I witness the passage of time outside my window. Rhododendrons burst, suddenly, into bloom. One day there is a hint of petal, the next day, there are dozens, then scores of dome-shaped flower clusters.
Almost as suddenly, the blossoms are going; they are fading and brown, and only the dark-green almond-shaped leaves are left behind. To the left of the rhododendrons sit the bushes whose name I don’t know.
I love seeing those bushes move through the seasons: light green in spring, dark green in summer, red leaves in the fall, red berries all winter for the cardinals to eat. Today, I used an app on my husband’s phone that identifies plants. Now I know those bushes are called Winged Euonymous, also known as Burning Bush.
Despite the counseling I give my patients not to do research on the internet, I search for “Winged Euonymous,” and I find that my bushes are an exotic invasive species. In fact, they are banned in the state of Massachusetts!
I didn’t want to know that. These plants have kept me company through all the years I’ve lived in this house. It’s like learning that a child has grown up to be something other than what you wished for her.
The view outside my window blends with the reading I’m doing this week. I’ve been a fan of Natalie Goldberg for many years. She got me freewriting after I read Writing Down the Bones. Now I am reading Long Quiet Highway, her memoir about her Zen teacher, Katagiri Roshi.
I love this book. At every page, I wish I could have read the book sooner in my life, and yet here it is now. Now is the perfect time for me to read it. It has prompted me to find and dust off my copy of Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir.
I have a solid habit established for daily meditation, but I’ve been struggling with establishing a daily writing habit. Natalie’s books remind me that getting to know one’s own brain by writing is a form of meditation. I think this is going to help me.
“Keep the pen moving,” she says. “Write what’s in front of your face. Trust your insides to lead you.” She writes about being a Jewish girl from Long Island. When she was teaching social studies to a 6th grade class in New Mexico, she had a deep awakening experience.
It was “[b]y accident, not intended, not even wanted.” Her heart opened, and she had to change her path, from the cautious, workaday world of a teacher to the hand-to-mouth life of a spiritual seeker. She visited a palm reader (though she didn’t believe in that stuff).
It’s sometimes funny how spiritual messages come to us. Sometimes they come in an accelerating way until we do believe that stuff, until we must believe that stuff and actually do something.
She tried to tell her old friends about her heart opening. They had no idea what she was talking about, but a woman she met on the path to the Lama Foundation understood right away. Natalie says, “The Garden of Eden opened up in my heart, and I don’t know what to do.”
The woman replies, “You must find a practice to water that garden.” Natalie was in the right place at the right time. She fit in, even though she hadn’t been to India, didn’t have long hair and flowing robes.
Recently, I shared a poem with my writing group in which I talked about my own heart opening. The feedback I got told me I need to rewrite my poem. They took it as something negative. The meaning is not yet clear.
As I write, the meaning of what I see, read, and feel all begin to connect. What I see out my window, what I read in Goldberg’s books, and what I feel when my writing is not clear, all these things fall into place. I witness the passage of time; writing is meditation; expressing spiritual experience is hard, but it is possible.