What’s Your Touchstone?

May 8, 2020 / phillipamory / Leave a comment

@BirchtreeBarn Palm Stones for Grounding
BLACK MOONSTONE

It’s said a thousand times a day, in a thousand different ways, that we are living in unprecedented times. By definition an unprecedented event is “without previous instance; never before known or experienced; unexampled or unparalleled.” And while history is replete with other deadly pandemics, COVID-19 and our actions to subdue it have caused massive disruptions to our personal and professional lives.

We are learning as we go to adapt to new ways of educating, cohabitating, telecommuting, meal prepping, conversing, worshipping, and even grieving. The necessity to adapt is no longer a prerogative – as Einstein said, “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.”

However, even necessary course corrections without foundational grounding can lead to unintended chaos and uncertainty. In my personal mind/body practice, I have found the use of touchstones, also known as palm stones, to be very effective in keeping me focused and engaged on mission-critical objectives. I keep a touchstone on my desk and in my pocket to serve as a visual and physical reminder to adapt only with purpose and intention.

So, what is the touchstone for your life – what’s your grounding, as you adapt? Are you adhering to the sound life principles that you know to be universal and true, regardless of the distracting noise? Are you all-in with supporting the physical, emotional, and spiritual health of yourself, your family, your coworkers and business partners?
We are indeed all in this together and I dare say we need each other more than ever. Let’s be mindful to live with great humility and unabashed gratitude for these lessons learned.

Birthdays aren’t always happy…

November 4, 2018November 5, 2018 / phillipamory / Leave a comment

It was supposed to be a routine visit to see your mom…just a random Thursday that you happened to be in town. Your last few visits had upset you, as you saw your mom in decline – difficulty putting a name with your face, not wanting to get out of bed, speaking softly with her eyes closed. Doctors were consulted, medicinal dosages were altered in hopes that these physical changes were pharmaceutical aberrations and not something more dire. There was no warning or foreboding intuition of what the morning would bring.

Minutes later you would be holding a warm and familiar body containing a heart that no longer beat. Hope turns to despair, faith to doubt, firm ground suddenly giving way to the quicksand of confusion, fear, and shock. My phone rings, your picture shows in the display and I instinctively smile. The sickening sound of your tears and the catch in your voice are alarming – what’s happened, are you alright, have you been in an accident? Mama’s gone…what? Mama’s gone…

And just like that, everything comes to a crashing halt, but absolutely nothing stops.

Take your time, but if you don’t want to be charged for the room, we’ll need you to get everything out.

Sorry for your loss, but the contract on the sell of your mom’s house is no longer valid.

I know this is a difficult time but we’re going to need a check to cover the unpaid funeral expenses.

Take as much time as you need from work, but payroll is due.

We walk down the hallway of the memory care facility with the smell of bleach and antiseptic clinging to our nose. At the end of the corridor is an elderly lady clutching a babydoll close to her chest. Vacant looks surround us but I know that these are human beings that all have a story; people who love them, and miss what they once were. They lived vibrant lives and made a difference in their community, raised kids, paid taxes and lived through World Wars. Now they look at us in bewilderment as we walk into a nearly empty room – the space that was once the home of their friend and sojourner. A few more odds and ends are packed up and the door is closed on one life, but will soon open to another beautiful but broken soul. In the dining room Fall decorations are being put out in preparation for a Halloween celebration. Plastic pumpkins are placed on the tables and brightly colored paper leaves are scattered around. The symbolism is not lost on me that Autumn is all about death. The blooms have now faded, the colorful foliage will turn brown, and soon the wind will blow them from their life source. The naked trees will mock us in their reminder that life is fleeting. In the stark moment I cannot yet envision the new life that Spring ushers in… only the harsh Winter that is near. I wonder if you see and feel what I do, or maybe you can see beyond – I hope so.

I stand in front of a graveside gathering to offer words of healing and hope. I feel your gaze but I intentionally look anywhere else, afraid that the heaviness of this moment may be too much for us both. My eyes drift to you – the gravitational pull is too great between us, and I look. Your eyes reflect back only your inherent beauty, your graceful poise, and your unquenchable love of family and friends. I see the long and tearful hugs from your girlfriends, the clinging embrace of my father, and I fully understand why you are so loved… why I love you.

Today is your birthday.

