Author Archives: Mary Skillings

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About Mary Skillings

I am coming of age...a new age. It is my Autumn Season; the time for harvesting what I have sown and tended through the years. Having raised a family, earned my degrees and spent many years working in the field of Restorative Justice, I have retreated now into a quieter time. I have wisdom to share and stories to tell and my wise brother made me promise to make time to write them down. I make time too for my little grandsons who help me see the world through fresh eyes. I take long moodling walks and read a lot of books. I have a lot of projects piled up; I don't know if I'll finish them. This new age that I'm becoming feels strange and slightly uncomfortable, but I think I'm growing into it well.

WHEN YOU ARE ENOUGH

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WHEN YOU ARE ENOUGH

February 17, 2015

I am holding you, says the Creator. You are surrounded by benevolence. You have been given the great gift of choice—it is no wonder that your desire for freedom and the power to choose for yourself what you experience in life is so fundamental to your existence.

Why then do you deny it to others?

When you have the opportunity, you build yourself a house, or purchase one that suits your needs and your aesthetic preferences. Because of this gift you were given, this freedom of choice, you are free to also build “mental houses”, mental constructs in which to house the World in which you live. You fashion your experience of what you call “reality” into constructs that make sense to you based on your culture, on what you were taught as you moved through childhood, on things you’ve read and the places you’ve visited and the things you have seen. For some, this house you’ve made for your World has remained much the same as when you first put it together. For others, your World-houses have undergone many renovations and remodels. But there is not one person on the Earth that does not have a World-house that he or she has built, or was given and complacently agreed to inherit without question.

Just like the neighborhoods in your cities, the mentally constructed World-houses are as varied as the people living on Planet Earth. But here is the problem. Most of you cannot see that those mental constructs of human, Earth-bound understandings of reality that are different from your own are just as beautiful and legitimate as yours. You tend to think that all the World-houses should be just like yours because too often you think that yours is best, or the only one built correctly.

The new word buzzing around the world is “one”. “We are one”, you sing. You are awakening to an ancient truth—that you are all interconnected and have been created from the same fabric; we are one, we are all related. Yes, you are part of the Earth and made of star stuff. Humans and animals and all the plants and the fish in the sea—you are all the children of Mother Earth.

This is true.

But, be careful.

When you look at your brother’s face and see yourself in his eyes, you must also see that he is different. You must look through his eyes and see the House of his World. You must listen to his heart. You must receive the gifts and the knowledge he offers you with joy and grace and gratitude.

You are all individuated drops of the Sea of God…flung upon the shores of this world to live and journey through many experiences until you are returned once more to the Sea. You are one—you are all drops of water from the Sea.

But you are each preciously different—a different cell from the great Body of God. The cells in your feet have a very different experience of the world than the cells in your hands, or the cells in your stomach, or the cells in your lips, or the cells in the memory banks of your brain.

Embrace your brothers and sisters for they have indeed come from the same substance as you. And  do not take away their gift to choose to see the world differently from you—to construct a House for their World that is nothing like yours. Do not assume that you understand or experience the world the same as they do. Offer your gifts and your knowledge and your ideas, and receive those shared by your brothers and sisters.

Listen to the hearts of the wounded ones—especially those whose ancestors were wounded by your ancestors.

Listen to the hearts of the wounded ones—especially those who have been wounded by the people who live in World-houses similar to yours, who peek out from the windows of your mental constructs of the world and are afraid of what does not look like what you have built together.

Listen to the hearts of those you have wounded.

Listen.

Receive what they tell you.

Open your minds to the possibility of creating a world together that will thrive; a world based on honor and integrity and compassion and respect.

Open your hearts and allow the Love that fills the very air you breathe to flow through your lungs and travel your bloodstream and fill your hearts.

Do not be afraid any longer. Fear has no power in the presence of Love and Compassion, no more than the darkness remains when we turn on the light.

Do not be afraid.

Do not despair.

If you do nothing more of consequence in this world than to do what you must do to allow Love to flow through you, for Compassion to be your automatic response to others, and gratitude to be the joy that lifts your heart each morning—you have done enough.

You are enough.

You are the Light of the World.

SNIPPETS

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February 4, 2015…Happy Birthday to Meridith!

SNIPPETS

1. BALLET OF THE BIRDS

A large flock of fat birds are cavorting in the sky. Bird ballet. They, as one Being, flow south, bank in a wide arc to the northeast, swoop earthward, soar heavenward, bank again to the west, to the south, reverse, around and around, not one wing out of sync with the whole.

I stand transfixed wondering what these birds are. Large as crows–but they aren’t black. Small seagulls? Wrong time of year.

Suddenly the music has finished its final note and they fall inelegantly toward ground, alighting on the cable wire strung across the alley outside my window. Thirty pigeons on the wire, fluffing their feathers, jostling each other for room to catch their breath.

And then as one they depart across the rooftops beyond my sight.

