Because we can, 2Dec11

For some unknown reason, I was thinking tonight about a boss I had years and years and years ago.  He had just done something that affected our customers, and I didn't understand the reasoning behind what he was doing.  Being the bright young impetuous thing that I was back then, I asked him why.  He looked at me somewhat incredulously, shook his head sadly and said, "because we can."  I knew what he had set in motion wasn't illegal, immoral or 'wrong' (per se), but it just didn't sit very right with me.  And I clearly still didn't understand what was going on, and was also fairly certain I wasn't going to get a different reply even if I asked again.  So I let it drop.  Or at least I thought I had.

What I've come to realize is that I've taken his dismissive "because we can" and I've turned it around many, many times over the years since that day.  Most of the time, I remember that I have a choice how I handle any given situation or circumstance.  I always have a choice.  Even if I don't remember that I do, I still have a choice.  I have a choice whether to react to an incident in haste, or step back a minute and respond instead.  The tai chi practitioner in me knows that if I react thoughtlessly, they just 'got me'.  I have a choice whether to instantaneously feel disrespected or devalued, or try to see what's really going on from a larger viewpoint, a higher perspective.  

This doesn't mean I let people use me as a doormat, or that I go along with everything presented to me, because that would be silly, could be dangerous, and is often counterproductive.  It means, to the best of my ability, I pay attention and know what I am choosing and that I am choosing. 

And more often than not, I choose to respond kindly, or thoughtfully.... "because i can."  And I like that.  A lot.   

What if it's just feedback? 10Oct11

At a seminar I attended on Saturday, there was this one exercise that purportedly was about figuring something out, but in fact it was about how receptive we each were to receiving personal feedback from others to achieve a particular goal when we ourselves were stuck.  Most of the time I think I'm reasonably good with receiving feedback, heaven knows there have been plenty of opportunities.  This one particular activity though caught me by surprise.   When everybody else was getting help solving the puzzle, and lots of people were cheering and clapping as different people figured it out (always with help), I was trying not to notice that I wasn't in the circle, I wasn't figuring it out, I wasn't getting help and I was the last to complete the puzzle.  I wasn't happy about any of this.  When the seminar leader came over to where I was sitting and working alone and offered help, then within seconds of focusing on the guidance, the solution showed itself clearly.   The intended impact, though, had already landed because of my internal tension around this 'exercise' was massive.  And it got me thinking about my (sometimes) response to life in general.

What if it's all just feedback, information, or innocuous data?  It doesn't automatically imply anything about ability or competence or worthiness.  Shifting the perspective to neutral, rather than some historically-based judgment, it is just data.  Or as Johnny-5 (E.T.) would have said 'hmmm, input'.  Without any hooks, shame or blame, it becomes just information, just feedback for my expansion, awareness and growth.   That's a whole different take on the subject.

Hmmm.  Input!

The Night Sky, 3Oct11

I was awake this morning a little after four.  At first that disturbed me a little, until I checked in and realized that not only had I had six and a half hours of deep, sound high-quality sleep, I also felt quite rested and refreshed, so I got up.  And once up, I decided to go outside and look at the night sky.  I have always felt a kinship with the starry night, perhaps it was all those evenings of walking our family dog when I was growing up and we lived on an army base in Germany. 

This morning the moon had just set; the swath of sky immediately above my head was brilliant black and the constellations standing out in vivid contrast.  Venus, morning star, was brighter than moonlight, Cassiopeia, Orion, The Pleiades felt like dear old friends who had come to visit after being away for a while.  I realized in this crystalline moment, I felt inexorably... totally... at One with the All That Is and completely In The Circle.

Do you?  What pulls you In The Circle?  What pulls you out?

Its What You Do, 24Sept11

I've been thinking again.  Whether we actually create the events which occur in our lives is debated by some, and I'm not going to get hung up there, because there is a more important, and more manageable, idea I wanted to put out there this morning. 

It's not what happens 'to' us as much as what we do with that, how we think about it, how we respond to it, how we ruminate incessantly about it, etc., etc., etc. 

If I perceive that I have been slighted by someone and I don't do anything about it, except mull it over, it has a tendency to grow into this gigantic, miserable monstrosity, which is strictly a construct of my very busy brain.  So, to prevent this nonsense from happening, I have two choices.  I can try to talk with this person and see what's really going on (and discover, most likely, we were using the same words and not speaking the same language ... or maybe we were and there really is an issue to resolve), or I can let it go, really let it go, put it down, and get on with my life. 

