Graduation Day!

Today, I graduate with my Master's degree in social work!

I have aspired to a new level of cognitive functioning,

there's only one appropriate way to celebrate...

Wabi-Sabi

As I emerge from the heavy rock that is grad school, (12-hour days, eating on the run, reading report after report of child abuse, constantly being graded, and pants that just aren't jeans), I feel exhausted and a little beat up. Something within me is tired and thirsty. And so I find myself reclaiming the spiritual; seeking a calm, reflective, unhurried space in my day.

It seems most faith traditions encourage some form of discipline. Most of the time I think discipline is healthy. Right now I think we try too hard. Right now I would rather embrace what comes naturally. My husband spends an hour in prayer every morning. I feel guilty for not maintaining the same practice. Normally he finds me still in bed when he's done. But that's ok. Because I get more out of lying in bed, watching the daylight pour in through our curtains, long strips of yellow and red that we first used as the table cloth at our wedding. I don't read the Bible religiously, either. But that's ok. Because I get more out of sitting on my front porch watching the vultures clamber around in the tall trees outside. The sound of the branches snapping under their clumsy weight reaches something deep inside me. I have a spirituality that comes so naturally to me. It is simple, and completely un-disciplined. It is nothing more than myself. And anything but myself. It's beauty and wonder and peace in everything, and I am connected to it in the noticing.

It is my experience that out of chaos comes order. Out of a million random events in my life come the words "wabi-sabi". I had been contemplating on my spirituality, and happened upon words for it in this month's issue of Mother Earth News. According to the author, Griggs Lawrence, Wabi-Sabi is "a subtly spiritual philosophy that sees home as sanctuary". Juniper (2003) (I can't believe I just cited like that in a blog) says "If an object or expression can bring about, within us, a sense of serene melancholy and a spiritual longing, then that object could be said to be wabi-sabi". Griggs Lawrence continues, "everything in a home, from the breakfast table to the attic windows, presents an opportunity to see beauty, because beauty is ordinary".

Hello new understanding of my soul. I like these bursts of daylight, though I know they are as impermanent as my home or myself.

I don't keep a Wabi-Sabi home, if one can keep a home Wabi-Sabi as they keep it Kosher. My home is anything but a sanctuary to me right now. It's a mess, frankly. But inside and outside my home I encounter things that draw from me that spiritual longing Juniper mentioned. And as I transition from grad school to civilian life, or any life, I look forward to connecting with the ordinary parts of my day, taking refuge in ordinary routines like cooking and cleaning, clearing out the unnecessary, and exploring these standards of Wabi-Sabi:

HISTORY

I try to fill my home with meaning and personal history. Keith's great uncle's war chest. His grandmother's drawers. Plates, bowls, and mugs that each carry their own memory.

IMPERMANENCE

The shadow, the daylight, and consequently the day. The plant. The wall. Me, the observer. Suddenly we are all equally impermanent. And equally beautiful.

INCOMPLETENESS

I do this too often - I take pictures of the most random things. Like this dough. I was rolling out fauschnaught, and struck by the beauty. I am sure it is very un-wabi-sabi of me to try and capture the moment and make it permanent. But I like that I recognize it's beauty.

VISION

Vision is about texture and color. I love our hand-carved bed Keith designed. I love our hand-woven orange blanket from Guatemala. I love the sunlight coming through those orange window shades / wedding table cloths I mentioned earlier.

CRAFT

I am sure a lot of these examples do not count as "Wabi-Sabi". Craft is about things made by hand, moving away from factory products. This is more like reclaiming those products and personalizing them. All but two of these were trash items that I was drawn to

(and then drew on...)

SPACE

Space is about simplicity. Letting open areas be their own decoration. It's part of making the home a sanctuary. The rest of our lives are busy, and our home should be an escape. My house, however, is covered in color and clutter! But one aspect of "space" that I do notice and enjoy in my home is light, and how it creates its own beauty in a space.

SABI (or the beauty that comes with age) AND SOUL

Keith and I refer to these things as having "personality". Like Keith's grandfather's 'barn tool drawer', now our tea drawer! It wears the scars of it's history so beautifully! From the cup ring to the heart-shaped newspaper that has managed to stick through the decades. I do think that the intensity of life gets stuck on objects. They live with us and outlive us.

HOSPITALITY

Many of our friends live in the city,

so something Keith and I have tried to offer is an outside space of hospitality.

Dabbling in Determinism

After two set years in grad school, glued to one region of the world and one main task, it is strange to come upon another fork in the road. I think about all the people I might have been. This is a very real consideration to me. As I see it, the roads I have taken have lead me to a very specific identity (or, at least, some very specific roles). A career. A last name. Maybe I would have been "Mrs. Smith, MSW" regardless. If the nature of time is fixed, as we understand it to be in the past, then I'm willing to see the future in a similar fashion. But my perception is that I have a lot of choices coming up. I could work clinically, leading to an LCSW and growing a certain set of skills. Or I could work in the macro-level, collecting and analyzing data, influencing policy, and growing a completely different set of skills. Both are within me. Another split: I could return to Thailand or Guatemala and really solidify a second language, feel that constant challenge and self reflection offered by a cross-cultural vantage, and really begin to align myself with those fighting poverty and oppression. Not to mention, I might eventually be able to eat spicy food without crying through my nose. Or, following another path, I could live with nine close friends in the mountains of West Virginia, tending to my own physical, psychological, and social health, making a positive impact on the world by having intentional relationships with the land and people, and being perfectly content to smell like butter the rest of my life (as I am told those of us from the US do). I am discouraged to consider the inability to do both. I am relieved to remember that some choices are not mine. If my husband's contract is renewed, we probably wont go to Guatemala. If I don't get a macro-level job, I'll probably work clinically, and vice versa. And I balance my (un)controllables with those of a million other people, towards a collective future yet unseen.

I know this - what I do now, in this moment, to grow mindfulness or relationship or integrity or discipline or learning or self-acceptance or joy, will follow me in whatever role I fill, and whatever future (fated or yielding) I live.