Tag Archives: love

Grace in Transition

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Grace in transition requires mental hygiene, letting go, and endless patience.

Despite the uncomfortable feelings that flood my emotional body at times, I do my best to silence the unfriendly voices inside my head and move forward, counting my blessings. At the top of the list of course, is that my cancer is in remission. I have love in my life. I’m not in pain, can give love and share joy.

Structuring each day is key, setting small goals that lead me to exercise, write, meditate, tend the garden, hold my lover close, breathe in the warm fur of my cat. Always the question: am I living my best life?

I’m afraid that in recent years I whine when confronted with change, sometimes loudly. I leap before I look, a method that has worked well for much of my life. At my age though, this approach has reached its limit. It seems that when I want something desperately, and right away, it may not immediately be good for me!

Today, back home, I find myself battling my pain-body, scrubbing negative thoughts from my head and refraining from sharing those ideas with others. Or, if I do, I gently, circumspectly, relate my process in the spirit of inquiry. What do you think about my current circumstances? I ask, instead of, please, help me understand, think for me, comfort me.

Though I do ask for prayers for a sense of peace and gratitude.

Give myself grace. If I stumbled slightly in this last chapter, so what? I need to practice letting go and moving on, like the week-long course I took at Esalen Institute in Big Sur 35 years ago. Now that was taking a leap, too. Especially since I left my job and moved there to be part of the work scholar program shortly afterwards.

We did Kundalini meditations, danced energetically and sobbed extravagantly. We asked and answered intimate questions in small groups, and more. In the afternoon sunshine, we called out our names from the meeting room doorway and windows overlooking the sea: “Lindaaaaaa, time to come home.”

Ah, if only. But, in a sense, I did come home, as I ended up living in Big Sur for the next 30 years. A beautiful transition out of Esalen and into the local community, falling in love and marrying, then caretaking a 25-acre property. Sharing it with countless friends, neighbors and their children, at Easter egg hunts and gatherings of all kinds. Many joyous weddings and poignant memorials happened on that land, too.

Now that was a graceful transition into the unknown, my third big one, actually. Before was leaving California while at UC Berkeley to study in Madrid, Spain. Later, after my house burned down in an urban disaster, I left the Bay Area to live and work at Esalen, followed by living in Big Sur. All pretty smooth transitions, reflecting the joy and energy of youth, with all that endless optimism and trust.

Then, divorce and a small-town romance that led to my next marriage. Messier, for sure. Ten years later the owner sold the priceless property where we lived, and my second husband and I moved to a small town in the Midwest, the center for the Transcendental Meditation movement. A unique community in an agricultural state. What a ride that was! Another relatively graceful transition, with lots of work and pain. Now it feels like a dream.

As a homeowner, I experienced the seasons for the first time, and made lifelong friends, experiencing the sparkling, warm heart of a beautiful community. I planted trees and flowering plants, redbuds, a crabapple, peonies, lilacs, tulips, alliums. Removing the odd midwestern chain-link fencing that had been there for 50 years, we installed wooden privacy fencing. We expanded the deck, placing my birdbath, a buddha sculpture, and river stones in the garden beneath towering silver maple trees. We spent summer evenings watching fireflies and winter afternoons watching the snow fall.

Yet, in this last transition back to the Coast, I’ve had a taste of the final transition. Torrey showed me the way, gracefully letting go of his life, as he realized, as he said, that his body was broken, and knowing that his mind was in pretty bad shape too. What did he do that was so surprisingly wise and good in this time?

He was unafraid. He expressed few regrets, only that he’d wished that he’d “had his awakening” and longed to be in California when he gazed wistfully at the abalone shells beside the fireplace. When we watched the film Manhattan over those last Christmas holidays, he was sad that the glorious chapter of his life as young man in the Big Apple had ended as well.

He reviewed his time here even as his body and mind crashed. “Crashing’s part of racing,” he liked to say. In meditation for hours every day, he felt the vastness of his being and I saw that this gave him great peace. He broke free, and that was a joyous moment. I wanted to go with him, because whatever he saw and felt as he was leaving his body looked really, really good.

How to save oneself? How to heal and find freedom? Take a break from the relentless perspective of ego. The spiritual books in my downsized library all say, look within, but I know that community helps us grow, too. The only thing that has given me relief from my assorted griefs recently is to serve, to give and share: to make sure my lover takes his blood pressure meds, send gifts to my friends facing medical challenges, plant seeds, water plants, load and unload the dishwasher, make sure my dog eats well.