This is the day that your mother labored and cried out in pain and eventually pushed you out into a waiting world. She looked at you in all of your vulnerable glory, and an inseparable bond was forged. The umbilical cord that connected you was cut but a new lifeline emerged. This new creation was something that only a troubled mother and her baby girl would ever know. The mystery cannot be explained and is best left to the secret places of your spirit.

Today, loved ones from near and far will wish you a “Happy Birthday”.

Happiness is subjective and a product of circumstances, but your joy comes from a deeper place and emerges solely on the condition of the heart. In good conscience I cannot ask you to be happy on this day but rather I ask you to let us collectively walk in your grief, in your pain, in your loss, in your memories of better times, with laughter and stories of the old days, recollections of riding horses, and playing in the creek, and running to your mama’s bed when you were scared, proudly showing off your new babies to their granny, easter egg hunts, and holiday meals – and recent times when you and your mama remembered the mystery that formed at your birth. Roles were reversed; now she was vulnerable and you were the protector. Together, you talked and laughed and remembered, she would become scared and look to you for safety. Life has now come full circle, as your mama has travelled back through the birth canal to her temporal death, and has been reborn into eternity. Your lifeline to her is now and forever an infinite one, not bound by the limitations of time and space or human frailty. This is the place where we all find our joy and embrace our oneness with all things mortal and immortal.

Soon our tribe will gather and light candles and sing the refrain “Happy Birthday to you…” but it’s not a hope or a request for you to feel something that’s momentarily absent. It’s a declaration of our our happiness that you were born, that you grew in wisdom and grace, that you overcame and became an encouragement to others, that you raised two amazing daughters who still need their mama, that you chose me of all people, to be your life partner.

“I’m off the deep end, watch as I dive in

I’ll never meet the ground

Crash through the surface, where they can’t hurt us

We’re far from the shallow now”

Forever your love – Happy Birthday

Lauren, Myrtle, Jackie, Amanda

The Homeplace – Now Under Contract

A Marriage Celebration, and the Gift of Now

July 23, 2018September 26, 2018 / phillipamory / Leave a comment

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A couple of weeks ago, Jackie and I were in Lynchburg, visiting with her mother Myrtle, who is now in a memory care facility. This place, these people, the service they give and the comfort they provide, have been a blessing to the family. The journey to this point has been a lifetime of conflict, estranged relationships, and bitterness, sprinkled sparingly with a dose of calm and even joy.

Like all of us, Myrtle was shaped by the environment she was raised in as well as the cultural norms of her day. She was a precocious child of high IQ, skipping entire grade levels, and questioning authority, while trying to avoid being a misfit. As a young adult she was on the forefront of computer programming for the banking industry, shattering glass ceilings in an industry ruled by the good ole’ boys. She was a strong but troubled intellectual, living and operating in a man’s world. I was fifteen when I met Myrtle. By then, she was showing signs of mental illness which had no name and no treatment. She was on her third marriage and had learned to distrust, if not loathe all men. I was dating her baby girl, the only child from husband two, and I became the very embodiment of the sins of men everywhere. She and I have maintained that love/hate relationship for 40 years.

Myrtle has dementia now, and it has rapidly robbed her the recall of a great portion of her past. It is an amazing thing to witness someone being totally present – with no other choice, since the past has been obliterated and the future cannot be fathomed. I walk into her room and she embraces me while holding my body tight to hers. She cannot make her lips form my name but she knows me. We sit and converse as best we can – like a Drew Barrymore scene from ’50 First Dates’ – our smalltalk questions and answers on an endless repetitive loop. “I’m so happy you guys came to visit – Phil your hair seems shorter than the last time I saw you. I’m so happy you guys came to visit – Phil your hair looks shorter than usual to me. I’m so happy you guys came…”

I have come to learn that many of our societal and individual ills are a result of our inability to be present. We spend so much time reliving our past, either our bygone glory or our painful mistakes – and so much time in the future, worrying about things that may or may not ever happen, that we miss the beauty and power of the now. I have often thought, what a gift it would be if we could take the magic pill that would make us forget our collective past. I was wrong. Myrtle has taught me that the present without the context of the past and a future without perspective, is a curse.
Being fully present is the ability to observe our past without judgement, for it is merely the vehicle that has brought us to this moment. Presence is the further understanding that the Now is the only time we have available to us, and the future is simply the next moment, and the next moment, and the next moment…
Myrtle has uncovered the reality that my present moment is cold and void without the collective moments of my past which provide a foundation for my future.

