Sunrise

It lasted a moment or two
or a little bit more
And that was plenty
Now unseen, yet seen.

The Window Without a View

"But lo! the morning peeps 

Over the eastern steeps"

~ William Blake

In my house upon a hill, there is a window to a wall. 

But what is it that you glimpse when you approach and truly see?

All the Angry People....

"...but angry people are not always wise..." 

~ Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Lately, I cannot help but notice...the "world situation" is making any number of people angry, and in very personal ways.  Because world situations are always very personal - they have to do with human life.

It is indiscriminate, the outrage.  If you are angry about something, and the more openly you express that anger, I can just about guarantee there is someone across "the divide" who will match it willingly, or even without thinking.

Sure, I have felt it, I have at times expressed it.  Openly.  And not so openly.  But I'm thankful I have gradually learned throughout my life to find a way to deal with it (even if imperfectly).  I'm dealing with it now.  Right here.  Right now.  Because something made me angry earlier today, and I consciously chose a different approach.

I claim no particular expertise, except to know what I have observed:  When we are angry, we are generally judging more than we are observing, and we are very rarely breathing, or at least not particularly well.

What if we could do our best to put our anger on a shelf and decide to understand instead? 

What if we could actually make an attempt to glimpse the other side? 

Wouldn't that be astonishing!?! 

(OK, fine, that last remark was just a little bit angry, because you see, I'm just a little bit angry about the anger itself and what it's doing to our lives and to our society.  I choose to see mine too, when it arises.) 

What if you could try on someone else's shoes by trying on their hearts?

You might begin to hear.

And some of "them" might very well begin to hear you too.

I must include a warning.  It takes a lot of courage to "try on" someone's heart, to allow yourself to understand.  Because the absolutes begin to fade, and that can feel uncomfortable - if you decide to tell your friends, some of them might choose to judge you, and you need to let that go. 

The starkly outlined blacks and whites begin to shift.

Some say they blur to shades of gray.  And you may see the gray at first, the mind sees gray, you may only see the gray, the mind sees ambiguity.  Keep going through the gray, keep going, keep on going (this is a very important step, it's still in process for me too).  Because when you keep on going, when you consciously choose to understand, you begin to see the colors, at first they come in softly.

There is a knowing that is impossible, yet real.  It embraces every contradiction of the mind.  It is a knowing that can only arise from Love, from heart to heart to heart to heart.

And the anger falls away.

You can look into "their" eyes, completely, without flinching...you can look into their eyes and See.

And the tears begin to flow.

The New Earth doesn't exist on one side of the bridge or on the other.  The New Earth is the Bridge.

Transistor Radio Summer #11: All Over the World

"There's gonna be a party all over the world." ~ Electric Light Orchestra

As the summer draws to a close, the Autumn Equinox just hours away, I can't help but include a song that had a magical, expansive effect on me in my teens and still does...

"I got a message on the radio....from where it came from, I don't really know....and I heard these voices callin' all over the world...."

By the way, I found the radio.

Expect a Miracle

"I am realistic.  I expect miracles." ~ Dr. Wayne Dyer

The other day, a friend told me a family she knows in Oregon packed up all of their belongings and headed for the hills, to an undisclosed location, the apocalypse deemed near.

And we are faced with a humanitarian crisis of untold proportions, as desperate refugees flood into Europe.  Barbaric extremists desecrate human life and human history, running amok.

The world is in crisis again. 

This morning, at Dawn.

What is the answer?

The first answer is to Love and to demonstrate Love, in whatever way we can.  Some Germans are showing the way.  And so is Pope Francis.

The Greater Answer, which is derived from Love, as all things must be, is to take it even Higher.

How about expecting a Miracle? 

Is this the New Earth or not?  We have a choice.  Miracles are Real.

"Nature Religion" at my Door

"Forgive me that I cannot kneel

And worship in this pew,

For I have knelt in western dawns,

When the stars were large and few"

~ "God's Creed", Ella Higginson, 1861-1940

It's a rare morning when the front page of a city's newspaper shares the heartfelt words of Ella Higginson, a poet laureate of Washington state.  I'm happy to discover Ella - she and I are clearly kindred spirits on the path in many ways.

The excerpt from her poem God's Creed appeared in the following story:  Do you see God in a sunset?  "Nature religion" may be the signature spirituality of the Pacific Northwest.  

