Lessons I’m Learning from my Sit Spot

The Messenger

Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world.

Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird — equal seekers of sweetness.

Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.

Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?

Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect?

Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.

The phoebe, the delphinium. T

he sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.

Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart

and these body-clothes, a mouth with which to give shouts of joy to the moth

and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam, telling them all,

over and over, how it is that we live forever.



In our digital age, this epoch in which we glorify multi-tasking and busy-ness, where sensory-mental stimulation seems to ooze from omnipresent electronic gadgetry, I am ever questing for silence, solitude, solace from the torrent of hyprmessaging and hyperactivity. Like H.D. Thoreau and Mary Oliver after him, I go to my version of the woods to recover my senses. Each morning, I situate myself on the bank of Richardson Bay on a bench fortuitously positioned between two healthy sheltering oak trees. I try to hold my perch for 20 minutes, opening myself to whatever traffic comes and goes in my immediate environment, allowing my senses to keep their inventory. Here are a few lessons that I'm learning:

1.    We’re all flowing to and from the same Source. Gaze at any open body of natural water for just a few moments and it’s impossible not to feel the stirring of the fluids within your own skin. After all, we’re just a couple hundred gallons of water, blood, and other flowing substances enclosed within a human skin. Taking time to sit beside a tidal bay each day reminds me that we all flow from and to the same divine source, that the same molecules that unite to form the bay also join together within me to give me form and substance. Can I allow this knowledge to help me draw from a deeper well of wisdom, understanding, desire for connection, soul quenching, and healing?

2.    You may look or feel drab or small, but – WOW – can you sing a beautiful song! The small brown birds – nuthatches, chickadees, oak titmouses - that inhabit the oak tree beside my sit spot delight me with their chorus. Their appearance is deceptive. Fist-sized and cardboard-colored, they appear rather generic when held beside the pure white great egret or the stately blue heron. But one full-throated lungful of song advises me that beauty lies within.

3.    Stop, sit still, survey the scene, and take a rest from time to time. Hummingbirds provide a bird species metaphor to our modern day lives:  flitting from one enticing treat or activity to the next, hovering a wee while, and then moving on to the next greatest thing. But observe the hummingbird a while longer. See how she pauses, stock still, balanced gingerly on a bare branch. Looking. Resting. Allowing the fruits of her activity to be integrated within. Readying herself for another period of activity. Then, from this place of profound stillness, she takes flight.

4.    Even something as mundane, unremarkable, or uninspiring as a playing field can serve an essential purpose and hold abundant nourishment. Vibrant emerald green turf holds a special place in the hearts of my neighborhood’s gulls and geese. They spread themselves by the dozens over the soft surface, drawing into themselves for shelter from the elements or carefully plying the turf for nourishing morsels. The mundane surface of the playing field becomes a communion of beings, a source of safety and respite, a cafeteria. The gulls and geese ask me, “What comfort and nourishment can you find in the ordinary, the everyday, the collective?”

5.    It’s not necessarily how high you go, but how you get there. The flight of the turkey vulture provides eloquent commentary on artful journeying. Launching from bare earth or jagged edge of hill, its wings spread impressively and – oh! – catch an updraft and propel its oversized body a bit higher. From a meaningful vantage point, the hulking yet graceful form turns in wide gyres as if blessing all beneath. Eagle or vulture? Only the studied eye can discern, as the gorgeous spirals of flight mask all perceived ugliness. Make your journey artful.

6.    Circling a destination or a course of action a few (or many!) times before your settle on it can be a useful, prudent practice. I watch innumerable gulls convene in seeming disarray and chaos in the steam rising from the wastewater treatment plant. A moment unfolds in which they place themselves head to tail with their kin until the whole twisted knot of gray-white feathers has become a gently revolving circle that mirrors the shape of the holding tank beneath. For dozens of seconds they rotate, with each rotation a few more birds setting off in their own directions or, dropping to cement surface, settling to rest, just so. There’s a certain wisdom in going ‘round and ‘round a few times before landing at your decision or destination.

