“Seeing the goodness in someone does not imply ignoring their difficult qualities or unskillful actions. Rather we can fully acknowledge these difficulties while at the same time we choose to focus on the positive.”—Sharon Salzberg in Loving Kindness
And, I would add that the same reasoning applies to situations that I have no control over, like, for instance the first winter storm of the season on a ferry between Tenakee and Juneau last night.
We left the wet little island city in the Tongass rain forest and steamed toward Juneau in the darkness at about 3:30 yesterday. Two muddy dogs down on the car deck in kennels, two coolers of deer meat, three totes of clothes and gear and four totes of trash (we cleaned the shed of old paint cans and construction supplies and the recycling and rubbish. There is no dump in Tenakee)– And books. Lots of books. Five boxes, one tote, and two large plastic bags for the Friends of the Library bookstore in Juneau.
Last week a group of us volunteered to make 25 percent more room on the shelves of the Dermott O’Toole Memorial Library. It’s one sunny room in the community center, and with the kids area and limited shelve space, it is crowded. Everyone likes new books and DVDs, but no one likes to remove anything that could be useful, or necessary someday when the power goes out for good and Google is gone– then we will need Sharon Salzberg’s advice on living kindly and all of the Sue Grafton alphabet mysteries, plus that book about repairing a rotary phone. (I made that up.You get the idea.)
The guidelines were clear :If it hasn’t been checked out in five years “or ten, if it’s a really good book” or decades if it’s a classic– “ we have to keep Catcher in the Rye” — or damaged or mildewed ( it rains a lot, and everyone walks or rides a bike to the library) – it goes.
All I can say is never ask a writer or a group of readers to weed a library. It hurt us more than it does you. I will not even look at the books in the back of our truck before I wish them all happy homes with good lighting. I will drop them off at the Friends’ bookstore (when the roads are plowed.) I promise.
I did adopt an armload, including Loving Kindness, because we all need more of that.
Which is a long way of saying, be nice to me because I missed the Advent Thought yesterday. I planned to write it on the LeConte, but their new internet service and my laptop did not bond, the rain turned to snow, and the wind kicked up. When we rounded the corner into Chatham Strait the ferry rolled and the purser announced that she had barf bags, essential oils and ear plugs. “It helps if you put one in one ear,” she said over the PA system. How is it that I did not know that?
I’ve been on rougher ferries, and I don’t think anyone puked, at least not in public, and once I realized that my efforts to send you a note were futile, I had fun doing what we always do on the 4-5 hour run to town, visited with friends in the lounge and the cafeteria, read, dozed. Looked out the window into the darkness.
The snow wasn’t that deep in Juneau, and it was warm, about thirty. After scraping the truck off, loading the dogs in and making sure Teresa and Larry got their battery jumped, the drive to our daughter’s house was pleasantly slow and mildly thrilling.
Yesterday was a great day. The kind we tell stories about on the ferry next year and the year after. And I Haven’t even mentioned the 7.0 earthquake. We didn’t feel it Tenakee, but it shook Juneau and up in Haines apparently knocked the water lines out to the school —but it could have been worse.
As Sharon says ( on pg.12) “ The ocean is not destroyed by the waves moving on the surface, whether high or low. In just that way, no matter what we experience,some aspect of ourselves remains unharmed. This is the innate happiness of awareness.”
