Letting Go is Love

Yesterday at 3 pm a media flurry launched with new news about the Crow Museum of Asian Art and The University of Texas at Dallas. For me, it was a much anticipated announcement after 14 months of hard work.

Just over a year ago we began talking with the University of Texas at Dallas about a possible union: Asian Art to the University in trade for perpetual care and support to a museum needing an evergreen future. We maximized our resources to a greater good. For those of you who have asked, this is very good news, and I am truly thrilled. Our region celebrates one museum in two locations: one one Flora and one to come on the campus of UT Dallas.

Here are four things this "acquisition" brings the Crow Museum of Asian Art:

1. Room to Grow: we called ourself a museum without walls because we've always lived beyond them: in vision, in practice and in heart. UT Dallas has space and vision.

2. Auditorium: At least weekly I am contacted by a member of the Asian-American Community asking about opportunities to present dance, theater and the cultures of Asia. That mean's I've said no 52 times a year for 20 years. I'm sure I am exaggerating, but the point is, now I can begin saying yes. UT Dallas has beautiful auditoriums.

3. Students: 24,000 to be exact-ish. I've longed for a University partner. We are an internationally-minded museum. Universities are too. We will bring the world to Dallas together. And Dallas to the world. Through research of the collection (and beyond) offering new contexts for how art is among the greatest human commonalities. Art and Academia are nothing less than Double Happiness.

4. Forever: Trammell Crow had a practice of planting saplings: little baby trees that he knew would grow far into the future offering shade he would never experience. We were this. The family nourished us with spectacular generosity. We invited others to our "Community Garden": Asian-American Leaders, friends and Asian Art Enthusiasts. Our Garden Grew. UT Dallas is the Future: blazing trails in STEM and rivaling CalTech and MIT. Universities are forever and now we are too.

This was an idea that felt impossible at times. Some days I felt like I was working two jobs: missing basketball games and spring break to push these two comets together. I had tremendous support from Trammell S. and my new mentor at UT Dallas, Dr. Hobson Wildenthal. I am learning that when you let go for big futures, you find that you have exactly what you need.

And the lessons in non-attachment! When you're working with new partners and going for big vision you have to be prepared to see their vision, too. The Tibetan Mandala has taught me a few things over the years and inside of this immense change, we may feel like we're being swept up, but truly we are the sand. We will form again in a different way, but the DNA of our museum: compassionate, inclusive and accessible will always be there. I'll write more about this but for now please know that all is well, very well. The future is bright. 

Mindfulness and the Stack of 2018 Holiday Cards

I have a bowl I use for my holiday cards. It was a gift from a student at Armstrong Elementary back in the day. It's glass with molded Christmas Trees on the sides: a solid design that comes out for the month of December for my ritual "containment of the cards".

What to do with these lovelies? I know some of you talented, organized friends keep an excel document of who sent and to whom you will send next year. I gape.

For a few years I kept them in ziplocks: 2007, 2008, stored away for...well I am not sure what. Mine were headed in that direction this morning. And it occurred to me that these cards have a new purpose: a source for mindfulness.

With the virtual feed of social media, the holiday cards have to compete for our attention.

I decided this morning to have a practice of sitting with these cards each morning this week. I took a small stack off the top and looked into the joyful faces of my friends and their children, full of promise and vitality. I started praying for them: that their lives will be supported with the things they need. I prayed that they will do all the good works God has prepared for them and that they will know they are instruments of his peace. I expressed gratitude for these humans creating amazing good in the world and sent prayers of hope and possibility to their outcomes.

I did this as a silent meditation in my morning hour, and the bowl of cards has taken on a new meaning for me: compassion practice. I changed the context from the racket of what to do with these items to a reminder of the joy, intention (and hard work!) they are to bring to our lives.

At the end of the week I will recycle them like the sand mandala, sending these positive and healing energies back into the world. I am grateful for the time they brought into my morning: the moment to give gratitude for my circle of everlasting love and support.

