Hearing Your Own Voice

Mary Oliver says:

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting their bad advice-

though the whole house
began to tremble and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my Life!” each voice cried.

But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,

though their melancholy
was terrible.

lt was already late enough,
and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.

But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,

that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,

determined to do the only thing you could do-
determined to save
the only life that you could save.

What is it that you know you must do? How easily we forget that, whether we’re young or old, it’s already late enough– already late for choosing to make the difference we can make.

It’s always seemed to me to be the most important work-related question of life: how much am I making my life count? How much difference am I making? “I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world” is another, wonderfully compelling Mary Oliver line.

What can I do to help pass health care for all? What can I do to discourage the President from wasting more precious lives on foreign soil? Very little perhaps, though I can learn to listen to my own voice. I can lend my voice to those who are mobilizing coordinated efforts. I can stand with those who demand accountability for legislators who serve the interests of insurance companies over the interests of their constituents. I can stand with those who want to save lives by an early end to two futile wars.

Most of all, though, I can share my gift for providing caring support to my clients and readers and students. Whatever your gift is, dear visitor, we need more of you. Thank  you cellists, gardeners, poets, floor installers, teachers, and doctors. Thank you kind people and strangers who smile; thank you children who make me laugh.

Thank you Creator, for all that is our life! Tomorrow, may I find new ways to serve.

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Blessings, dear visitor. Please post a response here, or email me at drvlee1234@aol.com.

Take a drink of love!

I know the way you can get
when you have not had a drink of love.

Your face hardens.
Your sweet muscles cramp.
Children become concerned
about a strange look that appears in your eyes
which even begins to worry your own mirror….

Squirrels and birds sense your sadness
and call an important conference in a tall tree.
They decide which secret code to chant
to help your mind and soul.

Oh, I know the way you can get if you
have not been drinking of love.

You might rip apart
every sentence your friends and teachers say,
looking for hidden clauses.

You might weigh every word on a scale
like a dead fish.

You might pull out a ruler to measure from
every angle in your darkness
the beautiful dimensions of a heart you once
trusted.

I know the way you can get
if you have not had a drink
from love’s hands.

That is why all the great ones speak
of the vital need
to keep remembering God,
so you will come to know and see him
as being so playful and just wanting–just wanting–to help.

That is why Hafiz says:
Bring your cup near me.
For all I care about is

quenching  your thirst for freedom!
All a sane man or woman can ever care about
is giving love!
–Hafiz (14th c.), translated by Daniel Ladinsky

All of us become shadows of our true selves when we have not had enough love. Looking in the mirror, we seen limitation, inadequacy, mistake after mistake. Looking at those we love, we see lack of empathy, bad intentions, and failure to live up to our expectations. Strangers become heartless and faceless, intent on taking our parking place or running us down on the freeway.

When our state concerns the children and animals around us, it can be hard to ask for and receive the love we need. “You don’t love me enough!” rarely evokes what would meet our heart’s longing.

Psychotherapists like myself get frequent and priceless opportunities to learn that giving love away can be the shortest route to letting love flow. We give it simply by attentive listening and an open heart that really cares about what we hear from the person in the client’s chair.

Parents of children small enough to welcome loving overtures have their own gold mine of opportunity to give love selflessly today, right now, by exercising that last modicum of patience and attention you have to give.

All of us have the next person we meet. Look deeply into the eyes of the person who a moment ago seemed only a clerk whose job was to total our purchases. A playful or kind comment can make buying carrots a precious experience.

Thank you, Daniel, for bringing us the priceless Hafiz!

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Blessings, dear visitor. You may post a reply here or email me at drvlee1234@aol.com.

 

 

“You do not have to be good.”

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of yourself
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile, the wild geese, high in the clear blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
–Mary Oliver in Dream Work

What a relief to know that we don’t have to be good. We don’t have to even remember the soft animal of ourselves. We will forget it soon enough, and once again fall into identifying with our ego, our persona and our social role.

Even though we forget that soft, sweet part of ourselves though, it stays with us, waiting for us to remember it and bring it up to consciousness again. It’s available for kindness, for connection, and for love. It’s available  today, requiring only that we let ourselves love what–and whom–we love.

