Category Archives: Love

HONORING TRANSITIONS

THE DAY MORGAN TURNED 13 YEARS OLD

May 6, 2023

My oldest Grandson crossed a threshold today. He exited childhood and entered the Spooky Forest of Adolescence. A long and winding road awaits him, finding his way to himSelf. Growing into a Man. There is beauty in this forest as well as dark and treacherous paths. There are Beings who live here — but one doesn’t know if or when they may show up nor whether they will be friendly Guides, or hungry Trolls hunting their dinner.

But this young boy-man of mine, he’s smart, and he’s incredibly creative. He’s adventurous and eager to learn things. I trust him to make it through this spooky forest. In fact, he will probably enjoy most of the journey! I certainly hope so.

To honor this momentous occasion, I am re-printing a blog I wrote the year he turned 4. As much as I love watching him grow to be a man, towering over me, now, his voice deep, his knowledge and abilities far beyond even just a few years ago, still, I miss the little boy he used to be.

So, Morgan, this is for you, today.

FIGHTING GOBLINS AND RESCUING PRINCESSES

April 7, 2014

I walked with three-year old Morgan, soon to be four, the three blocks to the little playground next to a neighborhood ball park. We looked for daffodils growing up beside the houses and talked of birds and worms, the dietary habits of squirrels and why the rain makes the grass turn green. We tried a short cut through the tennis court, but the gate was locked, so we took the other short cut through the alley.

“What’s an alley, Nonna?”

“It’s a little road behind the back yards of the houses. See? We’re walking down an alley.” We heard a rooster defending his territory.

“Nonna, what’s that sound?”

“A rooster.”

“Is a rooster a daddy chicken or a mommy chicken, Nonna?”

We arrived at the Park. Morgan ran for the largest layout of blue and green and orange equipment that included platform stairs, a tunnel, a swinging bridge, a curved stair ladder, a lookout post and a 10′ tunnel slide. He scampered up to the lookout post before I could even catch up and hurled himself down the slide…and did a full body face plant into the mud at the bottom.

You know how one of the funniest not-funny sights is someone slipping on the ice? The next funniest not-funny sights is a little boy covered in mud–face, belly, hands, knees–just after a half-flip belly flop face-plant off a slide. Morgan looked about to cry and much to my shame, I burst out laughing. He looked at me in confusion. His brain was registering tragedy and calling for tears, but his Nonna was having a complete giggle melt down. Tragedy lost to Giggles and soon we were both laughing while he spit out mud and wood chip fibers and I brushed what dirt I could off his nose and chin and hands.

He actually looks pretty clean here; we’ve removed most of the mud…but he’s still working on spitting out the mouthful of grit he got…

“Nonna, the Bad Guys are hewr. They pushed me down the slide. We bettow find ow fighting sowrds ’cause we need to fight bad guys.”

“What kind of bad guys?”

“Zombies.” He looked around. “No! Theys Goblins! Theys the wust kind!”

He grabbed a stick sword, I grabbed a stick wand. I said my wand could get more goblins. He said, “Ok, Nonna. You can use a wand this time. …Oh no! Hewre they come Nonna!”

We fought Goblins. It was quite a noisy battle.

“Nonna! We have to wescue the pwincess!” He took off to climb the stairs and cross the swinging bridge and climb up the roundy ladder… “You fight the goblins, Nonna, so I can wescue the pwincess!”

The tower was breached successfully. “Hurry, Morgan! Grab the Princess! Where are we taking her?”

“To that bench oveer thewr!”

“Is that where she lives?”

“No, she’s fwom Cavelot. But we can make hewr safe thewr on the bench and fix hewr ouchies. That’s the hospital, Nonna.”

“Ok. You better pick her up and carry her over your shoulder.”

“Ok, Nonna. …Whew…weew safe now. You fix hewr ouchies with yous wand, Nonna. She’s a beautiful pwincess, Nonna. Do you think she’s vewy pwetty, Nonna?”

“Oh, definitely, Morgan. She’s very pretty.”

“…Oh-oh, Nonna. Hewr come mowr Goblins! Mowr and mowr and mowr and mowr…Fight Nonna!”

“Morgan, I think they captured another princess! I think they turned her into a bird!”

“Yous wight, Nonna! Only she’s not a biwrd. She’s a winosowus. The Goblins changed her into a winosowus.”