Today, Jackie and I are celebrating our 35th wedding anniversary. 35 years of commitment, 420 months of faithfulness, 12,775 days of perseverance, 306,600 hours of passionate love, compassionate forgiveness, and eternal oneness. Our very best times are when we are fully present with each other – our bodies, our thoughts, our love, all in a timeless rhythm that matches the cadence of our intertwined hearts. However, the magic of the present is in the collective moments of our past – that moment when our hands first touched, when our lips first lingered, when I couldn’t wait to hear her voice again, when we saw our first movie together, when we went to our first concert with friends, when I sang to her over the phone, when I broke up with her, when I ran back to her, when I got down on one knee, when she said ‘I do’, when she delivered our babies, when we had trouble making ends meet, when we were discouraged, when we were angry, when we came through, when our kids got married, when we cried over death, when we were scared, when all we could do was hold on to each other, and then when we danced. These are the moments in time that created my present moment, and I pray that they are never ripped from my knowing. My past informs my future and lets me know that I need not worry. We have already lived through joy and sorrow, tragedy and celebration, abundance and need, and have learned that our love from within and without sustains us.

The greatest gift to be offered today is our thankfulness – for each other, for our tribe, for those who entered our life for a time and left, for those who have walked life with us forever, for those we only happen upon, and those we will never meet. Let’s be thankful for our past and the hope it provides for our future – and join with me in gratitude for our Now.

Happy anniversary my love, and cheers to those who may encounter us in our Happily Ever Now.

May we all live large, and love much!

THE GYM

April 24, 2014February 10, 2015 / phillipamory / Leave a comment

As good as turning 51 years of age can be, I had a great birthday. Jackie brought balloons to my office, my biggest work crises was an internet outage that gave me an excuse to work from home on a beautiful day, and I was treated to a carnivore’s dream dinner at the Angus Barn. I had just completed a Flintstone portion of Prime Rib, potatoes, bread (and a salad, to keep it healthy) and was working on the birthday cake when Jackie handed me an envelope and said, “Happy Birthday!”.

I eagerly opened the envelope and was in wide-eyed wonderment as I realized I was now the proud owner of a gym membership. The on-going joke in my family, is that I’m going to get in shape and drop a few pounds… tomorrow. To be fair, I attempted to do exercise to a Jillian Michaels DVD and literally developed a hernia. I was out of commission for months. Coincidence…?

I was super impressed and very excited to have the opportunity to join a legit gym. My beach vacation was looming near, and it occurred to me that perhaps my love handles and man cleavage needed immediate attention, prior to putting on my new swim trunks.

We left the restaurant and headed over to my new gym to check the place out. As fate would have it, a class was just letting out and a crowd of kids the age of well…my kids came out. I immediately sucked my gut in and threw my shoulders back and attempted my best “I’m super fit too” posture. My innerself told me they were all thinking, “who’s the old guy with the hot wife?. A very friendly lady met us at the door and quickly surmised that I was a new member and wanted a tour. The place is amazing and the locker room looks like a spa. I was feeling very good about myself and thinking of my future six-pack abs when we walked into a room that looked like something out of a Medieval torture chamber with harnesses and straps hanging from the ceiling… I’m told this is where TRX suspension training happens (gulp).

We went back to the front desk and the kind lady asked if she could sign me up for a class. A flurry of thoughts and emotions rushed through my brain and I thought that maybe by Monday I would have my courage up. Jackie interrupted my thoughts and suggested that I sign up for the next day. I’m sure the first, but certainly not the last, beads of sweat popped up on my forehead as I mustered the intestinal fortitude to tell her to sign me up for TRX for Thursday evening!

This morning I got up and enthusiastically went to the closet and dusted off a gym bag to pack. Jackie had purchased me a couple of new gym “outfits” to choose from. Now a new anxiety came over me – should I go to the gym on night 1 and be all matchy matchy in my Under Armour gear, or should I look like I’ve been to a gym before and grab some ratty t-shirt and vintage American Eagle gym shorts circa 1990. I stuck to the plan and went with the coordinating outfit, though I’m worried I’ll be judged for it.

So, tonight I’m off to the gym for TRX Bootcamp and tomorrow morning at 6:00 AM I’m back for Hot Energy Flow Yoga. If all goes well I will become “that guy” on Facebook that routinely posts from the gym, telling you what body part I’m working on at the moment. If it doesn’t go well… then it’s back to a DVD of Jillian Michaels – she never judged me.