Apparently another study (this one by Baylor University) has awarded Portland the distinction of being the most unchurched city in the entire United States - and Oregon the most unchurched state.  

This particular study took a rather unique approach: 

"Researchers compared the richness of natural amenities in every U.S. county to religious adherents per 1,000 people.  They found that areas with higher rates of amenities have lower rates of religious adherence."

I'm not at all surprised.  Like Ella, I walk the passages of "Nature's church" most days of the week, and even when I must remain at home, my church sends missionaries to my door.

Transistor Radio Summer #10: Born Free

"Live free, and beauty surrounds you, the world still astounds you, each time you look at a star." 

~ Born Free by Don Black

The other day I read a post on Facebook inviting us all to spend 5 minutes per day on a dream, suggesting that if a dream isn't worth spending 5 minutes per day, then it must not be all that important to us.  It's one of those posts we might tend to see one moment, forget the next.  Yet every once in a while, the simplest of instructions actually takes hold. 

You see, like many people, I have all sorts of projects in progress.  Some of these projects in progress have been in progress for years.  It might be months between visits to some of these projects.  And I asked myself:  Can I spend 5 minutes?

It wasn't long before I realized 5 minutes isn't necessarily enough, though in some cases, it is.  5+ minutes works even better.  I have made a few compromises too - not every project gets my attention every day, but I'm finding the 5+ minute rule invites me to at least visit some of them every few days. It's a very simple thing to do.

There are some things that aren't exactly dreams, but they bring us Joy.  Playing the piano is like this to me.  I am a highly imperfect piano player and was a reluctant student through most of my childhood, with a very strict, unpleasant teacher at the start.  I can save my childhood piano stories for another day.  Imperfect or not, even as an adult, playing the piano freely brings me Joy.  And it's easy to use the 5+ minute rule with the piano.

And so I just did.

And I discovered a song in a very old stack of music many of us have heard (far too many times in elevators in the 70's) and ignored or forgotten.  It gave me astonishing Joy to rather imperfectly play this on the piano just now, while dinner is cooking. 

I'd like you to listen to this song very closely. 

Listen to what it has to say. 

Don't tune it out.

Listen . . .

It can set you free.  In less than 5 minutes...

A Pilot Light that Never Dims

"You Will KNOW The Truth" ~ Eileen Caddy

A little while ago, I shared a post on Facebook, from the Findhorn Foundation.  For those of you not on Facebook, I'm going to repeat what it is it had to say.  It appeared with a photo of a diamond-shaped view through a rustic sort of a door, to the countryside, perhaps looking out upon beautiful Findhorn itself.  And in this moment now, I am realizing there were windmills, which is a little "wink" from the Universe (you'll see in a moment below).  There were many windmills in Kansas, where the wind always tended to blow, in the many years I spent there.

"Guidance from Eileen Caddy

You Will KNOW The Truth

When something is revealed to you from deep within, you need no confirmation or proof that it is the Truth. You can stick by it even if it means you stand completely alone. It is that inner knowing that counts; it is that inner revelation which you can hold on to. The things of the Spirit have to be understood by the Spirit; they cannot be dissected and analysed with a human's mind. This is where you have to be absolutely steadfast and unshakable and know without a shadow of doubt that what has been revealed to you from within is of the Truth and not fantasy. No one can help you over this; it has to be an inner knowing, an absolute certainty which is unshakable. If you find even the slightest doubt creeping in about the authenticity of what has been revealed or given to you, be on your guard. Again I say to you, you need no confirmation from the outer, you will KNOW the truth, whether it is from Me, and will find an inner peace in knowing."


At first I posted the photo, and the words.  I posted it without questioning.  I did feel it is possible to KNOW.  And quite honestly, upon reflection, I still do.  That's the inner peace.  Perhaps I'm still processing this.  As I posted earlier on Facebook, it's our minds that tend to analyze, our minds that tend to get in the way of the Knowing, the space of the Heart.  It's our minds that tend to take our inner peace away.  That inner peace is our Pilot Light.  It resides in the space of the Heart.  

Here is what I wrote earlier on Facebook, as I reflected upon the Findhorn post:


"This is a far more intricate teaching than it appears. We don't necessarily "know" on the surface, or that can seem to be the case. Because the mind tends to get in the way of the space of the Heart. It might take our entire lives (and beyond) to learn how to listen with the Heart and not the mind, to hear with100% clarity. Perhaps we never do completely, in this vulnerable human form, as long as we have minds, as they tend to question Hearts. 

