I hold dear.
  • My only true possession is my actions.

Frank Ostaseski, head of the Zen Hospice center in San Francisco, California, in his book, The Five Invitations, encourages us to sit down with “sister death,” to have tea and conversation with her because in doing so we learn how to live more fully. Ostaseski suggests that as we turn toward the griefs we carry, we become more whole. “Every time we experience a loss, we have another chance to experience life at a greater depth,” he writes. “It opens us to the most essential truths of our lives: the inevitability of impermanence, the causes of suffering, and the illusion of separateness. We begin to appreciate that we are more than our grief. We are what the grief is moving through.”

Geese at Staten Island, California

“In the end,” Ostaseski goes on to explain, “we may still fear death but we don’t fear living nearly as much. In surrendering to our grief, we have learned to give ourselves to life.” Ostaseski’s talk about poetry and the end of life, is moving, and I recommend it.

The other side of grief is love. For me, both Entrekin’s poem and Ostaseski’s insights emphasize the preciousness of every moment. The simplest things are treasures: sitting in the presence of those we love, the taste of a good meal, a walk under billowed clouds spread across a wide sky. Life is ephemeral. This is why in the end, acts seemingly as simple as walking across a room are not simple or trivial. They are rich and lavish gifts of being. As the 14th century Iranian poet Hafiz wrote in The Gift, translated by Daniel Ladinsky:

Now is the Time 

Now is the time to know
That all that you do is sacred.

Now, why not consider
A lasting truce with yourself and God.

Now is the time to understand
That all your ideas of right and wrong
Were just a child’s training wheels
To be laid aside
When you finally live
With veracity
And love.

Hafiz is a divine envoy
Whom the Beloved
Has written a holy message upon.

My dear, please tell me,
Why do you still
Throw sticks at your heart
And God?

What is it in that sweet voice inside
That incites you to fear?

Now is the time for the world to know
That every thought and action is sacred.

This is the time
For you to compute the impossibility
That there is anything
But Grace.

Now is the season to know
That everything you do
Is sacred.

poetry, Uncategorized

Necessary Shadows

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In learning to draw, my awareness of the importance of shadows grows. Shadows help us see what it is we’re looking at. They function to distinguish shape and to define forms. They help us understand the textural differences between one element and another, and to discern the nature of things.

In everyday life, we generally prefer things to go smoothly. Shadows hanging over our heads are not generally appreciated. Shadows between the sweet things in life that bring us joy are seen in clearer light when seen in contrast with the challenging, elements in our circumstances.

Currently, the media surrounds us with messages that feed the brain’s propensity for negativity, encouraging heightened alertness, and for some, a kind of panic. At markets where I live there is a run on food staples such as beans, bread, and rice, as well as hand sanitizer, bleach and hydrogen peroxide as people prepare for possible quarantines, lockdowns, and the potential need to remain socially isolated in the effort to squash the spread of COVID-19. This fear is compounded by anxieties in other areas too: rising rents and housing costs in general, the stock market’s decline, worries over climate change, health care costs, and who will be the next US president, not to mention ongoing violence against human rights, people pushed out of their homes and countries because of internal terrorism or wars, and though not always publicized, the numbers of those dying each day from hunger, the isolation of the aged. So much disquietude. So many shadows.

How do we live in the face of such anxiety and relentless suffering? The challenges societies face today are complex and don’t have simple solutions. Inequities and systemic injustices previously accepted or hidden beneath the surface are now visible, the contrasts between worlds drawn more clearly. Is balance impossible in the face of crisis? Situations may feel unbearable, nevertheless amidst it all, the world continues on, changing, though it’s not necessarily clear what that change might look like.

Living, like drawing, is a creative act. We are each a part of determining what form that change might take by what we highlight, the lines and textures we draw, and the contrast we choose to emphasize in order to create the forms and overall tone or feeling of the world we’re making.

In Rabindranath Tagore’s book, The Gardener, he writes,
“I was walking by the road, I do not know why, when the noonday was past and bamboo branches rustled in the wind.
The prone shadows with their out-stretched arms clung to the feet of the hurrying light. The koels were weary of their songs?
I was walking by the road, I do not know why.”