“Oh no! We’ve got to get her out of here! You better kiss her, Morgan, turn her back into a beautiful Princess! But be careful of her horn!

“Nonna, I’m not Mowgan. I’m a Pwince. I’m a Supeohewo Pwince! And I can’t kiss the winosowus pwincess.”

“Why can’t you kiss the princess, Prince Superhero?”

“‘Cause I’ll get make-up on my face!”

“So who’s going to turn her back into a Princess? You don’t want her to be stuck being a rhinoceros, do you?”

“Nonna, you can do it with yous wand!”

“Oh.”

“Ok. I will cawwy hewr over to the bench…I mean the hospital.”

“Prince Superhero, where do the Princesses live? Should we take them home?”

“Yeah. They live with the King in Afwica. We can fly in the aiwplane to Afwica. But you have to fight off the Goblins while I cawwy the pwincesses, okay Nonna?”

“Ok Prince Superhero.”

“Yay! We made it Nonna! You got the Goblins! Now we need to fly the beautiful Pwincesses to Afwica!”

“Nonna, quick, we got to take the Pwincesses to the King before more Goblins get us! Huwwy, Nonna. Theys coming…the Goblins aw coming! Mowr and mowr and mowr…”

“Prince Superhero, let’s get back to our plane and fly somewhere else!”

“Okay, Nonna. We’s going to Austwaila, now. To visit the Kangawoos. I don’t know if theys Goblins thewr. See Nonna? Thewrs the Kangawoos! We’ll land the aiwplane by the Kangawoos.”

“Nonna, the Kangawoos can talk. They’s Mommy Kangawoos with theys babies in theys pockets and Daddy Kangawoos–theys have babies in theys pockets too.”

And so we had a lovely conversation with the Kangaroos of Australia and discovered that they were also under Goblin attack. Soon we were fighting more Goblins and discovered that they had captured several Princesses that needed rescuing. Six princesses to be exact. According to the Little Prince they were all from the Star Planet Shada Zuken Sak. We rescued them…and just barely making our escape from the evil and ever present Goblins, the Prince and I flew them in our airplane out beyond the Moon and past the Sun until we came to the Star Planet Shada Zuken Sak.

Upon our arrival, the Little Prince made a mad dash for the castle carrying six pretty princesses on his strong shoulders while his brave Nonna fought off a horde of Goblins. Apparently the entire Universe is suffering from an infestation of Goblins–there is no escaping them.

He was successful…suffering only a broken arm
in the battle.

All six princesses survived and were very happy to be home again.

Nonna was called upon to do some magic with her wand to try to make the broken arm of the Prince better–but her wand broke before the spell was cast.

“Nonna, you will have to take me to the dentist to get my awm fixed cause yous wand is bwoken.”

“I see. Where is the dentist?”

“Can’t you see, Nonna? Ovew thewr!”

“Ah, yes. Under the slide.”

“But you have to get a new wand, Nonna, ’cause theys a lot of Goblins coming.”

“Okay. Let’s make a run for it, Prince!”

“Good job, Nonna. You got the Goblins and fixed my awm.”

“I think we need to fly in our airplane back to Earth, now Prince. Daddy and Mommy are waiting for us to come home.”

“Okay. But aftew we fly home we have to take the twain.”

“Okay.”

One airplane flight, two more Goblin battles, one train ride, and then a narrow escape from another horde of Goblins later…we were headed out of the park.”

“Nonna, I think more Goblins are going to follow me and gwab my feets!”

“Oh dear. You better ride on Nonna’s back then…they can’t get you then.”

“Are we going frew the alley again, Nonna? Whewre’s the wooster? Who’s that guy–what’s he doing? Does the wooster live in that biwrdhouse? Those are cool box gawdens. Weally–that’s what my Daddy is making fo ow home? Why is it called a daffodil? Maybe we can have a tweat when we get home! I’m hungwy. Can we pway bad guys when we get home? Not Goblins, Nonna…zombies.”

THE BREAKING

2 Replies

Like a Seed My Heart Breaks Open

April 30, 2023

“We spend our lives trying to anchor our transience in some illusion of permanence and stability. We lay plans, we make vows, we backbone the flow of uncertainty with habits and routines that lull us with the comforting dream of predictability and control, only to find ourselves again and again bent at the knees with surrender to forces and events vastly larger than us. In those moments, kneeling in a pool of the unknown, the heart breaks open and allows life — life itself, not the simulacrum of life that comes from control — to rush in.”

