2015

During these last 48 hours or so of 2015, two words have been on my mind: “love” and “gratitude.”   There’s a lot more to say on both counts, and that will have to wait for next year!

For now, I just celebrate the fact that I think under the radar, these two qualities have actually gained in power and visibility in the world.  If our feet seem to be unsteady, on shifting sands, it may be that there is literally an eruption of love rumbling around, trying to break through the surface.  There are so many extraordinary humans on this planet, doing amazing, love-and-passion-filled things, and our condition keeps evolving and blossoming. I think more people than ever feel the awe and thankfulness of being alive, and are celebrating life in new ways.  Let’s not ever lose sight of the miracle of that, even when things sadden, frighten, or worry us.

As for me, my overriding emotion today is gratitude.  I think I'll look back on 2015 as the year I was really born, when I finally had the courage to speak. This is the year when I found my inner home and started to believe I am worthy of an outer one. This is the year when I really began to understand what love is, and how to focus only on it. This is the year when I began to grasp my calling. This is the year when all the scattered puzzle pieces finally came back into one picture.  For the first time, I know without a shadow of a doubt that I can hold an energy of alignment in the face of any challenge.  I have a long way to go in learning to express love and in learning to embrace it.  And I have a long way to go in learning to give and become grounded.  But with all its twists and turns, I wouldn’t trade 2015 for anything.  Many of you have taught me a lot -- a profound thank you!

Now, 2016!  Have a wonderful new year, everyone!

Room at the Inn

For the past thirty years or more, King’s College, Cambridge has commissioned a new carol to be sung at its Christmas Eve service, which is broadcast on public radio in the US.  This year’s, by Richard Causton with words by George Szirtes (who came to Britain many years ago as a refugee), is incredibly powerful but may not become a crowd favorite.  Even for me, who was basically taught 12-tone theory and composition at Smith instead of traditional music theory, the piece was somewhat hard to listen to, both musically and in terms of the words, which explored the parallel between the biblical story of “no room at the inn” and the current refugee crisis.  The musical setting was at times atonal, almost a musical cry for help.  I can’t help but think that it might resonate not only with refugees, but also with others of us who are “homeless” for other reasons.  The refrain:

"May those who travel light

Find shelter on the flight"

Christmas has almost always found me far from home.  Only twice in my life (Christmas of 1980, when I was studying for my MMus at the University of London, and last Christmas, 2014) have I been in the country that I consider home.  Sometimes I think I’ll never understand why it has been so very hard to find my way there permanently.  When I try to channel my highest self, the answer seems to be that there was a life lesson I could not have learned any other way.  If it’s the lesson I think it is, I’m finally making sense of it.  I also think in the past I believed it would be hard, and so the law of attraction responded by making it hard.

I know one thing. Once I get back there and have a home of my own, I intend to create a guest space so that I can periodically welcome other mystics or spiritual seekers to spend time with me.  They will have full access to all my spiritual books, my art supplies and my kitchen.  I’ll take them around to cathedrals or abbeys or historical spots – or leave them to their own devices while they birth their own challenging yet important callings.  Yes, at times over the years I have experienced “no room at the inn,” and it has been devastating. The shriek-y sounds in that carol resonated because I have felt that same painful despair.  But often, most recently at several stops between last Christmas and this Christmas, strangers or friends have been astonishingly generous and welcoming. I have been at the receiving end of unconditional love and uncritical acceptance, and learned what it feels like to be welcomed with open arms.  Such a gift!  I am so thankful!  Having finally embraced that I am a mystic, I realize how crucial it is for people like me to be in the kind of welcoming, safe, silent setting that promotes intense spiritual growth. My dear friends have taught me well, and now I yearn to return the favor, to be the one with a temporary home base to offer other deep seekers.

I think I’m entering kind of a hermitage phase of my life, so I don’t plan to open a big retreat center.  No, this will be a “monastery” with room for just one or two wandering mystics at a time, while I continue to love, write, research, paint and sing. (There seems to be a grand oeuvre percolating.) How I’ll find the right people or they’ll find me, I don’t know yet.  But somehow, law of attraction will do its work, and there will be room at the inn.  

Holy Night

Just checking in, because those of you who are reading this are truly family.  I had tons to say, but it's the day for blessed stillness or glorious music or just fun, so instead -- may you have a holy 24 hours or so, whatever makes it that for you!  Back in a few days...love, Liz

"Material Girl"

I just wanted to report a small amount of success in becoming a more material girl (I probably would have said this without Madonna, but thank you, Madonna!)

Last Friday, I had the opportunity to visit a major mall.  Now, this is an interesting spiritual exercise when you really cannot spend any money.  For a number of years, I have avoided malls almost literally like the plague, and on the rare occasions that I set foot in one, my whole soul and body would scream “no.”  No to the commercialism, no to the (to my eyes) unattractive clothing, no to the chain stores and huge quantities of stuff.  No to spending money.  No to making the money so I could spend the money. Just plain no.

But I was determined this time at least to enter the place with a different energy.  After all, look where all those “no’s” have brought me.  Some grand adventures, but not much in the way of solidity.

I was determined, if nothing else, to look for things I liked.  For some interesting reason, the only “material” items that really spoke to me were some extremely high end purses and wallets in the window of a store I didn’t dare even walk into.  But I stood, with my nose pressed (almost Victorian child-like) to the glass, looking at these gloriously attractive leather handbags in a variety of colors, thinking, I would genuinely like one of those.  And that.  And that too.  I mean, it sounds absurd, but it was liberating just to want something tangible, and to say it to myself without immediately contradicting myself!  For me, it was quite revolutionary, after decades of training myself not to desire material things.

And I genuinely appreciated the mall’s variety and life. I appreciated the man who helped the woman with a cane getting off the escalator, the visibly efficient and hard-working staff in several stores, the guy who said “God bless you” when I sneezed but never took his eyes off his cell phone as he strode down the hallway, the colorful shopping bags, the neat poster of a labyrinth in the coffee shop.  I spent a mere $2.53 in that mall, on an iced coffee, but upon leaving, I realized that I genuinely had not had a negative reaction to anything the whole hour. And I guess anything that is not a “no” is a “yes.”  Perhaps I am finally saying yes to life in a way I wasn’t before, which, for a wandering mystic who wants to stop wandering, is progress.

My inner landscape is transforming by the hour.  It’s the kind of progress that might be invisible to a lot of people, but things are moving.  In this deep midwinter, in the stillness, it’s happening, like a creaking glacier, like the cracking of the ice around the Essex-Charlotte ferry in February.  Erratic and slow.  But welcome.  I am grateful.

 

Comfort and Joy

The next two weeks are the holiest ones of the year for me.

