What I Learned on Retreat
People want to know what I learned on retreat. I want to tell them, but it’s hard. How do I say it — that I learned there is love in the world….that the world IS love….without sounding sappy? Or sentimental? Or just plain stupid?
I can’t.
So I turn to the poets.
Aimless Love
by Billy Collins
This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,
I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table.
In the shadows of an autumn evening,
I fell for a seamstress
still at her machine in the tailor’s window,
and later for a bowl of broth,
steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.
This is the best kind of love, I thought,
without recompense, without gifts,
or unkind words, without suspicion,
or silence on the telephone.
The love of the chestnut,
the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.
No lust, no slam of the door–
the love of the miniature orange tree,
the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,
the highway that cuts across Florida.
No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor–
just a twinge every now and then
for the wren who had built her nest
on a low branch overhanging the water
and for the dead mouse,
still dressed in its light brown suit.
But the heart is always propped up
in a field on its tripod,
ready for the next arrow.
After I carried the mouse by the tail
to a pile of leaves in the woods,
I found myself standing at the bathroom sink
gazing down affectionately at the soap,
so patient and soluble,
so at home in its pale green soap dish.
I could feel myself falling again
as I felt its turning in my wet hands
and caught the scent of lavender and stone.
There Does Seem to be a Certain “Something”
As a follow-up from yesterday’s post: here’s a link to the photo project my friend was referring to when she asked me to take selfies before and after the retreat. Not all the photos are still up on the link — but enough, I think, for you to see what seems to be an almost eerie similarity between these and the ones I took. Don’t you think?
Before and After
One of my friends asked me to take a “selfie” just before I started the 2-month retreat at Spirit Rock, and then another after I’d finished. She said she’d heard of someone who had done this with a whole group of people on retreat and she was curious to see if there’d be any difference. I was curious too, so I did it.
This is the picture I took right after I arrived at Spirit Rock on Jan 28, just before going into the meditation hall to “stake out” my spot in the hall. (The next day, we voluntarily turned our phones into the office for the duration of the retreat.)
This is the picture I took on Mar 24, as I was standing at the door to my dorm, right after we were given our phones back. I’m not sure what this says about meditating. Except that my hair looks better after I’ve been on retreat than after I’ve been on an airplane!
You Already Know
I will not be posting again until after I get back from the 2-month retreat at Spirit Rock. The retreat ends on Mar 25th, but it will take me a while to get my “land legs” back. Check again on April 3.
In the mean time, I leave you (as is my custom) with a selection from my favorite guide book for travelers, Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino.
Cities & Eyes 5
When you have forded the river, when you have crossed the mountain pass, you suddenly find before you the city of Moriana, its alabaster gates transparent in the sunlight, its coral columns supporting pediments encrusted with serpentine, its villas all of glass like aquariums where the shadows of dancing girls with silvery scales swim beneath the medusa-shaped chandeliers.
If this is not your first journey, you already know that cities like this have an obverse: you have only to walk in a semicircle and you will come into view of Moriana’s hidden face, an expanse of rusting sheet metal, sackcloth, planks bristling with spikes, pipes black with soot, piles of tin, blind walls with fading signs, frames of staved-in straw chairs, ropes good only for hanging oneself from a rotten beam.
From one part to the other, the city seems to continue, in perspective, multiplying its repertory of images: but instead it has no thickness, it consists only of a face and an obverse, like a sheet of paper, with a figure on either side, which can neither be separated nor look at each other.
Now That The Walls
For today, this poem by Mark Nepo:
Now That I Feel
how little time there is, I’m
falling in love with everything:
the stranger whose name I’ll
never know, and the crow
pecking at the half bagel
she left for him.
Now that the walls I didn’t
know were walls have come
down, I want to care for
everything. And the sun
warming in all directions
without preference is
showing me how.
Today my heart aches,
not because something is
lacking, but because the love
I’ve carried all along is bursting
through all the gates of choice.
Lesson Learned
When I sat the 1-month retreat at Spirit Rock last March, I had a little notebook that I kept in my room so I could jot down the talks I wanted to listen to when I got home, or anything else I really wanted to remember from the retreat…and on one of the pages I wrote: NEXT TIME — TAKE THE SWEATER!!!
The weather was a lot colder last year than I had expected (and a LOT wetter) and although I had thought about taking one of my favorite winter wool sweaters, I ended up deciding against it — because it took up a lot of room in my suitcase and I thought surely it would be way too heavy for California in March.
Wrong.
I lusted after that sweater almost every day of the retreat.
So this time, I’m taking the sweater. I’m also taking:
- An umbrella, a rain jacket with a hood, AND a warm hat
- Closed shoes (last time all I had were my strappy Keens)
- Three pairs of wool socks (I only brought one last time and ended up wearing them every day)
- A sturdy, flat-bottom bag (like for groceries) to carry clean clothes back up the hill from the laundry room (since last time I used my pillowcase and everything got jumbled up — and rained on!)
I’m also taking some warm-weather stuff — a couple of sleeveless tops, an ultra-light sweater, linen pants, and thin socks — because I’ve been to Spirit Rock when it’s been HOT in the spring and, well…things change!
Given the Illusion
I leave early Saturday morning for my 2-month retreat. I haven’t started the actual packing just yet (first I have to wash everything I own — in case I decide, at the last minute, there’s something I hadn’t thought of that now I can’t live without), but I’m definitely in departure mode.
So for today, I offer:
American Airlines #371
by Billy Collins
Pardon my benevolence,
but given the illusion that my fellow passengers and I
are now on our way to glory,
rising over this kingdom of clouds
(airy citadels! unnamable goings-on within!)
and at well over 500 miles per hour,
which would get you to work in under one second,
I wish to forgive the man next to me
who so annoyed me before the wine started arriving
by turning each page of his newspaper
with a kind of crisp, military snap,
and the same goes for that howling infant,
and for the child in the row begin me
who persisted in hitting that F above high C
that all of her kind know perfectly how to hit
while rhythmically kicking the back of my seat.
Yes, I have softened and been rendered
even grateful by the ministrations of Eva,
uniformed wine bearer in the sky,
and if we are not exactly being conveyed to Paradise,
at least we are vectoring across the continent
to Los Angeles–orange tree in the backyard,
girl on a motorcycle roaring down Venice Boulevard.
And eventually we will begin our final descent
(final descent! I want to shout to Eva)
into the city of a million angels,
where the world might terminate or begin afresh again,
which is how I tend to feel almost every day–
life’s end just around another corner or two,
yet out of the morning window
the thrust of a new blossom from that bush
whose colorful name I can never remember.
Non-Hate
“Hatred never ends through hatred.
By non-hate alone does it end.
This is an ancient truth.”
— Dhammapada, trans. Gil Fronsdal
Getting Ready
I’m getting ready to pack for the 2-month retreat at Spirit Rock. I know I’ll need 2 weeks of underwear — since they only do laundry every other week — and a 60-day supply of face wipes, hand lotion, etc. But I’m not sure how much chocolate I need to plan to bring with me. (I’ll be gone 8 weeks. This is an issue!!!)