By Debra Basham, on April 28, 2019 Last week was a week with loss. Good Friday, the husband of a client/friend/colleague passed. Holy Saturday, the father of a business acquaintance passed. Easter Sunday, a loyal member of Saint Joseph Buddhist Sangha passed. A Buddhist teacher invited me to use the 49 day ceremony.
49 Day Ceremony
When someone passes away, in addition to a funeral service that usually occurs three or seven days after the death, we have a ceremony on the 49th day. Traditionally, the period of 49 days after someone dies is seen as a time for that person to check their consciousness and digest their karma. According to Buddhist teaching the bodhisattva Ji Jang Bosal helps the deceased during these 49 days to perceive their karma so when they return they are reborn to help this world, rather than continue in the cycle of birth and death. Buddhism teaches that there is a life in this body, then a time of investigation or consideration, and then a new life …
Loss is such a raw part of human life.
Listening to a TED talk by Nora McInerny, I was moved to laughter and to tears. McInerny is the author of The Hot Young Widows Club: Lessons on Survival from the Front Lines of Grief.
McInerny said something members of our Grief Journey Group have said to one another over and over for over twenty years: We don’t move on from grief, we move forward with it.
The next day, opening the May 2019 Guideposts, I see, ‘A Different Kind of Grief’ by B’ette Schalk. Schalk felt she lost her husband to anxiety and depression, writing, “Gone was the vibrant man I’d fallen in love with 24 years earlier, the man who liked going to parties and playing cards.” The article closes with a single page with 5 headings of great wisdom for caregivers: How to Cope With Ambiguous Loss.
How to Cope With Ambiguous Loss
Put a name to it.
Use “both…and” thinking.
Accept that good enough is enough.
Manage your mixed emotions.
Imagine new hopes and dreams.
Ambiguous loss is what my friend is living as her husband is in a facility for those with Alzheimer’s disease.
Ambiguous loss is felt by students afraid to be at school for fear of a mass shooting.
Ambiguous loss is felt in the aging and staging of life.
On the light side of 40, she recently shared with me she had read on a website about cancer that having cancer was like living with a loaded gun pointed at your head. You did not know when it would go off, but you knew it would.
Ah, ambiguous loss….
Whether it is our youth, our goals, our jobs, our homes, our health, our strength, our courage, or our loved ones, or our memories, we all navigate the waters of ambigious loss.
The best way I can think to close this post is with this Deep Spring Center Thought for Today:
“Your loved one is not dead, only he has left his human form. He is now expressing himself through you, through your growing open heart that can allow itself the experience of grief and allow that grief to become a catalyst for compassion. He is expressing himself through you in all the ways he spoke to you in your life, the joys and the sorrows. He is expressing himself through every human that he touched in this lifetime. And he is in the soil and the stars and the rain and the sun. You cannot lose him.” ~ Aaron
Whatever has the nature to arise has the nature to cease and is not me nor mine.
By Debra Basham, on April 22, 2019 Recently I wrote a poem titled ‘Longing’ that was inspired by an exchange with a dear friend that left me feeling less than valued, wondering if I should have, or could have, done something differently in our past to allow for a more pleasant current exchange.
Sitting heart-to-heart with another precious friend a week or so later, I was stunned to have her say to me, “You are more invested in saving my marriage than I am.”
Later, as I was writing in my journal, some clarity came about all of this, inspired in part by the Thought for Today from Deep Spring Center.
You as a world are inviting conflict but then not doing the needed practice with it, so you must invite it again and again. You are like the child in school doing endless multiplication table drills; they are unpleasant but you have not studied the tables, and will not, so the teacher repeats the drills. Your inattention calls forth the repetition. If you wish the drills to cease, learn the tables.
~ Aaron
The “D” stands for Debra, and the “V” stands for the voice of wisdom I call Holy Spirit, from my journal entry:
D: I know the truth that ‘wherever you go, there you are.’ If she is so easily offended because he yelled at her, she will encounter that energy again. It is today’s quotation from Aaron about calling difficulties to us over and over to learn what we need to know.
V: If you had a lesson you are still learning that expresses itself in the ‘Longing’ poem, what might that lesson be?
