What the Heart Knows

Dear Heart,


As I sit with the thought of you
and all you know
this morning
across the table from a friend whose skin
whispers
like Spanish moss
my chest expands on its own
to make room
for all you know


Your wisdom is wider than
all the world's libraries
your capacity to feel 
packs eight thousand words into none

You know wholeness
you can't break
though we might feel your power
shattering universes of feeling 
inside of us
this is simply 
our watery bodies speaking
their greatest gift
our capacity to feel




We need not fear that shattering
it is what widens our world
Let us love 
with the all of you


Passionately,
Your devoted student

Farewell to Luna

Dear Luna,


You left your body on Monday and I want you to know
how much you touched our lives
for the eleven years you shared with us.

Luna grooming her sweet self near Mt. Lassen

In Alaska, in Chico, in Baja
in the mountains, at lakes, at sea
on rafts, on trails, in sand
in creeks and under the
dining room table licking up scraps
dropped by your vivacious new
human sister Morgen


Glancing with pure devotion at Marko
Snarling ever so gently when 
children stumbled over you
Snarling not so gently when Lusa nipped at your ankles


Batting your whispery white eyelashes at
the three dozen compliments strangers gave you
every time you walked down the sidewalk
I am Luna, 
Regal Snowy White 
Star of the Dog Universe


I always felt softened
to be with you
In a world of rough edges and splintered lines
you were the perfect blend of
icicle feather, angel paw


Your Earth tribe will miss you, sweet one.
We will always love you.


Tia Jessie

Dear Baby Boy Soul

Dear Baby Boy Soul,


Are you calling to me?
I dreamt of you last night. Someone in India had asked me 
to care for you while traveling. For two weeks, 
you'd be mine to watch and care for.



And in that dreamscape
where all lines cross and 
one reality becomes another
you felt like my
little boy.

Then one day our group of travelers went to the mall. 
A tall girl I'd befriended walked beside me. 
I'd dressed in a pink and orange silk sari
wide skirt flowing at my ankles
just like the tall American girl.




Somehow
she was holding you now.
"I'm going to hold him for a while," she said.
My heart agonized
I had loved holding you 
it was heaven
and I'd waited all day to be with you again
your soft brown hair and chubby thighs that felt like
my hands were designed to hold them
as you sat on my hip


"No you're not," I said to the girl. 
"i've been wanting to hold him all day
and he's my responsibility. I'm watching him."


"Well, too bad, because I'm holding him."


I stood there, shocked
jaw dropped down toward the layers of 
pink and orange 
floral print silk.


Fighting energy does not belong around babies
I would not aggressively grab you from her arms
She would give you back later


But the grief...
Baby Boy Soul


Are you real?
Like in Velveteen Rabbit, are you real because
I love you?


Will you pass through my body someday
bewildering me with the sheer miracle of growing
from seed to full human being?


I would die with love for you every day.


Am I going to have you? And if not, why do you keep 
showing up in my dreams?


Mama

Charm, Power and the Human Heart

Dear Old Lady on NPR,


This morning as the day opened up before me, your voice crackled into my cottage. You were at a diner having breakfast with your old lady friends when a charismatic NPR reporter handed you a microphone. 


Two years ago he asked you, "How do you feel about Obama?" You were optimistic, and perhaps even as enamored with his charm as I was. Swept off your Aerosoles. 


I remember how I felt two years ago. I hope people don't expect a dozen miracles a day from this man. He is one man. We have a whole Congress, a whole complicated and complex system, a huge web that influences what happens in the political and economic landscape. It's ignorant to perceive the bulk of the power, and place the bulk of pressure, in his hands. 


We are here to awaken. And when we "go to sleep" and expect people in influential positions to "make things good" for us, we choose not to play an active role in shaping our world. And in that very moment, our world ceases to meet our deepest needs, because we are made of Source, God, Love, goodness... and we get to create what we want. To deny this gift is a tragedy. 


As you well know, Obama is criticized by every corner of the political map these days. Some of it makes sense to me because we put our faith in leaders and when they aren't able to live up to what they said, or to our expectations, we naturally feel disappointed. 


