Diana Rankin

Moral Dilemma: An Irish Story

Diana Rankin — Tue, 08 May 2012 14:52:40 +0000

While on a trip to the north of Ireland, I was faced with a moral dilemma. Such is often the case in the course in our daily lives—two choices with diverging paths, each choice bringing about a different outcome as it plays out in our lives.

One choice may seem the easier, but with reflection, we may begin to see it as less moral. So we choose the more difficult, but upright path, knowing that somewhere in our life we will be rewarded for our choice, if only to look at ourselves in the mirror and know we did what we thought was right. At other times, the easier choice is the right path, so the choice becomes clear. Yet there are those times when the right decision is less clear, the choices muddled in the righteousness of both sides. Such was my dilemma in Northern Ireland when I met an IRA man.

The IRA, the Irish Republic Army, the likes of which I had not heard about for years, not since the late 1990s when the troubles, as they are known in Ireland, were folded into a peace alliance among Northern Ireland and the governments of Great Britain and Ireland. This Good Friday Accord called for a cease fire from the IRA, a paramilitary group known for guerrilla warfare against the British occupation of Northern Ireland. It was the other side of the story I heard from this man. I say the other side of the story because as an American I had only heard what terrorists, murders, and thugs they were, those young people who made up the Irish Republican Army.

The sun was out the day we met in Belfast. My traveling companions and I hailed a taxi for a tour of the city. Little did I know the tour would open me to new vistas of understanding and add a depth of knowledge about the troubles and history of Northern Ireland—the home of my ancestors. It was in 1669 that my ancestor Alexander Rankin brought his family from the north of Ireland to America. He came after the 1688 siege of Derry where he and his Scotch-Irish comrades held off the army of King James II of England for 105 days before the English claimed victory and the city. And now I listened to a young Irishman who knew the perils of British occupation in his lifetime, and I knew at some deep level I must listen carefully for we were on different sides this young man and I. He was Catholic. My ancestors were Protestant, and in the north of Ireland that makes all the difference in the world.

The wall that surrounds Derry, which is also known as Londonderry, was a wall built to save a city and its inhabitants from invasion. Now, like the wall in Belfast, it divides a city and its residents. On one side live the Protestants, on the other the Catholics. In both cities, there is a sensitive peace that some pray hold, others do not pray so. Times are better certainly than they were, yet there is a feeling that the world should not forget the uprisings of a country’s youth for in the forgetting we lose our humanity and continue to repeat ourselves—whatever the name of the country—Ireland, Egypt, Syria, America.

In listening, I learned the troubles grew out of a history of oppression where “No Catholics Need Apply” signs frequented store windows beneath “Job Opening” signs. Separated by education, religious and political beliefs, as well as a physical wall, Catholics were forced mainly into entry-level jobs, if they had jobs at all. At one point, unemployment among Catholics reached as high as 30 percent. And there seemed little they could do about changing the situation. To be a registered voter, your name had to be on the lease, but land owners were those with the better paying jobs—the Protestants. Even the government and police force were predominantly Protestant.

I thought about my ancestor Alexander Rankin who left religious persecution in Scotland for freedom in Ireland. If he had stayed in Derry, would I be on the other side of the wall of this young man before me who spoke so passionately about the people who lost their lives during the troubles? There may be no rewriting of history, but there is the learning from it, which is what I was able to do as I was invited into a store, the likes of which caused me a moral dilemma.

We were buzzed into the store, one filled with gifts and books. In the store, three men dressed in Irish black, talked together. Perhaps artists with wares in the store, but in my imagination, I pictured them in a clandestine meeting in dank, drafty rooms, not in a well-lit store full of Irish mugs and faeries. Behind the counter were two women of a generation who perhaps knew the inside of Armagh Prison, a replica of a cell of which we saw while walking through the IRA museum, a museum full of torture and screams.

Woman that I am, I was ready to shop, but what would my shopping money support? Was I helping to support peace and adding to the economy of the shopkeepers and their families? Or was I supporting the buying of illegal guns and helping to fund criminal operations? I had no way of knowing. A moral dilemma. It was the book that made my decision for me—Bobby Sands’ Writings from Prison.

