Tomorrow

Tomorrow:  it don’t mean a thing if you ain’t got that swing

Dogen tells us “The Way is never separated from where we are now.” But we can separate ourselves from where we are now. Then we can’t act, but only react. And we react to our principles, our ideas, and we get tight and rigid, and we lose that swing.
Village Zendo Journal October 18

Tomorrow is my last treatment for breast cancer.  As I described in a previous entry, I have had four different types of treatment: chemotherapy, surgery, radiation, and Hercepton, the latter being the longest—52 treatments.  Tomorrow after more than a year of weekly blood tests, infusions, weigh-ins, I will be free to spend my Mondays at work or at play, which ever I choose.  Although, most likely, it will be work!

I want an epiphany.  I want a New Orleans jazz band with champagne and bubbles floating throughout the entire oncology center.  I want a reception type line of people to walk through as I leave the center, clapping, slapping me on the shoulder, shouting “well done” “here’s to your health” “great job” etc.; and then, we all meet at the local pub to laugh and cry and drink to life, love, connections, and good health. L’chei-im!!!

But the last 52 weeks have not led up to a New Orleans jazz band, champagne or a cadre of buddies to go to the pub with.  This past year has evolved deeper and deeper into a time of introspection and isolation.  My companions have been May Sarton, Pema Chodron, Eva Cassidy, Billie Holiday, Odetta, among other writers, philosophers, blues singers, and artists.   It has evolved into a time of solitude and walking along the Delaware alone, gazing at the moon and counting the stars twinkling in a sky of emptiness.

Solitude is a good place to visit but a poor place to stay.
Josh Billings

In her book “Close to the Bone: Life-threatening Illness and the Search for Meaning,”  Jean Shinoda Bolen introduced me to the sisters, Ereshkigal and Inanna.   Ereshkigal is a character in Greek Mythology who is sent to live in the Underworld.  Inanna, her sister and Queen of the Heavens, goes on a journey to rescue her when she hears her cries of suffering.  In Jungian psychology, it is thought that each character in a Greek story lives within us and thus can give us insights into our own suffering, recovering the dismembered parts of ourselves, resulting in healing.

When she knocked loudly at the gate to the Great Below and demanded that the door be opened for her, the gatekeeper asked, “Who are you?” and was told, “I am Inanna, Queen of the Heaven, on my way to the East.”  When he asked, “Why has your heart led you on the road which no traveler returns?”  Inanna replied, “Because of my sister, Ereshkigal.” Once she learned Ereshkigal was suffering…, Inanna was compelled to make this descent, to be a witness.  (Bolen, Close to the Bone, p. 54.)

Bolen then compares this descent to the journey out of ordinary life and into the underworld when we are confronted with a life-threatening illness.

Descents into the underworld take a person into the realm of death, transformation, and rebirth.  In a descent, there are symbolic deaths: death of some part of the old personality or former identity, the end of a particular hope or illusion… Something that has been buried in the psyche may be unearthed, remembered, and brought to life.  There is a possibility of a spiritual or psychological resurrection.

There was something about this story that resonated with my soul.  Even today, as I re-read these words my eyes are filled with tears, I begin to weep.

A few months ago I attended a poetry workshop at our local Wellness Community.  I wrote the following words…

Ereshkigal is suffering
She longs to be the bright colored ribbons
Tied to the lampposts throughout the city
But in her journey to the underworld
She has bumped into the places
Where she said no to life, no to relationships, no to change
When she lacked the courage to say “yes”

Or so it seemed…

Ereshkigal is suffering
The underworld is dark, lonely and desolate
Like a cave deep within stone mountain
As her eyes adjust to the darkness
She becomes aware of a white thread
Forming designs on the inner rock walls

She holds her candle to the rock
And there appears the story of her life…

Mary Oliver in her poem “The Summer Day”  asks of us: “Tell me what is it you plan to do/With your one wild and precious life?”  Tomorrow, I want to write that I am going to have an epiphany.  That I am going to change my ways, go the gym daily, eat good food, meditate, practice yoga, become more connected.  But, alas, I am not there.  I am still deep within stone mountain searching for the meaning in the story of my life written on the walls in the faint white thread.

So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises before you larger than any you’ve ever seen, if an anxiety like light and cloud shadows move over your hands and everything that you do.  You must realize that something has happened to you.  Life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hands and will not let you fall.  Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depression?  For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.
Rainer Maria Rilke

Last month I completed an eight week class on Mindfulness Stress Reduction (the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn)  At the end of each session, the teacher read us a poem.  I think it was the seventh week when the teacher read “Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye.  I wrote in my reflections that night, “this poem is my way out.”  I believe it is the road map out of stone mountain,perhaps it is the life story written on the wall.

That same week, I received the poem through two separate venues, a Buddhist journal and a Jewish social justice newsletter.  Dogan says that the way is never separated from where we are now.  Rilke suggests that we do not know the work that is taking place right now.  I cannot say what will happen tomorrow or any day after that.  However, I do know that the following poem is the map that will guide me to my wild and precious life.

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 any sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and send you out in the day to mail letters and
purchase 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.