2. THE STORY MAKER

Every morning she had tea and decided what story she would make today.

Do we think that Life happens to us; that every day unfolds according to the dictates of some hidden writer sitting in a stuffy room in a galaxy far, far away? Do we never suspect the writer is us?

3. THE SHIFT

She glowed. She had swallowed seven suns and every cell in her body was drunk with their Fire and Light. She smiled and the air crackled–angel hairs of fire running wild. One touch and reality would shatter.

She stood still. Only her eyes moved. She knew in the next breath, one turn of her head, the world would shift–like a kaleidoscope.

Like a kaleidoscope; every turning reveals a new story in color and light; another pattern to comprehend. There is no need to fear the turning. Light and Beauty never cease their dance with Love and Joy.

Shift.

4. COURAGE

Four fat pigeons are hanging out together on the cable wire strung across the alley. Meeting adjourns to the ridgepole of the house next door. They are lined up beak to butt like children waiting their turn to jump off the high ledge at the swimming hole.

The pigeon first in line hesitates at the edge, looking down at the deck below, looking out at the trees, looking right, looking left. He looks down again, wobbling his head up and down, back and forth. He steps back, forward, back, forward. He suddenly stands very still, slowly tips his head down, his body forward, and he falls off the ridgepole, head first! Three feet, five feet, ten feet and finally wings spread, flap, beak pulls up, and his plump pigeon body lands in the mess of birdseed strewn on the deck by the squirrel raiders.

Up on the ridgepole, the remaining three have each stepped up. Pigeon #2 hesitates at the edge, looking down at his friend below, looking out at the trees, looking right, looking left, looking down  again…and over he goes, deck-ward ho!

WE ARE ONE

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January 27, 2015

THE PAINTER AND THE SONG

Off to the side of the stage, the bare form of the Lion emerges from the canvas, black and white strokes of paint, some splashes of deep emerald green, blood red, a streak of magenta, a line of sun-bright yellow.

As the music rises and falls, like waves running to shore scouring the rocks and stones, like the wings of wind gusting through the forest tugging hard at leaf and bough, life slowly fills the Lion. He begins to breathe. Soaring through the people gathered, the music whirls through the room, swirling the Lion’s mane as it grows full and thick, shimmering with every color broken from the Light. He opens his eyes, golden green pools gazing out at the crowd.

The music climbs to the stars pulling the singers and the dancers and the listeners in its wake. At the very pinnacle, with one last mighty explosion of sound and Light the Lion roars. In silence we plummet gently back to ourselves, the music echoing in the cells of everything it has touched, weaving us together with Love and Light. We hear in the deepest parts of ourselves, we are One.

We rise to our feet with shouts and tears and laughter; the applause thunderous. The Lion looks wisely down upon us, willing us to rise to the call to carry this Light, to sing this song, to remember every time we look into the faces of Others, whether friend or foe, we are One. He wills us to rise to the call to bury our fearful judgments and our terrified hate along with our swords. We are One.

We are One.

**********************************************************************

The painting described in this post was done at Adam Sippola’s RISING POINT CD release concert party by artist Moira Villiard. You can see her work, including The Lion at http://mivala.deviantart.com/journal/

The song, One by Adam Sippola from his new CD, Rising Point can be heard on his website, http://adamsippola.com/music  Rising Point is also available for purchase on Adam’s website or at Electric Fetus in Duluth.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

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January 17, 2015

LET’S MAKE HAPPINESS THIS YEAR

2015. OMG…we have indeed made it all the way around the Sun again. Joni Mitchell is singing in my head…
“And the seasons, they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We’re captive on the carousel of time
We can’t return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the Circle game…”

The New Year has risen over the horizon, flooding the skies of our lives with rose and purple and apricot and gold; a gazillion potentialities wait to be selected and woven into the life we are creating.

The choices we have made in the days and weeks and months and years that trail far behind us have left their mark and set us on courses that would be difficult, some even impossible to alter at this point. But even in the middle of the story in which we find ourselves, we have the beautiful gift to choose what we want to experience this coming year. We have the power to create how we will experience life and even what we will experience to a degree most of us can barely comprehend.

For several decades now I have been running around trying to make sense of an idea I kept stumbling upon. I would hear it in a presentation, read it in a book, find it buried in a story, have it leap off the screen in a movie, find it cropping up in online conversations, find it winking saucily from quotes-of-the-day in my inbox, hear it on TED Talks. It is this: I am always choosing and constantly creating my experience of life–even most of my circumstances. I kept hearing that life doesn’t just happen to us and isn’t orchestrated by some other Force, benevolent or otherwise, nor by other people. “How could this be true?” I would ask. But slowly, as I focused and allowed myself to set aside my defenses and open up my mind and heart, understanding began to bring focus and clarity.

I began to understand better the mental constructs we build as individuals, communities, religions and cultures. Because they “are” doesn’t make them true or even real except to us who built them, or inherited them, and have continued to live within them.

