Continuous Practice
All that could never be said,
All that could never be done,
Wait for us at last
Somewhere back of the sun
-“In the end” Sara Teasdale
On Easter morning I was on a train heading home from Flagstaff.
It was not a normal way to spend an Easter morning. Certainly not in a life which consisted of a childhood of church-related activities, complete with new Easter dresses and the annual dreaded family photos before lunch. My mother still has every single one of these prints of my siblings and me squinting into the sun. Inevitably, one of my brothers was scowling and my baby sister was screaming. And yet, my mother refuses to discard any of these gems. “You can get rid of them after I’m gone,” she tells us with something like glee in her voice when any of us suggests that maybe some of these pictures could be trashed. Something to look forward to when it’s time to decide who inherits the family photo albums.
I taught lessons on Easter 2020, the year the world shut down, the kids telling me that they “might as well have a piano lesson because there was nothing else to do.” We all have things to do this year. During the pandemic we promised each other that we would pace our lives differently moving forward. Well, we did it. We are now living at 120% of the tempo of our pre-pandemic lives. Good for us.
Easter fell in the middle of a two-week spring break around here, which meant a welcomed change of pace for all of us. I spent a couple of nights in Santa Fe with Matt, and had a silent retreat day at the Upaya Zen Center. There were a couple of days at home practicing and having lunch with friends. I finished up the spring garden work. Then to Flagstaff for two days of long walks and conversation with a dear friend. Home for 36 hours, and then I boarded a 6am plane with my mom for three days of garden tours and tacos in Santa Barbara. The time away was lifesaving, giving my weary eyes something new to see and my tired thoughts new patterns to absorb. The silent day of “Continuous Practice” at Upaya reset my long-held intention to sit still and stop my restless wiggling, both metaphorically and literally. Two continuous days of deep conversation with a longtime friend was soul-giving. The fields of orange poppies, the beds of succulents everywhere, the days of walking and being outside with my mother made my heart sing and restored my roots. I came home to a wind-scrubbed New Mexico, a full month of rehearsals and performances, and many end-of-the-year administrative tasks to attend to in the studio. The calendar is crowded, bursting; 120% in a relentless Sousa march tempo forward. In other words, continuous practice ahead.
Last week a friend emailed, “What is saving my life these days is watching the sunset. And seeing the moon on the rise at 5am. Piano students. Gus the dog…” I love that line from the writer and Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor: What is saving your life these days? This is a question worth pondering often, I think. We spend so much energy dwelling on the things that might be killing our lives from day to day that we forget to count the lifesaving routines and gifts all around us.
Recently, I read an interview in the Buddhist journal Tricycle with the writer and social commentator Rebecca Solnit. She was asked about her book Orwell’s Roses, and Orwell’s lifelong obsession with gardening. In the book, Solnit contrasts Orwell’s reputation for cynicism and pessimism with his need to create beauty in his surroundings. In the Tricycle interview, Solnit cites an anecdote about a judge in The Hague who presides over the trials of war criminals. How is he able to listen to such atrocities day after day? someone asks him. “Ah,” he replies, “after work, I go to the museum and look at the Vermeers.” Solnit suggests that if the Vermeers soothe his soul and allow the judge to face the kinds of horrifying stories he must hear, then the Vermeers are “justice work.” Just as the tending roses might have been “writer’s” work in the case of Orwell. It is an honorable thing, Solnit says, to find what restores our lives so that we can go out and do meaningful and sometimes difficult work in the world.
In a month chockablock with responsibilities, I need this reminder. I need to be nudged to pay attention to the ordinary soulful habits and practices, the roses and Vermeers that save my life on a daily basis. The hour spent with a blank piece of paper and a pen. The evening walks after a long teaching day. The ten minutes watering my own collection of succulents. Listening to this recording. The first dinner of the season in the courtyard. The yoga class squeezed into a busy day. The 20 minutes spent sitting still. The morning spent on the piano bench. The two hours writing letters while in the observation deck on a train heading west. A garden full of wild red poppies. A clothesline full of kitchen towels blowing in the breeze. The crimson geranium blooming her heart out in the sunroom window. Life as Continuous Practice.