I knew the name, remembered it from my younger years when I read American newspapers about the young IRA men who went on a hunger strike to protest the British classifying them as criminal prisoners instead of political prisoners, the latter of which they believed they were. We weren’t so far apart in age, these young men and I, and I spent many a sleepless night wondering why someone with their whole life ahead of them would choose to stop eating and die and why Margaret Thatcher’s British government allowed the men to die. In all ten men, including Bobby Sands, starved themselves to death in 1981. Bobby Sands was 27 years old and had gained international attention for his cause—the right to be treated as a human being. Bobby Sands had been jailed without trail for nine years before his death. While a prisoner of the British, he was beaten, starved, and forced to live under inhumane conditions that speak more of ancient times than of those within my lifetime.

I settled my moral dilemma, not because I thought the IRA was right (I do not think guns and killing others are ever the answer), but because I was able to see the other side. I was able to feel the pain of hopelessness and the suffering of not being able to feed your family. I was able to understand the fear of living on the other side of the wall where bottle bombs flew both directions, and I was able to acknowledge that both sides are wrong—and both sides are right—and it is only through human interaction and intense and intentional dialogue that we are able to see—and to hear—one another.

I bought the book by Bobby Sands. He wrote it on toilet tissue using the insert of a cheap ballpoint pen. His writings were smuggled out of H-Blocks of Long Kesh Prison. And I bought two blank journals—one for a writer friend and one for myself. I don’t know what my friend will write in her journal; she remarked it had to be something special because she could feel the intensity of the journal. In mine, I will write my deepest thoughts and feelings of my heart as I have done with more than 100 blank journals, and in the writing on those pages, perhaps I will better come to understand another who lives on the other side of the walls within me.

Moral Dilemma: An Irish Story is a post from: Diana Rankin

Remembering JFK and His Challenge to Us

Diana Rankin — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 20:28:10 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

John Fitzgerald Kennedy challenged us as a nation, a world, and as individuals. He challenged us to serve our country in the cause of peace by helping other nations and he challenged other nations to “¹explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.” He challenged us to look to the future and to create a strong world and a peaceful nation, undivided where all are treated with respect and equality. I wonder if we have met his challenge.

When he came to be our nation’s president on January 20, 1961, I was 15, as fresh and innocent as the promise that came with his inauguration. I sat in front of the black and white television, the screen smaller than that of today’s computers, with my mother and older brother in our home in Dayton, Ohio. My family, staunch Republicans, were certain the about-to-be new Catholic President would lead our country into ruin. Any doubts I harbored vanished as he stood before the nation—and the world—and announced: “¹A torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans.”

A light breeze ruffled his thick hair on a day so cold white air breathed out with his words. He was hatless and coatless on this cold, but sunny, day, and the nation took notice. It was the ending of an era when only men with white hair and top hats and heavy coats could hold the highest office in our nation. JFK was ushering in an era of renewed hope, a time of being our brothers’ keeper, and greater awareness of a world beyond our borders. I felt a personal call to service as his words wound into me when he spoke those most famous lines from his inaugural speech: “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”

He could ask this of us, World War II hero that he was. He had earned the right, and we listened and we acted. I did not join the Peace Corps that he initiated or get involved in the Circle Rights Movement. None of my close friends did either, but we did feel the effect of JFK on our young lives, and those effects would echo throughout our lives as we became teachers and social workers, soup kitchen attendants and organizers of non-profit community-based businesses, and writers—and righters—of social ills. And then it was lost, lost in the violence of the peace movement against the Vietnam War and the anger of the Women’s Movement; lost in the me, me, me of the 1980s and the self-indulgence of the 1990s; lost in the greed of the new millennium and the political mudslinging and dividedness of the last several years. Lost.

I live in rural Ohio now, returning here in my middle years after having spent my twenties and thirties in Southern California. I sit in The Depot, a coffee house in Urbana, less than a mile from the campus where I teach part time. Young students often come here to study. One sits near me now. “Are you a teacher?” she asks. “I saw you working on the computer.”

“Yes,” I say, and then add, “It’s an article on my memories of President Kennedy.”

“He did a lot of good things,” she says. “He started the Peace Corps. She goes on to tell me she plans on joining the Peace Corps as soon as she graduates. She’s in environmental science and currently engaged in women’s studies, she explains, and she’s not sure how she’ll combine them along with her love of writing.

“You’ll find a way,” I tell her, and I feel a sense of hope, renewal, and continuation on this cold, sunny day in January when you can see your own breath on the wind and hear the echo of history on the horizon.

