reincarnated spirits

There is a man at the dog park who names his dogs after the city they were born in. No, the dog’s names are not the names of those cities. He goes further, looks up the obituaries from that city on the day the dogs were born and selects accordingly.

When asked about the dogs, he’ll say, “This is Alma; she was 87 and had six children…” The stories go on from there, & of course I can’t remember all of the details. “It’s a sort of reincarnation,” he describes.

I’ve thought about this a lot. Honestly, I find the concept quite beautiful. Sometimes, I think of Pickle as a reincarnation. Reincarnation: definition – “a spiritual or philosophical concept that the soul or spirit, after biological death, begins a new life in a new body.” (Wikipedia)

Unlike Alma, I don’t think that we get to choose who or what is reincarnated or what form they take. But I believe we can see reflections of that in those around us. For me, Pickle is a reincarnation of the spirit of hope, the spirit of joy. She has entered my life with the soul of a best friend. I’m sure it sounds corny, but these are things I thought I had lost, and I have found them in her.

All of this goes through my mind as she lies against my chest in bed tonight. I’m thinking of the beautiful day outside of the city and how I felt naked walking without my dog, how I felt a tinge of loneliness without her happy ears and bright eyes beside me.

I feel this loneliness often when I think about Derek, when I think about our closeness and all that I have lost in losing him.

Part of moving on after the death of a loved one is learning to regain that which you lost, not the person of course—they are always with you somehow—but regaining those quintessential spirits: joy, hope, tomorrow, love, trust.

Derek set a prime example of how a furry friend could bring those into one’s life. His dog, Casey, stayed by his side and brought him joy, hope during moments of deep illness, depression, anxiety. He taught me how to love & be loved by someone who will never speak our language but knows our thoughts, our emotions and loves us anyways—even when we cannot walk or do not have the strength to get up.

Sometimes I’m afraid that I will never have a friend like I had in Derek. I know that he cannot be “replaced”, yet I am learning to accept that there will be new best friends and new side-kicks. His relationship with Casey has showed me how to have that with Pickle, how to learn to keep going and have hope that there will be someone else on this planet that I can trust as deeply and love no matter what, even though we get mad or upset or make each other cry sometimes.

No, I don’t believe in reincarnation of the human soul, tempting as it is, but I do believe in the reincarnation of spirits or “fruits of the spirit” as the Bible calls them: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness.”  (Galatians 5:22)

June is a month that reminds me of Derek. The 1^st—his birthday. The 21^st—the first day of summer, summers that we would spend together being wild, being free. And now, tomorrow marks 10 years since the passing of Mattie Stepanek, a young man with Muscular Dystrophy whom Derek admired (and I admire). In watching this video of Mattie from 2002, I can only pray that Derek had the same faith, the same hope.

So, friends, what spirits seem lost or distant? Do you see them reincarnated in your life?

Today, I saw faithfulness in the backdrop of a lonely church against the brilliant sky. I saw love in the eyes of my puppy, peace in her beating heart against my arm. I saw joy in time with friends and time in the wide open breaths of a sloshing river. 

In moments like these, I know Derek had it right in love of his dog, his family, his friends; Mattie had it right in hope for tomorrow and faith in God, and at the end of the day, “We need to be. Just be.”

crossfit

As anyone who has talked to me in the past month knows: I’ve joined Crossfit. What is Crossfit? A cross-training workout facility where trainers challenge a group of people to push themselves to use muscles they didn’t know existed. We do a lot of weight training. I now know a ton of terms & lifts that I had never heard of: dead-lift, push-press, squat-thrust, and so on.

After day one, I realized how horribly out of shape I am. I entered the class with the mentality of: I can run two miles and manage through two hours of yoga; I’ll be alright.

All of my strength was living falsely in my mind. The day after the first class, I walked around like the tin man: squeaky & stiff. As I stumbled down the steps with straight legs, my friend asked what was wrong with me. “I worked out…”

I believe in taking care of the body (while recognizing that I often don’t). I dream of getting into the best shape of my life—these are my twenties! Didn’t the Greeks & Romans view the twenties as the “prime” of life? In our modern age of sitting at a desk all day, accomplishing that perfect figure is quite a challenge.

