The Courage to Be Present

Here's a blog post worth its weight in gold. I'd been thinking about this very thing, and ta da! Here it is already written for us: Karen Kissel Wegela is a professor at Naropa University, and the author of The Courage to Be Present. The subtitle of her blog is Ancient wisdom from Buddhism for today's therapists and clients. Click on the title and you can find her regular blog at Psychology Today.

Taking a Fresh Start

When we get bollixed up, we can always start fresh.
Published on August 29, 2010

One thing that I have learned from my meditation practice is how to "take a fresh start." It seems like a simple thing to do, yet I have found that it can have a profound effect not only on my meditation practice, but also on the rest of my life. We can always take a fresh start.

When I began my meditation practice back in the 1970s, my meditation instructor told me that if I realized that I was no longer doing the simple breathing technique that I had been taught, I could just start over again. The particular practice I was doing at the time involved resting my attention lightly on the out-breath and as the breath dissolved into space letting the attention I had placed on it dissolve along with it. When distractions arose, the technique was to simply note them by silently labeling them "thinking" and to gently return my attention to breathing. This eyes-open practice is one I still often do as it provides a strong foundation for staying present and awake not only with myself but also with others.

Sometimes simply returning to the breathing technique isn't enough. As my meditation instructor told me -- only half-jokingly -- "If you are going out with your thoughts and labeling your breath, take a fresh start." Anytime we get all bollixed up and forget what we're trying to do, we can start over.

On the meditation cushion, this means just dropping the technique altogether. Just stop. Take a breath or two. Look around the room, notice where you are. Then, gently, bring your attention back to the meditation practice and begin again.

What I find to be profound in this approach is that we could recognize that every moment is a fresh start. We are always at the beginning; we are always just right here wherever we are. Most of the time we don't realize that all we actually have is the present moment. We act as though all the feelings and thoughts we ever had are still impinging on us right now. In some ways, that is so. We are always living with the consequences of our past choices and actions. The Buddha taught that when we hang onto our stories about ourselves, or about what we think has to happen next, we create suffering for ourselves.

Yet, the next moment is also completely open. We can begin anew right now. Instead of being carried along by the momentum of our habitual --and even mindless-- ways of being, we can recognize the freedom available in each moment.

When I am caught up in an argument with a colleague or my husband, the fruit of my meditation practice often arises as the recognition that I could be fresh and new in this very moment. Sometimes it is quite annoying, actually, to realize that I could just stop, take a breath, and start over. Sometimes I would rather hold on to the illusion that I'm completely right and the other person is completely wrong. Of course, the price of such certainty is usually alienation and pain. When I am willing to let my mind just open to the possibility of starting fresh, I can let go of a rigid viewpoint and begin to listen well. I might even hear what the other person is saying and respond in a useful way. When I can do that (or when the other person can do it first), the whole situation can become more workable.

As a therapist, I often work to support my clients in taking a fresh start. Katie, a woman in her 50s, has long had a conflicted relationship with her son. She recently moved away from a town near Tom and now lives across the country in a new place. When Tom was growing up, Katie was a practicing alcoholic and single mother. Tom, understandably, still carries a good deal of distrust toward Katie even though she has been clean and sober for over a decade. When I first met Katie she was trying to get Tom to forgive her, to be willing to connect with her, to really talk to her. It was, of course, quite painful for Katie that he was closed to those possibilities.

As we worked together, Katie increasingly learned to put herself in Tom's shoes and see how it made sense that he would be leery of her. She had, after all, let him down time after time when he was growing up. When she was drinking, she was often also verbally abusive and probably quite frightening to him. "What now?" she wondered. "If I stop trying to get him to talk to me, what do I do?" What Katie realized was that she couldn't change anything Tom chose to do now. What she could do was take a fresh start herself. By taking a fresh start, she could let go of her own agenda and see what happened next without expectations based on either her shame and regret about the past or her hopeful desires for the future.

Taking a fresh start is a way of letting go both of fear and of hope. It is coming back again and again to the present moment and seeing its open quality. One thing Katie did was to cultivate her own interests aside from her family. She became involved with a number of community groups and discovered a talent for organization and leadership. She found healthy ways of relating to others and received appreciative responses from these new friends.

Katie became quite good at recognizing that she was wanting something from Tom that she might never get. She was able to feel those feelings of longing in herself and to repeatedly let them be what they were. Being willing to start fresh meant letting the feelings be and letting them go, as well.