2018 is the Year of Love and one of the first practices is to find love and sit with it. This morning I found love in the Christmas Bowl from an adored student at Armstrong Elementary. I wonder where I will find it next.

Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, love divine;
Love was born at Christmas,
Star and angels gave the sign.

Worship we the Godhead,
Love incarnate, love divine;
Worship we our Jesus:
But wherewith for sacred sign?

Love shall be our token,
Love shall be yours and love be mine,
Love to God and to all men,
Love for plea and gift and sign. 

Christina Georgina Rossetti

New Year, New Light, New Post

Hello, Friends.

I just headed out to White Rock Lake to take the year's first #pocketsunrise.

My first glance at the weather app isn't the temperature, it's the cloud coverage. I could tell it wasn't going to be a swoon-inducing color sunrise but I went anyway: that's what a practice does to you.

It's about 38* over here in East Dallas. The wind was cutting and I made my way hoping the dock wasn't already occupied by other witnesses to this first morning of the year. The wind was cutting so the dock was all mine.

I saw two cars, humans nestled warmly inside there for it: first light on our lives in a New Year.

The #pocketsunrise practice started in August of 2011. Two months earlier I'd been diagnosed with Thyroid Cancer. A new integrative medicine doctor, and now treasure of a friend, Carolyn Matthews, challenged me to pair exercise with something I love.

I love living near White Rock Lake: a living breathing organism of life: teeming with miracles. I love sunrises: also teeming with potential energy and unveilings. If you've faced a life-threatening illness you know: everyone is fighting for one more day. #pocketsunrise crested on my own horizon.

Since that summer I've taken thousands of #pocketsunrises. I post them for my loving and loyal friends on social media. I send them with intention to those who might need a little extra light. I send them randomly to those I love. Just a few weeks ago a dear family member asked if I had taken a #pocketsunrise on a specific date that was special to her. It was a miracle I had one and sent it right over. I didn't realize how long the light of a #pocketsunrise can stretch.

My practice isn't perfect: it has ebbed and flowed alongside other practices, but the call to secure an image from almost two years ago inspired me to be at sunrise's edge more often. This light falling on this day may be the light someone needs to see in two years.

Back at the dock this morning I shivered after just two taps of my phone and headed back to the car. something caught my ear or my eye and I turned out. I noticed the wind stopped blowing. I walked toward a second dock with a broader view of the east side of the lake. I felt my legs moving, my breath pushing oxygen to all cells. It was exhilarating. At the second dock a sliver of cloud opened up  pouring light onto the water. It was still and I sat, praying for all that is and all that I will receive this year.

While I was posting today's #pocketsunrise a large fish turned over on top of the water--strange I thought in this cold. I imagined that fish was saying "stop, pay attention. it is glorious".  I did. And it was.

I'm glad I went out and found the color behind the clouds and in the water. I am reminded that when it's quiet it's not complicated. And where it's not complicated, that's where peace, possibility and love live. 

Found: The Earrings that I (semi) Wrecked the Car For

I'm not always mindful.

This time it was a pair of beautiful Don Lucas Turquoise earrings. I bought them with "summer camp" money some time in the early-nineties. I worked at Brush Ranch Camps with the Lucas clan and he is a beloved jeweler from Bakersfield, California with an outpost in Santa Fe.

Those earrings are a treasure. They represent independence, friendship, the joy of summer in the Sangre de Cristos. About three weeks ago as I tidied up my jewelry box it occurred to me that they were not in the "Turquoise Section". This awareness happened at the same time I was working on a very complex project at work and The Missing Earrings became my object of fixation.

I tried mindfulness. I tried to calm the worry I'd thrown them away accidentally or carelessly left them on one of my many trips. Rationally I knew they had to be in the house. So I started looking. Thrice over through the drawers under the jewelry box; the closet; under the bed; the kitchen, even every pocket I could find in my closet. I searched the car: unfortunately a popular place to take off clip-on earrings for phone calls. No luck.