I began to understand that everything is energy and everything exists in its particular form because of it’s vibrational frequency. It took awhile, but I finally wrapped my brain around the fact that “like attracts like”–that the magnetic resonance of an energetic frequency attracts to itself other things of a similar vibrational frequency.

I started having more Aha! moments and fewer WTF explosions. Now I can say with absolute certainty that even when it seems like I have no control over my life and am simply subject to the whims of others and the will of the gods, if I look at mySelf honestly and look deeply inside, I will find that my mental constructs and the emotional resonance that my energetic vibration has allowed has called to me what I am experiencing, including that which I do not want to experience. I am reminded of the Native American story of Rabbit, a creature who can teach us much about fear. Rabbit would see Eagle soaring high above the woods and fields and terrified that Eagle would swoop down and gobble him up, he would run out and holler up to Eagle, “Eagle, please do not eat me! I don’t want you to eat me! Did you hear me? Eagle! Eagle! I’m talking to you! Don’t eat me! I really would not like to be your dinner–I have a family to take care of, you know. Did you hear me, Eagle?” Eagle ignored him for awhile, trying to enjoy his afternoon soaring on the thermal updrafts. But Rabbit only grew more frantic and continued to run about the field hollering up to Eagle, “Don’t eat me, Eagle! Please don’t eat me!” Finally, completely distracted and exasperated, Eagle swooped down upon the silly Rabbit and yes, ate him for dinner. Rabbit’s incessant fear and focus on what he didn’t want brought it soaring down upon his head. I love this story.

I recently listened to a presentation that addressed the Universal Laws that govern when and how benevolent help from those Spirit Beings we might call Angels is allowed. The speaker intimated that help and interference is not permitted unless we humans first ask, and then allow that help to come to us. Unfortunately, he said, most of us don’t ask. When we do, we often don’t let into our experience the help that comes in response, either because we have a misplaced sense of our unworthiness, or we don’t like the form the answer comes in. We know the joke about the person who prays, “God help me be more patient, more loving, more compassionate, more forgiving!” and then suddenly is confronted with opportunities to practice these virtues. In the New Testament Jesus said, “You receive not because you ask not–or you ask amiss.” I used to think that meant that I could only ask for spiritual things, lofty things. But now I realize that asking amiss is more about asking for things or experiences that are not in alignment with what we are vibrationally in resonance with. If I ask for money to pay my bills, all the while figuring I don’t deserve it or that this kind of request is wrong or that of course, a miracle like this couldn’t possibly happen to me–well, I’m not exactly in energetic, magnetic, vibrational resonance with receiving the money, or the opportunity to earn the money that the Creator might well wish to provide me with. I have set up a roadblock.

A roadblock is a great image to call to mind when we feel that our prayers are unheard and definitely not answered. All the provision and answers have been sent our way when we first asked, but due to the roadblocks we’ve put in place, the supply train can’t get through. It’s stalled out, parked on the side of the road, waiting…waiting…waiting… Are we willing to examine what these blockages are that we so habitually set up? Will we have the courage to remove them? They can be pretty insidious. Like the creeping charlie and snow-on-the-mountain that can take over a lawn or a garden, the roots of our old and often unconscious beliefs can run deep and develop sophisticated root systems that spread underground for acres. We yank them off at the top, even dig down beneath the soil a few inches, chopping and hacking and pulling. And then, a few months later, or next season, there they are, smiling evilly at us. I once dug up a six foot section of my garden, 18 inches deep, to finally, permanently remove all the roots from my snow-on-the-mountain. Similarly I have had to dig down deep inside my psyche to find and expose the roots of beliefs that do not serve me, beliefs that aren’t based in truth. I have had to look in the mirror everyday for many months and tell myself what is true  in order to cut off life to the lies that lived inside me.

My journey of discovery and learning, of awakening and transformation has been long and arduous. I feel triumphant. I have stayed the course. I stand here now just inside the threshold of this new year–2015–and I am so excited. The winds have shifted; new adventures are unfolding. Looking at my goals for the year I wrote:

  • Choose, CHOOSE, CHOOSE everyday to be happy and offer gratitude for the rich and beautiful life you inhabit!
  • Enjoy your life! Consider each day to be a pearl given to you to thread upon a silken cord–precious, rare, never to be repeated in your 3D linear dimension of Time/Space.
  • Whether you have little money or loads, enjoy today and do the things you love that fill you up with joy and love and light. Sometimes this will require discipline to achieve the result you want; it may even be painful or require sacrifice–but if the end result is beautiful and delicious fruit, then stay the course and find joy in the experience.
  • Give no place to the Dark Energies of Fear and Despair–there is no place in your life for Dementors and Bogarts. No matter how you feel in the moment or what appears to be manifesting or not manifesting in your life, give them NO PLACE. Stay the course of gratitude, love, faith and joy.
  • Allow the sorrows of the past, the regrets, the harm you caused and the hurt you endured to become the stuff of alchemy–rich threads of gold and purple, iridescent blues and greens, woven into the tapestry of your life. Look upon these experiences with compassion and grace-filled tenderness. Forgive yourself and others and release those scenes and chapters as a dove into the blue of a summer sky.
  • In humility and gratitude and with joy and delight work diligently every day to bring forth the Gift hidden inside you that you came here to give. Write. Just write. Write your way to the answers and straight into the River of Life and into everything that has been holding its breath awaiting your arrival. Write.
  • Oh yeah, and did I say, “Be Happy!”?

