Category Archives: deep thoughts

because it’s all about me

Deep thoughts this morning…

I suspect that my blogwriting is fueling my narcissism. I think I’ve generally been the type of person who likes to draw attention to myself and I’m pretty thrilled to have this platform to discuss my favorite subject (ME).

And I’m not particularly proud of that.

going for a smoke…

Yesterday RJohn related an epiphany he had while waiting impatiently in an airport lounge. As he sat with his luggage trying to make the time pass faster, he watched a group of people in the glass-enclosed smoker’s lounge. He explained how relaxed they looked as they sat there, puffing away. Chatting with friends. Creating a kind of impromptu community that was completely unlike the impersonal anxiety on the other side of the glass. He found that he was jealous of the time these folks took out of their travel frenzy to just kick back and indulge in their cigarettes. And while not advocating a smoking habit, he suggested that we would all be better off if we partitioned a similar space of self-indulgence into our daily routines.

I responded to him with a smoking anecdote of my own…When I was undergoing my cancer treatments and I needed some time to escape from the craziness of the hospital for awhile, I often went to the smoker’s lounge. There I wasn’t a patient, I was just one other person seeking some respite from their life for a moment. I’d cozy up in one of the padded chairs and lose myself in a book. The smoker’s lounge also had vending machines with Juicy Fruit gum (a favorite back then that I can’t stand now) and toffee ice cream bars (ditto). And I didn’t mind the smoke, really. Because my fears of ‘getting cancer’ seemed oh-so-ridiculous at that moment. 🙂

I don’t smoke now and have no interest in taking up the habit. But I do try to find ways of incorporating ‘smokers breaks’ into my day. It’s my cup of tea that I drink leisurely as I sit in a wicker chair on my back porch or my evening escape to water my garden. Just 10 minutes of space can make such a difference.

flying mountain


IMG_4499, originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl.

Tonite I watched an interview of housewife-turned-Buddhist-nun Pema Chodron with some friends. Chodron spoke about many common Buddhist concepts, with her own unique spin on the issues of pain and suffering and the goal to be ‘fully awake.’

For me, the most provocative quotation from the program was this one:

“We are all capable of becoming fundamentalists because we get addicted to other people’s wrongness.”

She spoke at length about how this addiction, or ‘getting hooked’ as she calls it, sets off a chain reaction of suffering. By removing ourselves from the addictive cycle we can have more peace and compassion.

I love that idea. I am certainly guilty of being addicted to other people’s wrongness just as I am guilty of being addicted to my own rightness. I recognize that this is a very rigid way to live, but it is so human…sigh.

What I really want…to see the divine in each person I meet and not to feel anger and self-righteousness when someone believes differently than I do. So I will keep trying….

Note: the picture above is of some Buddhist carvings on the “Flying Mountain” at the Lingyin Temple in Hangzhou, China. The day I visited the temple nearly two years ago it was rainy and cold, the ground so slippery underfoot that it was difficult to walk around the temple and monastery. Yet there were still dozens of worshipers lighting huge bundles of incense outside of the temple and saying their prayers. I was impressed by the devotion of the adherents. That day I also felt very homesick for my family back in the states. At the foot of the Buddha I said prayers for their continued safety and felt great comfort.

What if….

Photo: taken sometime during the latter half of my chemo treatments. At this time I weighed just over 70 lbs and had lost all my hair (including eyebrows and eyelashes). I’m wearing my wig in this pic. I was using crutches to get around much of the time, still unable to use a prosthetic limb comfortably following my amputation surgery a few months earlier.

Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if I’d never had cancer. It’s a big question, one that looms every morning as I get out of bed and put on my prosthetic leg.

I wonder how having had the cancer has held me back in so many ways. I deal daily with pain and sores. I have chronic issues related to the toxicity of the chemo. I limp. I am often tired and somewhat prone to depression. Every time I have an ache somewhere I wonder if it is the cancer again. Currently I am avoiding doctors and I haven’t had a physical exam in three years.

I just want to be me and not a cancer patient.

But I also wonder if I hadn’t had cancer, would I be a totally different person? Would I still be a gardener, a locavore, a mother, a lover of John? A Mormon? A Quaker? A teacher and writer of academic papers?

Would I love cats? Chocolate? Or meditating by candlelight? Would I have rowed the canals of Canterbury or clambered up The Great Wall? Would I be afraid of rodents? Would I relish simple living?

I suspect that I would be a wearer of high heels and a swimmer in oceans. And a cartwheeler in meadows of green grass. That I would be a hiker of the Narrows and walker of the Pilgrim’s Path.

But what if not?

And what if my cancer came back tomorrow? Or my kitties run away? Or I run away? Or what if my latest insurance claims are denied and my leg breaks and I lose my job and the Mormons excommunicate me and I make John miserable and I am unkind to my children and I am just so so so tired that I never get out of bed again?

What if?

open


wet petals, originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl.

A picture from my garden meditation time yesterday. My roses are still blooming (joy)! This one smelled so fruity and flowerly–I so wish you could’ve been there with me…(and I did pluck just one from the bush to add to my kitchen sink windowsill).

A quotation that I have been pondering the past few days:

“If in the last few years you haven’t discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead.”
~Gelett Burgess

I want to be open to new ideas, to continue learning, growing and changing. A life lived with fear and rigidity is not, for me, a satisfying one! I think life is too short to not be open. We should be absorbing and experiencing many new things…to tread in places where we are are unsure. To be like this rose–showing our most vulnerable inner places and sharing it with everyone, even those who may not recognize the courage that it takes to be open.

just one more

Yah, just as you were sitting back in your office chair and yawning a bit, thinking, “Naw, there’s no way she’ll post again today” (thus breaking her previous record of three posts in one day), she goes and posts again. What is it with that pilgrimgirl?

People:
For those of you who just can’t get enough of trains (and you know who you are), don’t you dare miss today’s Daily Dose of Imagery. Sit back and just feel those rails moving beneath you as you move forward into the horizon….

And if you really want to sleep well tonite, you can add a bit of this to your mind just as you’re drifing off into a train-induced dreamworld….

praise him

To the kind man who found my cellphone lying in a street in Santa Ana on Sunday evening:

Your call was a godsend. Thank you. And thank you for being in a park in Santa Ana tonight to feed the homeless with your Ministry Group. You are an example of all the good that the Spirit of Christ brings to this world. And I’m not just saying that because you returned my phone.

I do so wish that there were more people like you in this big wide world of ours.

My Best,
pilgrimgirl

what I’m doing today….

-Recovering from a cold. feeling about 40% better than yesterday
-Sleeping in a bit
-Baking and packaging brownies for school carnival
-shopping at Farmer’s Market & TJs. Biking home with about 40 lbs of food in my rear basket. Had to get a bit of a boost from CatGirl on the very last hill.
-Washing a sinkfull of dishes (blech)
-Laundry
-Reading about Paris
-Popping popcorn the old-fashioned way (on the stove), because it tastes so much better that way.
-Thinking about the Amber Spyglass,which I finished reading last night
-Pulling some weeds in the garden
-Enoying GameBoy’s cello playing.
-Listening to the oldies station on the radio
-Snacking on chile mango slices (yum)

What are you doing today?