Blessings to you, dear visitor. May you find some quiet moments in this and every day–moments to reflect on “your place in the family of things.” As Rumi says, “Inside you are sweet beyond telling!”

Psychotherapy: a profound privilege

George’s Leaving

In my work, I become a lover.
Understand people better than their own parents do,
know them in ways their lovers and children long for,
learn their sighs, their movements,
discover what
their facial lines reveal.

I love them better
than they love themselves….

Coming as envoy to the iinterior land,
I chart the features,
map the vastness,
near the enormous, red, wet heart.

The work is privileged.

I’ve lived more lifetimes now than I deserve
and know the anatomy of inner space
like my own two hands.

Across from me could be by my
lover….mother….daughter,
A perfect counterpart,
unfulfilled potential.

My unconscious rises.
I need to be impeccable.
I am not!

Today my heart hurts.
Tired of being a professional,
a perpetual lover
sickened  by change
I take to my bed.

Every leaving
tells me I am alone.

How can I say goodbye
over
and over
and over
yet stay open to the unknown face,
the voice on the phone?

George looks at me sideways,
goodbye tears running down.
“I felt cradled here,” he says.
“thank you for urging me to see my Dad
when he was dying.”

George, please don’t thank me.
For you it’s grace.
I know.
The work’s complete and
healing satisfies.

He says goodbye.
He goes.
I feel the loss of him all  night.

This lovely poem by Mary Ellen Mctamaney captures the preciousness of the journey of psychotherapy. It’s my calling and the great privilege of my life. I have indeed lived many lifetimes through my work with all kinds of couples, individuals and groups.

I’ve been privileged to help 21 years of couples restore the passion and sexual joy that creates the emotional glue of a long-term relationship and stable family. I’ve been a source of support through recovery from grief and from addiction. It’s been a joy to be a trusted guide for men and women facing depression, anxiety and mortality. Some seek new strategies that they can learn in a few months of strategically focused sessions. Others come for years, seeking healing of deep wounds with decades of history. I treasure them all. Each has in some way been my teacher, as I have been theirs.

“How can I make a difference?” is one of the most important questions in life. I’d like to make this post an invitation to anyone who knows about therapy from the inside. Please share your experiences.

Blessings, dear visitor. Please respond by posting here or email your response to drvlee1234@aol.com.

Start again today.

Mary Oliver says:

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean–
the one who has flung herself out of the the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down–
who is gazing around with her enormous, complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how  to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

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On the morning after a seemingly wasted day, this poem reverberates in my heart. Once again, I’ve fallen short, failed to progress toward my life goals, even gone backward.

I’m old enough to know my good days are limited now. They always were, but my bad knee and grey temples make it real.

What will I do with my wild and precious life? What have I done? My answer is well enough in family, a good start in my books, and and years of work with clients who’ve said the work made a difference–even a transformation. So far, so good, though never enough, never impeccable.

In addressing those who are most in pain, who suffer from war, abject poverty, life-threatening illness, or the daily threat of violence, I’ve failed badly. In assisting the least of these, I’ve done so very little.

I was a Peace Corps Volunteer once. Later, traveling in India, I gave rice to the poor. At home, I worked with homeless, addicted youth. Sometimes, I’ve been privileged to assist with dying and death. Good intentions, followed by inconsistent action. So little, so unsustained, so lacking in commitment to turn around some corner of the planet.

If I died tomorrow, anyone who spoke of me truly would say, “She had a big heart, but she never buckled down and took on responsibility to make change happen for a group with no voice or power.”

May I be guided to that group or project. Perhaps you, dear visitor, know of someone or some place in need. Will you let me know?

And what about you? When you and I have both merged with the Light, what will be said of how brightly we lit up the darkness?

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Please respond, dear visitor. You may post a response here, or email your blog post, question, or comment to drvlee1234@aol.com.

Opening to Life

David Whyte says:

Enough

Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.

This opening to the life
we have refused
again and again
until now.
Until now.

