Just leaving the scene of the big one piece stone front facade of the Lutheran church cracking, the big glass window shattering and it all falling backwards. I was across the street at first taking pictures, a woman standing there asked me if I'd gone to school there, I said no and she said, "I was married there." I shook my head and crossed the street to get a better shot, leaving my kids far back on the other side of the street, watching.
I didn't tell her that our only memories were walking and riding our bikes through the parking lot every day, and playing in the little park. And making jokes about how they didn't shovel anymore after the church closed, saying we should put "Jesus Would Shovel" on their sign out front.
So I took these pictures:
- goodbyechurch.jpg (227.24 KiB) Viewed 1338 times
- churchandsky.jpg (297.56 KiB) Viewed 1338 times
Then I heard, over all the construction noise, a child crying loudly. My six year old, from across the street. I ran back across the street. She was worried that the church would fall on me and in fact, the construction site manager was in the street at the time, warning people away.
She said through tears, "Why do people have to destroy things? That took a long time to make. It was pretty." I told her that soon it would be a CVS, and other things would happen in that space, and that to do a new thing, you had to let go of an old thing. Then she asked why CVS couldn't be in the church. "That would nice," she said, "there would be a lot of room." I said I didn't know, maybe it cost too much to heat.
So she kept crying all the way to the Root, which isn't far, but I couldn't stop to hug her because we had to get away from all the dust. Then I stopped to hug her and told her that things don't matter, even nice things, even things with memories attached; only people matter, and even with people, you can't feel bad if you have to let go of them. If you spend your time feeling bad about losing things from the past, you'll miss the new things that are in the present for you. New things that are waiting for you to find them, and have fun with. It doesn't mean we forget about the other things, we are happy we had them, and we remember them, but we don't feel sad about them. They taught us how live and be happy back then, so we could bring all the stuff we learned to the next place, to now.
That went over well, and all tears stopped, so now we're at the Root and we're talking about letting go of things. Practicing zen detachment. (Yeah, they are 6, 8 and 11 and a half, but the Root has been church to us for a while.) We've been looking at this:
Practice of Detachment in Zazen
In Buddhist sitting practice, called zazen in Japanese, the given stimulus is the instruction to sit upright: "Just sit upright. Do not lean to the left, incline to the right, slump forward, or arch backward."
For most of us, the instinctive reaction to this stimulus is to stiffen up or to brace, fixing the joints and holding the breath in the process. The more clearly we see it, the more possible it may be to inhibit this reaction, along with the false attempts at self-organization which are its offshoots.
To initiate a conscious direction of the use of the self that was previously unfamiliar may involve the wish to sit upright without fixing, keeping all the joints as open and free as possible.
This process requires trust, because it entails opening up to the unknown, abandoning the false security of holding and fixing. Again, it requires clarity, especially in regard to timorous responses to the stimulus "Just sit upright."
Which led to a discussion of what "timorous" means. Suffering from nervousness, fear or lack of confidence.
So you can't be nervous or fearful, if you're timorous, it won't work. You just have to sit upright and trust what is happening now. The only way to know what it is, is to be open to it and experience it and celebrate it. Like learning a new dance by dancing-- you don't know what you're doing when you start, you just move to what you hear in the moment and then you get it, and then you lead it.
In Lakewood, what is really happening now is us-- We have to recognize who we are, what we are, and participate in our present, and in our future, by being here, not necessarily trying to fit ourselves into "how things used to be done" or believing that we must cling to structures, leadership, ideas, that might not fit who we are and what we need. Again, we remember the past, we celebrate it, but we are not sad to let it go, because we need to be ready for now. There are not a lot of places like this, the way we can take care of it and grow it, celebrate it, sustain it, is to realize it is us. Sit upright, stay open and free, trust each other.
Now we're going to the big rummage sale out back.
Happy Saturday.
Betsy Voinovich