7.    Let the sun find you and catch your colors, dry out your feathers. The shiny ebony cormorant’s telltale gesture for drying its wings serves as a sort of sun salute. Chest lifts, wingtips thrust skyward, head gently inclines, arches backward in a graceful curve. Heart exposed to sun, wings full spread, wind gently caressing the full surface of its body. Ah, how important to routinely allow nature to soothe and heal the cold, soggy parts of yourself that could potentially bog you down.

8.    Be utterly, irrepressibly you. Yesterday morning, I searched and searched with my ears and eyes ‘til I found the source of the happiest, most sincere and exuberant upwelling of song. They came to rest on a tiny bird feathered in shades of brown, beak turned to the heavens, belting out its own original aria. He seemed to counsel me, “Hey – all you can do is be utterly, irrepressibly you!” So get on with it. Sing your song!”

9.    Be resourceful and also patient; work diligently, but also wait and watch. Every type of feathered creature has shown me the significance of resourcefulness:  from berry harvesting to collecting puffs of fur and wads of thread for nest lining, they’re wise users of resources. Their unique vantage points often give them a window onto opportunity to which busy upright creatures may only rarely, if ever, be privy. For many species, this resourcefulness comes coupled with an embedded capacity for patience. Simply watch a great egret or blue heron searching for breakfast and you’ll embrace a new understanding of patience. I’m learning that there’s both a need to apply oneself diligently to one’s daily labor, and also to take things slowly, to survey the broader scene before plunging deeply into activity.

10.Even a minor miracle such as landing gracefully on water can come to be second nature with practice, which helps to transform self-doubt, fear, skepticism, and lassitude into polished performance. I watch the skinny-legged rail come to a skidding but graceful landing in a shallow pool beside the bike path. Grace triumphs over physical form, as its small football-shaped body, gangly neck, large almond-shaped head, and overly long orange beak do not advertise, “Look at graceful me!” Clearly, practice has enabled the adult rail to alight and land with an artful polish that seems the result of committed practice (coupled with some wonderful assistance in the genetic realm from Mother Nature).

11. Bloom where you are planted. I tend to wait until the conditions are “just right” before beginning something, especially a new endeavor. From the proliferation of all types of rather marvelous fungi, I’m taking the counsel to bloom in whatever soil or leaf litter or tree bark you find yourself, as you may just be able to nourish others from the nutrients you draw from whatever medium in which you find yourself.

Winter Gardening

We plant seeds that will flower as results in our lives, so best to remove the weeds of anger, avarice, envy and doubt, that peace and abundance may manifest for all.     ~ Dorothy Day

The winter rains have found us. After three years of enduring dryness that seemed to turn every stem and leaf a sickly sort of brown, that sucked all semblance of moisture from the soil, that caused many a farmer and gardener sleepless nights and wrought furrows in brows deeper than those in fields, we are gurgling in winter wetness. Sodden sandbags stand guard at entryways, bracing for the next downpour. Water eddies and pools amidst the obstacles posed by leaf matter and soil runoff. And Mother Nature sports a hundred shades of green  - tiny blades of grass appear where before was barren earth. New growth gleams brightly on meadows and hillsides. The deer and coyotes are abandoning survival backyard picnicking for their preferred wild foraging. Even winged creatures seem to have a new lightness to their flight, relieved by the languor of dry, desolate days that had turned meals to tasteless morsels, cozy bedding to prickly, poking furniture unfit for even the grumpiest of visitors.

Abundance is a word befitting harvest time or, in this precious Mediterranean climate, the height of summer rather than the dead of winter. Yet Mother Nature laughingly shrugs at the calendar. “Now!” she seems to say, with glinted eye, “Abundance cannot be hemmed in by season or custom. Always is the time for new growth and rich harvest.”

Her wisdom is legendary. I’m trying to take it to heart.  

Dorothy Day’s words guide my heart’s musings and my heart’s homework, especially in these weeks when shameful acts of injustice, violence, unfathomable cruelty, and mind-numbing irresponsibility grab headlines. Rather than dwell on what inevitably springs from these – “Hate begets hate; violence begets violence . . .”, MLK observed – I prefer to invest in sowing the seeds of nonviolent speech, considerate and compassionate action, words  and actions that repair and renew so that they may be fed by these winter rains and multiply a thousand-fold.

