The Nest in the Stream

by Michael Kearney MD

  I have had some extraordinary teachers during these past fifteen years whose instructions have taught me how to come into deep connection with nature and how to be with my pain. A number of practices based on what I have learned from my teachers, and from the experiences I have shared in my stories, have become part of my daily routine. These make me more “accident-prone.”

  I end this book by describing my daily practices to share what helps me to come into deep connection and to a peaceful way of being with my pain. While these practices work for me, I do not wish to imply that they will work for everyone. While some readers will find them helpful, others will not. Feel free to try them, and take what works and discard what doesn’t. What matters is that we each have our own ways of coming regularly and reliably into deep connection with other-than-human nature, with others, and with ourselves; it matters that we are willing to feel whatever pain we are feeling; and it matters that we know we can release our pain to the flowing through of the deeper stream for the sake of all beings.

  In the middle of the night, if I look out of our bedroom window, I see the North Star. I touch my hand to my heart, and say a prayer. I may do this in a variety of possible ways. For example, I might say (to myself), “For all my relations!” or, “May all beings be happy!”

  Each morning, before leaving for work, I practice mindfulness of breathing meditation. I have deepened in my love of this practice and again and again am amazed to see how the simple act of paying attention to and becoming one with the sensations of breathing can, even in the most turbulent of times, bring me into bright, still, clear awareness. I have also come to value mindfulness of breathing as a practice of “inner nature connection.” In attending to and merging my awareness with the sensations of breathing, I am remembering the effortless, reciprocal exchange between my body and all that breathes.

  If I have time in the morning, I may continue from mindfulness of breathing to a practice that merges elements of Joanna Macy’s “Breathing through Meditation”2 with my own experience of the nest in the stream. Here, having first taken time to come into the sensations of the body’s breathing, I shift the focus of my awareness to the center of my chest in the area of my heart and notice whatever sensations are there. More specifically, I attend to whatever sensations of pain are in my heart, perhaps an ache, or a tightness, or a turbulence that has been lingering since the phone call I took about a patient during the night, and I allow my awareness to drop into these sensations for just a few moments; to feel whatever it is I am feeling in my heart. Then, letting this be, I bring my attention back to the sensations of breath, as it flows in with the inhale, and as it is flows through with the exhale.

  I picture the breath as a breathstream that flows in with the inhale, and down through my chest with the exhale. I sense the sensations of the breath stream, as it flows in and as it flows through. I pay particular attention to the sensations of the exhale, as the breathstream washes around and through the nest of my heart, carrying the pain in its flow. I remind myself that the breathstream is flowing through without my volition. I end by consciously releasing the energy of the pain or whatever feelings are in my heart to the great flow of life, for the sake of all beings.

  Occasionally I like to alternate my breathing through the heart practice with a gratitude practice. From my Native American teachers, I have learned about the value of gratitude as a form of prayer. Wolf teaches that gratitude is not a “should.” He says that practicing gratitude means noticing what we are already grateful for and allowing ourselves to be with the felt-sense of this in our body. I have noticed that this practice softens and opens my heart.

  I learned a gratitude practice called “Orderly Fashion Prayer” from Jon Young, who was taught it by Lakota elder Gilbert Walking Bull,3 and I like to combine this with an honoring of the four directions. I begin by turning (in my mind’s eye) to the east and remembering what gives my life its greatest meaning. I notice whatever feelings of gratitude rise up in my heart as I do this, and for just a few moments, I allow myself to linger with the felt-sense of this.

  Next, having turned toward the south, I give thanks for creation. As I do this, I recall any encounters with other-than-human nature that I have been touched by in the past twenty-four hours. For example, this morning I remembered how yesterday, as I left the parking lot at work, a dark-eyed junco had hopped from the under the shrubs onto the pavement just a few feet in front of me. I had paused for a few moments and watched him as he fed from the sidewalk, before stepping around him. He was still feeding when I looked back in his direction. As I remember this, I notice a gentle upsurge of joy in my heart. I allow my awareness to drop into how this feels in my body, and for just a few breaths, allow myself to rest in this simple happiness.

  Next, as I turn toward the west, I look toward my fellow humans, my loved ones, my patients, my teachers, those who are living and those who have already passed on. I notice whoever comes to mind as I do this. I picture this person as if they are standing before me. I allow our eyes to meet and notice whatever feelings of gratitude arise in my heart. Once again, I linger with my feelings of gratitude that this individual is part of my life, and I pray a blessing on her or him.

  Finally, I turn toward the north and give thanks for my own life; for being alive in the world at this time, and for the blessings I receive in such abundance. I rest for just a few moments in how this feels in my body. I may end with the short prayer, “My heart is yours, Grandmother, Grandfather, my heart is yours; for the people, for all the people.”

  I practice nature connection many times during the day, for example, while walking the dogs to the corner of the street where we live and back each morning, or when I take them on their daily late afternoon walk to a small oak forest by a creek.

