Wholeness
R A I N
November 14, 2021Dear Beloved,
In the midst of my pain, give me comfort.
In the midst of my sorrow, give me peace.
In the midst of my brokenness, give me wings.
For You are the author of miracles
and I need one now.
We are spirit and thus we are more than the world.
-Marianne Williamson
Center for Action and Contemplation, New Mexico
Cultivating Radical Compassion
Author Tara Brach is a skilled psychotherapist and meditation teacher who has developed countless ways to help her students transform their suffering not only for their own sake but on behalf of the world. Over the last seventeen years she has focused particularly on the RAIN meditation practice, [1] which “cultivates a trust in our own basic goodness and by extension helps us recognize and trust that same light shining through all beings.” Brach suggests:
When you are caught in difficult emotions, the RAIN meditation can bring you back to a wise and compassionate presence. Give yourself a few moments to pause and turn inward.
R Recognize what is happening. Mentally whisper whatever you are aware of: fear, anger, hurt, shame.
A Allow. Let whatever you are feeling be here, without judging it, trying to fix it, or ignoring it. Simply pause and “let be.” You might whisper “This too belongs.”
I Investigate. With curiosity, feel into your body—your throat, chest, belly. Discover where the emotions live inside you. You might gently place a hand wherever feelings are strongest. Sense what is needed or being asked for right now. Is it love? Forgiveness? Acceptance? Understanding?
N Nurture. Offer care to feelings of vulnerability, hurt, or fear. Let the touch of your hand be tender, and send whatever message might most offer healing. You can imagine this coming from your own awake heart or from another being (friend, grandparent, spiritual figure, dog) you trust and love.
After the RAIN: Take some moments in stillness, simply sensing the quality of presence that has unfolded. Notice the shift from when you started (an angry or fearful or victimized self) to the compassionate awareness that is always here.
[1] To learn more about the RAIN meditation, see Tara Brach’s book Radical Compassion: Learning to Love Yourself and Your World with the Practice of RAIN (Viking: 2019). For online RAIN resources, visit tarabrach.com/RAIN.
Image Inspiration: This piece is of a series of reclamation and it’s about finding our identities and our empowerment in our histories and stories and timelines and how do we apply that to our beings in order to become whole.
Image credit: Rose B. Simpson, Reclamation II (detail), 2018, sculpture.
“The Center for Action and Contemplation featured the artist of these sculptures, Rose B. Simpson, at our recent CONSPIRE conference—so many of us were impacted by her creations that we decided to share her work with our Daily Meditations community for the month of November.”
—Rose B. Simpson, CONSPIRE Interview, 2021
Murmurations
December 5, 2020‘I believe the spirit is in the wind and wave, and manifests Its presence throughout all Nature. But most completely, through our own minds and in our hearts, It proclaims our livingness and Its lovingness.
-Dr. Ernest Holmes
Murmuration refers to the phenomenon that results when hundreds, sometimes thousands, of starlings fly in swooping, intricately coordinated patterns through the sky.
“If 2020 taught me anything…if I look into some of the gifts that have come from this wild year…it is a deepening of the idea that we are bound and woven together as one.
I wore a mask, not just to protect myself but others as well. We experienced the smoke and ash from fires hundreds of miles away. We learned more deeply about the impacts of systemic racism and inequity. I got to, and continue to, learn more about how I’ve unknowingly and unconsciously perpetuated these systems. All of this points to deep truth: We are interconnected.
This constant reminder of our oneness compels me to engage in the world and do what I can to make the our planet a little bit better, to approach it with a little more kindness and compassion, to realize that my own spiritual path and freedom are totally merged with the spiritual path of all.
It is challenge get out of ourselves. It is confounding to face that my suffering and my own liberation from suffering are bound up in the liberation of all. it is much easier to think only of myself, my own consciousness and being.
Yet, when we face this truth of interconnection, we recover something we may not have known was lost. Something comes to life within us…we get our wholeness back. We get our oneness back. We have the chance to widen our identity from separation to unity, from competition to cooperation.
There is so much that awakens us to the truth of our unity these days. Even in moments that feel divisive, there is opportunity to see the deeper call for community, dignity and safety.
We are bound together in a perfect whole.”
-Rev. Masando Hiraoka, Mile Hi church in Lakewood, Colorado
Science of Mind
[My 2020 ‘word-of-the-year’: murmuration.]
“A new light is coming into the world. We are on the borderline of a new experience. The veil between Spirit and matter is very thin.” Dr. Holmes
♁
“The truth is that what we want or dream of doesn’t always last. It tends to serve its purpose in our development and then fades away, losing its relevance. And we can do enormous damage to ourselves by insisting on carrying that which has died.” -Mark Nepo
A note from Korby.
June 4, 2020
Suspending my creative promotions for a moment.
The murder of George Floyd is something we can’t ignore. All of us feel that. If you watched the video of Mr. Floyd’s last moments on earth or even just saw that brutal, incendiary image of the officer’s knee crushing his neck, there is no looking away. The question has been forced.
The question: is it in any way acceptable for an officer of the law to kill a man — unarmed and handcuffed and pleading for mercy — in broad daylight with no provocation whatsoever?
The answer is no. It is not okay. In the name of the most basic definition of human decency, we demand justice for George Floyd.
But then there’s something more.
That photo. The white man’s knee, the black man’s gasp.
I can’t pretend to know what’s in your heart but I can look into my own. The question I keep asking myself is: to what degree am I complicit in George Floyd’s murder?
Sure I wasn’t there at the corner of Chicago Ave and East 38th in Minneapolis. But the fact remains that I am a benefactor, an inheritor of centuries of white privilege, white provision. The law purports Liberty and Justice for All, but even after two centuries of reform, the law is on my side first.
