July 1 – Beijing Airport

After a night of close calls and an overbooked flight from LAX to Beijing that I almost didn’t get on, here we are in the sleek modern airport of Beijing. There is a crisp efficiency in the air amidst our 6 am fumbling with the money converter trying to pay for our coffee float (that would be coffee with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream!). It is hot and muggy as we await our last leg into Xining. I must say, I am disappointed they don’t have WiFi here!

Although China was never on my ‘places to go’ list, I am somewhat of a hero to the two 6 year olds who helped officiate our benefit last week. Henry my grandson, when I asked him a couple of years ago what he wanted to be when he grew up, told me, “I want to be Chinese and climb mountains”. His buddy, Jeremy, is taking Mandarin in Kindergarten and gave me a few language pointers on my way out the door.

The great thing about the 18 hours of flying is the forced lethargy. My down pillow has this magical way of fluffing itself against me in just the right places – finally, nothing to do but sleep.

There was anticipation with this trip of - sort of ‘waking’ up and finding myself in a strange country and saying to myself “now, how did I get here?” The last four months have been a whirlwind of ideas igniting into blazing hot transformative fires. Something inside of me took on the job of project manager thank God! I’ve certainly never put together a Benefit Fundraiser or even been to an auction. Or attempted to raise $10-20,000 in 5 weeks! A team of dedicated volunteers worked together with my miracle project manager/fundraiser person and, low and behold, we pulled it off!

Tango Meets Tibet. I cannot remember where this name came from – it was just the name of the event right from the beginning. And, I don’t actually remember when the beginning came.

Was it in Januaray when I realized that reaching the “old” age of 60 was just 6 months away? As the psychotherapist, I spent decades witnessing my clients, as well as friends and family, go through a sort of ‘birth canal’ as they prepare for certain important initiations in life. God, the thought of turning 60 and having my life stay the same as it currently was, was absolutely appalling! It wasn’t that any particular part was appalling; it was just the overall stuckness of it.

I prayed one of the big prayers. You know, the ones where you say, “Dear God, Buddha, Tara, Mary, all the angels, Jesus, anyone else who might be listening, I completely and totally surrender my life to you. Please take me and show me my very highest purpose. I completely trust, I let go. I only know that this is not it. No matter what you want, I will do. I hold on to nothing.”

Then nothing happened – for about a month. . . .

My husband Porter makes malas, prayer beads. He decided to design a new line of wrist malas for women. We’d had this business for years. It could have been a prototype for ‘mom and pop operation’ with a bit of daughter thrown in. He’d perfected his mala making to beautiful pieces of spiritual jewelry. Carlos Santana, Jack Kornfield and many other notable spiritual seekers purchase and use his malas. Daughter, Kristine, made us a homemade website that Porter occasionally upgraded.

Anyway, he did this design around the beginning of February and named them “Tara Malas”, due to the fact that there are 21 beads and 21 praises to Tara. We had dinner with our friends Debra and Geo a few days later. Now here we were sitting in our favorite meeting place, the Lotus Restaurant, eating the same round of food that we have been eating together for 5 or 6 years. Somehow it is comforting to know that we will probably be going to this same restaurant, eating the same round of food for another 10 – 15 years.

I was wearing the new Tara mala , a beautiful jade with garnet and carnelian and a gold guru bead, as Debra went on the say that Lama Palden, our mutual dear friend, would be doing a Women’s Day long Retreat at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. The event was entailed “Empowering the Awakening Feminine – A Benefit for the Nangchen Nuns” and, of course, the divine Tara, was the focus of the Awakened Feminine.

Do you ever get one of those feelings inside when magnificent possibility meets with auspicious serendipity? I have a tendency to bubble over with enthusiasm, which I immediately tried on calm and ground. But I just ‘knew’ that somehow the ethers had parted and grace was looking me right in the face. I called my friend Lama Palden the next day and we set up a meeting at her house. I offered that we sell our Tara Malas at the event with the proceeds going to Nangchen Nuns (who I still knew nothing about!) Palden spoke to me then about these dedicated women, the plight of their survival, and the great work that Thoknyi Rinpoche was doing as their avid supporter. Almost simultaneously, we thought of the possibility of the nuns making Tara Malas as a cottage industry. Through the course of multitudes of tweaks and changes, pounds of trust and patience and a mountain of divine grace, here we are!