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Perhaps the best way to introduce Amy Lewis Hofland is to ring a bell softly and to share with her a few minutes of silence.
In a class today we talked of silence
The precious space of sabbath
We talked of chords and phones and tethering things
That pull us from peace
The peace that is more the understanding
Beyond, past understanding
Greater than.
Knowing.
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Silence is how she starts every meeting at the Crow Museum of Asian Art, where she’s been senior director since its opening in 1998. It’s how she starts Sunday night family meetings with her husband, Scott, and their sons, Baker and Edward. It’s how she starts every speech she gives and every presentation she makes; it’s how she greets every morning.
“We don’t have enough silence,” the Dallas woman says.
Two minutes, that’s all. Three if you grant yourself 60 more precious seconds to pass without sound. She rings a bell — on her phone or in her hand — to set silence in motion. She rings it again; a bookend to the wordless duration. In between, each breath keeps rhythm with a heartbeat: Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale.
I live by the bells
Are we early or late?
A rhythm of loveliness
A mindful state
“The tools for mindful intention are always with us,” says Hofland, who has spent days-long retreats in Paris and in Florida where not one word was spoken.
“The breath is always the anchor we can source. The bell sets the intention to create a sacred space of time and silence. It takes us out of our known way of being, of being lost in thought, and brings us from our past or future thoughts into the present moment: awake and alive.”
Mindfulness in uncertain times
During these recent days and weeks of uncertainty about all we hold dear, Hofland’s focus seems especially profound.
She has been thinking about life, about blessings, about breath and about the present moment for quite some time. Nine years ago, she was diagnosed with thyroid papillary carcinoma. She had her thyroid removed and underwent radioactive iodine treatment. Yet as grateful as she felt for the outcome, she found herself wanting to be healthy in ways other than physical; a yearning to feel emotionally, spiritually, mentally intertwined.
“When you face cancer, you realize every moment is precious,” says Hofland, whose diagnosis inspired her to become a certified yoga instructor two years ago. She’s currently in training for her Mindfulness Meditation Teacher certification.
“What can I do with this day? You face your darkest hour, the urgency of now.”
She decided she wanted to take “a holistic approach to remission” after overcoming cancer. So she did some research and began seeing Dr. Carolyn Matthews, director of the Integrative Medicine Program at Baylor Charles A. Sammons Cancer Center at Dallas. “Turns out she had had the same cancer I had. We were sisters in cancer.”
Part of Matthews’ advice to Hofland was to exercise.
“It’s too hard,” Hofland balked.
Matthews wasn’t giving up.
“Pair it with something you love. What do you love?”
Hofland didn’t hesitate.
“Taking pictures of sunrises.”
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Healing walks
She began walking two to three miles most mornings around her beloved White Rock Lake, stopping to pull out her camera when the sky took her breath away. Some mornings, she may shoot just one or two photos; others, more than 30.
“I call this pocketsunrise,” she says, “because I keep my phone in my pocket, and the pictures are small.”
She shares the photos on Facebook and Instagram. Additionally, she plans to put 108 — a sacred number in such teachings as the Bible and Buddhism, as well as yoga — into a book accompanied by 108 poems. She wants to give a book to every patient at Sammons, where she underwent treatment.
At every appointment while in treatment, she says, “I sat with cancer patients in the waiting room, and I started studying them. I started thinking about what these people are fighting for, and realized they’re all fighting for one more day, for one more sunrise.”
When you think about it, isn’t that what we all want? What keeps us going when we’re afraid for our lives of shaking someone’s hand, or greeting a friend with a hug, or being more than an arm’s reach from a soap dispenser?
One more sunrise.
On the path, together
Hofland believes one way toward that shared goal is compassion. She might show it in silence when an ambulance goes by, “praying for the trembling fingers that dialed 9-1-1.” She showed it with the flourish of her hand when she signed the Charter for Compassion, a document of principles designed to motivate communities toward greater social good.
“I love the idea of compassion,” says Hofland, who looks for that trait in people she hires at the museum. “Everybody comes together for the greater good, for joy.”
At the Crow Museum, the staff studies a certain word every year. Compassion was so close to her heart that it encompassed two years, 2015 and 2016. The year before, it was Impermanence; the years after, Practice, Courage, Love. For 2020, the word is Meaning.
I brought a few things to this mindful life;
The bell, the breath came later.
Compassion arrived as my teacher,
And I rolled in all of the people who loved me into being.
Formed by grandmothers and godmothers, parents and teachers. Especially the art teachers.
They found me in the field of mindful presence.
And held onto me.
I brought poetry and writing,
Walking and wondering.
Sitting still.
Be still, I am God, he said.
I was finally quiet enough to hear.
Quiet enough to speak to his listening.
Quiet enough to know.
Silence is where we grow.
Silence holds a truth where we say what we see.
Silence is the teacher our teachers wanted us to be.
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