Tag Archives: Happiness

SPRING SONG

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March 20, 2016

I saw two robins in the slush during our Winter’s final tantrum the other day. They were fighting over what looked to be a worm. It had been raining hard in our part of the city, while snow buried everyone up over the bluffs. Our basement was leaking, proof that the ground was saturated and the earth soft–we knew this because it was easy to pound the metal stakes into the ground to put the deer fence back up around our garden. The tulips were pushing up above the earth–a beloved delicacy for the pregnant does who wander out of the snowy woods into the neighborhood where the snow has retreated, looking for the special treats they crave. So, it might truly have been a winter fattened worm escaping a flooded den. Do worms hibernate in dens? Where do they go when the ground freezes up? The scrawny robin won.

When my children were young, we went for our first ice-cream cone after we saw our first robins in Spring. It was a tradition. But I’ve become lactose intolerant. I bought some fresh strawberries instead that afternoon while it rained, and the school children were at home having a “snow day”.

This morning the sun came up blazing rose-gold, announcing the first day of Spring. It is streaming in through winter streaked windows, inviting us to fetch our overshoes and go for a muddy trek in the hills. I am making fresh ground-buckwheat pancakes. David is frying bacon. There is a pitcher full of Green Smoothie on the counter filled with pears and pineapple, grapefruit and greens, ginger and celery and cucumber and avocado–we’re getting fortified for our Sunday migration into the bluffs. There are a flock of Redpolls taking turns having breakfast at the feeder outside the kitchen window; getting fattened up for their migration to their summer home in the Arctic–true northerners after my own heart!

I’m going to buy some daffodils from the Market today. It’s a tradition. A vase of Sunshine on my table. Last week we found some pussy-willows just beginning to consider opening up. This week they will be ready. Maybe we’ll find some today as we slog through the mud and navigate the swollen streams in the hills that climb up to the bluffs. From up there we can see our neighborhood laid out like a toy town. Beyond lies the harbor, the bridges, the Lake. We can see all the way to Wisconsin. We’ll gather some pussy-willows, and fill up our house with Spring. Tonight we’ll go grill steaks at my daughter’s.

Tomorrow we’ll clean out the closets and put away the parkas and the skis.

DaffadillaBlueVase

THE THUMPER RULE

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December 2, 2015

MY GUIDING BUNNY

Some people have Spiritual Guides in human form–counselors, priests, pastors, teachers. Some people have Spiritual Guides in the form of Spirit Beings, like Angels or other Beings of Light.

I have Animals. Sometimes real ones. A dragonfly brought me a message one spring day when I was trying to resolve a problem. She flew right up to me and hovered about a foot from my face…she just stayed there until finally the “aha!” broke through to my consciousness; then she flew off. Another day when I was particularly edgy and cantankerous I went for a walk and inadvertently walked into the middle of an entire herd of deer. Deer Medicine is all about Gentleness and Grace. I stood stock-still, with silent tears rolling down my face. Two young ones actually walked towards me, stopping about eight or ten yards away. After about 15 minutes, they all slowly wandered off and I went home, gentled, graced and peace-filled.

But my Animal Guides aren’t always real. I have a Tiger and a Bear and a Wolf in my Mind’s menagerie. The Tiger’s name is Jack and he’s the one teaching me that there aren’t any parts of my Self that I need to kill off…it’s more about integrating. He’s taught me that Ego’s aren’t monsters that we need to keep caged somewhere deep in the dungeons of our psyche. They just need to learn when to move over and let the more Enlightened One of Us drive the bus.

But this isn’t about Wolves and Tigers and Bears. No. This is about a Bunny. Yesterday, Thumper got loose from the Bambi set and came wandering into my bathroom. I had just scrubbed the floor an hour previously, but there I was wiping up a pile of whiskers. Evidently my husband had dumped the whisker bin from his electric razor mostly on the floor, with some on the toilet seat and in the sink, just to keep it interesting. I think he meant to put it in the wastebasket, but he was probably looking at something else, his brain three steps ahead of his body. Sometimes his brain is actually out the door and three blocks down the street before his body leaves the house. You can imagine what he doesn’t notice then! Frowning, I could feel my body tense as my mind furiously wrote up the negative incident report that I would surely deliver as soon as he came upstairs.

Suddenly, there was Thumper, shyly peeking out from behind the wastebasket.

I eyed him suspiciously.

“Hello,” said Thumper.

Wow, I thought. I haven’t seen Bambi in maybe, oh, 25 years?

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Well, ummm, I just came to remind you what my father taught me. It’s pretty good advice, ” said Thumper.

He ducked his head shyly. His foot started nervously thumping. And I remembered.

“If you can’t say somethin’ nice, don’t say nothin’ at all,” said Thumper and I. Together.

“You know this one?” asked Thumper.

“Yeah. I guess I do,” I said.

“Cool!” said Thumper. He loped out of the bathroom. Then he quick stuck his head back around the door-frame. “Don’t forget, now!” he said.

And he was gone.

I finished cleaning up the bathroom and joined my husband in the kitchen where he was making smoothies. I opened my mouth…

“Remember!” whispered an invisible Thumper.

I shut my mouth.

I never mentioned the whisker mess.

Not once.

I have been thinking a lot about my new Thumper Rule. My life will be so much more amazing because my focus will be on all the good stuff. I’ll bet I’ll smile more. I might even discover humor in the nooks and crannies of my life.

Thumper never said ‘If you can’t say something nice to someone…’. He simply said, ‘If you can’t say something nice…’ Period. About anything or anyone or to yourself.

Does that include the weather do you think? And stupid drivers? And insurance regulations? OMG–does it include politicians?!

I just finished writing a letter to someone because they had written one to me and it required a response. It took me 4 days. I had to keep applying my new Thumper Rule so I had to keep deleting shit–stuff– and re-framing, ah–stuff, and…Whew! What an exercise! It was like running a fucking–um–an exhausting–marathon. But different.

IF YOU CAN’T SAY SOMETHING NICE, DON’T SAY NOTHING AT ALL…

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.

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 suppose. 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!) “Good 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.

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. I 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 thee
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.

	Mary Skillings on PLANTING SEEDS OF LIGHT
	Mer on PLANTING SEEDS OF LIGHT
	Alice Marks on GIFTS FROM GAIA
	Mary Skillings on THE TEDDY BEAR’S PI…
	sundog on THE TEDDY BEAR’S PI…

MUSINGS from MARY

Tag Archives: Happiness

SPRING SONG

THE THUMPER RULE

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

ON REMAINING LOYAL TO ONE’S SELF

THE END OF A LONG, LONG JOURNEY

A FALL OF DIAMONDS

WE CAME HERE TO THRIVE