ON REMAINING LOYAL TO ONE’S SELF

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December 21, 2014

ON REMAINING LOYAL TO ONE’S SELF

“Commitment means REMAINING LOYAL to what you said you were going to do long AFTER the MOOD you said it in has LEFT you.”

My friend shared this quote on a social media site I share with a Circle of women. It struck a chord in me that resonated for several days. Even now, returning to it, I feel the resonance sounding even deeper down.

We are rapidly approaching the close of the year, trailing its well-worn days behind us.  A brand new year of days stretches out ahead like a new journal or a fresh canvas with no mark upon its pages or spill of paint upon its surface.  Traditionally it is a time when, knowing it is one of those “fresh start” seasons–a time to change areas in our life that don’t serve us well–we make promises and resolutions and vows, mostly to ourselves. Typically, we soon lose sight of them, defaulting back into our comfortable ruts.

That’s where the quote at the beginning of this post comes in. What is it you wish to change in your life? What promises to yourself have you not kept? Why is it okay to break the vows we make to ourselves but not okay to break our promises to others–(even though we do that as well)?  Is it indeed because the mood we were in when we made the promise is gone? Ugh, I don’t feel like taking my walk or getting up to meditate or eating vegetables instead of bread or cooking instead of eating junk food or spending 30 minutes making my art today. I don’t feel like choosing the path of love and to check out my assumptions because my emotions are in cahoots with my Ego and I’m boiling over with defensive rage. I don’t feel like telling myself something as ridiculous as “I’m happy!” and smiling like an idiot when it feels like the entire grey, drizzly sky is sitting on my head.

I made a commitment to myself three years ago: to keep my feet on the path of Love and Joy. It has not been an easy path. Especially when changing means I have to confront my own twisted beliefs about myself and others. Old stuff rooted in another time and place but still radioactive. Stuff I have to let go of if I really want to change. Sometimes I just don’t want to scrabble around on that rutted, rocky, slippery trail. But as I have kept bringing myself back, the easier it has become to remain. The more old stuff I’ve released the smoother the trail has become. Gradually I have begun to see others and life and myself differently than I once did. I’m looking more often through lenses of love, joy and gratitude. It is a little like when I got my first pair of glasses when I was ten. Evidently I had been quite nearsighted for a long time without anyone realizing it. I remember being amazed at all the things that I could see that I had never been able to see before.

Five years ago I made a commitment to myself that I would finally honor my gift and calling to be a writer. It is a commitment I have struggled with–in part because some part of me barely dares to believe that I should be so blessed–me, a “real writer”? The other part is because it is damn hard work and I get stuck and yes, lose the mood. Lose my confidence, forget that I really do have the guts to make it through. But I keep returning. Little by little it has become easier.

Recently I renewed my commitment to meditate, journal and walk every day, seven days a week. I need to do this for my mental, emotional and physical well-being. I also made a vow to myself that I would do a 15 minute writing exercise every day for a year working only on description. I so admire author Terry Pratchett’s superb command of metaphor and simile and just plain old description–I want to be able to write like that! One day I was thinking this when I “heard” the man in my head. “Do you think I could always do this?” he asked. “I had to practice–for years! It takes work, my dear.” So, I wondered to myself, how would my ability to describe things improve if I worked on it a little everyday for a year? So, I made this vow to myself.

A few days later I broke it. I was busy and then I was too tired. The next day I was traveling. Then I forgot.

But I regrouped. I decided to honor myself and keep my commitment. A year stretches out too far…but I can do it a day at a time. So far I’ve made it 20 out of 26 days. And going…

I wrote in my journal, “Stay loyal to your Self–even when you’re not in the mood. Especially when you’re not in the mood!” The Sun never stops shining–alive and brilliant, giving light and energy and warmth to the Planets in his care. The clouds in our world can pile up and try to block the Light. They never totally succeed as even the darkest of stormy days will still have more Light in it than the dead of night. But, eventually the clouds dissipate, or we have the special thrill of rising above them in an airplane to find the brilliant azure sky and the blinding yellow Sun up above–still there.

I’m still here, too. I’m always creating my experience of life with my thoughts and my attitudes. Will I be faithful to shine, faithful to my vows and commitments even when the clouds come with their grey blankets, their drizzle and their storms, pressing down on me until sometimes I can barely breathe? The Sun is not hiding or on vacation. The Truth is still shining inside me: I am Love and Light and Joy. The ability to be happy–still shining inside me. I can keep my vows and commitments and I will be the happier for it. Healthier. More peaceful. More comfortable in my skin. More accessible to others. And when I break my promises to myself, I can forgive myself and get back up and back on track; much better than just giving up on myself.