So reads the opening paragraph in the April 30^th, 2023 edition of Maria Popova’s weekly newsletter, The Marginalian. It is the beginning of her introduction to Tina Davidson’s book, Let Your Heart Be Broken. She goes on to describe Davidson’s memoir as “a lyrical reckoning with what it takes to compose a life of cohesion and beauty out of shattered bits and broken stories.”

She had me. Right there in the lines, “We lay plans, we make vows, we backbone the flow of uncertainty with habits and routines that lull us with the comforting dream of predictability and control, only to find ourselves again and again bent at the knees with surrender to forces and events vastly larger than us. In those moments, kneeling in a pool of the unknown, the heart breaks open…”

Yes, the heart breaks open – and if we allow it, Life will rush in. But sometimes, in our confusion and grief, we desperately try to put the two halves of our heart back together. We resist the call to allow something new to emerge. We resist the opportunity to change and to grow. We just want things back the way they were. It’s as if a seed, having broken open to release life, frightened of the deep dark in which she finds herself, would try to close back up, rather than to push up toward the Light. It’s a little bit like a baby bird trying to crawl back inside the egg that just broke open and released him into the world.

Popova quotes Davidson’s book:

Let your heart be broken. Allow, expect, look forward to. The life that you have so carefully protected and cared for. Broken, cracked, rent in two. Heartbreakingly, your heart breaks, and in the two halves, rocking on the table, is revealed rich earth. Moist, dark soil, ready for new life to begin.”

For the past two years I have been repeatedly bent at the knees with surrender to forces and events vastly larger than [me] – than any of us. I have not just been kneeling in a pool of the unknown, I have been swimming in it. And some days I am just treading water, surviving. The thing about this pool of the unknown is that there are no clear answers. What is truly true is obscured. There is nowhere to gain a solid footing. It is a deep, dark pool of unknown.

This morning I also read two other bits of news. One was a report from DFL candidate Marianne Williamson, reporting from the South Carolina DFL convention. She wrote:

“Democratic activists [are]being told what to say to convince their friends and constituents to vote for Joe Biden in 2024. The official position – despite the fact that 51% of Democrats have expressed a desire to hear from other candidates – is that President Biden is the nominee and that’s it. Everyone is supposed to toe the party line this year, regardless… There is an anemic and delusional spirit in the air here, I’m afraid – an almost trancelike way in which Democrats are instructed by an official narrative to be so concerned about fascism…that we’re willing to limit our political imaginations, suppress debate among ourselves, and diminish our own commitment to the democratic process.”

The second article I read was about the man in Texas who shot 5 of his nextdoor neighbors on Friday. He was angry that they had asked him to stop shooting his AR-15-style weapon in his front yard at 11:00 at night because the noise was keeping their baby awake. So he walked into their house and shot them.

Marianne’s report heightened my current discouragement with politics. I used to be involved. I used to care. I used to vote. But since the political upheavals of 2016 and 2020, since the political and social fiasco of Covid-19 and vaccinations, since the national, and international confusion and hate filled squabbles about what is conspiracy and what is truth, what is mis-information and what is censorship, what is “fake news” and what is real, unbiased journalism, well, it all seems pointless. I’m angry. And impotent. I refuse to “take a stand” just so I am comfortable and can belong somewhere with like-minded folks. I have opinions – some of them strong ones… but in this grey of the unknown, I am committed to remaining open to the possibility that none of us are “right”, and all of us are “wrong”. Someone once said, “When there are two camps each declaring they are the ones who are right and know the truth of something, then the true truth is camped somewhere else.”

The article about the shooter in Texas broke open yet again that place in my heart that contains this bottemless well of grief. It’s like a slow hemorrhage…it never stops bleeding.

What I could only do in fits and starts was to look squarely at the two halves of my heart rocking on the table, revealing the rich moist soil of possibility and opportunity and begin planting seeds for something new and beautiful. These were seeds of love and compassion. These were seeds of hope. These were seeds of courage. But as we know, there is a time lapse between the planting of seed and its fruition.

Between these momentary fits and starts when I would find my footing, were the days and sometimes weeks of treading water, days of darkness with barely enough energy to engage in the bare necessities of living. When you’re nearly drowning in the unknown with no anchor, it is difficult to know what in the world to do. Some days it all felt too hard, too painful, too pointless. Feeling like that was unbearable – so I’d read novels, or binge watch TV series, or busy myself with household tasks.