“Thank you,” I add. She looks at me questioning. “For your service to this nation and to all people,” I say. I think it is what he would have told her.

Sources:

¹ http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/BqXIEM9F4024ntFl7SVAjA.aspx

Remembering JFK and His Challenge to Us is a post from: Diana Rankin

Bullies, Bullets, and Blame

Diana Rankin — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 19:42:42 +0000

I yelled at my cat today. It was a sharp piercing wail that surprised both of us. Seconds later one of my favorite tea mugs fell off the counter and crashed against the hardwood, smattering and scattering pieces of hardened clay across the floor.

Both LilyCat and I were so stunned at my outbreak we stopped and stared at the shattered mug and in that eerie and charged moment of silence it struck me how my angry outbreak had nothing to do with my cat. It had everything to do with my own frustration inappropriately taken out on her. The cat doesn’t have the power to make me angry. No one does—whether feline or human. It is my anger and I must own it, and I also must own how my personal anger contributes to the greater atmosphere that brings energy to a Jared Lee Loughner, a young man in Tuscon, Arizona who fired 31 shots from a semiautomatic pistol into a crowd. My angry outburst scared my cat; Loughner’s killed six people, including a 9-year old child and wounded 13 others, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Our anger certainly is different in the degrees, but my nonsensical anger does help to form the energy pattern of a Loguhner’s murderous rage.

Politicians and political pundits have been quick to point fingers of blame against each other for the Tucson tragedy, but they have neglected to see that three fingers are pointing back. Certainly some politicians and pundits, opportunists, and talk-show hosts are bullies who have waged a war of angry words, and certainly some of the rhetoric is filled with such hateful fury it makes me cringe. And, yes, I do believe these bullies have contributed to an atmosphere of divisiveness that spawns wrath and a sense of entitlement that if you do not believe as I do than I have the right to spew anger at you and take out my rage on your person. But also I believe that I too must shoulder some of the responsibility for the Tucson tragedy—as we all must.

We are not responsible for pulling the trigger, but we are responsible for feeding the insanity of murderous rage. Every time we lose our temper, we fuel the insanity of murderous rage. Every time we refuse to take responsibility for our own pent-up stresses and frustrations and blame the other for our emotions and actions, we fuel the insanity of murderous rage. Every time we make—or listen to—hate-filled speeches, we fuel the insanity of rage. Every time we watch a television show or movie that honors violence, we fuel the insanity of murderous rage. Every time we engage in a thought, deed, or action of anger, we fuel the insanity of murderous rage.

There is a lot of anger in our country. It is not the first time this country has been filled with anger and divisiveness. We knew anger during the Revolution War, the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement, the Anti-War movement against the Vietnam War, to name just a few. Perhaps as a nation we will not grow pass the anger that erupts whenever we have difficult times, but perhaps, just perhaps we will come to understand our personal contribution to the murderous rage that brought forth a Jared Lee Loughner, and in the understanding of this we will be better able to see our responsibility to be watchful of our actions that may be perceived by the other as bullying, be aware of the words that may feel like bullets to the other’s heart, and lay the blame of our anger where it belongs—at our own doorstep.

I would like to tell you I will never again yell at my cat, never again bully her, but that would be untruthful. There will come another day when I live in unawareness of the build-up of my own stresses and frustrations and hear myself scream when LilyCat gets my negative attention. What I will tell you is that in the awareness of knowing I am capable of loosing my temper, I grow in mindfulness of my own anger, anger that contributes to the atmosphere where a murderous rage can take hold. It is in the accepting of my personal contribution to the greater whole that I feel the depth of my responsibility to do my best to keep my own heart peaceful and my actions pure.

Bullies, Bullets, and Blame is a post from: Diana Rankin

Winter Solstice Is a Time for Introspection and Awakening Light

Diana Rankin — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 17:40:07 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

Winter Solstice comes at me always unexpected as the days shorten and the nights lengthen. Loneliness can overtake me in the darkness, leaving me feeling empty of energy, and I must remind myself to turn the loneliness into one of deep introspection and honor the sacredness of turning inward.

As I witness the daylight move so quickly away, I want to hold onto it, and I remind myself to remember that all life is a coming and going, with a few precious moments for each experience. As the participant in life’s movement, I must stay present lest I miss the richness that presents itself in the moments of my life. I remind myself of the value in darkness as I let go of the need for more light. As the great bear in the West goes into her cave, I too am led into the cavern of my inner world.

