Moments Making…

I keep going back while moving forward
and standing still.
Going back to points in time,
moments gone but, clearly, not gone,
moments visiting me on this journey
‘though they came and went,
seemingly gone for forever…

moments when the birds were swelling, painting a wave of sound
and color dark across dusk sky…

the time with my youngest son nestling against me
while the lil demon cat sat on my chest purring …

back when my eldest son gave me a look of love, wordless support
saying more in his silence than I’d heard in weeks…

my daughter, grabbing me in a hug out of nowhere
but everywhere perfectly timed, wresting me from
an overwhelming
sense
of
responsibility…

i
am
not
alone.

that point in time
when paths collided, friendships forged,
(sunset across the ocean roiling,
salty air everywhere,)
popcorn overflowing the pot,
calling laughter up from lost corners,
(moss under feet,
river flowing around every inch of me)
tears falling across a beaming smile when
one, then two, then three were born and then
gaining sight as midwife weeping over new life…
and back when eyes met across a tide of impossibility.
(and souls bridged forever in a flash of time,
songs across the telephone lines…
and a heart I can never forget.)

moments many, visiting me here.
now.

gone.

but still here,
weaving and woven,
spreading threads deeply,
steeping richness in the depths of soul,
muttering ministrations, filling cauldron’s
newness brew with the sustenance of loss,
filling up the gaps, calling me into

life, moments making…

jruthkelly4 Comments

Social Media, Siren Song?

Content creation, sharing content, maintaining strong social presence…on and on. Where’s the saturation point? Is the internet the next big siren song, calling us to the rocks and currents of total overwhelm, consuming consumers? I’d like to respond to myself and say “probably not, stop the stupid melodrama!” But. Guess what? It’s endless. There’s one more platform of great pinterest and we can all tumblr our ways to huge social dividends as we stroll down the empire avenue and turn around 5 hours later with total fanny fatigue.

Yes. Fanny. Fatigue. At some point there has to be the scheduled (or how wonderful, spontaneous!) stroll down the literal road out the front door/side door/back door listening to the birds sing, feeling the breezes whip away all that glowing box barf. Yes, barf. Those screens barf a particular energy that literally has to be washed away.

And I love the internet. But the birds have a hell of a lot more pizzazz and spirit than this humming vibe of social media madness. (This comes after I’ve made my rounds on the relevant platforms, shook the hands, liked the posts, sold some shares and commented on everything from great quotes, awesome art to the latest insight into pinterest.)

The threat, to my relentless mind, is one of losing authenticity in the endless grasp for maintaining presence and ranking and. What’s the point when the world we brush up against with skin and muscle, breath and bustle fades in the glow of virtual “advancement?”

Can you say balance? It must be maintained, sustained, perpetuated and worshipped. Like the sun I turn my face to now on a regularly scheduled basis lest the glowing gore of social media madness take me forever in her song…

 

jruthkelly6 Comments

An Engaged Life…

“There was a time when we humans were not so separated from the natural world and the spirits as we are today. We lived directly on the Earth, in nature, honoring the cycles of all things, where we could see the interaction and manifestation of Spirit easily. This way of living is not some kind of revisionist utopian fantasy. Rather, it is the nature of an engaged life, lived close to the environment and in symbiosis with the immediate world around us. As we have hidden our natural selves, and from our natural selves, in the sanitized boxes of suburbia, office cubicles, congested cities, logic, reason, science, technology, and the myriad traps of modern civilization, we have segregated ourselves from nonordinary energies and perception, seemingly banishing them altogether…This separation of ourselves from the natural world doesn’t make sense on any plane of existence, high-vibrational or otherwise. It is essentially an unnatural by-product of the complete removal of our culture and peoples from the natural world. it is antievolutionary.”

Colleen Deatsman and Paul Bowersox – Seeing in the Dark, Claim Your Own Shamanic Power Now and in the Coming Age

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A Pound of Flesh…

Or two? So many I know and cherish are living on the fine line between loss and hope, smiling, laughing and crying as they refuse a few demons scrambling to take even just an ounce of what’s precious. They refuse and sometimes precious things are taken anyway. They, and me. We can say we have limiting beliefs and if only we could believe bigger, deeper, broader then these demons would flee. I disagree. That concept is true on a few levels but if we can fling the curtains open wide and see clearly that there’s more to it than what we believe, some might actually grow outside their bigger playpen posing as arrival.

Life isn’t made of only butterflies floating around or only crocs waiting to grab and growl.

Not only that but butterflies float, are fleeting and seasonal. And crocs walk. They beat the streets posing in big suits and grins, waiting, beckoning, seducing. Hey, the percentage of interest is well worth the pay off now, right? Hey, no. And that butterfly moment with the uber sweet woman is gone and you can’t guarantee the next flicker of color will come along any time soon. But you can turn your face to the sun and laugh or weep if that’s where your heart is…

The common denominator in all of these realities is whoever is present, right? You, Ruth. You, Casey. You, Bam. You, Dan. You… It’s YOUR fault. Well, as one of those listed would say, Hell the F*&! no, it isn’t. It can take decades to realize the person you trusted was, in fact, a croc on the prowl and it may not be obvious to most folks even after the fact. Even when you’re missing a few limbs. People often see only what they want to see. Heaven help us if they’re standing on the edge watching you scramble with a fiend as they mutter under their breath… “she’s not a victim. She knew better.” (Really? How do you know that? What are you projecting?)

