Seeking Mystery Through the Mundane

Well over 2500 years ago, the Chinese sage Lao-Tzu decided to leave the province where he had lived because he had become disillusioned with the corrupt and decaying government that ruled there. When he arrived at the border, however, a guard asked the wise old man if he would write a book before he left of instructions in the art of living.  To this, Lao-Tzu agreed and he called this book the Tao Te Ching.  When it was completed, Lao-Tzu departed that country never to be seen or heard from again.

As some may know that Tao Te Ching became the sacred text Taoism and one of the most widely translated books of all time.  Its followers strive to live according to the principles of the Tao which they believe governs the order of the Universe.  Like Zen, Tao (or “the Way”), is a spiritual path which must be intimately experienced; not intellectually understood.  One of its main themes is unity, based on YIELDING rather than resisting.  When a seeker commits to the Way her or she sheds their expectations, becoming an empty vessel to be filled to the brim with both the yin and yang, the opposite male and female energies of life – career/home, light/dark, sorrow/joy, intimacy/solitude, aggression/passivity, pain/pleasure and health/illness.

If our souls are so preoccupied with undoing, how does anything ever truly get done? Inexplicably it gets done by pausing…

Pausing…

Reflecting on the way in which our life proceeds day in and day out; what works and what does not work.

As we pause to reflect before doing, we become aware of how the nature of things, even the minutiae of the domestic sphere, contributes to the harmony of the Universe… the Whole. One of Lao-Tzus lessons is “that naming is the origin of all particular things” and that “mystery and manifestation arise from the same source.”

I have, as my battle with cancer rages on, taken this wisdom to heart in all aspects of my life and in particularly, since buying my new home, in how I perceive the work I do in it and for it.

Strange as it may sound to some… working FOR my home (in other words my place of employment) and in and around my home is not drudgery but a labor of love. 

I do not see any of the work I do as “chores” but as tasks.  Yes, the housework has to be done but to me it is NOT work but caring… caring for the walls that now protect me and my shepherds. 

You see, redefining our work can and does cast a powerful spell over the subconscious mind.  After all, caring – for yourself, your loved ones, your work associates, your pets, and your home – is truly what you are doing as you commute to work, labor in the office, sort the laundry, bathe the pets, dust, do the dishes and work in the garden.

Our daily tasks are visible manifestations of the spirit of God in the work place, in the grocery store, at the doctors office,

and in our sacred place called home.  We find them by looking for Mystery in the mundane; seeing the sacred in the ordinary.  To me this is the heart of “The Way”

Lao-Tzu urged seekers to “regard the small as important” and “to make much of the little”  Today join me in trying to do every task you undertake today, no matter how in insignificant it may seem, as part of the path to Wholeness… oneness with the Universe… working through God and it shall become so.

A House is Who you ARE… not who you OUGHT to be

Whether we care to admit it or not, our homes are accurate barometers that reflect, through our surroundings, where we have been, what is going on in our lives, and who we are – today, this moment – although it is not an exact indication of where we may be heading.

For some people this may not be the most reassuring thought I could put forth.  Nevertheless, it is true and I have learned the reality of that truth particularly over this past year but accumulatively over the last 41.  Elsie de Wolfe who wrote “The House in Good Taste” back in 1913 that some said transformed the way America decorated for over half a century, said “You will express yourself in your house whether you want to or not.” 

Hmmm, seems a true euphemism…  I know that when I first married, and for 22 years thereafter, I decorated for my beloved husband who liked the country/hunting look.  So my walls were adorned with photos of pheasants and deer and shot guns etc.  I did, however always manage to throw homemade crocheted items, quilts, lace etc around the rooms to put a little of myself in there.

When he passed away, and I bought a home with two friends while I helped my daughter battle a nasty custody battle, I decorated in a dark Victorian style.  Not so much because I actually liked it but because I was angry that Doug had left me and he hated the Victorian so.  Again, I took the bedroom that was my refuge in that home and layered it in white linens, lace curtains and books and brought light into my darkened world.

