The Ultimate Yes

Sacred Life Sunday ~ The Holy Well

"For we are the stars.  For we sing. For we sing with our light. For we are birds made of fire. For we spread our wings over the sky. Our light is a voice. We cut a road for the soul for its journey through death." ~Passamaquoddy Indian poem

It's been an interesting week to say the least.  A friend was fine on Tuesday and died suddenly on Friday.  I was verbally assaulted by a woman's voice who never showed me her face.  After honking in irritation at a driver who most assuredly cut dangerously in front of me, I was the recipient of his middle finger.  A gal at work directed her anger towards me and in turn, I allowed it to anger me.  I found the perfect space to create a movement studio and now I just need to find the money to afford it.  Sigh...

I am more than my thoughts.  I am more than my fears.  I am more than my ego.  I am more than my expectations, assumptions and interpretations.  I am more than the events which occur around me and the ones I think happen to me. 

I am a holy well.  A deep chasm of desire, spirit and love.  I am never-ending light in a body whose time is limited.   I am a being who knows what's real and what's not.  I am a glorious mystery unraveling.  I am an expression of all that is pure and sacred appearing currently in physical form. I am a reflection of God. 

Sacred Life Sunday ~ A Wish of Grace

Profound grace paid me a visit on a bar stool last night.  And while he noticed my tears and questioned their cause, it was a moment of reckoning and self-forgiveness for me.  As I sat across from a man I once loved very much, I was struck by how far we have come from where we have been together.  There was so much hurt and anger between us a few years back that I wondered if we could ever be friends again.   The capacity we all have to hurt the ones we love is astonishing.  We also have the capacity to let love heal us. Being able to say "I'm sorry" and "Thank You" and "I love you" with just a look after all these years touched me deeply.  Thank you for looking back at me, Rick.

On this Sacred Sunday, I send a wish of grace to visit you, dear reader, when you least expect it and need it most.

It's the littlest of things...

"Let's dance around the Maypole today and celebrate the first day of May.  With May Day baskets in hand, we scamper across the land."

Happy May Day - Cannon Beach Elementary Fourth Grade

This was the sweet, hand-made basket that was given to me by a nine year-old girl as she wished me Happy May Day.  And then when I opened up the little piece of paper that was tucked inside and read the poem, I cried.  The entire fourth grade class of our local elementary school went around town today, walked into various stores and gave merchants and customers these baskets.  What a lovely gift.  What a simple way to make someone's day.   A gesture of friendship, compassion and just overall goodness.  I've been noticing of late that it's the littlest of things that have touched the deepest places of my heart.

Things like...

• warm, soapy water
• the swift and beautiful flight of swallows
• an unexpected compliment
• connections with strangers
• the soft glow of candles and the sweet smell of incense at dawn
• a gray hair that I pulled out of MY head
• that look my husband gives me that makes me tingle all over
• being still (which I don't do that often)
• walking to where I want to go instead of driving
• oh-so delicate and colorful hummingbirds outside my window
• the ache in my right wrist
• love...it's everywhere

Let's dance and scamper across the land everyday. Yeah...that sounds like a very good idea to me.

Sacred Life Sunday ~ Too much and yet not enough...

My dear friend, Carla, echoes similar sentiments to mine when it comes to my writing of late.  I'm afraid I'll become complacent if I stay away too long from what I know is one of my heart's truest callings.  I have the desire to write, but I haven't made it a priority the past three weeks.  There is so much to say and yet I continue to use the excuse "there's not enough time" way too often. 

The truth is...I've never been more excited and scared of what needs to be written by me, and me alone, RIGHT NOW.  Gulp.  More to share this week.  I promise myself.  I promise you, my readers.      

The Ache of Longing

I've been dancing...and running...and thinking...and dreaming big.  Two days ago, I was doing all four at the same time while on the beach and the strong, sure voice spoke again with a sense of excitement and urgency.  "Create the space and people will come to the beach and dance," it said. And it's not just in a very lovely and sacred space with beautiful hardwood floors and warm-colored walls, but they would come to dance ON THE BEACH!!!

