‘Though honing my gratitude muscles here lately, I’m still not much for perpetual positive pounding drowning out the sound of anything realistic, anything begging acknowledgement beyond conspiracies of love and beauty (say the Troy Davis dilemma, Occupy Wall Street, media whitewash of corporate corruption etc.). This 10 minute jaunt is worth the perspective. My only exception with this is that our thoughts and expectations are tremendously powerful, ‘though they are not the only forces creating the realities we call “daily life.”
The Parody of Democracy
I have precious little else to contribute after the miscarriage of justice yesterday in Georgia. Alan Watts reminds me why I feel so alienated from this culture.
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Must Know Life…
Mumford and Sons’ song “After the Storm” has held my hand for a while now. It seems appropriate today given the grief and confusion the world experienced on 9/11/01 and since then, on such cataclysmic levels worldwide. It’s an idealistic song of sorts but I believe we cannot evoke change in the world without clinging to the best of humanity and…it’s why I hold…
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What A Ride…
“Until you have loved, you cannot become yourself.” -Emily Dickinson
Rob Brezsny’s Free Will Astrology posted the above quote on Facebook today. And I have to say this resonates more deeply for me than anything going on in this rather roiling world. News of riots in the streets of London and surrounding cities, hurricanes hurling category 3 in the aftermath of atypical quakes in my own town here, ugly political posturing, corruption amuck and with each issue after issue I follow passionately – finding no solid resolution – the one thing that shores me up, defines every footstep and hand-holding moment is love and, in particular, loving others. Loving others. In whatever way life allows, in whatever way we can create, envision, revolutionize, we become more truly who we are by our loving. This is especially true once the masks have been stripped away, the safety mechanisms melted down into acceptance and the ego purified, tamed.
A nearby train hails me on a regular basis and it twists through my ideas of what should happen in a life, what is “fair.” Love is tied to that train but a love I can’t access as I want to access it. That train held my kids when I hoped they wouldn’t know the hurts they know now (ah and the joys…the lessons learned, the wisdom), that train held a promise of healing of my own childhood, that train faithfully calls out, haunting, insisting, reminding me I cannot control outcomes but I can certainly be fully on the ride this life has become. And what does it evoke of me? Love of other. And it magnifies. Increases. Grows me up, asks me to accept what is and release what isn’t, allow all my longings to birth me beyond any guarantee of their fulfillment. It reminds me that we all have such a hailing reality somewhere in our lives, maybe even deep within calling out possibilities, asking that we love beyond the control-filled drive to get there now, flowing in a spiraling wonder of returning possibilities. Maybe new ones but it’s always love. Love is always returning us to the deep place within so we can grow more fully into who we are.
I hear the news. Watch cause and effect unfold in my own life. And it’s quite a ride. We do the best we can and sometimes that best doesn’t fill the void, assuage the angry wounds. One of my kids is grieving on levels deeper than I would ever fathom or imagine to witness, grieving his parents’ split. And it splits me, rips me into pieces as I give all that I can and find that I have, in pouring myself out, not begun to fill up the loss for him. It’s a process his life will unfold and I can only augment, give room for his awakening to what life is and is not, what love can heal eventually. This loving in the midst of grief and joy and challenges surreal does something to the stuff of amness. There is a solid being emerging here, there, in-between the shocked pauses but only as I allow love to stew me, brew me into presence. It’s not so much about scrambling for a solution as it is about standing in, being with, holding up.
I love the scripture that says “there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” For all my frustration with many mis-translated, mis-interpreted scripture this one sings out a truth I cannot deny and that cannot be mistaken. It’s a highly powerful filter through which we can determine how much “love” is truly love. How many of us respond to others in fear of not being loved and call that very exchange love? How many of us respond to others in the hope to make them happy because we’re frightened of disappointment and identify that very response as love? What if it’s all we’ve known?
It’s the love that comes like a bit of a thief in the night out of nowhere that births us. It’s the love that melts away all the poses we identified as love, ceases all the reactions in the hopes to make mom and dad (in the form of someone who has become their replacement) understand or love us just a bit more, quiets the endless clamoring for the next fix and evokes heart, soul, mind in expression of gratitude, in constructs, creations that affirm the heartbeat of humanity. Through this unfolding of love for other, the fearless love, the control-free love, we become. And in our becoming the train goes ’round one more time, one more ride, and yet another. And we experience yet one more opportunity to manifest ourselves as love.