But all the rational claims and criticisms in the world, however fact based, will never outweigh the power of the human heart. And in my heart, I know Obama is an exquisitely beautiful soul with noble intentions and tremendous courage. 


In moments of fear, sadly, humans tend to blame. We don't see the power to create inside of ourselves, so we project the power elsewhere. But you didn't seem to do that as your elder-wisdom permeated my morning air. You still believe in Obama. You see his heart, and you see that he is a loving human being. Your eighty years have polished you with the sheen of forgiveness, of leaning into light. Of choosing to see the good in people.


You stand for that. Thank you for seeing with forgiving eyes. 


Jessica

Dear Self-Doubt

Dear Self-Doubt,


You spent the morning with me. Even after a bowl of fresh fruit, delicious gourmet granola and fresh local goat milk yogurt, even after a big cup of coffee and a walk with the dog, you were revved up and ready for the day. Disappearing during moments when I was being fully present, you returned when I turned my attention toward the past or the future.


You hung out with me as I searched for a place to live, and creased my forehead wondering if I'd ever find a place I loved as much as my Cardiff cottage. You considered which actions I should regret from the day before. You held a sermon inside my head scanning for ways I could be a better daughter or a more loving mother to my dog. You wondered if and when I'd ever live my dream. I almost let you take the reins again all day.


Then you met my friend Dresden. Within minutes of showing up, she and I were engaged in a Gmail chat session about living our dreams: about writing. We made a pact that every day for the next 30, we'll each spend 30 minutes writing. And publish it. 

Writer's Pact Girl

An hour later, you met Serra. She texted with an invitation to come swimming in her huge pool on this hot Labor Day. Swimming with bright-eyed children whose presence is like Buddha. 


And by noon, you met Randy. And like a parched field during the first few minutes of rain, within an hour spending time with this exquisitely beautiful friend, I could barely hear your voice at all. 


Self Doubt, I'll never hate you. You are welcome in my life; I am having a human experience. You are a facet of my perception and you want to be loved. That's the only way you'll find your place, wherever it is, at peace.  I'll just make sure to spend more time nurturing the friendships that help me to feel peace too.


Jessica 

Glance of Devotion

Last Thursday, one of my personal heroes was buried and my mother attended the funeral of a newborn baby. Life and death held each other's glance from Atlanta, Georgia, where 77-year-old Ray Anderson was buried, across the country to San Rafael, California, where a Latin American baby born without a brain was laid to rest. 

It happens all the time. People die. But when one of our heroes dies, it hits home hard.

Our hearts become draped in dedication to carry on their legacy, to find that place within ourselves that is most committed to whatever it is we are here to do in this life. Ray Anderson founded Interface, the largest manufacturer of modular carpet in the world. He was one of the boldest ethically based businessmen alive. In 1994 after reading Paul Hawken's book The Ecology of Commerce, he set big goals to be sure his business wasn't responsible for depleting the ecological life support systems his grandchildren depended on. Seventeen years ago, he started leading in a way that most CEOs are still not brave enough to do. Yet for Ray, it was outrageous to not be bold.  He set the bar high, and on Monday August 8th he ventured on from his body, leaving a greater charge for those of us who admired him.

Across the continent, my mother Carmen joined the parents of a newborn baby as her tiny coffin was lowered into the soil. When a baby dies, a stream of questions swirls within us, none of which seem to have answers. For 16 years, my mom has been an angel in the lives of pregnant, low-income Latina women living in low-income neighborhoods in one of the wealthiest counties in America. But no birth has ever been quite like this. I'll leave the details out.

What struck my mom most was not the grief experienced when a baby dies. She's faced that many times before. It wasn't how blessed she felt to have been asked by the parents to be the person to carry Baby Genesis out of their hospital room after she had left her body. It wasn't even how the woman's husband never left her side during the entire three-day labor. 

It was faith. 