Katie discovered that she could call Tom to ask about her grand-daughter and then just listen. Instead of pushing for what she hoped for, she could keep opening up again and again to what was really happening. She discovered, as she really listened to Tom, that there were small ways in which they could connect with each other. For example, she could share his enthusiasm a recent accomplishment of his daughter. Over time, Tom has been beginning to be a bit more open with Katie, too. It will take a long time, if it ever happens, before Tom will feel relaxed with Katie.

Taking a fresh start can mean beginning a new life as Katie did by moving across the country. It can mean letting go on an agenda as she did by letting go of her desire to have the close connection she could imagine with her son.

Most importantly, it can also mean for any of us, taking a fresh start in any moment by coming home to ourselves and letting go of whatever it is we think must happen next. We could let ourselves have a sense of wonder and uncertainty-freshness at any time.

Threshold Choirs and Community Singing

What at first seemed like a simple request for permission to use one of my tunes nabbed me a new friend today, even though it wasn't my tune. It was Ann Lee's tune. Mother Ann founded the Shakers many moons ago. I came across a song she wrote called simply Mother Ann's Song and recorded it ten years ago.

At about the same time, Kate Munger founded the first Threshold Choir. I've met women who sing in Threshold Choirs around the country, and have admired the work they do for years. I never thought I'd meet Kate! She's very damn cool, and we go to the same church: The Church of Singing is the Direct Path to Spirit. Here's an article from the San Francisco Chronicle about the work:


Threshold Choir founder ministers to the dying 12/9/08
Shelah Moody, Chronicle Staff Writer


For Kate Munger, music is a healing force. In 2000, the retired music teacher started the Threshold Choir,
a group of women who sing at the bedsides of the terminally ill in private homes, hospitals and hospices across the country. There are chapters of the Threshold Choir in cities including Cincinnati, New York and Anchorage, Alaska.
Munger conducts seven choirs in San Francisco, the East Bay, Marin, Sonoma, Santa Cruz and other parts
of the Bay Area.

Munger, originally from Massachusetts, holds a master's degree in psychology and has been a choral
singer all of her life. She produced two CDs with the Threshold Choir, "Listening at the Threshold" and
"Tenderly Rain: Songs of Gratitude, Remembrance and Keeping Watch"; both are available on the choir's
Web site: www.thresholdchoir.org.

Munger came up with the concept for the Threshold choir in 1990. "I spent the day taking care of a friend who was dying of HIV/AIDS," said Munger. "I did chores all morning and all day, and in the afternoon, I sat by his bedside, and I just instinctively started singing. I sat by his bedside for about two hours; he was in a coma but he was agitated. As I sang for him, he got calmer and calmer, and I became calmer. At the end of the afternoon, I felt like I'd given and received an incredibly powerful gift." Munger thinks of her music as lullabies for the end of life. She recited the lyrics of a song she wrote for the choir: "If you knew who walks beside you on the way that you have chosen/ fear would be impossible." "We really don't think of our work as performance," said Munger. "We think of it as prayer. We go to a
bedside when someone who's heard about (the choir) thinks they would like to be sung to by one or two or three people. Usually, we start out with music of our own. ... Then we ask them what they want to hear, what their favorite type of music is. If we don't know it, we will learn it."

Every Friday for four years, Munger and the Threshold Choir have been singing with female inmates at
Marin County Jail. "To me, it's an opportunity for these women to experience freedom. At least vocally, they are free for one hour," said Munger.

A Day in the Life...

Today has been a fairly representative day in my life, so here's a glimpse.

Wake up, clean the kitchen, make coffee. I don't always clean the kitchen in the morning, but I was too tired to deal with it last night.

I realize I'm still tired after 8 hours of sleep because I just spent two days in the recording studio singing Christmas carols with the Virginia Girls Choir (Project No. 1), and it's only August. I think that will make anyone tired.

I start reading emails and am reminded to submit a tune list for Sunday night's Lifeline at Park Avenue Christian in the city (project No. 2). Do I teach a new tune, or go over the last two new tunes and a couple of older tunes I don't want them to forget? Hmm... thinking goes on, which I ignore while

I pour coffee and talk to a friend on the phone. While on phone, am reminded that I'm expecting a phone call from the West coast about next Saturday's Community Music Making workshop (project No. 3) in Portola Valley, CA (wherever that is), somewhere near SF. At least I know one person who lives there, and that makes me happy.

