Hui Ho’olana garden
“Doing nothing is sometimes doing something,” wrote Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. “To meditate is not to run away from life but to take the time to look deeply into ourselves or into a situation. Meditation is an opportunity to take care of our body or mind. That is why it’s so important. We allow ourselves the time to calm our thinking, to sit, to walk, to breathe—not doing anything, just going back to ourselves and what is around us. We allow ourselves time to release the tension in our body and our mind. Then we can take time to look deeply into ourselves and into the situation we are in.”
I landed in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, on Molokai—an island in the Hawaiian Island chain. It was June and time to return to my center. I would gather for seven days with ten men and women I had yet to meet, and a retreat guide, Paula D’Arcy, who offered the invitation to show up in order to be present to ourselves, the land, and one another. We had two strict instructions: “do not reveal your work in the world,” and “do not reveal your faith or spiritual tradition—if you identify with one.” Our time together focused on listening, curiosity, tenderness, and an awakened heart—core to our humanity and central to the ancient contemplative practice of spiritual guidance.
I arrived wounded; the week was a crucial time for me to retreat and return to my essence, prior to major shoulder surgery. Once again, I was going too fast, for too long, with demanding work and my own set of should, must do, and too many yes responses. I was exhausted and in physical pain. I could not talk about my work or my internal struggle with a God whom I no longer encountered in once familiar and beloved forms, but who is now simply an animating spirit in life I experience as love.
The discovery of our common ground with each other began. Laughter, conversation, and shared silence flowed among introverts and extroverts. A growing tenderness and interdependence took root without ever naming the ways we were present in the world through our service, advocacy, and work. We sat quietly in a circle several times a day, then responded to, what are you present to? D’Arcy offered poems, music, and stories to provide a platform for us to listen and be transformed.
One morning, the topic of our patterns and habits was posed, together with words from photojournalist Dewitt Jones, “If our patterns go too long unquestioned, they become our prison.” A provocative topic: what are the patterns and behaviors that keep us from loving and living with authenticity and integrity? We offered dozens of ideas, then each chose five patterns to interrupt in our own life, and upon our return home, to restart and reboot. Mine include being nice, hurrying, analyzing, consuming, and resisting—topics I will explore with my spiritual guide in coming months.
The last morning, two of us who would have surgery upon returning home were asked to sit in the center of the circle. Ten men and women gathered in silence around us, standing sentinels offering prayer, their now familiar eyes giving care and comfort. The day of my surgery, and in these subsequent weeks of being unable to hurry, not feeling very nice, resisting my physical condition, and rebooting life, I recall being seated in the center of a loving presence that promises “doing nothing is sometimes doing something.”
– Pegge Erkeneff
Excerpted from Listen: A Seekers Guide to Spiritual Direction, October 2015, vol. 9.4, published by Spiritual Directors International, http://www.sdiworld.org.
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Deck with a view, Hui Ho’olana, Molokai