My primary lifelines to still giving a damn were my children and my work. I work with educators supporting them in creating healthy learning environments rooted in the philosophy of Restorative Justice. The challenges of this work are what kept me swimming for shore; gave me courage to plant some seeds now and then in the fertile soil of my broken heart. My children and my family were my reason to keep returning to making the choice to open my heart, to feel the feels as my daughter calls it. To reckon with the grief and the anger, to slowly find my way through the valley.

And then there were, and are, the occasional songs, or blog posts, or something a stranger would say…messages from the Universe… “Keep going. Keep swimming. Keep loving. Allow. Open to love and joy and gratitude, allow them to fill you up and radiate beyond you into the world.”

Sometimes that is all we can do. Sometimes that is enough.

CRYING IN THE DARK

FINDING THE GIFTS

LOVE: THE BREATH OF LIFE

1 Reply

March 9, 2020

WE ALL NEED TO START BREATHING

“It’s the type of love that says ‘I believe in you.’ It’s the type of love that says, ‘You don’t have to be like this.’ Not the love that’s like ‘I just want to hug you.’ It’s the love that’s like, ‘You’re going to be better! And I’m going to stand here until you get better. I’m not going anywhere. That’s how much I love you. I’m not going on to buses. I’m not going to lunch. I’m not. I’m going to stand here and wait for you to do better and be better because I love you.'” Mauri Melander Friestleben — about loving students

Love them first. This was the directive at Lucy Laney at Cleveland Park Community School in North Minneapolis under Ms. Friestleben’s leadership. “What if we all did that?” she asks us in the Kare11 documentary Love Them First.

And I ask the same question. Whether we are their teachers and educators, their care-givers, their probation officers, the police driving through a neighborhood full of youngsters who live in homemade war zones, what if our first response to children and youth was to breathe deeply and love them first?

How would we need to “see” these young ones regardless of their exterior behaviors?

How would we need to view ourselves in order not to have their negative or disrespectful behaviors trigger our self-defense system?

I have been providing support services to several teachers in some notoriously dis-regulated third grade classrooms. The goal is to re-create the environments of these classrooms into healthy, thriving learning environments. I have been teaching the teachers the necessity of shifting their culturally inherited punitive mindset to a mind that is set on always honoring the dignity and value of each child. I teach that while we must hold firmly to the expectations and boundaries that provide the structure in which we can all be together in a good way, we must also support and nurture our students at all times. That means we support them in taking responsibility and making amends for harm they have caused as well as supporting them through their very real crisis and stresses.

It always sounds so good in theory. The teachers never disagree with me. But then, here I am in this third grade classroom early on a Monday morning to facilitate a discussion Circle with the students. After 15 minutes and three attempts to get them to come and sit down quietly in Circle, we finally succeeded and were able to begin. They did well listening to each other without interruption or side-comments or total disregard for what was happening for about 10 minutes. Then it slowly began to unravel so I cut to the end and closed the Circle.

I watched how the teacher, who is young and only a few years into her career, handled the constant inattention and commotion. She uses affirmations, encouragements, call & response, all good things to settle them, redirect them, provide positive affirmation to those who are trying to pay attention and learn. I also see that she is stressed. I am surprised that she hasn’t just blown up!

But I also noticed that there did not seem to be an emotional connection between the teacher and the students. It seems on the surface that she is regarded as just another tiresome adult who they have to endure. Across the city at another school with another equally chaotic third grade, I sense a similar attitude.

I’ve sat with a Circle of teachers who have actually cried because they are so stressed and unhappy and finding it impossible to “reach” these children, none-the-less teach them.

So how does someone like Ms. Friesleben inspire an entire staff to so thoroughly love their students that it transforms an entire school? How is their love different? How come they are effective and the classes I’m observing never seem to be out of chaos for more than a few moments at a time?

I believe it begins with us. Do we love ourselves? Do we see the light within us? Are we gentle and compassionate with ourselves, while also holding ourselves accountable to make right any mistakes we’ve made or harm that we have caused? In other words, are we doing our own work so that we are able to receive love, and allow love to flow through us to others? “Love your neighbor (others) as yourself” is a tenet of most spiritual traditions/practices. So, it begs the question, how can we fully and freely love another if we don’t love ourselves? How can our self-defenses not be triggered when we are treated disrespectfully if we have not done this work within us?

