I’m not a Buddhist… Or am I?
I do not really consider myself a Buddhist; however, the half-assed part is spot on. I do meditate and have assimilated many Buddhist truths and practices that I pick up from my wandering around in this philosophy. This is the case with most of the ‘isms” I have stumbled into that have chords that resonate with the hearing of my heart. Taoism. Sufism. Judaism. And I still borrow from the truths that came from my Seventh-Day Adventist Christian upbringing – complete with church school and regular vespers services at each edge of the Sabbath hours. I once heard one of my favorite philosophers, Ram Dass, describe himself as a Sufi, Hin-Jew, Christian, Zoroastrian, Taoist, spiritual-scientific materialist, humanist. Same. Except I would add dogmatic relativist as the exclamation mark at the end of the long, rambling, often non-sensical, sometimes twisted sentence that I might be on any given day depending on the circumstances.
My perspective is not any more profound or inciteful than any of the other spiritual blogs that are out there in the internet abyss. In fact, probably less so. But for those who stumble in and find something for themselves – I am deeply grateful and will do my best to share honestly and openly and to shine a light on the experiences that have impacted my path because I’ve come to believe that that is one of the things that this whole being human thing is about: being there authentically and living out loud and openly without attachment to outcomes. It is a gift that we give others, and I have been impacted by others who choose to live this way.
My background is a hodgepodge of unexpected, seemingly mutually exclusive existences, each with its own lessons. And mostly, I feel like I was tardy to class. It is only in the relative calm retrospect of middle age that I fully appreciate the jewels, the lessons, and the experiences that I have been lucky enough to have.
The product of a Maine Game Warden and a stay-at-home mom, I spent my formative years and beyond barely ever leaving the state. I was scared to go to Portland, Maine’s most forward-thinking city, a mere town by the standards set by more metropolis states in the union. I tried to drive myself to the dentist once when I was 17. I got hopelessly lost and ended up by the bus station on St. John’s Street in a seedy bar that happened to be opened at 1:00 in the afternoon. I called my mother, sobbing, who came to retrieve me and lead me back to the simple respite of one road town. The fear continued into my young adulthood long after the first three of my brood of 4 were born. And then life segued in that ironic way that it has of doing so, and I found myself standing on various red carpets in Hollywood amongst the lovelies, pretending to steal the Cartier jewels on display at the Golden Globes the year that Borat won and hanging out on various sets – Grey’s Anatomy, CSI, Heroes, My Wife, and Kids. No, I am not one of the beautiful people. But I gave birth to one. Although I hated the moniker, and the AD’s on set loved to razz me with the title, I was merely one of those members of a most detested group called Stage Mothers. My young son was the actor – an equally unlikely happenstance.
We began as weird homeschoolers living in a single-wide trailer in the woods of a tiny hamlet in Maine. We had no TV viewing service; music was our cornerstone. Violins, cello, viola, piano. There was something always being tuned or practiced in our household. It sounds idyllic. It was not, but it should have been. We began traveling with the music and with a university orchestra. The unspeakable happenings of that long-ago September 11 raised everyone’s consciousness, and we became aware of the camps in Afghanistan for families displaced by the workings of the Taliban. The faces of shivering children with beautiful little running noses, looking desperately into the camera, caved my heart in. The part of me that longed to heal myself practiced that age-old therapy of trying to heal others as a proxy. So, when it was my turn to organize the benefit orchestra concert (because before I was a Stage Mom, I was an Orchestra Mom), I chose that the proceeds raised by the concert would go to the children in Afghanistan.
My son, Noah, was one of the main attractions. At age 5, he was performing the first movement of the Haydn piano concerto with the orchestra, his curly dark hair bobbing as he sat at the piano, nodding his head in time to the strings and waiting for his father, one of the conductors, to bring him in. Once, when he had a loose tooth, he was performing on a very shiny Yamaha grand. He became mesmerized with wiggling his tooth in his reflection in the polished wood just above the keys where his hands waited. It drew closer to the measure where the piano’s voice took over the business of the concerto, and I could see, from where I sat behind him, that he was totally lost – not in the music, but in the wonder of a tooth nearing the end of its tenure in his mouth. The moment arrived. His father looked down at him with the face and hands of a loving shepherd, but the lamb was not paying attention. The strings held the note, and they held the note some more. Smiles started to creep across the first musician chairs who could plainly see what was going on, and Noah’s dad, arms raised, holding the vibrato of the violins in his palms, patiently waited while I stood up, leaned over the pew in front of me, and whispered loudly, “Noah, dad’s waiting for you.” He startled out of the excitement of a first lost tooth and played the piece flawlessly. The tooth came out days later at a little apartment in Battery Park where his father was living in order to be part of the rebuilding effort after 9/11. And I did not appreciate these moments nearly enough, which has brought me to this moment with many lessons I feel worth sharing. Or at the very least worth ruminating about.
The concert for Afghani children was covered by each of the local news major network affiliates. It turns out this is how Jay Leno, Oprah Winfrey, and other news magazine shows find their stories. They cull the local news media for the Americana that exists beyond the cameras and mike booms of the studios where they sit pristinely made up. Noah played the piano on Jay Leno, Good Morning America, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and 48 Hours News Magazine did a segment featuring our family. That was, of course, before they were strictly a murder mystery show. It was not Keith Morrison with his creepy vibe that bylined our story. It was Harold Dow. And then a casting director that watched Oprah called.
So began the Hollywood odyssey that – in Beverly HillBillies fashion – took a little family from their trailer in Maine and deposited them in the warmth and sunshine of California.
My mind was settled, unfortunately, in the driver’s seat. And as the quote goes, the thinking mind is a lovely servant but a lousy master. The path took a deep and winding cut through territory that cost those that I love the most their peace and trust. It goes without saying; it cost me as well. They call it mental health. Depression. And fair enough, it is. But for some of us, a label is not what yields up what is most useful for the soul. There is a curtain that we must go beyond.
After the divorce, I made my way back to Maine and began my new life single, quiet and alone in the once music-filled trailer, working as a social worker. And because my path will always, I think, be bent into Picoassoesque lines that don’t mash-up but that nonetheless yield the beauty and intrigue, I find myself in this place where I am now – 35 miles deep in the woods of Maine via a network of dirt logging roads, off-grid, and part-owner of sporting camps and a campground on the shores of a lovely lake, flanked by Baxter State Park and the vistas of Mt Katahdin and her range.
In this special quiet, the lessons, the grace, and all that accompany gradually come into focus daily when I have the fortitude to get out of the way and allow it. And this is what I share with you. I invite you to come along on the adventure. Some days are quiet, with nothing but the wind telling any stories. But the truths that find their way in on those currents have shifted my whole being. Mary Oliver has many poems that I love and lines that button up every moment into its own unique, succinct bits of poetry. One of those is “Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” I intend to do just that. Thank you for being here.
