March 28, 2013

Easter weekend looms. Someone has called our current weather “Marchuary.” That sounds like the word “mortuary.” This is when we meditate on our Lord’s crucifixion and resurrection. It is a time of inner renewal. We slough off the dead cells of thought and glow with whatever inner being we have managed to bring forth.

I once had a dream in which I was attending my own funeral. A woman testified that I had been crucified and had arisen. That was my own Hallelujah dream. Since then I have returned to the tomb time and time again, for this is an earth school. My sense is that I did arise on a higher plane but that I must continue to serve down here as long as my body lasts.

My life is quite simple and yet I manage to complicate it with regularity. Such is the nature of life among the roses and thorns of this world. I got to hear Leonard Cohen perform recently. Now I sit here with tight sore shoulder and neck muscles, for that is where the tension came home to roost.

His line about “that’s how the light gets in” became the subtitle of my book, Life With A Hole In It. His performance on the world stage is awe-inspiring. He has the knack of reducing everything to a minimum so everything extraneous falls away. He wastes no word or gesture so that the light may pour forth at its maximum. This is grace of the Self and for it Cohen has paid the price.

There is a Work expression that says “Take what you want and pay for it.” This is not complicated. We all do this every single day of our lives. If we want inner peace, the price we pay is to surrender everything in us that is not peaceful. And so it goes. But it goes with ever-increasing grace. And that, too, is how the light gets in.

*Leonard Cohen: “As I understand it, into the heart of every Christian, Christ comes, and Christ goes. When, by his Grace, the landscape of the heart becomes vast and deep and limitless, then Christ makes His abode in that graceful heart, and His Will prevails. The experience is recognized as Peace. In the absence of this experience much activity arises, divisions of every sort.
 
Outside of the organizational enterprise, which some applaud and some mistrust, stands the figure of Jesus, nailed to a human predicament, summoning the heart to comprehend its own suffering by dissolving itself in a radical confession of hospitality.”

Vicki Woodyard
Life With A Hole In It

In my heart there is room for mystery and grace.
Not so for hard-looking happy people with
sensible shoes and stock smiles.

In my heart the loopholes of the lost are
laced with golden harp strings
playing daily in the ballroom where
dance the lonely ones.

Shimmering, moldering loves arise
to meet me face-to-face.
Grace-to-grace.
I’ve come unlaced.

Things are not how they seem but otherwise.
Come let us sing and play the songs we
love so much.
Perhaps the heart will grace us with its
tattered song.
The heart with no companion
is the sweetest note….

Vicki Woodyard
Author, Life With A Hole In It

Leonard Cohen at the Fox Theater in Atlanta, Georgia, 2013

“Avoid the flourish. Do not be afraid to be weak. Do not be ashamed to be tired. You look good when you’re tired. You look like you could go on forever. Now come into my arms. You are the image of my beauty.” ~Leonard Cohen, Death of a Lady’s Man.

What I witnessed for over three and a half hours was a man and his touring company hard at work to deliver the goods impeccably.

We sat close enough that we could see the guys waiting in the wings to hand off instruments, etc. to the musicians. As I follow the online journey of Leif Bodnarchuk, a backline tech, that was interesting to see.

Leonard himself has gone beyond the need of reviews. The man is a legend. He is, in a sense, a blue-collar worker. Just like a delivery man might come into a bar with a box of 24 glasses and say, “Here’s your delivery,” —thus did Leonard take center stage and humbly deliver his body of work. He’s your man. He’s Everyman.

Some were seeing Leonard for the first time. Others follow him as often as they can. No one could fault one moment of this show. When they took their last bows, they were well-deserved.

The crew begin tearing down and loading out the equipment as if in a race against time. My son and I stood at the stage door for ten minutes or so. We saw Javier Mas talking to Rafael Gayol, who was holding a styrofoam box of food. Shortly, Alexandru Bublitchi could be seen joining them. Then it began to rain and we scurried hurriedly back to our car.

