​Welcome to the 7th gift in
Resiliency Workshop

No. 7  Be Willing
If I am willing...
I am not broken.

Cease fighting... It's a Surrender Adventure.
This seventh of eight gifts is NOT about giving up but leveraging your human capabilities... into seeing what is right in front of you, clearly. What is your's to do?

Be Willing is an edge between approaching life with a certain sense of adventure... and the acceptance of what are impossible tasks for one mere human.

​What are you willing to receive today? 
Perhaps help is closer than you might think.  Maybe Spirit is waiting to be asked.  Ask and claim it. Be willing to see the situation differently.

We are neither seeing with the rose-colored glasses of a die-hard optimist, nor the manure-colored lenses of the disheartened. It is the neutral ground of showing up without prejudgments of:

​     • Right or wrong
​     • Good or bad
​     • But opening to 'what is'...

It could be a better-fitting solution, which works for everyone... and the life in front of us. ​It's not about giving up our will so much, as as Richard Rohr says is a 'giving to' the moment.

Be Willing changes my perspective. I access the greater possibilities in "giving to" the moment.



Centenarians know about the wisdom of 'giving to' the moment. They have had time to accumulate a long series of moments; they have seen life played out for a hundred years... and know things.

Or you might think about being willing like an embodied practice of the Serenity Prayer.   Leveraging its simple (yet thoughtful) balance, to encourage a focus on what is ours to do and what is NOT. This isn't easy to figure out in the moment, but it can help you move worlds. (...That would be your world the one in which you actually have some say.)

​Serenity Prayer AA (Affirmative Prayer version)
​God, grants me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

​                                                      • • •

Serenity Prayer (AL-ANON version...)
​God, grants me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the
courage to change the person I can, and wisdom to know that it is me.
​                  
                                        – Theologian Reinhold Neibuhr (Adapted)
​

1.

Video: What you can expect

Be Willing helps me daily when things LOOK out of control... and are clearly above my celestial pay grade.


 (As a hospice chaplain, I face the great mysteries on a daily basis.)

Here, I have the superpower of being willing... to not know but simply to be with myself and others... This rule is more than up to the perennially difficult, (and very human task) of change and loss.
 
“Walk fearlessly into the house of mourning; for grief is just Love squaring up to its oldest enemy. And after all these mortal human years, Love is up to the challenge.”        

​                                            – Rev. Kate Braestrup, Beginners Grace
Be Willing Intro
This micro-video will walk you through.

2.

Listen to the Audio of the chapter...

Gift No. 7 - Be Willing
If I am willing, I am not broken.

3.

Process:​ Be willing to See Your Time.
     How are your spending yours?

1. Review your day. 
• What percentage of your day was spent in the future, worrying or problem solving those things that have yet to happen? 
• What percentage was focused on the past, which can't be changed only regretted? 
• What percentage was in the present ?

• Here is the sweet spot. What do you notice about being in the present moment versus the past or the future? 

2. IMAGINE your day as a circle:

Shade the circle to represent the percentage of your day you were focused on the past, the present and, then, the future. As you look at the chart, what do you notice?  Are you willing to make a shift?  If so, in what way?

3. Set an AWARENESS alarm 5 times a day. 

When it pings you, take 30 seconds to stop whatever you are doing.  Take a breath and exhale with a Diva Breath. Inhale the 'right here and right now'.  Exhale what may be coming after this moment - Diva Breath. Repeat.

Be willing to simply and powerfully, be in THIS present moment.

Do this & journal about it 
on the PDF pages provided below or in the journal of your choice.

Are you game to show up for what is? for how people in your life just are?  We are all in process, choosing and thereby creating our lives... and we are all innocently doing the best we can to the level of our skillfulness.

What would your life be like if you stopped demanding that it be different? What would change if you're willing to forgive everyone? 

And yourself, too?

Be willing Process
This micro-video will offer you the "why bother" about this process...with some tips  about Being Willing.

4.

Questions to write about ...because your experience matters.
Write in a journal you already have or continue making your DIY resiliency journal  to consider your experiences more thoroughly.

Your writing will be a guide and guidance to your next right step in what is uniquely yours to do.
Click Icon above
​to download the journal pages for this gift.

