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Breathe for the World

By Simone Lipscomb | November 14, 2015

Tears rolled down my face as we sat sounding Om* for the World but especially for Paris. That simple word united our focus, our minds and hearts, as we began our yoga practice. Still feeling raw from news of the attacks, I surrendered to the breath and the opening of the heart that comes with breathing…in……..out……….in……….out.

The week had already been difficult for various reasons. Thursday my thoughts focused on an elder in my extended family, a family to which I once belonged. His birthday was coming around Thanksgiving….how old this year? 95? 96? I wondered how he was and sent him a heart hug. Friday morning an email arrived with the news that he had transitioned to the next stage of his journey and had left this earthly realm.

My heart opened to his family, my former family, and all day I thought of them. It’s difficult to know how to express love and grief in situations such as this. Love doesn’t go away because relationships change.

Then late last night social media began distributing the news of the attacks on Paris. More terrorism, more fear. More opportunities to hate. And more opportunities to love.

Gathering with my yoga community to practice this morning, we joined together and opened our hearts to help generate love and compassion. With each breath, each posture we were guided by our teacher to open more, create more space within ourselves and to give it away to the world. We dedicated our practice to love, the love generated from open hearts, open minds.

As the tears flowed I dedicated my practice to Paris and to Charles Cooke and to his family…breathing love and compassion to all. And even to those whose fear turned to hatred strong enough to commit such violence. Every posture a prayer for peace, a prayer of love.

I no longer felt helpless but rather empowered to help change the fabric we each and all create. We exist in an on-going collective creative dance. The key is to be mindful of exactly what we are creating….monitoring our thoughts, behaviors…our speech.

When my grandfather passed from this world during Hurricane Katrina I envisioned him helping those dying cross over. When Daddy-O passed this week and the Paris attacks happened, I envisioned him helping those whose lives ended so suddenly and violently. Both men were in their 90’s and both had faith based in love. They leave behind a legacy of love.

May each of us cultivate love and compassion with every inhalation and with every exhalation send it out to the world. With our mindfulness, let us breathe for the world.

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*While there are many possible origins and explanations for what Om means, I think of it as the sound of the Universe. When we hold this word in song, we allow the sound of the Universe to breathe through us.

Thank you Augusta Kantra for providing the container for a practice of love and compassion.

Divine Madness

By Simone Lipscomb | October 16, 2015

The sharp click of metal on metal as my cleats clipped into the pedal reverberated in the foggy air–silence broken for a moment as I pushed off, leaving the mundane, the grounded ones in whirling flight. Half bird, half coyote I spun into the pre-dawn light.

The drive down to the park was spent listening to one song played and repeated as I let the music and lyrics fill my mind. I rode with no soundtrack today except the lingering lyrics echoing within my mind and heart.

“Shining light of mercy…coming of the day. Shooting star of promise…the lantern on the way. Picture in the locket, love so near and far. Song your mother’s singing, firefly in a jar…..Coltrane in the 60’s, Blind Willie lost in time….Mahalia, like an angel, the hymns of human kind. Bouquet of forgiveness, the healing of the heart. Redemption of misfortune and the madness of the world. Madness of the world. Love of peace alighting. One moment making sense. Love crashing through the barricade, love reaching through the fence. The Christmas Eve ceasefire, wind beneath a bird. Inebriated choir and the madness of the world. Madness of the World. Madness of the World. Paint brush hittin’ canvas, the dancin’ in the rain. Flannery O’Conner, word on every page. Kindness of a stranger, Prodigal’s return. The absence of all anger and the Madness of the World….The Madness of the World. The letter from your father, the weight of every word. The love that keeps you singing; the sublime, the absurd. The ancients and the mystics, minstrel in the park. Soothers and the sayers, healing ancient scars. Those who came before us, those we’re never heard. Babies breath on my neck, madness of the world. Madness of the world….madness, oh madness, madness of the world.” Will Kimbrough from Mercyland Vol 2.

The first time I heard this song, tears came as my heart opened. Every time I listen the same thing happens…even listening to it on repeat. It mirrors my feelings and probably those of many of us struggling to make sense of this world.

Choosing to pay attention to behaviors human’s choose to practice toward each other, animals, plants, sacred places brings so much grief and sadness we can be overwhelmed. But then the fog is lit by colors of the rising sun….”Shining light of mercy…” or birds surround me as I pedal through their woods….”wind beneath a bird…..” Bursting out in laughter at the rays of light bursting through pine limbs in the fog…”coming of the day….” I realize beauty helps me rise above the sadness…”shooting star of promise…”

Without beauty of landscape and heart, the madness of the world would devour us. But somehow, amid the insanity of darkness we see inklings of light and they lift us above the quicksand of sadness to flight.