It isn't, I'm afraid, because of the birth of a savior 2,000 years ago.  Even as a child, I could not quite grasp why we were not all considered "holy children." And I don't get the notion of needing a savior -- all in all, I think humans are extraordinary.  I can't explain my passion for cathedrals and Lessons and Carols services, and the music, mythology, architecture and imagery of my particular heritage, except that they bring me joy and are an expression of joy that seems to transcend doctrine.  It's a mystery.  But not the whole reason for my late-December bliss.

Solstice makes this time of year holy for many people.  I often attend solstice events and appreciate it as an alternative, focusing on this dark time as a gift of nature, and an expression of a more female aspect of the Divine.  But I haven't found a permanent spiritual home in these practices, and the other major world religions and traditions don't resonate with me in the least.  As far as I know, New Thought/Law of Attraction teachers don't attribute any special significance to late December.

And it's not about Christmas shopping.  Except for a few years in my 20's, I've rarely had any money to spend on presents.  The whole commercialization of the season has completely passed me by.  If someone were to thrust $1,000 into my hands today, and say "go, buy some presents," I wouldn't know where to start.  I'd need someone along to help me.  Clearly if we're all spiritual beings having a physical experience, I've been a bit slow at the latter part (!) This may not be the right venue to do it, but I apologize to all my friends and family for the fact that I have given so few presents over the years. It is my intention to be a bit more grounded, and material, in Act Two!  I know that many people find joy in shopping, and the giving and receiving of material things, and I'd like to open my heart to learn how to experience that.

So that leaves us back at square one.  Why are these weeks holy?  I think it's because the darkness is so mysterious and rich.  It's the one moment of the year when our connection to this whole endless expanse of universe seems most powerful.  The Christmas lights, the candles on the table, link us to the stars.  The light does shine in the darkness, and "the darkness comprehend[s] it not."

It is the time when I truly do feel "tidings of comfort and joy."  Comfort, from finally understanding (in my head, at least) that all is good, all is love.  The little children who shook with fear over the epic struggle of good versus evil can come out now.  The struggle is over.  We can start to breathe now. 

Joy is the heart part of the equation, when you feel in your heart the all-encompassing love. I still only feel joy for short moments from time to time, but at least now I know what it is, and am beginning to know how to extend the moments out.  Joy just seems more accessible in this dark, snowy, breath-taking moment of the year.

Maybe if my moments of joy, reasons for joy, and expression of joy can overlap for just a few days with your moments of joy, reasons for joy, and expression of joy, the world will become a better place.  Maybe when we hear the carols and the peals of bells, then look out at the twinkling stars, we can imagine that they are singing back at us.

Good morning

Good morning.  Yes, another day where I've deep-sixed my original blog idea. This one was about the worst career (and life) advice I ever received.  It was probably advice that would have served me well on a practical level, but it was advice I simply could not follow from a "do unto others as you would have others do unto you" standpoint.  And my essay was great, except that I would have had to print those words here and put them out into the world, and, in that sense, further "imprint" them in all our hearts.  And I couldn't do that.

So I'm winging it. 

And returning to, I guess, what has become the theme of this Liz path.  Love. Just general, learning to feel it, learning to know what love is and what love isn't, and just taking the old chisel to that blocked up pipeline to the Divine and letting a tiny bit more in every day.  The last few nights, I've gone back again and again to the amazing Abraham-Hicks video on YouTube called "Votre Quete Sans Fin." Don't worry, she speaks in English and this has been posted by a French speaker who has given it French subtitles, but I haven't found another version of it.  Essentially, the gist of it is, it is our never-ending quest to "flow" love out into the world, and also to love ourselves.  Really to be able to look at ourselves in the mirror every day and feel how profoundly the Universe/God/Source loves us.  I'm sorry I don't even know how to share the link, but definitely, find it and listen to it during this mystical deep December.

And in a related note, I watched a rather silly and yet strangely touching movie last night called "Penelope." Without totally spoiling it, I guess I can say that this young lady has been the recipient of a family curse, and all involved have misunderstood how the curse will be reversed.  It only happens in a way that is, yup, relevant here.

That's all for this morning...

Spirit of the Season

Just a short one.

Here's my prescription for getting into the spirit of the season.  Take at least one day in December and:

• Spend it in wildness, as far away from a big city as you can get.  Watch the pale December sun and the slight movement of brown grasses and stark trees.  Watch the sun go down and a distant set of colorful tree lights come on through the woods.  Watch the stars before you go to bed.
• Don't buy anything, online or at a store. See what it feels like.
• Listen to music of the season, or any music that touches your heart.

Have a blessed weekend, friends!

Money I

I have wanted to talk about money almost ever since I started writing this blog this summer.  It has been so central to my journey, from the moment I arrived into a family weighed down with financial tension, to today.  In an odd way, I think of it as having been the catalyst for my entire spiritual journey.  Notions of "worth," "abundance," "love," "work," -- money touches on everything, doesn't it? 

It complicates matters having in recent years become a complete "believer" in the law of attraction.  When you know that focusing on the negative will only bring more negativity into your life, the old tendency to analyze, assess problems, and write histories has to be, itself, re-assessed.  Every time I sit down to write a blog about money, I sink into the mire.  This past weekend, I even thought I had come up with an "aha" that might explain (even more than the umpteen other "perfect storm" reasons) why my life in this regard has been so gut-wrenching, and yet (of course!) when I went back to read the essay, I felt that yucky feeling.  And when I analyze or criticize "the system," the same thing happens. Ah well, at least I'm proud that I am beginning to register what I am feeling. 

Perhaps I can say this without attracting too much negativity...my whole life, I have felt like a being from another planet, plopped down into an environment where this strange form of payment is used, and that they "didn't use that where I came from" and I don't get it.  It's actually rather humorous, when I can laugh about it, how very foreign, almost archaic, the whole construct feels.  I know that there must be people out there to whom it all makes sense, and at least some to whom money comes easily. There must be people who can spend money, even a dollar or two, without inner turmoil.  I know that for some people, money is a positive thing, but try as I might, it hasn't felt like a net "love" construct to me.

Thanks to all the work I've done the last few months, I feel increasingly focused and confident about who I am and what gifts I wish to use moving forward, and yet I can't seem to bear the thought of "charging money," per se, and putting others through the pain I have experienced.  And to return to the paradigm of doing 40-hour-a-week work inappropriate to my skills only for the sake of money seems absolutely contrary to my calling at this late stage of the game.  Be myself, or make money. This is the seemingly impossible crossroad I have encountered over and over on my path, pockets empty and spirits flagging. Is there a third way?

Well, yesterday, I came as close as I ever have to that third way, a potential compromise.  At least for me, right now.  It would make me so happy if it helps you at all in your relationship with money.

I'm making the following commitments for Act II of my life. 