I called my Mother. I have a secret wish all the things I've ever lost are with her: she's put them away for later, for a time when I might be old enough to stop losing things. I imagined opening up the safe years from now and finding those--well she may be reading this so I won't mention what I cannot find. She laughed. Calling the farm to ask if lost items are there happens with some...pattern.

The next morning while driving into work, it wasn't my iPhone that distracted me or the radio: it was the earrings. I was digging in the coin tray below the steering wheel on Lakewood Blvd. praying they were right there under a quarter. I was jolted out of that activity by the curb meeting my front tire and then the back once I corrected the wheel. I'm really lucky I didn't pop the tires. Or hit a parked car. Or a person. I drove down Ross Avenue imagining the increased cost of lost earrings + two tires + a possible new set of hubcaps. Or a life. Not worth it.

I went on to work and reminded myself to breathe. I imagined how happy the new owner might be to have them, or that, despite my 100% (nearly house scan) they would come back to me, falling out of a shoe. It's happened. I told people at work I'd lost them: I've heard if you're missing something tell someone. They remained missing. I went through the drawers again when I got home. And the glove box of the car.

Today, three weeks later, I went looking for something else: a string of beads needing to be re-strung placed in the front closet with two other items due for repair. And there in the corner of the box was a little bag with two perfectly luminous Don Lucas Turquoise earrings inside. I leapt with joy. In my heart I was back at camp staring at those beauties: the color of the sky on the best days in New Mexico. Back with the feeling of owning something very special. Laughing at myself for the attachment lesson I missed in all of this: after all these are just things.

What is the lesson of "lost and found"? Be more minimal? Create new rigorous practices of care for objects one loves? Give my good jewelry to my mother to put away for safe keeping (that's what she would say.). I guess it's all of these and many things. Slow down. Don't look for things in coin boxes while driving. Find peace in trusting they were right where I would find them. I'll work on it a little more and if you see me wearing my Don Lucas Beauties know that I am very, very happy. 

Real Quiet: The Sanctuary Sabbatical

What part of the day do you spend not talking?

I've been watching our human practice of “chit chat” these last frenzied weeks of Advent and Christmas. At the few silent retreats I've been to over the years, it was a study I experienced and left in the dining halls of Omega and Upaya. We wore name tags that said "In silence" on them so our fellow retreat-goers would kindly support our practice to be quiet. At Omega my friend and I whispered to each other in laughter on the way back to our dorm. It wasn't easy. But it did reveal something: there is noise in my life.

My same friend encouraged me to look at chit chat: what is the gain, how can small talk get smaller or bigger, or be walked away from?

I sat at a wedding recently before the ceremony began: I watched ebullient meetings of old friends happen across pews: conversational joy and laughter. I watched one friend sitting in silence reading hymns. He wasn't up for chit chat. I started to do the same. "Choose se your words wisely" I can hear my mother's voice in my head.

Today and tomorrow are part of a new practice called a "Sanctuary Sabbatical"; at Plum Village we called them "Lazy Days": Days for dreaming, for creating and for being quiet. I've turned off Netflix and written letters of appreciation to those I love. I made a list of things I am looking forward to in the coming year. I've started a Four-Quarter Plan for 2019.

I've also made a not-doing list: a wonderful practice I learned from my friends at Dorrier Underwood: if something has appeared on a to do list more than three times, move it to a not doing list. The action of declaring is empowering: to declare to not to; to declare to set aside time to not do other things and to do one thing.

I've declared these days before the New Year to be a Sanctuary Sabbatical. I am reading, working on an important work transaction and taking care of myself. I am making time for those I love and things I love. I am watching winter through the window. The light in December is always extraordinary. This place of quiet and reflection is a sanctuary: it can be an hour or a day; it is as you declare it to be. I'll see you in the dining hall with our little signs that say "In Silence". There is, as Wordsworth wrote, a bliss in solitude. 

