I watch the sunrise in my rearview window

Every morning as I drive to Richmond, I have the most pleasing opportunity to watch the sun rise, in all its glory, tinged with the metaphor of new beginnings. My chest feels full as I grab the air in and my throat tightens because a sunrise can have that effect on you if you believe you have been given another chance.

In a few weeks, with any luck, I will graduate from JMU's MS DLVE-SLP program. Currently I am driving to the VA hospital in Richmond where I am finishing up my fifth practicum experience, this one at the VA Polytrauma Center. The experience has been awesome albeit challenging.  Therapy requires a great depth of knowledge along with a quickness that doesn't always come easy for me. I work under a younger clinician who is mightly self-assured. It's hard to teach an old dog new tricks, especially when the old dog's brain is a little compromised. I struggle with chronic pain from neuropathy, auditory processing deficits, and a jumble of executive function-related residual issues. In sum, I'm slow . . . but sure I need to work with the brain injured in some way so that I can share what I've learned and help others avoid the pitfalls I've experienced. I think I can, I think I can.

I am 58 years old and this will be my third master's degree. I'm about to start something new because I want to help others who live with brain injury and because I can't go back to museums or marketing. Wish me luck . . . and the ability to compensate more effectively with the residuals confounded now by the affects of aging.

Now I let go and meditate on things that are higher. The great, explosive, gaseous, buring sun will come up tomorrow and I will breathe in from it a reserve of strength that comes from knowing that the world, the universe that holds me in its force field is mighty. I go forth humbly, a mere mortal speck, putting one foot in front of the other. I will do my best. I cannot alter the ancient and powerful forces that swirl around me with so much surety. I can only strive to be at one with the force.

What is the Purpose of Life? What is Karma?

I listened to a piece about Choprawell this morning on Morning Joe. Apparently, Deepak Chopra and his children are making the rounds of the news and talk shows to promote their new YouTube endeavor. Of course, I spent the next couple of hours listening to a dozen of the Choprawell video postings.

Many are worth talking about here, but the piece on the purpose of life and living your karma was of particular interest to me because of my late-in-life career change. I continually feel that I have to justify it to myself, especially when many of my friends, including my husband, are retiring. I am having trouble with the concept of retiring because I am following my karma.

What am I talking about? What is all of this karma nonsense? I've excerpted from Chopra's purpose of life YouTube, below.

What is the Purpose of Life? What is Karma?

Your Karma is your higher purpose

The higher purpose of all life is
     to reach enlightenment and total freedom from conditioning

To reach our Karma
    we exist to fulfill our unique talents and abilities

By fulfilling our unique talents
     we fit into the unique ecosystem
     like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle
     where no pieces are missing

When we fit into the ecosystem
     we feel joy
     and lose track of time

When we fulfill our unique purpose in life
     we serve

Our purpose is
     to feel an alignment with our Karma
     serve the ecosystem
     and experience wholeness

Our larger purpose is
     to reach enlightenment
     which is unity consciousness
     our true identity

When we learn how
     to be
     to love
     to create
     to serve
     and ultimately to exercise subtle intention
          in choices
          and awareness
     we become the evolutionary parts of the universe
     and find our true mortality

from Deepak Chopra

Because I grew up in the Baptist tradition and because many in my family and many of my friends find similar wholeness through their Christian beliefs, I also found Chopra's piece on beliefs worth mentioning and linking here: What is Belief and How Does It Shape Reality? Even before I was aware of Chopra and Eastern philosophy, I felt this way about beliefs: that they are limiting. This piece reiterates and speaks more eloquently about beliefs as limiting one's reality.

Reality is the whole realm of possibilities. When we decide to believe in any one concept as reality, we limit or cut off so many possibilities for awareness and achieving happiness, our karma, and enlightenment.

On Awareness

I have just returned from 6 weeks of summer school and practicum experience at James Madison University, as required by their master's program in speech-language pathology. In readings and in practice, I have thought about the dictum of Rhea Paul and others to create in the child an awareness of their language.

Between the demanding summer now past and what I sense will be a demanding fall, I have 4 weeks to adjust and realign. I am reading Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World through Mindfulness, by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Mindfulness meditation is a skill I plan to hone as I acknowledge what is (climate change, species decline, politics, over consumption, etc.) and live in the learning and doing moment.

And so, awareness. I live in awareness and I help children become more aware. Kabat-Zinn includes a chapter on awareness and I quote from it some pieces I want to remember:

"Awareness is immanent . . . but it is camouflaged, like a shy animal. It usually requires some degree of effort and stillness if not stealth even to catch a glimpse of it . . . You have to be alert, curious, motivated to see it. With awareness, you have to be willing to let the knowing of it come to you, to invite it in, silently and skillfully in the midst of whatever you are thinking or experiencing. . .

". . . This willingness to embrace what is and then work with it takes great courage, and presence of mind."

Good Karma

Good Karma filled our home when Ken's friend, Frank, a Buddhist monk, spent Saturday evening and Sunday morning with us. Frank and Ken were high school friends and they and their Northern Virginia track team buddies have started to get together from time to time to remember their youth. Their get-togethers usually coincide with Frank's trips home from Thailand.

On this trip, Ken brought Frank and his mother here to spend the night before proceeding to Wilmington, North Carolina, where Frank's mother is moving to be closer to her other son. On their way south, Ken will take them to a Thai monestary in Carrollton for a visit. Ken is earning merit, Frank says, due to his kindness.

I have been intrigued by Buddhism since becoming friends with a Buddhist man in 1995. I learned from Xavier and have read a bit, but fresh conversations with a monk have nudged my curiosity and understanding along. I cherry-pick concepts that appeal to me. Multiple lives. Selflessness. Simple living. Community. Good Karma. Frank is a forest monk. As a Master Naturalist, this appeals to me. Yes, the forest, nature, does have a calming and mind-clearing effect. In the words of John Burroughs, "I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order."

Today's Sermon

The topic of today's sermon at the Williamsburg Unitarian Universalists church: "Is This All There Is?"

A loaded question, of course, and one that is seldom asked until life presents us with a crisis. I found the WUU church about 15 years ago ... after a crisis. I return time and again to center myself on this very question and to focus on being "at one" with the world.

Like 90% of Unitarian Universalists, I jumped ship from a mainstream church because I wasn't comfortable with pat solutions and a promise of afterlife. While services, prayers, and songs made me tingle, the mainstream church usually left me cold. Answers were easy to accept in the short term, but they didn't really address my yearning to explore, learn, and grow. Magical thinking didn't do it for me because is rooted in one historical story, embellished over time for largely political reasons, and humanity's story is a very recent one at that.

I found what I needed in the Unitarian Universalists church and I was reminded of this today. The minister discussed the fact that Unitarian Universalism isn't a church that believes in everything and nothing, as it is often portrayed. Rather, the UU church attracts those who are drawn to depth and a spirit-centered life. The UU church supports people in their exploration of the great questions of life. It supports people who have discerned that materialism is not the answer and that, after all, life is short. It supports people who value thoughtful spirituality.

The UU church supports people who value wholeness. Wholeness is spiritual and to get there we have to move beyond the material realm. The UU church is a place UUs support on Sundays and other days, as we are willing and able, because it helps us discover the fleeting beauty and awesome depth of life in a complex world. The church helps us focus on the fact that we feel whole when we simplify. We prefer a short, deep, thoughtful, and whole existence to a "long life of half-baked hapiness" where material things and magical thinking distract us from what it means to be human.

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