• I commit this Act to love.
• I commit myself to loving the people I love, and at the very least, blessing the people I cannot fully love.
• I commit myself to doing, as much as possible, only activities that I truly love.
• I commit myself to being in a place that I love.
• I commit myself to welcoming "pay" or support of any kind given out of love or genuine appreciation of who I am and what I do from a place of love.
• I commit myself to start loving "things," and embracing being a physical being on this planet who wants to be surrounded by beautiful things, who wants a home.  I commit myself to accepting the role of money, at this time in history, in the modest acquisition of beautiful things.
• I commit myself, as much as possible, to spending money only on things I love, and loving the things I spend money on.
• I commit myself to supporting the people and causes I love.
• I commit myself to expanding my heart enough so that I don't dread or fear spending money. I commit myself to being thankful for the goods or services I have bought, and for the people who brought them to me.
• I commit myself to genuinely greeting and loving the guy or girl behind the cash register.  I have been there. They are me.
• I commit myself to leadership, when it becomes clear how I was meant to lead. I commit to remembering, when I do become a leader, what it was like to be on the "bottom."
• I commit myself to everyone's following of their path of love, so that eventually, there will be no "bottom."
• I commit myself to knowing that I can't see all the ways that the Universe may choose to share abundance with me. I commit to gratitude and open-hearted awe at the possibilities.
• Most of all, I commit to loving myself and this amazing river of life energy that I am a part of.  Maybe I was ahead of my time or "onto something" about money, and maybe I wasn't.  Either way, I am here in a society that uses the stuff, I believe I chose to be here at this time and place, and I commit to loving my path, and to never giving up!

Intuition

As has happened several times recently, there was another blog post planned for today, and yet it’s an active moment and I’m going to take a different path.  I sense, intuitively, that it’s the right thing to do.

And so, that’s the topic.  An online popularized version of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator was sent to me a few days ago.  Initially, I thought, why take this again?  I’ve done it several times, and always get the same result – Introvert and Extravert almost equal 50-50, Intuitive, Feeling, Perceiving.  But I had never done an online version of this, and while it wasn’t the official Myers-Briggs assessment, I tried it.  Nothing has changed over the years, except one thing.  On this particular assessment, my “intuitive” score was 85, and my “sensing” one a mere 15.  I’ve seen so many different wordings of what this means, but I think what it basically reveals is my natural tendency to address the world via my inner guidance rather than via what I am seeing and experiencing on the outside.  I spent most of the day yesterday trying to take in what it means to operate that intuitively. 

I mean, it didn’t surprise me.  Almost everything I do really well, I do quickly and intuitively, and usually without instructions.  Mix colors/paint.  Sight read music, harmonize, or sing along with music I have never heard before. Cook with no recipe. Create needlework and other crafts without patterns. Writing this blog is highly intuitive. Back when I was at Smith, I practiced about an hour a day for my senior organ recital, while friends were practicing hours and hours.  The recital went brilliantly.  When I follow my intuition and values, timings can work out almost magically; the downside is that such a journey may appear disorderly, even chaotic, to some, and routines and structures easily become boring for me.  My way of functioning is that, when I reach a crossroad, I decide on the next step based on my gut feeling of what would lead to the deepest learning experience.  Almost inevitably, when people suggest that I “get serious and work on a life plan,” I burst into tears.  The suggestion is so contrary to my way of operating, it causes me physical pain.  However, I understand that the reverse is also true, that my way of operating causes many people at the least, perplexity and irritation. Our culture is based on a slow, step-by-step, goal-oriented and institutionalized model, one that is almost literally impossible for some of us.  Intuitive and introverted people can easily become hermits in order to escape this paradigm, a path that even tempts me from time to time. 

So at this particular crossroad, what do I “do” with finding out that my intuitive side is potentially even stronger than I thought?  Life coaches say to work with your strengths, not at cross purposes to them.  I know that even though I have largely operated in alignment with my strengths, I’ve also carried a huge amount of shame, assuming that being me was “wrong.”  Ridiculous. Unsuccessful.  I mean, it has often seemed to be all those things.  I can see why I have often tried to undo my own natural leanings.

However, all of the 16 Myers Briggs “types” are considered equally valid, and I have to assume that the answer now, more than ever, as I have been concluding for months, is to be more fully me.  Look within for guidance more and more.  Follow my intuitive leadings more quickly.  Love and respect that inner wisdom, and operate from it ever more fully.  As an introvert, spend as much time as possible alone, thinking, writing, researching, creating – then attend that cocktail party or art opening, or communal music making experience, and lead by example. Let my extravert out from time to time. Feel my feelings and express my perspective on the human condition, and, as a “P,” stay open and flexible.  Love myself and the way I am, and stop fighting her.  I am the way I am for a reason, as we all are!

I needed to "buck myself up" today for a reason...my next blog will be on my favorite topic and greatest challenge, money.  If I announce that to you today, I cannot chicken out!

Invention

It has been another mystifying, horrifying week on a lot of levels, so forgive me for focusing on something totally different.  

I have discovered those round, robot vacuums that make their way around rooms on their own, with no human help.  Now, admittedly, vacuuming is my least favorite chore, especially in the years since an elbow injury made some traditional vacuums almost impossible to use.  Unlike dishwashing and refrigerator cleaning, which I love for some reason, I don't seem to really register the cleanliness results of vacuuming, so can find myself leaving it much too long.

However, I love delegating, and I love watching this robot in action!  Here I am, with my ridiculously high IQ, absolutely mesmerized by the thing.  When it hits the leg of a chair, it rotates a few degrees and tries to go in the new direction.  If it's blocked again, it may circle around 180 degrees, or 90, or even just slightly.  It seems to know when to circle around a table leg or doorway.  It seems to get itself out of all but the most impossible scrapes, and even then, a disembodied voice alerts you to the fact that it's in trouble and needs to be moved.  How, I wonder, does it "decide" what the next tack will be?  And how does its tiny little brush pick up so much dirt?

My lifetime has seen perhaps millions of new inventions, many of which are part of my day-to-day life.  And yet I have to confess that this is the first one whose inventors I can imagine in their lab.  I can imagine them busy at work designing, going through unsuccessful efforts, making hundreds of test runs, then cheering in celebration once they realized it worked, high fives all around.  I mean, I find myself cheering the darned thing! I'm kind of jealous of inventors of practical life tools...when your creative output is entirely of the musical, artistic and written nature, you're never sure how or if your efforts are changing lives. You may never get paid. You may never be sure if anything you have done has made people smile or do a happy dance!

But I sure am grateful for all the inventors out there, particularly of this funny little machine.  And may we all, when faced with roadblocks and discouragement, just kind of shift direction a few degrees and give the new path a try.  Silly whirring noise optional.