But deep down, yes, there are some things we tend to Know, if we really choose to listen. When I was a child, I knew there couldn't possibly be a hell in the afterlife, even if I heard any number of messages otherwise. The fears injected by those voices seemed like my own inner doubt, but deep down, at the deepest Heart-based level, it was simply obvious: No Loving God could possibly create Hell. It's a "no-brainer" - literally! The Heart knows what Love actually Is. And what it is not.

When we listen for the path of the Heart, our minds do tend to doubt, because the path of the Heart asks us to be coeur-ageous, and our minds tend to get in the way. It is much like "Field of Dreams", and the signs are there to en-coeur-age us. Signs are utterly essential because they quiet the mind. They are the tools of Synchronicity. They are the Magic itself, revealed.

A rather unusual wind came up yesterday. Around the same time, my hot water heater failed. It failed just a bit at a time, over several hours, until we noticed all the water was lukewarm. The pilot light had gone out, but I didn't know it yet, or even when I did, I thought something might be "broken". My mind tended to panic. My mind tended to worry I'd need to buy a new hot water heater for $1000. It was just the pilot light, but it didn't relight itself. It took a conscious intervention to get the hot water going again. Deep down, beyond the mind, I had a feeling my hot water heater was fine, and it was.

So don't worry so much about doubting. Worrying about doubting is simply the mind worrying about doubting. And we are human beings. The way of the Heart will come to you again and again and again. Sometimes it's not "the way" the mind envisions. In fact, usually it's not. It is generally beyond the mind's ability to conceive. It is conceived of the Heart. And it is Magical. The Universe's Pilot Light can never, ever fail. And that also happens to be why there could never be a Hell...."

Inner Peace.  The Knowing.  It's not exactly intricate.  The mind tends to make it that way.  It's really very simple.  God is simply Love.  And so are We.  I heard a piece of that in my childhood too...

Transistor Radio Summer #9: Open Your Eyes

"Open your eyes..." ~ Asia

I write in the midst of an intensely busy week, a day surely too busy to write.  Still, I am here, because this song is going through my head, and my Heart.

Asia generally wasn't considered a "good" band of the 80's, or so I tended to hear. Still, some of their songs really reached out to me, and a few were definitely popular.  This one really wasn't "known", but it carries a message.  It did then.  It does now.  It does always.

Transistor Radio Summer #8: Voice of the Living Light

"The truly holy person welcomes all that is Earthly." ~ Hildegard von Bingen

Tonight, a diversion from my transistor radio of long ago.  We go much farther back, to the 12th century.  A portion of this transcendent piece by the astonishing Hildegard von Bingen came on my radio as I was driving.  

Voice of the Living Light.  The segment I heard earlier had to do with Dawn.  It is worthy of reflection in the evening too...

Transistor Radio Summer #7: Feelin' Groovy

"Slow down, you move too fast, you got to make the morning last..." ~ Simon & Garfunkel

On my way to an early morning dentist appointment (when I really wanted to be on my morning walk instead), this came on the radio.  It surely had a presence on my transistor radio, long ago.

No matter what you are doing this morning (or any other time of day), no matter how you feel, take the time to listen, and to smile....

Joy in the moment happens, every day, if you choose to look for it....

Transistor Radio Summer #6: Silvery Rain

"Take to the sky, higher than high..." 
~ Silvery Rain, Olivia Newton-John/Hank Marvin

They have been spraying significant amounts of Round-Up near a trail where I love to walk.  This particular song re-released by Olivia Newton John in 1981 (and written a decade earlier) is not at all well known, but it made an impression on me long ago.  It was also an early music video.

We sadly have not changed our ways all that much since the early 1980's.  It's up to us...

Transistor Radio Summer #5: Rocky Mountain High

"You might say he found a key for every door..." ~ John Denver

I grew up in Denver with the wonderful John Denver, his musical creations flowing through my days for years.  I can't remember the first time I saw John Denver at the legendary Red Rocks, but I know it was more than once.  I was surely listening to this song already in the Summer of 1973.  I play it often still.   It too is all about Awakening.

