Living in Paradox

I became excited about Marc Lesser’s latest book, Know Yourself, Forget Yourself: Five Truths to Transform Your Work, Relationships, and Everyday Life when I realized how close to the heart of my “Grace in the Gray Areas” exploration his writing came.  We both talk about living in life’s paradoxes.

As I put it, living with faith, with intention and with compassion for ourselves and others, in the uncertainties, the paradoxes, the impermanence, the unknown—that’s Grace in the Gray Areas.

Lesser frames his exploration thusly: “Humans are inescapable storytellers, and we can hold many stories at the same time.  The elasticity of the human mind not only is capable of this but seems to welcome the chance.  This book seeks to help you name and embrace your life’s contradictory truths, its authentic paradoxes, as essential to creating an inspired, effective life.”

My fascination is with the gray areas of our lives—paradoxes where seeming opposites come into play, decisions we must make where there is no black and white (or where there is but we have to integrate the two), expectations of one way life will be when it turns out to be another, all of these things. I think when we are very young we believe in polar opposites and very clear delineations of black and white. Only with age and wisdom do we start to see the many shades of gray we must navigate throughout our personal lives, our work, our relationships.

Lesser has brought the multitude of paradoxes down to what he calls the five core truths:

1.      Know yourself, forget yourself (which develops your attention)

2.      Be confident, question everything (which broadens your outlook)

3.      Fight for change, accept what is (which fosters more skillful action)

4.      Embrace emotion, embody equanimity (which increases your resilience)

5.      Benefit others, benefit yourself (which increases your effectiveness)

I don’t know about you, but I see a lot of Buddhist concepts encapsulated in that list? Not surprising considering that Lesser—now head of the nonprofit Search Inside Yourself Institute--lived in the San Francisco Zen Center for 10 years, and was director of the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center.  Later in the book, Lesser notes, “[M]any spiritual traditions, including Sufism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and the Desert Christian Fathers, have utilized paradox as a method for helping people to wake up, to be more alive, open, honest, creative.  They use paradox to solve one of our most essential problems: as a bridge from the mundane activities…to the world of the sacred. Birth and death, self and no-self, here and not here, pain and loss—all are basic paradoxes of being alive, being human.  We must walk a tightrope between them.”

One of the reasons it is imperative to learn to live in life’s gray areas is, as Lesser writes, “[W]hen we insist on order and clarity in the midst of complexity, the result is sometimes limited thinking and faulty conclusions about ourselves and the world.  It’s a negative example of how real clarity and confidence are often actually reached through embracing paradox, which can sometimes be more accurate and more clear than what we ordinarily think of as clarity.” He cites a brilliant quote from Daniel Kahneman from a 2011 New York Times story:

We are prone to think that the world is more regular and predictable than it really is, because our memory automatically and continuously maintains a story about what is going on, and because the rules of memory tend to make that story as coherent as possible and to suppress alternatives.

 

“And to suppress alternatives…” because people don’t want to believe that life isn’t really black and white and that it’s all about the grays. 

“[E]mbracing life’s paradoxes is a powerful skill; it is a path to increasing effectiveness, awakening joy, and discovering our true purpose, in this and each new moment,” says Lesser.  He captures beautifully the essence of the “grace” piece of living with Grace in the Gray Areas when he adds, “Our minds are the most engaged and vibrant when we honor complexity, learn stillness in turmoil, face doubt with confidence, and seek to know ourselves so that we may better serve others.”  

Today's Gem of Grace in the Gray Areas:

Turn your face to the sunshine, and all shadows fall behind.

                       

                                    (Helen Keller)

Soul Food for Your Family

Do you often talk of your family life with words like “crazy busy”, “frantic”, and “juggling”; get sick of the sound of “ tappety tap” permeating your home; and wish you could spend more time looking at your kids’ faces rather than just their foreheads as they look down at their technology—and maybe they feel the same?  Nurturing the Soul of Your Family: 10 Ways to Reconnect and Find Peace in Everyday Life is a guidebook those till in the throes of parenting with children at home should run out and get, and those with kids who are grown will wish they had years earlier.  Any reader with or without children will find thoughtful discussion of living a slowed-down life in a speeded-up world. 

Author Renée Peterson Trudeau asks early in the book, establishing her own firm credentials as a mom, “Do you ever feel more like a police captain than a goddess?” Trudeau is a life balance coach/speaker, is on the faculty of Kripalu Center for Yoga & Wellness, and leads life balance workshops for Fortune 500 companies and other organizations worldwide.  There are also personal renewal retreats worldwide based on her first book, The Mother’s Guide to Self-Renewal.

This book ties together and goes beyond every spiritual parenting book I’ve ever read. It’s about how to help your family thrive in today’s always turned-on world.  It isn’t just a “how to unplug” how-to but rather leads the reader through what Trudeau calls ten paths of peace, which they can follow to nurture the soul of their family.

Her first chapter, The Transformative Power of Self-Care, espouses a ‘peace begins with me’ philosophy that takes ‘If mama isn’t happy, nobody’s happy’ to the next level—and includes papas, too. Self-care and creating peace are core values for Trudeau, recurring themes throughout the book. She builds a “pause for peace” into each chapter.

The chapter specifically on spiritual renewal is not about going to your place of worship on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday (though that can be part of it) but about a daily spiritual practice. Growing up her family meditated, so of course that is one option she suggests.  The six portals of spiritual renewal are:

·         Creating ritual

·         Cultivating stillness

·         Accepting what is

·         Service to others

·         Living in the present

·         Choosing happiness

Nurturing the Soul of Your Family is peppered with quotes from a range of moms and dads, but my favorite quote is one she gives from Richard Carlson, in Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff—and It’s All Small Stuff, “something wonderful begins to happen with the simple realization that life, like an automobile, is driven from the inside out, not the other way around.”