Palettes

Life gets rather "interesting" once you have gently released the whole notion of good versus evil.  I mean, it is so much easier, faced with all the craziness in the world and even in our personal lives, to play the old battle game, to put on the armor, pick up the shield, the sword, the crossbow (and modern equivalents) and run screaming into battle.  (OK, so I've been watching a little too much "Vikings"!)

Once you recognize only a force for "good" in the world, it's disconcerting at first.  You may have changed, but the world hasn't. You may be able to dimly see "that of God" in everyone (as the Quakers teach), but if a person's channel to the Divine is so blocked as to be, for all practical purposes, nonexistent, and they are still wreaking havoc on the world, the old temptation to do something is so strong.  You want to fight.  You want to criticize.  You want to rail.  You want to plead.  You want to march in protest.  You want to beg.  You want to shame.  You want to show them.  You want to show the world.  You want to make a legal case or a moral one. You want to teach.  You want to convert. You want to save. Yet somehow, none of it feels right any more.

I returned to oil painting the other day.  My attempt was rather lame, but it reminded me of something that may be relevant here.  We all know of ROY G. BV, the mnemonic for "red-orange-yellow-green-blue-violet" on the color wheel.  Well, in fact there are only three "primary" colors (red, yellow and blue) from which all other colors in nature and art are derived.  I am not all that partial to yellow, but if I arbitrarily decided to remove yellow from all my paintings, and from my palette, I would immediately lose all the variations on orange and green as well since they have yellow in them. Indeed, I'd be left with only half a color wheel.  As a painter, I know that opposite (complementary) colors are crucial to creating a rich painting, and that there is no way to permanently "eliminate" any individual color and still create art.

I'm not sure what this means on the international stage.  And I'm just barely "there" in person, grasping only that my personal "life painting" is the only one I can really control.  When a person or condition seems to be manifesting a hue that I'm not partial to, and I do not understand why they have chosen to be the way they are in my world, I'm at that point in life where I no longer wish to fight.  Instead, I remind myself that this is all part of my color palette, which is only the tip of the iceberg of all the colors in nature.  I can chose to use that undesired color as an undercoat or mixed with its complement, enriching today's blend of colors...or I just don't have to use it at all, and focus instead on colors I'm more fond of.  I'm the painter.  With each new painting, each new day, I can chose what colors to use, how to use them, and where to focus.  Faced with all that's happening in the world, it sure is nice just to have that little bit of power.

A Silent Shift

I wrote several potential blog posts over the weekend and they are sitting there, all deep and meaningful, but they are just not right for today.  There is something “holding the breath”-like on this last day of November.  Down below the cantankerous surface of social media and screaming headlines, the decrying and crying, a silent shift. Yes, for the better, ultimately.  I do believe that.  The human spirit is blossoming, taking off right now.  

 

Giving Thanks

There is so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.  I have a roof over my head as I finish the final minutes of "intermission," thanks to a dear friend and her ever-entertaining dog and cat.  I'm thankful to be part of a big Thanksgiving celebration and an excuse to bake one of my famous pies.  I'm thankful that I reminded myself yesterday that I can still paint in oils.  I am thankful for my computer, the library, and all my tools for information gathering and networking.  I'm thankful for world events, and all the ways they inspire thought and new spiritual understandings.  I'm thankful for friends near and far, some of whom are experiencing real challenges this month, and I'm sending them love.  I'm also, strangely enough, thankful for the raw, persistent and perplexing challenges in my own life, because I know that deep down they are catalysts for growth.  For whatever reason, I may not yet have learned their lessons, but that doesn't mean I cannot.  Somewhere deep down there within me is the power to do so.  Somewhere deep in me is extraordinary power, period.

More than anything, I am thankful for this blog, and the small audience of you out there reading it.  I know there is much to be done to make it more sophisticated, colorful and interactive. Yet for these few months, it has been what it needed to be.  Most of you cannot imagine the courage it has taken just to speak my truth in this modest way.  Each click of the "publish" button fills me with such fear, terror even, but once I do, I feel relief.  Yes, I'm finally out there in the world.  No lightning bolt. I'm still alive to write another day. Phew.

So I've only just scratched the surface.  To be a writer, regularly expressing herself in an ever-changing, spiritually-evolving world...what a great job!  I'm thankful.

Bittersweet

The other night, I had a very disorienting moment.  Perhaps it is on account of those little drips of divine love that I have finally allowed into my inner being.  They are sloshing around way at the bottom of the barrel, but are beginning to be noticeable.  Maybe it’s the “hundredth monkey” effect, where seven or eight years of Law of Attraction reading has finally taken hold.

But suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, I understood the theoretical possibility of experiencing the “sweet” not weighed down with the “bitter.”  Just for a moment, mind you, but long enough to completely upend me.

I don’t think there’s any doubt about it.  I’ve been addicted to the bittersweet.  I have always assumed that steps forward would be accompanied by steps backward.  That happiness had an alarm clock wired up to it (“OK, girl, you’ve got three minutes, grab as much as you can before uncertainty returns.”) That dreams coming true would always be accompanied by homelessness or poverty.  Passion would always be accompanied by rejection or solitude.  Accomplishment would always be accompanied by crushing debt.  People who were pleasant on the surface were rage-filled underneath, etc.  A lasting, unadulterated sense of joy, love, happiness or power was literally inconceivable, and so, of course, because you cannot experience what you cannot conceive of, I never experienced them.  Indeed, it was my impression that bittersweetness was a universal reality – I looked as reference at all the people who die two weeks after they retire.  Fall in love, then receive a cancer diagnosis.  Work like dogs to get a little bit ahead, then receive a huge medical bill. 

And much of our literature is based on a poignant, “tragic” construct, from Romeo and Juliet to The Gift of the Magi.  Some of our most potent religious beliefs twin the bitter with the sweet.  And look at creative masterpieces of art, music and drama.  My favorite composer?  Herbert Howells.  Hello?  Has there ever been music more wrenchingly, achingly, gorgeously, bittersweet?

Years ago, I tried to articulate my own life philosophy, to frame things without traditional language.  I’m proud of my efforts and process.  But let’s just say that, even there, in what I hoped was a new idea, I could not conceive of “joy” that was free to float upward without a tragedy “tether.” 

We are human.  We are always going to experience what Abraham-Hicks calls “contrast.”  It is an inevitable part and parcel of being on this planet, and it is necessary to spur desire, creativity, and growth.  But what I don’t think I understood until the other night was, energetically, how different pure joy is from bittersweetness.  Even one fleeting moment where I didn’t wait for the other shoe to drop was enough to have forever changed my landscape, both inner and outer.  The freedom was breathtaking but so powerful that I could see why most of us quickly grab for the nearest dead weight!  Books make it sound easy to focus on the positive, but when bittersweet is the highest experience you’ve ever had, you don’t really know what pure positive is.

What this one moment will mean for life going forward, I don’t know, but it has sure thrown me for a loop. I am thankful for it, though, and for the new, higher perspective it will surely bring. 