I tried to touch the sun a couple of times.  I took it into myself.  But I didn't need to take it in at all.  It was a part of me all along. 

Transistor Radio Summer #4

"A real celebration..." ~ Saturday in the Park, Chicago

And now a song on a Saturday, one I surely did hear on many a Saturday through and beyond my transistor radio, starting in 1973.  I really liked this one, from the start.  It's about Awakening.

Every day's the 4th of July...

Transistor Radio Summer #3

"...elbisrever si cisum ehT" ~ Electric Light Orchestra

Back to the basement with this one, on a lazy summer's day, it was time for a "laser light show" with the brother closest in age to me.  The song we always played?  Fire on High by ELO.  It was right around the mid-70's.

 The first part of this song is rather jarring then and now.  It is eerily reminiscent of a series of experiences I had much later.  The entire song in retrospect mirrors the aspects of a spiritual emergence.  When you journey through your darkest fears, on the other side is Light.

This piece carries reminders of "the backward masking" craze.  If you weren't an evangelical, you might have missed all the excitement - the PTL Christian cable network in particular warning evangelical children and teens not to listen to songs with backwards messages from Satan.  And of course we all immediately started destroying our records and stereos that way.  The song Stairway to Heaven will need to wait for another day...

Around this time I experienced real lasers at the museum and thought going to a laser light show in the planetarium was even better than astronomy (which I already liked quite a bit).  We were blessed to have an old-fashioned planetarium - now they are all digital and not nearly as effective.  But back in the cool confines of our basement around 1976, we created the best "laser light shows" of all - with music, flashlights and creativity, plus the volume turned up high.

P.S.  I almost never hear this song anymore, and it came on just the other day.  I was thinking about blogging about it tonight, and there it was again...

Transistor Radio Summer #2

"Turn around, turn around, it's on the other side." ~ Kansas

The summer is 1979, my transistor radio mostly in a drawer, my sister's discarded basement stereo now in my room upstairs.  I can't remember when I first encountered Kansas.  I actually visited the place itself around that summer, my now weatherman brother working the storms he loved.  Later I'd encounter storms there too.  It takes storms sometimes to trigger an Awakening.  I have Kansas to thank for some of that, in many more ways than one.

This song was all about the empty page for me.  And also about much More.  I still listen to this song today.  We think we know the empty pages we are supposed to write.  The ones we are supposed to write are never empty.

Transistor Radio Summer #1

"For we can fly!" ~ The 5th Dimension

I will find it if I look.  My red transistor radio from radio summers long ago.  There were many radios growing up - this was only one of mine, amid the household record players.  

Music was much different then, it seems, the 70's.  It could fill a home to overflowing, or drift in through the windows from the house across the street.

I have a special memory, from a very special Source.  It was my first synchronicity, the first I can recall.  I didn't have a label for it.  But I never did forget it.

It was some time near the end of June, and I was in the basement listening to the radio in my oldest sister's room.  The basement rooms were best of all in summer - upstairs all we had were fans.  

"Up, up and away in my beautiful, my beautiful balloon...."  It was surely 1970, this song a few years old, and I was 6 years old.

Someone shouted from upstairs and then came running down. "Balloon!  S-----u-----e  Balloon!"  It  was my oldest brother, and he was already running up again.

I quickly made it up the stairs, leapt out the door to the garage, then out another door, and raced across the lawn of our backyard, to where he pointed with a smile.  He loved to show me wonders in the sky, a weatherman in training.  

And there it was - in rainbow colors, rising, silhouetted by the Colorado mountains, our partially constructed chain link fence below, reflecting in the sun.  The fence to me was almost every bit as interesting as the balloon. It was about to hold a puppy.

I marveled that the summer skies had listened to the song, and for many years I wondered.  I didn't have a label for it.  It was The 5th Dimension.

Make A Wish

"...for to have faith is to have wings..." ~ Peter Pan, J.M Barrie

"Make A Wish"

Just three simple words and perhaps a "...."

I was about to post it on Facebook, a picture at the ready, from my time in the midst of Beauty, a walk long overdue.

And then I read the words.

And then I read them again.

And again.

As if for the very first time.

Make A Wish. 

How does a person truly "Make" a wish? 

It is a participatory process, the Multiverse embedded. 

Some might call it "co-creation"...

The picture.