D: Take nothing personally. I am not responsible for another person’s emotional state.
Note—As I wrote these words on to the journal page, I could feel something leaving my energy!
V: What else?
D: Wonderings are a symptom of not being present moment where I can gently say, “Oh, this is that old habit energy. I know you. Come, sit, have tea. I’ve been expecting you.” *
V: Tell all who know. They all know. Love, Holy Spirit
A very wonderful message on an Easter morning.
Going right along with that, was the quotation, “When humanity awakens, it will move beyond time,” which came from the Brahma Kumaris with this image:
*This is a reference to the stories of Milarepa (c. 1052 – c. 1135 CE), one of Tibet’s most famous yogis and poets.
By Debra Basham, on April 17, 2019 WORD FOR THE DAY
I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly,
acutely miserable…but through it all
I still know quite certainly that
just to be alive is a grand thing.
Agatha Christie
Visit Gratefulness.org/
This week’s news out of Paris was shocking, and of all times to have it be Holy Week for humanity to experience such a devastating loss of such history and magnificence and relevance and beauty. The Cathedral of Notre-Dame destroyed by fire.
Reminding ourselves of impermanence at times like this, we could/should read all of my blog posts rolled into one message. The message essentially is Agatha Christie’s: Just to be alive is a grand thing.
We might start with Does the tree still live in your heart? and Tree of Hope.
Then move back to Hey, Ma Durga. The following quotation is from that:
“My consciousness has never associated itself with this temporary body. Before I came in this earth, I was the same. As a little girl, I was the same. I grew into womanhood, but I was still the same. When the family In which I had been born made arrangements to have this body married, I was the same… And, in front of you now, I am the same. Ever afterward, though the dance of creation change around me in the hall of eternity, I shall be the same.”
Nothing—NO THING—lasts forever. We know that, and yet we deal with loss as though it is some sort of personal punishment.
Yes, it is loss. Yes, it is sad. Yes, it is difficult. Yes, it is painful.
But we do not have to suffer.
We suffer because of our subtle judgment, the way we tell the story in our own heart and mind. Today’s Thought for Today from Deep Spring Meditation Center explains that well.
Deep Spring Center
Thought for Today
Subtle judgment is caught up in the story that contracts and says,
‘I’m not good at this’ or,
‘I should be able to do it better.’
I might look at it and say,
‘I can do it better.’
That’s not a judgment.
I know I CAN do it better.
Can you feel the difference?
‘I should be able to do it better.’ Tightness, tension.
‘I can do it better,’ is a relaxed and spacious perception.
~ Aaron
I have been dealing with Comcast this week, updating router, cable box, and DVR. It took me five trips to the store, and many hours on the phone to finally get everything working. Right in the middle of all of that frustration (and I was feeling frustrated!), I knew nothing that was happening was eternal.
Whatever is happening, watch the stories you tell yourself about what is happening.
Make this a truly HOLY WEEK. Give up suffering….
By Debra Basham, on April 4, 2019 This past winter has been the f-a-s-t-e-s-t in my memory. We enjoyed visitors beginning the last week of January, and continuing right up until the week before we headed north.
Some groaned when I shared that, speaking of how difficult they found it to maintain balance with guests. I would clarify how fortunate I am we enjoyed everyone (well, maybe not everything about having brother-in-law, Jack, come down with stomach flu was altogether enjoyable).
We found an easy schedule, and I had time while many of our guests rotated activities they did without me—like shuffleboard or Tuesday night 60 cent shrimp at The Waterfront.
I honored my Tuesday afternoon meditation group, my Sunday morning online meditation, and my Tuesday evening Dharma Path study group. I attended my writers’ groups. I wrote my daily pages in my journal.
We enjoyed boating with Florida neighbors, going to Karaoke, playing dominoes, and watching HGTV and Wheel of Fortune.
I rode my bike, I enjoyed eating one meal per day, and I ORGANIZED.
As we prepared for departure, my organization really made the difference between struggling and savoring. For example, days before we were to leave, I took everything out of the fridge, washed all the shelves and drawers, placed clean paper towels on two shelves and in one drawer, and placed all of our stuff on those. I returned the homeowner’s fridge items to the door. On departure day, all I had to do was put our stuff into the cooler and toss out the paper towel carpeting.
