Able

Last September, after our cat passed away, I took the kids to Caumsett State park; it's our special place, well known enough that we're comfortable there and we find comfort there amoungst the trees and fields. The longer walk to the beach adds depth to our retreats there. It's a container big enough to hold us all, no matter what feelings we bring there.

I know its been too long (from a "good business practices" standpoint) since I posted to the blog and so in looking for pictures to post today I came across these. I'd dearly love to be at Caumsett today but the cold, nasty rain that has blanketed the upper east coast keeps me in today. Not to mention a million other errands and "to do"s.


These pictures let me remember the contentment we find in our special place and, even though I can't be there, just knowing that I have that available to me makes me feel more able to handle everything else that needs doing. So now its upstairs to continue to put the kids rooms back together after having them painted and then some Story-Beads work. Caumsett's got my back and because of that I feel better. Amen.
Who (or what or where) has "got your back"?

Journal Entry

the view from our driveway

It has been an emotional week. Everyone here is fine but events in the bigger world remind me to be mindful. Here is the entry from my journal on April 15th:

“There are so many people in the world. It hits me every so often – like now, riding on the subway. All these people and the expansive connective web of their lives that stretches out from them through their families and friends and acquaintances. It boggles the mind.

“I used to play with this when I was little – riding in the car, especially at night, watching as all the lights in the windows came on, wondering about all those families. I would see just how far I could stretch myself, sensing them all, and then see how long I could maintain the connection before having to let go from the sheer BIGNESS of it.

“We were rudely awoken this morning to the dog barking at passing police cars when finally I woke up enough to realize they weren’t passing. Three police cars blocked our driveway and countless more stopped traffic and let in ambulances and fire trucks. News 12 showed our house and the ruins of a motorcycle and nearby, the car it hit, looking little better.

“So, our morning was greatly changed. No school bus pick up since our road was effectively closed, but the policeman assured me he’d let us out whenever we were ready. Damage control with the kids: always the balance with Miss M about how much or how little to tell her – did she know the term “fatality”? Is she prepared if it gets discussed at school? And Lima Bean, conjecturing broken legs in true five year old fashion and me saying, “Let’s not make it worse by thinking bad stuff happened. Let’s hold the space with positive energy that no one was hurt.”

“It wasn’t until after we left the house that the bigness of it hit me. In the house it was a crisis, an emergency, if not our emergency per se. There is not time bigness, for tears, when there is work to be done in the immediacy of an event. The kids, the paperwork for my errands, lunches, socks and shoes, and its chilly so jackets today. And the energetic protection of our house, done almost subconsciously, to keep the negativity away from us.

I had felt so cold-hearted when Jen called to see if we were OK. She was aghast at the terribleness of it all. True to her reiki calling she is open to the world. I wasn't connecting to it in the same way. “I’ll keep praying” was what she said and all I could do was wonder at where my connection and my compassion were.

As we pulled into the parking lot of the deli, I found them. Past our street life was so damned…normal. Life was going on as if this hadn’t happened and yet it had, and lives were irrevocably changed. REM playing on the radio and suddenly it's there and I’m crying:

Everybody hurts. Everybody cries
Sometime.

There would be plenty of crying today – for those two families, in those two webs of connections. Plenty of crying. There are so many people in the world. I can play with the bigness of it all but only for a little while before it becomes too much for me.”

Sitting on the subway I hadn’t planned to write about this. When I trust in this practice and I follow the writing, it leads me to where I need to be. This incident might have fallen through the cracks of my consciousness if I had followed what “I” wanted, which was just to get over it and forget the whole thing happened. My writing keeps me honest. My writing keeps me connected - to myself and to the deeper meaning in things.

What question comes to you inreading this post? Trust the intuition and follow it wherever it leads. I can promise it will be rich, fertile ground...

Sacred Life Sunday - Ode to the Bath

I haven't taken a bath in close to ten months. It hasn't been by choice, exactly, except that the contractors recommended that I avoid them lest I, and my 800 pounds of water, wanted to end up in the basement below. Fair enough.

After three weeks of construction our bathroom was ready for its inaugural bath. What joy! What bliss! Well worth all the agravation and running around I've been forced to do during construction.

When I was little I used to pretend I was a mermaid. I have always loved water and tonight it is with immense gratitude that I bless the people who invented indoor plumbing, hot water heaters and beyond a doubt - my contractors! A sacred life indeed.

When was the last time you allowed the element of water to soothe you?

Clarity and Softness

I got glasses on Saturday. Its a big adjustment for me. My world is literally framed in a new context. Its like watching life in Hi Def - I'm not a big fan of HD, but neither am I a big fan of squinting all the time, so glasses it is!

I went on my monthly retreat to Caumsett today. The world moves in a weird kind of way in these new glasses and it was really distracting so I chose to take them off. The landscape was suddenly softer around the edges.

There are times that I need clarity and times that I need softness, and I don't just mean with my eyesight. Life gets confusing and I strive to find clarity about my next best move. Or life gets stressful and I search for a sense of softness.

Sometimes I think I search as hard as I do for clarity because I'm afraid to let go and just let things unfold. I want to feel like I'm in control. I'm scared that without clarity things won't "go right" - and that search for clarity clouds the fact that whatever is happening and whatever i'm feeling is exactly what needs to be.

Surrendering to softness is tough. Allowing. Surrendering. Trusting. These are much harder concepts to live. I need to remember that they are just as, if not more important than clarity and control.

I am hoping that practicing discernment between clarity and softness will be an ongoing lesson with these new glasses. Perhaps its that discernment, even more than the glasses themselves, that will change the way I see the world.

Sometimes we need clarity and sometimes we need softness. Which do you really need in this moment?