gratitude

Radiance

Eve Neuhaus 4 Comments

Who can resist the radiance of a smile?

IMG_3202

Or the sun’s rays?

IMG_4170

Or the sun in a flower

or a flower in the sun?

Radiance is both round and rayed,

Radiance is both round and rayed.

IMG_2498

It is our sun: its presence, presentation and representation in the world.

lines streaming outward from a center. common in Islamic art

Islamic art is full of centered circles with rays.

IMG_4245

Radiance is basic to life.

2013-09-23 15.16.04

It’s in the ceiling of this African house

And in this plant bursting through a crack in the concrete

and in this plant bursting through a crack in the concrete

IMG_2339

but my favorite is the radiance of my daughter’s smile on Mother’s Day.

Seeing the small is called Clarity.
Keeping flexible is called Strength.
Using the shining Radiance,
You enter the Light,
Where no harm can come to you.
This is called Enlightenment.

Lao Tzu

 

Sharing

Eve Neuhaus 11 Comments

Pull up a chair. Take a taste. Come join us. Life is so endlessly delicious.  – Ruth Reichl

Not long ago, the words “Live to share” came to me on the tag of a teabag.  I saved it on the window sill with a fortune cookie message from the week before. I generally appreciate random bits of wisdom – these two spoke to me so strongly that I wanted to save them.

fortune cookie kindness

From now on your kindness will lead to your success.

If the fortune is true, I’m deeply grateful. What grace to be at a point in life where it’s enough to be kind, to live from the heart without fear, and to leave the world of comparison, competition and mastery behind until its tools are really useful.

I’ve been trying to live by kindness for a long time – who doesn’t love the Dalai Lama? – but the workaday world doesn’t always reward it, and when I was younger and more fiery, it wasn’t always so easy. But now, having received such a propitious cookie fortune, perhaps I can do it.

IMG_4369

The tea tag appeals to me because it so precisely describes what I am doing with my life these days. 

After my mother died and our children grew up, Tom and I were left with a ridiculously oversized empty nest. I’ve always felt that if we have such a big, beautiful space, we should share it, so we’ve filled it with friends and family, exchange students, SERVAS and warmshowers guests, and an array of tenants. I host women’s circles and meditation groups, we have advocacy groups and the French club here sometimes, and once a month we open our home for a community dinner.

IMG_3676

We began having Monday night dinners about 25 years ago. When the kids were younger we did it every Monday: open community dinners. We’ve used the same rules the whole time:  come promptly at 6, leave at 8, bring real food, and help set up and clean up.

The food is consistently excellent though we never plan it. In all those years, not planning only failed twice. Once we had one salad and many desserts. That wasn’t too bad – it was fun to have dessert for dinner. But the time we had all bread was not so much fun. The next dinner is the first Monday in April. Tell me if you’ll be coming so the right number of tables and chairs get set up.

For the past two years, I’ve been fortunate enough to earn a living by sharing the house with new friends from around the world through Airbnb. Some of our guests have already become old friends. What an exquisite joy it is to sit around on the deck after dinner enjoying a glass of wine or a cup of tea with old and new friends, discovering commonalities and sharing stories.

IMG_2211

The exercise I get changing beds and cleaning, especially paired with a couple of dog walks a day, is perfect for me. The pleasure I find in hanging the sheets on the line and then making the beds, especially with my mother’s linens, is enormous. I love keeping the house fresh, clean and beautiful, and the extra cash flow is paying for many long-put-off maintenance projects. When I want the rooms for family or friends, I block the Airbnb calendar and everything is ready.

What more could I ask?

Wisdom

What you would grasp
let go
only those seeds that fall
grow.

a.o.howell

Noticing

Eve Neuhaus 5 Comments

Another entry for you, Alice, as your teachings continue to unfold.

Noticing comes naturally as I practice slowing down. You once said to me,

“You don’t have to do anything.  Just let the layers unfold until your radiant soul shines through.”

Slowing down allows the light of consciousness to flow more freely; my attention, in a more relaxed and diffuse state, picks up sounds, scents, images that I wouldn’t ordinarily notice.

So, I return your poem to you with my pictures.

Pastor’s Pastorale

rYour poem, my pictures

our mother in springOr were there time enough

x

to sleep and dream

y

and mull the mind

z

on things as they might seem —

a

IMG_4285

but, no

b

we plod

r

(and stumble on our guilts)

d

to God.