During my month (so far) at Crossfit, I have…

·      dropped a training bar because my boobs were in the way

·      fallen on my butt while jumping back from a squat

·      hung frozen on a pull-up bar because I was afraid of the support bands

·      bruised my knees doing “girl” push-ups

·      been out-run & out-lifted by a pregnant woman

·      laid on the floor because I didn’t think I could move anymore

·      grunted while lifting weights (weird!)

I have also…

·      (run a 400m, completed 21 kettle-bell swings, & 12 ring rows) x3 in 13 minutes (my first personal fitness test!)

·      learned how to do a handstand (I can’t quite balance yet; actually far from it)

·      become a master bear-walker

·      made new friends!

·      developed discipline in going to class at 6am twice a week

·      been deeply encouraged by trainers & classmates

·      learned how to lift weights properly: not the machine kind, either! (we use barbells & kettlebells (still trying to force that term into my memory: cow bells? kettle balls? cow balls? Yikes…))

Sometimes I wonder how I got to this lack of fitness. I went from being crazy skinny in high school (with no strength, of course) to –let’s just admit it—chubby in college & now. I’m excited to be learning how to have a figure defined by muscle rather than bone or fat. (I hope I can say the same in a few months when I hopefully start actually shaping up! But let’s not be vain…)

At the same time, the whole experience is extremely humbling! My smart-ass, strong-mind mentality only goes so far. Naturally, I come in at the bottom of my class quite often. I wouldn’t call it admitting defeat, but it’s certainly admitting that I’m not as strong as I thought I was. I’ve measured strength on life experience and sitting through long tattoo sessions. Now I am in a place where I have to admit my weakness in order to get stronger.

Month two: here we go.

technology

Technology. I’m torn. Some days, I think it is the most helpful thing; others, I want rid of it entirely.

I aspire to the simple life. These days, I wonder if that’s even possible. A while back, I got rid of my smart phone & tried my best to pare down to some form of simplicity. I did a lot of knitting those months (I really do just love to knit, though).

One day, I had this odd realization that technology may actually be in our favor. Working in marketing in the tech industry often has me convinced that it’s all just business and economy. However, with all of the talk of “cloud” and “connected devices,” I’ve started embracing it all. When I come home, all of my devices really are connected. I can access my photos or documents from anywhere (or at least I would if I knew how to do it right; I’m still working on it). It’s actually magical: I can find simplicity in having this easy, unified life.

Shelves & shelves of books (or in my case magazines) can live on a single device. While I adore the comfort of books & have yet to fully adopt the Kindle, I appreciate the archiving of Poets & Writers and The Atlantic; I can search my notes & highlights & back-issues. Magic.

I can store & organize all of my writing in a single ½” thick device rather than wasted trees. I can look up anything from anywhere using internet on my phone.

Am I the only person who is still amazed by this? We have so easily adopted into the tech culture that we tend to forget how insane it really is.

Yet I still resist: for fear of losing what I probably never had having grown up in a world where the internet always existed in some form. I prefer to ask someone a question rather than “Google” it. I prefer to, of course, read a book in-hand rather than press a button to get to the next page. I prefer to find my way by getting lost rather than listening to a mechanical voice tell me the “convenient” way. And I am torn between typing up writing & writing by hand.

Think about the technology in your life. Is it a nuisance or a God-send? Does it simplify your life or make it more complicated?

I’m constantly seeking balance; to embrace where it actually helps & to push away where it shuts off human contact and interferes with life experience. Here’s to typing away & posting words from my fingertips to the internet.

counting blessings: a walk

Sometimes the adult life catches me by surprise: the simplest things. Today is Friday, & I have no plans. As I walked Pickle around the block, on the way home from the dog park—our usual route—I realized what a free evening really means.

We reached the corner a block away from the apartment. To my right, the sound whispered dusk’s light up the street, calling me there. To my left, home beckoned me in. The rest of the weekend promised free time. What should I do? Where should I go?

Freedom suddenly struck me as a real thing; I could do anything, anytime: no questions asked. I could just keep walking; I could go in & read a whole book. I could just stay in bed. For now, my only purpose is to be.

I do not need to ask permission. I am not a slave to time. There are no restrictions. Do you feel it? How liberating! We are blessed to walk the streets & lie in bed & just be.

solitude

A few years ago, I thought I wanted to be with someone, but his answer was no. I know that’s common, but his reason stuck with me, one word: solitude. It took a few minutes to find that word, but when he did, he knew that was it. Solitude. As a generally extroverted person, I didn’t get it. Why would anyone want to be alone?

