Category Archives: reflections

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kitty karma, part two

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Some of you may recall my story about some kitty karma we generated a few months ago.  Our adopted cat Pumpkin, actually the neighbour’s cat found the al fresco service at our place was more reliable and settled into the metal storage shed.  The neighbour estimated her age at about 11 years and commented that she tended to get pregnant a lot.  I don’t know if that assessment was relative to most barn cats or a particularity he was assigning to this cat.  We had to admit that she did tend to look continuously bulbous at the belly.  So when she showed up with her Sprout, we weren’t surprised.  He is a handsome little bug which psychological studies would predict increases the attachment – and should he go to university, he would score higher grades, get better jobs, and be more successful than your average barn cat’s off spring.

Sprout and Pumpkin did well over the Fall and into the first snow.  We continued to provide fodder and began the process of taming the little guy with kitty treats.  I caught him at one point and even managed to get him to accept a few moments of cuddling.  Of course, honouring Pumpkin’s age, now 13 years, we made plans to get her spayed as soon as it was clear that Sprout was no longer nursing – which he was but he wasn’t going to let anyone know.  Then last weekend, Pumpkin began to seem somewhat out of sorts.  We took her to the vet – agonizing over leaving Sprout for a few hours without Mom.  The vet cleared her health-wise and we talked about the ease of having her spayed.  No worries.  She’d be in and out in a day and outdoors the same day.  Technology had changed dramatically, we were assured.  Well, you likely know the ending to this section.  Pumpkin died from the anesthesia.

There are many directions I could go from this juncture.  There is the self-directed anger and rage.  There is the other-directed anger and rage.  There is the heart-rending grief when I looked out the window that first evening I was supposed to bring Pumpkin home and instead watched Sprout on the deck staring down the lane towards the metal shed.  He sat there agitated between the draw of the food bowl and the habitual sight of his mother coming up to the house to feed with him.

It didn’t help that we were hit with a snow storm over the next two days and the temperature plummeted to -23° C  for two nights.  At 2AM the first morning of the storm, distressed and  unable to sleep, I looked down from the upstairs window expecting dismal darkness laced with freezing rain; there was Sprout bouncing in the snow banks and at daylight I chuckled to see the kitty-angels in the snow.  The next night when the wind was at its screeching wildest, I sat in the little unheated mudroom and listened to him mewling in the space under it; all I could hope was that my voice soothing him would help.  He survived the first night when temperatures sank to -23°C; I was convinced we would make it through!  He didn’t show up at his usual time for breakfast after the second night of deep freeze; I was convinced he was dead.

If Sprout were to live out my story of his life, he’d likely not survive.  Thankfully, he seems to be writing his own version of the Life of Sprout.  For the moment it seems filled with anxiety, wonder, adolescent demands for food, and refusal to listen to reason.  Of course, kitties are vulnerable at this age and skittish which makes it hard to cultivate a quick bond with him.  That introduces much uncertainty about his potential for survival and I am working on resting in the reality that there is only so much we can do.  He has food and water; the old barn is filled with warm old hay, and the shed has nooks and crannies to protect him from larger animals.

It should reassure me.  Sometimes it does.  And then it doesn’t.  What is fascinating is the way my mind grabs each sense perception and derives a conclusion.  I see him eat and think, “Oh, he’s going to be just fine!”  I don’t see kitty paw prints in the snow from the night before and think, “He’s dead!”  I try to lure him to me with treats and when he dashes away: “Oh, he’ll never survive!”  I watch him dive into snowbanks and the angels sing.

This is a fickle mind which writes tales of life and death from each split second.  It has no shame.  It will as easily destroy as generate.  It has a licence to kill and clone.  Thank goodness it cannot realize – make real – anything without the cooperation of the rest of the five streams, Four Foundations, Six Paramitas, Five Precepts, Ten Grave Precepts, and a raft of Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, Mahasattvas, and the Mahaprajnaparamita too!

Unknown's avatar

career: shaken not stirred

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Now that Chaplaincy study is coming to a close, people often ask how this will change what I do. Usually they mean will I be earning my money a different way.  Let’s be honest, very few people ask if or expect an answer that your training is going to lead to a career in which you likely will not get paid much or have no prospects of advancement.  I loved the section in David Whyte’s book, Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a pilgrimage of identity, in which he contemplates telling the world of his decision to live in alignment with his true self.