On with it…
Spread the Love!
A Poet on Sorrow and Destiny…
“I believe that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension that we find paralyzing because we no longer hear our surprised feelings living. Because we are alone with the alien thing that has entered into our self; because everything intimate and accustomed is for an instant taken away; because we stand in the middle of a transition where we cannot remain standing. For this reason the sadness too passes: the new thing in us, the added thing, has entered into our heart, has gone into its inmost chamber and is not even there any more,–is already in our blood. And we do not learn what it was. We could easily be made to believe that nothing has happened, and yet we have changed, as a house changes into which a guest has entered. We cannot say who has come, perhaps we shall never know, but many signs indicate that the future enters into us in this way in order to transform itself in us long before it happens. And this is why it is so important to be lonely and attentive when one is sad: because the apparently uneventful and stark moment at which our future sets foot in us is so much closer to life than that other noisy and fortuitous point of time at which it happens to us as if from outside. The more still, more patient and more open we are when we are sad, so much the deeper and so much the more unswervingly does the new go into us, so much the better do we make it ours, so much the more will it be our destiny, and when on some later day it ‘happens’ (that is, steps forth out of us to others), we shall feel in our inmost selves akin and near to it. And that is necessary. It is necessary–and toward this our development will move gradually–that nothing strange should befall us, but only that which has long belonged to us. We have already had to rethink so many of our concepts of motion, we will also gradually learn to realize that that which we call destiny goes forth from within people…” Rainer Maria Rilke – Letters to a Young Poet
I love the “steps forth out of us to others” bit. So much steps forth out of us into our worlds and to others and so much we can cultivate of the best “stepping forth” through our attentiveness and willingness to trust self, to trust the processes of growth that include everything from intense pain to sheer delight. And how vital it is to allow these contrasts without judgement, without fear as we build our lives.
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For Japan
May your lands be filled to overflowing with the greatest human tide of compassion…healing…restoration…
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Snow and Light
The weather-guessers say more snow’s on the way and I’m not alone with mixed feelings. The sight of soundless white falling to a ground deadened by autumn’s work, covering up loss in a cold caressing grace overlays the longing for a warming light, guiding me out of a long, sighing night-time filling up days and days of winter. But snow dresses up the drab and empty, the naked and alone…
…walks and whiles of wandering in white, building laughter and balls of wonder ice flying through the air, smacking on jackets filled with life, children growing up in this light…
… a quiet vigil posing against the backdrop of winter’s cloak, guiding soul, filling feltness whole beyond the pain of stripped trees, blades of grass bowing in colorless submission to this rest, rest, resting before renewal…when comes the sun shining, melting, felling loss and planting seeds for spring…
[two plates hold flame on my mantel today: one in memory of a soul whose light lives on in my heart ‘though her life has passed into the next expression, beyond our tangible reach. the other in support of lives fighting to thrive in the aftermath of violence.]
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Fill ‘Er Up…
Life fills us up when we quit believing we must be the compensation for fear-driven loss. And it fills up those we think we’re responsible for. Guess what? It does it even when we’ve left, when we’ve given up, when we’ve tossed it all at the feet of “fate” and said: “I have to live…”
On with it…
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Vital Visual
leave these colors here
should’ve feared cruel crumbling fall
now the ground so cold
should’ve feared cruel crumbling fall
now the ground so cold
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Sacred Path
“Our personal progress is a matter of free will. How deep we are willing to go to reach understanding depends ultimately upon our desire to become explorers. We can see ourselves as victims being tossed between bliss and despair, or we can look deeper and begin to take responsibility for our thoughts, feelings and actions. When we choose to change, refusing to become victims, we have chosen to see life from the eye of Eagle. The power of personal connection to the Creator and to spirituality is found in the individual who is willing to commit to life’s paths of initiation. When we acknowledge that we are spiritual beings who are willing to fight in the trenches of human self-empowerment, insisting on personal integrity, we have chosen to test ourselves by entering the paths of human initiation that lead to authentic wholeness.” Jamie Sams – Dancing the DREAM…
These wise words bolster me for the week and upcoming months of change. Sams’ insights speak to the heart of where I’ve been and where I’m going.
On. With. It.
J. Ruth Kelly 