It's seldom the events themselves, but it is what we do with them that give our lives great joy or great angst.  I choose joy.  Again and again and again.  I choose joy.

What's your Thrill Level? 13Sept11

I woke up this morning thinking.  Those of you who know me well, know this isn't much of a surprise.  Even the fact that it was 3 am when I woke up thinking isn't much of a surprise these days.  It just means there is a nap to be scheduled sometime in my near future, today.

I remember hearing a story, whether actual or allegorical I don't know, about a teen and her mother on a ferry crossing a large lake.  A storm kicked up and the teen was out on the foredeck of the ferry enjoying the storm.  The mother scolded the teen and told her to come in out of the storm.  The teen instead talked her mother out onto the deck to experience the storm.  When it was over they were talking about it.  The teen asked her mother what she was experiencing and the mother described her physiological responses, rapid heart rate, adrenaline rushing, sweaty palms... and described her fear of the storm.  The daughter then said that she was experiencing identical physical responses and recognized them as excitement.  

The I-Ching is an ancient Chinese oracle with 64 hexagrams.  One of the hexagrams is Thunder/Thunder.  In the translation that I use by Rod and Amy-Max Sorrell (called The I-Ching Made Easy) it expresses itself as "Shock, Surprise, Excitement, All Shook Up" and the description goes on to say "The shock of coming across something quite unexpected.  Scared and then excited.  First terror, then laughter.  The germination of a seed in the spring.  The stimulation of sexual arousal.  The subtle difference between terror and excitement.  Some enjoy the storm and some run from it.  What's your thrill level?"  My sister loves storms, her dog did not.

I tend to side with my sister and with the teen in the story.  As a rule, I perceive that things that raise my pulse are positive exciting events rather than something to be feared.  That's been my experience, and is my expectation.  But that's just me.

You Asked for It! 6Sept11

I've been watching how some of my friends treat each other and how the others feel about they way they feel they are being treated.  I've been thinking about what St. Paul says in Galatians 6:7 "... whatsoever a man soweth, that he shall also reap" (KJV).  I don't believe this applies just to how we treat others, or our own actions outward toward others or to inanimate objects; I think this also applies to how we teach other people to treat us.  

If we allow someone to appear to take advantage of us, that's our choice and it has consequences both for us and for the person who seems to be taking advantage of us.  If we resist someone who appears to desire to take advantage of our 'good nature', there are choices and consequences to that action as well.  Each of us gets to decide in the bigger picture, through our choices and actions, where we want to be on this continuum of choice and consequence, cause and effect.

There's also a tangent about how we treat and think about ourselves.  If we see ourselves in a generally positive light then we tend to get positive outcomes, and tend to have positive experiences (or at least we can more easily find that silver lining in the cloud).  If we tend to see ourselves in a negative light, that's what we get, too.

We are responsible for our actions, our choices, our decisions and how we experience what we allow to happen to us. There are no victims, everything is an opportunity to see something or someone in a new light and choose differently if we don't like a particular outcome.  It's all sowing and reaping and sowing and reaping again and again and again.

Eat That Frog! 5Sept11

It always amazes me how quickly a task that I may have postponed for weeks and weeks is actually accomplished when I finally just do it.  Today's story was about re-wrapping some insulation around some exterior water pipes with reflective sticky tape. The repairman didn't put it back together after he fixed the leak (that's quite another story) and I have been conscious of the need to do this inconsequential and gargantuan task for ages and ages but there was always something preventing me, it was always too dark, or too hot, or too late, or too early, or too something. 

As I finally steeled myself to go do it, and I realized it took maybe 3 minutes, I was laughing to and at myself.  I was also reminded of a great book I read several years ago by Brian Tracy called Eat That Frog!  Twenty-one Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time.  Now that 'school' is starting for me again, maybe its time to get it out and go through it again.

No frogs were harmed in writing this note.

Life is but a Dream, 1Sept2011

So, there's this Reader's Digest contest, Give us the 'Reader's Digest version of some event in Your Life, and do it in 150 words or less, and if we pick you (no criteria identified) you can win $25,000.  I thought,"That would be cool.  I wonder what story I could tell from my life that is short, sweet and to the point "(i.e. could be told in 150 words or less).  I let the question simmer overnight and this is what came up.