Reading

OK, so I have a new favorite author.  Kate Morton.  I've always liked reading, but until now have never really found a fiction author whose work I could literally stay up all night reading.  Now I have.  Her books have been around seven or eight years, but I just hadn't caught up, I guess.  What they have in common are strong women characters, long-held family secrets that one character is trying to get to the bottom of, story lines that span two, three, even four generations, and unique houses in England with personality.  Wow, what a combination!

The odd thing, though, is that at the end of a book, I spend at least 24 to 48 hours in kind of breathtaking appreciation of the remarkableness of normal life.  Whatever time period she is describing, be it wartime London or Edwardian Cornwall, you feel like you are there.  And then, once your head is out of the book, you feel as if your own steps are being taken as part of some larger drama.  I love to write, and have even given fiction one try, but her facility with words, and her interweaving of time periods and characters, leaves me in the dust.

I guess it has been a good week for distraction.  The news is overwhelming. I realize that the difference between now and my Time Inc. days is that on social media, I am not only accessing the perspective of one or two major news organizations, but dozens upon dozens of perspectives, warnings, criticisms, and predictions.  Can there possibly have ever been a time in human history where keeping a calm center was more difficult?

And yet, in the end, it is rather simple to sort through it all.  There is love, and there is the lack thereof.  As I scan through news feeds and news reports, wherever I access them, I try to sense the "energy" of the sender.  And when I can, perhaps paradoxically, to love the mixed cacophony. Somehow, we'll survive these times, and some brilliant writer 50 or 100 years from now will write about it.

Paris

It's hard to know what to say about this weekend, or the myriad other tragic recent events that have left so many of us shattered, fearful, and even angry, that hasn't already been said in the traditional media, social media, and elsewhere.

The only thing I can add, I guess, is this.  I have come to believe that there is only one "force" or "energy" in the Universe, and that is love.  Everything else is varying degrees of separation from love.  The enormity of that love is, itself, scary.  Most of us spend a lifetime pushing away from it.  Only a year ago or so I realized I had to make a choice -- to continue to allow an empty chasm at the core of my being, or to risk opening up the tap and allowing this powerful life force to fill the void.  Emptiness was terrifying, and love was terrifying, but there could be no middle ground.  So I opened the tap, slowly, so as not to swamp myself.  Love has begun to trickle in, drip, drip, drip.  At aged nearly 60.  Damn.

These world events are a reminder to go within, to find one thing, anything, to love.  And if we can't love this hard week, then liking is good.  Not social media "liking" but as deeply as we can bear, something in ourselves, our world, the wider world, in the stars.  In the end, we can't control anyone else's pipeline to love, only our own.  With everything that is happening, that's actually a relief.

Gratitude II

This isn't the post I was going to write today, but I guess being a blogger is a bit like being a stand-up comedian or a story teller.  When you face your audience, a whole different story may come out than you intended.

Do you ever have one of those nights when you simply cannot get to sleep? You end up reading an entire book, and roll your eyes at that cup of tea you had just a little too late in the day.  Once the light is off, you're still sitting bolt upright in the dark, feeling like your eyes are literally propped open with toothpicks.

And, last night, that's when it happened.  I was blindsided by a wave of gratitude unlike any I have ever felt.  Having just read a marvelous book (The House at Tyneford by Natasha Solomons) the only explanation I have is that for this brief moment in time, I could see my own life as a novelist or filmmaker might, as astonishingly full, dramatic, colorful, even suspense-filled.  I was tearful, and yet also beaming with pride, over the degrees earned, the paintings painted, the letters, articles and blogs written, the students taught, the friends made, the travels and risks taken, and the evensong services sung and heard  Whereas normally my attention gets stuck in the many roadblocks, hardships and uncertainties that have characterized my journey -- tempting me to lose heart -- in this context I could see them as important plot devices, catalysts for determination, movement and change.  I was the heroine of my own novel.  And yet, I was also the author.  For perhaps the first time I fully embraced my creative role in all of it, good and bad.

And there was more to come.  The wave of thankfulness lingered for a second in the present, and the warmth, safety, and new friends of my temporary current home, but then the wave kept moving, and pulled into its orbit my whole future.  Now, I'm not talking about the sometimes well meaning, but slightly manipulative, "thanks in advance to the Universe for getting me x, y or z."  Usually this doesn't work because underlying it is fear, a kind of "oh no, what will happen to me if x, y and z don't come?"  No, this appreciation was different.  It was a sort of gratitude bliss that wasn't attached to outcome.  It's like, I can see that I am beginning to trust my choices and actions, in tandem with the powerful stream of Life and Love, and I can feel that what I'm creating now will be even more remarkable and book-worthy if I can stay thankful and open hearted.  I finally fell asleep with a smile on my face.

I won't lie.  It was hard to maintain this level of positivity in the light of day, as a rainy wind blew and fear tried to take the reins.  And yet, at least now I have a clear memory of nearly an hour of my life spent in pure thankfulness.  And I think it will get easier and easier to align to that energy moving forward.  This is one heck of a good book I am writing.  And what I love is, we are all writing amazing books if you think about it.  I truly don't know one person with a boring life! Do you??

So much information

This is another stab at a topic I know I've already written about.  Thanks for bearing with me! 

One of the things that I keep having to remind myself is that there has never been a generation of humans exposed on a daily basis to so much information.  It is not only that there are so many more humans on the planet with every passing day, each with their own interests, skills and activities.  Each person is making an impact ("news" on some level or another), and we are receiving this wide-ranging news almost non-stop over the course of the day, in dozens of forms, and visually taking in ever more input. 

I was proud to be a "generalist" early in my lifetime, a Jill of all trades, master of none.  And I still believe in the American liberal arts education, which encourages exposure to many different academic disciplines. I believe in the kind of mind that can look at the big picture, analyze it, and find creative solutions in ways that perhaps a person of a very specialized education cannot.  Yet, this very generalization almost caused me not to be accepted into my British master's program -- evidently, in those days, an American undergraduate transcript was looked on as suspiciously unfocused.  Mine was a patchwork of music theory, music history, composition, conducting, and piano and organ -- but also English Literature, Chaucer, Scottish Literary Tradition, European history, theology, earth sciences and art.  Kind of a snapshot of me, really.  Then, when I worked as a letters correspondent at Time Magazine, part of our job was to read the New York Times every morning, so that we would be conversant about up-to-the-minute world and national news before responding to reader challenges to Time's own reporting. (This was before 24 hour cable news, Twitter, Facebook, or even e-mail.  Letters were still literally delivered by U.S. mail.) The journalistic "eye" and curiosity rubbed off and has stayed with me.  I can "do" generalist really well.