My heart aches to make this kind of dance, this kind of self-expression, this kind of art available to others.  And while I'm dancing on the beach anything seems possible.  Ideas flow easily.  Negativity and resistance disappear and my ego goes with them.   In this place of utter bliss, I am more of the me I want to see in the world.  And then I return from my dance and I struggle.  Reality sets in.  How do I make something this BIG happen?  Where does the money come from?    And then the next moment, I shrug it off because I see signs all around me saying "Yes, yes, yes," but then I waver again and become afraid.  What if I fail?   And fear I feel is changing.  It's no longer the fear of failing because I tried to make this dream of having a community-based movement studio come true, it's the fear of giving up and regreting I never really gave it all I had. 

The longing isn't going away.  It's deepening.  It's burrowing its way into my being.  It's asking me what I'm willing to risk to have what I really want.  I recently read Steven Pressfield's "The War of Art" and in between fits of laughter (he's got us procrastinators pegged!) I tried to let the wisdom of his words sink in.  We each have a calling; something we are inherently gifted to do.  The question to ask ourselves is, "Are we going to answer that call?"   

So as I sit here at 11:11 pm on a Wednesday night feeling the ache of longing, I google it and it doesn't come as a surprise that it's available.   And now the voice whispers, "What are you going to do next?"      

Sacred Life Sunday ~ Sweet Beginnings

It's early Sunday morn.   It's oh-so quiet at this time of day.  I love waking up before the day does.  I love sitting by the gas stove and feeling its heat.  I love beginning my mornings slowly awakening to the fact that here I am again...after a night where my dreams take me away to a world other than this one, I am very much alive and aware I've been given another day.  Writing those last few words bring tears to my eyes.  I am so grateful for my life.  I am so grateful to be...here... right...now.

The candle that's burning is the one Carla made especially for my wedding.  The music that softly plays from my computer is a newly-discovered gem of a musician.  His versions of U2's "With or Without You" and Kansas' "Dust in the Wind" (which is one of my all-time favorite songs) are absolutely lovely.  I sip my honey and creamed coffee.  I listen to the sounds of my husband as he begins his day.  The shower, his coughs, brushing his teeth.   While I love my alone time, I love having a constant companion.  I love being  married.

I feel moved to write more this morning and I'm aware of the clock ticking towards eight.  I have to be somewhere in less than an hour.  I recently began working a couple days a week for a former employer of mine.  This time around it's different.  A few years ago, I was the manager and while that had its perks and positives there were also some things that weren't so enjoyable.  Now I get to just play front desk gal without having to worry about all the other stuff I dealt with before.   It's much better this way.  How I spend my time and who I spend it with is more precious than it ever has been.  My vision is becoming better as I age. I see more clearly now what's important and what I can let fall away.

It is a very Sacred Life Sunday indeed.  Have a beautiful day!

Sacred Life Sunday ~ Eclectic Mysticism

A lovely church in Santorini, Greece

It's Easter Sunday and I'm celebrating the holiday by partaking in two things I love; eating chocolate and expressing my thoughts.  I think Jesus would appreciate my ways of celebrating a day that is typically devoted to him.  Even though I've never spent an Easter Sunday in church and I don't consider myself a Christian, I'm all for honoring the life of a man whom I think was an amazing teacher and healer.

I have to admit I've always felt 'out of place' when it comes to religion.  While I was growing up, my best friend's grandmother use to preach to us about God and the Devil and would always issue a stern warning everytime she heard rock music blaring from our a.m. radio. We were surely going to "burn in hell" if we kept listening to that blasphemous noise.  I remember on more than one occasion running home crying and asking my Mom all sorts of questions to ease my fears of being "a bad girl in God's eyes."  She always did her best to assuage my concerns and to assure me that God loved me no matter what.  I believed my Mom more so than Earlene's grandmother, but for several years I couldn't help but think there was something wrong with me because 1) I wasn't a Christian and 2) I did things I considered a lot worse than listening to rock music.

