April 2005 Newsletter
Online Issue # 9
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The Front Page
Enough Already
In my kitchen, on the green bookshelf, sits an old copy of the More-with-Less Cookbook. I've owned it since I lived in Duluth, MN and bought it from the Co-Op on the hill sometime in the 1970's. I use it for one recipe, Basic Baked Beans, and I like to make them the slow cook way, although I've used the quick soak method in a rush.
I would never think of parting with this book that I think of more as a mantra than a cookbook. It's the title I love and need to keep in the heart of my home and in the heart of my life—more with less.
Right now, sitting in my room at home working on the computer, looking out three south facing windows at undisturbed newly fallen late March snow, I look past the accumulation of stuff that I have collected or created, plus the stuff I am working on, will be working on, or need to be working on. There is stuff to find a home for, stuff to be decided, stuff everywhere. It's so much messier than my dream: a clear expansive work space with my friendly iMac waiting for me, a fresh legal pad and pen available off to the side if I need it, my little black phone that won't call out but still conveniently allows me to answer upstairs, the funky green lamp that lights my table at night and on gray days. Even that's a lot. But then there's all the other stuff.
There's the bird-shaped stone that looks like speckled snakeskin, the tightly curled scrap of birch bark found on a Lake Superior shore years ago, the mysterious pink fish greeting card that I like to ponder, the bright yellow Colman's Mustard tin containing paper clips, one of the lovely cases for my reading glasses that my sister made for me. I feel like a BEFORE picture in an organizing magazine makeover. I can even hear the clarifying questions I need to ask myself: Do I love this stuff on my worktable and in my life? Do I need it to be here in my work area now? What of all this helps me? What hinders me? And my favorite question—If I was beginning over would I bring this into my life and my room today?
Truthfully, I don't know. So I repeat the phrase, "Be here now." With all my stuff? Yes, even with all my stuff.
The truth I do know is that I have all the essential stuff I need for what I want and need to do, but on top of that I have all this other stuff I've been describing, and then there's all the unseen and "unseeable" stuff I haven't even mentioned. It's the unseen corollary of my truth that prompts me to remember and admit: a part of me still feels afraid I won't have enough or won't have what is truly needed. In my counseling work and in my groups, just as in life, anything is possible. And aren't we supposed to always be prepared?
I'm no longer thinking about the tangible objects I just listed and described, my thoughts have moved on and zeroed in on the qualities of wisdom, compassion, acceptance, discernment, knowing. For me the holy fear is about both my willingness and my ability to show up, to be and remain fully present and true, regardless of what arises.
In order to do what I do as a career counselor, and what I do in small listen-writing groups, here's what I need: one table (mine is plum-purple), one chair for each person who shows up (mine are bright pink), and the commitment to be present as fully as I am able throughout the process. It's not possible to bring all the answers for all the questions that might be asked, and it's certainly not possible to know all the remedies for each fear, longing, disappointment, confusion or frustration that might be voiced. Nor is it possible to reveal all the steps that will lead to a life lived more fully or more happily. Admitting that, showing up and being present might seem like a rather pathetic offering, given the magnitude and importance of what brings people to the table. And yet, it is what I am called to be and do: to listen and to trust what I hear.
So I choose to show up offering my complete and undivided attention, so that others can show up and give themselves their complete wholehearted attention, and in doing that remember what their lives want and need to be about, now. Together we witness the voicing and the hearing, and honor the string of self-revealing experimental steps that have already begun, steps that continue to unravel themselves so that something new can be created from the priceless materials of their lives. It's not unlike the transforming work of undoing an abandoned knitting project to make a pair of socks or a scarf or a child's sweater, something useful, now. And loving the new doing and the new result, while valuing the original yarn.
It's taken me years to have the courage and the wisdom to know when to let go of the truly good and helpful stuff, the professional tools and techniques that can also be a protective barrier between my real listening work and another's real heart of pain and passion. Exercises, inventories, handouts, resources, books and questions all have their rightful place and perfect use. But for me, learning to release my fearful hold on all this stuff is to dare to show up empty, willing to enter and fully occupy the sacred space of the table and the chairs, and hear the human heart that is longing to voice itself and find its true way home.
Always remembering that the heart knows its own truth, but it needs a listening, trusting place to be believed. It longs for the next step to be a true step, not a perfect step. The heart asks for very little, but like some basic recipes, it also asks for no substitutions.
With gratitude,
Laurie Mattila
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