"When I was 38, my best friend Pammy died, and we went shopping about two weeks before she died, and she was in a wig and a wheelchair. I was buying a dress for this boyfriend I was trying to impress, and I bought a tighter, shorter dress than I was used to. And I said to her, 'do you think this makes my hips look big?' and she said to me, so calmly, 'Anne, you don't have that kind of time.'
And I think Easter has been about the resonance of that simple statement; and that when I stop, when I go into contemplation and meditation, when I breathe again and do the sacred action of plopping and hanging my head and being done with my own agenda, I hear that 'you don't have that kind of time,' you have time only to cultivate presence and authenticity and service, praying against all odds to get your sense of humor back."
That's the bold, small voice of beginner's mind: "you don't have that kind of time." I think she's talking about the useless worry, small bore obsessiveness, and belittling of the self that's a kind of daily death to the spirit.
Is there a "you don't have that kind of time" moment in your life that helps reframe your perspective, helps you stop and breathe and pray so you can listen to what's beyond our own agendas and hear the voice of something deeper?
I have beautiful friends. I'm not talking average beautiful, I'm talking models who live in L.A. AND WORK, girls who are on television, girls who play in bands, girls who are size 0's. There are times when I get caught up in keeping up with my beauties. But the second I start feeling like the group troll, I remember, it's not really their beautiful outsides that I am so enamored with, it's their beautiful insides. And I have beautiful insides and outsides that are uniquely me.
ReplyDelete"you don't have that kind of time"... wow that's completely the kind of thought that derails the monkey mind.
ReplyDeleteRenee, totally. I read it as a bright, cold, necessary blast of beginner's mind!
ReplyDeleteThe truth is, we never did have that kind of time. In college when I read St. Augustine's memoirs, the one statement that stuck with me is "Time is movement toward death." And the insight of Dylan Thomas in his poem Fern Hill in which he recounts the joy of boyhood but concludes "Time held me green and dying..." chills me to the bone.
ReplyDelete