Think about breakfast. Sounds good. More coffee first.

Forget about breakfast as I read new tunes in my email. The one person I know in Portola Valley is also working with me on project No. 4, a hymnal revision called (goes off to look up name of title, which I really must learn soon - ah) One Heart and One Song. It's a revision of a hymnal called Music for Liturgy. 

Start to sort mail from the last three days, most of which is submissions for project No. 4, which had to wait until after I finished singing most of Christmas. I'll have more Christmas in September, and I've already had Christmas arranging in May and Christmas recording in June (most days over 100 degrees). I prefer my Christmu-sez in December.

I find a few lovely new tunes, some dull things, and a few things that don't fit the criteria at all for the hymnal revision. We're looking for unaccompanied music for congregational use. That means no instruments, just three or four-part interesting things to sing. Think Sacred Harp, Sweet Honey, Georgian Singing, Sardinian pastoral singing, Hungarian Women. The links are cool, people. Imagine you showed up at church and it sounded like that. You'd be on a spiritual bender before you knew it.

I sing at my desk for a couple of hours and realize it's time for a late lunch. No putting it off. It's almost 2 PM, and I forgot breakfast. Time is an artificial construct, unless I start to get cranky. Then I know it's time to eat.

More tune reading. Lots of fun. It's good sight-reading practice. More correspondence. It's funny how much correspondence I've had in the last week - the deadline for submissions must be in a few days. People have even been sending me their friend's tunes, so I've even been getting in touch with people to make sure they'd like to submit their submission (Song alert: I just dropped in to see what condition your submission was in.).

I love my life.

Wake from my song stupor when the phone rings about 4:15. Lester McKenzie from project No. 3. We've never met. Seems nice. We find a good page and climb on, so now we're on the same page. Great. Gonna have fun next week.

There was much more to my day, like writing a grocery list for the shopping trip that never was, sending Christmas carol files to Virginia, talking to another friend (whose helpful husband went wild with the weed-wacker and cut down her herb patch. O.M.G!), talked to my mom while looking for my sister Janet (who, it seems can't stay in her bed while in the hospital): Me: "Where's Janet?" Ma: "In the HOSpital." No one can make you feel foolish like your mother, even when you've already called the freaking hospital and no one has answered Janet's alleged phone. I told my mother about my friend and the herb patch debacle, and she just said " That's the Stupid Gene. They've all got it." Me: "All of them?" Ma: "Every last one. If I've taught you anything, it's that they all have it to a greater or lesser extent." Me: Really? Ma: "Yep." I called my friend back and told her what my mom had said about every man that ever was, and she laughed and said "She's right. I'm hoping my son doesn't have it, but it may be too much to hope for." Who knew?

The women in my life make me laugh. A lot.

Try calling my sister again, who's wandered back to her hospital bed and who sounds better today (Woo Hoo!). I decided to celebrate Christmas a little early and have a glass of wine, looked at the clock, and it was almost 7 PM. Never sent that tune list for Sunday (Project No. 2). Sh**!

The email men deliver a batch of tunes to look at. Print and read through. Look at the clock, it's 8:30. Who knew?

Time to think about dinner...

Francis Henry Turner's Blueberry Conserve

This week's been full of cooking my favorite summer recipes, dreaming up new recipes, and improving old favorites. I love to cook, but only in spurts, so I make big batches and freeze or can when A) I'm in the mood; B) I'm home long enough to enjoy it; 3) the necessary ingredients are so fresh that they leap off the shelf at the market and wrestle me to the ground; Q) I need the practice to keep my skills up; Y) I feel like improvising and there's nobody around to play with; or Z) I need to make room in the freezer. 
This recipe utilizes A-Z. Blueberries were looking particularly fetching (and organic and cheap!) last week, so I bought some to freeze. When I got them home I realized I already had plenty of frozen blueberries, so I thought I should figure out a way to use them. Out with the old, in with the new. Rotate the stock, etc. My dilemma was to figure out a way to use all those blueberries so that I didn't just sit down and eat a whole cobbler, or pie, or too much sugar. Then. It. Hit. Me: the first conserve I ever ate. I've dreamt about that conserve and have never had anything like it since. 
Frank Turner loved to cook. He had about three hundred cook books, and every room in his house had built-in book shelves. He loved to can things. He sang tenor in the choir and acted in the Ithaca Players production of The Nutcracker every year for a million years. When I first met him, he invited me to lunch and served blueberry conserve. I never forgot it. 
Digression: Frank was FUN. One night, a few of us were sprawled around the back parlor watching the movie Halloween. During a break in the action, Frank slipped out of his chair and quietly slipped back with two of the longest carving knives in the house. I saw him, but no one else did, and he had this impish look (his is the picture in the dictionary next to the word "imp"). He sat down in his wing chair and I waited. About ten minutes later, at a very tense point in the movies, I was startled by the sound of knives being sharpened. It took a few seconds for everyone else to notice that the noise was actually in the room WITH US, and the look on Frank's calmly murderous face as he sat in that chair drawing those knives expertly across one another with the most perfect motion, and the people screaming by the glow of the TV light is something else I'll never forget. I will also never forget the look of pure glee and the laughter and yelling that followed. 


