A Horse With No Name

Every man is divinity in disguise.
It is God playing the fool.

~Emerson

“I See You” by MHopkins © 2014

Now I’ve been up close and personal with some animals—dogs, cats, monkeys, raccoons, bears, even some endangered species like the lynx and bobcat that visit my land—but never a horse...in the middle of the road...on a dark and snowy night.

I suppose stranger things have happened.

‘Twas the night before the night before Christmas, and I was on my way home from a holiday musical extravaganza sponsored by the Unity Church of Boulder.

With a new moon rising and snow clouds hanging low in the sky, visibility was limited as I wound my way up the familiar stretch of Boulder Canyon toward my home. Sticking close to the canyon wall, I drove through the snow, all the while contemplating the meaning of “Unity.” What does it really mean—this concept of oneness?

Suddenly, out of nowhere, I came upon a horse running wildly back-and-forth across the narrow, two-lane road, sliding as she maneuvered uphill in the snow. The unexpected sight of her scared me half to death; she was scared, too. So I stopped and turned on my hazard lights, not sure what to do next, but this much I knew: Boulder Canyon is no place for a horse, especially at night when it’s snowing.

For a brief moment I watched her and, she, looking over her shoulder, watched me. And then I did the only thing I could think of to do: I rolled down my window and talked to her.

“Don’t be scared . . . I’m not going to hurt you,” I said softly. “Please, you have to get out of the road before you cause an accident.”

She stopped running, eyeing me suspiciously.

“Please, come here . . . you have to get out of the road,” I pleaded.

Slowly, she turned and walked toward me.

“Come here, girl, I’m not going to hurt you. I want to help you,” I continued, coaxing her with promises of safety while holding out my hand to her through the open window.

She approached my car, towering high above it, and lowered her head to meet me at eye level. As I reached out to touch the side of her face I saw something in her eyes that moved me. In that moment, I caught a glimpse of her spirit and I understood with acute awareness what I had only intellectualized until then—that the same life force that moved through her flowed through me. The same vital energy that animated her form, gave life to mine, albeit in different packages.

It was as if time stood still for me and that horse on the canyon. I whispered, “I see you.”

Just then a car came barreling around the corner and slammed on the brakes. My new friend freaked out and started running around my car. She had no bridle or halter to grab, so there was little I could do but work out a plan with the man in the car behind me to get the horse out of the road. We agreed—he would stay with the horse and warn oncoming cars with flashing lights, and I would drive the remaining three miles up the canyon and get the local police to help us.

The rest of the story played out like a scene from The Andy Griffith Show. I ran into the police station and exclaimed with excitement: “There’s a horse in the middle of the canyon.” To which the officer replied, “Yeah, what does the horse look like?”  

Four legs a tail and a gorgeous mane?  So I described the horse and told them of the man I had left behind on the canyon waiting for help, and I discovered that the officers knew the horse—or at least they knew the horse’s guardian—and they followed me out to remedy the situation. The horse was rescued. Crisis averted. It was surreal.

Later, as I pulled into my driveway, I could not shake the intensity of my experience with that horse—the moment of connection with her living spirit. What a precious gift to see and truly understand the essence of this spiritual principle, which reminds us that we are all unique expressions of the same Creative Source, interconnected with everyone and everything else. Call that Source whatever you like—God, Allah, Great Spirit, Creator, the “Big C”—it matters not, because there is only One from which all things flow.

You are at once a beating heart

and a single heartbeat in the body called humanity.

~Dr. Wayne Dyer

Oneness is a concept emphasized by many, and has been, perhaps, one of the toughest ideas for me to wrap my mind around. It is simple enough in theory to say that we’re all one, but when I see my neighbor in his yard shoveling snow and I’m standing across the street in my own yard—physically separate from him—it’s hard to make the connection. It is especially challenging for me to find the common thread when I look at the most vile criminal offenders—rapists, murderers and child molesters—for it is here that I am most keen to distinguish myself in every conceivable way. It’s even more difficult to conceptualize my oneness with the creek flowing through my back yard or the horse in the middle of the canyon, particularly when I consider the differences in our physical constitutions.

To grasp this concept requires that we open our minds and see beyond our physical limitations. Analogies help. For instance, if I pour wine from a bottle into your glass, what do you have? A glass of wine—the same wine that’s still in the bottle, only now a portion of it has been transferred to another container. The same is true of me, the horse and the vital energy that flows through us, bringing our “containers” to life. True, our containers are quite different and come with unique bells and whistles—in that way, we’re definitely not the same—but we come from One, which makes us all related in a wonderfully abstract way.

