Do You Have Choice Yet?

Presence begets presence. Condemnation and fear begets more conditioned thinking and antics to look better but what’s real? Presence… or, as Tolle is saying here, consciousness. Awakening…

“Choice implies consciousness – a high degree of consciousness. Without it, you have no choice. Choice begins the moment you disidentify from the mind and its conditioned patterns, the moment you become present….Nobody chooses dysfunction, conflict, pain. Nobody chooses insanity. They happen because there is not enough presence in you to dissolve the past, not enough light to dispel the darkness. You are not fully here. You have not quite woken up yet. In the meantime, the conditioned mind is running your life.” Eckhart Tolle

If we embrace this as truth, how will it revolutionize our parenting, our teaching, our counselling, our rehabilitation of ourselves and those life has entrusted us to love? And what awakens us?

Questions worth asking…

jruthkellyLeave a comment

Courage

I think what struck me the most about this is the love-in-action and the fact that these people ARE, that they are part of a strong tapestry of hope and meaning weaving itself through what can be a very daunting tale of humanity…well worth the time to witness.

jruthkelly4 Comments

It’s a Dance…

Every child has known God,
not the God of names,
not the God of don’t,
not the God who does anything weird,
but the God who only knows four words
and keeps repeating them, saying:
“Come dance with Me.”
Come Dance.
Hafiz

 

jruthkellyLeave a comment
child of life, visiting grace on me for a season

Universe Twirl

Yesterday turned out to be one of the longer dances with life and universal rumbling tango twirls as I focused mainly on staying steady on my toes. It was beautiful, something I would not have predicted. Exhausting. Just life, mainly. But there was this girl…

almost 18…

she was in the backseat behind me, quiet. Rolling with the latest spin in the dance of our day. Her guitar teacher hadn’t been there. Door locked. Next? We’re taking my niece somewhere. Been an emergency kind of day…

quiet. Her silence was palpable.

And then BAM, crash, slam. “Mom! You have to stop. We have to help! Call the police…” She tends to command scenes when they qualify as such, without thinking or calculation. It just happens and this half-smile grows on my face every time.

The small pickup truck in front of us went from humming a straight trail along the path ahead to quietly careening off the road with no provocation, straight for the telephone pole. Full frontal impact and resulting crunching smash. I pull into the doctor’s office parking lot adjacent to the wreck, scanning for risk of fire, seeing none. The girl in the backseat is out of the car and running towards the truck. That’s my kid. Slow down girl. Life’s dangerous. Gulp. I’m calling emergency response and she’s helping the 86 year old grandma out of the car. Someone’s grandma. Not hers. But might as well be.

They’re talking. She’s holding her hand. Then she’s taking her cell phone and calling family for her. “Hello…first off, your Grandma’s ok, ok? Everything’s fine. But…” But the truck’s not going anywhere ever again. And I’m watching the universe spin a story of instant care. Passers by have stopped and are directing traffic. My daughter is bent over, inspecting for injuries and the police, emts and firemen haven’t arrived.

I’m not needed. Except as guardian of the girl on scene and as an observer privileged to witness love unfolding. This girl wasn’t aware of the world around her. She was focused, disinterested in any attention. Behaving like someone born to respond. And I’m in awe, now the quiet one.

The official responders arrive. And they’re appreciative, not shooing the girl away, making their way around her ministrations and determining the grandma’s not injured beyond the tear-inducing shock and pain from airbags deploying.

She’s “the girl” here because I’m watching her become all she is apart from me and yet not apart from me. I’m in no hurry to say “my daughter” because this is a person the world receives apart from any realization of me and she’s a wonder I like to witness and acknowledge apart from the blinders motherhood can be. All I could do in the aftermath was sit with tears of appreciation. She’s going to be just fine, Mama.

I had to leave her there on scene. That girl. Willful. She refused to leave before the grandma’s family arrived. So, knowing her to be cell phone armed and surrounded by emergency care workers, I finished my rescue of my niece, shaking my head as I drove off. She would be where I told her to be and all would be well.

But she wasn’t. She was ok. But across the street at a radio station sitting quietly with the woman and another passerby. And that passerby sat marveling to me about that girl. She’d left to call the family again, making sure they knew where to find their grandma. I just smiled and acknowledged the wonder of a girl, fearless, instantly concerned and eager to provide comfort.

And I waited in the car. Later the girl supreme told me the grandma said she had restored her faith in young people. Youth. Girls.

But she didn’t tell me until I had nudged her, mentioned the wonder of her unfolding response myself, suggesting maybe she should consider emergency response work (gulp). She had little to say. Mostly quiet again. Except to let me know that one thing about restoring faith.

Sometimes the universe puts us into these amazing twirling dance days of happenings orchestrated for the sole purpose of that one thing…to slam us into an appointment with faith.