This Gift of Free Choice we’ve been given is at once the most precious and the most terrible of Gifts. It is a privilege and a curse. For as much as we love to shift the blame for all the misery in our lives and in the world to our mothers or our fathers or our exes or God or the devil or the liberals or the conservatives…the truth is that ultimately we are responsible for how we experience the world, and what we give to the world and what we take from Her. We alone are responsible for whether we remain loyal to ourselves long after the mood to do so has passed.

ON TRUST

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December 4, 2014

STEPPING OFF THE EDGE

Her heart beat like a panicked bird caught behind glass. She pocketed the promise and stretched out her arms–the full beautiful length of them. She uncurled her fingers to receive whatever help might come and stepped off the edge. She didn’t leap, or jump. She was crying a little. No tears of joy; hopefully that would come later. No, she just stepped. Courageously she picked up her foot and moved it forward and set it down beyond solid ground smelling of earthy, familiar things. Her body followed, flying and falling through the sky with a promise in her pocket.

It’s called The Leap of Faith, something each one of us faces periodically. Whether we arrive anxious or excited, we have all come to moments when we are challenged to step off the edge of what has been familiar and fall through the sky into the unknown with only a promise in our pocket. Or, maybe for some it is sailing across unchartered waters away from familiar shores. We are called forward, upward. We are called to shed the old skin of who we’ve been and how we’ve lived. All we hold is a promise: everything always works out; life is good.

It sounds like suicide. If feels like suicide. When we step off the edge, we have to leave behind our old habits of mind and being lest they snap us back again like a bungee cord that won’t let us go. The naysayers caution us against our foolhardy notion to venture forth into new ideas, new places, new spaces in the world within ourselves–such things might lead to new worlds outside of ourselves. They want to keep us safe, they say, as they clip the bungee cord to our belt.

There is a universal law: “intention precedes manifestation”. It means that what we focus our thinking upon will begin to gather energy and mass and eventually solidity and physicality and thus it is that we create our lives. We create the stories we live. Sometimes the only way out of one story is to take that leap of faith into a new one. Faith has been defined as the “substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”. This is the promise we hold in our pocket as we take that leap without the bungee cord–sailing through air, through water, through testing and trials, all for the sake of realizing our dream: to find the Holy Grail of our lives, whatever that may be for each searching Soul. Stepping off the edge is to live fully with every cell into every moment of our lives.

That cliche, live life to the fullest used to bug me. What the hell did it mean? Once I dissected it with a dictionary in order to understand its meaning–fully. I believe it means to be aware and awake in the present moment I am living; aware of my surroundings, aware of what my senses are experiencing, aware of the choice I have in each moment. Sometimes these are small things in small moments, like appreciating the feel of warm water streaming over my body in the shower. As I stand there I become aware of the fact that I am privileged to have warm water that is safe for me to shower in right here in my home at just a turn of a knob.

Sometimes these are big things in big moments, like the moment when I receive a job offer, or sign the deed to my new house, or board the plane that will carry me to a new adventure.

Then there are the really big moments when I come to a crossroads in my life. These really big ones usually precede the plain old big ones because they involve making decisions that require I choose one path at the exclusion of another, altering my life forever. Usually one of those paths is familiar, a continuation of what I have been living while the other leads to unfamiliar, unexplored territory. Sometimes neither is familiar and to move forward requires a decision between two entirely different lives from my current one, both full of the Unknown, with my only alternative being to camp out at the crossroads which is sort of a metaphor for stagnation. But to move forward requires one of those suicidal leaps of faith. 

For those of us who choose to camp out for awhile, sometimes the authorities come and evict us and we have no choice but to head down one road or the other. Or die. And sometimes none of the choices are pleasant. Sometimes the material we have with which to create our life isn’t very beautiful and the roads we have to choose from are difficult; even dangerous. But, we still have choices. We get to choose whether to live fully conscious or numb ourselves into oblivion. We still have an internal garden we can cultivate, or allow it to be overrun with thorns and stinkweed. We can choose to make our life a work of art, a powerful poem, or abandon ourselves in the misery around us.

Living life fully: opening ourselves to full awareness of what we are experiencing in the present moments of our lives. Living life to the fullest: being intentional to fill the moments of our lives with as much life as we can possibly cram into them. Creating a life that is thriving and beautiful like a fertile garden or an amazing work of art, at least internally if not also in our external experiences, requires intentionality, presence, and quite possibly having to periodically step off the edge and free-fall into the unknown with only a promise in our pocket.

WINTER COMETH

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November 11, 2014

WINTER COMETH IN THE MORNING…

Snow. Storm. The Winter King has arrived halfway between the Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice.  Of course, here in the Northland, he’s pretty much expected anytime once the cutouts of jack o’ lanterns come down and the pictures of Pilgrims and turkeys go up.