Fast forward many, many years...even though I'd been exposed at an earlier age to a religious philosophy that made me feel connected to something greater than myself for probably the first time, it wasn't until I was in college that I began an exploration into my own sense of spirit.  It wasn't so much that I began questioning the existence of God.  It was more questioning my own beliefs and discovering I wasn't so much looking for answers, but wanting to find peace within myself.

Fast forward a few more years...through a series of serendipitious events I went to a church in Portland, Oregon and after attending several services, I felt like I'd found a place not only where "my peeps" were but where I could worship and honor God the way I wanted to as opposed to being told by someone else how I was supposed to.  I was a member of that church for three years and there are definitely times when I miss it, but there were two other things that happened in my life back in 2001 that changed the way I view church and religion in general.  I moved to the beach and I started to dance.

I no longer needed to sit in a quiet, high-ceilinged space with stained-glass windows listening to someone speak eloquent words to feel a connection to the sacred.  My church was now the wide-expanse of sand, sea and sky and my religion was revealed by moving my body.  For the last eight years, dancing on the beach has become my spiritual sanctuary and I'm now closer to God than I ever have been.  I am an eclectic mystic and were it a religion, it would be the perfect one for me.

Sacred Life Sunday ~ A Bath just before Bedtime

What do you get when you mix a tub full of hot water, a delicious smelling fizzy bath bomb and a tired 5'4" blonde woman at the end of the day?

ZZZZZzzzzzz....

I have just about enough energy left to finish typing this sentence, turn off the computer and go upstairs to bed.  Yep...that's all there is this evening.   

 

Loving the parts of me I don't like

"Something we were withholding made us weak.  Until we found out that it was ourselves." ~Robert Frost

I really hate to admit I'm still learning to love myself.  Not just the parts and pieces of me I like and I'm confident about, but the ones that make me flawed and human.  The ones that sometimes whisper not-so-nice things in the middle of the night and the ones I can't help but see when I look in the mirror.  They're not physical attributes (although I wouldn't mind having straighter teeth, smoother skin, firmer thighs and rock-hard abs) they're the things I do (or don't do) that keep me from being more fully-expressed and living big.

Things like...

• Worrying about money all the time. 
• Comparing myself to others.
• Procrastinatinating and putting off things that are really important to me.
• Feeling like I always need to be doing something.  I hate to be bored.
• Unfairly judging people who have vastly different political viewpoints than mine.
• Flitting from one thing to another.  It's challenging for me to stay focused on one thing for long periods of time.
• Having way too much clutter and forgetting where I put things. (Might there be a connection there?  HELLO!!!)   

I'd love to point the finger and blame someone else for my blemishes and not-so-confident bits, but I'm old enough (and I like to think I'm wise enough now) to know better.  I take full responsibility for my life.  All of it.  What it's been, what it is right now and what it will be is of my own making and choosing.  Loving the parts of me I don't like is a life-long process.  I know this even though I'd like to believe I otherwise. Today I'm going to do the things that really nurture me and make me feel good so that when I look in the mirror all I see is love.

Feeling a bit grumpy of late

I feel a bit like this dried-up puffer fish this morning.  After spending several hours online yesterday watching streaming videos and reading articles about the Democratic primaries taking place, I am exhausted.  I gave up my daily newspaper habit and watching television years ago and now I'm seriously considering giving up visiting websites like this one.    I want to be informed of what's going on in our world, but I think there's a point where too much input messes with your mind.

What was it exactly that made me so grumpy?   Politically-speaking, there were plenty of things that happened yesterday that caused my irk-meter to rise, but what created the most chaos for me was reading people's negative, very prejudiced and sometimes downright vicious comments on a variety of newssites.  I'm all for expressing one's opinion, but when folks can't state their thoughts and feelings without having to resort to name-calling, fear-mongering and gossiping, ooohhhh that makes me so angry.  When I'm all riled up, I'll admit that part of me wants to jump into the fray, write a nasty comment of my own and tell everyone they're full of shit.  The bigger part of me says "be the change I want to see in the world" and so I will step away from it all, calm down and do something today that brings positive energy to this planet.

I feel better already.