A Simple Prayer May you be gentle with yourself.
May you treat yourself with the kindness
of a child
and the dignity of an Elder.
May your discipline be an easy expression
of self-love.
May you feel held in the lap of this Earth
and know it as home.
May you never lack of wonder.
And may love be the source of your courage
in all things.
May you be gentle with yourself. What if this were your only resolve for 2010? What an act of courage! Radical. Revolutionary.
Sound sappy and vague to you? Wimpy, even? I can relate. And having worked this koan for the last decade or more, I've come to respect its power and the emotional strength it demands.
Here are a few ways I've applied it:
- striving for a zero-tolerance for self-attack
- kicking the quiet, brutal habit of perfectionism
- standing up to my inner critic and defending myself
Having done my own digging and discovery, I'm now teaching my clients how to do these.
May you treat yourself with the kindness of a child...
Like gentleness, there's tremendous, generative power in kindness: when I'm unkind to myself my generosity towards others withers. When I am kind to myself, I water a thirsty plant and others are blessed by its bloom.
...and the dignity of an Elder. Having been taunted by my brother with the moniker "Josephine" and bullied on the playground much of my childhood, dignity means a lot to me. Trouble is I've often sought it outside myself, in the form of status and approval.
One of the gifts of aging seems to be caring less what others think of me and more about my integrity. So here I invoke the Inner Elder:
Imagine lifting your own head with a gentle but firm finger under the chin. Imagine resting a blessing hand on your bowed shoulder until your spine lengthens up to meet that hand.
May your discipline be an easy expression of self-love.
What if your discipline were an expression of your inner disciple rather than the bullying of your inner drill sergeant? A surrender to aliveness rooted in your desire body instead of a tense striving to assuage your critical mind. Faithfully saying yes to what you want more of versus curbing or fixing what's wrong with you.
When setting goals, I've learned it's also self-loving to lower the bar--because it preserves self-esteem. If I'm willing to humble myself at the outset I lower the risk of humiliating myself later--when I fall short of my grandiose goal.
May you feel held in the lap of the Earth and know it as home.
I sense in myself and many around me a deep anxiety. One of its roots, I believe, is a lack of "at-home-ness" in one or more of these domains: self, other, or place (including Nature and community).
I plan to reduce my anxiety footprint this year in three ways:
- increasing my anti-racism work (which has dramatically lowered my anxiety around people of color);
- more date nights with my sweetheart (to deepen our already sweet at-home-ness with each other); and
- more walks in the woods (to deepen my connection to myself and the land I live on).
May you never lack of wonder. In our high-speed, high-density lives, there's seemingly
no time to really see, hear, feel, ponder... And the consequences of
not doing so are mounting around us.
When we wonder, the mind and the heart open; we grow, learn, and connect. I believe it's crucial that we recast "childlike" wonder, humility and curiosity as expressions of maturity and strength, as well. And that we learn and practice the many skillful applications of these traits--from intimacy to biomimicry to foreign policy.
And may love be the source of your courage in all things.
The root of the word "courage" is coeur--French for heart. Peter Senge, speaking at a conference I attended last fall dug further into its etymology, saying its meaning also encompassed "tears to, rending of, or opening of, the
heart."
I believe this is the kind of courage the world needs--is desperate for, actually. The ability to feel our hearts and take a stand for what we love and cherish. It takes courage to stand for something and knowing what I stand for gives me courage.
What do you love? What rends or opens your heart? May these bright embers be what stokes your courage and anneals your resolve in the year to come.
"The only failure is not learning from what happens." -- Anonymous
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