My husband, David, took a photo yesterday while shoveling and posted: “Winter, embrace it or move!” He took photos and brought in wood for the fireplace. I made gingersnaps, soup and bread. Today we went skiing.  IMG_2817

FaceBook was full of postings today about the weather and the snow–love it, hate it, celebrating it, forgive it. There were pics of cozy fires burning in wood-stoves, people baking cookies and gathering to watch movies.

Of course, there were also the sad reports from those who crunched their cars skidding down hills, hit the ditch spinning out on icy highways, nursing strained muscles from shoveling. Then there were the disappointed folks who missed classes and meetings and dates.  Shops whose sales were bleak and empty tables at the restaurants.

My nephew, Nathan, was born and raised in Bogota, Colombia. Growing up he visited relatives in Minnesota every summer, but only a few times did he come in winter. The first time he was six years old. His four year old sister thought all the trees had died. Down at the park that they played at in the summer Nathan was awestruck by the fact that the water in the river was hard and we could walk on it. “Where did all the turtles go, and the frogs?” he wanted to know.

Fast forward a dozen years. He and I are driving down the steep hillside of Duluth, snow piled up on the boulevards. “You know,” he said, “one of the things that is so weird about you guys here is that you’re always talking about the weather. Everyday. Constantly. Everyone comments what it feels like, good or bad, or what it’s going to be like tomorrow. You even have channels on TV just for weather!”

“You don’t discuss weather in Bogota?”

“No. Never.”

“But you have weather reports on your news programs, right?”

“Nope. Nothing. I never heard people talk about weather until I came here.”

“Huh. Wow. Is the weather so boring in Colombia?”

“Pretty much. It’s always the same. We have rainy season and dry season. Temperatures vary a little. But not too much changes.”

Of course, Bogota is also full of flowers. Everyday. All year. Looking out my window this morning the neighborhood is frosted with white. Not a sprinkle of lacy powder, but the eight inch thick stuff, piled, drifting, blowing. Two days ago there were swaths of gold and burgundy mums in my garden. Shrubs still sported red and yellow leaves mixed with the fading green. The mountain ashes held their scarlet berries up against a brilliant blue sky. The birch had shed their golden leaves into piles on the still green grasses, their white barked limbs glowing in the sunlight. Some apple trees up the road where I went walking, though naked of leaves still held golden apples. I ate one; still sweet and crisp. It was the last of Autumn, the colors bravely holding their own as the season slowly faded.

Two days later it’s a black and white world. The only natural color: some red berries, russet leaves clinging hard to a few trees, the green of pine needles the blue sky.

Yep, we Northerners talk about the weather. No two dFirst Skiays quite the same, interesting and full of surprises. Up here Nature is constantly busy parading the cycle of life through our midst, keeping us on our toes, flexible and changing. To be truthful, most of us wouldn’t have it any other way!

SUPPORT OUR TROOPS

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November 11, 2014

I SUPPORT OUR TROOPS

I support the men and women leaving family and careers to go overseas to Iraq and Afghanistan to “serve their country”. I support them because I wish they didn’t have to go. I support them to remain safe, and whole and return able-bodied and able-minded, and most especially, able-hearted.

I support our troops. I support these men and women and pray that they will awaken deeply to the preciousness of all life— to the interconnectedness of all life—to the equality of all people and cultures. I support them to find ways to do good while they occupy a place that isn’t theirs to occupy, to do good to their fellow American service men and especially the women and to do good to the citizens of the country they are occupying. I support these men and women because whether consciously or not, intentionally or not, they are now in unique positions to bear testimony and Light to the world—to stand strong and courageously opposed to the continued mindlessness of killing and oppression. They are the most powerful witnesses for peace the world could hope for.

Several years ago I watched the testimonies of veterans at the Winter Soldier summit before Congress. One of the speakers was a co-worker of mine. These men and women spoke courageously of the crimes of war, of the violence and abuse that was not limited to being directed at “the enemy”, but was right at home within the barracks and the training fields. I will never forget the tall young man with the bright blue eyes who said that before he went to Iraq he was excited–he wanted to “go blow shit up!” Now he was ashamed of all that he had indeed blown up. This beautiful young man had shot an old woman under orders “in case she was carrying an explosive device. She wasn’t. She was just an old woman on her way somewhere and I shot her dead, bleeding out in the street.” I have read about the work of veterans against the Vietnam war, the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war—what they have seen and done and learned. Today I read the current suicide statistics of returned veterans—“every 65 minutes a veteran dies from suicide. That’s 22 per day!”

I saw a pie chart today indicating where our tax dollars are spent.  Screen Shot 2014-11-10 at 10.22.59 AM

5.6% on Veteran’s Benefits to 55% on all that outfits us for war. Another 5.5% on the needs of government. That leaves approximately 35% for all the rest of our domestic needs: education and housing and health and social security and energy and science and transportation and food.