Dr. King went on to counsel, “We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love.” Nature has shown me how rainwater has the capacity to re-new – to make new again – and to re-generate – to join tiny seeds and lifeless and struggling plants and animals to the life force that so essentially nourishes them so that they might experience vitality and abundance.

It’s hardly the season for sowing, though I know many a diligent farmer who is nonetheless meticulously tending upstarts. After all, Nature sometimes laughs at the calendar, and wise farmers take their lead from Her. If we can’t all be sowing, why not make time for weeding, for tending the soil? During this season of honoring darkness, perhaps each of us could look into the darkness in our own hearts, identify any weeds rooted there that might be ripe for removal, and set about the difficult but satisfying work of weeding? Perhaps we can participate in cultivating our healthy crops by tenderly yet decisively uprooting the seeds and shoots of malice, violence, judgment, pettiness, and fear so that these don’t proliferate in our gardens?

Just maybe, when the rains have run their course and sunlight’s again heaped generously upon us, we will glean mended relationships, softened hearts, mutual understanding, forgiveness, tenderness, and the peace that comes from having engaged wholeheartedly in good, hard work. What abundance that would be . . . 

Enthralled by Tinier Beings

In recent weeks, I've found myself enthralled by tiny beings:  infinitesimally small spiders; avocado-sized baby coots; perfectly etched miniature Japanese maple leaves; thumbnail-big sand dollars; spritely evening grosbeaks, with their inspiring yellow throats. Perhaps it's the waning of light that's prompted me to ponder the beauty and gifts of smallness, or perhaps my earnest search for ways to assert more bravery in the face of big emotions and big questions about how to deal with the violence, ignorance, divisiveness, and destruction in our world, or maybe just my subconscious acknowledgement that bigger is not always better, that mass and volume are not the only markers of greatness . . .

I sat for 20 minutes in a rain-soaked meadow on Sunday morning following the aerial choreography of a microscopic ebony spider. She effortlessly glided through the air, eschewing contact with saturated stalks of meadow grass, avoiding the byways offered by thistle stems and countless green blades of new growth. Suspended by an invisible filament, she propelled herself, the air itself her highway. An intrepid explorer, she evidently delighted in free floating. Then, as if the second hand of some great Nature clock lagged, I observed her slow, elegant collision with a sodden golden stalk. Contact - matter beneath feet - seemed profoundly disorienting. Sprite-like meandering through open air turned to effortful trudging, the ascent of the 10-inch stalk requiring minutes rather than milliseconds. Would that I could find such grace and surety in the face of wide open possibility, of no ground beneath my feet.

This morning, I beheld the bundle of exuberant curiosity that is the tiny black coot. Boldly ranging beyond the concentric circles cast by her Momma's progress, she purposefully seeks the deepest water. Mid-way between shores, where the chasm is greatest and the predators most likely to eyeball her delicious backside, she dips and dives and dives and dives. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven seconds I count, the water now bearing no trace of her watery pike. My peripheral vision finds her next, restoring herself to surface, continuing her fearless exploration. The prehistoric form of brother Pelican looms overhead, dangerously near and frighteningly large. She appears unperturbed, happily making her watery sojourn in search of novelty and nourishment, no need for sign of Mother or shore.

Now I am delighting in the yellow-throated grosbeaks conferencing outside my window. Oblivious to the cacophony of city noises - table saw and siren, jackhammer and pick axe, hammer and horn - they share their secrets as they savor bright orange berries. "The world's a crazy, bountiful place," they seem to chatter, and "Aren't you glad we have each other?"

As I muddle through my days, these little creatures help me to see the merits of curiosity and community. They encourage me to abandon fear for fearlessness, chide me to trust that spaciousness and possibility can harbor more opportunities for freedom and creativity than stability and security. In their own way, to paraphrase Brene Brown, they show me that vulnerability is the clearest way we have of measuring courage.

Learning from Nature

My soft early morning eyes follow the chubby tuxedoed bodies of Buffleheads plying the jade surface of Richardson Bay. I watch. A poofy cottonball head and small gray beak tilt forward, puncturing the water’s skin; fat black and white rump slip noiselessly after. The water ripples out in concentric circles that give way to glassy stillness. In my somewhat unfocused line of sight, all is momentarily unmoving, silent. Submerged, the bird works his underwater duties, gleaning nourishment for the day, counsel for others about where real treasure lies.