Everyone has a song.

Several years ago I came to the Arizona desert to study with a Native American.  One of the ceremonies we did at the conclusion of one of the weeks was to sing 'our song' to Grandfather Mountain.  I'm not a singer.  In fact, I'm pretty shy.  I dreaded this activity all week and wondered what song I knew well enough to feel comfortable singing out loud, loudly enough to be heard across the valley.  When it was time for the ceremony, I still didn't know what I was going to sing.  When it was my turn, I got very quiet inside, meditating.  The song that floated up in my consciousness was "Row, Row, Row Your Boat."  I laughed out loud.  What a perfect song for me to sing.  Indeed, Life is but a Dream.

Gadara, Noble Friend 31Aug11

From Captain's Fury by Jim Butcher, p. 372

Tavi nodded slowly.  "Can you tell me what gadara means? Describe it."

Varg gave Tavi a very Aleran-looking shrug. "It means that you are a foe that is equal.  Honorable. Trusted."

"A trusted enemy?" Tavi asked.  "And you name your son as such?"

 "Enemies are far more faithful than friends, Aleran, and more dependable than allies.  One can respect an enemy far more easily than a friend.  It is considered a mark of respect," Varg said.  

This brief passage from the six-volume series which begins with The Furies of Calderon (that I am enjoying greatly during my summer off from studying more substantial material) brought to mind the many noble friends who have graced my life.  These are people with whom, or on whom, I have sharpened some aspect of myself, my awareness, or my skill set in dealing with 'challenging' people.  I remember the first time I heard the term 'noble friend', I thought the speaker was crazed.  Why would I even think about calling these people who were so intent on making my life difficult 'friends'?  It wasn't until I looked back with the perfection of 20:20 hindsight that I could see the gifts that these noble friends had given me. 

Predominantly the gifts I received from noble friends included clarity and boundaries.  Any time I didn't know my edges, I dreamed up someone who was more than happy to show me where I was porous or overly fluid in my boundaries.  I've also received help with being clear what I expected out of relationships and with situations in my life.  There's a quote "keep your friends close and your enemies closer."  I used to think that was simply so that I could see what my frienemies were doing and to increase the ease with which I could take appropriate action, but I am coming to see it has more to do with being more present to receiving the gifts they give me.  

What fun!

Take Out The Trash, 27Aug11

I had the opportunity to watch "The Peaceful Warrior" (released 2006) again last night, for the first time in several years.  Several times in the storyline when Dan is being particularly dense, Socrates tells him to take out the trash and points to his forehead.  Eventually Dan understands that anything that gets in the way of his perception of the present moment, or his awareness of his desired intention/goal is trash and needs to be removed from his thought processes.  Just because there are 'valid' evolutionary and physiological reasons we are wired this way, doesn't mean we have to be at the effect of our biology.  We always have choice in what we think about, particularly in what we think repeatedly about.  When we take the trash out, our thoughts can be clear and unhampered by old stories. 

Our old stories, as a rule, tend to be mis-remembered anyway and are generally not helpful, nor supportive.  They tend to reinforce whatever (usually negative or demeaning) world-view we have previously believed about ourselves and our situations, so the best, kindest and most useful thing we can do for ourselves at any moment in time is 'take out the trash'.

I'm headed out the door right now, with another bag-o'-trash overflowing with old stories that no longer are useful, putting them out for the trashman, where they belong.

Perspective: Labyrinth or Maze? 25Aug11

I thank my friend Barbara McG for reminding me about it being our choice to see the various aspects of our lives as a maze or as a labyrinth.  Mazes, as you may recall, have dead ends, wrong turns and sometimes contain deadly monsters (vis a vis Theseus and the Minotaur from Greek mythology, or PacMan for those of a slightly more electronic age).   Labyrinths, on the other hand, are all twisty and contorted, doubling back and seemingly going 'round and round', but you cannot actually get lost in them.  You do ultimately reach your goal in a labyrinth.

The trick is in perspective and how we each see our paths.  If we see the apparently unfortunate or difficult events of our lives as dead ends and roadblocks, then that's how we experience what happens.  If we see the same events as true opportunities for learning and growth, that's what we get.  There are some days when the labyrinth is pretty darn twisted up, but to the greatest extent possible, I choose to see the events as workable issues rather than something that stops me flatfooted.