And then, can we truly see the divine light within each of our students? Do we look deeply into them and see what they’re not saying? Do we believe in them? I mean, not just cliches we might parrot — but really believe in their inherent worth and goodness, in their potential?

Something else that Ms. Friesleben says:

“There is a level of investment that comes at a cost. Because when you choose to press into that, you do get great outcomes from kids, you do. But [to do that] you also [must] choose to press into the pain. And for some people it’s too much. But it’s worth the cost because the return on your investment is pretty powerful.”

They are worth the cost. So, let’s all take some deep breaths and remember that even as we are surrounded by the air we breathe… we are surrounded by Love. It is the Breath of Life — the breath of the Universe, the breath of the Creator. It’s the type of love that says, I believe in you. It’s the type of love that says you are worthy of love, you are valuable, and you have something important to give to the world.

“No child should feel locked into a box that they can’t fight their way out of. It is our job as grown ups to find the keys and open them up and open the box and say “Fly!” “Breathe!” “Live!” “You will NOT be confined to a box. Not on MY watch!” Mauri Melander Friestleben

LIGHT AND WATER WALTZING

4 Replies

March 2, 2020

MOMMA IS DANCING

My mother once told me as we stood on a bridge overlooking a creek, “After I die and you see the sunlight dancing on the water, think of me. I will be in those sparkles. I will be part of the Light.”

My mother always loved to dance. I wish my father had taken her more often. When she lived alone she would put on a rousing piece of music and dance around her house. It was her exercise. Now, whenever I drive her somewhere I have classical music on. If it is upbeat and cheery she will wave her arms as though she is dancing or maybe conducting the orchestra. A big smile on her face, she will exclaim with childlike wonder about everything she sees.

In November I noticed an advertisement at the library for a dance class for folks with Parkinson’s or other disorders affecting mobility. I took her to one. She was in a terrible mood when I picked her up. But a few minutes into class she was smiling and doing her best to follow along with a dozen other people sitting in a Circle doing an odd mixture of ballet and movements to support brain pathways. Dancing in chairs!

Momma needs all the brain support she can get. She suffers from vascular dementia. She was only able to attend the class twice as she began to rapidly decline from Stage 5 into Stage 6 of her illness making it much more difficult for her to process information and also for her brain to direct her body what to do. Only six weeks later she is stumbling now and then into Stage 7, the final stage of this disease that devours a brain.

Occasionally she will cling to me… “I’m going to lose you!” she says.

“No, Momma. You won’t lose me. I’m here. I’ll always be here.”

Her eyes pleading, she shakes her head. “You will lose me. I’m, I’m, I think I’m slipping away.”

She’s right. We are losing Momma a brain cell at a time.

The other day I sat on her bed holding her hand after a severe episode had left her exhausted and sleeping. Whatever bitterness and disappointment still lingered in the holes and scars in my heart because of who my mother was not, because of what she was unable to do or give, because of what she didn’t know…quietly dissipated like shreds of fog succumbing to the Sun.

She was Enough. She is Enough. I gaze at her withered and ruined body in which she holds Divine and Sacred Light. Her body is a vessel meant to be filled up with Love. Mine too. All of us. Our bodies are vessels meant to hold Love and Light. She did her best to do so in the ways that she understood.

She did her best.

And soon, Momma, you will be that Light I see waltzing with the water in the bay.

WE THE PEOPLE…OF NO ACCOUNT

4 Replies

April 28, 2018

WE ARE THE HOPE LEFT IN THE WORLD

“I had forgotten how much light there is in the world, till you gave it back to me.” Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of EarthSea (1968)

My eyes came to a halt on the page. I closed the book upon my finger and sat, with tears trickling down my cheeks, so grateful for those who have brought light and beauty into my life the many times when I have despaired that there is any hope remaining; hope that the world might be whole again; hope that I can make any difference.

“The great and mighty go their way unchecked. All the hope left in the world is in the people of no account.” Ursula K. Le Guin, The Finder (2001)

I went for a walk. I sat and watched the Spring-thawed creek tumble happily over the boulders and brush, freed at last from Winter’s grip. I have felt like one “of no account”. And in terms of society, I suppose I am. Of no account. I have not done anything spectacular. I am an unpublished writer. I am an unemployed teacher. I am a very quiet activist. I’m a bit of a recluse.

