Infants:whether new babies or creative projects, do this to life - they disturb sleep by waking us in the middle of the night for feeding, they occupy our thoughts in the midst of activities that used to be completely focused on for themselves, they demand attention during time that used to belong exclusively to 'me.' As I write those words the experience seems reasonable - even a bit poetic, for new life is very poetic - but truthfully, the experience of my new 'babies' doesn't feel reasonable or poetic, it feels irritating and out of control; mostly because it is. If I allow it to be. Which is why the picture on this blog is a fence line because this morning when I woke up it was with the decision to spend some extra time with the 'fence line' of my life. With all that was happening I knew I needed to make sure that the one thing I got into my day was the spiritual practice that creates the fence line of my life: the boundary I am able to walk along with some sense of serenity.
What I know from experience is that by making sure I begin my day walking along this fence line I will be able to keep nourishing these new lives that have been born because the scribbling all over my calendar won't bother me as much. I also know that unless I choose to walk this fence line of practice I will eventually 'abort' the new life I have been given because part of being human is containing an ego that absolutely adores the status quo: keeping life predictable. My fence line of spiritual practice is how I balance the persistent clamoring of my ego that desires I attend to its needs for validation and approval. New life shifts attention away from old validations and life can be feel lonely unless I choose to make time to walk my fence line and deliberately orient myself with practice.
Practice is defined as repeated exercise in an activity requiring the development of a skill. The skill I desire to develop - to keep developing - is the orientation of myself to my core belief about living which is that I contain a spark of God within me and it is my job in life to feed this spark so the Spirit may use me as It's channel of creative power. Again, this sounds lovely and poetic and so you'd think it would be easy to stay with such belief. Yet what I know from experience is that being human I am easily smitten by scribbles and ego clamoring. My only antidote to this reality is to deliberately orient myself in the direction of my Spirit's needs each day. This daily orienting is how I build my fence line of practice.
Fences need to be built. They do not grow out of the ground; even if the fence is composed of growing plants or trees they had to have been deliberately planted into the grid of the boundary the fence creates. Our orientation to each day is exactly like building a fence in that it needs to be deliberately created. The reality is that most adults have fences of rituals orienting us toward a new day: turning on the coffee, jumping into the shower, lacing on shoes and heading out for a walk or run, feeding the cat or letting the dog out, turning on the early morning news shows or booting up the computer. Whatever it is that you do virtually every day as you begin the day, is generally a ritualized signal to the psyche to orient itself to the next 16 or so hours of activity. Growing up I was luckier than many people as I had a mother and father that believed that orienting the self toward the spiritual side of life was the most important beginning ritual of the day. They prayed the rosary each day and those beads of prayer defined virtually every day of my life; often they went to daily Mass and there was the house in Florida with the intercom system (my father loved gadgets) which they flipped on each day so I awakened to the intoning of morning prayers -- I did not care much for that ritual - I thought it was rude!
Truthfully, I didn't care for a lot of their rituals of prayer since, as with most rituals, they interfered with what I wanted to do with my time. In many ways, large and small, I rebelled against the 'fence line' they built into my life and as with most young adults, one of the freedoms I discovered when I left home was being able to live outside of that fence. And I reveled [interesting how similar in letters the words 'rebel' and 'revel' are!] in my freedom to not have to! I reveled: played and enjoyed with great gusto, life in the freedom of open spaces without fences. That is until I became exhausted by all that playing and wearied by the grinding regularity of responsibility and depressed and anxious in the vastness of possibilities and choices and consequences that I discovered as I grew into life.
It was during a very difficult period of my life when I was unsure - and scared - and confused - and downright terrorized by the consequences of the choices I had made that then seemed to 'fence' my life that I learned that I could build my own fence line right in the middle of all those feelings. Post by post, board by board, I erected my personal fence line of practice: repeated exercises in an activity that required developing a skill. The skill I was developing? Turning my will and life over to the care of a Power Greater than Myself and developing a relationship with this Power. Slowly, day by day, as I was willing to engage the exercises required to develop the skills of relationship, the fence line took shape.
The shape of the fence is simple: I get up and flip on the coffee and take my cup and head out to the patio where I thank God for a new day. Having greeted my HP {Higher Power} we sit in quiet communion - or sometimes I chatter away - but I always pray my own ritualized thank yous. Sometimes I journal, sometimes I color mandalas which for me are prayers in color, sometimes - often - I just sit and bask in the knowledge that I am loved completely and utterly by the Source of Goodness named HP or God. I absorb this reality knowing that not only does it renew my Spirit but with a renewed Spirit there is a very good chance I may be able to share the love and goodness as I go into the day. This was a very, very good thing when I first began this exercise because I was raising three small boys and breathing in love and goodness was an essential ingredient to being present as I mothered them.
When I began building the fence more than a couple decades ago, I decided to set the alarm for 30 minutes before the house awakened. My fence-building and fence-walking morning time has varied from as little as 15 minutes to as long as an hour virtually every day since I began. One part of me that gets really annoyed is when people tell me that they just can't find that kind of time. You can't find 15 minutes? Decades of fence-building and fence-walking has taught me that we never 'find' time: we 'make' it. Fences do not grow out of the ground - they are built. I am also sad when people tell me they just can't do this for what I have learned as I have incorporated this practice into my life is that my 'fence' - my exercises of deliberate choice of how and to what I orient my day - has not only brought me great joy, it is what gives me the ability to cradle new life in my arms -even though I am menopausal and past child-bearing age.
As I write this I am deeply grateful to my parents not only for their example of how to built a fence line, but for their integrity of character as they kept to their daily practice despite the demands of a life that included ten children - most of whom whined and complained about being restrained by their 'fence'. After they died, I brought from their home to my home a framed wall hanging with the saying: A day hemmed in prayer is less likely to unravel. These words are true: the day may fray a bit but it's bloody unlikely to completely unravel with a fence line of prayer.
Again, I enjoyed the way this got me thinking about my own life and rituals. You set a great example of how centering yourself - or building the fence - reflects in yourself as joy. What's 15-30 minutes less of something like sleep or Tv when compared to the joy of starting your day well.
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