Imagine that. And a girl. She makes my heart sing.

child of life, visiting grace on me for a season
the girl of a universe twirl…

jruthkelly2 Comments

Pray For Peace

I had no words in the aftermath of so much carnage last week, all over the world, not just in Boston. All over the world. Every week. And, at the same time, so many beautiful things unfolding. It makes no sense. And that’s ok. So, I shake my head at all the loss and give my words to others these days. Creativity is random and rare. I have to remind myself not to despair of the mere trickle of poetic flow. There will be more productive times. In the meantime…

Here is one whose expression I can feast on with deep gratitude and her words say all that needs saying in the reality and the aftermath of all that is this life…

PRAY FOR PEACE by Ellen Bass

Pray to whoever you kneel down to:
Jesus nailed to his wooden or marble or plastic cross,
his suffering face bent to kiss you,
Buddha still under the Bo tree in scorching heat,
Yahweh, Allah, raise your arms to Mary
that she may lay her palm on our brows,
to Shekinhah, Queen of Heaven and Earth,
to Inanna in her stripped descent.

Hawk or Wolf, or the Great Whale, Record Keeper
of time before, time now, time ahead, pray. Bow down
to terriers and shepherds and siamese cats.
Fields of artichokes and elegant strawberries.

Pray to the bus driver who takes you to work,
pray on the bus, pray for everyone riding that bus
and for everyone riding buses all over the world.
If you haven’t been on a bus in a long time,
climb the few steps, drop some silver, and pray.

Waiting in line for the movies, for the ATM,
for your latté and croissant, offer your plea.
Make your eating and drinking a supplication.
Make your slicing of carrots a holy act,
each translucent layer of the onion, a deeper prayer.

Make the brushing of your hair
a prayer, every strand its own voice,
singing in the choir on your head.
As you wash your face, the water slipping
through your fingers, a prayer: Water,
softest thing on earth, gentleness
that wears away rock.

Making love, of course, is already a prayer.
Skin and open mouths worshipping that skin,
the fragile case we are poured into,
each caress a season of peace.

If you’re hungry, pray. If you’re tired.
Pray to Gandhi and Dorothy Day.
Shakespeare. Sappho. Sojourner Truth.
Pray to the angels and the ghost of your grandfather.

When you walk to your car, to the mailbox,
to the video store, let each step
be a prayer that we all keep our legs,
that we do not blow off anyone else’s legs.
Or crush their skulls.
And if you are riding on a bicycle
or a skateboard, in a wheel chair, each revolution
of the wheels a prayer that as the earth revolves
we will do less harm, less harm, less harm.

And as you work, typing with a new manicure,
a tiny palm tree painted on one pearlescent nail
or delivering soda or drawing good blood
into rubber-capped vials, writing on a blackboard
with yellow chalk, twirling pizzas, pray for peace.

With each breath in, take in the faith of those
who have believed when belief seemed foolish,
who persevered. With each breath out, cherish.

Pull weeds for peace, turn over in your sleep for peace,
feed the birds for peace, each shiny seed
that spills onto the earth, another second of peace.
Wash your dishes, call your mother, drink wine.

Shovel leaves or snow or trash from your sidewalk.
Make a path. Fold a photo of a dead child
around your VISA card. Gnaw your crust
of prayer, scoop your prayer water from the gutter.
Mumble along like a crazy person, stumbling
your prayer through the streets.

jruthkelly2 Comments

Freak Fest…

I’m still spinning, catapulting into my world, the last whirlwind trashing all the pretty boxes with their topses on the shelves in my mind. Wheeee….

This year has stunk so far. No, I’m not complaining or being negative. It’s a fact. Period. A stinkin’ fact. It has had some beautiful moments and days and and and. Yes. All the good stuff that makes the heart sing right in there with a ridiculous onslaught of flotsam, jetsam and madness posing some notion of sanity.

Instead of smashing me into a corner I’m finding this ancient fury hurling some revolutionary song from a layer long lost. Time to march, sister. Time to stop ignoring your own lil freak-drum…

“When you speak, sing, write, dance, muse & move to the beat of your invisible freak-drum—impeccably, messily, off-key or on-point —-you grant heroic permission. You crack every ceiling. You strike awe & hit home. You move people to share their own incandescent awesomery.” ~ Alexandra Franzen

Gem found on Rebelle Society, of course. Where else? It shines out, shouting something at my reeling, raw heart. I couldn’t just post it. It evoked. Resonated. Reverberated and highlighted the effect of whirlwinds and spit sins (dunno what those are but it came out of me).

Spit sins. Spit sins are words and words piled up high, towering over a person, leaving this ick sheen behind, a sort of deceitful mess-mass suggesting action but never doing anything actually. In fact, they’re about as useful as spit and that’s a sin since they don’t feed the life of the soul with actual substance and action and.

And.

Spit sins.

We’ll see where next the whirlwind sends…

me.

jruthkelly3 Comments

New What?!

