All These…

heartaches, shakes and victories,
delights, rumbling mysteries…
sad betrayals and aborted hugs…

reasons screaming meaning, making nonsense of karma, shredding ideals whose humming “virtue” obliterate the stuff of love, saying “what goes around, comes around” while studiously ignoring the so much that goes around for so many and never comes around…ever and. And turning love into this gross assessment of cause and effect when some cause just don’t care about effect, let’s all shaft the masses and watch them writhe and when we die in beds of soullessness… rich and fat, what is that? What exactly IS IT that goes around and comes around? Will someone please tell me? No, nevermind my rhetorical quiz. I know. What goes around? Our fathers’ programs and mothers’ lessons leaving all this rot in our words and stories, telling clever belittling jokes and smacks at siblings in “playful” jabbing sarcasm posing “wit” with cuteness, our self-absorbed fixation on whether or not we’re “right” or “growthful” or making the difference that wasn’t made for us or or or…

What else goes around?
Sing it out, will you?!

The love, regardless.

It goes around. It comes around. That’s all. Karma be damned. All these wild dreams of karmic justice, karmic absolution, karmic restitution, karmic shmarmic nonsense posing LIMITS on love. See, now. Watch, they’ll get what’s coming to them. (beauty or malformation, all!) They’ll get every chance to heal the bullshit posing as clever wit constructed in daddy’s ugly mockery. They’ll get every chance to walk away from the fight with dignity, seen as wrong but knowing otherwise. Knowing there’s something other than rightness, something deeper brewing compassion, brewing awareness of real, yes solid, yes exactly justice. But it won’t look like karma. It’ll just be this…

quiet humming grace
oozing love through every pore
dripping awareness and presence
and standing witness 24/7

because there’s no holding of the breath for karmic salvation, no measuring exact portions of recompense for lives and life details whose value is boundless unfathomable preciousness. And, in spite of that fact, could die on the side of the road never realizing just how sweet. All these layers, all at once, no karmic salvation to make sense of it all. No sense to be made. Only love, people. Only love. And that not in fear, not in desperation, not in frenzied hopes to keep us all from dying on the side of the road but

in quiet confidence of just how sweet is the now chance to be,
breathe, expect love
and love’s best.

 

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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.

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A Musical Thing…

Alan Watts weaves together many layers of the human experience in a liberating expression of truth. It’s one of those essential truths I wrestle with more often than I care to admit to myself. But. The more I admit it, the more it’s about the music and less about what I’ve accomplished, where it is I think I’m “going.” The way we’re set up, at such young ages, to look for the grand trophy, the major accomplishment, the big prize…it’s a defeating march. Chronic illness, or any recurring struggle, will either highlight the defeat or push us against that wall, the one we can stand and look at until it melts away and the music is the thing, once again. On with it…

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Pause

There are times when life pushes us so rapidly forward everything in the surrounding landscape seems suspended in a freeze frame of such deep meaning. All we can do is strap on the seat belt and hope to not come out of it feeling like hammered refuse. (Ref yoose)

It’s so much and all at once and doesn’t fall on hard soil here, so much to sink in. So…

I feel like hammered um. Yes. But the pound has definitely driven home (deeper/truer) the preciousness of it all and the impossibility of ever really affirming value. We can only live, only flow, only hold and then release, only note the images frozen temporarily as their gold is branded deeply into our hearts, a realization of the depth of treasure at once fleeting and forever.

Like a daughter’s prom details thrown together at the last minute as our relationship continues to morph in the setting sun of her childhood (and I swallow huge lump in throat, grin and grab one more hug, so proud beyond measure of all she is becoming, unfolding) as she expands her horizons, and continues to teach her little brothers great things… the continued meaningful silences from a son who still has few words but a brain alive, a soul running deep and an ability to convey with his body language and eyes beyond what is so often for far too many a flip use of verbal language (nothing flip about this one), as he wields violin and climbs trees, creating maps and adventures within the stillness… and the son with hair afire and heart running fast forward into comprehension and expression, so far beyond his years, holding tight to bonds while learning who his real friends are and how amazing is music, is the outpouring of heart…

Like a body slowly healing and then stumbling and then back up again and pounds gained, then lost, muscles diminished and then trying again, a fine science to this tightrope walk with chronic illness and fitness (insert ironic laughter here), friendships new and renewing, insisting on stretching my mind, my self-perception, my limitations, my pride, my walls, preconceived ideas and notions stripped away as the imagination begins to slowly re-emerge and…

All of this richness of living suspends my writing and pauses my outpourings because of what stews in the cauldron of heart and mind, growing me more deeply settled (and stirred!) but with so much less to say. For now, living is all…further bulletins as life allows…

Beauty, Minstrel teaches her bros guitar-pickin’ and…
Long-haired, “Jesus” plays soccer too…
Red, Rockin’ Blackbird beautifully…

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In Moon’s Music

Whisper me out of this corner
or come,
come find me in the shadow
of some long gone judgement,
weaving threads from my filth,
linking light and dark,
in a grateful design knowing,
pulsing a pattern here of
my best worst
and cursing the idea,
the reality,
the haunt of shame.