Somehow, after living through an experience as grueling than anything I could imagine, the couple never lost faith -- in God. They never lost faith that everything is in perfect order. That their baby is not dead, that her soul still lives, as long as she is remembered. For my mother, the most striking element of the whole experience was the everpresent element of devotion to God.

In moments like these, when life in the body makes its swift transition into death of the body, it is God I ponder most. Ray Anderson was a Christian man as are Genesis's parents. For me, God does not live or have meaning in religion, for I don't believe a religious God exists in the big picture. But the God within each of us, the essence of Love itself, the pure spark  of beauty at our core … how do I want to express this spark, most? With this one precious life, what is my way of extending the profound gratitude I feel for being alive? How will I claim my right to be happy, and spill it out widely into the pool of humanity, so that others may more easily choose their joy too?

To invoke extreme courage in us: that is the mark of a hero. To sit beside a woman as she gives birth to a baby who will live less than a day: that is the mark of a hero. 

I smile in thankfulness for Ray, for the baby and her parents, and for my astoundingly beautiful mother. The greatest gift I can give back, to do my part in this cycle of giving and receiving -- all of which is love -- is to express the beauty I see and feel in this world. There is great pain too, but having our attention there too long just makes it grow. 

We are not of this world, but we are in it. Thank goodness the beauty of the human spirit is infinite. 

it's ethics, at the center

My uncle, Dr. Louis Rios MD, is going through a transition. As a general surgeon for more than 30 years, he's now reflecting big time. Between New-Yorican (Puerto Ricans from the Bronx) style joke after joke after joke, as his siblings and he are known for, he asks himself: What has this career given me? How is society better off because of what I have done? What are the ethical issues at the center of medicine, that I might speak to in my later years? How can I help make the field of medicine less focused on money and more focused on caring for the sick?


Yesterday we barely made it out of a late afternoon Florida thunderstorm, parking the boat as the heavy drops began falling. For hours while still out on the water, I stared at the dark clouds on the horizon, letting thoughts float up from within. Somehow, during this week spent traveling with my dad to visit his siblings on the east coast, I have been struck by the power of ethics in my life. Not ethics as enforced or designed by anyone else -- but ethics stemmed from the core of one's own being, from the mind-boggling internal, intuitive guidance system we have all been given.  

This afternoon Uncle Lou (left, with my dad) asked me to read an article he wrote a year ago. In it he expressed, with vulnerability, the sense of abandonment experienced by physicians who don't get the kind of emotional or moral support given to, say, police officers, when someone dies. Doctors lose a patient and are paged on the hospital intercom to perform two more surgeries. Policemen, on the other hand, are substantially consoled and given paid time off to cope with the loss.


Where is the justice in this equation? What might Uncle Lou voice, in journals of medicine, to help bring about a place, an organization, that provides the kind of support doctors need when a patient dies under their watch? 


The power of values flashes through my mind. Sesame Street values like kindness, respect, generosity, care, and appreciation for cultural differences. 


I think of my primary college mentor, Bruce Grelle, who inspired his students to reflect on the values and ethics promoted by major religions like Christianity and Buddhism. Are their spoken values genuinely held by their representative religious institutions?


So tonight in southern Florida at Uncle Lou & Aunt Martha's house, after some California Cabernet and fried Puerto Rican 'tostones' (tohs-tohn-ess), I feel a joyous sense of comaraderie with my uncle, a man of great humor, integrity, class and sensitivity. And I can't help but notice a shared strain of ethics at play in our path -- a strain shared with great passion, as well, by my father, Lou's older brother. 


One thing is for sure. I am not promoting "one right way" -- that there is one dictatorial "rightness" in any human voice, in any one religion or in all of them combined, or in any book ever written. 


When it comes down to it, what I'm saying is personal. My own life is about spotlighting that no matter your age, Sesame Street had a point. And if all we do is focus on being kind, celebrating this astoundingly precious gift called life, being human enough to mess up madly and forgive ourselves, having the courage to ask questions and speak up when something just doesn't resonate with our own internal moral compass... that, I pose, is the primary substance of a life well lived. 


Hats off to the Uncle Lou's of the world.