She stands at the shoreline, elliptical body balanced on pencil-thin ebony legs, graceful neck folded neatly at its midpoint, watchful eyes observing, thoughtfully consuming. Motionless, long schooled in moving at nature’s pace. Her wedge-shaped beak begins a descent, lowers millimeters at a time, almost imperceptibly. Neck slowly unfurls, trailing golden beak. A momentary hovering, stillness gathered and held. At lightening’s speed, mouth drops to water, jaws open, shut. Gullet takes over, efficiently processing the morning’s latest morsel. Thirty seconds pass, gullet and figure working in seamless harmony. Gradually, she again assumes regal stance, presiding over the green Bay, the Mallards and Grebes, the Snowy Egrets. Pale eyes resume encompassing gaze.

Round and round she travels, rhythmically, purposefully, gossamer strand trailing then artfully catching a cross-thread, lending the work its telltale shape. Her squat gold and black body pushes along her eight deft weaving tools, forelegs gingerly guiding the thread’s placement – just so – before engineering a change in direction, a coupling of the new strand with a cross-thread to sturdy up the new home. Her path spirals inward, each revolution tighter, more focused. A silver dollar-sized eight-sided ring culminates the masterful weaver’s work. Noiselessly, with practiced efficiency, she crosses to the two o’clock corner of the web and settles in rest. Almost motionless, I can see-hear-feel her breathing. The sun finally rounds the girth of the eucalyptus grove and, warmth unfurling, casts its autumn morning light on the weaver, the web, and the witness.

Earlier this month, I spent three days and two nights camping in a meadow edging the Pacific. The meadow rests among the 17 acres that comprise The Regenerative Design Institute’s patch of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The Design Institute is a 2-acre permaculture garden and varied patch of wild lands within the park’s marvelous expanse. While the prospect of three days of camping in such a scenic refuge sounds idyllic, the weekend entailed more than lounging under my tent’s safe nylon canopy lulled by the waves’ music.  Rather, it involved more than 30 hours of solitary and group exercises, reflection, journaling, and activities otherwise aimed to facilitate a stock-taking of my life. The days marked the opening session of a six-month program called The Ecology of Leadership, or EOL. Per its website description, EOL aims to “awaken our unique gifts and [support us] to more fully participate in the extraordinary cultural and planetary transformation of our time.” For those familiar with the activist ecologist and philosopher Joanna Macy, the program responds to the opportunities inherent in what Macy describes as “The GreatTurning” – the turning away from an industrial growth society toward a life-sustaining civilization. For me, the program appeared as if by Grace, another step stone on this path to align my work and the daily pattern of my life to be synchronous with my belief in the interconnectedness of all beings and my desire to be a more active and effective healing resource. In truth, the program also provides me with a way to direct my energy from the despair and isolation of mid-career unemployment and uncertainty to pursuit of my vision of a wholehearted life of integrity and meaningful contribution. It enables me to commune with other seekers trying to discern their proper place on this Earth, yearning to discover and take up their particular and significant work in the world.

I count my new practice of sitting quietly in nature among the gifts already gleaned from EOL. In addition to nurturing a daily meditation practice, I have added the daily discipline of sitting quietly for 20 minutes in the same “sit spot” bordering Richardson Bay. There, I am instructed by my guides from EOL to simply observe. From this practice and my summer of farming, I am slowly learning that soundly immersing myself in our natural world helps me to re-member my place within the unfolding fabric, to claim my membership in the family of things. Observing the Great Blue Heron and the Bufflehead, I am re-learning the significance of standing still and diving deep. From the Great Egret, I am discovering that open and watchful waiting yields rich desserts, that I need not muscle and strive to earn my daily bread, that there is always enough – and often abundance. From the Robins outside my kitchen window, I take the lesson that small morsels consumed thoughtfully accrete to sufficient food for the journey, and that companionship and community are as important – if not more so – than a ready supply of bright red berries.

