Patti Smith at Bedtime: The Mindful Family

"These Are The Words"
(from "Pope Francis: A Man of His Word" soundtrack)

Awake everyone, the dawn has come
Life is streaming from the sun
A garden blessed, the bird that sings
Nature gives us everything. 

Full Song 

I stumbled on this precious song tonight. I can't stop thinking about Patti Smith--and especially as a mindful, contemplative leader of our time. I've watched her performance at the Awards for the Nobel Laureates in honor of Bob Dylan a dozen times, if not more. If you watch Patti sing: her courage to stop and try again after losing the complicated lyrics, her commitment to get it right, her nerves: you see the artist at work when everything is at stake. If you watch the audience: they are rapt: some with mouths open, some crying: it is clearly a moment that called all to be in the moment. I wish I'd been there. 

Tonight I'm just playing "These Are the Words" a few times. Scott is reading. Edward is listening to a book. I have not seen the film yet: Pope Francis: A Man of His Word but as I study it, it appears Patti Smith wrote most of the songs for the soundtrack. "These are the Words" is just one. And to me, here on retreat, I'm hearing the message. 

Nature gives us everything. 

To the Contemplative Leader, to the Mindful Human and the Mindful Family, yes. On the Mindful Family Road trip I need four things: 

A Trail 

Water 

Good Shoes 

Breath 

Simplicity is key. And I think that's why I love Patti Smith's lyrics. They're simple. And they tell the truth. She is exactly who she is: whether in a polished soundtrack or performing in front of millions of people on live television. It's not about her: it's simple: it's about the music. Nature gives her everything she needs. She is so present in her courage it's contagious. 

Nature gives us everything. 

The Artist and The Green Apple

All he wanted to do was hike to the old apple tree in the orchard and pick an apple or three.

"Go for the ones up high" a neighbor advised us, "they're more ripe!".

We met Laura on the trail as she walked the property where our tiny house sits in the middle of the Santa Fe National Forest. When we'd seen her earlier across the pond and through the reeds, she called out "hello, neighbor!" A few minutes later she came up the hill and met us on our own hike.

"I live down by the river," she told us, "my cabin is the most...rustic structure on the property. But I've just spent a year in a teepee in the rockies, so this is heaven."

I didn't know which part of this encounter to marvel at: the tall woman with blonde choppy chin-length hair and leather tassel earrings who walked up out of the woods. Alone. Or the apple she was mindfully eating. Or the teepee, or the most rustic structure on the 150 year-old ranch we were temporarily calling home.

Edward, who knew already knew the magic of the apple tree and it's exact location proudly told her both. He was marveling, too. She told us about the ranch and how the trails weave in and around river and creek and pond. She told us she walks the trails most evenings at sunset. And in August, I bet she also eats an apple a day on the way home.

The next day after an excursion into Santa Fe, we had to rush home to have the "Laura Experience". Baker, Edward and I explored the trails, and intentionally (Edward's intention) ended up at the apple tree. He instructed me which apples to pick, based on size and color (a new expert). We took five.

Three for our "snack picnic" and two for the tiny refrigerator in the tiny house. He ran back to put the two in the fridge "for safe keeping" and returned to sit and enjoy the three "plein air".

The Green Apple: loved by Manet, Cezanne, Monet and Georgia O'Keeffe and now Edward Hofland. I told him Green Apples were to these artists the pinnacle of skill: the ultimate. He has good sense. We studied ours carefully and ate it slowly. We sat in the sun, sweat beading up on the boys' noses, loving those apples and when we were finished, we loved throwing the cores into the pond "for the fish". ("Full circle" Edward exclaimed saying something about fish manure.)

This moment was created by another moment: the meeting with Laura: the friend I will likely never see again: goddess of the ancient orchard: taking her walks and eating apples in season. We had to be there for it: to learn and see the mindful practice and to want it for ourselves.

Edward ate apple number four today on the drive to Colorado. I noticed he stored number five in the refrigerator here. This mindful ten year-old nomad packed in his treasure for another day. 

And Now I'm Here: The Mindful Roadtrip

We are on our third Mindful Family Road Trip. This is a tradition inspired by my Executive Coach, mentor and Friend Nancy Dorrier.

A Mindful Family Road trip is a practice in Being. Being in the moment. For this trip, it started off with a dinner the night before we left. I sent the boys next door to the Dollar Tree to pick out four fresh notebooks for us to use on the trip. When they returned we worked on our wishes for the trip in both destinations: Santa Fe and Vail. We also wrote our checklist of things to remember to take—everyone participates and “owns” what makes it into the car and what didn’t. We forgot our fishing pole: even with the list.