It is within the inner world where I find both the richness and the horror that is my personal human experience that expresses itself out into the world. I come face-to-face with my beauty and my unkindness; with my success and with my faults and failures. It is where who I am and whom I want to be smack up against each other and I cannot hide the truth of my thoughts and actions from myself. It is here, in this inner world, that I am able to delve into myself and move beyond to the point of creation of that which I want to be and want to manifest within my personal world and for the greater world. It is here in my inner world that I meet my ancestors and the ancestors of all. It is here in this inner world where I soar through imagination into other worlds and gather together with beings of immense wisdom and knowledge that I then bring back to my world.

As I remember what awaits me in my inner world, I remind myself to allow the darkness to linger just a little longer in the morning and the daylight to leave at its appointed hour in the evening. As I let go and give myself over to the shortening of the days as we draw closer to Winter Solstice, a voice from my inner world gives me the gift of knowing that on the awakening of the day following Winter Solstice the light begins to lengthen as the days begin once again to grow longer.

Winter Solstice Is a Time for Introspection and Awakening Light is a post from: Diana Rankin

Are You Receiving Gifts or Trying to Learn Lessons?

Diana Rankin — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 21:34:47 +0000

: Image by CaptPiper via Flickr

People have told me that Planet Earth is a school and we are here to learn our lessons. I disagree. I believe we are here to love. That’s it. Just to love. When we love, we see all that comes to us as a gift. It is in receiving the gifts—instead of learning a lesson—that we learn more about love and about life.

This is not to say that we never have anything to learn. Quite the contrary. We should be life-long learners, but at some point we need to graduate from school and become adult learners. As long as we are in school, our mindset keeps us as students with a teacher in front of the classroom teaching us. As we graduate, we allow our own wisdom to be our teacher. We learn to listen to ourselves as well as the wisdom of a multitude of others including nature, animals, books, and certainly those humans who have gone before us on the path we now tread. We let go of the need to learn and do it right and instead we learn to just be, receiving the gifts and relishing in the excitement of each moment.

Daily, I see so many with tears falling from the deepest of heart breaks from grief or betrayals. As we look at the deeper meaning of the pain, we are able to see beyond any lesson and find the true gifts. A lover’s betrayal often opens the heart to greater love by setting the one in pain on an inward journey, seeking the spiritual path and truly uniting with the Beloved, which then heals the pain by allowing us to understand—and accept—the truth and the limitations of the human beloved. When we are able to see the one who we perceive as hurting us as an instrument to help us remember the truth of who we are—a being of love—we are able to see the heartbreak as a gift and the giver of that gift as a soul mate with whom we made an agreement: “Come wake me lest I forget who I truly am.”

If we are caught in lessons, we keep asking ourselves what we are tying to learn and may miss the gifts of the time we spent together. When we seek the gift instead of the lesson, we are able to see how one action that may have been hurtful to us actually led us to a place that was for our betterment and gave us the greater gift of something that turned out to be so much more than what we once had.

Again, this is not to say there is nothing for us to learn. Certainly when our hearts are broken, we want to ask ourselves what is our part in the heartbreak. Perhaps we need to choose more wisely, to be more discerning. But if we stay stuck in always learning our lessons, we often miss the gifts that await us. Instead of celebrating the gifts of the situation, we get caught in bemoaning that we didn’t learn our lesson the first time and are once again in a situation that causes us grief.

Words have power. They interact with our physical and emotional health. They propel us forward or hold us back. They build us up with confidence and surety or they tear us down in blame and insecurity. Lessons. Yes, we all have things to learn throughout our lifetime, but there comes a time in each of our lives when we are allow to walk away from school and live in the celebration of the gifts of who we are and all that life holds for us.

Are You Receiving Gifts or Trying to Learn Lessons? is a post from: Diana Rankin

A Blessing Creates a Higher Consciousness

Diana Rankin — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 01:45:32 +0000

: Image by Skiwalker79 via Flickr

Blessing another, our food, a situation and ourselves takes us to a higher state of consciousness that allows us to experience life from a perspective different from that of the normal state of daily affairs.

Although there is some controversy within the scientific community about what happens in the brain when we bless, a twenty-year old theory backs up the experience many of us have every time we say a blessing. Scientists call the experience an increase in the gamma waves; I call it a feel-good experience.