Like the speaker in Tagore’s poem, we’re on a journey. We don’t always know where we’re going or may not understand why we’re where we are, but something beckons to us. We hear rustlings in the wind, shadows of those chasing after what might be answers. Tagore mentions koels. If you’ve ever listened to a koel’s vocalizations, the bird sounds as if it is saying its own name, yet Tagore mentions the possibility of a change in what they say, suggesting, too, they’ve grown tired of speaking and are saying nothing at all. Tagore observes his situation and senses something is altering in the pattern and nature of things.

We, too, like the speaker in Tagore’s poem, are sometimes pulled toward certain places, people or experiences without necessarily knowing why or having a rational explanation for why. That’s the wonderful or perhaps terrifying thing, depending on your perspective. Life can never quite be named, though one thing is growing clearer to me as a result of the recent fears over the covid-19 pandemic: we’re all in this together. The natural environment, physical environment, animal and human environment—we all affect each other. We are connected, are a community, regardless of our awareness or level of functioning or disfunction. True in art as in life, shadows can help us understand the source of light and deepen our humanity. Heartening examples of this are emerging from Italy where, as CNBC reports that though Italy is a country hard hit by COVID-19 with 17,660 confirmed cases and 1,266 deaths so far, “Italians are singing songs from their windows to boost morale during the coronavirus lockdown.” Schools, museums, cinemas are closed, soccer matches canceled. Restaurants are ordered to close, the economy is struggling, but people have found a way to express life’s joy—singing and dancing playing music together from their balconies—separated, but still seeing themselves in a shared struggle.

We fear losing what we love, our way of being in the world, our freedom, our lives. Fear shrinks us, as research shows, while love and gratitude expands us. The poems in The Gardener are love poems and reading them brings to my attention that beneath the panic and fear, there is another world coexisting alongside, one that is stable and without fear, even in the midst of disaster. There’s an interesting etymological connection between the words whole and holy. They both mean whole. Holy ground is where we are whole. To be well means to be whole and is a kind of holiness. To be well when around you the world is in panic is to find holy ground to stand on. How might we discover this holy ground to stand on while in the midst of difficult times with so much that could cause panic? This is a challenge.

Drawn to expand beyond our own walls of comfort and understanding, we ask ourselves, how do we live in joy despite the circumstances around us filled with anxiety and for many, suffering—mental, physical, and spiritually. A friend I meet with is in her eighties. This week she stated, as she often does, “Being old is difficult.” Working on writing her memories of escaping Austria with her family at the age of two during WWII, she has stories to tell before she’s ready to die, she explains, adding on to say, “I need to learn how to die, how to live with joy and die. It’s an exchange of energy you know. We drop the body, but the energy goes elsewhere.” In acknowledgement of impermanence, I’m reminded of The Five Remembrances, many Buddhists read each day:
I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.
I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape ill health.
I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.
All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.
My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.

Perhaps from a certain perspective these remembrances sound rather grim, but their larger purpose is to see the interconnection between death and life, to live intentionally with joy in recognition of our short time on earth, and in that recognition, to focus our purpose. Death and awareness of our death, either eventual or impending, can transform us. Maria Popova in her article on the Brain Pickings site, “The Five Invitations: Zen Hospice Project Co-founder Frank Ostaseski on Love, Death, and the Essential Habits of Mind for a Meaningful Life,” quotes Ostaseski.

“I have seen ordinary people at the end of their lives develop profound insights and engage in a powerful process of transformation that helped them to emerge as someone larger, more expansive, and much more real than the small, separate selves they had previously taken themselves to be. They discovered a profound trust in the universe and the reliable goodness of humanity that never abandoned them, regardless of the suffering they encountered. If that possibility exists at the time of dying, it exists here and now.”

These seem like wise words for our time. In the midst of challenges, suffering and shadows that look like death, we can still open our hearts to life, to love, to the goodness that is ever present around us. We are part of each other and of the bigger energy of life that is ever present. What we focus on grows. We can be whole.

Toward the end of Tagore’s book, The Gardener, he writes, in section 68,
None lives forever, brother, and nothing lasts for long. Keep that in mind and rejoice.
Our life is not the one old burden, our path is not the one long journey.
One sole poet has not to sing one aged song.
The flower fades and dies; but he who wears the flower has not to mourn for it forever.
Brother, keep that in mind and rejoice.

We know life has burdens and that its flowers fade, but the journey is worth taking. Though their lives are brief, every day flowers’ blossoms are worth rejoicing over.