Our night on the town finished, I sat in my own kitchen again. We are all alike, folks. As Leonard says we are “the brief elaboration of a tube.” And so to bed, having had a cup of hot chocolate and a cookie or two. The Master had held class and I was privileged to be one of his students for “one night only.” Leonard fed us on the loaves and fishes with baskets left over. Now that is a miracle…no waiting required.

Vicki Woodyard
Author, Life With A Hole In It: That’s How The Light Gets In

The mind is an instrument of torture when used for anything but practical purposes.

Let your thoughts lie dead in the market. They are offal.

Surrender your desire to be thought of as special.

Leave off telling us about your happiness. No one wants or needs that.

Verify everything with your body. It tells you nothing but truth, whereas your mind lies.

Give up thinking that good luck is just around the corner. There is no corner.

I’m all over the place when I write. Last night I was at a Poetry Evening at Cancer Wellness. Small but inspiring group of people willing to stand up and read. We got down, folks. We really did. I read five of mine and one in particular got a laugh. I can’t suppress the comedy writer for very long, as you know. I believe the line in the poem contained the word “suck.” Well, actually, I know it did.

We had dainty little servings of exquisite food. Not being a drinker, I had my first Pellegrino with a Meyer lemon in it. Fancy. Then I sat back and listened, clicking my fingers instead of clapping, as per the instructions.

Today has been slow. I am so excited about Leonard Cohen coming to town next Friday night. It’s been a long winter and he is bringing spring with him. I want to write about the experience—be warned.

Woke up this morning almost in tears. I had gotten up at six. Had some toast and oatmeal and then went back to bed. The dreams were intense, as they often are when I go back to sleep. Every long-buried trauma seemed to rise up and scream at me. So I was grateful when the day got started. I made a grocery run and took a short walk in the afternoon. It was hot and windy and I scudded along like a cloud.

Tonight my son and I watched The Buena Vista Social Club. I had seen it before and always enjoy it. I watched Bill Maher’s monologue and laughed at his pope jokes. I had been writing my own in my head. Like saying what the cardinals actually like to eat is suet. I have tossed down way too many mini-Hershey Bars today….and now for the poem.

If you are wondering what your fate is,
What your “too late” is….
Imagine God handing you a valentine
that says “Be mine.”

If you are on the verge of a breakdown
about what’s to come down
hard on you,
Here’s what to do.
Be “you.”

For if you try to be like them,
nothing will happen but resistance
in this instance of copping out.

If you are wondering where
your next love is,
Turn and face yourself.
It can’t be done
for you are one.

Vicki Woodyard
Author, Life With A Hole In It

Essence is elixir of the gods.

A good prayer: “God help me to bear heaven.”

You can’t bookmark the ocean!

Truth is strong medicine and sleeping people have allergic reactions to it. They break out in lies.

The world savages us. Society paints a veneer over this. Wisdom calmly sees this and never fights back. Why? Because it occupies a higher level.

When you stop thought in order to just be, the entire truth rushes in and fills you. We should be living for this.

Now that my friend Betty is living on the other side of the veil, I find myself moving into a much larger inner space. Isn’t that curious? I feel as if she knows perfectly well that this is happening and is luxuriating in her healing. No more body to betray her with its nausea and weakness.

Yes, she misses her family deeply but she gave them the best of herself over a long period of years. She was a good Jewish mother, happy in the kitchen and in the garden. When she felt like it, she spent time watching wildlife in her backyard surroundings. She also loved music; we had that in common.

I have opened quite a few of her old emails, just to see what it would feel like. Nothing has changed. Our energies matched so perfectly; there was no static between us. I also have a very small file of emails from my friend Peter. I will retype them into the Mac at some point. They are too precious not to be shared.

When it comes right down to it, simple everyday life is to be cherished. Pots of soup, honest feelings expressed, silence, candles, lovely warm baths. Who cares about complexity anyway?

A good prayer is “God help me to bear heaven!”~Vicki Woodyard

My friend Betty passed into light on March 8, 2013. Since then I have been experiencing, not sorrow, but an expanded sense of silence. I have gone about the last few days touching her absence as if she had left me with a gift.