There's a story of a couple young boys who were faced with cleaning out a stable.  One grumbled about the work, how nasty and generally unpleasant it was.  The other, facing that much horse excrement, started digging excitedly.  When queried, he said "There's gotta be a pony in here somewhere." 

Irene barreling through the eastern Caribbean reminds me of the big hurricane that battered Houston a couple years ago and took out a lot of property on Galveston Island.  I lived in Katy at the time, roughly 100 miles inland from the coast.  The coastal areas had been appropriately evacuated because of concern about storm surge and a great deal of damage was actually sustained.  For one memorable night in my quiet little world, the storm rolled through, the rains pounded, and the trees touched their toes over and over and over again, lashing vigorously from side to side.  Power went out early that evening and we all waited by lantern and candlelight.  Once daylight came again, the neighbors all checked on each other.  Lots of minor damage in our world, but nothing earth shattering.  One neighbor had a generator and offered me one of his outlets to run my refrigerator (if I had a long grounded extension cord), which I accepted.  Another was in need of refrigeration for some medication, so they stored it in my fridge.  When the power came back on after four days, it felt somewhat miraculous to have air conditioning again, ceiling fans and electric lights.  Most of us were off work for four or five days, and spent the time cleaning up the debris in our yards, and visiting.  We got to know our neighbors a little better that week, which was a lovely plus.

Best blessings, safety and peace for all those in the path of Irene.  And look for the ponies!

Fire in the Belly, a found file, 13Aug11

From my Facebook archives, 19Jul09

My friend Jane was visiting me this past week and we had a fabulous time.  She's a phenomenally cool (and fine) human being and has done any number of amazing and fantastic things in her life (and I'm not just saying this because she'll probably read it.)  She was a commander in the navy, has done her stint with the dot.coms, worked for school systems as a financial geek and is working again with the navy as a civil servant.  She's also a Reiki three, a minister, a certified archetype reader (as I am) and can weld a power grinder (for removing rust from her houseboat) better than most professionals.  Oh, and she's getting her PhD in leadership.

We are both extremely competent at double handfuls of tasks -- Janis'/Jane's of all trades, masters of none.  Its the master of none aspect that I want to write about.  We talked briefly one night about how neither of us were really, incredibly, unstoppably passionate about any one thing, or even a small cluster of things. 

Jane was looking at my business card.  (I'd made one up so I'd have something to hand out if the need arose.)  It says taiji/qigong practitioner, qigong teacher, certified archetype consultant, HeartMath practitioner, fabric artist, drum/drumstick maker and custom beaded jewelry.  She said to me, only half kidding, "pick three"...  yikes. 

At a wonderful symposium put together by Tammy Holmes earlier this year, there was a woman speaking named Tama J. Kieves.  Her book is called This Time I Dance!, subtitle Creating the Work You Love.  Her teaser is a brilliant question "If you're this successful doing work you don't love, what could you do with work you do love?"   Holy cats!

Today at a training meeting at church, the associate pastor quipped that she's stumbled onto being a minister simply because she kept taking classes until ... oops ... she was qualified as a minister.  Wow.  That didn't hit me with full force until tonight when I was thinking about what really makes fire in the belly. 

How many people are lucky enough, or focused enough, to be doing something that really puts/feeds a fire in their belly, and how many are just going along doing stuff that pays the bills, or makes their lives easier/more pleasant or what they were expected to do?  What would it be like if we each did what 'lit' us up all day, every day?  I presently don't know what that would be for me, though I believe I am aiming to find out. 

Best Piece of Stump I Ever Ate, 7Aug11

I spent the afternoon working diligently to make some number behave.  Those disagreeable and troublesome figures in the two databases and several spreadsheets eventually did give up their secrets and coalesced.  I felt exonerated, and, yes, wildly successful.   As I drove home across Tucson, I reveled in the damp creosote scent that we associate with any sort of (even very minor) rain event and marveled at the gigantic cloud formations.  For some reason I was reminded of an image from a book we read in high school.  You probably read it too.  Shane.  The two men work ferociously to dig out an old stump that had been resistant for an indeterminate period of time and then the woman in the story ended up burning the pie because she was ogling at the men pulling the stump, and ended up baking another, entirely from scratch. (They didn't have Pillsbury Ready Pie Crusts in the freezer section in those days.)