Voilà!
Maybe because my overall birth number is 2, I live Habit Number 2 of Stephen R. Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People®.
The morning of our departure, I rode my bike to the Snowbird Poet’s group. There was confusion about the time and I sat waiting, writing in my journal: What gift to just be.
Workers were trimming a tree two houses down the canal. The heavy-duty equipment was VERY loud. I continued to write: What do I do with the noise? Do I story tell? Do I acquiesce? Might my peace coexist with the sounds? It has been a holy season. I’ll let my heart savor the sound, grateful I can hear.
Then a poem came through.
Saddest of Days
We buried her today
way too soon
Nothing prepared me
for the shock
Then soon she rose up
gathering all of my memories
Reaching the depths
of my despair
Singing my sadness to sleep
so our joy could dance on….
Debra Basham 04-01-2019 (WC 40)
My journal entry included: It is a time of releasing. Notice how easily it is here, then it is gone.
I’m very aware we are all here and gone, too.
You are, and you aren’t. Many of you are “gone” more while you are “here”, and will be more “here” when you are “gone”.
Just be present. That is enough.
You are enough.
Tell all who know. They all know.
Love, Holy Spirit
Today is Day 91, writing down my soul in my journal. Today is another day to let joy dance on. The saddest day is any moment we forget that….
By Debra Basham, on March 29, 2019 I have been wondering about the distinction between self care and nurture (kindness and wisdom) and “distraction.” Might we be doing wholesome actions such as exercise or journal writing, or playing music, without being skillful?
Additionally, I wrote to Barbara Brodsky, Founding Teacher of Deep Spring Meditation Center, asking about all of this. “We are encouraged to skillful practice of support practices, Metta, Tonglen, etc., that are a part of Buddhism. Might it also be appropriate to develop skillful support practices that come from outside of Buddhism? For example, Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). Tapping on the meridians, while being present with difficult body or mind states, and saying skillful statements can support insight and release of painful karmic patterns. One does not try to avoid the emotion, one feels (touches) the emotion, then moves through a process of working with the emotion at the level of energy and awareness.”
Barbara clarified that the primary distinction isn’t the specific practice but what truly has drawn the practice forth. Was the motivation genuine kindness or was fear present, thereby was the real desire to “fix” something?
Barbara went on to say that all support practices from any tradition are helpful when motivated from a spacious and kind desire to attend, rather than from a contracted fearful need to fix.
Barbara said the ‘Daily Quote’ from Aaron clarified the question perfectly.
When we release some of the self-identity and separation, we come to feel our interconnection with everything. The tree dances with the wind not because the wind forces the tree but because the wind and tree literally inter-are. They share the same core of being. The wind is the tree; the tree is the wind. And so they dance together. You can dance with life in the same way. ~ Aaron
Barbara’s summation was simply, “When our practice comes from that place of interconnection, we are attending with skillful support.”
At the relative level we appear to be separate, but at the ultimate level, there is no separate self. You can understand that no wave is separate from the ocean. The wind and the tree and you and I dance with life. We inter-are….
By Debra Basham, on March 22, 2019 You see, I have this weird, but in my experience, validated faith that if I surrender myself to my own words, the ones that came without too much cogitation or premeditation, they will lead me to a place I didn’t know I’d be visiting; they will show me 1) What I didn’t know was on my mind when I started, and 2) What I didn’t know I knew about that particular subject.
Sydney Lea, page 195, The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop, by Diane Lockward.
Sitting in my Snowbird Poets group, I placed my fingers on the keyboard barely breathing and witnessed The Aftermath.
Time is nonexistent, Dear One, non-exist-ant
Standing barefoot
I am aware
of things I am too young to know
Stripped of my innocence
when he climbed on top of me
in the courtyard
beneath the Viburnum
That snowball bush was in full bloom
while I was not
yet
but soon would be
Ten years later
I hear from some
deep drug-induced fog:
“If we don’t get her awake
she is never going to
have this baby!”
Then: “It’s a girl!”
