Seeking Solace in Everyday Ramblings

Okay, I admit this is from this time last year. We have had drizzle and low light the last few days and I love the light here. Not that the layer upon layer of clouds and the silver glare out there isn’t interesting but it is more difficult to capture and less, (how do we say?) mood boosting.

My mood could use a boost.

No one thing I planned this last weekend unfolded exactly as intended. The biggest factor was just absolutely awful traffic. Now as a committed pedestrian and user of public transit you could wonder why that would affect me, but the traffic is so bad here it affects everything.

We have had an incredible growth spurt and no concomitant increase in infrastructure and so when it is bad, it is really really bad.

I was reading a modern interpretation of a Buddhist text at some point during all this and the author suggested that the most overlooked practice these days is patience.

Boy, that would be me, as I go further and further down the technological rabbit hole I notice my ability to be patient is wearing a little thin. I think that also might have something to do with basically working two jobs and feeling that I need to be “on” a lot of the time.

The theme for the church in July is the Sabbath, an interesting concept for Unitarians to explore. We don’t really have any formal community practices around it other than the Sunday service(s) and related activities. My coordinator is encouraging me to teach into the idea of rest, restoration and renewal. I am thinking about all of this this as I move through my day.

While not patiently waiting to cross the street or for the bus that is 40 minutes late to come. It is not in my basic Steppe pony nature to be patient.

One of my students emailed me yesterday a few hours before class to say that he was emotionally torn up about the shootings in Orlando. He is gay. Most of my male students are gay. As a matter a fact I am always bemused when I find out a male student isn’t because I always assume they are. (Which is an interesting thing to ponder in and of itself).

Anyway, because I have anecdotal evidence that everybody I know is distracted and preoccupied with the enormity of the tragedy in Orlando and what that means for us as a people I sort of shifted my plans and taught a grounding practice with lots of gestures of self-compassion.

As the extent of the massacre wasn’t really apparent yesterday morning people hadn’t been able to receive spiritual comfort in church proper and there I was with nine students, most of whom were in need of that.

So it was a very engaging moment for me as a teacher. I am not specifically trained to give that kind of guidance, but I am trained in the texts to some degree that do.

On Sunday night I was an emotional mess. I didn’t feel well, I was upset about the news and the plans that I had arranged my whole day around were mutable and in the end fell through.

So what was I to do? I played with the cats. Diego, I discovered, has unknown strengths as a Ping-Pong ball goalie and he made me laugh. (I also watched this hysterical Jimmy Fallon clip where he plays Beer Pong with Jane Fonda with these gigantic balls.)

Then I did an integrated yoga practice specifically geared towards relieving anxiety that is very effective and spiritual in nature. And then I took a bath.

I taught a modified version of that last night. I hope it helped. The student who had emailed me said he could tell that I was directly addressing his need and thanked me for that.

In the end my impatience and frustration, annoying as it all was, moved me into a space where in finding ways to soothe and comfort myself and having done that then to share it with others.

So in spite of a suicidal mentally ill man with assault weapons and all the incredible suffering his suffering has engendered, we can take solace in the fact that each of us matters and each of us has something valuable to share. Really.

Last updated June 14, 2016