The down side of this for those of us who might have forgotten our own focus, or might be searching for it from scratch, is that the generalist ethos -- magnified by today's constant news stream -- means that your thoughts are constantly bouncing around from topic to topic to topic.  I give myself a hard time that I'm not more interested in, say, climate change and fashion and politics and new trends in physics. I get sucked into feeling responsible for keeping up with all of it. Then you add to it a tendency to worry about what other people are thinking, and all this external input can be utterly paralyzing. 

I tried to "do" the Times today, and yet after reading a few articles about Great Britain and a few recipes for Thanksgiving, I couldn't go any further.  It's the same with my Facebook news feed: I am grateful for links to the music and art that I am passionate about, and just to see my friends' names and faces.  But I just cannot do much more than scroll through about 80% of it.  I bless the fact that such-and-such is their passion, but have to remind myself constantly that I am not required to add it to my own repertoire.  It's too much.  This human brain has just about reached its capacity.

Our world will only become more and more complex and fascinating.  It's a conundrum.  How can we continue to be informed, educated thinkers and teachers if we have reached the saturation point? I really don't want to become a hermit.  In fact, this coming decade is likely to be the most productive and exciting of my life, if I can focus exclusively on those topics that I truly care about.  The world population may grow by another few billion before the end of my life, and who knows how information will be disseminated by then?  This is life energy continuing to grow and change, and it will not stop. "It's all good." But I suspect that the only way I will truly make my mark is to gently release the tendency to gather and analyze so much new external information, and focus more on creatively expressing what's already within me. 

Focusing

Many years ago, when I was studying at Parsons School of Design, I took a colored pencil course.  You might think that colored pencil would be an easy medium, but it is surprisingly tricky.  Anyway, that particular afternoon, when we walked into the classroom, it was partially darkened so that we would concentrate on an image being projected onto a screen in the front.  The image consisted of blurry areas of color, splotches, really.  At first I thought the teacher had inadvertently neglected to put the slide into focus, but soon I grasped that he had left it blurry on purpose.  He asked us to reproduce what we were seeing, using colored pencils.

I’m sure I thought, “no biggie,” and proceeded in a relaxed way to try to reproduce these beautiful, shimmering areas of color.  And initially, that seemed to be what the whole assignment was going to be about.  Yet probably about five minutes into the exercise, I started to notice that each time I looked up, the image appeared to be getting slightly sharper.  Indeed, I finally watched as our professor inconspicuously touched the “focus” button about every two or three minutes.  In about half an hour, the image reached full clarity, and our sketches overall were quite powerful, in part because we had responded initially only to areas of shading and color, without being distracted by detail.  As we added detail, it was supported more richly than if we had seen the image (I believe it was a Manet still life) clearly from the start.

I guess you have figured out that I like metaphors, and it is dawning on me that this art exercise is a perfect metaphor for my last few years, having started with an extremely blurry image, and begun, piece by piece, to “draw” it, as it slowly came into focus.  Moments of furious creative activity have been followed by days, even months of “processing” the updated picture.  Each time I pause, things begin to look sharper.

Most recently, the Danielle LaPorte book was so honest and direct that I was forced to confront how I continue to almost deliberately and fearfully shy from my own identity, leaving my picture blurry.  After years of “trying” to be many wonderful things, my real passions (writing/research; England; English church music; women’s spirituality; English history, art, spiritual history, etc.) came into sharper focus than ever.  A few days of “processing” later, I started work on the collage, which presented this material quite differently but more visually and somewhat more powerfully.  After that, there were several more days of processing, and then this past weekend was another turn of the focus wheel…I joined an academic online group whose topic aligns with a growing area of interest and research for me.  I then got up the courage to order two inexpensive used books that are relevant to the kind of writing I may soon be doing…why it still requires courage to do these things, I don’t know.  When you are trying to bring focus to decades of blurriness, each step, each placement of pencil to paper, is scary.

The picture that is emerging is slightly off target from the traditional path for someone who loves English church music.  That’s OK.  My journey always was, as a young woman of my generation. That’s why things got so blurry in the first place. I am thrilled this morning to learn that a young American woman has been named an Organ Scholar at an English cathedral, one of the first women and, I am quite sure, the first American woman to do so.  Wow. A lot has changed in 40 years…

But my picture, sixty years in the making, will look nothing like hers, even though we share the same passion.  It is made up of a whole wider set of colors and experiences which, in the end, I am glad I had. Each time I put my head down and creatively process my emerging path, the unseen “teacher” seems to be sharpening up the image.  When I look up, I’m seeing more and more that interests me and delights me, and seeing it more clearly – my own personal life masterpiece.  The more I focus on abstracts like joy and happiness and color and abundance, the more the details are presenting themselves, before my very eyes…

Spring ahead, fall back...

I am sure many of you have had the experience of moving forward in a positive way, and then, seemingly out of nowhere, waves of old fear and negativity seem to rush in, sort of a tsunami.  Almost every spiritual teacher I have read in the last few years describes this phenomenon.  The general consensus is that, when you start to move to a new level, you unleash old fears that are, in effect, threatened by your progress.  These fears have, in their own way, been a crutch, a safety net, and they are used to being useful, I suppose. 

Actually, what is manifesting for me right now isn’t fear so much as impatience, and I think that may be considered slight progress in itself.  Impatience is somewhat further up Abraham-Hicks’s feeling scale than fear or despair.  Impatience means that you are more alive, more engaged, not digging yourself into a hole and giving up.  I'm vacillating between chomping at the bit, and losing steam entirely or sliding backward.

I think it has to do with focus.  It’s pretty straightforward.  When I focus on the future, and on healing and forward movement, I spring ahead, as I did, for instance, when I went “window” shopping earlier this week.  When, perhaps due to fatigue, I just cannot maintain that focus, my thoughts inevitably turn to the past, the obstacles I’ve encountered, etc. etc.  And when I focus on that, I start to "fall back" down a slippery slope toward powerlessness and helplessness.  When I think about obstacles, more obstacles start to appear in the present.

Part of it may be about being ever more deliberate in creating a new image.  For about five years, my “image” has been that of a woman with “a few hundred dollars and a dream.” It was dramatic, it was heroic, and it was, in an odd way, magical, because I have accomplished some stunning things on almost nothing.  But when that is your default setting, you return to that extremely tenuous place time and time again, only to start all over again.  Your inner self somehow thinks that your phrase is your identity, your “home.”  And there is the implication in that wording that I am separate from my dream, which creates its own reality.

So I think it’s time to replace that “catch phrase” and default setting, and quickly.  The first one that comes to mind is, “living the dream.”  Hmmm, definitely an improvement!  I’ll keep you posted!  Have a great weekend, and hope your path is positive!

Desire II

Just an update to a recent blog, where I spoke of having spent years not even wanting to own things, and limiting almost to nothing my contact with stores (other than the lowest end big box stores, where I could get what little I bought, inexpensively.)