53 years later
my twenty-year-old granddaughter
takes off on a bicycle
as a sinking feeling
of fear
flashed fast across my face
Of course, she was right
I would have let her brothers go—
without so much as a second thought
But the Viburnum will bloom
again and again
unlike a young girl’s innocence
Debra Basham 03-18-2019
See Processing.
Pearl Bailey says there’s a period of life where we swallow a knowledge of ourselves and it becomes either good or sour inside.
Bailey’s words sing the truth. I had come from a legacy of women who had worn the shackles of sexual shame. My mother had a first marriage she did not tell us about, and I did not learn until I was in my forties that she had discovered she had a sexually transmitted disease at the same time she found out she was pregnant for me.
I became pregnant on New Years Eve, three weeks before I turned sweet sixteen on January 22, 1966. I got married, and I was forced to leave high school in tenth grade. (See Loved and Wanted: Listen to Your Mother.)
My daughter, and my granddaughter have carried that legacy of sexual shame, but none of us need carry it any longer. It is time for all women to be free….
A Course In Miracles
LESSON 60
God is the Love in which I forgive.
God does not forgive because He has never condemned. The blameless cannot blame, and those who have accepted their innocence see nothing to forgive. Yet forgiveness is the means by which I will recognize my innocence. It is the reflection of God’s Love on earth. It will bring me near enough to Heaven that the Love of God can reach down to me and raise me up to Him.
I do not have written permission to share these words from Each Day a New Beginning: Daily Meditations for Women by Karen Casey © 1982, 1991 by Hazelden Foundation, but the message must be shared:
For too many of us, feelings of shame, even self-hatred, are paramount. No one of us has a fully untarnished past. Every man, every woman, even every child experiences regret over some action. We are not perfect. Perfection is not expected in the Divine plan. But we are expected to take our experiences and grow from them, to move beyond the shame of them, to celebrate what they have taught us.
Each day offers us a fresh start at assimilating all that we have been. What has gone before enriches who we are now, and through the many experiences we’ve survived, we have been prepared to help others, to smooth the way for another woman, perhaps, who is searching for a new direction.
We can let go of our shame and know instead that it sweetens the nuggets of the wisdom we can offer to others. We are alike. We are not without faults. Our trials help another to smoother sailing.
I will relish the joy at hand. I can share my wisdom. All painful pasts brighten someone’s future, when openly shared.
By Debra Basham, on March 17, 2019 Our granddaughter spent this past week with us. It has been six years since she had done that, and it was quite a week! As her mom said, “You cannot spend a week with Gammie without processing!”
Our first processing was my bout with an intestinal bug the day she arrived.
The second processing was my missed opportunity. Stacey and all the kids refer to a winter visit with us as retirement training. True to form, our big evening event after watching Wheel of Fortune was a game of 500 rummy at the dining room table, during which Courtney said, “I am wishing I had my car.”
My missed opportunity was to just be honest with her and let her know I understood her feeling. Instead, I launched into an unskillful articulation of why it was best for us that she not have her car.
We did not have an overt scene, but there was definitely a loss of rapport, and as soon as the game of rummy was over, she retreated to her room.
I took the lump in my throat to bed with me.
The following morning, I continued processing as I sat with my journal (See Writing Down Your Soul).
Gratefully, after she got up, Courtney and I sat on my bed for over an hour just talking heart-to-heart about LIFE. I shared my painful history around the sexual double-standard. I admitted to having been unskillful the previous night, and I thanked her for not giving up on me.
We spoke of significant things including: my mother’s having hidden a first marriage; my pregnancy at age 16; the culture that forbade my attending school because I was sexually active and a bad influence on the other girls; Courtney’s mom’s divorce from her dad.
Generations of sexual guilt and shame has been carried by the women in our lineage.
Courtney and I took turns with the tears…
Thursday night she sang karaoke at the American Legion and she killed it! One women came over to our table after Courtney’s first number and said, “My husband has an amazing tenor voice. Your singing moved him to tears.”
At the end of her last number, the DJ took the mic and announced, “We have taken a vote, and Courtney R. cannot go home. We are going to adopt her so she can stay here with us on Pine Island.”
It was such a HUGE night of affirmation for all of us.
