Tonight is the full moon and it is a harvest moon.  The first time I visited California with my cousin Cathy to stay with her brother Robert we had dinner in Sausalito on the evening of the harvest moon.  The orangey waxy super-sized ball of an orb came up over the east bay looking superimposed, over-acted and theatrical.  It tempted us to want to touch it and almost believe that we might be able to if we were out in the bay on a boat with a ladder long enough.

This morning, the substitute teacher for the deep flow yoga class at Namaste brought this concept of fullness into class with his instruction, the chanting, the breathing and an invitation to let every moment be full and perfect in its imperfection.   This called to mind the Suzuki Roshi quote that we are perfect as we are, and, there’s always room for improvement.  Each moment, each person holds this paradox.

This was my third yoga class for the week and it feels mighty good to be back at that pace; it has been a while.  The pause to just be in my body for 90 minutes, hold an intention for my practice, focus and feel strength in my muscles transforms into confidence not only in my life, but in life itself.  Without this pause, the committee and chorus of my mind chatters and clatters like commuter traffic in Grand Central station, an elevated din making it impossible to drop in.  And the traffic is a ruse, of course, distracting me from the terror just below.

Impermanence has made itself known lately, serving up more changes than is comfortable or digestible, and making it impossible for me to skate on the surface of pretend.  Three of the four heavenly messengers, namely old age, sickness and death, e.g. the ones that greeted Buddha (while he was still Siddhartha) after he stepped outside the palace walls have been circling very close.  And I have been resistant to let go into the fourth messenger, awakening.  I have done what is incredibly human to do, respond with fear and hold on for dear life, white knuckles and all.  A futile attempt to not feel the pain and sadness and grief unleashed by bereavement in so many lives around me, not only the bereavement for the loss of loved ones, but also the bereavement that begins with diagnosis.   Resisting, instead of going with, the flow however, can only last so long.  As Marion Rosen liked to point out, the strongest muscle is the relaxed muscle.  The contracted muscle is already spent.

There are numerous reserves of support, including Chris, my partner in crime since June.  He has been exceedingly generous with opening his arms to me, offering a harbor in the storm.  His patient, kind and compassionate love offers all kinds of space, a field to play in like I’ve never had before in an intimate relationship.   Seasoned and shaped by some true character-building opportunities, a veteran at letting go, he knows on a visceral level that there is nothing to hold onto, really.  Most recently informed by a sudden cardiac arrest that he survived in March 2011 he knows that life is impermanent at a cellular level.  He is not your average bear.

And yet there’s the play of life, the drama we project onto the screen, the stories we tell ourselves and get pulled into that take us away from the more ephemeral underlying truisms.  We get sucked in, stand in lines for roller coasters and lattes, stress out over bills, worry about our loved ones, and plan our lives by weeks, months and years.

So this new love has become my opportunity to practice in many ways.  I get to visit with my demons in this new field where love is patient and love is kind.   To see the less than glowing aspects of myself in a more gentle way affording me the opportunity to make some changes from the inside out.  The foundation we’ve been building, in concert with my hospice volunteer work, is tilling the soil to plant new seeds. Ever so slowly I am learning to relax into the falling with the understanding that there is nothing to fall into.  And, while I’ve missed writing in the long, wandering ways these blog entries take me, seaming together narratives from fragments and pieces of paper, and I’ve missed going to yoga 3 or 4 times a week, I have relished learning a new language of relationship with Chris. Perfectly imperfect in our fullness, it is a marvelous night for a moon dance.

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On a side note, one of my co-volunteers from the Zen Hospice Project, Tom Nickel, presented to the American Counseling Association at their annual conference earlier this year on the subject of helping clients prepare for end of life, the final chapter.  The Association followed up with an article in Counseling Today and it is well worth a read.  We all get to that final chapter eventually, whether we go kicking and screaming full of resistance or relaxing into the wave and going with the flow.  You can read Tom’s article here.