accounts receivable. food made with love

hwubby says, grace has invited us to her house for dinner. i say, o yeah i remember her coconut rice, so fragrant. hwubby says, yeah, that's all you remember, food. i say, that's not true, i remember grace is a great person, she has a good and kind heart. hwubby says, wait till you know what's her job at the dental school. i say, what does she do? hwubby says, she's in accounts receivable for twenty-five years. now that really grabs my attention. i have experience in customer service in a newspaper agency, meaning i have to deal with, shall i say, difficult, instead of, irate, customers. and that was when i wasn't so connected with my own true nature. i took it personally. i judged and criticized those people who i thought gave me a hard time for what i thought petty things like, how come my papers are not on my front porch, my coffee is getting cold and i'm not getting my sunday papers and you made mistakes in the bill. now i can see that such situations are opportunities to practice seeing divinity in myself and the other while sorting out the tangle of mundane details.

back to the present. back to grace. so as i am sipping a juice of guava and pineapple and working through chicken, salmon, mushroom sauce over rice - a spread of food that are made with love - i ask grace, your job is kind of like what the president's, if it's not difficult it won't go to your desk, you are the last person on the line, so how do you approach it? in her calm voice and even tone grace says, with a sweet smile, listen, let them talk, and then i pick out pieces, i don't forget the goal is to collect but i want them to pay willingly. she goes on to tell me a case. to cut a long story short, she tries all that she can to move the bill dispute forward, she shows this customer what she has done and what she is going to do in a methodical and thorough manner. and then she says, this bill has been around for a very long time, it may go into third party - meaning collections - and it will damage your credit, why don't you pay it while we work with you to get to the bottom of it. surprise. the customer says yes and hands her his credit card. hwubby says, you let go of any expectation and only focus on helping him. i say, and not letting her eye off the ball as well. and that is the state of equanimity in action.

i slowly chew on the layers of wisdom and pour some more of those fantastic raspberry sauce over a nice and big bowl of ice cream and fruit salad. hunger in the body and soul are satisfied all at once. really you never know when you come in the presence of a great being who live the highest teachings.

i am in the center of an up-and-down see-saw

coming out of meditation and straight into one crisis after another. okay, change the word. it's not crisis. it's an opportunity to practice being anchored in my own self. it's a benchmark to see how anchored i am in my own self. in my peripheral vision i am aware that thoughts like, how am i going to get through this, this is too much, i can't believe this is happening now with all that is going on, are hovering. but i summon my free will. i tie attention to the present moment. how am i going to get this fax through to hong kong? ahhh. i remember noticing my cousin on facebook's chat room every so and often. so i go to take a look. there he is. i send off a msg. in the ensuing back and forth he finds out the machine has run out of ink. meanwhile another crisis comes on the scene. i really feel like in the center of a see-saw watching the ups and downs unfold. i have no idea how it's going to play out but i am determined to stick with what's necessary in the moment, including sipping my chai every now and then, one eye on the chat box, cell phone next to ear. and my breath is held steady in the shaft of golden light that runs between base of spine and top of head.

i don't have to prove i am right

i need to make a difficult phone call and i can see the mind going wild: they won't understand, they'll be so disappointed, i can't handle it, it's all too much. blah blah blah. so i do the only thing i know how. i say to myself, i'll go to sleep, get up super-duper early, meditate and then make the call.

i do all that. and then some. i meditate two and a half hours. for most of that time i watch all this tumultuous mental activity spinning out and all around me. but i do what i could to hang in there with the shaft of golden light that stands tall and strong from the base of spine to the top of head. eventually the body and mind settle down and i enjoy the sweet stability in my own self so much that i can just sit quietly like that all day long if i didn't have to take care of what's necessary.

while i prepare to come out of meditation two simple instructives appear: listen with full attention. simply state the facts. i know what they are for. they are telling me, drop the defenses, stay in the present with what is whatever it is. indeed. one of the ways that i have been 'off the mark' is being defensive, that i have to prove i am right, that i have to be understood and accepted. no. i don't.

hooooh. i feel so much lighter and clearer just having this understanding. anchored in this place and state i go on the phone. i listen with an open and patient mind. i explain the facts as i know it. i respond to clarifying questions. i can hear the disappointment in the person's voice. i acknowledge it, i thank her for being so understanding and kind and the dialogue keeps going. the situation itself is still difficult but the way i feel about it is different. some old knot deep within is untangled. it is so worth it to put in the effort to stay tight with what is.