To offer a kind or wise word at the right moment means so much. I have been the beneficiary of loving, patient and thoughtful care, from people who owed me nothing. I want to be that person, the person who gets out of her own way, and gives to others freely, from her heart.

New Year’s offering from Middle Earth

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May This new year be filled with peace of heart and peace of mind…

The mists, gentle rain, pulsing winds and shining light of this corner of the world fill my heart’s cup. This is Middle Earth, with friendly hobbits, wizards and elves living in the timeless forest, freely offering sweet potions of wisdom and blessings to all.

As this new year begins, my resolutions swirl around my feet and float up above my shoulders, caressing me into feeling more faith in myself. Yes, I will (fill in the blank) and yes, I will (fill in the blank) etc. We’ll see how it goes.

A Sufi teaching says that gratitude is the key to will —and while I don’t yet understand that exactly, I am teasing out possible meanings. Steeping ourselves in gratitude – authentically counting our blessings: for life, for health, for shelter, for birdsong, clearly empowers us, if only to get up and out of bed in the morning!

To start the New Year, I also like to reflect quietly, and re-read passages from some of my favorite works. This year it’s Turgenev’s First Love, Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving, and Muslim Sufi mystic Inayat Khan’s unique symphony of truths, Vadan: “True love is without beginning or end…it is willing surrender…It is love that teaches us, Thou, not I.”

Following a theme of love and renewal, my favorite Pablo Neruda poem, from Extravagaria, has swum to the surface of my consciousness, so I’ll share it here:

This is where we live

I am one of those that live
in the middle of the sea and close to the twilight
a little beyond those stones.

When I came
and saw what was happening
I decided on the spot.

The day had spread itself
and everything was light
and the sea was beating
like a salty lion,
many-handed.

All that deserted space was singing
and I, lost and awed,
looking toward the silence,
opened my mouth and said:
“Mother of the foam,
expansive solitude,
here I will begin my own rejoicing,
my particular poetry.”

From then on I was never
let down by a single wave.
I always found the flavour of the sky
in the water, in the earth,
and the wood and the sea burned together
through the lonely winters.

I am grateful to the earth
for having waited
for me
when sky and sea came together
like two lips touching;
for that’s no small thing, no? –
to have lived
through one solitude to arrive at another,
to feel oneself many things and recover wholeness.

I love all the things there are,
and of all fires
love is the only inexhaustible one;
and that’s why I go from life to life,
from guitar to guitar,
and I have no fear
of light or of shade
and almost being earth myself,
I spoon away at infinity.

So no one can ever fail
to find my doorless numberless house –
there between dark stones,
facing the flash
of the violent salt,
there we live, my lover and I,
there we take root,
Grant us help then.
Help us to be more of the earth each day!
Help us to be
more the sacred foam,
more the swish of the wave!

Little House on the Prairie to Little House in the Big Woods

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“My soul is trembling in the wake of a colossal change,” I said —

“This is what you do,” replied a dear friend of many decades, reminding me of my life’s path so far, the cataclysms that have driven my personal evolution.

I’m sitting on my sheepskin beside the fire in the wood stove in a cabin built 150 years ago. I’m listening to Boris, the glorious Americana rooster sing his cock-a-doodle-doo. I’m watching Anna’s hummingbirds, one, two, four, five, seven and more, stream to the two feeders outside the window, their magenta head-dresses glowing in the muted light of this overcast day. The beams and shingles of the 19th century cabin ceiling were crafted from hand-hewn redwood milled from this canyon long ago.

It wasn’t an easy process, leaving my four-bedroom home in a quiet neighborhood on the edge of endless corn and soybean farms in the middle of the continent. The neat widow’s nest I’d fluffed and sorted until it was just right, my late husband’s library organized by subject in the redwood bookshelves he’d built, my tribe of loving and creative friends, my well-appointed Little House on the Prairie. Four years of dramatic transition – and blessed support.

And now, back home.

The tender romance that blossomed before and during the months of my cancer treatment: beginning in a French bistro in Carmel, a cup of coffee and a hug, with the kind-hearted gentleman who went on to take care of me the week of my surgery and who swept me away back to the coast in a madcap road trip last month.

Feeling the blessing of my husband on the other side, who would want me to be cared for, loved and happy.