Too much wanting goodness
for far long…
now these shadow threads
sing me more softly,
deeply weaving richer hues of being,
of leaning, needing, longing.

No longer enslaved to the perpetual denial,
suppression, hiding of these unsightly finds
supreme.

Don’t you know they make me,
break me out of spotlight
casting shadows more wicked,
in their pretending honor,
their alleged salvation?

Here, I am. Singing songs
in moon’s music, humming silence
in the glare of sight,
digging deep this dirt delight,
growing flowers fed on dew
and dancers’ rain,
rain,
rain…

kiss of love haunting.

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Vulnerability, The Birthplace

“vulnerability…the birthplace of joy, of creativity, of belonging, of love…” “for me… it was a year long streetfight…I lost.” Brené Brown

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Vulnerability

Found this gold from Oriah Mountain Dreamer today and had to give it a place here…

“The root of the word vulnerablilty comes from the Latin “vulnus,” and means “the ability to carry a wound gracefully.” Been thinking about this since I read it in Mark Nepo’s “Finding Inner Courage.” I like that it doesn’t deny that there will be wounds. “Carrying” the wound implies it does not have to immobilize or crush us. But to do so, gracefully. . . ah, there’s the tricky part- as in with dignity (not denial,) with beauty (as in truthfully,) and with Grace- the unearned blessing of being held by that which is larger that enables us to continue, to live & love fully even with wounds. The word says it all- to experience this blessing we have to accept our vulnerabilty- it is the open door that allows this Grace to lift & carry us when we least expect it.” From Oriah Mountain Dreamer

This says it all…

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Sea Full…

We spoke, hugged, reached with eyes…
did we connect? Did you feel my love, know my concern?
Can you rest in knowing (can I?) love is holding us up
from within
as we stretch out our hands, grasp for the doable
in every moment,
rest and accept and reach
while we strive not to strive
too much?

Do we clutch at water as we tread
in lake, pool, ocean of unity?

Do we turn the light on
as the sun shines through?

What is it we really do?

Do we let our words take
the place of what we’d feel
if we would just be
with
being…?

Let’s run to the within
of rest/flow/grow
as we float in this grand sea…

please.

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Negativity vs. Authenticity

Everywhere, all the time, everyday, without fail, I can find a post, a tweet, an ad about how to end or oust or reverse negativity whether I want to or not. It’s there. And it sometimes makes me cringe. What does the author, expert, person mean by “negativity?” What do I mean when I use that word? Negativity is the reality of being negative without considering the alternative positive possibility, being negative without opening up to life’s lessons, being negative out of sheer habit or sheer stubborn refusal of anything else, out of total lack of imagination. Professional “stick in the mud.” But. Here’s where the cringe comes in for me…If you oust or otherwise curtail it without owning up to why it exists, why it is such a comfy thing for you, and do not discover where it started, then you’ve just painted over it. You’ve not grown. You’ve changed your stripes.

Another cringe-catalyst: if you can’t handle the downside of life and lump anyone who is real about their pain, their struggles, their confusion into the “negative” pot, then you’re afraid of life, afraid and unable to truly, fully be with. Be with self. Be with others. Be with ALL that life is. Guess what? Life can chew you up, spit you out and leave you without recourse. And to have a season of grief, of floundering in the dark is good for the soul. It brings you to deeper awareness, to a place of knowing what needs to come next so you can smile from within.

Authenticity, a sometimes risky unfolding of self, a sometimes “negative” aspect of amness is the higher call for me. Sometimes we roil in truthativity and it’s not pretty. It’s not pleasant. It’s not fun for others. What if enough is enough and the rumblings of change begin with a “sour attitude” for, well, for days? What if the sour attitude is down there hiding under the smile because negativity isn’t helpful? That’s sometimes the only way to manage our worlds with finesse. But at some point, negativity – depending on what that words means to you – needs to be used for what it is: an opportunity to discover what needs to change, a chance to affirm the soul’s needs and desires, an aspect of self screaming for growth.

Unless, of course, you really are a sourpuss who needs to grow up, buck up and get on with smelling some roses since we all know the cow dung stinks. But always ask this before rushing to “fix” “negativity”: Would we label any human process as “negativity” with any real regularity if we were aware of how deeply vital the processes of personal growth are? Would we fixate on being “positive” if we valued authenticity to the point of growing beyond anything anyone could truly categorize as “negativity?”

True authenticity won’t drag anyone down in the long run, not if it’s about growth, about finding the strength to let go or stand firm as needed. If all you can see is the glass half empty, dig deep, find the reason and heal the source. Then you won’t have to put on the positive, it’ll flow from deep within…

 

 

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