When bills over powered my resources, and I moved into a small apartment with my daughter and granddaughter, we took as much of the furniture with us that we could and then I allowed my daughter to choose the dining table and eventually her and her daughter’s bedroom décor etc… colors went from burgundy and white to purples and blues (except in the living room where I also slept).  We were happy there but my self-expression began to totally disappear. So much so, that when my daughter and granddaughter moved into their own place and then I into my own townhome… I kept that apartment style with me and the darkness grew… as did depression and cancer and loneliness.

Then I started to listen to my soul… which had been screaming at me for quite some time and realized that my life was finally my own now and I had to decide what it is “I” truly liked and wanted and where I wanted to go…

I started very slowly because, admittedly, as most of us feel, I did not have enough money to really every show the “real me”.  However, my therapist with my cancer team at the Mayo clinic reminded me that I could no longer afford to put my life or creativity on hold until I had more “cash” or more time.  Truth was, I was never going to have either of those again unless winning the lottery was in my future.  So, I have used some very simples steps to work toward building my new life and decorating my new home (I finally bought my own home): acceptance, blessing my circumstances, and discovering my true personal preferences… not my mother’s, not my husband’s and not my family or friends…  MINE!

The back cover of my first book “Surviving the Shadow Stalker; A Poetic Journey Through Abuse”, showed me in a Victorian setting.  My second book, “Shadows of Love” showed me under a Texas Mountain Laurel wearing cowboy hat, jeans and a western style shirt (my life starting to become my own) and my third book, “Dancing With The Spirits of Shadowplay”, showed me against an Ocotillo fence wearing a cowboy hat.  My current book will have a photo of me actually hiking up the Superstition Mountain, wearing a cowboy hat (the only hats I truly look decent in) and walking away from the fast paced world… I have realized That is ME!  I found her, finally.  A desert rat who does not NEED the things society has been screaming I do need… and so the decorating of my home truly began in earnest.

Oh, I am sure my children and some other people would not like my style, which is following my love of the Apache and Navaho Indian) and sometimes that has made me sad; but my home is warm and charming, cozy, interesting and it is inviting.  I have stopped wanting to live up to the expectations of other’s and have chosen instead to live up to my own which, believe me is difficult enough.

While money certainly would help all of us to express ourselves through our surroundings, I have learned that creating a warm, inviting home that reflects my own personality did not have to begin with hiring an interior decorator or reaching for my check book or credit card (I don’t have a credit card and my checking account is empty). I only had to look at my home with love… love of self, love of the Creator… love of life.

Once a week, I walk around my new home, burn sage, and offer thanks for the walls and roof that safely enclose me and my fur boys. As I have known the pain other woman have also suffered of losing a home to death and debt, I cherish every moment I have in this place and I ask the Creator to bless it and let nothing but peace, love, prosperity and faith enter through its doors.

Home truly is the definition of God.

“Every spirit builds itself a house, and beyond its house a world, and beyond its world a heaven.  Know then that world exists for you” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

During the 19^th century (seems like a long time ago since we entered the 21^st century doesn’t it?), the home was viewed as “heaven on earth”, a hallowed haven in an uncertain world.  When man, woman, or child crossed the threshold of their home, “they were safe, not only from injury”, as John Ruskin wrote, “but also from all terror, doubt, and division”.

Today, I cast a longing and nostalgic glance backward to this era.  The Victorian era seems so calm, gentle, and gracious – the complete opposite of these modern times.  Yet, historically I know that the four decades spanning the Civil War at the turn of the Century were among the most politically, socially, and economically turbulent years in our history… Until now.  Why then, should a period of such profound upheaval come down to us not only as an age of innocence but one of stability and tranquility?

I personally believe (having had older parents and grandparents than most my age), that is in large part due to a legacy of love left to us by those great grandmothers who reigned over their hearths as surely as Victoria did over her empire.  Victorian woman may not have had the vote or the trappings of power (including personal disposable income and independence), but they were the MORAL, SPIRITUAL, AND PHYSICAL CENTER OF THE HOME; responsible for creating a welcome treat of beauty, comfort, and contentment that would protect, nurture, and sustain those they loved.  To achieve this, ordinary middles class women, like me, elevated the pursuit of domestic bliss to an art form, from white linen Sunday dinners to red-checked gingham Independence Day Picnics.  Women approached the domestic arts of cooking, gardening, crafting, decorating and entertaining now as burdens, but as a form of personal expression and a means of persuasion. 