Now, feeling nostalgic for a place I wanted to leave for much of my time there. We human beings are such odd creatures. Perhaps it was the shock of all Big Sur’s easily forgotten details – cold bedrooms and hauling firewood, poison oak blooming on my arms and face from touching the pets, a dash of PTSD looking out at the wooded canyons all around this Little House in the Big Woods.

Small things, a small price to pay for the privilege of living in love, again.

The joys of touch, the warmth of hugs, of cuddling under the covers. A delightful man who brings me coffee in the morning, who kisses my feet and makes me laugh. Like, duh.

Such a decisive moment and when did this change begin? A query from my sweetheart’s spiritual daughter, a beekeeper and animal rescuer who visited us this week.

It began in the moments when I realized I might have only 5 years to live. Wouldn’t one last chapter be sweet? My gentle knight in shining armor consoled me, telling me over and over that I would be OK, and we agreed we wanted to spend this next chapter together. So here we are.

Now begins a time of forest bathing, star-gazing, and luminous healing in domestic bliss.

Even a spiritual warrior trembles on the brink. She wonders about choices and consequences, longs for what is past, then clarifies her priorities in order to move forward with a peaceful and courageous heart.

And away we go!

Like a kid on a slide

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Norman Torrey Waag 1947 – 2024

Linda Sonrisa Jones

Jun 21, 2024

Late in his medical journey, when they inserted an IV, or poked another tube into a tender part of his body, he lost the masculine stoicism he’d carried proudly through his life. He would yelp in anguish and push medical staff away, telling them, No, No, No.

Nephrostomy tube, catheter, stent, pacemaker, PICC line, cardioversion, the works. He got it all in the battle to keep him alive, although in a diminished state. Ultimately, that was not his destiny. He understood this, and escaped.

A magical life has a magical end; he departed on Lord Rama’s birthday, with thunder in the heavens, in his own bed, with his beloved wife and dog beside him.

When the doctor urged us to return to the hospital for that last time, we felt like combat veterans, compelled to return to war. We had to go back, it had become what we knew, and we were trying to get it right.

In some ways we did. Lovely young nurses sat with him because of his inclination to leave the ward, half-dressed in his street clothes, or, imperiously naked and yelling. Those were bad moments, but they were also pure, the authentic rebellion of a freedom-loving soul.

I came into the room and a willowy young brunette was sitting beside his bed. “Linda, this is Abby,” he said, his voice rich with warmth, “and she wants to go to Italy, too!”

On an earlier hospital stay, I watched a girl with a crooked face bring him his meal. Suddenly she was smiling at him shyly. I turned to see him beaming at her. Our nurse friend laughed when I told her this story. “Coping mechanisms,” she commented.

During our last hospitalization he was surrounded by caring and kind people, from the wonderfully present doctors to the male student nurse who watched women’s basketball games with us.

Everyone who had the time was interested in him. He recited the poetry of Hafez to the palliative care staff: “We all rise each morning to labor on the Earth’s field. No one does not lift a great pack.”

The grief I live with now is a gentle, perpetual ache in my soul. A grief that is a profound reminder of the great adventure that awaits us all.

I know he had to go on ahead, and I know he waits for me, just around the corner of the river, basking in a sea of consciousness and bliss.

Today, the leaves of the cottonwood and maple trees dance softly in the breeze. Sparrows, cardinals and chickadees chatter in the garden. The magenta spirea bush waits patiently for me to plant it in the dark, worm-filled Iowa dirt.

Does Death Really Exist? Like so many of Tor’s books, this odd little guide, by Swami Muktananda, fell off the shelf and into my hands. At last, I can really read these spiritual, intellectual works, opening them to find the perfect words for this moment.

How a person dies is the fruit of the way in which he has lived. It is said that if you want to attain anything in this life, attain a good death…O God, if You really want to give me something, give me a good death, a sweet death.

What is it like to meet your end with a vast library of Buddhist, Hindu, Christian and Ancient Egyptian teachings on the subject, yet no longer be able to read them? I suppose you rely on the accumulated wisdom of your many lifetimes, and your own personal awakenings.

This life is but one day in the life of the Soul. Tor taught me this, and it gives me great comfort. It’s what I told the caregivers when I shared that he hadn’t eaten in a few days, not really at the end of our hospital stay, and not when we came home, either.

That’s when they said it was time for Hospice to assess him.

Always a fast learner, Tor grabbed that opportunity. As pneumonia came on and his breathing became labored, he swallowed the morphine and raced into the afterlife. Whoosh! Like a kid on a slide.

Photo from Waag Family archives.