snailpath

In my work, I used to plan, preside, and assist at quite a few funerals and memorial services. Sometimes, relatives simply said, "Do whatever you think is right." When I knew about their lives and beliefs, this was not difficult. But if we met for the first time, my operating question was not "What can we (including the Church, whom I represented) do well?" but, "How can we least offend?"

One day, when I was serving in a Roman Catholic Church, a well-dressed, well-spoken woman, perhaps in her early 60s, arrived in my office. She was carrying a package, approximately the size of a generous box of chocolates, wrapped in brown paper.

"This is my mother," she said.

Ah, her ashes, I immediately grasped. No, don't put her on the floor -- here, use this chair.

Then, the woman spoke. She had been living abroad for most of the past 25 years, and when her mother died a year ago she didn't know what to do. She was living in a Muslim country where no Roman Catholic churches or clergy existed, and although she personally wasn't religious, her mother had made many pilgrimages...

And so the story went. What could she do to honor her mother's faith, while keeping true to her own knowledge? We had time, and so I allowed her to answer the questions. It did not happen in this visit -- really, there was no rush -- and over the next two months she grew into what was needed. In the end, a private Mass was celebrated, just for the family; she and her husband and children participated in a from-the-heart eulogy, and the ashes were committed to the ground at a nearby Roman Catholic cemetery.

With time and patience, we get it right.

But did I at my father-in-law's funeral? More next time.

Have a slow journey,
Candace

On the first day of January, Rich's father died. This was a bit more than a week after his 84th birthday, and about a decade after he gave up on life. For most of that time, he never left his bed except to eat the three meals provided by the assisted living facility. A combination of medications kept him from further suicide attempts, but nothing stopped his mind from churning up images of a past that terrified and of a punishment that awaited. No assurance, psychological or spiritual, could convince him that he was wrong.

By the time a stroke took him, with speed and mercy, his once strong body which served him as a truck driver and football player and machinist, was no more than a thin canvas over bones, reduced not by betrayal of the body but by destruction of the mind.

But once, there was more. In preparing for the funeral, Rich gathered up photos of his Dad, beginning with his years as a sailor during World War II. No doubt, these years, for all of their horror, were an unsurpassed adventure for a coal miner's son who never could have dreamed of travel to islands in the Pacific or the ports of Russia.

There he is on his motorcycle, and in his football uniform, and his arms around a young woman. Smiling, and eyes bright. Ah, life is so good! Then the wedding photos, and then holding the hand of his young son.

It is said in many traditions that the soul/spirit/consciousness hangs around for a while before moving on to the next world/life. Naturally, the recently-departed body is curious, and listens in on the conversations at the funeral. What did they, really, think of me?

In this case, it was this: "I always remember him smiling," many visitors said. Most, of course, had not seen him in ten years.

But, now free from his thoughts and his body, did he realize, "Ah, that life was, after all, so good."

Let's move slowly through it. Smiling.

Candace

Who looks outside, dreams;
Who looks inside, awakes.
--Carl Jung

I am walking on the bridle path at Central Park when a young woman approaches. She is obviously lost.

"Can I ever get out of here?" she asks, half-laughing, half desperate. "I'm going round and round, and there's no exit."

I say, as seriously as I can, that no, there is no exit.

"Then I guess I just have to jump the fence," she says, laughing again.

I then admit there is a way out, and she just passed it. Follow me, I say, I'm going that way. You can get to Fifth Avenue from here.

How do I know this? I'm not smarter, it is only because I passed this way once before, and I'm grateful to share my minimal knowledge of park geography (New Yorkers: 'Fess up. Everyone, at some time, gets lost in Central Park).

Everyone goes in circles, and everyone gets lost. Admit it. Understanding begins when we know where to get out, and if we can't find a way at first -- laugh. And keep walking.

I will be taking a brief break from Snailpath as the hibernation season deepens, and will return in early January. At that time, I also hope to have another blog up-and-running about a specific and, I believe, foundational Snailpath practice.

For now, thank you for reading this. Those who track such matters estimate 13 million blogs are now circulating, and I am honored to have your time; and, as always, comments are welcomed.

Have a slow journey,
Candace

My morning meditation began with an outside hum that progressed to inner anger and ended with an exploding thought, "Do humans improve upon anything, or will our only legacy be destruction?" We are, after all, a people who believe that war brings peace, and there exists an "Us" and "Them," and that this precious life is best used watching television (or reading -- writing! -- blogs).

Such are the thoughts provoked by the hum of a chainsaw across the road, now in its second week, cutting the trees. For what? More houses? A "neater" backyard for the farmer (he's done this before).