As in the practice of meditation, my sit spot practice also invokes the most basic onboard tool – the breath – as a means of restoring my attention and emotions to the here and now. Now, I’m finding it helpful to envision myself breathing alongside the regal Egrets and Herons, humming through my activities propelled by the self-same breath imbibed by Buffleheads and Mallards, respiring with the formidable stillness of Redwoods and Cypresses. These visualizations readily guide me into my Heart’s center, to its beating, which mirrors that of the Creator that sustains every living being. By consciously settling into silence, resting in breath and mantra, I hope that I am gradually becoming more adept at listening and responding to the way life continuously evokes us forward on a path with Heart. If it’s good enough for Mary Oliver, it’s good enough for me.

And so I try, moment by moment and day by day, to keep moving forward. I invoke the company of my breath and of faithful companions on this journey toward awareness, non-violence, and service in healing the earth. I sometimes falter. I sometimes check out. I've been known, too, to stumble and lose heart. It’s then that I close my eyes, find my breath, conjure the faces of those who encourage and inspire me. It’s then that I take myself to the edge of the Bay and regard the Buffleheads and the Blue Heron. I am learning to join them on their path, to rest and trust in abundance, in revelation, in nourishment enough for the unfolding journey.

And when I need further cajoling to re-join the path, to re-engage in the practice of slowing down and opening up, I turn to poetry - what poet David Whyte describes as, "Language against which we have no defenses." These words of Denise Levertov recently undid me . . .

We live our lives of human passions,
cruelties, dreams, concepts,
crimes and the exercise of virtue
in and beside a world devoid
of our preoccupations, free
from apprehension -- though affected,
certainly, by our actions. A world
parallel to our own though overlapping.
We call it "Nature"; only reluctantly
admitting ourselves to be "Nature" too.
Whenever we lose track of our own obsessions,
our self-concerns, because we drift for a minute,
an hour even, of pure (almost pure)
response to that insouciant life:
cloud, bird, fox, the flow of light, the dancing
pilgrimage of water, vast stillness
of spellbound ephemerae on a lit windowpane,
animal voices, mineral hum, wind
conversing with rain, ocean with rock, stuttering
of fire to coal--then something tethered
in us, hobbled like a donkey on its patch
of gnawed grass and thistles, breaks free.
No one discovers
just where we've been, when we're caught up again
into our own sphere (where we must
return, indeed, to evolve our destinies)
-- but we have changed, a little.

~ Denise Levertov ~

(Sands of the Well)

The Mutuality of Nourishment

As 2009 opened, I was issued a challenge – extended by my youngest sister to each of her six siblings - to make at least 500 pb&j sandwiches for the local soup kitchen or outreach center of my choosing. After strong-arming my Solstice partygoers into a couple of hours of focused sandwich making, my wife Christine and I had a mere 150 or so sandwiches to our credit. I dutifully dropped them at Santa Cruz’s Homeless Services Center and noted the rather lukewarm reception that greeted of our collective labor of love. Turning our Corolla-turned-meal-wagon into Trader Joe’s parking lot to restock our sandwich making supplies, I began to question, “What does it mean to truly nourish people?”

This seemingly innocent line of inquiry took on a life of its own, spawning a new round of meal preparation that seemed more in keeping with our community’s needs. Over the following weeks, Christine and I lovingly (if sloppily!) prepared 75-or-so bag lunches – complete with small bean, cheese, and salsa burritos, tortilla chips, and cookies – and distributed them to the omnipresent row of Latino men walking the day laborer line. Tentative at first, the guys shyly scooped up brown paper sacks with mumbles of, “Gracias.” The task became equally fun and fulfilling, but I still pondered whether there might be a more meaningful way to foster community and address basic nutritional needs with my rather limited culinary skills (but abundant desire and energy!).

By April, I managed to expand my query enough to identify a couple of folks equally keen to spread nourishment and – joy of joys! – a community that exuberantly offered to participate in our foolhardy act of gastronomic kindness. Former pb&j sandwich makers and dear friends Karen Lambert and Clay Madden agreed to join me in making lunch each Wednesday for a team of organic farming trainees and the staff of the Homeless Garden Project (HGP – see www.homelessgardenproject.org). Our little café would use primarily ingredients grown on the HGP’s 2.5-acre organic farm and distributed to HGP’s Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) subscribers. Indeed, we instantly became contestants on Organic Grab Bag Iron Chef, charged with generating a tasty, nutritious meal for 12 – 18 people with the veggies tucked in the walk-in fridge in a large brown grocery sack every Tuesday evening. And we agreed to do this for approximately 28 weeks: the duration of the trainees’ apprenticeship on the farm.