Weeding

"Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God's handwriting..." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have gotten behind (way behind!) on my weeding.  And because weeds in my gardens can no longer stay, I set about the task, just now, for a time, a little at a time, or so I thought.

I was in for a bit of a surprise.

The more I weeded, the fewer weeds I saw.  It seems many of the weeds had integrated into Beauty, no longer weeds at all...

Turning Point

"It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh... people will come Ray. People will most definitely come." ~ Field of Dreams

There is a scene in Field of Dreams when the Magic becomes visible.  The doubters couldn't see.  They thought is was "crazy".  

How could you mow over your corn?  

Because there is Magic.  And I'd like you to see.

There came a day.  The day everything changed. 

I sense we're not far from this day on this planet.  We have much of an over-thought world driven by "rationalists", when we don't need to live on mere "rations" at all. 

The Magic will find them, one Heart at a time.  They knew it as children and long, long ago.  We did too.  We do now.  They are coming.

It's the world that once was, and is, and will be again. 

P.S. I noticed a typo while previewing this entry.  I chose to keep it (or should I say, "is") very intentionally. ;-)

Beauty

"The fruition of beauty is no chance of hit or miss - it is inevitable as life - it is exact and plumb as gravitation." ~ Walt Whitman

As I walked, there it was, Beauty emerging where it is not supposed to be.  Where would it be if not for the brokenness?  And would we even notice its unlikely vitality if not for the jagged edges?

Clearing a Way to the Dawn

"Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star." 

~ Henry David Thoreau

The other day, I just happened to be upstairs in time to see the Dawn peek through my attic window. 

But I could only see a glimpse. 

There was an old bed frame in the way, boxes of papers, books and who knows what, a bag of old, abandoned shoes, and a table upside down, awaiting a garage sale. 

Hastily I cleared a path, stumbling over boxes.  By the time I foraged my way to see, it was too bright to take a picture. 

Today the Dawn arrived again.  Today the way was clear.

In Celebration of A Life...

"Be it as if I were with you..."

"The best of me then when no longer visible--for toward that I have been incessantly preparing."

~ Walt Whitman

Today I walked in Nature, celebrating the beautiful life of Frances Alice Toepfer, May 8, 1922 - December 6, 2014. 

"I feel so very thankful to have known Frances Toepfer as a wonderful mentor and friend. My journalism and newspaper staff instructor at Lincoln from 1979 to 1982, she encouraged and delighted me for years with occasional heart to heart talks and letters. I visited Fran most recently last summer, and she was still enjoying her writing, artwork and reading. She was actively engaged in life and beautifully aware of her loving spiritual path. I too am a writer, and she inspired me to think expansively from the very first day I walked into her class, not only in my writing, but in life itself. She is even with me now, reminding me to write succinctly (and yes, I sense she is inviting us to smile, as all of "her writers" remember...). I express my heartfelt condolences."

 

Today...

 

"Yesterday"...

Sleep Epidemic

"Life is so strange 

When you don't know 

How can you tell 

Where you're going to?" 

~ Missing Persons, "Destination Unknown"

It is perhaps just a little disconcerting to doze off with my laptop in my lap the second time this week, about to blog, this time not quite sure what to write about, and then awaken to reading this...Siberian woman becomes latest victim of unexplained mass sleep epidemic

At least my blog for the night is done...(and yes, that song popped into my head, just as I awakened, strange indeed...)

Simplicity

"I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars." 

~ Walt Whitman

As I was on my walk today, a delicate pattern at my feet captured my attention.  I cannot really know what the winter winds had left upon the ground, but I stopped to breathe, observe and celebrate the grace of its simplicity.

Almost...

"There is always a gap between intention and action." ~ Paulo Coelho

In the two or three months before Christmas, every time I went to a particular grocery store, they would ask me if I was collecting stamps for some sort of promotional program.  I always would say "Yes".  Because "Why not?"

One day last week, I noticed the woman in front of me apparently retrieving her stamps for a rather ugly serving dish, too small to do much serving.  It looked rather useless actually.

But when I got up to the register, I asked when I needed to retrieve my stamps.  "Tomorrow is the last day."

So what did I do?  I spent who knows how much time (maybe an hour?) looking for stamps obscurely stashed away in my kitchen (though I thought I had stashed them all in the same obscure place), carefully placing them one by one by one by one in little squares on a sheet I also managed to somehow find.  For 50 stamps (equating to $1000 in groceries, I think), I'd get some sort of a pan, after all, "a $14.99 value".

