Today’s session comprised 25 participants from the UK, Canada, and India, as well as California, Indiana, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Florida and New Hampshire. After the group’s brief silent-centering exercise, one narrator and two “actors” read an excerpt from Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya with two characters: Astrov, a middle-aged country doctor faced with a typhoid epidemic, and the elderly nanny, Marina. “Place” was a dominant theme in the discussion, both in terms of the scene’s physical space (a terrace garden’s avenue of trees) and the place/status reflected in society (aristocracy vs. serfdom). The discussion evolved into a series of keen observations and personal associations: trainees trembling under their blankets at night, like Astrov praying they won’t be called to work; knitting as not only textile but text, Chekhov’s weaving a story; and the numbness resulting from overwork in the medical realm. One participant noted that Astrov seems to construct his identity in relation to his patients, but not in relation to the structural dynamics of his profession.  Beyond what was explicitly stated in the text, participants compared assumptions made about the caregiver Astrov as he “spills out his feelings” to a caretaker, Marina, whom one participant identified as a truth teller, “a stand-in for God.” What is it, the group wondered, that awakens Astrov’s numbed feelings: guilt? Judgment? Awareness of his privileged status? Feeling himself to be “as stupid” as anyone else? This question segued into the prompt: “Write about an awakening.”

Writers addressed both rude awakenings and gentle ones. A splintered door became a metaphor for awakening into sexual identity.  A glacier’s slow descent with “ice falling away” described one writer’s gradual “waking up to truth.”  The sudden trauma of a car accident was the catalyst for recognizing the impact of a longer, more destructive trauma. The last writer to read offered a gentler awakening to the morning sounds at a country house and the sight of a  lake that “resembles eternity.”

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Monday, June 29th at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

We look forward to seeing you again soon!

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A country house on a terrace. In front of it a garden. In an avenue of trees, under an old poplar, stands a table set for tea, with a samovar, etc. Some benches and chairs stand near the table. On one of them is lying a guitar. Near the table is a swing. It is three o’clock in the afternoon of a cloudy day.

MARINA, a stout, slow old woman, is sitting at the table knitting a stocking.

ASTROV is walking up and down near her.

MARINA. [Pouring some tea into a glass] Take a little tea, my son.

ASTROV. [Takes the glass from her unwillingly] Somehow, I don’t seem to want any.

MARINA. Then will you have a little vodka instead?

ASTROV. No, I don’t drink vodka every day, and besides, it’s too hot now. [A pause] Tell me, Nanny, how long have we known each other?

MARINA. [Thoughtfully] Let me see, how long is it? Lord — help me to remember. You first came here, into these parts — let me think — when was it? Sonya’s mother was still alive — it was two winters before she died; that was eleven years ago — [thoughtfully] perhaps more.

ASTROV. Have I changed much since then?

MARINA. Oh, yes. You were handsome and young then, and now you’re an old man and not handsome any more. You drink now, too.

ASTROV. Yes, ten years have made me another man. And why? Because I’m overworked. Nanny, I’m on my feet from dawn till dusk. I know no rest; at night I tremble under my blankets for fear of being dragged out to visit some one who is sick; I’ve toiled without repose or a day’s freedom since I’ve known you; could I help growing old? And then, existence here is tedious, anyway; it’s a senseless, dirty business, this life, and gets you down. Everyone about here is eccentric, and after living with them for two or three years one grows eccentric oneself. It’s inevitable. [Twisting his moustache] See what a long moustache I’ve grown. A foolish, long moustache. Yes, I’m as eccentric as the rest, Nanny, but not as stupid; no, I haven’t grown stupid. Thank God, my brain isn’t addled yet, though my feelings have grown numb. I want nothing, I need nothing, I love no one, unless it is yourself alone. [He kisses her head] I had a nanny just like you when I was a child.

MARINA. Don’t you want a bite of something to eat?

ASTROV. No. During the third week of Lent I went to the epidemic at Malitskoe. It was an outbreak of typhoid fever. The peasants were all lying side by side in their huts, and the calves and pigs were running about the floor among the sick. Such dirt there was, and smoke! Unspeakable! I slaved among those people all day, not a crumb passed my lips, but when I got home there was still no rest for me; a switchman was carried in from the railroad; I laid him on the operating table and he went and died in my arms under chloroform, and then my feelings that should’ve been deadened awoke again, my conscience tortured me as if I had killed the man. I sat down and closed my eyes — like this — and thought: will our descendants one or two hundred years from now, for whom we’re clearing the way, remember to give us a kind word? No, Nanny, they’ll forget us.

MARINA. Man is forgetful, but God remembers.

ASTROV. Thank you for that. You’ve spoken the truth.