Traditions that celebrated the joys of home and family life acted as the mystical mortar that held bodies and souls together in a tumultuous society that was changing at the speed of light.  Ah yes… progress (but I don’t think it has been all good do you?)

One of my favorite poets, T.S Eliot wrote “home is where we start from.”  Today, over a century after he was born, home is where I and many women are longing to return… at least figuratively if not literally. I have always believed that the time, energy, love, and emotion that I invest in caring for my home, in essence carving out a haven for myself and those who are dear to me, is a sacred endeavor…

Life holds no more guarantees for you or for me than it did for our Victorian forebearers. However, they faced the coming day with full hearts, determined to create a lasting work of art; a happy secure, and beautiful treat of love and laughter.

Living in my new home, I have renewed that endeavor which I lost when I left Pensacola and shortly thereafter lost my beloved Doug.  Oh, I kept trying, for a while, but my heart and soul were not in it.  Finally, I have found my way back and my new home is becoming my sacred refuge once again.

Home truly is the definition of God.

Feeling Complete

“How to be happy when you are miserable.  Plant Japanese poppies with cornflowers and mignonette, and bed out the petunias among the sweet-peas so that they shall scent each other. See the sweet-peas coming up.

Drink very good tea out of a thin Worcester cup of a color between apricot and pink… ~Rumer Godden

It is hard to believe that it has been one year since I moved in to my house… one that I bought after so much struggle and loss totally by myself and have been slowly decorating (ever so slowly) as finances and cancer treatments allow.  I am finally decorating my home totally for myself… not for mother or father, husband or children, but just for me and coming home, not only to the beautiful location I have but to an interior that fills me with so much peace has been a revelation into my own psyche and a complete joy.

Rumer Godden, in her memoirs A House with Four Rooms, stated “It was the small things that helped, taken one by one and savored. Make yourself savor them,” she told herself when life was not tidy.

Well, life is not tidy around here today.  My schedules are colliding, needs are conflicting, my oldest shepherd has a swollen mammary gland and needs to see the vet, nausea from the last infusion is weighing heavy, and my office is strewn with real-life refuse, reflecting outwardly the disarray of my own mind at this moment.

One of the reasons I personally love Rumer Godden’s writing as much as I do is that she weaves the colorful threads of her extraordinary life –domestic, creative, and spiritual—with such ease.  The seams that hold her life together do no pull or gape the way mine do more often than I care to admit.  She began her career in 1936 and in a sixty year period wrote 57 books.  She wrote novels for both children and adults, non-fiction, short story collections and, of course my favorite – poetry. Most of her novels, which are mystical, celebrate the beauty of real life; the magic, the mystery and the mundane.  The New York Times hailed her as a writer who “belongs in that small exclusive club of women, which includes Isak Dinesen and Beryl Markham, who could do pretty much anything they set their minds to; hunting tigers, alluring men, throwing elegant dinner parties, and winning literary fame.”  Of all of her books, however, it is her memoirs that I read over and over again. I am captivated by how she lived, nurtured a family and created many homes out of shells of houses all over the world while writing almost continuously (and people think I don’t sleep?)  She is such a glorious story teller, but no story is as riveting as real life.

The soul craft of creating and sustaining safe havens set apart from the world, in which to seek and savor small authentic joys, is a recurring theme in Rumer’s work.  Her secret in living such an authentic life seems, to me, to have been in dwelling, no matter where she actually kept house in the heart of Spirit…

There is an Indian proverb that says that everyone is a house with four rooms; a physical room, a mental room, an emotional room, and a spiritual room.  Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time, but unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person…

My new life (however long God will allow it to be) in my new home, in the part of the country I love, is showing me how beautiful EVERY room is…and I let the mountain’s breeze blow through them all each day as the sun comes shining through every window.

I have not planted sweet-peas or Japanese poppies, but I have planted a Prickly Pear Tree, a Fire Stick, a Candle Stick and next weekend will be adding colorful bougainvillea to gaze at during the day as I play with my two shepherds.

As I sit here in my office, sipping a cup of French Roast Coffee with a touch of cream and cinnamon out of my favorite coffee cup, it’s nice, for the first time in my life, to feel like I am complete; I am at peace.