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.