Things I’ve seen, been touched by, moved by, otherwise disturbed or encouraged by in the past month and 8 days…

…grass growing up from the cracks, carving inevitability across sidewalks of “progress”

…hearts reuniting after months of estrangement and breathing a sigh of relief in the refreshing flow

…lives suddenly torn away from each other by the oddest, most revealing turn of events (with some lingering unfortunate confusion)

…overhearing two of my children conversationally saying “I don’t think you realize how much I love you…” (!!!!!!!!!) (they were dealing with relationship strain, beautifully, and the one who said it first was NOT the female. that’s the kind of argument you like to overhear…)

…the news of a beautiful 23 year old in India dying after the most horrifying example of inhumanity

…the proclamation of Newtown, CT “We choose love…”

…realizations of love as a conspiracy in spite of all the tyranny and violence suggesting otherwise

…renewal of faith in fate (married passionately to free will, of course)

…free-falls into grace

…a shimmering color-filled halo around the moon with barefoot laughter and kids dragged out of bed to watch (on holiday)

…a string of “coincidental” encounters speaking purpose bigger than my own designs

…a cat fight (or 2?) o.O

…friendships strengthened

…concerts calling a symphony of diversity

…paradox making meaning

…the release of singing 5 minutes of my life as a musical

…brewing schemes for more good wickedness

…recognition (the annual one) that “new” year is a great concept, allowing us the opportunity to reflect and review our lives, and wish others all the best but it’s also just another day…

And that’s the stuff I can share…

jruthkelly5 Comments

The Perfect Storm

my back’s to the wall here
where
this snarling call deep down sounding silent shouts,
spirals a covering hover-fall
a story of
reverberations resounding roars and all those long lost soars coming home
to roost and grope every fragment in a fusion eradicating
everything i relied on, homing me here having the be

hush

someone, something’s let me out and i circle overhead massing magnificence clouds
storms brewing my
tender, fierce, urgent emergence,
no frivolous shed,
shite sham
will remain

hush

take cover ’cause we’re all done with pretend,
these winds whip wild wakeful
gonna shred all the cloaks you claimed me for
long ago back there in the womb of reformed gynephobic fantasy

hush

see – silence speaks something forever changed and changing
but don’t expect the cagey girl
or the wordy woman
she’s all done, her fingers want more than cold flat surfaces
and carrots dangling conjurations washed away by rain

hush

see – you didn’t calculate, forecast or otherwise regard the once-in-a-lifetime
wonder brewing thunder rhythms
evacuating comfort zones and
sending us all home.

jruthkelly3 Comments

Further Bulletins: People Care…

There are quite a few issues dividing people into groups of pros and cons, for and against, heffalumps and woozles. It’s very confusel. Truly. Awfully. And what gets lost in the collision of perspectives, most of them valid, some of them regressed and infantile, is the truth. The truth that when we’re stripped down to the essentials, the life and death line in the sand, the reality of our mortality, right where we are, in our alleged zones of comfort, we stand in love and support. We forget what divided us and we reach out to give a big hug, somehow, some way. Most of us, anyway. I’m going to proclaim that most of us do. Because, it’s true. And I’m going to share why I believe it, just from two examples. The really wonderful news is that these two examples are only two of countless – count that: countless – others.

Before 11am today, I ran into two stories of people reaching out and giving, going above and beyond any “normal” expectation and lavishing care. Forget that I live and experience that in my own world on a regular basis. Forget that were it not for kindness I’d not be where I am right now. Beyond what we all experience and take for granted on a daily basis, amazing and beautiful things are going on…

My 1st encounter with humanity love-news today came in the form of Rachel Beckwith’s story. Her story is tragic. Nothing coming from that tragedy changes the gravity of the loss. If we could all erase what happened and keep her here in this reality making a difference with her big-heartedness, we would. But we can’t. So we did something else. We did what we could do. People honored her dream and her big heart. Strangers and unknowns and people who’ll never be identified added their support to her dream. She wanted to raise $300 by her birthday. $300 for water for 15 people in Africa. She came up $80 short on her 9th birthday. A month later she died in a car accident. Less than 5 minutes of footage to see how people responded:


And then an hour after wiping the tears off my face, I find a Mother Jones article. The upside of it is that Old Crow Medicine heard of a US soldier who died in Baghdad. His name was Levi and he really liked Old Crow. They wrote a song for him and sang it to his family, in person. Here’s the video…

This is what we are, all conflicts aside, all greed and pride washed away, soul-fed and soulful, all self-loathing melted into something richer and truer. When we embrace this part of ourselves, we embrace an ancient truth; we embrace love and we embrace what can never tear us apart.

It’s happening everyday, all over the world. Right now. In spite of all the shite flying around, corruption surreal, regression horror and economic disaster…this is who we are underneath all the pretend.

jruthkellyLeave a comment