Doesn’t anybody else realize that this is an ancient agenda? Accusation posing as great enlightenment saying “You have the power.” Yeah? Hey, guess what? There is tremendously beautiful power in healthy dependence and reliable relating. How many folks get that? Actually, few. What then? There are some realllly obvious easy, no-brainer personal growth moments that can lend truth to the idea that we are our own worst enemies. You keep doing the same thing and getting the same injury, you either have no motivation to make it different, or like the drama but also like to pretend you hate it, or you’re too brilliant to see the simplicity of the solution or so into each moment that you can’t be objective enough to pull back and assess or are simply quite dumb. So, you wake up one day and see the pattern and change it and your life flourishes. Does that then mean everyone on the planet has the same need? Or everyone else is just as dumbo asleep as you were? No offense but it’s an offensive and much-repeated assumption. “Hey y’all! Stop bein’ stupid! You’ve got the POWER!” Duh. Really?

See, I sit here with an illness I can’t, for all my power, oust. Just when I think I have it figured out, it morphs into a different monster. Ah yea, I know. I have a limiting belief about my health.  You know what? I have a huge belief in the preciousness of life and love and that alone keeps me trying to find a solution in spite  of the unpredictable change in the game plans. I realize I might sound like a  whiner (depending on the “ears”) on 1/5/2012 but I’m not. I’m angry. I feel this year is going to be hugely better than last year. But it’s starting with some much-needed pissy woman on the snarl.

Do I blame anyone for where I am? No. Not even me. Some lives begin in a whirlwind and are fortunate not to be smashed into bits by the 3rd decade. In fact, we can say that of many lives out there but we’d rather talk about how it’s all in your head as we take that pound of flesh in our greed for rightness. Ah yes, and as much as I have an inclination towards it, reincarnation takes that pound-go-round too with the whole “you chose it before you entered this life” mantra. The brilliance in that is only so far. See, if you choose something in order to learn and grow more towards that which you already fully are then, um, what’s the point? And if you chose it and then drank from the river of forgetting, what damn good is it doing you to remember? A lesson is purely learned when we dive in, period. This “hey I chose it” is another version of “God causes all things to work together for good for those that love him and…” More conditional unconditional dumbness. I know of lives who believed thus and things didn’t work together for good. Not in ways the human flesh can appreciate while living out the pounds of blood and bones pulsing what we have right NOW … LIFE.

As much as I need to lose some pounds right now, I’m not losing another ounce to the wave of dumbness posing expertise as it looks at life through a crack in the curtain. The cost of some huge and beautiful changes can sometimes eclipse the gain, folks. For years and sometimes, forever. Why is that? Because nature is brutal, as well as gentle, seasonal, random, ordered. And we are in it, of it, rolling with the tide and making the most of it as we remember to turn our faces to the sun.

Happy crocs and butterflies, y’all! May we all realize that the innocent can be seen as guilty if you wear the right shades. Emphasis: RIGHT. May we all realize that the guilty started out without any power and now feel entitled to take it. And some of them started out with so much they’ve no idea how precious it all is. May we all realize that life. is. a. mystery. Nobody. gots. THE. answers.  And good people, positive, hard-working people with huge belief in good things happening to them personally STILL. GET. KICKED. to the ground. Why? Are you kidding me? Because. Period. All done. Ain’t. Always. A. Why. We. Can. Make. Peace. With.

But we can smile into the sun…shake off the energy of loss and hold to how it’s taught us of the wonder… Besides, what if we’re here for one reason? One. One repeatedly. But ONE. And like the butterfly, fleeting, beautiful, brilliant, drinking up earth through the feet. ONE. Purpose….

LOVE. Love in the moment as we look up at the next person. Love in the moment we can comfort another human being. Love in the moment before the baby you just birthed takes his last breath. Brutal but. Love. Gentle. But. Love. All true at once. And more than we can fathom. Just. Love. If we look for the happy lil reason for it all after it’s all said and done we’ll miss the moment we can love and as soon as we define why something happened, we diminish the million and one other possible whys and wherefores and we actually think we can put a price tag on immeasurable value. Tell you what, if you like a pound of flesh, go ahead. But not here. I’ll lose mine by sheer melt. All other takers, be gone!

(Thanks for riding the ruth-wave… believe it or not, I’m believing bigger this year and more specifically than this post might suggest. I’m just wow. Yeah. Amazed.)

Check out the song that helped me hurl this particular post…

jruthkelly2 Comments

Naked

“…our clothes, our skins, our personalities, our virtues and our vices are as transparent as space. We cannot lay claim to them, and there is no one to lay the claim, since the self is as transparent as its garments.

Empty and nihilistic as it may sound, this recognition of total nakedness and transparency is a joy beyond all telling, for what is empty is not reality itself but all that seems to block its light.” Alan Watts – Nature, Man and Woman

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