  Occasionally I stop and give my full sensory awareness to what I am hearing, seeing, touching, smelling, or even tasting. For example, if I notice birdsong, I may close my eyes and bring my full attention to what I am hearing. Rather than trying to analyze the sounds, I openly receive them, and then, with the exhale, let my awareness drop down into the felt-sense experiencing of them. If I find my attention has been carried away by thoughts or worries, as soon as I notice this, I relax, let go of the thought or the worry, and allow my awareness to fall back into the body and the sensation I am experiencing.

  As I walk from the parking lot to the palliative care office by the long route, sun-wise around the hospital rather than through it, I pay attention to the young live oaks that line the roadway. I sometimes sing the sweat lodge song of welcome for the stone people as I walk and notice the clouds, or the breeze, or linger for a moment in the cool of the shade before stepping again into the white heat of midday.

  As I enter the palliative care office, or the hospice, or the hospital, or the room of a patient, or as I put my hand on the door handle on my way into a meeting, I pause to remember that there are elements in what I am about to encounter that are beyond me. I may repeat the prayer, “My heart is yours, Grandmother, Grandfather, my heart is yours; for the people, for all the people.”

  More and more I have come to rely on the breathing through the heart practice to get me through my working day. If I am feeling upset or overwhelmed, as I was yesterday listening to a patient’s young wife, who was weeping as she spoke about her utter helplessness in the face of her husband’s awful suffering, I will find the earliest opportunity I can to take a short “time out.” If possible, I try to find a quiet corner of the hospital, or a window where I can stand and look out at the trees for a few moments, or better still, I step outside into a patch of shade in the fresh air for a little while. I then go through a four-step practice of mindfully breathing through my pain. Firstly, I notice and sense the sensations of breathing. Next I notice whatever pain is in my heart and allow myself to feel this. Then, I return to the sensations of the breath, paying special attention to the exhale, feeling how it moves
through my body. Finally, I consciously release my pain to the next exhale, and the next, surrendering all to the effortless flow. This does not take long, just minute or so, but it makes a big difference to how I feel and how I am as I continue through my day.

  As often as I can, I go to what Jon Young calls a “sit spot,”4 my special place in nature to which I return regularly to spend some time. I have a number of sit spots. The one I use most is in my own backyard. I also have one in a park about five minutes’ walk from the hospital where I can occasionally escape for a five-to ten-minute sit. These are places I have become familiar with from the simple acts of visiting, hanging out, and paying attention with respect to all aspects of what is going on there. It is my hope that these places have become familiar with me too.

  I notice the behavior of birds and other creatures, as well as plants, and rocks, and other features of the landscape, such as the temperature, the light and shade, the wind, and the moisture in the earth, or the lack of it. When I return to the hospital after even a very short visit to my sit spot close by, I feel refreshed and well and as though I am an ambassador for what poet E. E. Cummings calls, “The leaping greenly spirit of things.”5

  Most Monday evenings, having finished at the hospital and stopped off briefly at home, I meet up with some friends to carpool and drive an hour south to the weekly sweat lodge ceremony offered by Wolf and Lisa. Even if I am tired and stressed at the end of the working day, as I often am, I inevitably make this journey with a growing sense of excitement and gratitude to have such an opportunity of prayer and community just down the road. I enjoy sitting and chatting with friends before the lodge begins as we gather in a circle around the sacred fire. I often enter the lodge with pain and sadness for patients in my care. Sometimes I pray out loud. More often I pray for them silently. In the ceremony, whatever pain I am experiencing merges with the medicines of the sacred herbs, the breath of the stone people, the singing, sometimes the smoke of the sacred pipe, and as the sweat flows down my body and onto the ground, I feel lighter and cleaner.

  By the time I return home from the sweat lodge, it’s late and my beloved wife is sound asleep. I know that in just a few hours I will be getting up for the weekly interdisciplinary team meeting at the hospice. I pause and look out the north-facing window beside my bed. There is that bright star all on its own, straight above the top branches of the fig tree. Silently, I say to myself, “For all my relations!”

  NOTES

  Epigraph from Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, trans. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy (New York: Riverhead, 2005), 171.

  A SEARCH FOR HEALING

  1. Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, trans. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy (New York: Riverhead, 2005), 45.

  2. William Wordsworth, “Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood,” Poems of Wordsworth (London: Macmillan St Martin’s Press), 203.

  3. To read more about Jean Vanier, see Jean Vanier, https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Jean_Vanier.

  4. Cicely Saunders, The Management of Terminal Malignant Disease (London: Edward Arnold, 1978), 194.

  5. Carl Gustav Jung, letter of July 10, 1946, in C.G. Jung, Letters 1: 1906–1950, 433.

  6. Károly Kerényi, Asklepios: Archetypal Image of the Physician’s Existence (New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1959), 25-26.

  7. G.E.R. Lloyd (ed.), Hippocratic Writings (London: Penguin Classics, 1978), 39.

  8. Brian Doyle, The Wet Engine: Exploring the Mad Wild Miracle of the Heart (Brewster: Massachusetts, 2005)

  9. Nicholas Black Elk, Black Elk Speaks: Being the Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux, as told through John G. Neihart (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979).

  10. Joanna Macy, Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991).

  11. Alan Wallace, 30 Guided Meditations: Short Introductory Meditation (Santa Barbara: Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies).