I didn't bother to count the stamps before I put them on the sheet.  But I saw my destination...42, 43, 44.........45...........................46...................................................

No more stamps.

I probably spent 15 minutes at least looking for 4 more stamps in my kitchen.

The sheet said I could pay $7.99 for the $14.99 pan with what I had.  Why?

And that's the question, isn't it?  Why?

I never did find the other stamps.  I would have liked to take a picture of the sheet I so carefully filled out, give it a useful purpose, but it's long gone with the recycling.

Sometimes the goals we set are not really that important.  Sometimes they are.  And sometimes it's the intent that matters most of all.

I fell asleep last night before I could write the "sheet of stickers" post already in my head, my laptop literally in my lap as I dozed off (and I forgot when I awakened and then went back to sleep for real).  I had thought I might blog every day, but my body overruled me.  When the dog awakened me just now, as she does early in the morning, I required myself to write, my "resolution" shattered.  Why?  It's really the intent that matters.  Time to get more needed rest...still, I'm kind of stubborn about such things (which is why I "almost" filled that silly sheet)...I may write twice today... ;-)  I won't require myself to post a picture now...it went out in the recycling.

Recalculating...

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.” 

~ Douglas Adams

I have an old Garmin GPS device in my car I generally only use when I'm already lost in downtown Portland (which used to happen every time I ventured down there, but lately I've been doing a bit better, especially when I take the bus). 

Despite my advanced degree in Computer Science (and former life as a computer scientist), I am and always have been a very special kind of technophobe.  That's precisely why I at least tried to do my share of work in "human factors" (the art of making people far less technophobic) because quite honestly most software is not designed with actual human beings in mind.  Thus technophobes are made, not born, and it's not their fault at all.

Everyone in Oregon recalls horrific stories of people lost in the mountains, blindly following navigational instructions down some minor logging road.  One couple was separated, and a woman lasted for weeks in her car, snowbound in the mountains, while her husband sadly froze to death trying to hike his way to help.

A couple of months ago, while picking up a client at a downtown hotel for an early morning meeting, my Garmin told me to turn right, I obediently obeyed, and I ended up on a bridge heading the opposite direction, over the river in the dark, then by the river an unfamiliar warehouse district, then b
ack across the river on one of the oldest bridges in Portland (a draw bridge that thankfully was not letting a boat through at the time).  There is really only one bridge in downtown Portland I actually know well (and now I know 3 ;-) ).  I used a second navigational device on my iPhone to find my way back, stopping more than once along the way to check the map (and don't ask me why I don't use my iPhone more often). 

Years ago, I will never forget driving in circles downtown while taking one of the brightest engineers at our company to an awards ceremony.  She had a PhD and was from India, an absolutely brilliant woman with multiple patents to her name.  The navigational device kept telling us to turn and to turn and to turn on a very rainy night on a very circuitous route.  Eventually, we both laughed, realizing technology had tricked and gotten the best of both of us (and it's even possible the results of one of her papers had been embedded in the device).  So we followed our instincts, parked the car and walked the rest of the way.

Yet another time, while heading to a big radio station downtown, not once, but on two different occasions spaced enough apart I forgot all about the first time, my silly Garmin told me to turn on the worst possible road of all, the "transit mall corridor" (in fact, this has happened yet another time outside the convention center).  When you don't know where your going, rarely drive downtown  and nobody is front of you, nothing is more scary than a transit mall corridor (except maybe one of the bridges) because at first you have no idea whether 1) you are actually supposed to be on that road at all (in some cities, you aren't),  2) which direction the traffic is heading (it always looks one-way the wrong way for some reason), 3) where the heck you are supposed to drive (when frazzled, it's surprising how confusing that can be, as there can be a bus lane next to a light rail lane) 4) did I just go through one of those awful downtown red light cameras or stop too far over the line? (I know of red light cameras in the suburbs that will penalize you for turning right on red without stopping completely behind the line before you turn, but the problem with those is you can't inch up to see if anyone is actually coming, so I usually decide not to turn at those intersections at all - except by accident downtown when a Garmin tells me to turn.)  and 5) please tell me the light rail, trolley, bus, both or all are not coming before I get a chance to get my wits about me and find the proper lane (or get off the road altogether if there is no proper lane).