Yesterday I was privileged to share an afternoon with poetry friends who often join together to celebrate the ancient oral tradition of poetry.  Our only rule is that we don’t read–we recite. We’ve learned that taking the time  to commit a poem to memory makes that poem part of  you, and begins to reveal its secrets. When you share it with others through recitation, still more depths are revealed. When we share without hiding our own vulnerability, a powerful exchange occurs.

Kim Rosen was a special guest of the group yesterday. An author and wonderful performer of poetry, she took us on a journey that renewed our joy in Mary Oliver, David Whyte, Walt Whitman, Billy Collins, Rumi and others. In her book, Saved By a Poem, she shares her journey of mastering poem after poem. She shares that mastery along with glimpses of exquisite vulnerability. Learn more about her at www.kimrosen.net.

In my work as a psychotherapist, public speaker and author, facing the refusal to open to life is a daily challenge. Sometimes that refusal is my own; sometimes it’s what holds back my patients. When we get out of own way, and allow grief, mourning and confusion to flow, we are rewarded by an equal measure of love, passion and and fulfillment.

Dear visitor, if you are among those who have not yet opened the door to your own magnificence, I offer you these profound words from Derek Walcott:

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Blessings, dear visitor. You may post a reply here or email me at drvlee1234@aol.com.

The Decline of Civility

During a recent visit to long-term friends, I was amazed to find out that that they are on the other side of the health care debate. They are an intelligent, kind and well-educated couple. I was astonished to learn that they regularly listen to certain Fox News commentators, especially two who I consider to be masters of smear and innuendo. I feel sure that if it were announced that President Obama had found a cure for cancer, those Fox talk show hosts would denounce that cure as another example of Obama’s Commie-socialist-Kenyan-secret Muslim plans to take over and ruin the country.

“Tim,” the husband of my old friend, asked me if I agreed that “liberalism is becoming a religion with Obama as the Messiah.” Being asked such a peculiar question by someone I’ve known for years was blew my mind. I didn’t voice my true answer: “No, it’s  the other way around. Conservatives have become so attached to their ideology that they can’t see what’s obvious to most of the world–that the United States now has one of the best and brightest and most integrity-driven president we’ve had in my lifetime.”

There was more to come and it was even worse. When Tim said, “That abortion doctor got what he deserved.” I was truly stunned! Hearing those words coming out of the mouth of someone I’ve long considered a friend was a wake-up call. It brought the polarization of our electorate far too close to home.

I was too overcome at that moment to be able to challenge Tim by pointing out that such a statement claims that “my way of seeing abortion is right, and anyone whose actions represent another point of view deserves to be murdered.” This is freedom? This is America? Have we become so polarized that we believe that those who want to make decisions according to their own conscience deserve violent reprisals?

I must be among millions of progressives who are stunned by these developments. Since Barack Obama came forward and showed himself to be a person of character, integrity, compassion and a brilliant mind, I’ve been optimistic about our politics for the first time in many years. When millions of us mobilized behind him and put him into the presidency, I was ecstatic.

I actually believed that Obama’s Christian faith and great record as a husband and father would endear him to my conservative relatives and friends. I couldn’t have been more surprised when his religious and family values were ignored in favor of thousands of hours of silly season TV time to such groups as those who claim our President is not a citizen or that his intention to speak to school children about working hard in school is an effort at sinister indoctrination.

While his critics railed that he had never run anything, Barack Obama was running the most successful presidential campaign in history. He prevailed by assembling an amazing team of people with integrity and purpose like his own and by carrying out their plan with great discipline. He succeeded because millions of us volunteered our time and gave him whatever money we could. He won because he restored hope and national pride in more than half of the nation.

Personally, I never for a moment anticipated the anger, the hate, the smears, and the death threats. I never realized that the vision of an America where all points of view are respected and valued was anathema to millions. I never imagined that a president who would be admired around the world and widely loved at home could at the same time be the object of such contempt by so many Americans. It never crossed my mind that a person I admire so much could evoke insulting accusations that he’s like Hitler or Stalin.