Spiritual teachers and mystics across time have urged us to consider that what we do to one we do to all; that we cannot hurt another without also, in some way, hurting ourselves. And while many of us may find it easy to extend that thought pattern and courtesy to a handful of people we're close to (our immediate family and loved ones) how often do we reach out to help strangers or animals or the environment in the spirit of unity and oneness?

And so this was my Gift of the Magi—wisdom and recognition shared between a girl and a horse on a dark canyon road, and now I pass it on to you.

As we begin a new year, may you connect with the peace that comes with understanding your connection to the One.

Today is the Day!

He said, 

“There are only two days in the year 

that nothing can be done. 

One is called yesterday 

and the other is called tomorrow, 

so today is the right day 

to love, believe, do and mostly live.

~Dalai Lama

He saw me before I noticed him.  By then it was too late.  Shocking red and blue lights swirled in the dark of night as I steered my car to the side of the road.

The officer approached. “Good evening, ma’am.  Do you know the speed limit here in this part the canyon?” He quizzed.

“45?” I said.

“Yes.  And do you know how fast you were going?”  He asked.

“45?” I said.  

[Officer laughs.]  “Well, now I wouldn’t be standing here if you were going the speed limit, would I? Let me help you out. When I first saw you, you were doing 57… and then you sped up! [More laughter.]  Where are you off to in such a hurry?"  

I think I was more surprised than he; still, I had no real excuse.  I was tired.  It was late.  I had worked all day and was coming home from a board meeting at Children’s Hospital.  My husband and wonderful canine companion waited for me at home. But what was the hurry? What was so important that I would go 20 miles over the speed limit without any awareness of how fast I was driving?  For that matter, I didn’t even remember the last 7 miles or so. Apparently I had navigated the familiar curves of the dark canyon just fine, but I couldn’t will myself to remember. Had I been in a trance?  I pondered this while the officer checked my license, registration and insurance.

He lectured me on the dangers of going too fast in the canyon—wildlife and fatal accidents and such—and he made me promise to “slow it down,” which I did. Then he let me go with a warning.  

The rest of the way home I minded the limit, conscious of my surroundings and the beautiful starry-night sky.  I turned off the radio.  I thought about the way we tend to rush from one thing to the next, never truly enjoying the present moment, the silence and beauty, because we’re focused on some future event, like what we’re going to do when we get home, or we’re thinking about something that already happened, a phone call or conversation.  We're zoned out, missing the strange and wonderful once-in-a-lifetime moments before us;  moments that could be filled with awe and gratitude but which, once spent, we can never get back. 

I’m reminded of this as we move into the holiday season, where the tendency is to spend our time in a planning state: checking things off our to-do list and watching the days on the calendar bring us closer to “the day.”  When you find yourself in this state, STOP!  And remember:  TODAY IS THE DAY… To make it happen… To give up who you’ve been for who you can become… To make your dreams come true. . . to LIVE!  

Today is the day.  Be glad and rejoice!

In the Meantime

Here is a test

to find if your mission on Earth is finished:

if you’re alive, it isn’t.

~Richard Bach, Illusions

Statistics are out:  “10 out of 10 people will die!”  So said the random card I found on the ground by my gas pump.  Like a splash of cold water to the face, it lifted me right out of my head where I had been stuck worrying about something that I had little control over.  It’s easy to ignore the inevitable when we’re healthy and young and living our dreams, or just caught up in the mechanics of life. But we all have an appointment with death sooner or later, which begs the question:  What happens when we die?  

I am drawn to this issue—life after life—because I can’t wrap my head around the idea that when we die we are finished.  Sure, our bodies return to the earth, entombed or scattered as ashes as we’re reminded of the universal law that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it simply changes form.  Our loved ones will gather around our caskets and mourn our passing, comforting each other with comments like, “She looks so peaceful,” or “They sure did a good job with him,” staring at the body as if we were in there somewhere.  Yet if ever there’s proof that we’re more than our bodies, it’s in these moments.

When my grandfather passed a few years ago, I had the honor of being with him in his final days.  He was concerned for my grandmother, and asked that we take good care of her, but otherwise, he was ready to go.  He wasn’t afraid.  And as he moved in and out of consciousness, through labored breath, he shared his final thoughts, “We are born with a framework for society . . . or so we think . . . but it’s an illusion . . . there’s the body and the soul . . . but only the soul lives forever.”  It was my greatest spiritual experience, witnessing the soul of a man leave his body in the wake of his words. 