From Uncle Vanya, by Anton Chekhov

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

Our text for the session was “Clearing” by Martha Postlewaite.

Our prompt was: “Write about (or draw) your clearing.”

More details on the session will be posted soon, so check back!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Please join us for our next session Wednesday, June 24th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

We look forward to seeing you again soon!

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“Clearing” by Martha Postlewaite

Do not try to save
the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create
a clearing
in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there
patiently,
until the song
that is your life
falls into your own cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know
how to give yourself to this world
so worthy of rescue.


Copyright 2020 Mindfulness Northwest
[read in the Winter 2014 MBSR class in Bellingham] 

A combination of new and returning participants, 28 total, joined us today, representing local and international perspectives.

Our text was Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye, posted below, and it was a crowd favorite. Two readers read the poem aloud. One participant pointed out how we experience loss internally in order to find kindness externally. We also noticed the juxtaposition of the images in the poem. Before we can find kindness, you must come to know it through sorrow and loss. Another participant mentioned that the dead Indian in a white poncho could be any of us who could contract/have died of Covid. Someone else mentioned that there is something of a universal and cosmopolitan approach to kindness, to see the cloth like a whole humanity needing kindness right now, beginning from an individual thread of sorrow and leading to kindness. Many readers pointed out the personification of kindness in small actions throughout the poem–tying the shoes (what a difference that can make to someone who can’t tie their own shoes) and gazing at bread (honoring it, knowing that it’s there). There was a consensus that we all need to be more attentive to the isolated acts of kindness in our lives.

Our prompt was “Write about a time that kindness did or did not find you.” Five participants shared their writing, inspiring a rich array of responses from the listeners. Several of the stories shared were about “simple” acts of kindness that had lasting, healing effects. Other themes had to do with the power of kindness to unite us with others and with the way kindness can even remake and reshape one’s life. Some participants wrote poems with striking, revelatory metaphors for kindness–a small bird, a white box; others wrote moving stories in which unexpected expressions of kindness helped them recover from trauma.

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Please join us for our next session Monday, June 22nd at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

We look forward to seeing you again soon!

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 Kindness 
 by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

From Words Under the Words: Selected Poems. 
Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

In today’s session, we read, heard, discussed and wrote in the shadow of “Passion,” a poem by Native American author Louise Erdrich. A mix of returning and new participants from the States and abroad noted the varying shades of devotion in the poem, enacted through destruction to bring about connection. “Devotion” also conjured up associations with religious attachment, and devotionals. We began with the question of what kind of dog we each imagined in the poem, which turned out to be quite varied: one person saw a compassionate animal, and another thought of a gentle personality that stayed with the bereaved lover like a service animal. A third participant drew on the poet’s Native American heritage and its connections to spirituality, leading him to conjure a sin-eater or grief-eater. A fourth realized that she had not visualized the dog at all but more had imagined its large presence for its human companion. The excruciating pain of the human was considered: More than one person identified personally with the human’s situation of losing a lover and wanting to divest completely from that past. And we also thought about how the dog might be absorbing this grief, being so devoted that it is willing to take on this burden. Emotion and action were linked. We also appreciated how one listener felt annoyed “in my body” with both dog and human.  

The prompt, “Write about an expression of devotion” inspired responses reflecting tokens of deep meaning (“Buying a gift she didn’t know she wanted,” “a song on WhatsApp”), as well as actions (stepping away from one’s own needs to self-sacrifice for the benefit of another). Writers used different forms ranging from short/specific lists of actions to longer descriptive prose — unified by structure — describing devotion over the course of a lifetime. One writer honored a mom: “A stranger is not a stranger to her.” The last writer circled back to the Erdrich poem’s animal-companion theme, describing in vivid detail an owl diving down a chimney to rescue its mate, even at the risk of being stuck.

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Please join us for our next session Saturday, June 20th at 2pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

We look forward to seeing you again soon!

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Passion
by Louise Erdrich
 
Your dog gnaws the rug you made love upon
for the last time.
When your lover left
and you rolled yourself inside the rug
to sleep in agony
your dog stayed with you.
Your dog chews out the armpits of your lover’s shirt
and shreds the underwear
you were wearing when he touched you.
That’s devotion.
The dog chews your pen and stains his tongue
then licks the white pillows.
His way of writing you a poem.
He eats the spout off the blue plastic watering can.
He starts on the porch,
a rotted board, and soon that board rips
away from the wicked red nails.
Your dog eats the nails
and does not die.
Although you have no porch,
no lover, no rug, no underwear,
you understand.
The dog is trying to eat your grief.
In helpless longing
to get close to you
he must destroy what’s close to you.

Published in the print edition 
of the December 16, 2019, issue of the New Yorker.