If you want to meet terrifying silence, tell the world you are going full time as a poet.  Who would give me a word of encouragement if I did?  It has never been easy to go full-time as a poet in any recorded portion of human history.  When we announce to the world that we are about to go full-time as a poet, people do not come up to us, slapping us on the back, saying, “Great career move, David,” or “I hear they are taking them on at Lockheed right now,” or “Marvelous.  I hear there’s a decent dental plan comes with the verse.” (p. 123)

I remember telling my parents I had left my job as a Chemist in the Federal Government to become a free-lance writer.  After the ear-piercing silence, they shook their heads, mystified that I would walk away from a good pension plan (health care!) for a life of… of … of what? my father demanded.  Even worse was my defensive attempt to explain that Frank had a good job as a self-employed consultant.  They could not grasp the link between how he “did” his job and how the money came in; there wasn’t a bi-weekly pay cheque.  This was crucial.  That flow from production to recompense was what made their world feel safe and secure.  Of course, their perplex mystified me equally because they had both endured losses of their treasured careers through the capriciousness of political upheavals.

I amuse myself these days having conversations with the (likely aggravated) spirit of my dear Dad.

“Well, Dad, I’ve decided to close my private practice to become a Chaplain,” I announce to his portrait on the ancestor’s altar.

“A Chaplain?  Does that have a better salary than a psychologist?”  His right eyebrow would begin a syncopating twitch. It makes the little mole on his eyelid a bouncing ball I follow to sing along with the “career catastrophe” song.

“Um.  Well.  No.  I don’t know.  I mean, I don’t know if Chaplains get paid.  Not in private practice anyway.  In hospitals, they get about $32 an hour.”

“And what do you get paid now?”  I can feel the rabbit hole opening up because he’s never understood how self-employed professionals pay themselves.  “Draw?” he would ask.  “That’s what you do with crayons!  How much is your cheque made out for each week!”

“Well, it doesn’t matter what I get now, Dad.  I’d be following my heart – you know, doing what’s important to me… for the world… to ..er..um… save all beings… creations… numberless… vow…”  I’m floundering and the other ancestors on the altar are now looking very interested in how this is going to end.

He seems to be silent long enough for a few ashes to topple from the incense stick.  “Saving all beings, eh?”  He glances over at his mother who in her portrait is about to walk over to him and plead my case.  “Like a Bodhisattva.  Well, make sure you read the contract carefully before you sign it.”

I’ve never really considered that Bodhisattva-hood is a career choice.  It seems to just arise for most people I know whom I think of as compassionate beings committed to easing suffering in the world.  Perhaps they just make it all look simple.  Or perhaps it is really just that simple; choose the path.

The Heart Sutra is emphatic that seeing through the illusion of separateness and an abiding self is the step to being unhindered to be of service to the world.  Grounded in this understanding that separation and interconnection are the figure and ground of our life, we break free of the things that hinder us, that hold us back from being who we are, which cloud our vision, our dreams, our intimate truth.   “Without hindrance, the mind has no fear.”  Anger, desire, sloth (my favourite), restlessness/rumination, and doubt cannot shake or stir us from our career choice – poet, writer, Chaplain, Bodhisattvas all.   Without these blockades in our path, we enter fully into that pilgrimage of discovering who we already are.

Over the next few months, I took the time (to speak) with person after person (in the organization)….  I began to see that in an extraordinary way the conversations themselves were doing all the work.  It forced me to ask the next question: “If this kind of conversation will bring you the work you want for yourself within an organization, what kind of work do you really want to do in the wider world?  What are your elemental waters?  What courageous conversations will bring you to your poetry?”  Each of us has an equivalent core in our work, whether it is the path of the artist or the explorations of the engineer.  Even if we already possess the work of our dreams, there is a way of doing that work that will deepen and enliven it, a way that begs for a daily disciplined conversation. (p.135)

Thank you for the daily disciplined (if somewhat raucous) conversation.