Tag Archives: Open Heart Project

Book Writing Saturday: Retreat

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Instead of my regular Book Writing Saturday this week, I am on retreat. I am practicing with my fellow Open Heart Practitioners, and we are being led by our shared meditation instructor and friend, the brilliant Susan Piver. This is a virtual retreat, in part because we are scattered all across the globe, even as we are connected and practicing together.

So instead of literal book writing today, limited to four hours focused on the book, I’m doing a retreat. And yet, it has everything to do with writing this book, is structured similarly to the in person writing and meditation retreat I did with Susan in April, (and the one I’ll most likely be missing in October). There will be multiple sessions of meditation, dharma talks, and time alone to read, write, contemplate, and rest.

My word for this year was retreat. And as a practice, it’s become one of my favorite things, powerful and restorative. There’s a plan for a full week retreat at the end of Susan’s book, How Not to Be Afraid of Your Own Life: Opening Your Heart to Confidence, Intimacy, and Joy. It begins with a weekend intensive spent alone and away, along with a focused plan for the remaining five days back in your normal weekly routine. I’ve been wanting to do that one, but need to wait for a time when I feel like I can be away from my little family for an entire weekend. With the huge question mark about Dexter’s health and future, I don’t way to be away from him for that long, don’t want to leave Eric alone with that possibility.

Susan has asked those of us participating this weekend to have a book to read,  “one that supports you on your inner journey. Use your judgment and select something that will challenge you to delve within.” I am reading Brene’ Brown’s Daring Greatly. Last night, we answered a writing prompt Susan provided, and as I said earlier, there will be other blocks of time for reflecting, contemplating, and writing–becoming still and quiet, sinking down, delving deep. I suspect there will be some tears, as well as epiphanies. There usually are, when you make space for them, when you show up with an open heart.

One thing I found interesting as I prepared for retreat is that suddenly all the things I thought were so important, that had to be done before this could begin, seemed to dissolve, to no longer matter so much, even though Susan had warned us about the opposite happening, about obstacles arising the closer the retreat got. I felt like I was moving differently, slowed down, stripped down to what was important and essential, relaxing. The only “obstacle” ended up being my struggle with any type of math: I got the time zone conversion wrong, added two hours to my time instead of subtracting, so showed up late, didn’t start the retreat in “real time” with every one else. D’oh!

In my post a few days ago, I shared lyrics from an Alexi Murdoch song:

May the grace of god be with you always in your heart
May you know the truth inside you from the start
May you find the strength to know that you are a part of something beautiful.

Besides writing, contemplating, opening my heart, and meditating, opening up to this awareness is my intention for this retreat–for the grace of god to be with me always in my heart, to know the truth inside me, and to find the strength to know that I am a part of something beautiful.

Book Writing Saturday

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Today was rough. I mean, whose idea was it to write four hours in a row anyway? What could I possibly have to write about for four hours straight? At first, I told myself I didn’t have to at all. I have every reason not to—Dexter might be dying of cancer, and I’m teaching again this semester, and I have that sample essay for my class I should write, and I’m sad about Eric’s parents leaving, I should email my mom and my brother, and I have so much that has to get done this weekend, the garage needs cleared out and my car needs a deep cleaning and there’s laundry and the checkbook needs balanced and I really just want to stay on the couch and watch tv or read a book all day, and it’s so nice outside, and I could really use a nap, and so what if I write this book anyway, who cares.

But my meditation this morning was preceded by reading the Open Heart Project’s latest email, about Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of wisdom. As Susan Piver explained, we connect with the energy of this deity any time we attempt to understand, to connect with truth, to see reality with compassion and clarity, and that “the attempt to understand and to know, is an act of generosity toward ourself and others.” In this light, the writing of this book, the story of how one woman learned to be present, to show up with an open heart, remembered that she was fundamentally good, wise and kind and powerful, seemed more important, more than just my own exercise, about more than just me.

Then even when I start, there’s all sorts of moodling that happens, what Brenda Ueland said imagination needs, “long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering.” I check on the Shambhala Mountain Center website to see how much it would cost to stay and do a weekend retreat. And of course, I have to check my Facebook, email and blog stats before I can begin. Then I try to convince myself that I should make some art before I begin, “prime the pump,” and there’s this picture of Dexter in my head, an art journal page of sorts that would be that one picture of him, the one that’s Eric’s laptop background right now, with the words “May he be well. May he be happy. He is loved. He is precious,” but instead I open my notebook and write a list.

Things that have elicited panic in me this morning:

  • All the work that needs done
  • Eric taking the dogs hiking
  • A mouse in the compost pile
  • A spot of maybe blood on the quilt covering the couch where Dexter sleeps most nights
  • A rattle in Dexter’s breath
  • Sam licking at his butt, again
  • The dark
  • Being alone
  • Thinking about bills and debt and balancing the checkbook
  • How dirty my car is, how the ABS light keeps coming on but there never seems to be time to take it in to the shop and get it checked
  • Not knowing what I’ll write about or if I’ll be able to write for a full four hours
  • The pain in my chest when I was meditating, which is probably cancer (okay, probably not, but my mind goes there)
  • That “something” might happen to Eric

Fear is a liar.

A little after two hours of writing that went surprisingly well, I had to take a break and eat lunch. That was about 10:30 am. You see, when you get up at 4:30 am, you get hungry for lunch at about the time most people are starting to think about breakfast. And the only reason I’m even calling it lunch, rather than “second breakfast” like a good little hobbit, is what I ate wasn’t very breakfast-like. I have been on a kick lately where I eat tons of salad and my favorite sandwich is a Gardenburger with hummus, cucumber, and spinach on round, thin multigrain bread. I’m like that, get stuck on eating the same things for at least six months at a time, without getting bored. In fact, even though I’ve eaten the same thing for lunch at least four times a week for the past four months, it was exactly what I was craving today.

I am bound by routine, happy in repetition. Maybe it’s because I’m an introvert and highly sensitive, easily overwhelmed by external stimuli, preferring quiet and calm. I don’t desire to travel, eat exotic foods, or try new things. I want to walk the same trail every morning, noticing how the seasons change the landscape, cataloging all the different colors and shapes of cloud in the same patch of sky, wearing a deep groove into the earth with my steps, knowing a place “like the back of my hand.”

After lunch, after two episodes of “How I Met Your Mother” (please don’t judge me), after picking up poop and playing fetch with the dogs but stopping after two throws because Dexter seemed to be breathing too hard, I go back to try and write for two more hours. I wonder if I should revise my plan, only write for two hours each Saturday. I mean come on, I got 2000 words written in the first two hours, and the final two will probably be crap anyway, me writing to be able to say I wrote for a full four, but I tell myself to keep writing, even if it is crap.

It feels okay, so I write about what I’ve been doing so far today, what this experience is like. One thing I’ve noticed is that it isn’t so much writing a book as learning to write a book. And yet, I am using the one strategy I’ve always applied: just start writing, keep writing and hope that something happens, pray that something will make sense.

Here’s one thing I wrote that made sense:

And yet, the week before she started this new drug, the new treatment, we were doing a forward bend in yoga, our legs straddled, stretched out as close as we could get to splits and still remain off the floor, heads down, bodies bent in half at the waist, the goal to eventually touch the floor with the top of our head, and I looked over to see her place her head and forearms on the mat, lean forward and raise her legs in the air into a full, unsupported headstand. In the moment just before, I was feeling proud that my head was closer to the floor than it had ever been, and there she was, defying gravity.

3.5 hours
3814 words
Topics written about: change, cancer, loss, death, grief, fear, basic badness, basic goodness, writing, getting another dog, identity, and authenticity.