Lately my ancient Garmin tells me my maps are out of date and usually displays a huge "?" (and since I only use it when I'm lost, I never have time to get the maps).  But every once in a while, when I actually know where it is I'm going, like when I choose not to turn down a transit mall corridor, what my Garmin tends to say is "Recalculating..."  It thinks it knows the route, but a now wiser me knows better.

In life, there are many times a seemingly unadventurous (yet surprisingly adventurous) soul like me will choose a special, custom route, even rambling and circuitous.  My friends might say I'm lost, the maps not yet available.  I have some idea of a destination (or at least what my destination ISN'T).  As for my navigational device?  It is actually my Heart, the best human factor of all.

Reclamation

"...the seed still unbroken

the star still unburnt..." 

~ Ali Smith, "How to be both"

I found the altar scattered on the ground today, many pieces missing.  How it came to be and not I cannot know.

Nature restores all things to what they Are, even as it always builds Anew.  The entire forest is an Altar, as is our entire Planet Earth...

Fallen

“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn't understand growth, it would look like complete destruction." 

~ Cynthia Occelli

While walking I noticed a tree, off the trail and inaccessible.  It had fallen, perhaps in the winds last month, perhaps last year, perhaps last week.  Cut off from its roots, it came to rest, suspended.

.

I moved an ivy plant the other day, in my home, with care.  Last year when I picked it up, I broke a vine, the greater portion of the plant cut off and fallen to the floor.  How long did it take the leaves to know the roots were there no longer?  How long did it take my plant to grow fresh new leaves and vines?

Perhaps it wasn't a tree at all, fallen in the forest.  Perhaps it was a branch masquerading as a tree.  Perhaps the real tree thrives, hidden from my view, preparing for the Spring.

Altar

"'Your sacred space is where you can find yourself over and over again." 
~ Joseph Campbell

At the beginning of every yoga class, there is a statement, translated and not:  "Now is the time for yoga."

"Now is the time for Beauty." echoed in my thoughts, as splashes of light in the forest called me to a sunny day.  On any given morning, there are many things I "need to do", but when "Now is the time for Beauty", Beauty is what I need.

Eventually I came upon an altar, its origins unknown.  Perhaps it was a child at play.  Perhaps it was an adult.  Is there really any difference?

Just Keep Loving...

"Everyone just keeps loving through it." ~ A wise anonymous teen

Overhearing this snatch of synchronistic conversation from two young ladies jogging by, I reflected as I walked...

No matter what "it" we might encounter, all we need to do is Love. That's the very Key to Peace on Earth, Peace with one another and ourselves. 

At first I got a different meaning, multi-dimensional for sure...It is only through "It", the Universe, that we always find a way to Love.  "It" is Love Itself and so are we!  Life Itself is Love...

The Weavers

“A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men...” ~ Herman Melville

The weavers of the web today revealed their presence in the mist.  We need not see the weavers to know the wonders of their work...

 

When Day to Day Begins...

"The angel shook her head slowly and said. 'Six pairs of hands.... no way.'" 

~ Erma Bombeck, "When God Created Mothers" 

For me (and for most of us), the real "New Year" starts when "day to day" begins. 

  

Even before the coffee was brewing or I launched my "work at home", I decided I don't have time this year to search for socks.  There are only a few strays left...

I'm tired of extra pans in the sink, despite filling the dishwasher the night before. 

Somehow the first of "the dreaded attic boxes" came to my attention.  (That's the "new car" sticker from my 2007 Honda.)

Real New Year's resolutions arrive in the doing, not the planning.  And even with high school nearing its end, a Mom's day to day continues...

Winter Reflections of a "Lady" called Susan...

"But, first, remember, remember, remember the signs. Say them to yourself when you wake in the morning and when you lie down at night, and when you wake in the middle of the night. And whatever strange things may happen to you, let nothing turn your mind from following the signs..." 

~ C.S. Lewis 

 

 

This is part of the view from one of my windows.  At night, a golden glow seeps in.  

I could choose to reflect on the "starkness" of winter (or the "starkness" of a view).  

Or I could choose to reflect on "Narnia".  

Did I mention the stand-alone "wardrobe" upstairs?  

There exists a magical forest...