for Carlene

I'd dreamt of you the night before 'abandon hope' was posted.
[we're in our (aha!) offices located in my old elementary school of all places! Sycamore School!
though I've followed tibetan buddhism for nearly twenty years...and you've seen my walls..
Pema is/was my first teacher of dharma when I read 'start where you are' fifteen years ago- in a profound period of complete hope-lessness.
"I live in hopelessness."- saying this frees me from the idea that things will or should be different from this very moment. I am a hopeless romantic. I've never been to Hope Arkansas. I held the office known as the 'Sister of Hope' in the Masonic organization, Rainbow for Girls.
I hope I can make my self clear. etc...etc...
Pema asks me to experience hopelessness, and the engendering of the great heart opening bodhi-chitta that arrives when all is lost. Think: moment of 'assassination'? And really death is beyond hope. We hope we won't die and all that we love will remain alive. We hope the tulip bulbs aren't buried too deep in September and that they'll arrive in March or April to remind us to keep hope alive.
My sense is that it's not so much that I may or may not abandon hope, but that it is the very moment when Hope abandons me that Ani Pema seeks to point me to.
the tulips fail, the assassin succeeds --I feel the moment as deeply as I can, and one more thing- I realize that no matter how high my hopes are somewhere someone feels the complete abandonment of all hope. Yet, beside that is the other great lesson from Pema- known in Tibet as that of 'tonglen', or 'sending and receiving'- which could be stated: We are alive to bring hope. We can do this very practically only at the very moment when we take in someone else's complete hopelessness, despair, yes, their suffering. and we only can do this if we are fearlessly committed to feeling our own.
In the church I went to every Sunday with my own grandmother and Auntie Ann, Christ was reported to have said, "suffer the little children to come unto me" I used to think it meant he wanted all the children to die. ( one my first confusions regarding the will-o-God)
Now I know it means: Bring me their suffering and I will open my heart, I will give them hope.

The Sycamore trees outside the elementary school shed their broad leaves every year and I felt alone. Sad. Winter arrived.
You are a remarkably special woman -&- hope springs eternal.

-e
Sat Jan 26, 12:56:00 PM

in the background is this person I was

'zero is what I bend toward when everything I know burns to light'
- Meredith Stricker
from the text for my dance performance
'Triune', Margaret Jenkins Dance Studio San Francisco, 1981

http://www.asu.edu/pipercwcenter/how2journal/archive/print_archive/index.htm#layers