Jean Burman

The other day I pulled from the bookshelf my poor old worn out copy of Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way” and began flicking through the pages. It had been years since I had looked at it… the “dog-eared” pages (top and bottom) a poignant reminder of what I had considered at the time to be “important points” worth remembering!

oops… that’s a bit wonky… (not the best photographer!)

Thumbing through the pages, I came upon a paragraph which had been circled in pencil… and began to read. The author was speaking of “paying attention”… the act of focussing on the details of the “moment we are in”… as a means of coping in times of hardship. She had recently undergone a painful divorce and had retreated to a lonely house in the hills to recover and heal. In remembering how she had felt… this is what she had to say…

“In times of pain… when the future is too terrifying to contemplate and the past too painful to remember, I have learned to pay attention to “right now”. The precise moment I was in… was always the only safe place for me. Each moment… taken alone… was always bearable. In the exact now… we are all… always… all right”.

Here’s the new cover version

And then something Jools said the other day resonated with this notion also… and I realised that her words and thoughts were along similar lines. The cause of her pain… though much different to that of the author… was still in reference to painful human experience (and I hope she will forgive me for remembering her words here?)

She said…

“My days have been slow and I have had much time to reflect on many things. I have painted in small amounts and am paying much more time to details and colour separation - I am seeing things in a different way. I have developed a higher level of patience and awareness of others, which has seeped into my paintings. Best of all I am looking at those close to me… appreciating them more and forgiving them for any ridiculous foibles they may have… as they are doing for me. With all of the pain, discomfort and frustration comes understanding.”

Jools beautiful garden and artwork - image Copyright the artist - View more here

I had seen this “paying attention” before in my father… after my brother died accidentally as a young man. In the days and weeks following John’s death… Dad kept a small spirax notebook and wrote endless lists. Lists of people to see… questions to ask… arrangements to make… things he had to do… places he must go. My prevailing memory of that time was of watching my Dad make notes in that little spirax notebook! It puzzled me at the time for… even though I was only a young girl at the time… I was able to reason that all the lists in the world would not change what had happened. But it did “assist change” for my father… it kept him in the “here and now”… the very moment in which he felt he could somehow cope with the unspeakable loss. At the very least… it helped.

“The moving finger writes: and having writ

Moves on: nor all thy piety nor thy wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a line

Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it - from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

I saw it again in the last year of my mother’s life. Terminally ill… but never without hope… she would greet me each day with… yes…you guessed it… a list!

This time it was a grocery list… or a list of practical “things to do today”. The items on the list were always of a practical and down to earth nature… phone Hazel… the fridge needs cleaning… ring the doctor… you know… nothing profound or life-changing. Sometimes she drove me crazy… but I came to see that the incessant fussing with the details of the moment… and more than that… “paying attention” in that moment… was comforting to her.

With all of us around her… and sometimes when we were sitting together alone… she would often fall silent and just observe… and as I talked she would be taking in every detail. I realise now how frightened she must have been. Her only way to cope with that fear was to focus-in on her life in that very moment… for it was only “there” that she felt able to cope with the enormity of the experience.

In “The Art of Happiness” a handbook for living… co-authored by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler MD… the experience of human suffering is summed up this way…

“In the same way that physical pain unifies our sense of having a body, we can conceive of the general experience of suffering, acting as a unifying force that connects us with others. Perhaps that is the ultimate meaning behind our suffering. It is our suffering that is the most basic element that we share with others, the factor that unifies us with all living creatures”

image courtesy www.cloudappreciationsociety.org

The events of the past week… the tragedy in Virginia in the USA… the ongoing and terrible loss of life in Iraq… along with the losses and sadness that people in places all over the world endure each and every day… have served this past week to sharpen my awareness of the precious need to pay attention to the moment we are in… this one… right here… right now…

Your comments are always welcome…

This entry was posted on Monday, April 23rd, 2007 at 2:18 pm and is filed under That's Art, That's Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.