1,440 Minutes in a Day and How to Fill Them

Last night I attended a lecture by my dear friend Bonnie Pitman, the Founder of the Do Something New (TM) Practice. She taught us many things: to look, to pay attention, to find the bliss of solitude. She reminded us that we have 1,440 minutes in a day.

Set a timer for sixty seconds and sit with me.

It's spacious, isn't it? Time feels so different when it is identified as time: a division of space (24 hours) into smaller spaces (60 minutes) and into the smallest spaces (60 seconds). Conscious intention makes sure we don't miss it: the human being on the elevator, the leaf that falls below the crepe myrtle, the glow of a slow sunrise.

I don't want to miss it. And the way to not miss it is to be with it. To say to time: sit with me in silence and give me a parentheses to breathe. Because otherwise I forget.

This is existence. We choose what we put into this parentheses: consciousness or unconsciousness.

And we have so many magnets pulling us away from being in the present: technology, movies-on-demand, email. We need the parentheses to remember.

I practice this intention by placing three minutes into the beginning of every meeting I lead. I learned this practice at the Festival of Faiths in Louisville, Kentucky. It takes something: an ability to stop one energy in the room and invite a new energy; a willingness to let go of what people might think; a worry they will look at their phones or use the time to prep for the meeting. It takes making a different commitment: to invite the self to stop and choose silence, reflection, to breathe and go inward.

So drop into Friday with me --and later on, in the middle of email or at the beginning of a meeting, take just three minutes and put them inside of a parentheses. Set your timer on your phone and follow the breath. You'll still have 1437 minutes to conquer the world, and chances are those three minutes will give you what you need to do it. 

9/11 And Other Etchings

We all have our stories: before 9/11 I remember my parents talking about where they were when Kennedy was shot: certain places on their university campuses. Now we have a new etching: the place we were, the way it felt, and the things we did in the moments after we saw things we never thought we would see in our lifetime.

I was living in Uptown: near Downtown Dallas. I didn't know that the choices I made in September 2001 would haunt me, likely forever. It can't be unseen. My memory of 9/11 is a relationship I should not have been in: the black sheep brother of a best friend: reckless, rebellious, ridiculous. That's where I was, or rather he was with me. We woke that morning to strong coffee and shock: quickly realizing the things that really mattered: being with the ones we loved. And that wasn't each other.

Awkward--both aspects of that fall morning in Dallas, when the planes stopped flying--both memories I would rather forget.

But I can't: they are tied together forever. This person left my house both immediately and permanently. At least I like to remember it that way. In his wake were two precious friendships-and they have never come back to me. The risk wasn't worth it. But for a few moments that morning, 9/11 has him in the picture: both of us standing in front of a big box television crying and word-less. We knew in that moment of truth on television, our fake relationship was over. He gathered up his things and left.

I couldn't go to work: the museum and parts of downtown were closed. I drove to church with a few hundred other people: we were all dressed for work. Hoping for normal. I sat in the Memorial Chapel at the Church of the Incarnation: looking at life, and death and choices.

Like so many of us, 9/11 had a connection point beyond the television for me. In 1998, three years prior, I lived for a summer in New York at 110 Liberty Street, just across the street from the World Trade Centers. I walked that morning path: past the Brooks Brothers that was the temporary morgue, I rode the trains into the same station, I spoke to the doormen, and the guy at the coffee stand. I knew the families who lived in the buildings with the glass windows blown out. I knew the rhythms too well.

In the church that day I prayed for all of them: the doormen, the coffee-seller, the church family at Trinity Wall Street, the family I lived with. I prayed they were all somewhere else in that moment: already at pre-school, off in the country, not quite at the door yet. I wanted a different outcome for all of us. I wanted all of us to be somewhere else in that moment. I still do.

And so we created new rhythms that day. We learned what it was like to walk on the Katy Trail without airplanes. We finally found our New York friends and told them we loved them.

I broke up with my boyfriend.

I created a different life: one with a little more purpose that it had on September 10th. Wisdom? Reality? Somewhere in between, but the good news, inside all of this bad news is that we came together as a nation and found a deeper kind of love: real love.