What I wanted to have a think about is not "the best piece of stump" but instead why we seem to value accomplishments that are hard, over ones that are not so hard.  I don't honestly have an answer to this question, but it does puzzle me.  There seem to be a couple of contradictory beliefs that are both alive in well in the common psyche.  Or at least in mine, and I think they are pretty ubiquitous.  One, that "if its easy, its not worth much"; and two, "if you are doing what you love, it will be effortless."  There's also a cynical version "only dead fish go with the flow", but I digress.    

I think about successes I have had, yummy meals, quilts that really came out well, projects that went without a hitch, even something as minor as asking for/claiming, and receiving, a remarkably close parking place under a tree when I went to a very popular mall on Friday afternoon.  I tend to dismiss those successes, downplaying them, and most other people dismiss theirs too.  Ahh, another snarky twisted belief pops up, "who do you think you are, thinking so highly of yourself?"  There's an ugly one, and false besides. 

I remember Marianne Williamson's quote “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Apparently, I need to let that sink in some more.

Fairy Tales, 4Aug11

Went to see "Crazy Stupid Love" on Sunday afternoon with a dear friend and found it entertaining, tender, endearing, "realistic" and heartbreaking.  We were both teary as the lights came up and realized that we had both been crying off-and-on through the entire movie, in between the gales of belly laughs.  Somehow, somewhere, deep in my feminine psyche there is still desire for the happily-ever-after fairy tale to be true.  What is that?  What's up with it?  Why is it in there and how does it serve me?

I sat this morning with my morning cuppa joe and continued to ponder this question.  What sprang to mind almost immediately was that it is about deep connection, or the desire to intimately and uniquely connect with another person.  We perceive this as different from the connection between really good girlfriends, or male friends who commune like girlfriends (and I am blessed with several of those).   This was exemplified in the movie as the ultimate bond between Hannah and ... what was his name... Jasper?

I recognize it as an ever-deepening level of trust and exploration ... and then the pinball game tilts, and I have to stop and reframe it.  Really good friends do this too, constantly.  Perhaps I only perceive it as different from the connection between really good friends; perhaps that is part of the fairy tale. 

What's the missing piece, the honest desire?  To know and feel known.   And how do I get there?  Participation.  Engagement.  Interaction.  Involvement.  Some very bright person said, "Energy Follows Attention" and another one said, "Home is where the Heart is".   What's probably true is actually much simpler, and much more difficult, and was ultimately discovered by the characters in the movie ... relationships require constant attention and continual nurturing and both parties have to agree to fully participate for maximum benefit.   But even if both parties don't choose play, it is still possible to be the love I wish to experience and then, because energy does follow attention, love is returned to me ... pressed down and still overflowing. 

That's the way it works.

En-Chanting 3Aug11

Tonight they opened Tucson Global Chant with a chant I haven't heard since my dear friend Joni and I spent 9 glorious days in a chanting experiential workshop with Jonathan Goldman at Sunrise Ranch (somewhere in Colorado) more than a boat-load of years ago.  It went:

"Listen, Listen, Listen to my heart song, (2X)

I will never forget you, I will never forsake you."(2X)

Joni may still recall the melody.  I didn't, until a half second after the hundred of us who were present started singing it and then the whole experience flooded back in. 

It's hard to describe the feeling of it, but it was like being inside the songs, inside the chants for hours at a time.  We'd come up for air, herbal teas, water and healthy snacks, ravenous because we'd been so actively working the sounds and working ourselves with and through the sounds, and then we'd submerge again and not come up for air until lunch time and then we'd do it again in the afternoon.  We all came home hoarse from singing so much and with smiles bigger than Texas because we'd had such a tremendously glorious time.

The workshop was my first introduction to toning (singing tones, mostly vowels) with different parts of my head, as well as deep-throat singing, which I did kind-of, sort-of, manage to make one rumbly-ish sound that came from deeper in my throat than my vocal chords.  Most of the folks who perfected that technique rather massacred their voices for normal toning, singing and conversation, so I didn't really need to be expert at it.  The toning with different parts of my head was interesting because by vibrating different parts of my sinus, the long 'e' was best for this and at a higher pitch, I sometimes could get multiple tones (on purpose) at the same time.  Something about vibrating the different resonance cavities in my face and neck, I don't pretend to understand the physics of it.