We enthusiastically showed up our first day with a steaming, humongous pot of spicy black bean chili-n-greens with a side dish of cornbread and farm-inspired salad, all of which were devoured quicker than you can say, “Homeless Garden Project.” We learned early on not to begrudge any ingredient that would lend a little fire to the meal, and that fire was best calmed by sugar, preferably delivered in the form of homemade cookies. When enthusiasm threatened to devolve into lackluster meals, we called in the reinforcements. Christine became my faithful sous-chef (OK, at times substitute chef!) and Karen & Clay’s daughter, Kendall, routinely rescued us with batches of lovingly-prepared cookies. The Triple C Double K Kitchen seemed to garner rave reviews. Secretly, though, I think that our panel of organic farming trainee/judges had bonded to us with such fondness that they became compromised critics! Mike – talented sculptor of the spiral garlic & onion bed, gifted carpenter, and wise mentor – offered to start a cookbook called Imagine Flavor based upon some of the dishes we dreamed up. Carmen always had stories of her four year-old’s achievements and antics for us, and we delighted when she shared the news of finding secure housing. Floppy sun hat-bedecked Barbara, skirt billowing in the ever-present coastal winds, frequently sent us off with armfuls of the farm’s brightest flowers.

Habitually slow to emerge from the greenhouse or tiny farm office, Susie would inevitably appear. Sandy gray-brown hair loosely caught in a rubber band, brown weather-kissed skin catching the sun, she’d squint up at us and inquire what delectable feast we had fabricated. Should she not appear, I would wander toward the greenhouse and find her carefully finishing off a seed tray, deep in concentration. As we walked toward the makeshift kitchen/dining area, she would lament that the frenetic pace of the season – which had started without the farm’s co-directors in place – meant that she did not have time to be present to people in the way she deeply wanted to. Seemingly in perpetual motion, I always took it to our credit that Susie actually paused to savor our Wednesday lunches for a good 10 or 15 minutes, which seemed luxurious. Ultimately, this proved to be enough time for us to shape a friendship based squarely in laughter, grousing, and shared admiration at the everyday miracles that abounded at the farm.

Mid-season, she added a few mouse-hunting (OK, rat-hunting) kitties to the farm’s small menagerie. Susie derived no end of pleasure from watching the girls (as she called them) learn the art of pouncing, which they perfected on each other and on assorted inanimate objects . . . She looked after the kittens as if they were her first born, balancing care and attention with the benign neglect that they needed to become true farm kitties. In this way, I glimpsed Susie’s knack for parenting. I was honored to meet one of the prizes of her true art of parenting when her son, Tashi, visited the farm with his girlfriend, Caitlin. Confident and kind, outfitted with Susie’s disarming gentle smile, Tashi warmed up the farm every time he visited. Susie seemed not to take her eyes off of him while he was there. It was clear they shared a remarkable bond, one which any single mother who has had to sacrifice much to hold her family together can speak to.

Among my brightest memories of this grand experiment in mutual nourishment – because Clay, Karen and I soon began to look forward to our Wednesdays at the farm as one might anticipate a great meal – I will never forget the sight of Susie standing in the buffet line at the 20^th Anniversary festivities at the farm. Cloth-covered tables and chairs spread in a pattern out behind her, she beamed at Tashi and laughed her deep, resonant Susie laughed at a shared joke, eyes twinkling. She seemed in her element, surrounded by years of friends and the land –both of which she had taken pains to cultivate – and gazing upon the extraordinary produce of her efforts: the buffet of glorious dishes and the family she so dearly loved. Gazing at Susie and the entire HGP community – some of the two decades of formerly homeless HGP trainees, current and emeritus staff members, donors, friends, and children and pets galore – I thought, “This is what it means to nourish people.”