It’s taken me until recently to understand.

We were on a hike, some friends & me, and as usual, I lagged behind. About six miles in (the tail end of a loop trail), I realized that I didn’t mind hanging back. I soaked in the shade of the Redwoods and breathed in the green. I could see no one ahead of me on the trail, no one behind. With the quiet of the woods around me, I kept going at my pace. To me, hikes aren’t the time for timing to beat a personal best.

After being consumed by the regular chaos of city living, I realized that one moment was what I longed for: to be truly alone. (I admit, it was weird at first to hike without my dog, but honestly, do you know what it feels like to be truly alone?)

Sometimes it’s easy to feel alone when surrounded by people. In the city, you can walk up the street & not talk to anyone (rarely, albeit) and feel like you are the only person alive—the rest of the passersby are part of the surroundings. Have you felt that?

I just wasted about twenty minutes trying to find a single word, but it’s a word that means the realization that every person around you is simultaneously leading their own life with their own emotions, feelings, needs, beliefs. The notion crossed my mind occasionally over the years, but my first memory of it was at a gas station in Utah. It was my biggest solo trip. The man at the pump across from me had deep lines in his face, though he could not have been more than fifty. It suddenly occurred to me that this man had lived 40+ years before this one moment of our lives crossing. Have you ever thought this about your co-workers? Your boss? I think about it at work the most: all of these acquaintances, but we are all human, at our core.

It’s funny to think that we are different. We live off our experiences and become so indulged in our own lives that it’s easy to forget that everyone else’s lives are just as complex. They go to bed at night. They get hungry. They feel sad. Sometimes remembering this is the only way living on the other side of the country from my family makes sense. Life does not stop in Pennsylvania just because I am out here. That’s why it’s always different when I go back; that’s why people call with news: life is still moving, even when I am not there to witness it.

Sometimes the complexity feels like too much. Sometimes I wish it would slow down (how many times have I wished it would go faster?). Sometimes I wish I could go back. But the pace is constant, along with change and intricacy.

I think that’s why we all need moments to be alone. This is my season of understanding solitude.

Solitude can often be confused with prolonged singleness. I’ve mistaken it myself, wondered why I am single, why that person chose to be single. There is a difference. There is a tiny knowing somewhere that solitude is a choice, that even when the opportunity to not be single presents itself, the direction to take is apparent: solitude.

That is where I am. While there are moments of doubting that, there are more reassurances that this is where I am supposed to be. I am grateful to live alone (with the company of my pets).

As I flip through pages of Rilke on solitude in Letters to a Younger Poet, I realize this topic is just beginning. I’ll leave you with these excerpts from Rilke:

“There is only one solitude, and it is vast and not easy to bear and almost everyone has moments when they would happily exchange it for some form of company, be it ever so banal or trivial, for the illusion of some slight correspondence with whoever one happens to come across, however unworthy…But perhaps those are precisely the hours when solitude grows, for its growth is painful like the growth of boys and sad like the beginning of spring. But that must not put you off. What is needed is this, and this alone: solitude, great inner loneliness. Going into oneself and not meeting anyone for hours- that is what one must arrive at. Loneliness of the kind one knew as a child, when the grown-ups went back and forth bound up in things which seemed grave and weighty because they looked so busy, and because one had no idea what they were up to.”

and

“And you must not let yourself be diverted out of your solitude by the fact that something in you wants to escape from it. Precisely this desire, if you use it calmly and judiciously, as a kind of tool, will help you to extend your solitude over a greater expanse of ground. People have tended (with the help of conventions) to resolve everything in the direction of easiness, of the light, and on the lightest side of the light; but it is clear that we must hold to the heavy, the difficult. All living things do this, everything in nature grows & defends itself according to its kind and is a distinct creature from out of its own resources, strives to be so at any cost and in the face of all resistance. We know little, but that we must hold fast to what is difficult is a certainty that will never forsake us. It is good to be alone, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult should be one more reason to do it. To love is also good, for love is hard. Love between one person and another: that is perhaps the hardest thing it is laid on us to do, the utmost, the ultimate trial and test, the work for which all other work is just preparation. For this reason young people, who are beginners in everything, do not yet know how to love: they must learn. With their whole being, with all their strength, concerted on their solitary, fearful, upward beating hearts, they have to learn to love.”