You see, we emailed each other almost daily, having met on Bernie Siegel’s forum quite a few years ago. I knew that her prospects weren’t good. She had been diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer, Stage III. As we begin to write, she felt free to tell me her hopes for beating the disease. At one point she even said she had “learned her lessons” from the cancer and didn’t think it would recur. And of course it did.

She would write, “You shouldn’t have to go through this with me; you have already been through it twice,” and I would say that I was up to it. And then we would talk about cooking, gardening, butterflies, birds that visited her yard in Florida. We were both honest to a fault and said how we felt about being private people.

She encouraged my writing and always told me the truth. I asked her advice on all kinds of things that went on in my daily life. We joked around and shared our fears of the future. Last year she went to hear John Edward when he came to town. He seemed to avoid telling her anything and I suspect he saw what lay ahead of her.

The last email I got from her showed me that she was growing weaker. She had forgotten someone who we both had talked about. From using her iPad from her bed, she now turned our correspondence over to her son. He was very kind about relaying our messages to each other.

Then last week he wrote to say she was slipping and was now in a hospital bed at home and on morphine. I knew she was already halfway on the other side. I remembered how I had broken down and sobbed when my friend Jeanne died of ovarian cancer. But with Betty, so far it has been different. Such peace is felt.

I am going to post this beautiful image that a friend happened to send me in an email. Let’s just call it Betty’s Rebirth.

Sleeping woman
merges with true nature.
Intangible entangled
with the ground.

Vicki Woodyard
Author, Life With A Hole In It

I could write a book about suffering. Oh, that’s right. I did. Apparently I have learned very little about it. I can be having a perfectly good day when pow! right in the kisser. An emotional riptide pulls me under. I try to fight my way out. Bad idea. Best to go with it. Welcome it. Sit down and invite it to have a cuppa with you.

But grief is smarter than we are. It knows all about us. Last night I had the evening to myself and grief would have none of that. It soon had me crying about being alone. Once it found a chink in my armor, the rest was easy. I ran right down memory lane, exaggerating the good times and mourning that they would not come again.

Tissues piled up in the pocket of my robe. Time does not alter love nor make the losses much easier to bear. The holidays are poking their nasty little heads around the door. Soon my birthday, then Thanksgiving, Christmas, my wedding anniversary and the New Year. Fast forward to January 2, any year. I am a waist-size bigger, I have bought stock in Kleenex and vowed to “get a life.”

But hold on a sec. After Bob died, I DID get a life. I became a published author. Not that anyone seems to have noticed—ahem. Life With A Hole In It, A Guru in the Guest Room…hello! Not only that, I have written well over a thousand Facebook Notes. Time for another exclamation point.

But the point is that the grief will always be there, just as the love. Actually the love grows…
“More today than yesterday, less than tomorrow” is the right phrase to quote. Bob gave me a charm with those words on it. He also gave me two children and 38 years of fidelity to our marriage.

So grief is an old friend. Not a welcome one, but a necessary ingredient in my life. I will never be Polly Plastic, healed over and sashaying forth into the world. But I do go to Tai Chi once a week and Part the Wild Horse’s Mane for all it’s worth. I know what my soul needs, which happens to be my own good company. I use the “n” word (NO) quite liberally. This extends to putting up with evil-intentioned parsers and those who would have me smile at my grief as if it were stamped with an expiration date.

Each loss is etched into my soul’s journey. Love is somehow dignified by them. I am not sentimental by nature. If you come inside my home, you will see a minimal amount of clutter. I prefer practicality and I subscribe to the less is more philosophy. A Scorpio with a Virgo ascendant, I don’t take kindly to emotional mess.

What I do is recycle everything. My sorrow has become a way of working through the artificiality that clogs my pores. It cleanses my skin and deepens my insights into what makes people tick. And I know what floats my boat and it ain’t faux cheerfulness. It is, these days, the sight and sound of Leonard Cohen on his knees, and the fact that he can get back up again! As the guru told his disciple, “Everytime you fall down, just get back up.” And each essay I write is another successful attempt at just that. Leonard Cohen and I rock!You can order Vicki’s book here.