Questions:

1.Where are you being invited to be more willing, more open, more available?

2. How is love, support and connection showing up for you?

3. How willing are you to allow love, connection and support? 

4. What beliefs do you have that keep you from being willing?  Are those beliefs really true? What would you like to believe instead?

5. How present are you to the moment?  Are you off in the future worrying about what will never be? Are you stuck in the past wishing for something that is no longer... or never was? Do you want to be more present?

5.

Be Willing - GIFT No. 7
Read Along with the audio


All the several centenarians that I had the honor of knowing in my caregiving years were playful.


In fact, they were complete flirts and made fun out of ordinary moments. They helped me in caring for my mother. They were willing to support others—even in their triple numbers. I believe it is how they got to that ripeness. They were willing. No one told them to do it. It just needed doing–and they could.

ALBERTINA X. @ 102
Albertina was only ninety-eight when I met her and she spent her next four birthdays in assisted living with Betty (and me). She sat at my mother’s table. She asked for things that Betty forgot she needed. The impish crone was only 102 at the time and famously said, “I am happy to help the old ladies, it is hard when you get to that age.” The gentling elder to whom she was referring was my mother at eighty-seven.
ALBERTINA IS A WOMAN WITH A FULL QUIVER OF WIT--BUT UNLIKE my mother, her zingers didn’t draw blood. She is the inverse of my mother—body as tiny and frail as her mind is sharp and robust. She remembers, too. One day, seven years into my care‐ giving with four to go, she called me on my cell. “I know that Betty is in the hospital and you mentioned that your sweetheart (i.e. the new guy) is out of town. How are you holding up?”
HER COMPASSION CRUSHED ME. MY MOTHER HADN’T ASKED ME HOW I was doing for a decade. I was alarmed to be so startled—that someone would notice or be curious about me and my inner world. Albertina’s warmth showed me my isolation. I was depleted. I started asking for help—or at least I knew that I needed to.

ALBERTINA MAKES IT EASY TO LOVE HER BACK. I WISH I COULD TELL you the story of her wedding cake but she has forbidden it. I think she is being humble, but she might just be kidding me too. If I could tell you, I would take you back to the “Day of Infamy” when not only Pearl Harbor was being bombed but also Hong Kong was invaded. Albertina is a Hong Kong native of Portuguese and Chinese descent. I would tell you how she had to hurry up and get married to her fiancé who had Portuguese citizenship.
​
“WE NEEDED TO MOVE TO THE SAFETY OF MACAU--IT WAS A neutral state in Portuguese control.” Her expression had darkened , “The occupation was very bad,” she explained. Clouded by that shadow memory of the unspeakable for a moment, she paused but soon recovered her lightness by telling me this story about her wedding cake. It is a story of how she was loved by her friends--and she still is. It is a story about being willing to caregive each other—in life and death situations.
HER GROUP OF FRIENDS IN OCCUPIED HONG KONG DECIDED THAT, before she got married, Albertina must have a wedding and a cake —despite the Japanese invaders. The wedding was a borrowed affair. Her brother walked her to the church and gave her away because her father was in a Macau refugee camp. “The clothes were easy. There were so many suitcases abandoned on the street from people fleeing the occupation, I had a lot of choices. I was very slim, so I could wear anything.” The shoes were harder...she explained, ”I have big feet. I had to cut the toes out of the high heels, so I could walk in them.”

THE CAKE WAS EVEN MORE DIFFICULT. EVERYTHING WAS STRICTLY rationed but a few friends divided up the ingredients. Each chum took an illicit ingredient; sugar, flour, eggs, and most important of all was the electricity to bake the cake. “That friend was an engi‐ neer, so he knew which power cable to splice.”

“IF ANY OF MY FRIENDS WERE CAUGHT BY THE OCCUPYING FORCES they might have been shot—we didn’t think...” She spoke with concern, even seventy years later about the possibly fatal risk they took to bake a cake for her. (She has that effect on people.)
I SMILED AT HER, THINKING ABOUT THE EMBODIED LOVE THAT CAKE represented. “Did it taste good?”

