fish clouds

Bastyr University courtyard fish (and frog and turtle) pond.

everything reminds me of everything else

Actually, the title of this post ought to be: "everything reminds me of everything else, and then I forget what I came in here for." Or, "everything reminds me of everything else, and that's why I haven't been able to finish a blog post for such a long time."

It's like when you clean off one shelf or counter and then all of a sudden everything else looks so much worse and you end up cleaning everything, and not actually finishing the thing you were doing (writing) before.

This morning I had a middle-eastern/mediterranean kind of breakfast, with salad and olives and feta and oregano. I thought a ripe pear with some yogurt and honey would go nicely with the rest of my meal, except that we're out of both yogurt and honey. Which made me think of A Taste of Honey by Lizz Wright so I went to put that in the CD player, but I don't have it on CD, so I put a disc in my computer to burn and then (after I checked my email and tidied up my messy desk) went back in the kitchen to slice my pear. The juiciness of the pear reminded me of my lack of honey, which in turn reminded me of a post I read just recently (because I am also very behind on reading) by the chocolate lady that mentions "dark, winey, bamboo honey", which made me think of of agave syrup, because it's dark, and which I do have, so I put some in my tea (after putting the new CD in the CD player, and sweeping the floor), and it (the combination of "dark" and "honey") also reminded me of seeing a friend put honey in his coffee, which I haven't ever done. Thinking of him reminded me that we were joking the other day about a competition to see who could waste time most efficiently, and I suddenly noticed that my train of thought kept circling and looping me backwards, because going forwards feels a little bit like being perched on the the foggy brink of what might be a meandering slope but it might be a steep cliff and I am just on the verge of finding out which.

The train image reminded me of a book I want to read, called Night Train to Lisbon: A Novel, by Pascal Mercier, so I went on-line and put it in my shopping cart for later.

Ah! But what about that foggy brink? Just in the past few weeks (after months of tilling-the-ground work), the six months between January and June '08 have lit up with great potential, and probable intense challenge.

Two weeks ago, Dr. Church, the president of the university where I teach part-time, invited me to take on a role there as a "catalyst," to shine a light on the gap between "our walk" and "our talk" and to help bring together the people in the community who care about invoking and embodying the university's highest purpose (well, that's how I'm describing the role today -- I imagine the description will change as I begin to actually live in to it). Lucky for me I am going to be able to participate in an Art of Hosting and Convening Conversations that Matter training at the Whidbey Institute at the end of January. (I am so looking forward to asking Chris Corrigan the many questions that I've already started accumulating like little shiny suitcases ;-)) The training is great timing for me and so well-related to the theme of "radical hospitality" that Dr. Church shared with the university community when he first joined us two years ago. My initial agreement with the university is to do this work for six months and then in June we'll decide whether it's been good or not.

On the same day two weeks ago, the executive committee of Bet Alef's board of directors resigned in frustration and anger. Later in the week, I was invited, along with half a dozen other members, to join the remaining directors on an interim board (again, January through June). There is a great opportunity to become very clear about the essence and purpose of the organization, as well as a great challenge to understand honestly what has gone awry.

I have also been extending invitations, myself. For one, I've asked my young colleague Joshua Leahy (who is a naturopathic doctor and acupuncturist, like I am) to join my clinic, with the idea in the back of my mind (OK, maybe it's not exactly in the back) of cultivating him as a practitioner to take on some or a lot of my practice (by June, of course) should I end up working more for the university. We went to a day on "Mentoring: Tending the Interdependence Between Generations," another rich offering at the Whidbey Institute, and I'll post some of my notes from that one of these days -- depending on where my train of thought and I end up going in the next few months. Do wish me luck!

Well, I thought maybe this would be my last post of 2007 but I didn't actually finish it till tonight, and so it's my first post of 2008 instead. May this year bring us all joy and health, inspiring challenges, and deep blessing.

Which reminds me! I meant to post this video that was shared on KarmaTube some time ago, but the beginning of a new year is a perfect time to watch and hear it again.

leaving the holding space

This little passage from Otto Scharmer's new book, Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges reminds me of a sensation I have often had when leaving a time/space of communion (a kind of space which I like to use the word "conversation" to describe):

"When operating from that deeper presence of a future that wants to emerge, you connect to yet a deeper resource of listening and of intelligence that is available...

...What happens is that you leave that conversation as a different being -- a different person from the one who entered the conversation...You are no longer the same. You are (a tiny bit) more who you really are. Sometimes that tiny bit can be quite profound. I remember that in one instance I had a physical sensation of a wound when I left a particularly profound conversation. Why? Because that conversation created a generative social field that connected me with a deeper aspect of my journey and Self.

