big rocks first

February 21, 2016 - Daily Notes, From the Editor

Today is Sunday. I went to visit my niece, Faye.

She is two years old and has been a budding photographer since the tender age of eleven weeks. You think I'm exaggerating, but the way she gripped my Nikon with her tiny hands in exactly the right place and pulled her nearly-newborn face closer to the eyehole that day gave me shivers. The good kind.

There is list of all of the things I "should" be doing today for Lucia.

There is also a story about a teacher who has a jar filled to the brim with rocks, sand, and water. One day he pours it all into a bucket and asks his students to fill the jar back up using all of the original contents. The students put the water and sand back in first, then start adding the small rocks. They discover soon the jar has already become so full that the big rocks no longer fit.

The teacher says, "Remember this. It is not a lesson about rocks, but about your life. If you fill your life with the small rocks first (things like work) you will soon discover there is not enough room for the big rocks (things like meaningful relationships, love, and nieces).

Today was Sunday. My heart feels happy. I chose a big rock first.

xo
laura

a heart waits for her flight

Last autumn while learning to dance salsa, I met Leo. He founded a startup called flightSpeak because he believes airports should not be about steel and scanners, but about people--their sights, stories, and connections. He invited me for coffee and asked if I'd write an essay about flight. I loved the idea. Where will you fly next? Why will you go there? No, why will you REALLY go? This post originally appeared on Valentine's Day, at blog.flightSpeak.net. xo -Laura

“No matter who we are or where we are going, I think we have the same reason for our flight. It is connection.”

— Laura Lowery

Bump-bump, bump-bump. This exquisite organ pumps life force through our bodies and connects us to one another in unseen ways. 

Your heart can detect the pulse of other hearts around you and it begins to mimic them. Waves form with every beat, carrying information from one heart to another. Most of the time, without even realizing it, we are talking and listening with our hearts.

While lovers buy roses, I am preparing for a different kind of heart connection. It started when I met my high school crush at our reunion in Oregon. He had followed the pulse of his ancestors and gone to live among the Sioux on the Great Plains.

I asked if I could come for a visit and capture photographs for a story in Lucia (following my own heart led me to return to my Pacific Northwest origins and create this magazine). He offered to introduce me to his community’s leaders. “They are all Grandmothers,” he said. He wrote the word with a capital G.

Now I am dreaming of a flight to the heart of the continent, leaving Seattle’s steel buildings and city sounds for Painted Hills and the vast, rich silence of Dakota prairie—something deep in my psyche yearns to meet these Lakota Grandmothers.

Native American blood flows through my veins too, sloshing with genes of Icelanders and Europeans. My father’s great-grandmother was Cherokee, orphaned on the Trail of Tears. She gave birth to sixteen children. My great-grandfather was her youngest. I want to know, better, who she was.

I do not have a photograph of her, or any other direct connection to draw from. Perhaps this sentimental desire to fly halfway across the country and meet Native women to whom I have no direct connection is really my heart’s way of seeking to unravel one more knot in the mystery. We all have mysteries, don’t we? How deep do your roots go?

No matter who we are or where we are going, I think we have the same reason for our flight. It is connection. We make sense of our world, and the people in it, through our bodies. We must see them with our own eyes, hear their songs with our own ears, sit beside them to eat. We must sense the cadence of their pulse with our own hearts. This is how we come to know one another. This is how we come to know ourselves. This is why we fly.

The heart is the great connector. Perhaps we will be next to each other at the airport while I wait for a flight to Denver, or on the way to a Rapid City connection. You will know me by my pulse beat (bump-bump, bump-bump) and because I will want to hear your heart’s story, too.

---

{Visit flightSpeak for more airport inspiration...}

a valentine state of mind

February 12, 2016 - Daily Notes, From the Editor

Last night I taught yoga at the women's shelter. They always thank me profusely for coming, as though I am the one doing the favor, as though I am the one doing the giving. Last night I was given a card signed by the staff, and chocolates.

What they don't know, what they cannot know, is how deeply I receive on Thursday nights. How I am filled and that I return to this moment in time and space to remember who I am, what has happened in my life, why I do everything I do, and what matters the most. 

Two mamas came to the candlelit class. Their babies were in the next room, another volunteer watches the children while we do yoga. We could hear them laughing, asking questions, playing through the walls.

"How does your body feel?" I asked both women, before we began. 

I heard them say, "tired," "old," "failing me," "overweight," "exhausted," and "I came to yoga tonight because I know I need to move, but I kind of just want to lay here for an hour and breathe and look at the ceiling."

So we breathed together gently and felt for our heartbeats. "Your heart can detect the other heartbeats around you and it begins to mimic them," I heard myself say.

We envisioned the tiny muscles all up and down our spines. We imagined them as connected directly to our belly buttons. We felt them working to hold us steady as we moved slowly, mindfully, with so much self-reverence and respect. We stayed close to the ground. Every so often we paused to feel our heartbeats again.

Savasana was fifteen minutes long. As the class ended, the doors opened and their little ones poured in, vibrant and energetic. "Mama! Look!" 

They had little Valentine's Day bags of presents and candies they'd been given. They were eager to show me, too. I sat there on my knees for several minutes, taking in the entire scene. Happy children. Relaxed (for a moment) mamas. There was so much love. More love that I have been physically close to for weeks now. It nearly brought me to tears except that my smile was so huge. 

We are all in this mess together. All of us. If you remember one thing this Valentine's Day, let it be this: Your heart is connected in a very real and visceral way to everyone else on the planet.

If you're lucky enough to be with someone you love on Sunday, feel for it and notice how awesome it is. If you're not, please know that all you have to do is head to a coffee shop, or a yoga class, or a bookstore, or a playground, or nature, and witness. Close your eyes and feel your heartbeat. It's connected. We all are. 

xo
laura