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I’ve been practicing my meditation each morning, and after meditation I can truly say that I see clearer, hear better, and feel more relaxed. I’ve been using an app – yes an app for meditation – called the Insight Timer.

A friend walked by the other day and out of the blue, was admonishing me for wanting to build a house – “You can’t do this! You better not do that!” – and I smiled at him. He then said, “Don’t give me that relaxed attitude.” But there I was, relaxed.

I have an affirmation that I wrote out the other day as part of a larger piece I was contemplating. I thought of it this morning as I sat in the adirondack chair in the backyard, listening to the bluebirds and chickadees chirping and watching the pink-eyed possum climb over the fence and disappear behind the giant elephant ears and then enter the backyard of my neighbor.

I fly with no fear (I am safe)
I fly looking all around (I am open)
I fly with my ancestors (I am protected)

My friend had rattled me the other day because the truth is my income has diminished again and yet I feel richer than a queen. Is building my own house a wise move in this economy, in my economy, this new, new economy? And I didn’t have a ready answer, so fear crept in and snuggled up close, almost suffocating me.

Yet, I must live somewhere and not just anywhere, and though we are cozy in the Red House, in our weighing station, and we are not in a hurry to board the mother ship to the next destination, I think about things like investing, like making smart financial moves that will help me and my son and provide for our future. And the saboteur of investments past says, “Try as you might, you cannot control the outcome of even a wise investment.”

And so I keep trying to think my way into future and keep falling back on letting go of such notions, such nonsense, such ego trying to run my life and invade my present peace of mind.

The meditation helps me let go and let god.

Not what these words sounds like, it’s not “him” god that my bible carrying friends refer to, it’s not the god of my father, it’s the let go and let tomorrow live there god, because I live now. Here in this backyard where a bluebird is hopping along the clothesline, the sky is grey and the air heavy with portents of rain and I am sitting here this morning, enjoying my coffee.

I got my lab results and for the first time in a year my thyroid levels have normalized. I can’t point to one thing that made that happened, but I can point to everything.

I went through the last many hours in a seminar on unlearning racism, the end of which has left me emotionally depleted.

Along the way, several new people stepped into my world, and each of them was bearing a gift.

Tonight, it’s time to lay my weary head down and say thanks.

Without a dog attached to my hip, I am not motivated to go out first thing for my daily constitutional and so today after being in front of the computer for much too long a period, I got myself up and went for a walk. And of course, the path is different because I’m on this side of the bayou, which still has me sort of turned around in the car. And my gateway to the park is across the Esplanade Bridge and onto the entrance on LeLong.

As much as I miss the intimacy of my walks along City Park Drive because the path followed the lagoon under huge hundred year old oaks and there was lots of fowl and feathers for my daily meditation, the Big Lake and the new jogging path hold their own beauty. I veered off the Big Lake path and onto the new running path, which is I believe almost a mile around. I came across an outdoor exercise pavilion which is beyond cool.

On the way back around the path, I encountered two women who were in the midst of a walky talky and one said: “It’s about business. See, there’s my business. There’s your business. And there’s God’s business. I’ve been spending too much time worrying about God’s business.”

And there you have it – my constitutional complete, I returned home.

I have this memory, which I have recounted here, of living in a shotgun house during periods of transition, which is where I find myself again. Only, this time is different; I’m much more aware of the fact that I’m in transition, that right now all things are possible, and that this shotgun holds moments of unbridled joy that have yet to happen.

So it is that I have positioned a chair just so in my yard, and I have seated myself there the past two days for a snack, or a sip of tea, and I have listened to the birds that congregate in the large tree, and I’ve felt the warmth of spring arriving, and I’ve been there, in my backyard, in this shotgun, which is housing my transition.

The Zen Master Teacher said that fear is a good thing, it helps us, but fear is a child and has no discernment so that we need be mindful of when fear has no necessity. Oh, I’ve been here before, it’s not that scary, this is okay, this is what happens here.

And so it is that I am in this shotgun healing from a long stretch of discovery and bending and reshaping that has taken place within me. And instead of feeling the need to flee this place to get to where I’m going (wherever that is), this time I realize that this is a weighing station in my life and while I sit here the places I might could go are endless, boundless, outside of even my own imaginings.

I’ve been here before, but I was restless to get to the next place and didn’t hear the birds or see the butterflies. Now I do.

I liken the multiple losses I have experienced in the past year or so to a death, which would make the last year of posts almost like reciting Kaddish for me. Kaddish is the prayer that Jews say for their close loved ones for eleven months after they pass and then it becomes a one year anniversary event.

This morning, before dawn, I met with the Zen master teacher for Dokusan* at MidCity Zen and I had my questions ready. One question was given to me by Jim, who owns Meaux Bar, and it was this: “Why have I been chosen to this personal invitation; what qualities do you see in me that I have not acknowledged in myself?”

I didn’t ask this question because like all things in life, you can plan on what you are going to do, but you really don’t know what you will do until the matter is at hand. So on my knees in a dimly lit alcove on a black cushion tucked quietly away in a shotgun in MidCity, I met the master teacher and I bowed.

What do you practice with these days?

I didn’t understand the question, which is apropos for me and life’s events. We discussed how I had come to Zen (read: crisis).