A Mindful Family Road Trip takes the road less traveled. We found this Tiny House far up the mountain from the little village of Tesuque, north of Santa Fe. To our delight, it is nested over a set of orchards lost in time. We have the valley to ourselves: two ponds with a cistern that once drafted water from the nearby river. It was and is Utopian –even covered over by time and the absence of the farmer. A network of trails take the traveler past apple tree, willow, campfire site, rocky ridge, a darting cotton tail and an old paddle board Edward immediately rehabilitated and enjoyed. It’s pretty special: not a human in sight: we are enveloped by nature, held in this nest: a perfect place to practice mindfulness and being together.

We were welcomed by a teasing thunder-lots of threat in those dramatic clouds but very little rain. The cool air was enough and we settled in with agreement it was time to meditate and do some writing. As I set the bell on my Insight Meditation Timer thunder opened our silence as well as closed it, as if to say nature was in the mindful moment with us. We sat for three minutes and then wrote for four. The topic was “meeting the Tiny House” and the prompt was “I saw the feather in the window sill”. We write by hand (the brain-to-hand connection is key to creative writing) and each of us shared our writing with another giving feedback (two to three phrases directly taken from the reader’s writing and read aloud). Each of us had precious, personal observations of our day together –memorializing what matters most. The responder allows a space for recognition and appreciation and invites careful listening.

On the second evening (enjoying a vegetarian version of Cowboy Nachos-even the cowboys are eating healthy) we made a list of all that happened yesterday. Some wrote in prose style-others listed with detail how we as humans met the day and how we were inside of that day: actions, feelings, interpretations and joys. Edward (age 10) ended his writing with “I went back to the house and listened to book, made dinner, and now I’m here”.

And now I’m here: watching the sunrise drift up over the mountain’s edge. Two boys reading, wrapped up in blankets on the floor of this tiny house. It is quiet save for the wings of a hummer and the turn of a page. This is mindfulness.

The Mindful Family Meets the Tiny House in the Canyon

I saw the feather in the windowsill: dappled in grey and white stripes.

Whose feather? Whose hand, whose eye who found it, discarded on a swirling flight over canyon and river? 

I smelled it on the trail through the orchard. The scent of memory. Hiking not far away from here when I was a girl. I knew the trail then. 

Someone planted the orchids in the pond. Someone watered the orchard and saw feathers and black beetles here: scurrying into little holes in gravel to places I cannot see. 

I sit with my questions.

Where is the trail head? Can I drink the water? 

A winged creature darts past me. Waking me up. A bug or a bird? I don't know. And I wonder about this, too. 

Kind hands. That's who. 

Kind hands made this utopia farm, and the feather and the seed pod left on the windowsill for me to find. For me to find and wonder into this place where I leave you now with a story on your windowsill. 

A Letter to A Contemplative Leader

Dear Friend, Dear Contemplative Leader:

Join me in a new way of being: being up for a very bright future full of possibility and miracles. Join me in this moment. The one you imagined in the moment before. Because here we are. Together.

There is power in silence. It is the place leaders find peace. And discernment. This spacious place we all know, yet forget to seek. It is always with us on the inside. As constant as our breath. If you are breathing you can also be meditating. The tool is in you.

Silence can give us the words we need and at the time when we need them. We can respond from a place of emotional fortitude. Not reaction. Interpretation. We can fact check our own stories. We have time for this.

There is power in togetherness. We are stronger together. I need you and you need me. I see you in the elevator and I say little prayers for your children, and your mothers. And the beautiful work you create every day. I see you. Ask me for the cup of sugar. It’s waiting in my cupboard. Ask for what you need. 

There is power in understanding. Contemplation opens up skills for deep listening and loving speech. We need this. Our children need this. Urgently. You, dear contemplative leader, can show them a different way to respond. A kinder, gentler way. We were born to love each other.

There is power in awareness. I want to be awake and alive with you in this moment and the next. I want to practice and grow and practice and grow some more. I want to fail and succeed and be present for my heart in both of those spaces. Contemplative Leaders leave lots of space to fail. You do, too, contemplative leader, because you know that in failure there is truth. And in truth we grow the most. Through practice we learn to be okay with uncertainty. You are perfect in your imperfection. More vulnerable in your truth.

Dear contemplative leader, we want the same things. We share these values: we—balanced and gracious are up for something greater than ourselves: mindful, compassionate, fearless and so devoted to leadership we look to the next generation to teach us because we know where brilliance lives. It lives in all of us. Contemplative Leaders help other contemplative leaders lead.

Dear Contemplative Leader, don’t forget to breathe. The breath is a rhythm. Rhythm leads to pattern…pattern leads to practice. And don’t forget to write. To be curious about where compassion is sourced in the world. And Dear Leader, read lots of poetry by Mary Oliver, David Whyte and John O’Donohue. And so I leave you with the words of Mary Oliver:

Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?