Retirement training continued….
Friday morning Courtney played shuffleboard with her Gampie and all afternoon she sat in our TV room with him and a half dozen of his senior citizen friends playing mountain music and singing.
After the music, Courtney decided to ride her bike over to Ragged Ass. She did not ask to use the car. She said she would go for a little while before dinner. She asked me to send her a text to let her know what time dinner would be.
Our rockin’ Friday night was to be spaghetti dinner and dominoes with some of our Michigan friends. Her last night of spring break.
As Courtney took off on her bike, I had a sinking feeling. I could not even tell you exactly what it was, but our good friend, Nancy, saw it in my face and asked me if all was well. I said, “We will see how it plays out.”
A few moments later, as I finished putting the house back together after the music gathering, I could not find my phone. I had John dial my number. Courtney answered! “I took Gammie’s phone by mistake.”
As we hadn’t finalized the time for dinner, and now I did not have my phone, I asked John to send a text message to our friends asking what time we were planning to eat. Dinner would be at 5:30.
Because I knew we would be out for the evening, and busy off-island all day on Saturday before taking Courtney to the airport, I had several things needing to be attended to. I asked John to send Courtney a text message telling her I needed my phone. He did that.
She did not reply.
A while later, I asked John to clarify exactly what he had said to her in the text message to about my phone. He had written, “Gammie needs her phone.”
More time went by and still no response.
I looked at John’s phone to see what time he had sent the message.
He had also sent her a message saying dinner was at 5:30 so she needed to be back to leave at 5:15.
I told him it was unfortunate he had done that as it had given her an implied permission it was OK to not return home with my phone before then.
I was trying to calm down, willing myself to accept what was happening, but as time went by with still no reply to the text messages, I was having a harder time finding my center.
John and I were both becoming more and more triggered, and clearly we were reliving a difficult event when Courtney had come to Michigan the previous summer.
John grabbed his keys, headed for the door saying, “I’m going to get her. I’ll throw her @$$ in the car and put the bike on the rack.”
(The bike rack was on the car, because we would be returning her borrowed bike to the friends we were having spaghetti dinner and playing dominoes with.)
I told John going to get her and embarrassing her would not be kind to any of us and would only make things worse. Already after 5:00, it was too late for me to take care of the things I had wanted my phone for, so we both needed to just calm down.
I called Courtney. “Baby, I need you to come home. Your grandpa and I are in a big drama that all started because you took my phone and then didn’t answer our text messages. Since you’re in the middle of it, we need you to come home and help us work through this.”
When she came in, she was red-faced from racing home on the bike in the heat, and she was obviously now upset too.
Fortunately, it only took us a couple of minutes of processing to realize John had been sending the text messages to my phone — thinking that was the only phone she had! She obviously was not checking messages on my phone.
We all saw choice points….
Courtney said she could have returned with my phone as soon as she realized she had it.
John said he could have asked rather than assumed if she had her phone too.
I said I could have used John’s phone to send the text messages myself rather than asking him to send them. I knew she had her phone.
It would have helped if I had noticed he was sending the text messages to my phone rather than hers when I had looked at the time of the messages!
It was important to me to have Courtney know her Gampie had been so triggered that he wanted to ‘drag her @$$ out’ and I had stopped him from doing that.
I thanked her for helping us release not only the difficult time of her visit the summer before, but more importantly, an old pattern of the painful triangle of parenting between Debra/John/Stacey. John would let me be seen as the bad guy.
We all cried and we hugged and Courtney said it really bothers her to be yelled at.
I clarified that I had not yelled at her. I had been emotionally upset, but I had told her what was going on and I had stated clearly what I needed from her.
We were able to recover without any additional processing; and I think we all enjoyed our spaghetti dinner. I know Courtney enjoyed winning at dominoes!
She sent this precious text message while waiting at the airport:
“I loved my week with y’all! Even the processing…. haha.”
Here are two treasured photos taken at the same restaurant near the airport: the first in 2013 when she was 14, and the second after an amazing week of processing with this beautiful woman who calls me Gammie.
This may be the most significant week of processing of entire my life!
By Debra Basham, on March 6, 2019 Art is remembrance.
It is love.