For the better part of a year, I had intense dreams of my grandfather. Not the man who suffered congestive heart failure and passed in his hospice bed, but the vibrant young man he had been when I was a little girl.  At first I would wake up startled when he appeared, and I could never return to my dream.  But in time, I willed myself to talk to him and he revealed some fascinating truths about his life in spirit form.  I’ve often wondered what informed those dreams.

In his book Life After Death:  The Burden of Proof, Deepak Chopra points to talking to the dead and near death experiences (NDEs) as two of six lines of evidence that the soul is real and eternal.  He studied many cases of NDEs, where the person had been pronounced dead and was brought back to life, and he interviewed those patients about their experience.  Intriguing to me was the discovery that across the board, people experienced what they believed.  Christians reported seeing angels and white light and Jesus.  Muslims reported meeting Allah and scenes of Islam.  Those who believed that they had wronged others, or that they had been “bad,” reported an experience of torture and hell.  Those who believed in nothing reported an experience of nothingness.  And so on, weaving the thread between life and death.

  

I know a guy I like to refer to as a “Militant Agnostic.”  “I don’t know and you don’t either” is his motto.  I never understood this thinking.  Sure, evidence based science has its place, but not in the realm of faith.  If there exists even a possibility that there is an afterlife, why not reach for that hope? Why not believe? What do we lose by being open?  Maybe, just maybe, we would be more peaceful and relaxed and far kinder to every living person and thing around us.  Perhaps we would not fear death as we do.

It’s your life.  What will you do in the meantime?

It's All the Rage

Anybody can become angry—that is easy,

but to be angry with the right person

and to the right degree

and at the right time

and for the right purpose,

and in the right way—

that is not within everybody’s power

and is not easy.

~ Aristotle

Laughing Men, Vancouver, B.C.

Picture it:  You’re stopped at a red light waiting for it to turn.  Green. You barely have time to lift your foot from the brake when the car behind you starts blaring the horn.  Maybe she’s trying to tell me something, you think.  Is something wrong with my car?  Stunned, you haven’t moved through the light yet when the driver in the car behind you approaches.  You roll down the window.  She starts screaming at you then punches you in the face.  In self-defense, you cover your face with your hands, but then she grabs your wrist and bites off your middle finger—at the knuckle, through the bone—before fleeing the scene.

Sounds crazy but it’s a true story that happened in my aunt’s Northern Virginia neighborhood.  Aside from the obvious questions, like what allows a person to bite through skin and bone and blood vessels to remove part of a finger?  And once bitten, what do you do with it?  Spit it out?  Throw it in the owner’s car?  Leave it in the street?  I have to ask:  Why are we so angry?

You’re better than that.

You’re not an angry person, not the fighting kind.  You’re a volunteer, your son’s baseball coach, a Sunday school teacher at church.  Just last month, you attended a community fundraising event and donated money to support a local homeless shelter.

And yet you have these moments where anger gets the better of you—where ugliness turns you inside out and the worst parts of your nature are revealed; moments when your frustration builds to a fury and explodes in ridiculous ways as you burn those around you with your annoyance. 

Like yesterday when you got stuck in the wrong line at Whole Foods.  You stopped on your way from work, in a hurry to get home and make dinner.  You only needed three things, which should have taken five minutes from door to door.  Instead, the woman from Minnesota in front of you decides to write a check for her groceries.  Slowly. And of course, the cashier couldn’t figure out how to enter an out of state check into the system, which led to multiple cries for help on the P.A. system that went unanswered, followed by more failed attempts to process the check.  You’re ashamed to admit it, but you were huffing and puffing and on the verge of throwing your money at the cashier and storming out with your groceries.

Then, as you’re headed home, there’s a guy driving slow in the pass lane, blocking the free flow of traffic.  As you try to pass him on the right, you see that he’s talking on his cell phone and completely oblivious to the fact that there are other people on the road.  You make a point to give him your best stink eye with your face just inches from your window, and nearly rear-end the car in front of you because you’re so blinded by your rage.  Now you’re laying on your horn, screaming some shameful obscenity that your offender can’t even hear and, which, in any other moment you wouldn’t dare speak.  What's wrong with you?  One look in the mirror and you would see the reflection of a crazy person.

The scary thing is—you’re not alone.  There are a lot of “you” out there.

Take a look around.  We’re all losing it over something or another.  Our anger boils over in our politics and religions, in our music and social networking, in our schools and sporting events, in our jobs.  We rage over inconveniences.  We shake our fists with righteous indignation when others don’t do what we want.  Why? 