Back to the conserve. Once it snuck back into my brain, I couldn't get it out. 


Enter self doubt: Could I do it? I haven't canned anything in a couple of years, and I've never made a conserve before. What if I cook it too long? What if I don't cook it long enough? Someone recently pointed out that it's always the same things that trip us up, or send us to the places where we entertain our self-defeating behaviors. We never look at them as the huge clues they are to finding the things we need to work on. We just get anxious. "God, why is it always the same issue? Couldn't we have a little variety?!"  


Enter confidence: I dutifully moved all the equipment and jars with me in the last move, without a second thought. So, If it cooks too long, heat it up and use it as a glaze for meat. If it doesn't cook long enough, it's sauce for ice cream. Time for a list of ingredients: Blueberries, lemons, sugar, raisins, walnuts, cinnamon (I think).
Then I went surfing, to hunt up a recipe that might be adaptable. Got one on the first try on Cooks.com. I tweaked it a little bit and here it is. When I tasted it I was immediately transported to Frank's dining room with the navy blue and white flocked Japanese wallpaper and his three cats. 


1/2 c. water
4 c.    fresh or frozen blueberries
4 c.    sugar
1/2 c. raisins or currants
1        lemon, seeded and cut into paper-thin slices
1/2 c. coarsely broken walnuts
1/2 t.  ground cinnamon


Combine water and blueberries. Cook over low heat until berries are tender. Crush some, but not all. Add remaining ingredients. Cook while stirring until jam is thick. I use the frozen plate test: spoon a little bit of conserve onto a frozen plate, and draw your finger through it. If the two lines don't reconnect, you're ready to can it. Process  the jars for fifteen minutes (from the time the water returns to a boil), and you're done. Makes about 6 half pints. 
If you've never canned anything before, here's a website that can help you figure it out:  http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/fresh-strawberry-jam-recipe/index.html

Incredibly Amazing Bran Muffins

These are my favorite muffins. You can refrigerate the batter for a month, which eliminates multiple messes, and makes you look even more magnificent to your people. If you have muffins left over when company leaves, they freeze like a dream. 

Makes 3-4 dozen

3-1/2 c.  all-purpose flour

1 c.        whole wheat flour

1/2 c.     flax meal

5 t.         baking soda
1 t.         salt

2 t.         allspice

1 t.         cinnamon

1            15 ounce box bran flakes w/ raisins

1-1/2 c.  sugar

1-1/2 c.  Splenda

4            eggs

1 c.        canola oil

1 qt.       buttermilk (or buttermilk powder + water, see below)

3 t.         vanilla

Combine the first seven ingredients in the largest bowl you have. Add the bran flakes, sugar, Splenda and mix. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs (by hand is fine). Add oil, buttermilk*, vanilla and blend. Pour wet stuff over dry stuff and mix well.

*If you use powdered buttermilk, add the powder to the dry ingredients, and the water with the wet stuff. 

To bake, preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Bake in paper muffin cups (about 3/4 full) for 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

To store the batter, put it in a container with a tight lid. When you feel the need for magical deliciousness, don't stir the batter, just scoop it out  and drop it into muffin cups. 

I sometimes add 3/4 c. walnuts, or sliced almonds (to surprise myself).
Write the date on the container the day you make them, but don't expect the batter to last a month, even though it can. You'll be taking muffins everywhere...
Enjoy!