Leaving that holding space -- the social field -- discontinued that deeper connection, which I then experienced as an open wound." pg 186

I've usually described my version of that experience as feeling like my roots and their tiny delicate root hairs are being pulled apart from a deep entanglement with those of the person or people I've been with -- like Scharmer's "open wound," it can feel raw, and tender. Or, I feel it like I'm a piece of bread dough that's been stretched and stretched and then pulled apart from the other pieces, with the soft side exposed to the air. Two of the times lately when I've been aware of that sensation have been when leaving synagogue after a particularly sweet and deep Bet Alef service (which is, now that I think of it, all of them!); and today, when I got to congratulate the new naturopathic doctors who graduated from Bastyr, many of whom I got to meet years ago when they first started medical school. Although some of them will stay in the area, and some will relocate but will keep in touch, all of them have stepped over the threshhold of this particular "holding space," into somewhere new and vast and maybe far away from here. It will take a little time for the roots to readjust and settle, to remember that hearts and minds and breaths once mingled can never again be entirely separate, that "the deeper connection" is actually impossible to "discontinue."

dreaming bill

(Updated 2/15/07: There will be two memorial services for Bill at Bastyr University, one on Friday Feb. 23 at 5:30 pm in the chapel, moving to the fire circle on the hill above the herb garden at 6:30. The second will be the following day, Saturday Feb 24, a formal service in the chapel at 2 pm that will be webcast)

My spirit buddy and teacher, Dr. Bill Mitchell, died the night before last of a broken heart. His son Noah, aged 27, had died suddenly in the morning, and Bill died that night in his sleep. They both died of myocardial infarction ("heart attack").

Bill was one of the co-founders of the John Bastyr College of Naturopathic Medicine, where I went to medical school, which has since grown up to become Bastyr University.

For the first 15 or 16 years that I knew Bill, I really mostly just knew of him, and he didn't really know me. Like many of my school mates, I was in awe of his brilliance, his robust connection to the natural world, and his weirdness -- little realizing how weird I was going to turn out to be myself.

In 2002, when I started a two year stint as Assistant Dean in the Naturopathic Medicine department at Bastyr, one of my first and favorite assignments was to support Bill's teaching of a new elective course, the prototype for a series meant to embody and make explicit the part of Bastyr's mission statement that emphasizes education and services that "integrate mind, body, spirit and nature". I got to talk with him often on the phone and meet with him to create the syllabus and course requirements and other things he was not so interested in. He told me early on that "the syllabus can't really be created until after the course is over, because I won't know till then what Spirit's going to want me to say." Then we laughed for a long time and knew that we understood each other, and ever since then we have loved each other.

I last saw Bill a couple of months ago over lunch at a little restaurant near his office. He talked about an idea of leaving his practice to his daughter, who is also a naturopathic doctor, and maybe leaving this city where he had been for so many years, about going to a place where he could swim for hours in the warm ocean. Our last interaction, though, was by email, which turned out to be a pretty reliable way to keep very loose track of his moonbeam self. I had written him to describe a dream I'd had of him on New Year's Eve, where I had been so happy to run into him because I needed to ask him a question about Dr. Bastyr's practice. In my dream, he'd said, "well, that means Dr. Bastyr has something to tell you!" and pulled a large phone out his jacket, to connect me with Dr. Bastyr (who died in 1995). Then I woke up. Bill's email reply to me was "Wow what a great dream. Dr. Bastyr healed you. You knew you were being healed. He didn't say a lot. And he worked on your back and neck. Love and laughter in the new year. Bill"

Bill had ravishingly hard times in the past few years, enough to break a heart many times over. He was scoured out from the inside and became almost transparent; you could see the light shining straight through him. He let all the hardship pour through him like a great river, and he didn't hide from it or hide it from those of us who orbited him.

It turned out that I often had occasion to weep in Bill's presence, for very varied reasons. He never minded, it was always OK with him. I know that it's OK with him, now, too. Leaning on his presence was like leaning on a mountain. And that's still true, too.

The soundtrack for my day yesterday, before I had heard about Bill, happened to be Joni Mitchell's Blue, and her song "A Case of You" has gotten woven now into the missing him that rises up today:

I remember
that time you told me
you said,
'love is touching souls'
surely
you've touched mine
Part of you
pours out of me
in these lines from time to time

You're in my blood
like holy wine

and from Hildegard von Bingen, one of Bill's patron saints
and about whom he was exceedingly knowledgeable:

I am the one whose praise echoes on high.
I adorn all the earth.
I am the breeze that nurtures all things green.
I encourage blossoms to flourish with ripening fruits.
I am led by the spirit to feed the purest streams.
I am the rain coming from the dew
that causes the grasses to laugh with the joy of life.
I am the yearning for good.