Will’s song brings tears because amid awareness of climate change and ocean acidification, social injustices and meanness, we can still find the sweetness of love and laughter. It’s a healing waltz as we dance in the schizophrenic reality of life. I think he reminds us that we can survive and even thrive in a world of madness by being mindful of beauty walking shoulder-to-shoulder with darkness.

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Check out Will Kimbrough‘s body of work. Find his song, Madness of the World, on Mercyland: Hymns for the Rest of Us, Volume 2

The New Normal

By Simone Lipscomb | September 2, 2015

The usual situation of having at least three books going at once gave a strange coincidence last week. On the sofa I was reading, Telling Our Way to the Sea, by Aaron Hirsh. The book is about two college professors who take students to the Sea of Cortez via the Baja Peninsula. The quote that caught my eye? “We live amid wreckage yet we hardly notice that something has changed. Why are we so blind to the destruction–so forgetful of what was here? Knowing only the natural world we’ve encountered in the short interval of a life, we fail to notice the substantial transformations wrought by previous generations; and so we over look the absence of all that was already gone when we ourselves first arrived on the scene.”

Then migration to the bedroom and the book on the bedside table about the Amazon River, Mother of God, by Paul Rosolie, presents this quote on the same evening: “I have witnessed a kind of generational amnesia to ecological abundance. It is a sinister phenomenon whereby members of each generation seem to accept what they see around them as the way things ought to be. It is a problem of shifting baselines, a lowering of the standards by which we judge the condition of our environment. Over generations and across continents, this collective inability to accurately assess environmental change has become a serious problem.”

From May 1st through August 31st I walk one morning a week at sunrise looking for sea turtle tracks–evidence of a nest—as a sea turtle volunteer. The mile and a half section I walk begins at the wildlife refuge and goes eastward. The first part is in an exclusive, gated development but it isn’t immune to litter. And not just a plastic bottle here and there. Metal tent frames are abandoned here just like all along our Alabama beaches. People leave tents, ice chests, beer bottles and cans, plastic water bottles, chairs, plastic toys, cigarette butts, kites and string, fireworks, balloon remnants, diapers, condoms….it’s an endless list of nasty human waste and the weird thing is people walk by like it’s not even there.

Photograph Summer 2010...Shell Oil — Photograph Summer 2010…Shell Oil

Tar balls, oil containers, gas containers, antifreeze containers….doesn’t seem to faze our tourists or those that live on the beach.

Drilling in ocean water too deep to be safe…drilling in sensitive environments like the Arctic…fracking shale near homes, schools, playgrounds…clearcutting forests….overfishing…dumping sewage in the sea…violence against the planet, wildlife, humans….yet we seem numb, immune.

Are we so used to trash, pollution and rape of the planet as the norm it no longer affects us? S.N.A.F.U. I suppose. Seriously S.N.A.F.U. Sadly so. I don’t like this new normal. How about you?

Photograph I took Summer 2010. It reminds me of a woman's body and so I call it the Rape of Mother Earth — *Photograph I took Summer 2010 during the BP Deepwater Horizon Disaster. It reminds me of a woman’s body and so I call it the Rape of Mother Earth*

Eye Contact

By Simone Lipscomb | August 24, 2015

While hovering over a coral reef in the Caribbean, I spot a blenny. The small fish, perhaps an inch long with eyes the size of a pin head, makes eye contact. In the Sea of Cortez, hovering over a rocky outcrop a juvenile puffer fish, also very tiny in size, approaches my mask and makes eye contact. No matter the size of the species, it always feels as if a real connection of some sort is made when eyes of one connects with eyes of another.

One of the most satisfying experiences enjoyed in my life is making eye contact with wild animals. Perhaps not all wild animals would accept it as a peaceful action but those who choose to interact with me like this help me to feel accepted into that other’s life, if only for a moment.

While interacting with a juvenile humpback whale, there was definitely eye contact. Considering the cetacean was over 15 feet in length, she wasn’t the one intimidated. I offered a quiet mind and peaceful heart to this sister and the encounter changed my life. Maybe it changed her for the better in some way, too.

And manatees…they seem to love making goo-goo eyes with me or my camera housing dome port. (Perhaps they are really making goo-goo eyes with the manatee they see reflected in the port). I like to think that when we make eye contact with others…be it wildlife, our domestic non-human friends or even humans…we are making an agreement to connect.

