Saturday before Thanksgiving Year of our Lord 2014

It is the day before the Todd family celebrates Thanksgiving at our local Lutheran Church. As the local weather report says on my phone there is a fine ice mist going on this morning. Francie is downstairs preparing to brine the turkey. Me, I am listening to a CBC Morning Show on Radio One. There weather at both locales East Lansing and Ottawa sounds about the same right now, cold and crappy.

The host is having folks bring in breakfast foods. There has been a frittata, some blueberry French toast and a tenderloin omelet so far. I am growing quite hungry. I did go down and grab about a third of a pumpkin pie bagel to hold me until breakfast. A woman with a delightful accent is now talking about welsh cakes. She is asserting that they are wonderful for breakfast. 
 
Another guest is a singer named Jeremy Fisher. He just performed a Christmas song called, “I owe, I owe, I owe”. Quite cute. The host is asking Jeremy now about the stories that the performer offers up between songs, “Are they true?” Mr. Fisher responds that his memory is additive and that as time goes by the story gets warped a bit here and a twisted tad there as he responds to each audience he faces. He is a fun guest and a passable performer.

 A new dish is being offered up for the breakfast. She says it is a bit of a muffelet. It is an omelet cooked in a muffin tray. Bread, stuffed at the bottom of the tin, add eggs and cheese and bake. Sounds good. Me, I don’t think that is an omelet. Sounds to me more like a scrambled egg bake. I have tried making those throwing in some crisped up maple bacon. Not bad but the kids did not like the odd texture.

As I was out of the room the program shifted to world news. Apparently there is a security summit in Halifax and John McCain is screaming that our policy toward the Islamic State is in his word “delusional”. Yeah, it is time to change the station. Off to Pandora. The first song that comes up is one called Dreamer or Believer, the very catchy hook is “The worst is behind him, love is gonna find him. He’s good no troubles that a dollar won’t cure.” The singer is Jimmy Gardreau. I love my Pandora “Wake the Dead” station.

As to my breakfast I can smell the scent of a ham steak working its way up the stairwell from the kitchen. Five or six days of the week oatmeal. Today will be a piece of ham and most likely an omelet. Saturday mornings are good morning. If the ice doesn’t linger I will most likely go to work late this afternoon or early evening. I will try and rally the troops to go cut our Christmas tree midday. This means bringing the boxes of Christmas stuff up from the basement today. Ah how quickly the year has flown by. Have a Great Day and may the turkey be with you come week’s end.

If You Haven't Ever Heard Me Give a Speech

A few weeks ago I gave a speech on meditation. If you haven't seen me speak in a long time or ever here is a link that will allow you to do that. Start at about the 38 minute mark. http://www.law.msu.edu/video/index.html​

The Speech I Gave Last Night on Meditation

Hello, I'm an administrative law examiner for the State of Michigan. 

I meditate daily. I am not afraid to admit it. What do I mean by saying I meditate? 

Well, I get to my office between about 7:40 a.m. Almost always I am the first person there. As I juggle my stuff walking in the door I turn the office alarm off. My lunch goes into the refrigerator, I start a pot of decaffeinated coffee and I go to my office.

 After struggling with my keys I set my bags down on a table. My office is windowless so I turn n a small floor lamp. After I close my door I unroll a little yoga mat behind my desk and put on some ancient music. I like ancient choruses without instrumental accompaniment in Latin. I can’t understand a damn word of it but it is very, pretty and soothing. Then I sit with my legs folded on the mat.

 For about 10 minutes while in this posture I try and clear my mind of everything. I just let all my thoughts flow by and just try empty my consciousness. 

That is the sum of my practice. I have been doing this for probably five years on a regular basis at my office. As I sit and listen to the singing I am mentally taken to a peaceful place. It calms me. Mentally it moves me into a cool calm almost holy space. In this state I let go of the world and its problems, just for now. My breathing slows and I feel real rest coming to my bones. With my thoughts clearing I can see, I can discern. 

Meditation isn’t a philosophy, a theology, an ism or any method or path. It just is. Discernment and calm, these are the things I touch when meditating. I meditate because I need a respite from stress. What kind of stress do I have you ask? 

Well let's see every day I listen to seven different people who've come in for a hearing tell me their problems. They do this with passion as they plead for restoration of their driving license privileges. People tell me about horrible things; sexual assault, child abuse, infidelity, grievous disease and failed dreams. Most people lay out this parade of tragedy to explain why they drank or drugged too much in the past. 

 Also I hear from people who killed their best friend because they flipped a coin to see who was going to drive because they were both too inebriated to be behind the wheel. Yeah it's pretty nasty stuff isn’t it. 

