Delivering Compassion: From Roger Housden’s Book, Sacred America
This is an article from a 1999 edition of Body and Soul Magazine, from a chapter in Roger Housden’s book Sacred America. Dale Borglum and Roger recognized that though I was in a ‘Blue Collar” job I utilized my job to fuel my spiritual practice. Looking back, I smile.
This article came out during the absolute darkest time of my life. My do-it-yourself haircut, goodwill outfit, no money, no food, arms and hands that wouldn’t work, trying to prepare for my lama’s visit from Nepal who insisted to stay with me despite all the above “because all that matters is your warm heart”-well-now I can see the blessing of this time and how it led me to now. I hope it is an inspiring read for you.
…come into my mind as a result. Or, I would promise myself that whenever I reached a certain corner I would observe something I had never seen before and this was after years of reaching the same corner every day.”
“One of the beautiful fruits of being a mail lady was that it gave me the chance to cultivate deep mindfulness.”
There was one particular gate that was difficult to open, she continued. She swore at it for years until she finally realized she had a choice to do something different. From then on she would chant the words “May The way Begin for Everyone” as soon as she saw the gate.
When someone approached her wanting to chat, instead of hoping he wasn’t going to talk her ear off, she would say under her breath, “May I welcome this person’s presence into my life.” People would want to engage with her every day; she would find herself not giving advice so much as being a true listener. Dogs, kids, the elderly: Everyone responds to an open heart more than anything.
and the community embraced her. Every day she would find herself accepting two or three gifts. “I used to imagine my thoughts were on ropes that were only ten feet long,” Susan said, laughing a long, almost raucous laugh.
I would see that only a few seconds would go by before one of those thoughts would convince me it needed a rope fifty feet long. Then, all the other thoughts would say, “Well, if that one can be on a fifty-foot rope, so can we.” Before you know it, you have spun off somewhere else altogether, and maybe you have passed up an opportunity to see a flower, or a kid who wants to come and show you his new stuffed animal.
Cultivating this attitude gave me something I could apply anywhere whenever I could see that my mind was distracted. Over the years, I realized that if I can keep my thoughts on ropes ten feet long, there’s no reason for me to think I need to change anything or do anything different. It showed me that everything just keeps evolving exactly as it should. That was one of the beautiful fruits of being a mail lady. It gave me the chance to cultivate deep mindfulness.
“The job opened my heart, showed me the insecurities and judgments I carried, and helped me let go of them.”
Now I see that any job can do that. I know now the value of a routine. If we are content within a structure, we can know the infinite. Being content with a day job doesn’t mean selling out. It means being at rest in the limitations-the structure-of daily existence. The fruits of my job only emerged as I became at rest-at rest in the knowledge that I was making a difference, both to myself and others.”
Suddenly I heard the subtext beneath Susan’s story. She had re-created in a more conscious way the belonging she felt in the natural environment of Orcas. She had made use of her job to settle more deeply both into herself and into the community she served.
“It’s true,” she said, when I voiced my thoughts. “I have been a finger person all my life, living mostly in a shack with no TV. By nature I want to be invisible, and the job obliged me to come out. When I had to wear the uniform - I hated it at first - I was forced to interact. Suddenly I had a place in society, and my job took away the sense of separateness that I had felt. Now, having been immersed in the Norman Rockwell world of America for so long. I can’t ignore the fact that we’re all the same. The mail job is one of the few jobs left that still gives daily persona contact like the old milkman job did. It opened my heart, showed me the insecurities and judgments I was carrying and helped me let go of them.”
The whole point of her job, as Susan saw it, was to be accessible. That was the reason for the uniform, she realized: Everyone can look at you and know you’re the mail lady. They can talk to you because you’re a public person.
“The peace I knew on Orcas, the inner and the outer being one, I have come to know through the mail job,” she continued. “My job took the connectedness deeper, even though it did not offer the same resonate with the natural world that Orcas did. But it did give me a sense of belonging and a context in which to practice being human and experience my commonality with others. I have always been poor, yet I have come to know that my desire to be awakened does not require money to go off on retreats. It simply needs the willingness to step into what is in front of me with the intention to awaken.”
Susan had to return from her work recently due to physical injury, so she stands at the beginning of another new era, not knowing how her being-in-the-world will express itself next. She has learned, though, that the quality of her inner life is determined less by the content of her day that my the knowledge that whatever she is, there is always an opportunity for wholeness. What she does know is that she is volunteering herself to the big world, to be used as life wishes to use her. With that motivation, she says, whatever uncertainties lie ahead, she cannot help but be excited.
Roger Housden is a write, explorer of sacred traditions and leader of contemplative journeys in the Sahara, India and the United States. From Sacred America. Copyright 1999 by Roger Housden. Published by Simon and Schuster. Reprinted with permission.