SimoneLipscomb (9) — *Sampson, a bobcat that lives indoors in a wildlife rescue center after being surrendered by a human who declawed him and kept him illegally as a pet.*

It has been said the eyes are the window of the soul. That’s how I gauge if someone is ‘home’ in their body. It’s how I communicate with other species and with other humans. There is much to learn from looking into another’s eyes.

Cath Steel & Will Kimbrough — *Cathe Steel & Will Kimbrough*

What about you? Are you willing to take the risk to make eye contact?

Or will you live with blinders, refusing to connect with others around you?

Moving Beyond Fear

By Simone Lipscomb | August 18, 2015

As is the usual case when cycling, I went into a meditative state and allowed the miles, humidity, heat, green tunnel of the trail and my mind to meld. Thoughts and ideas surfaced and I began to tug on a string of thoughts on fear.

We see fear daily…people carrying guns openly into schools and grocery stores; people destroying the Ocean, land, wildlife and human health to grab more money, more profit at any cost; humans lashing out at others because they look different, practice a different religion, live in a different country, come from a different culture; killing snakes, huge granddaddy alligators, rhinos, lions, whales, dolphins…an endless list.

So how does all of this relate to fear?

Many years ago I read the statement: What is not love is fear (ACIM). This statement has bounced around in my mind and heart for over thirty years and each time I chew on it, it seems more true. Here’s a short list of other ideas on this:

1. “There is no fear where love exists. Rather, perfect love banishes fear, for fear involves punishment and the person who lives in fear has not been perfected in love.” I John 4.18 (ISV)

2. “When you don’t choose love you choose fear. To transcend fear, we must move somewhere else emotionally; we must move into love.” Elisabeth Kubler-Ross & David Kessler

3. “There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.” John Lennon

4. “Love is the only antidote to fear.” John O’Donohue

5. “Fearlessness is not only possible, it is the ultimate joy. When you touch non-fear, you are free.” Thich Nhat Hanh

6. “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” Plato

7. “Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.” Marianne Williamson

8. “Hate is the consequence of fear; we fear something before we hate it.” Cyril Connolly

I grew up shooting guns in a family with guns and still enjoy shooting my pistols at the range, so please don’t mistake me as a person that is anti-gun; however, I can only draw one conclusion from grown men wanting to open carry semi-automatic rifles into grocery stores and schools–they are afraid. Sadly, much of the fear is created in their own mind. A few weeks ago an image blazed through social media of men wearing their semi-automatic rifles into a grocery stores…really? Is it that scary to purchase ice cream these days? Or veggies? Has the beer aisle been invaded by prohibitionists? Open carrying your big guns in schools? Doesn’t that only generate more fear…especially in the children who are trying to focus on learning? (Sigh). As I pedaled the only conclusion I came to was…they are afraid.

The mega-corporations that trash our planet and all life on it…aren’t they fearful of not having enough? The profit-at-any-cost mentality has at its roots a fear of not having enough money…or power.

Fishermen that call manatees ‘speed-bumps’ and lobby to have them de-listed from the endangered species list are, at the foundation, afraid that they won’t get to the fish quick enough, that somebody else will get more than them, that an animal as gentle and sweet as manatee should, God forbid, have rights to live in their own watery realm safely.

There are some that physically attack others who are different. Think of women that have been abused, gay individuals who have been tortured, black people, Native Americans…what could possibly be at the basis of the horrendous acts of violence? If you pull the thread long enough, fear is at the foundation. Fear of losing control of another you consider ‘property,’ or fear of your own sexuality, or fear that individuals with different colored skin will ‘take-over.’

Every scenario I pondered as I pedaled, came to one basic foundational cause: fear.

So what is the answer? How can we collective move past this to stop the violence born of fear?

As is often the case when pondering a lingering question, I found a random movie on Netflix. Seeking a Friend for the End of the World’s basic storyline is a comet is going to hit the earth and it’s the story of how people deal with an impending global disaster. I noticed three ways people dealt with it: 1) Violence and anarchy; 2) Survivalist mode; 3) Love and peace.

We are living at a time when some humans alive now could see the end of civilization as we know it. There are countless ways this is progressing so there’s no need to go into those. But how we choose to deal with these stressful times is the same as the movie: 1) More violence against the earth and each other; 2) Defensive/survivalist actions; 3) Love and peace.

At the end of the movie the female lead character whispers to the male lead, Steve Carrell, “I thought we would end up saving each other.” He replies, “We did.” The comet hits and everything turns to light.

Isn’t that the answer? Love each other, love life, and we transform into light. We save each other.

Perhaps the only way we will make true, lasting, planetary change is to move beyond fear and find a way for love to blossom. Each of us…individually…can excavate the fears within our own hearts and minds. If we are serious about creating a better world, the change begins within ourselves.

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” Rumi.