Towards the end of the workshop we had one day where the entire day was spent in silence, other than toning.  It was quite a trippy high, undoubtedly endorphins were through the roof.  I continued to hear/feel/experience the toning and chanting as I went to sleep that night.  Reminiscent of the way the leaders end the Global Chant here, stating they will be chanting in their dreams and inviting us to join them. 

The last session of the workshop, we all sang "listen to my heart song" to each other and that experience did bond us all together.  I've lost touch with most of that group (there were 85 of us there that summer), but I'm still connected, in the best possible way, through our heart song.

Memories, Pressed Between the Pages of My Mind, 18Jul11

Last Friday my biological niece had her first child after a lengthy (31 hr) labor.  Part of me is surprised she didn't have any pictures of the actual delivery on FB, and yet in many ways she is quite private, so I am glad she didn't.  One of her FB friends contacted me, a woman who we had connected with during a tour-bus trip to greater Paris that was my niece's high school graduation present.  The agreement was that I would take my niece, her best friend since third grade and her mom (my sister) to somewhere-that-required-a-passport as her graduation present.  By the end of the negotiations, the grandma and (now ex) sister-in-law had joined the party and we were a gaggle of six and we were headed to Paris.  

This woman, I'll call her Meg, who was probably a grandma in her own right decided to enjoy, rather than be grumpy about, these two silly teenage girls who were on this highly informational 'blue hair' bus trip around Paris.  Meg got along with the teens famously and so could discretely be the responsible adult who was watching over them, and quite often playing with them, which allowed the girls to get a sense of freedom and still be quite safe in this foreign place where none of us spoke the language.  This is Paris of the late 2002, when things were rather calm, the people were friendly, helpful, and really rather genteel, and kind hearted towards Americans; the worst any of us expected to see was some homeless guy peeing on the sidewalk (which we did, as I recall). 

A hundred memories float up after being reconnected with Meg.  Every one of them was glorious.  The morning coffee, the baguettes, fruit and cheese for breakfast; the food at every meal was beyond magnificent (this was fabulous French cooking after all, Julia Child would have been pleased).  The teens wouldn't touch most of it, as it was too strange for their tastes.  Man, it was good.  The incredible museum with the giant slides outside, that Meg went down more readily than the two teen girls did, enjoying the moment immensely.  Monet's garden, looks just exactly like the paintings, even now. And the crazy castle ... Chambourd? ...  with all the towers 600+ as I recall, reminding me of a manic sandcastle built by kids at the beach.

One of the single women on the trip, I think her name was Diane, wanted to go see a burlesque show in Paris and I thought, why not?  So she and I took a taxi across the city to the Lido to see a show.  The dancers, who were about 7 ft tall and painfully bone skinny, wearing little but feathers and sequins, were incredibly talented and completely matched in their movements.  It was a gorgeous, fabulous show.  I think the tour guides may have told us it was a bit challenging to get a taxi in the evening after the show in that part of the city, but I'm not clear on that detail.  Anyway, we got out of the theater and tried for at least 45 minutes to hail a taxi and none will stop as they are all engaged.   We were well across town, not exactly sure where we are, or where the hotel is exactly but we did have a hotel business card, and neither of us spoke the language.  Finally this man approached us and asked in English if we were looking for a ride.  Diane and I discussed this briefly, then showed him the address where we need to go and asked him how much.  He quoted us a fare of 40 francs and Diane decided to quibble and got him down to 35 francs.  So we got in the back seat of his Beemer and he started driving.  Our tour had been in Paris for about a week by that time and I had been paying attention to the streets and the landmarks.  Suddenly Diane started panicking, that this man was going to sell us to the gypsies.  I calmed her down, the gypsies wouldn't want us ... we were too old for breeding, not strong enough for manual labor, nor rich enough to be useful as hostages, and honestly not beautiful enough in the eyes of the French to be worth selling to the gypsies.  And besides this man was driving past all these familiar landmarks that marked the route to our hotel.   We got there, after what seemed a bit of an extended trip (he did make a few wrong turns on the way) and we paid him his requested fare and gladly exited his car.   What stories, what memories, what a trip.

Its all good.

