The Promise of Ease

My Loving Kindness meditation is like the clothes I used to sew:  made without following the pattern, pieced together with whatever fabric caught my attention, devoid of anything too difficult to sew, like buttonholes, and hemmed with large, loose stitches in case the length wasn’t right and I want to re-hem.  My clothes came out pretty good despite their imperfections.

I never learned about Loving Kindness meditation. I just heard it once and thought, “That sounds so soothing. I’ll make up what works for me.” Like how I made clothes.

May I respect my body.

May I honor my creativity.

May I be healthy.

May I love and be loved.

And, most recently: May I live with a sense of ease.

I had been musing about wanting life to be easy, or easier.  Life can’t be easy, I realized, but it could be lived with greater ease.

Morning and night, I pray for a sense of ease, only today recognizing what ease looks like for me.

Ease is coffee with a new friend, where the conversation and laughter flow, often loudly, often attracting looks from the people quietly working on their laptops in Coffee Obsession. Neither of us worries about blurting how we feel or think; we are uncensored and allow our true selves out to play.

Ease is the early morning quiet, sitting in the nook off the kitchen, feet up on the hassock, wrapped up in a heavy bathrobe, ready to do the crossword.

Ease is slow.

Ease is kind.

Ease grants permission to say “yes” or “no” to invitations based on how they feel vs. a sense of obligation or responsibility.

Ease exiles the should.

Ease is warmth: wool knee socks, hats, turtlenecks, fleece, woolly throws, waterproof boots, green velvet curtains blocking window drafts.

Ease is fully listening without interrupting, without judgment, without feeling the need to offer advice.

Ease is writing with no expectations. It’s the act, not the product.

Ease is walking the same path in the woods and noticing what’s different each day. The wet, yellow leaves light up a sunless day. The boulder is visible now that the leaves have fallen from the trees. The one small branch on the diseased elm tree that looks like it’s alive; might the tree have a chance?

Ease is a small space heater in the bathroom, so my body doesn’t tense and shiver when I step out of the shower in the winter.

Ease is a walk to Salt Pond, where the air smells differently and the light changes. How could half a mile make such a micro-climate difference? It is a wonder.

Ease is silence.

Ease is stepping into 85-degree pool water after slogging through slush and ice in the parking lot to get here.

Ease is 80 percent, plenty good in a world where perfection is an illusion. Is it weird that I had 80 percent engraved on my husband’s gravestone? Our marriage was never 100 percent, and we were comforted when we felt we were at a steady 80 percent.

Ease is resiliency, knowing from hard-lived experiences that the current crisis or difficulty will eventually resolve in some way. How is unknown, when is unknown, but life weirdly leads us to a new place, a new opening, a new version of ourselves.

Ease is acknowledging uncertainty, which takes most of the fear out of it.

Ease is the blast of the ferry horn and the gliding sailboat masts outside the windows of the community hall where we wait for the meeting to begin.

Ease is the promise of the morning and what may emerge.

May you and I live with ease today and all days.