On This Day, November 9

"Shining true and smiling back at all who wait to cross.  There is no loss." 

~ Kansas, The Wall

On This Day in History, November 9, 1989: "East German officials today opened the Berlin Wall, allowing travel from East to West Berlin..." 

And that's not all this date carries, for those who might look, for those who remember.

We get to choose.

We get to choose what sort of a November 9 THIS one is going to be.

I feel we are choosing already, many of us. I'm personally choosing the same thing I chose yesterday, in what might feel like an imperfectly perfect kind of a way (that's why we chose to be human).

We can simply choose to choose Love.

L-O-V-E

The choice doesn't need to appear to be perfect. Just by existing, it IS. It's about honest, heartfelt intent, in the most human of ways.

I remember early November 1989, perhaps more in feelings than in details. It was like some kind of a Miracle, back then, inexplicable, yet Real.

How could it be?

It simply was.

I remember the years leading up to it. I remember the years that came after. No, not all the details. I remember the feelings.

On November 10, they started tearing the wall down. I DO remember at least some of those details. I was 25 years old. And I had recently fallen myself - that Fall, I had fallen in love. I remember studying the images, astonished. They didn't arrive quite as rapidly in those days, but still, we all watched. I remember the front page of the newspaper. I remember the evening news. And we did already have cable.

We tended to believe back then that the wall would never actually fall (except through the madness of mutual destruction). I remember a friend telling me what it was like to have visited there, how forbidding it actually was - traveling there wasn't needed to feel it - we felt it in plenty of ways. Falling like that, truthfully, it wasn't even "a concept", for a very long time, not for most of us. As long as many of us could remember, that wall simply >was<. Yet fall it did. And it all came about in a way nobody expected.

It's time to begin.

It's time to continue.

We get to choose.

November 9.


Photo from July 1, 1988, permitted use with this attribution from Wikimedia Commons: By Neptuul (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]

Beyond the Counting....

"Two separate kinds of NaNs are provided, termed quiet NaNs and signaling NaNs..." ~ Wikipedia

I know it's going to be an unusual morning when Facebook does this as I awaken....

It's rather blurry due to an imperfect way of taking a picture of my phone, but if you look very closely it says "Seen NaN/NaN/aN", and not the first I saw today.  Computer scientists see "NaN" occasionally during coding.  It means "Not a Number", and why it consistently dropped an 'N' on the one at the end, I really couldn't say - that's particularly strange.
 

It seemed to be attempting to express a date, though that's unusual too (those of you familiar with Facebook know it would normally say something like "Seen 8:42" in that context). 

Perhaps today is a day for Infinite possibilities!  Who can count the ways?

Integration

"...and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own...."

~ Mary Oliver, "The Journey" 

There comes a time in a life when you need not pick up the pieces.  It is then that you realize they were always a part of the whole.  And everything is new again.

Carried...

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." 

~ Henry David Thoreau

I observed the current a long while, the water high, enough to encroach upon the branches of bushes, some attempting to float and others submerged.

And then I noticed a stick that looked to be stuck - yet also adrift, apparently.  It wasn't like the rest.  It wasn't attached to a bush or a tree.  It had become entangled within the branches that were.  And then all of a sudden, it broke free, the current carrying it forward.  It traveled a few feet.  Before it became stuck, again, this time a bit more.

I left it there, eventually, watching long enough to see the current turning it one way, then the other, working its way, as if aware this particular stick had the freedom to roam. 

It wasn't actually adrift.  And it was never actually stuck.  Carried, it was free.

Thankfulness now: It's logical!

"The most thankful person is the most fully human." 

~ Thomas Goodwin

How often is it said when we look back on our experiences, we find ourselves so very thankful for every single one?  Take any piece of you away, no matter how small, no matter how grand, no matter how joyous, no matter how dire, and you simply wouldn't be you!  Experience is growth.  Experience is transformation.  Experience is you!  So we find that we are grateful, grateful for every piece, every part of life that helped us come to be.

That brings us to this minute, this very moment now.  It doesn't matter what this moment brings.  It could be big.  It could be challenging.  It could seem insignificantly small.  No matter what it is, some day, if the logic holds and it most certainly does, you will be thankful, thankful for this moment.

So if you know you will be thankful then, why not be thankful now?  You have nothing to lose starting early!   Every piece matters....

 

Beauty, today...

"This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven." 

~ Genesis 28:17

Music and Dancing and Beauty today....(the ticket for a modest yet perfectly wonderful seat a little gift I gave myself at Christmas)...

A young girl was sitting next to me, playing with string, an aspiring ballerina.  Just before the lights began to dim, she created Jacob's Ladder...and in that precious moment, I remembered how, too...

Rules of Engagement

"An open heart is an open mind." ~ Dalai Lama XIV  
Lately I have been noticing how the way we all tend to interact and perceive has everything to do with our own relationship with Love.  If what we see is drama or fear or some form of division, then perhaps we need to spend some time working in the space of our own hearts.   

I claim no particular state of perfection.  I am reminded continually of my own heart work to do.  But little by little, by leap and by step, I seem to make progress.  To avoid the divisions of judgment that inevitably create suffering, my primary rule of engagement needs to be Love.  It starts with the healing of divisions within.
 
And that is the Miracle.  The more Love we consciously let into ourselves, the more Love we will perceive in the hearts of one another - and the more Love we can meaningfully and openly share.  

The divisions we were so very convinced were so very real mysteriously fade.  What remains at the Center is Love.  It is Infinite, you know...

And Grander, too...

 "The Universe grows smaller every day..." 

~ The Day the Earth Stood Still, 1951 

I looked out to the patio as I awakened this morning, observing an eerie glow, the music from the original The Day the Earth Stood Still in my head - I had watched it, again, just on Friday.  It's a classic, for sure!

 "Gosh, the moonlight is Magical," I thought, not having quite seen this kind of an effect.

And then, with a smile, I realized what I was looking at, utterly unpredicted, newly arrived since I let the dog out at 5 AM.

Snow!!!

How wondrous a thing can be when you see it anew!  It has not snowed here in 2 years (or at least while I've been home).

The pilot light was out yet again on the hot water heater this morning.  It can be a bit unpredictable every once in a while.  I had notes on how to light it, though I hadn't done it before by myself. 

At first, it wouldn't light, because I had forgotten a step (exactly when to turn the thing to "On" when you prime it!). Then after a very short while, I was washing my coffee pot, feeling the heat of the water in my sink with a kind of a glee. There was just something to it, this business of having a hand in heating the water. Even the water felt new! 

And that's Planet Earth. That's why we are here. "Pilot", indeed...

(And mentioning eerie glows in the night and expansive ways of thinking about movies like The Day the Earth Stood Still, I'm delighted to welcome Stephen Bassett, executive director of Paradigm Research Group and The Congressional Hearings Initiative, on my The Frontier Beyond Fear Blog Talk Radio program to usher in the New Year!  You decide for yourself: Science fiction or real?  (If you listen closely, you will hear Truth.)  Join us this Tuesday, January 5, at Noon Pacific/3 PM Eastern, or listen to the archived podcast afterwards - visit www.frontierbeyondfear.com for details!)