From Galen

Awakening.

“The students at your dojo will teach you everything you need to know,” he said.

The loss is ambiguous. Late winter, as the days steadily become longer I begin to feel the gradual shift. Head no longer down in the tunnel of the hood, hat and scarf, I begin to look up, and around. This year, now the beginning of May and I somehow only just noticed that the grass is green, simultaneously realizing it has been for weeks. 

Winter we know in this region as part of a meaningful and rich cycle—contemplation and renewal. It is still spring, only just now May yet my mind jumps to next winter for which we need to begin preparing already now, and with some new urgency knowing the even greater challenges which clearly lie ahead. 

How do we lead at a time like this? What do we need to carry on together, what do we carry each of us only by ourselves. 

It’s like having lost my voice, in the aftermath of an earthquake unsure how long the ground will keep shaking. The voice of grief, so unwelcome, so unexamined in polite company—so hard to ignore and yet we do. Our planet, indigenous communities, vulnerable people in every community. Tender hearts in each of our chests. 

Lungs, the seat of grief fill with fluid. 

No one has to explain anything to anyone. You can’t really, about what was lost. What it was like, what you thought before. We find each other, after. In the midst of recognizing the loss of old structures, we start new ones. No hurry. 

Let’s take this next breath together. 

Our lungs fill, the seat of courage. 

The feeling, that nothing we did was enough to keep us from coming to this perilous juncture, is true. What do we need to see here, where the seams burst open, where the strain we have each long felt has become evident? What will the consequences be of stopping to examine further? What perils await if we fail to? What are we here to create in this time of awakening?

There is a paradox in grief. It is at once intensely and deeply personal, and inescapably collective. No one knows exactly what each of us has lost and none of us is free from loss.

As I’ve mentioned, my own aikido practice began in the face of immeasurable loss. Even my first ever time leading class was marked by this relationship. It was 2011, driving to the dojo in St. Paul and more than a little nervous having been asked to cover Thursday night basics class for Mick. I happened to be listening to the radio and heard that a fellow dojo member who had been injured at a high profile workplace shooting (remember those?) had finally died after a week in intensive care. Not surprisingly in hindsight, this news galvanized my nerves. Once at the dojo, a full mat, lights off, no talking (a radical proposition at that dojo) misogi practice. First class.

The next first class that comes to mind is the first day our dojo was open to the public, March 4th 2018, the 25th anniversary of my mother’s death. 

I want to say it makes sense then (because that is what writing is for, right?) that what I have lost in not being able to train at our dojo, in the physical presence of those of you who have found your way there as students, is joy—an immense and overwhelming sense of warmth. There is certainly warmth in these days that have turned into months. But nothing like I feel when after having arrived early to open the dojo I hear the first chime of the bell on the door and know that someone else has arrived, someone to practice with.

This practice is not from a materialist paradigm—the virtues we cultivate do not exist on the physical plane, though they have great consequence to our physical existence. 

What is revealed is how each of us relates to work, play and rest. It is difficult to know what the work of teaching aikido is, or in moments even what the practice of aikido is. I am fortunate in my situation to still have moments of play. My kids help, my partner helps. I grew up an only child in the country so I’m used to entertaining myself. 

Ah but rest, this is also on our first dojo t-shirt for a reason. Relative to grief it is perhaps the most difficult. In some ways my relationship with grief is to resist rest. So it has been useful to have this opportunity to slow down. No surprise I’ve still kept busy. But the more I examine, the more I see space to rest. And in learning more about how to rest I see how doing so affects both the quality of my work, and my play.