But again and again I have been brought back to this: That simply BEING here in the world matters. And if I am willing to allow the Light that is in me to shine, if I am willing to keep on the journey that allows my heart to be open so that Love and Grace can easily flow, unrestricted, uninhibited into and through me, radiating beyond my physical space into the world… I am nourishing life. If I take deeply to heart that words matter — that there is great power in words — that all things are created through our words — if I consciously and diligently choose words drawn from love and not from fear — I am creating life.

“You can’t hide true power. Not for long. It dies in hiding, unshared.” Ursula K. Le Guin, The Finder (2001)

I began to scribble in my journal…

“Why do I hide? What Fear drains away the energy to act, to do that which I set out to do? Is my small act of kindness or my words on paper so insignificant that I shouldn’t bother — an insignificant drop of water? How many times over how many decades now have I heard that we are powerful… that we hold the Creator inside? That the power to create worlds lives in the cells of our bodies?

We are not, I am not without power. Love is not powerless against Fear and all that Fear spawns. What is intolerable is that I listen to the Lies and shut down; hide.”

And so I call gently to my Self… come forth again. Just Be, today. Just Be Grace.

And I call gently to you, as well. Just Be, today. Be kind. Be Grace. Be Light.

“Fear lives in the head. And courage lives in the heart. The job is to get from one to the other.” Louise Penny, The Long Way Home

THE POWER OF WORDS — Part 1

4 Replies

March 11, 2018

WAKING UP IS HARD TO DO

The chaos and suffering in the world frightens me. It feels overwhelming, especially when I contemplate the fact that the power to change it not only lies within me, but the responsibility to do so is also mine, ours, all of us together. I echo what I hear others say, “What can I possibly do?” The words are said with a sigh of defeat. I feel helpless. I want to turn away, go back to sleep.

Waking up is hard to do, none-the-less living wide awake and taking responsibility for how I impact the world around me. Shifting deeply rooted paradigms and habits of being is no easy task, no matter how much I intellectually agree with the idea! But I see no other way. So I am choosing, day by day, to mindfully, intentionally co-create a thriving world beginning in my own small corner of it. Beginning with mySelf.

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

Words conjure images — paint pictures in our minds. Words generate feelings. Words create the structures of the stories we create and within which we live our lives.

Many years ago I read a number of books about intention and manifestation and how we create our reality with our thoughts. I was fascinated. I dove right in. After awhile, the shine wore off. It wasn’t working for me. I saw it working in the lives of others, but I wasn’t manifesting what I wanted. I had a wish list. And I intensely wished for the things on it. Yet, my life continued much as it had been, and it wasn’t the life I wanted.

I’d get another book about positive thinking. I would try to shift my thoughts. But in too many of my real-time moments I didn’t have the energy to work through the negative thoughts inundating my brain. It felt more satisfying to wallow in the role of victim, to be angry, to hunker down in depression and despair, or to blame others for the lack of happiness and abundance in my life.

Then, eureka! One day it dawned on me that this power of thoughts and intentions thing was working! I was indeed creating the story I was living with my thoughts and words. I was creating the real experiences of my life with my beliefs about myself and others, with my assumptions, with the stories I made up in my head about situations and people. Yep, I had a wish list, but what I manifested was linked to what I actually thought, actually believed, actually felt, and from the words that I spoke, too many of them pessimistic and negative. I had a little tiny smear of positive thinking on top of a whole mass of negative thinking. Sweet frosting on top of a bitter, burned cake.

That was the turning point for me. What followed was a journey of exploration to search out old, gnarly and deeply rooted negative beliefs living in the shadows of my Self. Craggy giants, parasites quietly hogging all my energy.

I had to wake up. I had to face up. I had to ferret out the agreements I had made in my past as to what would keep me safe, or make me acceptable. I had to open my heart. I had to change my mind. The Old Guard had to go.

I often walk along the railroad tracks that run along a service road carved between the trees that climb the bluffs above my neighborhood. The tracks became a metaphor for the path to the life I wish to be living. The only way to manifest this life, is to keep my feet on the track, walking it every day, step by step. If I lose my balance and fall off, I must courageously step back up and keep on going. My life, at least the life that I wish to be living, depends upon my keeping my feet on this track: It is a path of Love and Joy.