Clearly, I am not in support of war.

I do support the men and women who have been sent off to fight these wars our leaders and their corporate sponsors create.

When he was in office, former Congressman Dennis Kucinich proposed a Department of Peace. If we can have a war department, and a defense department, why not a peace department? Pour those dollars into making reparations and amends around the world to all those we have bullied and abandoned. Pour the big salaries into men and women who know how to make peace and build relationships and co-create plans with world leaders that will allow all of us to have enough to eat and drink and a roof over our heads and education for our children and medical care. Dismantle our own WMD rather than point our finger at some lesser brother for playing with the matches we invented.

Who better to ignite this movement toward reconciliation and peace and the possibility of prosperity than the men and women who were on the front lines, witnessing the carnage and the destruction and the grief that is war and oppression and occupation? May each “peacekeeper”, become a peacemaker.

Yes, I support our troops. I support their courage and their strength and the terrible personal journey each of them are on.  I support them to find themselves, to know themselves, to separate truth from lie, Light from Dark. I love and support these brave and battered men and women—dads and moms, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters.

May each one, abroad and at home, be blessed this day with a measure of peace, love and happiness. May each one find the unique healing that he or she needs, and in turn, become a healer of the world.

THE END OF A LONG, LONG JOURNEY

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WHEN YOU GET TO THE END OF YOUR HERO’S JOURNEY
YOU CELEBRATE…AND THEN SIGN ON FOR ANOTHER!

November 3, 2014

“We call upon our sisters around the world to be brave–to embrace the strength within themselves and realize their full potential.”  – Malala Yousafzai –

For two hours now I have found really important things to do other than write this blog post. I paid some bills. I sent a birthday card to my beautiful niece in London. I sent some emails off to two school principals asking to interview some of their staff for my book. I responded to some texts and emails. I finished the grocery list. I heated up some of my husband’s delicious curried vegetables for lunch. I did some laundry. I checked my to-do list a half dozen times. I found some chocolate. And ate it. I did a writing exercise after reading the article it was about. That was freaky. I was directed to turn the brightness of my screen down until I couldn’t see the words so that I would focus on the feeling of writing and write faster and not be constantly editing. I toasted a piece of my yummy, homemade gluten free bread. And ate it. I opened my blog page and looked to see who is following me. A bunch of folks I never met. That’s cool.

Okay. So, I want to tell you about this amazing weekend I had. I want to use words that will show you rather than tell you, but the words seem to have scurried down the cracks between the floorboards. Or maybe they curled up in the afghan since its only 63 degrees in here. Typical November day–grey. All the leaves fell down so the trees are bare now. The hillside looks like a charcoal drawing–smudgy lines and streaks of grey and black with a few wispy shades of brown brushed through.

I don’t remember anymore what it felt like when I woke up in the morning as a kid. But since sometime in my mid-teens, with extremely rare exceptions, I have always woken up with a knot in my gut. The older I got, the tighter it got. There have been days when I woke up and it wasn’t there. Those days are so incredible that I remember vividly what it feels like. Buoyant. Light. Happy. Easy. I think the last time I was in New York City.

Over the past nearly 20 years I have been on a journey; a quest I supposeSoulCard 6. I have wanted to experience healing in my body, my mind and my heart. Despite feeling a lot of love in my heart for others I have struggled to allow that love to flow outward to them, afflicted with criticalness and judgment, anger and frustration. I’ve been on this hero’s journey to become Grace, to learn to love, to be a light in the world, to make a difference for good, to be the change I want to see–all the time wrestling with these monsters that rage and storm through me. NO TRESPASSING signs don’t work.  They barge in whenever they feel like it.

I’ve studied positive attitude. I’ve studied how to change by changing habits of mind embedded in old belief structures. I’ve worked at it. I’ve worked hard. To my credit, yes, I’ve grown. I’ve learned things and I’ve dismantled old belief and energy structures that were not healthy and did not serve me or my relationships or my work. At one time in my life frequent depressions would flatten my life completely. I used to say it was as though a Black Hole was constantly orbiting my life. I was aware of its presence at all times, wondering when it would suck me into its fathomless depths yet again. But it has been many years since I’ve even sensed that Blackness, none-the-less become its dinner.

And yet, I have still not known what it is like to wake up naturally exuberant and happy and eager to engage in the activities of the day. I love better and deeper than at any other time in my life, and yet, my inner critic is a brazen loudmouth who never shuts up and feels it his duty to include others in his constant critiques. Particularly husbands.