  12. Robert Bly, The Kabir Book: Forty-Four of the Ecstatic Poems of Kabir (Boston: Beacon Press, 1977), 52.

  13. Joanna Macy, Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide to “The Work that Reconnects” (Gabriola Island, British Columbia, Canada: New Society Publishers, 2014).

  RELATING TO PAIN

  1. Coleman Barks, trans., “Childhood Friends,” The Essential Rumi (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1996), 142.

  2. Michael Kearney et al., Self-care of physicians caring for patients at the end-of-life: “Being connected…a key to my survival,” The Journal of the American Medical Association 301, 11 (March 18, 2009): 1155-1164.

  SEVEN STORIES OF NATURE CONNECTION

  1. Jon Young, Elle Hass, Evan McGown, Coyote’s Guide to Connecting with Nature (Santa Cruz, California: OWLink Media, 2010).

  2. Thich Nhat Hahn, Interbeing: Fourteen Precepts for Engaged Buddhism (Berkeley, California: Parallax Press, 1987).

  FIRST: COLMAN’S WELL

  1. R. S. Thomas, from “Here,” Collected Poems 1945–1990 (London: Phoenix Giants, 1993), 120.

  2. Rainer Maria Rilke, The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. Stephen Mitchell (New York: Vintage International, 1989), 135.

  THIRD: THE LAND

  1. Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992).

  2. John Moriarty, One Evening in Eden: Tridium Sacrum, Vol. 2, Audio CD set (Dublin: Sli no Firinne Foundation, The Lilliput Press, 2007).

  3. Jon Young, What the Robin Knows: How Birds Reveal the Secrets of the Natural World (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012), xxv.

  4. Mary Oliver, Winter Hours (Boston: Houghton Mifflin), 96-97.

  5. Young, What the Robin Knows: How Birds Reveal the Secrets of the Natural World, 63-64, 175.

  FOURTH: THE NEST IN THE STREAM

  1. John Moriarty, One Evening in Eden: Eden, Vol. 2, Audio CD set (Dublin: Sli no Firinne Foundation, The Lilliput Press, 2007).

  2. Bernie Glassman: http://zenpeacemakers.org/​bernie-glassman/

  3. Eugene Gendlin, Focusing (New York: Bantam New Age Books, Random House, 1982).

  4. Carl Gustav Jung, cited in P. W. Martin, An Experiment in Depth: A Study of the Work of Jung, Eliot, and Toynbee (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987).

  SIXTH: THE TREE OF LIFE

  1. Friedrich Nietzsche, Maxims and Arrows 12 from Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer, originally published as Götzen-Dämmerung, oder, Wie man mit dem Hammer philosophirt, 1888, quoted in Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning 1992 Edition (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992).

  SEVENTH: POLARIS

  1. Joanna Macy, Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in without Going Crazy (Novato, California: New World Library, 2012), 233.

  2. His Holiness the Dalai Lama: https://www.dalailama.com/​the-dalai-lama/​biography-and-daily-life/​questions-answers.

  A STORY ENDS

  1. D.H. Lawrence, Mornings in Mexico and Other Essays, ed., Virginia Crosswhite Hyde; essay, Indians and an Englishman, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 120.

  2. John Moriarty, What the Curlew Said: Nostos Continued, (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 2007), 111-112.

  3. T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding,” The Four Quartets (Boston & New York: Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1971), 59.

  INTO THE DEEPER STREAM

  1. Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, cited in Jack Kornfield, After the Ecstasy the Laundry: How the Heart Grows Wise on the Spiritual Path (New York: Bantam Books, Random House, 2001), 98.

  2. Macy, Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide to “The Work that Reconnects”, 276-278.

  3. Gilbert Walking Bull, “Orderly Fashion Prayer,” Jon Young, personal communication.

  4. Young, What the Robin Said
: How Birds Reveal the Secrets of the Natural World, 48-79.

  5. E. E. Cummings, Selected Poems, edited by Richard S. Kennedy (New York: W. W. Norton & Company Ltd, 2007), 167

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I begin by thanking Radhule, my darling wife and best friend. She has been with me every step of the way—encouraging, challenging, teaching, and inspiring me.

  I thank my three beloved daughters, Mary-Anna, Claire, and Ruth, who have given me loving support from afar, including reading the manuscript and offering me helpful feedback. I thank my stepchildren, Joshua, Bella, and Ben, who have been patient and understanding as I have disappeared, again and again, to “work on my book.”

  I feel so blessed to have had Barbara Gates’s warm and bright editorial input during the writing of my book. Again, and again she helped me to find my voice, while always challenging me to think of the reader.

  I am thankful to Rachel Neumann for opening the publishing door and saying yes to my manuscript. It has been a joy to work with my editor, Jacob Surpin, who has been kind, available, encouraging, and helpful throughout. My sincere thanks to Terri Saul for her art and production direction, and to Jess Morphew for the exquisite cover art design. And a big thank you to Nancy Fish and her team in marketing. Everyone I have met at Parallax has made what seemed like a daunting process easy and enjoyable. I am honored to be part of this community.