Beacon Station

I am not a morning person. Today, I missed the train to work and had to wait for the next one to arrive nearly a half hour later. I huddled in the frigid cold, cocooned in my winter coat, black hat pulled over my ears. I sat on a bench, immersed in a book of meditations. The first to prod at my self-protective shelter was an acquaintance who approached me to say hello. While I like this friend and have spent time in the past in affectionate conversation with her, I was a little annoyed at my luck that private peace had been disrupted. We were sharing a little morning chit-chat when a woman and her baby approached us. They seemed poorly dressed for the weather, missing hats and gloves, the young child wrapped in a blanket with only a thin sweatshirt for a hood. The woman began to speak Spanish, asking for directions to a subway stop in Brooklyn. My friend did not speak the language well (but better than I do), so responded the best she could, offering her written directions to the station and noticing the child shivering, tucked the blanket closer to her ears.

As luck would have it, the train was running late. My toes were beginning to freeze, so I tucked inside the wind shelter for a bit, changing my work shoes for a pair of battered hiking boots. “You look like you’re getting ready to milk the cows!” my friend joked, noticing the mud still caked on those boots, and I told her about the walk I take from the station and through the woods to the nonprofit center where I work. These days, ice skates would work better than boots, as the world around us of forest and rivers is mostly frozen over. Most days in the winter, I catch a ride to work instead, but this day had decided to brave the slick path.

When the train arrived, all was not well. Five minutes of sitting in seats, when the conductor announced the words ‘mechanical failure’. We would have to disembark and catch another train. For some, including my friend, this meant hopping across the track. The Amtrak would take those NYC bound passengers to Penn Station. For those with shorter, local trips, we would have to wait another 30 minutes for the next train to arrive.

Despite the inconvenience, I think by this time I was beginning to wake up. I called in to work to let our front office assistant know I would be late. I loaned a woman my cell phone who needed to make a call to her grandmother waiting in Peekskill. And on the platform yet again, I watched and listened. People sending text messages and making calls. A man speaking loudly into a headset about ‘customer acquisition’. Beside me on the bench, a scraggly-haired man spoke to another on crutches about the night last winter he’d slept in the station and the vets who tried to take his money. The man on crutches nodded, ‘ain’t that a shame’. He spoke other words that seemed to float around me- ‘chemotherapy’, ‘cancer’- pieces of human story, like ice floes cracking, slowly melting in the river.

When I arrived at Garrison, a well-to-do community on the banks of the Hudson, it was quieter. It is a one mile walk to work, and my boots served me well.

I did not fall, and I was finally awake.

~

I will be travelling to Dharma Drum Retreat Center tomorrow for a day of silent Zen retreat. I will be travelling with two friends- one Jewish, one Catholic- and two high-energy children. Somehow I trust there will be a place for all of us there (my children entrusted to the Little Bodhissattva Progam can abandon the silent rule!). We will meet other dear friends there as well. This will be a new experience for me, to share a space and retreat experience with so many I love, and yet be fully turned inward to my own practice. I cannot speak of what this will be like, for to do so will be to arrive with expectation. I only now think of their faces and send each one care.

And yet, from reflection on this morning’s experience, it seems that we are always in community, wherever we are, whether we realize it or not- and even when we try to resist. Separation is imagined. We are in this together, interconnected. Thawing, awakening, moving along the river.