So the other day, a friend and I went to must be two of the nicest gift shops in the Adirondacks.  I wouldn’t have done it on my own, but I decided it would be good practice.  Left to my own devices, I probably wouldn’t have gone in, or would have gone in, made a quick spin around and walked out embroiled in a complex set of negative emotions: jealousy, frustration, superiority ("I don’t need those kinds of things") – you name it.  Instead, I took a deep breath, and got started.  I smelled the scented soaps.  I felt the glorious carpeting.  I looked with wonder at the colors of the cashmere scarves.  I imagined the jewelry on me, not on the little cardboard cards.  I admired gorgeous, innovative clothing designs.  I laughed at the clever toys, and tried testers of several colognes and scents.  When I looked at the price tags, instead of seeing them as monsters, with the power to reduce me to a shame-filled nothing, I just saw them as numbers.  “Hmm…175 dollars, 20 dollars, 695 dollars…”  I didn’t buy anything, but I found that I walked out of these places in a really new mind frame.  I appreciated what other people had created.  I wanted.  I desired.  I was oddly at peace.

Now, of course, these are gift shops, but I’ve been frozen even in that regard.  Not able to give to myself, or to others.  So it was also the first time in years I saw things that friends might like, and that, too, was progress.

Many people might say, well now, Liz, if you had played by the rules all these years and focused on money first, and making more of it, you wouldn’t have been in this position.  And I don’t know what comes first, the chicken or the egg.  But if you feel so cut off from yourself that you don’t even know what you like or what your preferences are, the desire to thrive and earn and be part of the whole network of “things” dies, and all the consumer products in the world aren’t incentive enough because you don’t see yourself in them. 

Do I want all 6 or 7 billion of us to become passionate consumers, desiring more and more until we drown ourselves in stuff?  No.  But I found out from hard experience that the desire to express, to own, to create, to thrive is life. It is part of being human and living on a physical planet.  Many of my friends are going through a process of simplifying and paring down, and this, too is natural at certain stages.  But inwardly, I find myself saying, don’t go too far!  Don’t overdo it! Be very thoughtful about keeping those few things that genuinely reflect you, that are a physical manifestation of you, because there needs to be an anchor to keep you on the planet from which to start growing and desiring again.  I don’t think it’s a given that we will “find ourselves” when we’ve pared down to nothing, although it worked for me eventually.  While it may be that many of us need to do the inner work first, then “consume” from there, it’s a delicate balancing act not to end up with zeros all across the board.

I’m pleased that I saw things that were beautiful to me, and wanted them.  I’m pleased that I could see them, and not be sent into a tailspin.  I’m pleased that I smiled as we drove away.  Suddenly, a whole new world of loveliness and possibility seems to be opening up to me.

 

My New Resume

OK, so about a week ago I finished Danielle LaPorte’s Fire Starter book.  I am still reeling from the power of it, and so thankful to have had it brought to my attention.  However, it ended before I had quite made sense of how to incorporate all my new revelations into a cohesive whole, a brand or career to carry forward into the world.

Of course, in the end, there haven’t really been any “new” revelations at all.  I have just run out of excuses (and fears).  A book like LaPorte’s simply gives energetic iteration to the message all of us have heard in a million guises: “be yourself.”  And yet those of us who, for whatever reason, have crammed that self into a tiny box, sealed it tight and hoped to be tossed into a trash bin somewhere – people like us need to read such books regularly for a constant reminder. As the energetic “hit” of the last page of an excellent book starts to fade, I can feel myself starting to slink off to find my old box.  That Greek Chorus of negativity starts to sing: “other people can be themselves but you cannot”; “there is no modern job or career that fits your passion and your journey, so forget it”; “everyone else is miserable in their job.  What makes you so special?”; “if you haven’t figured it out by 59-and-three-quarters, you’re a goner.”

One of the things that really strikes me is the utter and total disconnect between the material that this book evoked from me, and my resume.  The latter is too traditional, and I know that.  It has been utterly inadequate at doing anything but represent the bare bones of what I’ve done: my degrees, and the highlights of my work life at Time Magazine, teaching, running a small art association, and office work/data entry.  (What my resume does not highlight are my many experiences in retail, waitressing, dishwashing, ice-cream scooping, house- and pet-sitting, and everything I have done just to try to stay alive in recent years.)  This traditional resume long ago ceased to be effective at expressing who I am or what I am capable of, perhaps because I had lost touch with those things myself.  It barely gets me jobs of any kind any more, and it is confusing, even to me, and feels “dead.”  It represents 35 years of exile and hibernation.  So to go from the high of LaPorte’s book to thinking about my resume was demoralizing in the extreme.  I almost got out the packing tape to seal my little box up and set it out there with the garbage, again.

Fortunately, the artist in me chose that moment to kick into high gear and breathe a little life into the process. I knew I needed to make a collage.  Not a “slap a few words and pictures on some cardboard” collage, but a big, complex, self-portrait of me and my passions.  It took nearly a week, but when I stood back and looked at it, it was, like, “this is me, and hell, is she extraordinary!”  I realized that this is my resume!  This is who I am!

So many potential blog topics come to mind:  the soul-deadening aspect of trying to get a job with a written list of accomplishments; the feminist and artistic implications of a “right brain” person not functioning in a left brain world (creatively, I can do both equally well, but clearly the right brain/artistic/musical/mystical/spontaneous piece is how I really operate); the inadequacy of our traditional job market process and financial system as a vehicle for so many of us and our unique gifts.  As we try to pour ourselves into the mold that someone else needs, we can lose ourselves.  And, heck, that’s the point of books like these, to urge us to focus on who we are, not what people want from us.  It’s not for nothing that the word “employer” (in French) is “to use”, and employee means, “to be used.”  I begin to understand why I’ve just been unable to fit in.  Indeed, maybe I’m even strangely proud of it!

This morning, I’m praying for the courage to get this huge collage scanned, then put a copy of it under my name on a piece of paper. I’m praying for the courage to call this my resume, the courage to create a web page with this image as its focus.  Maybe there are people who have been looking, literally, for what I have to offer, looking for a unique vision and a colorful life journey.  That’s a resume I’d be proud to hand out, and which might successfully magnetize the kinds of opportunities I’d love!

All Saints

Just operating under the assumption that many of the people I know are "saints"...Happy Sunday!

Halloween

OK, I really, really don’t like Halloween.  Ever since I was a child, I have had a fear of people in masks, people pretending to be something they are not.  I don’t have too many major fears any more, but a few relatively minor ones seem to be sticking to me like glue.  This is one of them.  I don’t like scary movies, people in costumes, buckets of “brains,” skeletons, zombies, any of it!  Halloween is one of those days when, given my druthers, I’d rather just hole up somewhere in the dark with the porch light off so people won’t come to the door.