With the help of EEGs, scientists have been able to measure gamma waves, which are the highest frequency of brain waves—electrical impulses that occur naturally in the brain. Gamma waves are associated with higher levels of intelligence and feelings of happiness, and an increase in a person’s feelings of compassion toward others. In recent years, commercial neuro-programming products have entered the marketplace to help increase gamma waves. Although I’m sure they are good, I haven’t personally tried any of these programs, have not felt a need to, because I continually experience an increase in happiness, alertness, and compassion every time I bless someone or something. And I am blessed to have numerous opportunities every day to say a blessing. So do you.

Begin by blessing whatever enters your body—food, water, tea, and so on. In workshops I offer where food is present, we always have a blessing of the food, the elements that helped the food grow, the animals that sacrificed their bodies to sustain ours, the farmers who grew the food, the workers who processed the food, the truck drivers who delivered the food, the groceries who stored the food, and so on. You get the idea. A blessing isn’t just a simple, “Bless you, and you’re off and running, although even a quick blessing is meaningful if said with heart.

Heart is important in every blessing. A blessing said with genuine gratitude, a feeling of deep thankfulness, seems to be necessary for me to experience the euphoria. Perhaps emotion is needed to activate gamma waves. Certainly it has been in my life and it seems scientists are also finding this to be true. Well-known for his work in neuroplasticity— the capacity for the brain to rewire itself—Richard Davidson, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin, found an increase in gamma activity in Tibetan Buddhists monks during meditation. When the monks meditated on loving kindness, the gamma waves increased even more.

Living in the country allows me opportunities every day to increase my gamma waves by blessing animals in the fields, winged ones in the sky, and those along the side of the road. For the deer and field cats and great winged ones who bless my life as I travel along, my blessing is simple, “Thank you for being in this world and for blessing my life with your presence.” My blessing for those who have left this life is, “Bless you, bless the one who took your life, bless the ones who will partake of your giveaway, and bless me.” Those final two words are crucial to the blessing. They are the words that take us into a deeper compassion for ourselves, which, in turn allows us to feel greater compassion for all beings.

We don’t have to look far for something to bless. There is so much in life that calls for our blessing. Daily I bless my four-legged children for their well being and thank them for enriching my life. I bless each member of my family, and each friend who is in my life. I bless the sun and thank it for warming me. I bless the rain for feeding the fields and flowers. I bless my office as I walk into it every morning. I bless the computer for working so well. I bless words for coming easily when needed. I bless each part of my body for good health and vitality. I bless friends and acquaintances and the clerk at the checkout. I bless the authors of books I read and musicians of music I hear. I bless my vehicle that keeps me safe, the mechanics who keep it running smoothly, and the gasoline and roadways and every other driver on the road.

And with each blessing, I also bless myself. You might have noticed—and you would be right if you did—that with so much time spent blessing the other there is no time left to spend in complaining, so the gamma waves just keep growing and growing and blessing me as I bless you.

A Blessing Creates a Higher Consciousness is a post from: Diana Rankin

Morning Meditation

Diana Rankin — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 00:42:01 +0000

: Image by Alesa Dam via Flickr

In my morning meditation, I begin with a prayer, first of gratitude—a thanksgiving for life and all that has been given to me—and then I ask for healing, for myself and for everyone who has asked me to include them on my healing energy prayer list. I give thanks for my perfect healing and the perfect healing of each person as I speak his or her name aloud.

Then I begin a healing chant. A deep breath, and on the out breath, in a voice so full it reverberates through my every cell and out into the universe, an AH-OM-HUM. I chant until the chant is chanting me, and my body as I know it disappears as I become a thousand tiny dots of lights, spiraling and dancing, and moving about. Rearranging energy, realigning cells in a healthy pattern— healing. I feel my breath moving in and out of my body and beyond and I become aware of these pin points of light moving and intermingling with all those whose names I have spoken and somewhere within me I know, I know the Divine Light that I am heals all as I heal and touch all that is our world as the Divine Light of God permeates and passes through me to all sentient beings and into our world and out from our planet into the universe.

I continue to sit in stillness, watching this exchange of energy as these tiny specks of light move into me and through me and back out into the world. And then, without movement of my physical body, I see my forehead, at the sixth charka, the third eye, move into the flame of the candle that sits flickering on the altar in front of which I sit. My entire body become part of the flame that becomes a light of dancing colors that move through the world of dancing, colorful light that is full of voice and music.