That officer’s knee was in my name. Me. The soft child of the American family, indulged and coddled.
A few freedoms I know and can name: I’m blind to most. I take for granted the world through which I move, as though it were my birthright.
But what would it be like not to have the whole system of justice and economic invention arranged like an armed phalanx behind you? What is it like to be black in America? I cannot know.
But I can listen.
That there are white folks like me awakening to the knowledge of not only our collective biases, but more importantly, the consequences of those biases, is perhaps cause for a quavering hope. It won’t give George Floyd his life back, or Breonna Taylor hers, or restore Ahmaud Arbery, Donnie Sanders, Tony McDade, or the extinguished lives of countless others. It might yield the imperfect consolation of justice. But what next?
What after?
The sense I’ve gotten from talking with my friends and family is that the spirit is willing, but the way forward is uncertain. It’s hard for an individual person, however well-meaning, to know what to do, where to start. I’m not sure whether a post, or a hundred posts, will add up to anything truly meaningful. I don’t know.
Change begins in the heart. Okay fine. But what does that mean? What does change actually look like? I can say any number of things to ally myself with people of color, but is that really a solution? Talk is cheap.
Voting change into office will help. Let’s get busy doing that.
But I’m looking for something personal. I think we all are. It’s not just about police brutality. It’s about wanting to be whole. Whole individuals. Whole people. A whole nation.
Well, what’s possible?
Let’s for once allow ourselves a wild hope. Let’s dare to concede the possibility that maybe, somewhere in the future there’s an integrated America, where Black Lives Matter, where the rights of each individual really are extended to all.
At the very least, maybe it’s possible to be a little more whole.
I’ve been quiet the last few days, mulling over this question. Reading a bunch of different perspectives. Trying to get my thoughts in order. Praying about it.
What would it look like to be a little more whole?
And this is where the death of George Floyd has shined a light in a dark corner of my own heart.
See, I live in a mixed neighborhood in East Nashville.
While its gentrification has been going on for more than fifteen years, I still have neighbors of color. Close neighbors. Two of the houses within a hundred feet of me are occupied by black families.
I have lived in this house for almost five years. I love living here.
But wait. Do I even know my black neighbors’ names?
No.
We have been living in parallel universes.
Worse, there are little kids in the family of one of those houses. What am I teaching them, by never saying hello when I see them playing in the yard? By them never seeing me talk to their parents?
I’m teaching them that white people don’t see them. They are invisible.
By the sheer act of being unneighborly to my literal neighbors, I’m participating in the furtherance of this no-longer-acceptable status quo.
There are other ways I, I know. But allow me to focus on this one for a second.
The question is, who is us? You draw a circle, everyone inside it is us. Great. But where is the boundary — the place where us ends and them begins? How big can we make the circle? I don’t know the answer to that question. But I think, where I live, I can expand my circle of us, even if just a little bit.
When I was a kid growing up in Twin Falls Idaho, it would sometimes happen on summer evenings that my dad would fire up the home made ice cream machine.
There is nothing as distinctive as the nasal whine of the buzzing motor cranking that frothy mixture of milk and sugar into something thick and sweet and frozen. The sound would fill us kids with anticipation. Shivers in our bellies.
Ours was a cheap unit and my dad would have to sit next to the machine on a chair and free up the motor with his hands when it would stall. After a half-hour or so he’d lift the frosty cold canister from the wooden bucket of rock salt and ice. Suddenly all the neighbor kids would magically appear in our driveway. My mom would hand out bowls and spoons and we’d eat our fill as fast as our mouths would let us. It was an unqualified joy.
So I’m going to try something. An experiment.
My friend Laura helped me make a few little handmade flyers. Yesterday I started handing them out to the people on my street — knocking on doors, inviting them to my house this coming Sunday, for an ice cream social.
Just, pop over for a bowl of homemade ice cream and say hello. Everyone welcome.
I have all kinds of neighbors. Young families, white folks, black folks, famous musicians, student renters, a couple people I’m pretty sure voted for Trump. All of us living right next to each other, basically never communicating beyond a wave from the sidewalk.
But what would it look like if we — for the time it takes to eat a little ice cream — act like the neighbors we are, for one hour, one time? I say let’s try it.
The Sunday Social Ice Cream Hour. Folks will come at 6. We’ll be done by 7:30 at the latest. Maybe a lot sooner if no one comes!
Either way I’m gonna do this again and again. I can be fairly relentless when I’ve made up my mind.
It might be amazing. It might be awkward. I don’t know!
The thing is, we have nothing to lose. It’s clear that doing what we’ve been doing is no longer acceptable. For me, change begins at seeing what’s in front of you. Seeing who’s in front of you. Just saying “Hey! What’s Up? Who are you?”
I’m not trying to claim this is the answer. But it might be an answer. To see if we can draw that circle a little bigger. White people living in mixed neighborhoods have a unique opportunity in this critical moment.
And that’s what I have felt these last few days: if not me, who?
Hey man, come over to my house. Bring your kids. Let’s hang out for a few minutes.
Maybe it’s a start. The invites are out. I’ll let you know how it goes.
I’m sorry Mr. Floyd. You didn’t die in vain. My prayer is that some small good can come of this. Maybe we can be a little more whole.
Korby is a writer/producer and singer/songwriter. He currently lives in Nashville.
George Floyd with his baby girl, Gianna.
A gofundme fundraising page has been created for Gianna.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/gianna-floyd-daughter-of-george-floyd-fund
From author Seth Godin:
“When a problem appears too large, too intractable and too unspeakable to deal with, it’s easy to give up.
There never seems to be enough time, enough resources or enough money to make the big problems go away.
Perhaps we can start with a very small part of it. One person, one opportunity, one connection.
Drip by drip, with commitment.”