Oddly enough, I have changed in one respect from childhood, which is that as a child, I did not like fantasy stories, even ones as mainstream as The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.  I was even lukewarm about The Wizard of Oz.  I was exceedingly serious, and had a doll collection (didn’t play with dolls, or stuffed animals, which I was told were too full of germs!) I preferred books and toys about history, like Little House on the Prairie, and my dollhouse, which had been my mother’s and was filled with 1930’s era furnishings.  I would sketch illustrations to stories about the Revolutionary War or the Civil War, or blueprints of our house. These kinds of things were about how things “really were.”  They were putting an honest face on life.  Even my Barbie doll was atypical, because my grandmother, who had given her to me, made all of her clothes.  So Barbie wasn’t flashy and hip and 1960’s, but a bit Depression-/World War II-era, although it was hard to hide certain of her, um, attributes!  In any event, she seemed more like a real person this way.

It’s only over the last few years, as I have started to relax into a more mystical side of my own personality – the side of me who believes that we humans are far more powerful than we believe – that I have come to be much more open to fantasy, magic and the mystery of life.  I believe that we can experience miracles, and even, under certain circumstances, walk through doors into entirely different worlds.  I’d like to time travel, and love being places where I get that magical sense of past-present-and-future coming together.  When they don’t focus too much on “evil” or violence, I like fantasies like the Harry Potter series and Philip Pullman’s The Subtle Knife. I now re-read books like The Secret Garden with far more enthusiasm.  I have even had some fantastical moments in my own life, like the time, in England, when a little old lady reminding me of my grandmother showed up mysteriously next to me on the street and chatted with me about life – and then just as mysteriously, disappeared.  I mean, into the ether. This wouldn’t be so strange except for the fact that it turned out to be the very moment when my grandmother died, back in the States. Do I believe this was Grandma coming to see me one more time before she died?  You betcha! 

So the rigid childhood “thing” about reality has slowly but surely relaxed.  Indeed, I could be said to have spent about 30 years trying to bypass “reality!”  But at the end of the day, can I walk into a party of people wearing masks?  No.  I used to have a great button to wear on Halloween: “This is my costume!”  But for those of you who love it, I’m truly glad you do, and have a happy, happy one!

 

Health

This has been a hard week or two for my friends from the standpoint of health.  These dear ones, their kids and grandkids, and even their dogs and cats, have been getting really hard news from doctors.
 

This is one of those topics where I don’t quite know how to respond, except tearfully and from the heart.  My heart goes out, literally.  All I can do is send love.

For decades, I have rarely had medical insurance or medical care of any kind.  I definitely don’t recommend this…I suppose it’s a miracle on this level, as well as others, that I am still physically on this planet, although I once had a natural healer say that in fact I may be healthier because of having avoided modern intervention.  Who knows?  One never knows what would have happened on that other path.

But there is no question that our bodies take the brunt of whatever our journeys have been.  Absolutely every being on my mind right now has been living life to the fullest; working hard, learning hard, teaching hard, loving hard.  We’re all, even children and pets, on the cutting edge of what it is to be spiritual beings in a physical body, and all of us respond differently on this pilgrimage.  The many billions of us on this planet are processing “life” in our own unique ways, and no matter where we are on the health-disease spectrum, it’s all still a miracle.  We haven’t done anything wrong or right, we don’t have to change our habits (unless it thrills us to do it!) and we don’t have to hate ourselves for imperfection.

The way I’ve gotten through all these years is, at all times, to love my body, and to try not to fear her.  Just love her.  Yes, she’s “overweight” and yes, she’s imperfect and probably in some respects unhealthy.  But I just love her power, her ability to adjust to wildly changing circumstances, her deep insight (way down to the cellular level) and her audacity.  She and I have just stepped out and done it, no matter what, on a journey like no other.  And that’s what I celebrate with my friends and their friends and family – all of us have been out there, doing it.  Being human, learning life lessons, and moving forward at probably the most complex and complicated moment in human history.  If our bodies are scrambling to keep up, or even shutting down and saying, “hey, give me a break,” it’s kind of understandable, isn’t it? 

May all of us, when these circumstances arise, find the wisdom to know how to proceed, find the help we want, find the courage to keep breathing, and…heck…may this just be a better week for all!

Gratitude

Having an “attitude of gratitude” is something I lost track of for a long time, if I had ever had it at all.  How mortifying to admit this, but it is true.

But over the last few years, slowly but surely, it has become a regular part of my life, even at moments when most people might not have seen much to warrant it.  It started the day that I drove the two-plus hour drive down the Northway to Albany to hear a concert of the music I love, by an English choir.  I had debated and debated about whether to attend, thinking that this phase of my life was long since over.  But having made the decision to go, I just said over and over, as I drove through the budding trees in the Adirondack Mountains: “I am thankful to be going to this concert.  I am thankful to the conductor. I am thankful to the choir.  I am thankful that I sang this music thirty years ago.  I am thankful to all the composers of this music. I am thankful for this tradition.  I am thankful to my car, which will get me to the concert safely.”  This mantra intensified on the trip home, with a new CD playing in the player, and me alternatively sobbing, singing along, and saying, “I am thankful.”  What an extraordinary journey has ensued!

I feel like an ancient goddess who for some reason left many of her children by the side of the road and, waking up to the wrongness of that, goes backward down the road and, one by one, picks them up into her loving arms and cries with gratitude that they are still there.  It’s a miracle, it’s something to be thankful for, even when your feet are tired and your arms aren’t as strong as they used to be, even when you can’t quite articulate who it is that you are grateful to.  You are still grateful.  And once they are all back in your arms, you face forward again and walk into the future, finally smiling. Finally, no longer bereft.

Right now, I am helping a friend ready her home to put on the market.  My days are filled with painting walls, cleaning windows, sorting out things for sale, recycling, the dump…all those decisions.  It feels oddly aligned to my purpose right now.  If I’m committed to anything other than my own rebirth, it is to other women my age who are renewing themselves.  Many of us are going through this process in some form or another. New houses. New careers or expressions of passion. Retirement. Newly single. I am thankful for a roof over my head as it gets colder, healthy food, and time to write, vision, and to share notes with you on this whole process.  I am grateful to be a woman of the 20^th and 21^st century, not the 17^th or 12^th century.  As much as there has been no real roadmap for being an independent woman, fully self-actualizing, at least I have had the freedom to stumble down that road my own way, without having decisions made for me by others.  And today, with the news on my mind, I think of the refugees in Europe and pray, not just for their bare bones survival, but that as many of them as possible can move beyond survival to finding their highest alignment to who they really are.  Somewhere on this hard road they are on, women and men, may they find a measure of peace.

So, the paint bucket beckons…blessings this weekend, all! And thank you.