And then there is silence, a deep profound silence that echoes back on itself and I—I, the person, the one of tiny balls of light, the one of flame and light and voice and music, the one who prays and feels gratitude, the I that I am—ceases to exist. I am like the wind within stone—silent, without words or thoughts . . . or being. The I in I am is no longer. I am has become just am until even that disappears and there is . . . nothing . . . and in that nothingness there is everything . . . And then the silence as quiet as the wind within stone becomes the wind itself and I am transported by and transformed into the wind itself as I move without time or space into the I AM of all that is throughout eternity, and then once again I become the I that I am.

My eyes open and I am born anew into this world I inhabit, this world in which I live and move and have my being, this world in which I speak and laugh and weep and sing. This world in which I love. And I am oh so grateful that I have left the known to travel the unknown that I might return to the known, rested, cleansed, prepared. And the day has begun.

Morning Meditation is a post from: Diana Rankin

On the Way to Grace . . . Be Here Now

Diana Rankin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:04:50 +0000

We wear a lot of different hats in our lives—living mini lives within our bigger life; lives that make up the fullness of who we are—mother or father, wife or husband, daughter or son, employee or employer, housekeeper and gardener, caretaker of children/pets/parents. We need our appointment books and electronic calendars to remind us of where we need to be when, what task we need to be attending to at any given time. It seems to me with so much going on the only way we can exist with any amount of sanity is to stay in the present moment—to be here NOW.

“Be here now,” the phrase coined to represent being fully present and engaged in your life by Ram Dass back in 1971 in his book with the same title— Be Here Now. It was a good book then. It’s still a good book. I’m on my second copy, the first, with its tattered edges and worn pages, long since gone to someone else’s bookshelf. I no longer remember to whom I gave the book, but I always remembered the book, so a dozen years or so ago I picked up another copy. It doesn’t have as much character. It’s edges aren’t tattered nor are the pages worn. I haven’t needed the book to remind me to stay in the now the way I did when I was younger. As I’ve grown older, I’ve grown and becom

e more adapt at reminding myself to stay present. But I remember, oh how I remember, that first copy of Ram Dass’ book and the revelation it was to me.

I was a part-time hippie then. I lived in California. And I was a seeker. By day I put on my corporate suit and wrote copy for a small publishing firm. We s

pecialized in books on marketing and how to make money. Napolean Hill’s book Think and Grow Rich had a big influence on us. He wasn’t one of our authors. Mainly we published the owner’s books and his theories on how to market products to the masses. It was a fun job with an office full of friends. The owner, who taught part time at a couple California universities, even had me fill in for him on occasion because I had taught school for a couple years in Ohio before I became a part-time hippie and headed off to California. The owner didn’t know I was a hippie. Had he known, he never would have let me stand in front of his students—half of who were older than me and the other half who looked older—and impart to them the information I had memorized from reading his books.

I got fully into teaching, the same way I got into the writing. Both activities required of me to be completely present in the now, but at the time I didn’t realize this being fully present in the moment was what Ram Dass was talking about. I was still trying to figure all that out, so it was the weekends I lived for—the long days when we jumped on the motorcycles and flew along the California freeways, stopping at friends or the homes of people we met on the road. We didn’t need much sleep. We were young. We’d spend the night passing joints while words poured forth an

d our minds—if somewhat stoned—were filled with new expressions and concepts we were certain no one else had ever thought of. I’m sure some of our ideas were slightly delusional in our marijuana-filled psyche, but some of our thoughts were . . . well . . . deep and full of exploration of human potential. That’s where Ram Dass and Be Here Now come in.

It was a new concept, and we latched on. We dug in, lit another joint, and analyzed every word. How can you plan for a future and be here now? What about yesterday’s memories? If I’m sitting here now and only thinking about my big toe, does that mean I’m here now? Am I here now if I’m thinking? Is being here now beyond thinking? Is it just experiencing? “Hey man, let it go, let it all go. That’s being here now.”

It’s only now—so many years later I don’t want to think about it—that I realize how much time we did spend in the now, in the present moment. In the moments of our analyzing and arguing, we were alive in the moment. In our gliding down the freeway on two wheels, we were living in the now. In the time we spent touching the minds and hearts and bodies of each other, we were fully present in the now. In the time I spent writing and teaching, I was fully en

gaged in each moment. It was only when we stopped living and tried to be in the now that we failed. It was only when we stopped engaging the fullness of who we were in that moment of time that we stopped being in the now.