Have we become a culture so entitled to comfort and ease that we steamroll anyone or anything that gets in our way?  Are we simply scared of not getting what we want, afraid that we can’t handle it if things don’t go our way?  Perhaps we’re so accustomed to expressing our feelings and anger that we can’t keep it in check anymore.  Or maybe we’re suffering from a spiritual starvation that demands to be fed yet we don’t even realize what we’re hungry for? 

Its not an easy question to answer.  For starters, there just aren’t any clear-cut ways to judge how pissed off people really are, and why.  Perhaps we can ponder this the next time we’re recovering from a meltdown.  I dare you.  It’s all the rage. 

Stressing the Vine

When we long for life without difficulties,

remind us that oaks grow strong in contrary winds

and diamonds are made under pressure. 
― Peter Marshall

People speak of wanting an easy life.  But how many of us really want it ‘easy’?  If our desire was met and we faced only comfort and ease, wouldn’t we soon become bored?  Where’s the fun in life without challenge?  Where’s the flavor without spice?  Where’s the growth without pruning?  Would we not seek to create our own chaos if chaos didn’t exist, particularly where situations have become stale or too readily assured?  I dare say that we would.

Yet we hear so much about how unhealthy chronic stress is for our bodies.  We need only turn on the news or read a health post on the Internet to discover all of the reasons why we should rid our lives of this toxin.  Constantly faced with demands, frustrations, hassles and deadlines, it seems impossible to break free.  But do we really want to break free?  Might this be where the magic happens?

Consider the life of a wine grape.  While it’s true that many agricultural endeavors require nutrient rich soil to thrive, winemakers worldwide will tell you that when it comes to growing grapes for wine, fertile soil is not always the best.  In fact, most California vineyards are planted in soil that would choke the life out of other crops.  Growers look for nutrient poor or even dry soil that drains well because it forces the vines to extend their roots far into the dirt to find sustenance—stressing the vine—and causing them to direct their energy and sugar into grape clusters instead of leaves, which produces small grape berries.  A handful of tiny grapes will be almost all skin and very little juice, which translates into a rich, concentrated color and flavor in the wine.  For these growers and vintners, the stressed grape is the best grape and produces the superior vintage.

Might we also benefit from a bit of stress on the vine?  In our periods of stress we are called to break out of our complacency, extend ourselves beyond the comfort zone, and direct our energy to find ways to thrive even under the most pressure-filled conditions.  We are given an opportunity to turn our negative stressors into positive ones that help us to grow, remain vital and alive.  We learn to think positive and remain hopeful for better days. We discover how strong and capable we are.  And if we stretch, we learn that humor and laughter are the catalysts that lift us out of our oppression and transform us into the most colorful and delicious versions of ourselves, like the wine grape.

So perhaps what we really mean is that we want an ‘easier’ life, every now and then; a break from worrying that a certain wolf may huff and puff and blow our house down.  If an easier life is what you desire then I suggest you can have it, simply by making up your mind to not dwell on factors that you cannot change and, instead, look for ways to set a positive process in motion; and trust that there is a good reason for this.

Still, I Fall

Black is the color

of my true love’s hair

His face is like

A rose so fair

He’s got the sweetest face

And the strongest hands

I love the ground

Whereon he stands…

~ Black is the Color

Irish Folk Song (modified for “him”)

Ah, Amore!  The agony.  The joy!  The blush of new love, the rush of romance; thinking of your beloved each moment of the day, imagining his hands touching every part of your body; anxiously awaiting the next conversation, the next kiss.  Falling in love is the easy part—any fool can do it—but staying in love, I think, calls us to fall in love again and again over the lifetime of our togetherness.   

I want to remember it all—each moment of awareness, each insight into his depth, each time my heart breaks open, just a bit wider, softened by the light of what’s real and true and vulnerable between us.  Like these five moments that pulled me in a little deeper, reminding me why I fell for my sweetheart; f-a-l-l-i-n-g in love all over again.

1. It’s both.  When he met my Grandmother I wasn’t quite sure what to expect.  But there he sat, knee-to-knee with the matriarch of our family, as she fired off question after question in her gentle, southern way.  “What do you do for a living?” “How long have you two been courting?” “Who are your people and will we like them?”  He answered each question with patience and care, and when she asked, “Is this a real thing or a play thing?”  He responded, “It’s both!”  Yes, he was serious about our relationship, he told her, but we also played and had a lot of fun together too.  Hearing this, my 80-something Grandmother took his hands in hers and just laughed and laughed. I. Fell. Madly. Deeply.