It is like a sword
that distinguishes
between appearance and reality.
~ Rupert Spira
I have been wondering just what it is that allows some people to find joy or see beauty or create art where it might have been missed by another.
Musing is jogged by such mundane objects as coconuts and trees and chickens! My sweet friend, Carol L. Myers, with her recent display:
Not only did someone take time to create these coconut faces (below), someone also displayed them where others could share in the joy.
And someone paid great attention to detail.
Artists are like that. Artists pay attention. An artist can see something that has been there all along, but not noticed, and an artist shares what is there with the world.
Butch Farubetti looked at a Norfolk Pine that had been cut down and saw a ‘hidden treasure’ inside.
In The Art of Peace and Happiness (Presence, Volume 1), Rupert Spira says this about art:
An apparent object is never itself beautiful. True art is neither representation nor abstraction. It is revelation—the revelation that love, rather than inert matter, is the substance of all things.
By Debra Basham, on February 27, 2019 You have to love it when lessons come so closely you are able to see both sides of a coin clearly…. That has been my recent experience around customer service.
Stopping by a Little Free Library, I was so surprised by the thoughtfulness of leaving a pair of reading glasses on the shelf!
The ‘readers’ came in very handy for my daughter, Stacey, so she could pick out a book for rainy-day reading as she enjoys retirement training with us for the week.
Although I had the receipt, returning a light switch that did not match my switch plate cover was met with, “You will have to come back tomorrow when the manager is in. She is off on Monday.”
Mentioning that I was 9 miles away, and that I had arrived by bicycle (I was wearing my helment), produced no mercy. I felt the annoyance, but once out in the parking lot, I thought to return as ask about any other times of business the manager was not normally there.
The following morning, I drove back, and asked to see the manager. A different cashier said the manager was in, but she was in the office on the phone placing an order. As I waited, she and I chatted between customers. She had been born in Mexico, her mom lives now in Illinois. When the time became L_O_N_G, she said, “I am going to just take care of this for you. You have waited too long, and you should not have had to come back in the first place.” She completed the transaction just as the manager came around the counter, still on the phone, making eye contact with me and nodding her head, yes.
When I got home from the hardware store, I realized I must have only received change for a $10 rather than my $20 when I had met friends for coffee earlier at the Getaway Cafe.
Driving back to the cafe, I excused myself, and said, “When I was in earlier, I think you may have given me change for a $10, rather than my $20.” Handing him my business card, I went on, “If you are over $10 when you settle your drawer, just send a text or give me a call.”
Taking my card, he opened the drawer, and handed me a $10 bill, saying, “You take this. I get busy and it is more likely you are right. If I am short, I will call you. You should not have to drive back because of my mistake.”
Later that day at meditation, I shared all of this as a way to notice how, looking at all of our interactions as customer service, what is the impression I am making in the world….
By Debra Basham, on February 17, 2019 
I am still doing morning ‘writing down your soul’ pages. This morning’s entry dealt with my sleeping with a bed hog. From my journal:
This morning as I got up, I again showed John how he pushes me over to a 12-inch slot of bed. I find that very unrestful.
I asked what Holy Spirit would have me know. Would I prefer my bed empty? I answered that I would prefer not to sleep pushed over.
I was then reminded how all of life is connected, and how much I enjoy hearing John’s music, and how much I appreciate the life we have generated. When asked if this sleeping is major or minor, I admitted that it is overall minor, but it feels major when I am trying to sleep.
(Note* In my journal, I use a marginal notation of ‘D:’ for what I am saying and ‘V:’ for what Holy Spirit is saying. Here is the rest of my entry.)
V: OK. What allows you to bring kindness to both of you and have you say, “Honey, please scoot over. I am on the edge.”
D: The desire (choice) to have both of us matter.
V: You see how your sleeping in resentment is not kind to either of you. Saying exactly what you need will allow a new pattern to emerge. Be willing to say it gently over and over until the new pattern is stable.
As I closed my journal, I opened email to read this ‘Thought for Today’ from the Brahma Kumaris:
Your expectation will hold others back.
Your acceptance will let others fly.
P.S.
As I posted this, and went back to email, my next message was this:
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