Keanne's Story, 15Jul11

My friend Keanne and I are part of an 8-woman prayer group, playfully entitled TSW because we know that our prayers do manifest in our lives and that praying with each other gives us each extra oomph in our lives.

Keanne's experience:  Just want to let you all know that the restaurant is coming right along. We have an architect that is working with us to bring the building up to Code.   We are looking at about $50,000 to make all the changes necessary for city building codes. The kitchen doesn't require any modifications.  We need a proper parking lot, the floors refinished, wheelchair ramps improved, landscaping and another bathroom. I met with a professional though the SBA that does business plans. He also will begin to speak to lenders for us.  He says we should have our money in about 3 to 4 weeks.  We are also looking at some grant money as a vegetarian/vegan restaurant.  I have got the QuickBooks thing down pretty well and was able to come up with a Profit and Loss Statement. Wow!  We made a profit in our first 6 months!

Plans are being drawn up this week and next we will be getting our permits for construction. Our space is workable for a 'proper' restaurant. We will close the dinning room during the construction but will be opening a new room where we will be doing healthy grab-and-go food. Vegetarian take-out, plus our cooking demos and we might even do some yoga dinners. We are so excited. We love the support that we are getting from everyone.  We have talked with the landlord not to raise our rent for the next five years and after that only 10% a year for five years. So we plan on being in business for at least the next ten years.

We recently had a man in the restaurant that is a professional photographer; he is willing to do all our pictures for our web sites in exchange for food certificates.  And we just met a woman who is redoing both our web sites so they match and complement each other. She also is working for trade.   Doors continue to open for us. We believe in what we are doing and so does the vegan/vegetarian community. TSW!  You're not kidding. Thanks for being my spiritual support. Knowing we are all here for each other provides such a feeling of confidence and security. I love the TSW Gang!

Jimmy Buffett: "Its my Job to be worried half to death ... that's what people expect in me..." or not. 14Jul11

I'm learning some really interesting things about myself from this book study group on the Trance of Scarcity.   A continuum between stingy and lavish was introduced in chapter three; lavish is represented by wholeheartedness and gratefulness and stingy is represented by constricted, limited and tightly controlled.  I live, like everyone else, somewhere on this continuum; on different days, and on different topics, I slide along the scale between free, easy and open to closed, tight and hurried/worried. 

This was made incredibly clear to me when I went in for a massage.  My masseuse had to cancel because of a family emergency and I was desperate for someone to work on my tight back, so I called some new friends who had opened a wellness clinic in town.  Two of the three co-owners were certified in massage and I got in to see the woman that day.

There's a story I have told myself about tightness in my shoulders and upper back.   It's just the place that I store tension.  The masseuse said, as she was kneading my shoulders hard, "You know, you don't have to store tension in your shoulders."  And then it hit me.  I thought, "Hey, you are right.  I don't."  When I got in to see my regular masseuse the next time, she said, "Whatever you are doing, keep it up.  Your shoulders have never been that loose."

Nothing had changed in my life, except an awareness I had held.  What had kept my shoulders tight, holding tension, was an old story that I had to be hurting in some way in order to warrant having a massage.  You didn't just have them because you enjoyed them, because they felt good.  That was somehow indulgent, and I must have enough puritan in my history that indulgences are not OK.  Good people didn't get massages unless they absolutely needed them, they had to be for 'medical' reasons.

So my new story, that opens me up more toward lushness, and away from stinginess, is that massages are reasonable self care and that I don't need a physical/'medical' reason to need them; that I have no need to store tension in my body because nothing is wrong, or if something needs fixing, I handle it and don't let it build up and store in my body and that I allow myself to be aware of what I want and I take care of myself.  

Pretty darn cool.   

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, 9Jul11

It happens, you know.   David Wilcox has this as one of his primary themes.  Many of the old black spirituals flow from a similar well.  Its the story line of Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker and countless other tales.  I woke up yesterday morning feeling trapped and orphaned.  I also know its not true.  I know I belong.  I really do.  Sometimes I belong even more than I want to.


Still sometimes the feeling arises, and sometimes it persists for a while. Yesterday morning I wrote my prayer partner and asked her to pray for me specifically about this.


In less than ten minutes, I had been contacted by a friend "out of the blue"  I had lost touch with months ago and we reconnected.  It was a small thing, and yet not small at all.

