Category Archives: spirituality

Lessons from a Retreat

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On a recent night, I sat by some trees on Lake Michigan, the waves crashing so loud on rocks below me I’d have to yell to be heard over them. Fireflies flashing all around, clouds and stars swirling above, crickets chirping between crashes, mosquitos buzzing. A calm night with only a gentle breeze yet so much noise and movement: the bugs and birds, water, even the stars seemed loud.

I dissolved into it all. Nature so loud and always moving, changing. Not still. I’m part of nature, always moving, changing, transforming. My mind swirls with clouds and stars, flashing thoughts, nerves buzzing, moods loudly crashing and slamming into awareness.

It’s all one dance and I’m part of it.

Night after night, day after day, for 13 days, I experience the water’s constant change. Exploding loud and crashing waves or gentle ripples like a rocking cradle. Sometimes bright blue or shimmering green or moody grey.

I am a moody, moody person. Even by myself, on retreat, no conversations or internet or news and here comes a crash of joy, a wave of anger, a ripple of sadness. Ha! How freeing to let the waves roll over me, laugh at their bluster, see them dissolve on shore leaving behind either nothing or maybe a pebble, a rock, something to take a look at and see what its message is.

Every day and night for 13 days, I watched, prayed to, swam in and learned from the water. And not just any water: MY water.

How funny to be a visitor to this town in Wisconsin, my first time here, and yet this is MY lake, the Lake Michigan water that flowed through the pipes of my Chicago childhood home, hydrated and cleansed me. The sprinkler water my friend and I jumped through on hot summer days. The lake I told my problems to as a teen as soon as I could drive the 20-some minutes there, or as a young adult when I lived close enough to walk. The lake I swam in with friends or cried to alone. The very lake my grandfather fished, my great-grandparents lived by as soon as they got off the boat from Poland.

We recognize each other, the lake and I. This lake knows me, it knows my people, my ancestors and where I come from. It shows me that everything moves and changes, my mind buzzes, my moods come and go. Yet at my core, I am recognizable through the ages, a consistent presence, an essence, a stillness beneath the noise.

Just like the Lake.

Healing Home

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Every morning, the first thing I do is come downstairs, open the blinds and thank the Creator for my view of the trees and creek. The lush, varying greens of Summer are a favorite, although those first explosions of Spring also take my breath away and the white etchings of snow-covered winter branches are the highest form of art, and the brilliant orange, yellow golds of Fall are ridiculously spectacular.

This weekend marks 13 years of living here, and I have loved the view each day of those many years.

Opening the blinds is my morning prayer. I’ve woven many forms of continual prayer into this home.

How many hours have I spent on the deck, watching the many busy chipmunks, the albino squirrels and their common grey cousins, the cardinals and woodpeckers and occasional hummingbird?

How many moments of crisis or heartbreak have I paced the driveway, arms raised to the trees, imploring their guidance and protection?

Often, I place my hands on the walls and say thank you.

Some evenings, when I’m walking up the stairs to bed, I see myself doing so throughout time, imagine my ghost gliding up and down the stairs into infinity.

Echoes of a little girl, friends and family gathering, Christmas carols fill each room.

Is it unhealthy to love a home so much, an apartment I don’t even own, a simple, aging duplex in the city?

The basement has a cupboard where my dog liked to sleep. The crayon sign my daughter made proclaiming his private space is still scotch-taped to the door. He died upstairs as I held him and I can point to the spot out front where he raised his head and luxuriously breathed in the autumn breeze for the last time on his final walk.

Today I swept the back deck, also a practice of prayer, and then lifted my eyes to the cobwebs reaching up the corners of the building, around the windowsills. Old and catching leaves.

I swept them down with satisfaction until I saw a spider scurry away and then another. Then I continued sweeping but with un-ease filling my gut as I took down their homes, maybe even killed them. This is part of the prayer, the attention to each moment, how I affect each being around me, how I am affected by each being, each place.

This place, my home for 13 years, has held me with a loving energy throughout all the joys and suffering that a decade-plus can bring. I’m a big weirdo, a sappy cornball – I know! But this home has nurtured my contemplative spirit more than any other place on earth.

Thank you, Creekhouse.

Grandson at Target

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I took this photo of my grandson Lucas yesterday. His hand is on the shoulder of a young Target shopper he just met. Lucas had enjoyed sitting inside that cube for a few moments, then saw a little person walk by and said “Come in here, baby.” The other boy then hid behind his mom’s legs and Lucas went after him. “Come in here, baby,” he said, his tone not demanding or forceful, but gentle and encouraging.

“He’s really shy,” the mom explained to me. “Does yours have siblings?” she asked, wondering where he gets his social confidence. “Not until next month,” I said.

Before finding the hollow cube, Lucas excitedly pointed out to me all the spectacular things on the shelves, the many colors he knew, the faces he recognized like Baby Shark and Mickey Mouse. Both his joy at the visual delights and his exuberance in sharing them with me (“Gammy, look!” “Gammy, look!”) melted my heart.

I know many toddlers are this way, fully present in the moment, able to find joy in the simplest things and eager to share them with others. But I know this specific toddler, see his unique preciousness in the way he is so attentive and caring, the way he looks into my eyes that peer above the mask I must wear in the store. As Grammy, I recognize his sensitivity, the preciousness of his heart as similar to his mother’s.

Soon enough, he’ll be lured out of the joy of each moment and learn to numb his exuberance with the screens in front of him. I know this as someone who spends plenty of time with screens of my own. I also know the new baby sister will no doubt be challenging, and that his devoted Mama worries about his feelings being hurt when her attention is divided.

I see these hearts, Lucas’ and his mother’s, the precious unique spirits we each enter into the world with – and then I see how the harshness of life, of being human among other humans hurts us and dulls our senses, our ability to feel the Sacred all around us. Oh, how part of me would love to preserve forever Lucas’ sweetness just as it is right now. After all, Lucas will probably have times of feeling sad and unseen when Sister comes, and the thought of that pokes at me, and certainly worries his Mama too.

Then I look out my window to see the young brother / sister duo that live next door exploring their yard together or playing ball on the driveway. Lucas will have moments of delight in playing with Sister, important lessons learned while sharing with her. He and Sister will have a relationship that further shapes him, maybe transforming the pure sweetness of his heart into an even richer capacity to love, a capacity far more expansive than my own heart, which grew up without siblings.

So I look at this photo of sweet Lucas, his hand on the shoulder of a shy little boy, his beautiful spirit shining and I remember that the whole point of being human is to be present to the full range of experience – simple and complicated, joyous and heart-wrenching – to experience all of it and then somehow find our way back to our own unique precious spirit with an even deeper capacity to love.