One chapter, Defining, Celebrating and Honoring Your Family Culture reminds the reader of the importance of being intentional, a helpful antidote to the constantly reactive position we find ourselves in as parents. In another I love the phrase Trudeau uses, “Do Less, Experience More.” The chapter People First, Things Second: The Digital Divide focuses on dealing with the trickiness of technology. Another, Time Together, suggests being in nature as great for family spiritual renewal.

Breaking Free: Making Hard Choices focuses on the tough decisions you have to make—about money, about technology, about work, even about food—to get the life you want for your family. The last section, on Finding Your Tribe, is about building your own and your family’s support network—and using it! As the author said in an interview about the book, “Learning to ask for and receive help can take years of practice; it’s like strengthening a muscle.”

There are journaling and other exercises for the whole family throughout the book. (I love the one on creating a family vision board! Even the most jaded teen or tween will get into this because it’s theirs, too.)

I tried so hard to be a good mom—but would have loved a guidebook like this to taking care of myself so I didn’t get so strung out sometimes (arguing with my child as though I were a child, too and letting him push all my buttons) and to support me as I took on the various challenges of nurturing my family in the midst of the daily storms of the world around us.  Fortunately the book also includes the concept of self-forgiveness—another muscle this parent could use some practice flexing. 

Today’s Gem of Grace in the Gray Areas:

 “The moment a woman decides to be unafraid, she is transformed. When she recognizes the power and possibility of her own strength, and surrenders every fear to that power—she becomes the greatest version of herself.  Her character, her passion, her identity—they all come to life.”

(Diane von Furstenberg, designer & board member, Vital Voices, in the book Vital Voices: The Power of Women Leading Change around the World)

Vital Voices

If you’re concerned about global poverty and war, about the situation of girls and women around the world, the book Vital Voices: The Power of Women Leading Change Around the World is for you.  Vital Voices is an NGO which with partners worldwide supports the work of 12,000 women leaders in 144 countries.  It began as a government initiative in the Clinton Administration after the 1995 Beijing United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women.  The book’s author, Alyse Nelson, based here in DC, is co-founder, president, and CEO of the Vital Voices Global Partnership.  Hillary Clinton, who at the Beijing conference proclaimed that “women’s rights are human rights,” wrote the book’s foreword.

There are profiles of women whose names you have likely not heard before, but whose stories you will not forget, like Carmelita Gopez Nuqui, who for decades has fought human trafficking of Filipino women to Japan, and Panmela Castro, who uses her street art to advocate against domestic violence in Brazil. 

There are profiles of women like the three who who won the Nobel Peace Prize for their “nonviolent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace building work.” Leymah Gbowee won for her work to bring peace and democracy to Liberia, including fighting the use of rape as what she called a “toy of war.”   Sharing the prize was Tawakkul Karman, who led a revolution in Yemen against a repressive regime. The book quotes the third winner, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, whose acceptance remarks capture the spirit of this important book: “Be not afraid to denounce injustice, though you may be outnumbered.  Be not afraid to seek peace, even if your voice may be small…My sisters, my daughters, my friends---find your voices.” 

I can’t write about women around the world as forces for change without also putting in another plug for one of the most powerful books of our time, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, which is a must-read. Don’t miss the subsequent four-hour TV series Half the Sky, which debuted last year and has been rerunning locally in the DC market on PBS this month (also on DVD). 

Check out these two important global movements and find out how you can get involved:

VitalVoices.org

and

HalftheSkyMovement.org  

Honoring Alice

Happy Birthday, Alice Walker!

Did you know there's a documentary coming out about the inimitable poet, author, civil rights activist, and feminist?  Alice Walker: Beauty In Truth, a film by Pratibha Parmar, premieres in London March 10.  

                          (photo courtesy of Kali Films Ltd.)

Walker was the first black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction,for her novel The Color Purple, but she did not spring unformed as a writer into the public eye in 1982 with that book (or the movie made of it several years later).  I have loved Alice Walker’s poetry and prose since I was a high school student reading Ms. magazine and she was an editor there. (She contributed to more than 30 issues and appeared on the magazine’s cover).  Among her wonderful books: You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down (stories), The Temple of My Familiar, We are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For, and Possessing the Secret of Joy.  Often Walker’s writing tackles subjects hard to read about, but her unflinching eye and eloquent pen make the challenge worthwhile, because as the documentary title implies, her writing and her life embody beauty in truth.

Because for me the best of Alice Walker is her individual poems, articles, essays, and speeches, an early collection of them is my favorite of her books: In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose.  The title references an article I still remember vividly reading, "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: The Creativity of Black Women in the South" in a 1974 issue of Ms. The writer speaks of the black women who came before her, and of her mother and the “legacy of respect she leaves to me, for all that illuminates and cherishes life. She had handed down respect for the possibilities - and the will to grasp them.”

                          (photo by Scott Campbell)

Today’s Gem of Grace in the Gray Areas:

Look closely at the present you are constructing:

it should look like the future you are dreaming.

                                    (Alice Walker)

Today's Gem of Grace in the Gray Areas: More Listening

Following on my review of the Mark Nepo book Seven Thousand Ways to Listen in my last post, I just found this glorious quote from a favorite author from my childhood who I'm rediscovering in a new light in adulthood:

Part of doing something is listening.

We are listening. To the sun. To the stars. To the wind. 

                                       (Madeleine L'Engle, Swiftly Tilting Planet)