Smiles in the Ice

February 5, 2023

She's got a smile that it seems to me
Reminds me of childhood memories
Where everything was as fresh as the bright blue sky…”

(Guns N’ Roses, “Sweet Child O’ Mine”)

Sunrise 1/31/23 lighting up the ice that formed under the raised dock.

Ice in the light of the rising sun is one of my favorite forms of beauty to photograph. It requires just the right conditions to form and just the right conditions for me to be out photographing it. Here in Kansas City, ice (thankfully) doesn’t last very long. All the factors that go into creating ice around the lake change - the wind, wind direction, temperature, water levels, etc. - meant that each time it freezes the ice that forms is different.

Finding a beautiful patch of frozen ice formations grabs my full attention and takes me out of my head for a time. As I look through the lens, noticing how the light, shapes and textures play together, I lose my thoughts - and my worries - for a little while. In those moments, joy sneaks in.

Sunrise 2/1/23

This week the universe clearly wanted to remind me that cultivating joy is a practice. I’ve seen it in newsletters, multiple blog posts and newspaper articles. My sangha practiced cultivating joy which is one of the four Buddhist bramaviharas (divine abodes - the things we want to cultivate in meditation). Even the ice was smiling at me to remind me:

Double bonus when the ice cream cone swirl is smiling at you.

Do you see the blue-eyed unicorn smiling?

A bit of a devilish smile!

When I walk in nature, I practice noticing easily. The same tendency to be on high alert that results in struggles with anxiety and stress has a flip side of helping me notice all the little things around me in nature. Practicing paying attention is good - but it isn’t sufficient for health, happiness and resilience. As importantly, it isn’t sufficient for the energy I want embody in the world.

My golf coaches used to say “practice doesn’t make perfect, practice makes permanent.” I have a tendency to practice being serious entirely too much. My brain flits around from subject to subject and over the years the strategy I seem to have subconsciously developed is to try and lock it into place with “seriousness”, “focus” and tension. This is pattern I need to unwind.

Maybe practice is a little like ice - it freezes whatever is there?

Perhaps whatever is frozen in us is as beautiful as what gets frozen in the ice? (Bonus: I think there’s another smile in this one.)

I have a stubborn belief buried in me that likes to say, “I can be happy/enjoy/relax when everything is perfectly in place”. This belief, of course, is a trap. It will never all be “perfectly in place”. This belief describes joy as something to be earned rather than experienced. My dream-weaver pointed this out again recently when I woke with the phrase on my lips, “People need your presence not your perfect.” Cultivating joy will help me be truly present rather than simply attentive and on alert.

Luckily, anything that can be learned can be unlearned. Cultivating joy is something I can practice. I can’t make joy happen, but I can practice noticing when it does. I can also practice being open to joy in meditation or while I’m walking. I have words written in my journal and on sticky notes around my house of the things I want to practice and joy is included.

Fortunately, there are secret passage ways in the ice where the joy fairies can sneak in.

Another secret passageway. Wish I was like Alice and could make myself small enough to go inside!

Yesterday I was standing in my kitchen when I found myself singing, “oh oh oh oh sweet child o’ mine” - which made me laugh! I couldn’t tell you the last time I heard that song. When a random song appears in my head I take it as a message from the universe. Spirit always has a sense of humor - so many songs could have conveyed this message but a Guns N’ Roses song took some creativity!

I asked Siri to play “Sweet Child O’ Mine” so I could sink into it a bit. Siri rarely gets my requests right, less so when I ask for something out of my normal listening patterns. She tried to play “Sleep Child” several times before I finally got her to believe I really wanted a Guns N’Roses song. I can’t help but find the humor in trying to put me to sleep when I felt the urge to dance! I danced around the kitchen through two rounds of this song, making breakfast, singing and laughing. I hadn’t remembered that song as being so uplifting! I felt joy and then I felt relaxed for quite a while.

Some days I feel buffeted by the winds of fear and anxiety. Other days I look up and see the universe raising a hand, saying “I’m here and I’ve got you.”

Thank you for being here friends. May you open to the joys, large and small, in your week.

If one could freeze the sunrise, it might look something like this.