The further right you go, the wilder the accusations become: they say Obama is the Antichrist, and that he wants to kill your grandmother. Children who learn a song at school that says “Yes we can help our country” are being indoctrinated into some sinister leftist agenda.

Really, America! Dissent is one thing. Disagreeing with the Democratic ideas about how to improve our country is fine. Worrying about the economy and how no one seems to really be sure how to turn it around is reasonable.

Here’s what isn’t reasonable:

• bringing guns to political rallies

• calling the President of the United States disgusting names

• encouraging those whose limited education or intelligence makes them susceptible to manipulation by moneyed interests who want to stir them up

• any action which create a dangerous climate for everyone’s children

To borrow a phrase from my conservative friends, I want my country back! I want to give and receive civility and respect. I want us to learn to talk to each other again.

There’s an analogy here  to something couples who want to have a good relationship have to learn. There are boundaries we must observe if we want to have good communication. The minute I call you stupid or selfish, the opportunity to have a fruitful dialogue is lost. In politics, the minute either of us denigrates the character and intention of a political opponent, the same loss occurs.

I do think part of the problem is how much attention we give to the media, and how uncritically we listen to those on our side. When conservatives listen to Fox News all day and liberals listen to MSNBC, there is an effect. Some hosts have learned to increase their ratings by railing against the opposition. (Keith, I mean you. Give it a rest. Sean and Bill–likewise. I challenge each of you to have a five minute segment of your show where you acknowledge some positive action on the part of one of the politicians or opposing colleagues you usually insult.)

We must all take this polarizing of our country very seriously. Innocent people have already gotten hurt, and more will follow. At the very least, we will fail our children by sabotaging each other’s efforts to make political progress.

Here’s the challenge I plan to offer John and his wife: You watch Rachel Maddow (They’d never heard of her!) for 1 hour, and I’ll watch Sean or Bill for one hour. I’ll look for something positive to report, and you do the same.

It’s a start.

Thank you for reading this dear visitor. I’ll return to this blog’s usual purposes soon. Please respond by posting here or emailing me at drvlee1234@aol.com.

Inner Joy

Rumi says,

In the early morning hour,

lover and beloved awake

and take a drink of water. She asks,

“Do you love me or yourself more? Really,

tell the absolute truth.”

He says, “There’s nothing left of me. I’m like a ruby

held up to the sunrise. Is it still a stone or a world

made of redness? It’s has no resistance to sunlight.”

(This is how the martyred, ancient Sufi sage Hallaj, said

“I am truth.”)

The ruby and the sunrise are one. Be courageous

and discipline yourself. Completely become hearing

and ear, and wear the sun ruby as an earring.

Work. Keep digging  your well. Don’t think

about getting off from work. Water is there somewhere.

Submit to a daily practice.

Your loyalty to that is a ring upon the door.

Keep knocking, and eventually the joy inside

will open a window and look out

too see who’s there.

In his profound wisdom, Rumi never looses sight of “the joy inside.” It’s always there, ready for us to access it through consistent, daily practice.

You don’t have to be a skilled meditator. Further, as Mary Oliver has pointed out,”You don’t have to crawl on your knees for a hundred  miles in the dessert repenting….”

You don’t have to be part of any group or spiritual elite.  A consistent daily practice can involve simply asking. Your practice can be reading Rumi daily or reciting the prayers of your childhood. It’s enough to offer a prayer of gratitude for the richness of our lives.

Though full of challenges, my own life is rich in children, friends, and family. My backyard is full of roses, tomatoes and corn. My body is strong. My opportunities to serve are many. I am so grateful!

You may leave a post here or email me at drvlee1234@aol.com. To book me as a speaker at your event or for performing Rumi and other poets, please email or call me at 510.882.2330.

Blessings to you dear visitor.

Come Together Now

One Song

Let us choose one another as Companions.

Let us all sit at one another’s feet

Come a little closer now,

so that we may see each other’s faces.

Inside we share to many secrets.

Do not believe we are simply what these eyes can see.

….Now we are music together,

sharing one cup and an armfull of roses.

I’m touched today by these beautiful words from Michael Green’s translation of One Song: A New Illuminated Rumi. Like so much of Rumi, these words could not be more relevant to us now.