It has been a long journey. Ever been on a long road trip and have your passengers begin asking, “Are we almost there?” And then, more urgently, “Aren’t we there yet?” It’s the same with these hero’s journeys. (Why do they call them hero’s journeys anyway? They so do not feel like anything remotely heroic!) “GThe Hero's Journeyood God, aren’t I almost there? How much longer? This sure looks familiar, haven’t I been here before? Didn’t I already cover this section? Wait a minute–I do not have to go down inside that, do I? Really? It’s the only way through to the other side? Oh shit. Okay, so I made it through. I’m still alive. I’m on the other side… …So how come I’m still not there yet?! How much further? How much longer? I’m lost. This sucks. I just want to be happy, like, really happy. I just want to be able to do life successfully, to love well, to be light in the world, to do good work. Consistently. I feel like I’m battering on locked gates and kicking at locked doors and trying to find my way through a veil of fog. ARRGGHH!”

Yeah, that’s a hero’s journey.  Maybe it got that name because if you manage somehow to stick with it until you actually do come to the end of it, however battered and bruised, the very fact you didn’t give up makes you a hero of some kind.Beyond the Door

Okay. Last weekend. While I was sleeping, I guess, I came to the end of it. I arrived. I finally made it through the locked door into another world. I don’t know why. I don’t know how. I don’t know why on Saturday and not last year or ten years ago or not until March 15th next year. It was now. I woke up and I could feel it in my body–something had shifted. It would be like having a pounding migraine headache for 3 weeks and suddenly waking up and it’s gone. Completely gone. It was like the morning I woke up years ago and I knew the Black Hole was gone. I just knew. And it was. And it never came back.

I feel light in my body. The knots and edginess are gone. The energy of those around me no longer feels like I’m trying to tolerate someone running their fingernails down a chalkboard. The thought of “work” no longer feels like an order to climb a mountain dragging a broken leg. Even thinking of the pile of bills for which there is no money elicits rising excitement to see how on earth this will all work out!

Whatever the blockages to the flow of Divine energy through my physical and emotional body have been, they aren’t there now. I feel love, warm and vibrant inside me. Flows of LoveI feel that love flowing through me and from me. I feel sorrow for the pain I have caused others–and oh, how clearly I can see it now that I don’t feel that knee-jerk egotistical defensiveness! I’m looking full in the face the ways that my self-absorption, selfishness, and especially all my fears have harmed others, but though I feel some grief and regret, I no longer feel worthless. Instead I feel renewed responsibility to do better. And I feel like I have the energy to do so.

The beauty in the world around me and in the people around me fills me up with happy joy! I marvel that so many people in the world wake up this way every day. I marvel at what we could all achieve in our lives and how much more loving a world this would be if we could all be free from the bondage of Fear that poisons and taints every aspect of our lives. Fear is the Dark Destroyer–the Dark Consciousness–the Father of Lies and Illusion.

I am free. For those of you who are also free–you are blessed. For those of you who wrestle monsters in the dark, don’t give up. Don’t give up. And hold fast the thought that even if you cannot see or feel it, there is a loving Presence that is with you, always.

All Through the Night
Sleep my child and peace attend theeThe Guardian
All through the night
Guardian angels God will send thee
All through the night

Soft the drowsy hours are creeping
Hill and vale in slumber steeping
I my loving watch am keeping
All through the night

While the moon her watch is keeping
All through the night
While the weary world is sleeping
All through the night

O’er thy spirit gently stealing
Visions of delight revealing
Breathes a pure and holy feeling
All through the night

Photos courtesy of David Jensen, Northern Visions Media
Soul Card images from Soul Cards 2 by Deborah Koff-Chapin of Touch Drawing

A FALL OF DIAMONDS

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A FALL OF DIAMONDS

October 31, 2014

Bottle green she runs relentlessly at the shelf of cobblestones and the slabs of boulders. She falls back white and frothy, scrabbling at the pebbled beach, the stones rolling and bouncing. Along the slabs and towers of boulders she takes a run and heaves herself high into the air–ten, fifteen, sometimes more than twenty feet.  She falls back, a shower of sun-drenched diamonds filling up the grooves and gullies.  Exhilarated she bounces off the waves retreating from the shoreline and others coming in for their run. Like swaggering boys chest bumping, like two antler tangled stags, the waves collide and throw more diamonds into the sky. And the cobblestones roar and the waters crash and the diamonds fall.

Waves inside me roll and crash, battering the boundaries beyond which I cannot go–I cannot touch–I cannot control. Fear collides with compassion and all is reeling and roaring and colliding on the surface of my consciousness–throwing diamonds in the sky.  But deeper down, under the posturing and the macho chest bumping, the tumbling and twisting, I detect a  stillness. Below the chaos there is peace.

Perhaps in this now I can be happy.  In this now, and in the next now, stringing them together like buttons and beads on a thread, I might find many things for which I am grateful and awestruck, I might dare to believe that all will be well.  Once the chaos on the surface settles down what remains behind might be different than it was before–rearranged.  But maybe the changes will not be about loss, or destruction.  They could just as well be another way to see.  Something new to experience.

The Sea just rolled in a 20 foot jumper, showering me with diamonds even here below the tree where I thought it safe and dry. “Come and play!” she roars.