How simple then to walk the night

s

IMG_4309and touch the stars or taste the dew

f

smile at such gifts

w

and count ourselves among the few

t

IMG_3904who yes

IMG_4328

who pray

IMG_4322

yet kiss

IMG_4122and sing to others what they miss:

It’s this! It’s this!

 From the Archives of the Heart

Everything was opening its secrets to me in silence, without a word. Everything shone in my heart now instead of my head. The more I appreciated, the more I could see. It was a whole new way of learning, by listening to silence.         ao, The Beejum Book

Thank you.

The Sybil

Eve Neuhaus Leave a comment

Alice O. Howell,  at whose feet I sit in this picture, whose student I will always be and whom I love without reservation, is 91 now. Cosy, kind or crotchety, she is being tended by family and friends in her home, Rosecroft, nestled in the Berkshires. It’s quite a winter they’ve had there, so I’m happy to pass on news from a friend who visited her last weekend. He writes that she is very much her old self and suggests reading her poem “The Sybil.” Thanks so much, Greg.

(I wish I could get the placement of the lines right but I don’t know how to do it here. Click on the title to see the poem properly.)

THE SYBIL

“Old Granny Larkin had age by the toe

and hollering for help.

She just shriveled up a little

every year with them boiling-downs.

Her watery grey eyes

went on and off like a light

depending on the kind o’ day it was

for her.

Her white hair kind of exploded

off her head – like it had a life all its own

and I mind, as a little girl

watching it raise up and move

this way and that

with her thinkin’.

She was so old not a body ’round

knew about her young times.

She must o’ been born old

like a owl.

 

Click here to continue The Sybil.

 

Neighborhood magic: an interview with Tom Neuhaus

Eve Neuhaus 16 Comments

Every now and then I’m planning to introduce you to some of the people who live in our neighborhood. My husband Tom kindly agreed to be my guinea pig for the project, so here he is!

I asked him a series of questions beginning with “On a routine day in your life, what give you the most pleasure?”

IMG_3841

He takes a sip of his wine and spreads some camembert from Fromagerie Sophie on his cracker.

“The most pleasure? Eating cheese and drinking red wine,” he says.

“And feeling the wind whistle past my ears when I ride my bike. I’m very fond of that. Just feeling the air. And I like the soft light of the evening.”

He eats some more cheese and considers.

“Just simple creature comforts give me the most pleasure.”

After enjoying some of the wine and cheese myself, I ask, “What activities in general give you the greatest joy?”

IMG_4060

“Diverting water,” he says without hesitation. (This is a guy who spent most of the last few weekends repairing a gray water system he built in our backyard. Lots of water to divert).

He continues, “Walking on the beach, eating great food, sex, GREAT music, oh, listening to great music like Rachmaninov’s 2nd and 3rd piano concertos, oh, I love that!

“All the sensory stuff. I’m not real big into thinking grand thoughts. I’m more emotionally driven than cognitively driven, more into senses than internal cognitive states.”

We finish off the cheese and wine. I ask, “What experiences in your life changed the way you see the world most dramatically?

He barely pauses. “Camping, being outdoors and realizing it doesn’t have to be thought of as God’s creation, but whatever it is, it’s damn beautiful. Canoeing across a lake in upper Minnesota or hiking up in the mountains in Colorado. You just can’t beat that.

IMG_3114

“That year in France, speaking foreign languages, meeting other people, eating their food, laughing at their jokes. Humans, I like humans a lot. That’s why I like teaching.

“Going to Africa, being in the villages.

“Reading great books. They open your mind, change how you look at things. It’s very important to read books from many different perspectives. That really opens your mind the most. I’ll read one book about how Europe underdeveloped Africa and then the next book is about the human body. I like that, I really like that.” He pours himself another glass of wine.

“What do you like about the way you make a living?” I ask.

“I love the variety. Running the chocolate business, Mama Ganache, you’re constantly running into all kinds of problems and challenges. Teaching, you’re always trying to be on the edge, trying to do a good job.

IMG_3987

“I remember buying some antiques from an old farmhouse in Texas and there was a sign that said Ich will streben nach dem Leben: I will strive to live. I like that Germanic idea of striving. I like trying to do as well as I possibly can. Without being a type A personality, just for the heck of it, just for the variety and the challenge. I like that, I like that.”

I continue, “What was your favorite job?”

“Huh. My favorite job? I liked them all. I liked playing the pipe organ because I like the challenge of making good sounds and the preachiness of organ music; collecting rat urine, well, I wouldn’t say that was my favorite job, but it was fun hanging around scientists. I liked baking, I liked working the line in a French kitchen, getting into arguments with the chef, running a restaurant, having a fun time with Puerto Ricans – the restaurant industry is full of Puerto Ricans in New York, great people, fun to josh around with, I learned a lot of Spanish. Ah, every job has so many good things about it – as long as you stay open-minded – stay curious about the world.”