Careful ..... 7Jul11

About a month ago when I was looking at my finances, I said out loud to no one in particular "It sure would be useful to have an extra couple hundred bucks a month."  I thought nothing more of it.  The next night I was coming in through the gate of our little gated community and the security guard, who also served as part-time postmaster, asked me if I wanted his community post office job.  We have a small private post office that serves only our community, separate from the USPS.   (We go up to the local Post Office to pick up the bundled mail and packages.)  He said, "it pays a couple hundred bucks a month." Every time I hear my words coming back to me out of someone else's mouth, it tends to catch my attention. 

He was leaving town and thought the position might interest me.  After we talked a bit about it, and he told me the catch ... that I would have the whole thing six days a week for the month when the alternate postmaster took vacation this summer.  I agreed to take it on.  By the end of my first week, I had gotten the task(s) down to the absolute minimum number of hours per day (which makes it less profitable, since it is a paid-by-the-hour job).  Ah, well... 

Mysteriously, that month of vacation coverage morphed into seven weeks (this past week was week 2), and even though I recognize it as a service within and for our community, I have also realized that I'm not interested in continuing this job past this September/October when they can find someone else to pick it up.   

Be very careful what you ask for.

Here Comes the Sun - 5Jul11

I've been part of a group working through Victoria Castle's Trance of Scarcity as facilitators, preparing for book study groups that our church will hold this fall for congregants.  One tiny aspect of tonight's material talked about our old 'stories', where they come from, how we used them to boundary our world and how we unintentionally still use them to create our current reality. 

One of the women spoke about how she used the old story of "Not Good Enough" to motivate her to always try harder which ultimately created in her an incredibly strong work ethic and allowed her to succeed in her chosen field of study/business.  The variant that bubbled up for me tonight was a story called "If I'm Really Smart, No One Will Love Me."  It manifested in my high school years as a perpetual B+.  No matter what I did, how hard I worked, I seldom pulled down an A, but I was fabulous with those 92% and 93% B+s.  So here's the conflicted battleground between "Not Good Enough" and "Smart, But Not Too Smart" which has warred inside my being for years and years.   Zounds.

Marianne Williamson's quote, which has always bothered me and I never knew why:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

What I've come to realize, what I've come to own these past couple years is that I am cheating myself and my world if I am not as bright a light as I can be.  And as I learn to shine even brighter, I know that it doesn't diminish anyone else's light, but instead gives them permission to shine too.

Preach On, Sister.  Preach On!

Let It Be, Let It Be...

I'm a doer by nature.  So the notion of just being still, and letting things happen on their own is not completely 'natural' to me.  Yesterday I had the marvelous gift of being able to just sit on the shaded patio of a friend's beautiful house and just stare off into the distance at the mountains, the desert, and the building cumulus clouds of what would later become last night's yummy rains.  To not have to do anything, be anything, have anything, other than that moment of now was totally delicious.  It wasn't silence -- there were kids splashing and laughing in the pool, a bit of ukelele music on the I-Thing and conversation going on at a nearby table.  For a long moment, it was like all my gears disengaged and I was coasting without any effort.  I was sitting peaceably and contented, not thinking about anything, just being.  Nice.


That moment reminded me of the bliss of a morning meditation -- the internal stillness, the spaciousness, the allowing, the ease and the penultimate trust that all is well with the world and nothing at all was needed from me.


All is well.

Flip Wilson Had It Right - 2Jul2011

Remember him? "What you see is what you get."  Or in plain language, how we each see our world is what comes to us, what we continue to create.  If we perceive the world as a generally friendly cooperative place, we tend to each feel generally befriended and cooperated with.  There may be instances when this doesn't happen - that 'bad stuff' happens instead - but these other times tend to be more easily dismissed as aberrations rather than the norm.  What I choose to see is a world that works, where people cooperate and everyone wins.

One of my dear friends, I'll call her Helen, had planned an enjoyable weekend with her friend who I will call Larry.  Larry hurt his foot while working on his second home and the doctors were doubtful that Larry could travel because of several potential medical complications.  She was really sad about this and we prayed about it, knowing and believing and trusting that his foot wasn't as bad as the doctors thought it was and that he could come home.  He arrived home yesterday and gets to stay for a full six weeks so that his foot can rest.  I don't expect to see much of my friend for the next six weeks, but I know she's happy.  

And I'm good with that.