It has been absolutely necessary for me to fire the Judge who pompously struts about within my mind and arrogantly assumes she is in charge. Unfortunately, she keeps showing back up for duty, and sometimes I forget that I fired her and before I know it, she’s taken charge again, and I have to rein her in and dismiss her from her post yet again.

I have to choose each day, sometimes hour by hour, what I will think about, how I will perceive others, how I will respond to the situations I am experiencing. Sometimes it is as easy as choosing to smile when otherwise I may have remained glum of face, and a bit rough in my thoughts. Sometimes it is as difficult as choosing to bless someone that I have perceived has wronged me. Sometimes it is as crazy as imagining the world differently — cleaner, safer, happier, more compassionate. It is as simple as looking for the beauty in the world and in the people I encounter. It is as unsettling as trusting that health and wealth are flowing to me effortlessly.

I am aware of the ugliness and the cruelty and the insanity happening in the world, yes, but as I respond in the “now” — offering compassion or comfort, signing a petition, contributing money, attending a meeting, voting, teaching, writing — I also choose to imagine it transformed. I look for what already may be wonderful that otherwise I wouldn’t have noticed or may have dismissed in the face of the overwhelming chaos that surrounds us daily.

As the sun quietly rises this morning with feathered scarves of orange and pink and purple, I am happy. Because I choose to be. I am grateful for the blessings that fill up my life. I open my heart to the flow of Love, my mind to the Wisdom of the Creator who dwells within. I choose to allow the Light that is within me to shine today.

Next: The Power of Words — Part 2: Nothing New Under The Sun

THE MONTH OF DEEP DARKNESS

2 Replies

December 10, 2017

WISHING YOU A KIND AND QUIET DECEMBER…

…She closed her letter with this wish for us. The words jumped off the screen and lodged themselves in my heart which for days had been stressed, angry, afraid, and lost. Really lost.

I have only written two or three blogs this year. A handful of journal entries. Maybe a writing exercise here and there. What writing I did was mostly focused on writing curriculum, powerpoints and handouts for the classes and workshops I led, working with educators examining Restorative Justice in Education.

The nature of my work calls me to invite, encourage and sometimes challenge educators to engage in self-reflection and to embrace some deep changes of heart and mind. I cannot do this if I am not regularly looking at the issues in my own life that obstruct or waylay my ability to remain in a heart and mind-state of kindness, compassion and peace. I have to live very present, releasing resistance and fear, and embrace the Courage to live honestly, and to engage in the change that our world so desperately needs.

As the months of 2017 rolled along, everything seemed to get harder. By August, I was dissolving into tears at the slightest provocation. It became more and more difficult to even read the headlines in the news, none the less the articles. Never-the-less I was scheduled to lead three significant workshops in August. One of them was for 40+ school administrators looking at the attitudes and practices of Restorative Justice in Education — why they make sense and have the ability to transform school climate.

But in September I had no contracts. No longer distracted, no longer having to put one foot in front of the other no matter what I felt like, I rapidly unraveled.

I was lost. Angry. So very, very angry. Some days I didn’t even know what I was angry about. I wanted to climb out of my own skin. I found myself envying my dear mother who just turned 90 and probably won’t have to endure this world too much longer. The darkness was so heavy, I could physically feel it squeezing my chest and churning in my stomach.

I said to my husband, “Imagine if someone was incessantly running their nails down a chalkboard and no matter what, the noise won’t stop…that is how I feel inside my skin.”

Some days were better than others.

One day I was driving my mother to her eye doctor appointment. All day I had felt like a hurricane was battering my insides. It was violent, unrelenting, loud and screaming. But on the outside, as always, I was trying to smile and be cordial and do all the right things. It was exhausting.

On my way to pick her up I’d thrown an SOS out to the Universe…and now, as we drove down the road, a Bald Eagle flew over, briefly following my car… then moving on. In the Indian world of Animal Medicine, this is significant. It indicates that our prayers are being carried to the Creator.

And nearly every day since, some help has come including the quiet kindnesses of my husband and a homeopathic remedy called Rescue Remedy for fear and anxiety! (btw, it works!)

But most of all, this lovely closing wish in a brief note: Wishing you a kind and quiet December. In the moment that I read it, peace flowed over me, head to toes, and then began to fill me up on the inside.