ALBERTINA LOOKED AT ME LIKE SHE HAD JUST REMEMBERED, “I never tasted it. It was too small. I wrapped up the last piece and saved it for my father to eat when we got to him.” A triumphant look overtook her wrinkles, and I could see her as a happy twenty-something offering the precious crumbs to her father once they reached relative safety and reunited in Macau.

FOR HER, IT WAS A TASTY BITE TO REMEMBER EVEN AT 107. WHEN I asked her about it again, when she herself was in hospice, she was very happy that I remembered.
“YOU’RE NOT DEAD, WHEN SOMEONE REMEMBERS YOU.”
​
WE REMEMBER. ALBERTINA PASSED AWAY JUST SHORT OF HER 108TH birthday.


Be Willing

PictureBegin Again as well as the Field Guide. Available for purchase from Amazon, Apple and IngramSpark.

IF I AM WILLING, I AM NOT BROKEN.
How did I find the strength to show up until the end? Being
willing was all I had to manage as we inched along.

ILLNESS AND DEATH CLOSES US DOWN.
If you show up for me, maybe your miserable, flawed, beautiful face is just the thing I need to crack me back open. Every act of affection I have seen or done are breadcrumbs on the path. Every death I have ever attended, or heard, or read about was also a clue. Life grows and dies in such small increments it is hard to see from the ground-truth level any perspective on what is happening or even where I am. It’s a garden not a puzzle to be solved.

                                                  • • •

WHAT DO YOU NEED TO DO TO BE WILLING RATHER THAN hopelessly overwhelmed? Caregiving can feel like occupied territory. Albertina and other centenarians offer us evergreen examples. They respond to what is in front of them with flexibility and creativity. They solve issues as they arise, one by one, and remember what is possible for them to solve. They see and use resources wisely. They watch all that is in motion—circling around them—but remember what is theirs to do with the certainty of a Palau master and an Etak Compass.

LOVE, BIRTH, AND DEATH FULLY UNITE US AS HUMAN BEINGS.
The chaos of caregiving is all the same, no matter if I am blue or red, atheist, or evangelical, leftist, progressive, spiritual or whether I believe in evolution, global warming, or not. Grief and loss are intimately woven into our bedside efforts just like leaves fall in their season and new ones grow. Our cells are constantly sloughing off and renewing themselves. I see it as a daily cycle of loss—and renewing life, which everything you see with your eyes and heart is a part of—everything on the planet. We caregivers are not alone but accompanied and supported by the seen and the unseen.

THE LESSONS FROM CENTENARIANS ARE ABOUT STAYING OPEN OR just re-opening from the constriction of loss. They love who shows up for them.

LOVE WHO SHOWS UP FOR YOU. SHOW UP FOR THE LOVE THAT LOVES you back. Be willing. Ask for what you know you need, as it occurs to you. Be kind to yourself.

IF YOU ARE SUPPORTING A CAREGIVER, BE CREATIVE AND FLEXIBLE. Offer specific help, which they are likely to need. Send a card. Be okay with not knowing what to say. Listen. Leave a message. Pay respect (even in a drive-by prayer). Check in. Take time or take food. Show up or just slow down and pay attention.

THE GREATEST SADNESS AT ONE HUNDRED IS THAT MOST EVERYONE you have loved is dead. Centenarians stay alive by being willing to make new friends among the people who show up for them. Renewing family, in this way, is a higher order of DNA. Choose well from the people who show up for you, and Be Willing to show up for them.
​
THIS RULE IS RECIPROCAL AND GOLDEN.
If we are willing, we are not broken. We are resilient. In the end, being willing was enough for all the moments, which Betty and I had.
24/7 Willing -
a sound Meditation for your ONE Wild and PRECIOUS LIfe.
About a hundred meditations into the pandemic, I did this offering about the power of Be Willing.

AUTHOR’s Note about the books & the circle of care
 
I hope this workshop is supporting you, if you are willing, support me back:

  • Leave a review. This helps a great deal! (& Thanks if you have already done so...)
  • Recommend  the book & workshop to a friend who needs some renewability 
  • Or better yet, pay it forward: buy a book & give it to them... 
 
Thank you and best blessings,
 
Rev. EM