Weekly Newsletter 11.24.2020
Updates
In the last few years, Medium enabled a different kind of platform to publish on - the Series. It’s optimized for mobile devices and is intended to enable folks to write and publish while “on the go” - sort of an Instagram for essayists. I’m less interested in developing stories or essays in this way, but it’s an interesting medium for guiding meditation. If you’re looking for an aide to help you get centered and mindful, whether you’ve got three minutes or thirty, take a peek at “Making space: a quick guide”.
I post longer reflections on Medium - not regularly, but as they’re ready. If you’re interested in exploring my take on the world, visit https://billhulseman.medium.com/. If anything strikes a chord (or a nerve!), leave a comment on Medium, or reach out to me directly to get a dialogue going!
Guided meditations via Zoom continue! Mondays at 4:00pm PST. The aim is to practice being present - to ourselves, to others, and to the world. If you or someone you know could use a 20-30 minute dose of peace and quiet on Mondays, visit the meditation page on my site to sign up.
Good Stuff
Listen
I was lucky to see Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings perform twice before her far-too-early departure from the world. When she came on stage in DC, one of the Dap Kings introduced her shining, bald head was startling - she was touring after losing her hair during chemo - but it was also misleading. I think we all expected a subdued Sharon Jones that night, but she delivered a two-hour, high-energy show. The Dap Kings were having trouble keeping up with her! “Humble Me” is one of my favorites - and it’s also a good, gratitude-inducing listen.
Let me be grateful
For all that I’ve seen
And all that I have here
And everywhere I’ve been
That pretty much sums it up, right?
If you stream music on Spotify, I’ve started a playlist called “Bill’s Good Stuff,” including music I’ve loved for a long time as well as things I’ve come across more recently. Feel free to add the playlist to your favorites! Bill’s Good Stuff Spotify Playlist
Read
As part of Monday’s meditation, I included and excerpt from Anne Lamott’s Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers. It’s a thin little book, but it packs a (spiritual) wallop. I’ve been drawn to Lamott’s writing since Operating Instructions - she balances depth and levity as she weaves insights for surviving and thriving. Her voice and her POV are distinct from other authors on the Spirituality shelf at your local bookstore, making me feel less like I’m being preached to and more like I’m on a long walk with an honest bodhisattva who has been through it but who sticks around to make sure you make it through, too. I’ve returned to this passage hundreds of times (OK, maybe dozens) when I can’t find the words and “thank you” just isn’t enough. Around this time of year - and especially this year - I hear it differently. Maybe it will resonate with you as a kind of Thanksgiving meditation.
Gratitude begins in our hearts and then dovetails into behavior. It almost always makes you willing to be of service, which is where the joy resides. It means you are willing to stop being such a jerk. When you are aware of all that has been given to you, in your lifetime and in the past few days, it is hard not to be humbled, and pleased to give back.
Most humbling of all is to comprehend the lifesaving gift that your pit crew of people has been for you, and all the experiences you have shared, the journeys together, the collaborations, births and deaths, divorces, rehab, and vacations, the solidarity you have shown one another. Every so often you realize that without all of them, your life would be barren and pathetic. It would be Death of a Salesman, though with e-mail and texting.
The marvel is only partly that somehow you lured them into your web twenty years ago, forty years ago, and they totally stuck with you. The more astonishing thing is that these greatest of all possible people feel the same way about you - horrible, grim, self-obsessed you. They say - or maybe I said - that a good marriage is one in which each spouse secretly thinks he or she got the better deal, and this is true also of our bosom friendships. You could almost flush with appreciation. What a great scam, to have gotten people of such extreme quality and loyalty to think you are stuck with them. Oh my God. Thank you.
The truth is that “to whomever much is given, of him will much be required, and to whom much was entrusted, of him more will be asked,” if Jesus is to be believed. He meant us, not the Kennedys or the Romneys - us, to whom such exquisite companions have been given. In the face of this, we mysteriously find ourselves willing to pick up litter in the street, or let others go first in traffic. Or even to let the psychotic talk to us for longer than a normal person would, to set aside the apprehension or boredom we feel and actually listen…
You breathe in gratitude, and you breathe it out, too. Once you learn how to do that, then you can bear someone who is unbearable. My general-purpose go-to mystic Rumi said, “There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground,” and bearing the barely bearable is one of the best.
from Anne Lamott, Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers (Riverhead Books, 2012), pp.56-61
See
I encountered Melody Postma’s work at the Lanoue Gallery in Boston. As I walked in and began to say ‘hello’ to the gallerist, my eye caught sight of Wonder Woman (three Wonder Women, to be precise). They were juxtaposed with other images and an explosion of color - all part of Postma’s distinctive pop-art, collaged style. “Wonders of the World” has hung in my living room ever since. More recently, I connected with Postma after tagging her on Stella’s Instagram, and, seeing more of her work on Instagram, I wish we had more wall space. She sells original paintings as well as prints, and she’s adapted several of her pieces to tote bags and iPhone cases! Need a stocking stuffer? Or something to hang on your wall?