When humans leave a place, is it better?

I did not have these thoughts in Manhattan. I can easily meditate while horns honk and car alarms wail because cities belong to us, it is where we become the best of who we are: Artists and actors and writers and musicians and idea-addicts, all living for the question: How do I interpret and transform life?

I need the City to show me who I can become.

But I need the trees to remember who I always will be.

Have a slow journey,
Candace

In a former profession, I thought a lot about "resurrection" and "rebirth" and other such philosophical conundrums which, when embedded in a religion, become thoroughly theoretical and ultimately meaningless as a path of healing, growth, and freedom.

I thought about this on my return to New York, too, along with the equally puzzling concept of "reincarnation." Then, I stopped thinking, and once more understood.

I ate at the same restaurants that I did a year ago, with the exact same meals. I met some of the same people. I shopped at the same bakery, and bought the same sort of loaf I had dozens of times before.

But, it is obvious, I was not the same person physically, and neither were those with whom I shared time. The food was not the food I ate and long ago digested, nor was that food even alive a year ago.

So why was I still stuck, partly, in the same emotions, if everything else had truly died and been reborn many, many times? Why was my heart still in chains?

Because death and rebirth, I perhaps hoped, was something in the future, when "something" would change and "someone" would do this something to me, and all I need do was wait and suffer.

Silly, no? So I went to New York to find those hungry ghosts who love to chortle, "I'm You!"

And I found -- no, they're not.

I am alive -- again.

And they are not.

Have a slow journey,
Candace

I recently returned from a brief trip to New York City, my birthplace and home for almost half my life. A questionable fact that writers (at least those living in New York) accept as true is that 80 percent of the country's writers live in this place where, it is also true, enough stories are generated in 24 hours to keep a writer busy for as many years. So, a few will follow as I digest and chew them through.

But first, the novel that accompanied me on the bus trip. It is a classic, and one I have read before: Alexander Solzhenistsyn's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich." Briefly, the plot is this. The scene is a gulag in Siberia where, during Stalin's reign, millions suffered and millions died for crimes never committed. The "zeks," the prisoners, live in frozen huts, work on mindless projects, wear rags, eat watery gruel, and at any time can be beaten or thrown "in the hole" at a guard's whim. And their sentence is virtually endless: When the ten years are over, they are given ten years more.

At the end of the day, we are with Shukhov, an ordinary zek who shows us that humans can, even in most brutal of institutions, take pride in their work (even if without purpose), and in humor (even if without laughter), and in caring for one another (even if risking punishment).

He is in his straw bunk, looking forward to five hours of sleep before beginning the next workday on the tundra, where the temperature is thirty below zero.

Solzhenitsyn writes: "Shukhov felt pleased with life as he went to sleep. A lot of good things had happened that day." Among them was an extra bowl of oat gruel at dinner, an extra chunk of bread, some tobacco bought from another inmate, a slice of sausage and two biscuits (one of which he gave away) bestowed by a "wealthy" zek who received a parcel from home, and he really enjoyed the day's work, building a wall as good as it could be.

"The end of an unclouded day. Almost a happy one."

Happy Thanks-giving,
Candace

At a jail in San Francisco, women are learning about food. Specifically, they are learning that food matters, and that they have a choice. They are participants in a substance abuse treatment program where they will learn about cooking organic food, nurturing themselves and others, and, to their amazement, realizing that how they feed themselves can change who they are. As one inmate said, "When you eat this food...you can feel it in every cell of your body." Another said simply, "I am trying to save my life." And they are taught that they can have all of this for the cost of a fast food meal.

Does this program "work"? Thus far, participants in the program have an overall recidivism rate of 39%, in contrast with 60-70% for those who were not selected.

How do we save our lives? Do we know that we can walk free from our self-built prisons? We escape not with a bomb or a blowtorch, but by invoking three Snail Principles: Start Small. Go Slow. Eat the antidote.

If, for example, our prison is miserliness, if our compassion, kindness, generosity and respect is doled out to this-person and not-that, then we need to start small. How small? From the Buddha (the reason for the first half of today's title): Start practicing by giving a carrot from your left hand to your right. Slowly. Then, reverse. Generosity is the antidote that frees our minds.

Such are my thoughts while eating a hot slice of bread (the reason for the second half of today's title) just removed from the oven, a loaf filled with history and memory and the work of farmers and beekeepers and millers, some of them neighbors.

Bread is such a fine snail food. It starts small, just a seed of grain, just tiny yeasties. It rises slowly. I feel it in every cell of my body. How can I not be changed?

Have a slow journey,
Candace