I didn’t realize that then, didn’t realize that being in the now is being fully engaged with your life in the moment, regardless of what that moment brings. We spend much of our lives in the now. Life forces us to. It forces us when we are blowing kisses on a child’s tears, when we are answering the questions of a student, when a car is coming at us on the wrong side of the road, when we twist an ankle on steps and need to right ourselves, when we are awed by a sunset, when. . . when . . . in a thousand ways life forces us to be present in the moment, to be here now. And when life is not forcing us to be in the nowit allows us to be in the now if we accept the gift of the present moment—each and every moment.

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On the Way to Grace . . . Be Here Now is a post from: Diana Rankin

On the Way to Grace . . . Butterflies, the Dove, and the Shaman

Diana Rankin — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 21:28:20 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

There’s a patch of unmowed grass in my yard. It’s there because a dying butterfly claimed it, and I saw no reason to disturb her. Having a neatly manicured lawn just isn’t that important to me, at least not as important as giving a butterfly her chosen space as she begins her transition into the next world. She wasn’t the first butterfly I say die this week—or the first winged one in whose death I was involved with.

Earlier in the week I found another butterfly in my office building. She flew in through an open doorway and stayed where she landed—just out of reach of the sun in the hallway of a man-built structure in the 1870s. After watching her for awhile, finally realizing she wasn’t going to get up and fly away, I carefully picked her up and carried her outside. She rode well on my palm and transferred through my nervous system her gratitude for her new place—a shady spot just beside the sun between day lily leaves and hydrangea bushes.

It wasn’t my place to extend the lives of these two butterflies, or to mourn over their passing. It was for me to thank them for sharing their magic with me, for giving me the energy of their lives, of what they represent—transformation into a new form. This is difficult for us—to watch something so beautiful die and not mourn. It is even more difficult when we are the instrument of that death, which I was this week as well. It was a dove that ended its life on the front of my vehicle as I drove to the office one bright morning. There was no way to miss her. She flew up without warning from the side of the road and into the right front wheel well. I saw her hit. I heard her hit. But when I looked there was no bird on the side of the road, no bird impaled on the wheel well. No bird in sight. Yet, she had been there. Of that I’m sure.

It was a dove. I cried out when I hit her, my heart thumping and breaking. And then I stopped. I heard her in my heart and knew she had come to me to give of her energy, her magic, her medicine. It was my choice to stay in the mourning of taking her body from her, or to engage in the interchange she offered me. I chose the later. It is in Ted Andrews’ book Animal Speak that I so often turn when a winged one or animal comes into my life, giving of its energy to help my life in its transitions and changes, celebrations and smooth pathways. Dove came to say, “These are the Between Times—a time in which there is a thinning of the veils between the physical and the spiritual, the past and the future.” She came to help me see the creation process within my own life.

She came to give me her song that I might “mourn what has passed, but awaken to the promise of the future.” She came, as did the butterflies to confirm the transition of which I have been aware, and to help me see what I can give birth to in my life.

The shaman’s life is full of new birth, the new that only comes after a death. All our lives are full of little deaths, mini deaths that—if we let go—allow us to move into the new—a new way of being, a new home, a new job, a new realm of existence. We can hold onto the butterfly, mourning its passing. We can feel saddened by our part in taking the life of another of God’s creatures. Or we can thank the ones who come to us for imparting their medicine to us, for gifting us with the magic they carry within them and have chosen us with whom to share this magic. In accepting, we honor them and we honor ourselves as beings who understand our oneness with all life and the miracle of the continuous circle of life and death and rebirth.

On the Way to Grace . . . Butterflies, the Dove, and the Shaman is a post from: Diana Rankin

On the Way to Grace . . . Chopping Wood and Carrying Water

Diana Rankin — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 19:42:53 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

I guess I should have known the day wasn’t going to go as I planned when the first thing I saw when I stepped out onto the deck Sunday morning was a red tail hawk taking flight from my backyard garden. Often I see hawks fly over my home, even occasionally see them land in the meadow out beyond the backyard or in the fields when swooping down to pick up prey, but this was the first time I had seen one take off from the garden. He gave me a quick flash of his pale belly with its band of darker feathers, the color of the top of his wings, before he fully spread his broad wings out wide as he rose above the ground and was off among the tree tops and out of my sight. I thanked him for his visit, and then got about my day, well-planned as it was with a full to-do list of outside chores.