Crises brings us to the threshold and fear holds us in its grip.

Is there passion in Zen?

Zen is living. When you cross the threshold, the walls go away, and joy is everywhere.

I closed my eyes and the scene changed – the dimly lit background and shadowy figure reversed to a lit figure in a dimly lit background. And then I bowed and took my leave.

Joseph Campbell says that we should celebrate all thresholds with ceremony. This was mine. I liken the last month as being truly alive. I have crossed to the other side from death, and as the master said to me, there is no way back.

*Dokusan offers the opportunity to present the state of your practice to the teacher for comment and instruction. It is a chance to ask questions, discuss difficulties, and most basically, reveal who you are at that very moment.

I was at Tin’s parent/teacher meeting today and hearing about his leadership qualities, his presence amongst the other children, his pride in a doing a good job, his developing to big boy duties, and what I heard the loudest was when they said Tin has the “IT” quality. This is something I have seen in him from the get go. He uses all faculties, charm, wit, intelligence, and talent to move everyone he comes in contact with and most notice.

Like Sarah from the Bible, I had to wait till I was ancient to have my first child, and just like Isaac – Sarah’s son, who had the IT factor and went on to father the nation of Israel – my son has qualities older than both of us and you need only look in his eyes to see that he’s been here before and is leading us into the future.

Soulful, charming, beautiful and warm – his eyes tell tales that have not even happened yet.

Wild Geese

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
call to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”

Mary Oliver

Up with the chickens this morning, which means I got to bed on time last night with no distractions. I woke, meditated, and read the Sunday New York Times from a few weeks ago while I drank my one and only cup of decaf. It was dark outside. I then read a few pages out of The Power of Now. This stayed with me:

To the ego, the present moment hardly exists. Only past and future are considered important. This total reversal of the truth accounts for the fact that in the ego mode the mind is so dysfunctional. It is always concerned with keeping the past alive, because without it —–who are you? It constantly projects itself into the future to ensure its continued survival and to seek some kind of release or fulfilment there. It says: “One day when this, that, or other happens, I am going to be okay, happy, at peace.”

Even when the ego seems to be concerned with the present, it is not the present that it sees: It misperceives it completely because it looks at it through the eyes of the past. Or it reduces the present to a means to an end, an end that always lies in the mind-projected future. Observe your mind and you’ll see that this is how it works.

The present moment holds the key to liberation. But you cannot find the present moment as long as you are your mind.

Since Tin first learned how to speak, he has called some things the “wup” – and generally this is when we are on the I-10 headed to Metairie. I’ve come to define wup as the guardrails, the sound wall barriers, and the big ass pump that is right before the cemetery, installed post-2005 Federal Flood.

Day before yesterday, we passed the pump and he pointed and said, “The wup.”

The wup is mysterious but lives on that freeway and perhaps it is that mega pump installed here to save our city. Perhaps the wup means nothing more than “that thing that has no name” – it’s probably best not to decode everything a four year old says or does such as these mysteries:

Tin walks into the Botanica on Broad with me. I’m there to get candles, one for positive energy, one to open my road ahead. He picks up a candle and starts carrying it through the store. It’s the Angel of Death. Did you have to pick that one up, I think to myself. Then I try in a flash to see if there is any meaning to his random choice and decide to leave it alone. It’s random, much in the same way the drive-by anger or fear of others will rub up against you in your daily life. Don’t stop and give it meaning. Let it go.

Tin says to me that his daddy came to pick him up to take him home. Again, I have to say do not give this meaning other than a statement, possibly overheard from one of his friends.

Tin says I don’t want to kiss you, I don’t want to hug you. Go away. Here I sing to him, “Why do I always have to steal my kisses from you?”

I was driving to pick up Tin and passed the church on Canal and Jeff Davis that always has the best teasers on their marquee – today it was DJesus Unchained.

Earlier I had gotten out of the shower and taken a look at my shower curtain – the one with the goldfish jumping out of the water. I purchased it as I had had that dream of Tin and I watching a fish jumping up in the air – which meant unbridled joy.

The image of the fish on the shower curtain had caught my eye because I had just seen this online:

When I got to school, I saw my friend in the playground and went to get Tin (who I must say looks like he has grown and aged right before my very eyes – that four year old marker – sheesh). But when Tin and I walked back out of the school, everyone was in the house that has had the solar container out front for months now. We went in too and learned all about a new solar switch that reduces energy and even the need for dozens of solar panels – it is revolutionary – and just hearing about it took my breath away – I kept nodding and thinking, a ha, here it is.

It is no loss on me that this is all happening on this corridor of Soraparu where Waldorf is, where the Raphael Academy is, and now where an invention that is being deployed on army bases and third world countries is happening as I type. These leaps in thinking, in deed, in action, are becoming more common place. The doors are opening.

I had lunch with a friend today at Toups Meatery on Carrolton, and we spoke about the connections that occur when you just sit back and open yourself up to the universe. It’s a wonder.

I came home and was invited to Dokusan at the Zen Center. Yes, an invitation to meet a master, as a student, and further my practice.

Close your eyes, now imagine me leaping out of the bayou and into the air. That’s how I feel inside. DRachel Unchained. DJesus!

“- Old man, how is it that you hear these things?
– Young man, how is it that you do not?”