The need to reform health care in our country presents all of us with a great challenge–to listen and empathize with those who see things differently. It’s so easy to be influenced by the media’s focus on controversy and extreme views. Instead, we need to do our best to “sit at one another’s feet,” and learn.

Conservatives of both parties worry about increasing the role of big government in our lives. In a few areas they feel government must set the rules, such as in their desire to require government (rather than women and their physicians) to make decisions about abortion.

In most cases, though, conservatives are dedicated to minimizing the ability of government to regulate or interfere in commerce and business, in the use of guns, and in daily life in general; they want tax cuts, not increases, and are against programs that require tax supported massive government spending. Conservatives tend to believe that those who are doing well are enjoying the fruits of their own hard work rather than of any advantage they may have enjoyed due to their race or family background.

Progressives (“liberals”) care about freedom too, but they are troubled by the inequities in our society. They believe that the playing field is not level for minorities and for those who grow up without wealth and privilege. They want government to intervene in the interests of justice and fairness.

Progressives tend to believe that those who have benefited greatly from the American system (by becoming very wealthy for instance) should shoulder more of the burden of the cost of social programs. In this, they don’t denigrate the hard work of those who succeed; they point out, though, that millions of janitors and waitresses and laborers and many others have no wealth in spite of years of hard work.

In certain arenas, progressives believe change will not happen without government intervention. How could racial equity have advanced as far as it has if civil rights legislation had not mandated equal access to education? How can those who are too poor and powerless to demand access to health care ever hope to achieve it if government does not use its power to require it for them? Progressives say that history is full of examples that those who have power and control wealth do not share it unless forced to do so.

There is common ground between these two polarities. Conservatives can be just as compassionate as progressives. Progressives value freedom and independence just as much. All of us can agree with our President when he says providing health care for all is a moral imperative. Since we don’t agree on how to achieve this, compromise is the only way.

At the moment it seems that no real compromise will be achieved by this Congress in the matter of health care reform. In spite of the hard work of people from both sides of the aisle, Republicans feel unable to support any of the bills now being considered. Most seem to feel that their constituencies or their financial supporters will punish them if they sign on to any version of the bill Democrats control.

Whether or not we support the final 2009 health care bill, I think we can all help to reduce the polarization of our political process. We can “come a little closer” and listen to each other. We can all agree that we want to stop the increasing ugliness and even potential violence that is so prominent right now in our politics.

Please let me know if you feel I have represented your side of the equation fairly. What are your thoughts on how we can all show compassion, empathy and integrity while we disagree so deeply?

Blessings to you, dear visitor.

Please write a post here, or email me at drvlee1234@aol.com.

How can I serve?

In my dream, I stood concealed while a violent crime took place. I felt powerless and did nothing. On waking, the message seemed to be that I stand by while so much that is painful and violent happens to my fellow human beings.

Ted Kennedy liked to quote the Biblical injunction in the Book of Matthew: feed the hungry, give clothing to the poor, visit those in prison. Those words from my own childhood touch me still, and evoke my longing to make a real difference in the lives of those who struggle.

I feel my efforts to help have never been sustained nor consistent enough. I’ve worked with homeless youth, men and women with HIV, dying people and their families. I’ve worked with many individuals and couples whose ability to experience joy was compromised by childhood injuries. I’ve been privileged to hear often that the work helped these treasured clients make significant changes.

Still, it never seems enough. In recent years, I’ve replaced hospice and homeless work with writing. I need to do more to directly alleviate suffering and bring hope to those who’ve lost their way.

How can I best serve? My dream told me that is the question which will direct me now. Dear visitor, please contact me if you have thoughts on this for me, or if you’ve answered these questions in your own life.

Rumi says:

….Work. Keep digging your well.

Don’t think about getting off from work.

Soul water is there somewhere.

Submit to a daily practice.

Your loyalty to that is a ring upon the door.

Eventually, the joy inside will open a window

and look out to see who’s there.

Blessings to you dear visitor. You may post a response here or email me at drvlee1234@aol.com.