2.  Bald for a cause.  A participant with St. Baldrick’s Foundation, my sweetheart has been shaving his head to raise money for child cancer research for more than seven years.  This year he will be anointed a Knight of the Bald Table for his many years of service.  I love his philanthropic nature. I’ve known this about him since we first met while volunteering at Children’s Hospital.  But last spring as I watched him on stage getting his head shaved before a cheering crowd of friends and supporters, he glowed.  In that moment I understood what my friend Jenna meant when she described another as being made of “wind and light.”  He was.  It made me love him more.

3.  Minding the mundane.  We had big snow that day so I worked from home.  But under pressure of a big deadline at work, he ventured down the canyon in the dark of morning where he stayed all day.  Yet, after a tiring day at work, traveling in hazardous conditions, he stopped at the market for groceries and picked up dinner before heading back home.  As he helped me unpack the shopping bags, stocking our fridge with fresh organic produce, my heart melted in adoration for the Man who takes such good care of me. They say, in love, we each feel like we're the lucky one. I knew that I was. He minds the mundane with a patient and glad heart. I will never take that for granted. 

4.  Spooning the Furry.  I heard him in the bedroom one Saturday morning, speaking in low tones.  I thought he might be on the phone.  I had been in the kitchen cleaning up after breakfast and as I started towards the bedroom I saw them together, lying on the floor spooning.  “You’re such a good doggie,” he said, stroking the Furry’s head; “We love you so much.”  The dog was in bliss! I stood there watching them, bathed in sunlight from the open window, just hanging out together, until he saw me in the doorway and gave me a smile. I thought my heart would break.

5.  The brightest light.  For our first married Christmas together, I found a fabulous tree.  I had been busy that day decorating and making the house more festive when he took off for town.  He returned a while later with excitement.  “Look what I found,” he said, unpacking his shopping bags and lining the counter with two-dozen soft white LED candles.  Then he carefully placed one in each window of the house, even the super high windows close to the top of the cathedral ceiling in the living room that required a ladder to reach.  As I watched him move about with enthusiasm, to me, he was the brightest light of all.  I could not have loved him more.  Or could I?

Day by day, in a thousand ways, still, I fall…

Stepping Into the Future

The future is something which everyone reaches

at the rate of sixty minutes an hour,

whatever he does,

whoever he is.

~C.S. Lewis

Mooghaun Hillfort - Dromoland, Ireland
(MHopkins 2013)

People speak of “putting the past behind us”.  But where else can the past be put?  It has only one place it belongs and, once there, can only be a reference point for the future.  Yet we make it a part of our present by clinging so tightly to our experience.  We go round and round in our heads, remembering some conversation, slight or injustice, real or imagined, and we stay stuck in that feedback loop reliving it again and again, often exaggerated and out of context because now we’re focused on some isolated aspect of our otherwise fading memory, giving it life, meaning and a whole host of expressions that perhaps never were.   Imagine what we miss while running around the same tired circles!

Can you see it?  How clinging to an aspect of our past might prevent us from seizing something wonderful that is available to us in the here and now?  Consider this: 

A new form of clinical psychology known as acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) stems from the understanding that a great deal of our psychological pain comes not so much from the experience itself, but from the words we use over and over to describe our experience.  Instead of getting stuck in our heads and avoiding any real forward movement, ACT encourages acceptance of the situation, conscious choice of direction and action, bringing more meaning and psychological flexibility into our lives in the process.

In his book Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life, author and ACT co-founder, Steven Hayes, suggests that we can actually repeat a troubling word or concept over and over until it loses meaning and power in our lives.  Take the word grass, for instance.  Hayes recommends repeating the word over and over for 49 seconds.  Grass, grass, grass, grass, grass, grass…  The theory is that at some point, your mind will stop associating ‘grass’ with the luscious green stuff and observe it as a meaningless noise.  This disconnect between words and reality will allow us to drop those mind movies that have been tormenting us.  Why not give it a go,  beginning with ‘grass’ or some other word of your choosing and then moving on to the more emotionally charged descriptors that unnerve you, like ‘rejection’ or ‘failure’ or ‘broke,’ or any other parade of horrible that you can conjure.  The idea is to rub out the sting these words carry so that you can deal with life free from the fear created by your internal dialogue from the past.  Sound feasible? 

Diagnosis, they say, is half the cure.  But we’re best careful with how we use our diagnosis lest it becomes the story we tell about our life, the reason for why we can’t have or be or do what we want.  For just as understanding the root of our problem paves the way for setting it right, so too can it provide a ready excuse for not living our best life.

Is there something that you’re ready to put down, let go of, and leave behind?  Are you ready to reach for something new and make it real in your life?  As you move into a great new year, now is a perfectly fine opportunity to trade what torments for something more solid and real so that it becomes part of your future.

Wishing you all the best in 2014!