Now you would certainly think I would know by now that the best laid plans of humankind usually go astray. The first glitch came when the riding mower refused to start—this after it started up just fine—twice. But it refused to start the third time, and this after I had hooked up the garden trailer and driven all 900 feet to the end of the lane and filled up the trailer with newly-timed tree branches. So here I am at the end of the lane, with my plans to deliver this load of newly-cut branches to the brush pile at the other end of the lane. On the way, I thought I’d pick up a couple small trees that had come down in the last storm, throw them on top of the tree branches and be off to the brush pile. But here I was, stuck with a mower that refused to cooperative with my well-planned day.

I turned the key again in hopes of the mower starting. Nothing. The engine wasn’t even turning over. Not one single gruuuu or spit or sputter. Red Tail flew overhead going from a tree in the north woods to the utility pole almost directly above my head. Hawk sat on his perch eyeing me below the way he watches for small mice and moles among the rows of soybeans. I pushed in the clutch, put the gear shift in neutral, and turned the key to start once more. Nothing.

Sheeeee, went the hawk. I turned the key again. Still nothing. A breeze kicked up and ruffled the velvet tops of the soybeans sending green waves across the fields. Once more I turned the key to try to start the mower. Not sure why I kept turning the key. You would think I’d get it that the engine wasn’t turning over, but isn’t that the way it is with our thoughts and deeds? We keep thinking the same old thought and doing the same old thing and expecting a different outcome. So there I was doing the same old thing and expecting the mower to suddenly change its mind and start. It was having none of it.

I pushed the lever to engage the blades, and then disengaged them. Sometimes the blades stick in place, which keeps the engine from starting. Still nothing, but at least I had a different thought and tried something different. But still it didn’t seem to do any good. Hawk looked down at me. The sun was growing as hot as my temper. A familiar panic was beginning to grow in my gut as I started fretting about what to do. The starter probably went out again. How am I going to get the mower to the repair shop without a trailer hitch? Who could I call to come here to fix it? The mower’s old. Should I buy a new one? I need a new roof. Not a time to buy a new mower. And on and on and on.

Red Tail screeched as he took off, circled a few times over the field, and then landed on a utility wire at the other end of the south field. I started walking down the lane, on my way picking up one of the fallen trees and dragging it to the brush pile. I did that a couple more times, walking down the lane to drag back a fallen tree or push the trailer full of cut-limbs back to the tree line. Between trips up and down the lane, I trimmed the trees at the tree line, even bringing out the ladder to reach those over my head.

It would be nice to tell you that friends unexpectedly showed up and fixed the mower, but that didn’t happen. I could have called a friend for help, but that didn’t happen either. I just spent the next several hours trimming trees and walking up and down the lane, and as I did I let go of control, and somewhere among all this chopping wood and carrying water, all those jumbled thoughts, plans for the day, and questions of what should I do now, all left my mind, replaced by the quiet of the day and the knowing that life was unfolding as it should, so I might as well just enjoy it.

About the time I was spending as much time drinking water as I was trimming trees, I figured it was time to quit and turn to less strenuous work. Mowing would have been perfect, but it wasn’t to be, and I was okay with that. Still, I did not relish pushing the mowed all 900 feet back down the lane. As I started walking toward it, I asked the mower to work, saw it running, saw me riding it with the blades cutting off the top layer of grass for a smooth finish of green along the lane. Thanked it for serving me so well and faithfully. And then I let go, knowing I would have the strength to push the mower back to the garage. So I kept walking, enjoying the day, the breeze that cooled me, the quiet of the countryside, and the way my life was unfolding this day.

Joseph Campbell said, “We must be willing to give up the life we have had planned in order to have the life that is waiting for us.” I suppose that is true whether that life be a well-planned life or a well-planned day. When we are able to let go of our small power and let life move through us, we are able to live in a much greater way.

On the way down the lane toward the mower, I stopped to pick up a feather—a red tail hawk feather. “Thanks, buddy,” I said, knowing that at some level he heard me. And so did the mower. As soon as I sat on the mower and turned the key, it purred into action.

On the Way to Grace . . . Chopping Wood and Carrying Water is a post from: Diana Rankin