She turned to me as I huffed and puffed downhill (yes, downhill!) from Mater Dolorosa Retreat Center in Sierra Madre. In my defense, I was seven months pregnant and even before carrying an extra 10, 20, fine, 30 pounds was already violently exercise-adverse.
I tried to smile as I gasped, desperate to convey without words that, “Yes, I can do this!”
Karen Maezen Miller, forever in my eyes lithe, shorn of hair and beautiful, took my elbow, made me sit on a rock and cheerfully kept up conversation as I caught my breath. It meant the other ladies in our group had to wait.
But I didn’t feel embarrassed or mortified. That was what being the focus of Karen’s attention made me: calm, open-minded, open-hearted even. She saw the muddled me and didn’t judge. She just sat with me. I could listen to her voice forever.
We finally made it the couple of blocks to Karen’s Sierra Madre home, with a Japanese garden she fell in love with at sight. It was in shambles when she and her husband bought it and nurtured and loved that half-acre into their own paradise in plain sight, with a koi pond and lily pads, a Jizo statue and tea house that welcomes bears in their seasons.
Karen is a Buddhist priest and author of “Mama Zen: Walking the Crooked Path of Motherhood,” “Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life” and “Paradise in Plain Sight: Lessons from a Zen Garden,” every book helping me love better.
Her writing makes you take an anticipatory breath without knowing it, so wondrous are her stories that you get to the end and realize she’s wielded her words like a light to shine on a simple truth or a surgical tool to open you up, open your heart up, to a gem of morality, humanity.
“Ah, yes!” I’ve said to myself so many times after reading a missive. “Yes. And thank you.”
Attention is love. What you pay attention to thrives. Life is change. Life is suffering. Enlightened and joyful, she remains a teacher to my Catholic self. She doesn’t shy away from pointing out the evil and sneering unkindness in this world of ours, either, showing up anyone who appeals to the worst of our leanings.
How does her clear-lensed observations, and open-handed wisdom make me feel like I’ve known all those things all along?
In 2012, she helped me name our fourth baby, miscarried the doctors told us, as if I’d tripped and lost my hold, but really “the hardest gone” as Karen said. That helps me still.
So when the Eaton Fire exploded in the hills where her house and garden nestled, as I found out Mater Dolorosa was damaged but mostly spared, and I wrote story after story of people frantic, people lost, people mobilizing, I decided Karen is okay. Better than finding out otherwise, my fear told me.
Three days ago, my Karen (she is always mine) wrote “One Nation, One Home” about her time in the fires. Read it. Read it. I am waving the lamp and jumping up and down and pointing. Read it.
It’s something a lady at Pasadena Foursquare Church told me two days after the fires. What remains after the fires is us, she said.
“It’s the people,” Karen says now. “People who lift us up and get us through. Thank you for reaching out beyond yourselves, even if it’s just to care. We can’t let ourselves be turned into the kind of people who don’t care.”
She who sat with me on a corner of Sunnyside Avenue in Sierra Madre and care for me still, she and her garden of growing and weeding is a messy shambles she reports, but she is here. I can call her and reach out a hand and hug her. She will hear me when I thank her again for being.
And so, amen.