We drink the last of the wine, a very nice cab from Vina Robles, as the sun goes down behind Bishop’s Peak. Am I fortunate or what?

Slowing down in SLO

Eve Neuhaus 6 Comments

Not long ago I changed the name of my Airbnb listings to Slow Down in SLO. It took a while for me to decide if SLO, San Luis Obispo, really is slow, but I concluded that it’s actually true. Located halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, SLO is a too far away to commute. Imagine: 44,000 people, virtually no traffic, everything you need a few minutes away, year-round access to an extraordinary outdoor environment, and a culture of kindness rooted in a Franciscan heritage and enhanced by a mild climate. I feel immensely grateful to find myself here – it is grace – but slowing down doesn’t happen from the outside. It’s internal.

Nature does not hurry.

Yet everything is accomplished.

– Lao Tzu

It was Lao Tzu’s poem that brought the deeper truth home to me a few years ago. Since then I’ve been reflecting on the virtues of slowing down, so it seemed like an obvious topic to write about  – except that the entire week I gave myself to put this together disappeared into a whirl of activity.

photo 8

Necessary activity. Did I consider slowing down in the midst of the hurly burly? I did – but only for the time it took to laugh at myself and at the lila, divine play, of life – and to refocus on slowing down.

Internal slowing down doesn’t mean doing less. It means doing whatever you’re doing more mindfully, more passionately, more fully, giving it the full focus of your attention. In the long run it’s more efficient – I’m sure your mother already told you this. Indeed, the benefits of being present to a task, whether it’s cleaning the wet leaves off the deck—which I’ve been doing in between paragraphs because a photographer is coming to take pictures of the exterior of our house, a sad mess because of the drought until this week when the rains came and now a much happier mess—or brushing your teeth or talking to your mother, are countless.

Hafiz says,

Time is a factory where everyone slaves away earning enough love to break their own chains.

The key that will let you out of slavery is to love what you are doing, whatever it is: catching your mind when it wanders into the future or the past, or to some place other than where you are, and bringing it home to the moment: celebrating the stillness of the center.

Tom and Lily Bear at the dog beach

Ganesh Baba talks about the four phases of our existence: the physical, the biological, the psychological and the spiritual. Slowing down involves all four: consciously releasing stress and tension in the body, slowing the breath and consequently the heartbeat, lowering the emotional pitch (“Don’t screw up the pitch!” he would scold), and using spiritual practices to find the still center within.

It’s the mind that’s moving too fast, rarely using the power of attention at its true worth, skimming the surface of experience instead to allowing it to be absorbed and processed at all four of the levels of our being. Unless we slow down we sacrifice the richness and beauty of life, of any life.

What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality. – Plutarch

For those of us who believe in physics, this separation between past, present and future is just an illusion. – Einstein

All life is fleeting. Cling to that understanding, and seek, then, within yourself that which alone endures. – Yogananda

beginning with thanks

Eve Neuhaus 16 Comments

The weekend after September 11, I went to a writers conference where Carolyn See, the keynote speaker, suggested the practice of writing “charming notes,” one handwritten thank you note a day. Refocussing on who and what I was thankful for at a time like that seemed wise and very appealing. Collect beautiful notecards, she told us, and if you can’t think of anyone to thank for something that happened recently, go into your past and thank people you haven’t had contact with in years.  I was ready.

For the next year I diligently wrote a note a day. I wrote to my family, my neighbors, my teachers, my friends. I dug up the addresses of middle school friends, camp counsellors and therapists. I wrote to the city council and my congresswoman. After a year, I slowed to writing notes in a more standard way, for dinner parties, gifts, and once in a while, for a memory or shift in my thinking.

Years passed like that. I still kept a collection of cards, but I let the daily practice go.

Then, a few months ago, I was moved to begin again.

Now I begin almost every day at my desk handwriting a note.  Before getting up, I lie in bed thinking of who I will write to. Sometimes it’s obvious, sometimes it takes some meditation to allow the recipient to surface in my consciousness. Buying notecards is pure pleasure.

So, it seems appropriate to begin this new blog with thanks. To Tom and to all the people who make it possible for me to begin a new project in this almost unbearably beautiful place, surrounded by people who love me and whom I love: thank you!

photo 4

California flowers blooming regardless of the drought