Susie MacMillan, ripened to 57 years of age, was somehow called back to the Creator in the wee hours of the morning on December 26^th. She died when fire consumed her haven of peace, a trailer tucked on the far edge of a winery approximately 8 miles from town. As I think about her death, the lyrics of a favorite Mary Chapin Carpenter song ease into my mind: “I keep thinking I’ll flame out/ Leave noone with a doubt/ That I was meant to fire like a rocket.” Susie had far too much sparkle to die a conventional death. In this, I take great comfort as I try to honor and propagate her inspired commitment to hard work, to live ‘til it hurts, and to nourish the land and its inhabitants with every particle of one’s being.

Nurturing Silence in the Midst of Deafening Noise

Few of us have occasion to reflect deeply on something as significant to us as the air we breathe – our liberty – and yet the ability to move about freely, to associate with whom we please when we so choose, and to be the author of one’s days are yearned-for luxuries for those who live lives in confinement. Several members of our 10 year-old meditation community have had an intimate experience of connecting with men who lack these luxuries, which has given us a newfound appreciation for the capacity of meditation to liberate one’s mind. Over the past two years, several members of our meditation community have facilitated weekly meditation sessions for a group of men serving criminal sentences within Soledad Correctional Training Facility in central California. During this time, our small community of inmate-meditators has grown tremendously, both in the depth of their commitment to practice and in their sense of membership within a broader community of people who use meditation as a tool for awakening.

These inmate-meditators are housed within facilities that occupy a somewhat legendary place among states in terms of their inhumane conditions. In California, more than 172,000 adults are imprisoned in 32 prisons designed to accommodate 90,000 individuals. Additionally, California’s prisons reflect the further travesties of racial inequity and social injustice. Among the nearly 200,000 inmates, 93% of are male and almost three out of every four prisoners (an incredible 73%) are either black, Hispanic, or some other racial minority. [1]

Despite a corrections budget in 2007 of a staggering $8.75 billion - exponentially more than the GDP of a host of low-income countries – rehabilitative programs within California’s prisons are woefully underfunded. According to the California Catholic Conference, the chaplain ratio for California’s adult prison population is 1 per every 5,385 inmates. The sad status of California’s state budget has been used to legitimate cuts in programs aimed to teach prisoners employment skills, advance their education, and equip them with improved communications’ and basic relational competencies, among other types of rehabilitation. Cuts result in “warehousing” – confining inmates to their cellblocks for longer and longer durations of each week. In response to these diverse factors, volunteer-run programs have literally become the lifeblood for men eager to turn their lives around and re-enter society as more whole, healthy, and sensitive human beings.

More than 2 years ago, our small, faithful, longstanding meditation community spawned a group of approximately 10 men and women who have been sharing Christian meditation with men at Soledad Correctional Training Facility, a maximum security prison approximately an hour’s drive from our home base in Santa Cruz, California. Once weekly, a pair of team members travel to Soledad to share a 50 minute-long session with the men: 25 minutes of silent meditation followed by time for a prepared reflection and group discussion. For the past year, we have additionally incorporated yoga sessions into our visits once each month, using the practice as a form of “body prayer,” another tool for the men’s spiritual toolboxes.

Many of the inmates at Soledad are “lifers.” These guys have already passed the equivalent of two or three decades behind bars, and many contemplate the possibility of serving that many more years before their release. Though hardened by the circumstances of their lives, we have witnessed time and again as these men exercise openheartedness, humility, and trust in our shared practice of meditation. There’s Tao, eyes flickering with intensity as he tells of his life being completely transformed by meditation; stoic, pensive Lee, as deep as a mountain lake, whose questions probe the depths of what it means to be a child of God; Steve, eloquent and self-deprecating, who is an obvious leader and example to others; and Gerald, whose passion for mentoring translates into gentle adjustments to the budding yoga students in the group. These are among the many others who have become our meditation community behind bars.

In 2009, out of a shared desire to deepen and extend the men’s commitment to meditation and to foster the type of mutual support that community invariably provides, our team offered its first day-long retreat. On November 5, 2010, a team of eight of us – four men, four women - offered our third day of retreat for men who have chosen to cultivate meditation as a means of deepening their spiritual journey, achieving a more tranquil mind, and awakening more deeply to God’s presence in the midst of their noisy, chaotic reality.