At about 15,000 hearings I've done to date over 15 years it still takes a toll every time. 

 And then I go home. My wife has a great job but it's pretty high stress too. So if I want to unwind by working through my day’s emotional onslaught with her as my amateur psychologist I have to do it reciprocally and take on her traumas in exchange. Sigh.

My kids well nothing stressful there. One of my children has Aspergers and the other ADD. One is like Robin Williams nonstop all the time and the other wants everyone to be totally quiet for long as possible. Do you see any disconnect, any source of dissonance. Is there I ask you perhaps the germ of stress there?

 Over time this life was taking its toll on me. A few years back I was eating achiphex like candy. But then one day about five years ago I was walking through the old Barnes & Noble in East Lansing. I saw a magazine up in the bright sunlight windows that caught my eye. It was called Tricycle. A vividly colored piece of art on the cover drew me in. The first article I flipped to had a title like “Just Sit." The article went on to talk about some of the healing qualities of meditation. Things like lower heart rate lower blood pressure better general overall health stood out as I read it. 

Throwing down my five dollar bill I bought the magazine. How was I to know I just bought into meditation? 

 The article I read simply talked about sitting. It talked about not fighting the ideas that flitted through you mind. It urged getting on a mat and just breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth. Let the ideas pass by but don’t grab onto them. Don’t make a list. Let the quiet settle in. 

 This wasn't the first time I’d been introduced to meditation. I am a Delaware attorney. Delaware has a three day bar exam. Between day two and day three the bar exam I was hospitalized with chest pains. By the time I got to the hospital I was in tachycardia, my heart was at two hundred beats a minute. It wasn’t a heart attack I had a condition that is known as Wolf Parkinson White, there is an extra electrical pathway across my heart that makes it race when I'm stressed. The net impact is that when you're stressed like say standing in the court room making an argument trying to win your client some money you can faint or better yet die. 

Great time to learn your body can’t handle oral argument, after three years of law school and two thirds of the bar exam. 

 Given my career path was set my cardiologist suggested that I learn some relaxation techniques. I picked up a book called "Minding The Body Mending The Mind." It was one of the best things I ever did. In that tome I found a crash course on relaxation techniques. Breathe in through your nose slowly filling your lungs and let the air pass across your lips on the way out. Alternatively lie on the floor and relax every muscle in your body. 

These two techniques from the book have stood the test of time for me. I used these techniques for a number of years. 

However when I left Delaware and got the private practice in Michigan I was always rushed I was always stressed and I lost touch with how to handle stress. I ignored the things I knew on how to give my bodily and mental systems a break. 

Failing to meditate early in the day means I will get lost in the day. Meditation is an act that focuses my being. When I say lost in the day I mean my focus is drawn in a 100 directions and I don’t seem to accomplish anything. My prioritizations schemes all fail. 

 For me the act of centering my mind is as natural and necessary as taking a shower to cleanse my body. If I don’t take my shower say because I know I have heavy work to do that will require sweat and or exposure to gunky things (image cleaning a wet basement), my day is thrown off also. Showering just gets me to the starting point of the day. Maybe what I am saying is I like to start the day clean mentally and physically, a tabla rasa as it were. 

Meditation can be as simple as walking about and just forcing me to be in the moment. Look there is a tree. Smell the bakery. See the light glinting oddly off the windows up there. For me the bindings of stress are loosened through practice/meditation. The emptying of the grocery bag of the mind and the ditching of the daily list punches a hole through the mental garbage that can overwhelm me Meditation gives me perspective. 

Were I to hold anger or resentment about what seem to be injustices in, the dark nature of those feelings would kill me. Some days I suspect my irritations at others and at myself have already planted the seeds to my doom and that the harvest will come due soon. Maybe that sense or belief that internalizing hurt and rage is unhealthy is why in my later years I am drawn to meditation. 

October Grey

 

October when it comes to Michigan is an affair of contrasts. One day might be clear and the temperature could be in the 70s; maybe just shirt sleeves would be more than enough cover against the weather. But the the fronts roll in one after another each dragging with it A drop in the temperature and mist or in hail and alternately snow.

October is a period of transition. Daylight is decreasing at a very precipitous rate.

Living through October is a time when you come to understand dread. With October's passing me realize that winter is not a fable, that it is not simply going to skip you by this year and it is a hard reality with which you must live. October you watch the clouds that mark a front closely.

Imagine

Sometimes an image can take you back to particular place and time. This picture puts me silently and solidly in 1974. It is as if it was an album cover to the mysterious music that would provide the soundtrack to my life.

Gothic

North woods - 1930s Dream Sequence