It is the darkest month of the year. And given the state of the world, and the headlines in the news each day, it feels like the darkness is so deep that whatever light exists is obscured by deep fog. Even so, everywhere I go there are bells jangling and lights and sales and crowds… And I repeat to myself my new mantra: a KIND and QUIET (i.e. PEACE-FILLED) December).

Slowly, I feel this heaviness lifting. I offer gratitude for the Light and goodness that is shining in the Darkness. I stood by the stream that tumbles down the bluff behind my neighborhood the other day, marveling at how during this monochrome time of year the water gets to do art. The ice forming along the edges and over the rocks; amazing, beautiful art that will be different tomorrow and the day after. I released my heavy heart and all my worry and fear and rage into the stream and let it be carried away. And the water reminded me that “resistance is indeed, futile”. That the key is allowing the flow of my life, honoring my life.

I didn’t blog this year in part because I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to be able to write what would bring joy, and courage, and strength to my readers. I wanted to write something funny.

I had so little of any of that to offer.

But now, in the darkest month of the year, during the deepest darkness we have known in this country in a very long time, I offer you this little sip of hope; this little sprinkle of joy; this small peace: please create a kind and quiet December. Do what you need to do to make it so. Maybe if we all would be kinder to ourselves, we could be kinder to our partners and to our neighbors and to the tired clerk at the store. Maybe if we took the time we need to just stand quietly under the trees, or next to the frozen stream, or looking out over the city from the hill — the screaming inside the cells of our skin would stop.

No matter what those who currently hold power do to this world, there are people to love. No one can prevent us from practicing kindness, or choosing gratitude and joy. No one except for ourselves. Myself.

Wishing you a kind and quiet December. Wishing you a year filled with kindness. And may Peace fill up the space inside your bones.

WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD

1 Reply

January 19, 2017

WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD…

You know the song…

I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom, for me and you
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.
I see skies of blue, and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.
The colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces, of people going by
I see friends shaking hands, saying how do you do
They’re really saying, I love you.
I hear babies cry, I watch them grow
They’ll learn much more, than I’ll never know
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world…

…Actually though, the music that surrounded me was the whisper of my skis, the happy songs of some little birds flitting about in the sunshine, and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons playing softly through my ear buds as I glided through the woods…

I keep stopping, just to absorb the beauty surrounding me. Perfectly pristine white snow sprinkled with sparkly glitter stretches smoothly out before me. It is marred only by the ski tracks. Sparkling and blue shadowed, it covers the floor of the woods like a frosted cake–one can only guess what lies beneath the smoothly sculpted mounds and gullies. Here and there I spot the tracks of deer and tinier creatures. A rabbit. A squirrel? Some sort of tiny mouse, his long tail marking where he scrambled.

It is quiet here. The loudest sounds are my skis and the crow singing some happy crow song. Vivaldi is light in my ears, and I glide on. I top a small hill, and as my skis carry me down, my eyes rest on the trees. The white birch, touched by the sun, are like white neon poles standing among the rest of the undressed forest of dignified charcoal greys and browns and black. Here and there small groups of green-needled pine keep watch while the others sleep. As I glide by, I breathe in their breath and I am grateful for them.

The sun and the sky are a watercolor wash of blue and buttercream. A few clouds, thinly transparent stretch across the expanse. They look like they are melting into the icy blue water of the sky.

At the overlook, I lean on my ski poles and look down on the harbor of my city and beyond to the Great Lake of Gitchi Gummi. Such a busy busy world down there with its ships and train yards, tall stacks spewing white steam marking the industrial plants, business buildings clustered at the center of the long narrow stretch between these bluffs and the water, and houses and highways and bridges spanning the harbor–little tiny cars zipping back and forth. The sun gilds the water golden. It is another water color painting.

“Remember this,” I whisper. “What a wonderful world! It’s so beautiful–so breathtakingly, achingly beautiful! Whatever comes, remember this. Show up seeing beauty no matter where you find yourself. Make it. Create it. Show up with Love. It is all around you, all the time, just looking for a way to flow into the world. Remember this.”

	Daniel Skillings on HONORING TRANSITIONS
	Mary Skillings on THE BREAKING
	Meridith on THE BREAKING
	Mary Skillings on PLANTING SEEDS OF LIGHT
	Mer on PLANTING SEEDS OF LIGHT