The theme for the November 5^th retreat day was Meditation & Healing, a natural extension of topics covered in our retreat earlier this year on the theme of Forgiveness. Indeed, forgiveness is a priority concern for many of our regulars; they earnestly discuss its complexity at every opportunity. We have come to understand and try to honor their need to hear again and again that nothing can separate them from God’s love. With the men’s support and participation (a small group serving as their representatives in the retreat planning process), we chose to develop the November retreat around the theme of Healing. In so doing, we invited the men to experience more profoundly the healing qualities of silence, of prayer, of various types of breathing and movement, and of community.

As quiet music played in the prison’s cavernous gymnasium, men trickled in to collect their nametags, admiring a banner crafted by our team that welcomed each retreatant by name. We did our best to establish an atmosphere of silence within our space; indeed, one man remarked:

[I]t was as if I was walking into another dimension. The expressions on peoples’ faces, the aura, and the presence of the hold spirit were so very obvious. Many of us have been incarcerated for over 20 years and do not have the opportunity to spend time with people who treat us, let alone see us, as human beings. Walking in here today felt like walking into a room filled with family.

He went on to acknowledge the significance of the climate silence, safety, and trust we had painstaking tried to nurture. He said that the atmosphere and his interactions with our retreat team members and his peers, “. . . helped me see myself in a better light, gave me more confidence and showed me that there are people who support me in making better choices and living a spiritually productive life.”

Approximately 40 inmates shared in the retreat, including our “regulars” from Thursdays and a number of men who routinely attend Tuesday evening meditation and yoga sessions offered by Buddhist volunteers. Indeed, our group has differentiated itself by welcoming and encouraging a spirit of openness and ecumenism as we have built our small community of faithful meditators. Our November retreat day was graced by the presence of the long-time coordinator of the Buddhist volunteers and an experienced yoga teacher familiar with Hindu rituals. We feel that these subtle but significant partnerships model our belief in cultivating strong, faithful practices that promote awakening and our desire to learn with and from various faith traditions even while maintaining our touchstone of Christian meditation.

The day consisted of several prepared talks on the topic of healing and meditation interspersed with periods of silent meditation. We had allocated time for small- and large- group discussion, yoga, pranayama (healing deep breathing techniques) and journaling. A member of our team who is a certified spiritual director spent one-on-one time with nine inmates in addition to leading a guided meditation. We closed the day with a healing ritual led by one male and one female member of our team that involved blessing the hands of each inmate and volunteer with holy oil provided by the Catholic chaplain. This ceremony closed with a song especially recorded by the lay deacon of Resurrection Catholic Community, one of the parishes from which our volunteers are drawn. Each man also received a small paper bone – a symbol of the “dry bones” referenced in Ezekiel – with a handwritten, personally signed promise of prayer from a fourth grader at a local elementary school

At the day’s end, the retreatants completed feedback forms, which we have drawn upon previously in planning our retreat day agenda. Several men commented that the day felt like “getting out of jail” and being restored in their humanity. One spoke of being moved to tears, particularly, by the children’s thoughtfulness and care. The spiritual director amongst us commented that she was privy to tales of profound transformation that the men attribute to faithfulness in their practice of meditation and participation in our small community.

In closing, we share this excerpt from one of the men’s comments on the day:

In this our third retreat I am again reminded of what a blessing you all are to us. You are the very disciples our Good Lord commended in Matthew 25. I am deeply grateful of your dedication, openness, compassion and willingness to share your time, friendship and wisdom with us struggling souls. I am especially thankful for your sense of acceptance, not just tolerance, of each and every one of us. Words are inadequate to fully express my gratitude. Suffice it to say that I will always carry your love and example with me throughout my life.

The silences we share in these retreats is precious. It gives us a brief glimpse into our true peace and helps sustain us in our struggles. The insightful and wise talks from the presenters give hope and strength to those of us who cry out with the author of Ezekiel 37:11.

May you, too, perhaps be inspired to venture behind bars and have your beliefs, myths, and assumptions held up to the light for potential transformation.

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[1] http://www.cacatholic.org/index.php/prison-facts.html