“and
half of learning to play is learning what not to play
and she's learning the spaces she leaves have their own things to say
and she's trying to sing just enough so that the air around her moves
and make music like mercy that gives what it is and has nothing to prove
she crawls out on a limb and begins to build her home
and it's enough just to look around and to know that she's not alone
up up up up up up up points the spire of the steeple
but god's work isn't done by god
it's done by people”
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This afternoon, my body is speaking loudly to me and asking me what were you thinking yesterday. Do you know how sore we are today? Heck, it hurts just to lift this one leg up and you did this to us why? Then there is the other part of my body, which seems to be saying thank you, yes it was painful and uncomfortable, but you made it through. So now, you know you can walk through the discomfort of moving up and down the hallway. Now you know that you can train your body to walk up and down the driveway, then to the mailbox, and by January, you will be able to use your walker on the days you have to go to Brockport to teach.
Read moreI was lying in bed the other night nursing a sinus headache paying attention now and then to the television in the background. Sometimes the commercials are more entertaining then the shows and sometimes there seems to be more commercials then show, but I will save that for another time. last night, it was the Terminix commercial that resonated with my spirit. Not because we have termites, at least I do not think we do, but there promise of how they can come and remove all the termites from your house, keep them away, and if their treatment does not work they will pay for the damage. As I was sitting there watching this commercial, I found myself thinking that it is too bad there is not a parasite removal plan for our lives.
Read moreI have this relationship with Don Miguel Ruiz’s book that defies description. I can’t quite describe it as a love hate relationship because I never hate it. It is kind of like going to a psychological and spiritual gym. You go, you do the work, you feel good on so many levels, but there are some parts of the workout, which require you to work a little harder and dig a little deeper then others.
This is how I have felt about his section on social masks. My initial response was – I don’t wear any social masks. That is too simplistic of an answer. Ok, so what social masks do I wear and how do I know when I am wearing them. One of the clues he suggests is when you feel false, frustrated, or dishonest. When are we faking the funk and being what we think others want us to be and not who we really are?
Read moreRecently a client asked me if I worked as hard on my own spiritual evolution as they felt they were. I found my heart smiling. I had to giggle because for the last few weeks I have been grappling with a single word – perfection. Don Miguel Ruiz wrote, “Our image of perfection is the reason we reject ourselves; it is why we don’t accept ourselves the way we are, and why we don’t accept others the way they are.” In his Companion Guide to the Four Agreements, he challenged me to think about what my image of perfection is. I could not begin to answer that question or any of the other questions he asked because I could not find the words to define perfection.
There have been days when this single word made me wonder if I really wanted to grapple with it and was this challenge going to be enough to stop me in my journey.
Read moreWhen I was a little girl, there were so many things I was taught about how females were to be. I remember being taught a poem, which described how girls were to be:
Sugar and spice
and everything nice
that's what little girls are made of
Read moreI remember 1991 as if it were yesterday. Well actually, I think the winds started blowing in my life the year before. My mother had become increasingly ill, my long-term relationship was eroding before my eyes for reasons I did not understand, and 1991 was to be a year of major changes in my life. for the first time in decades I was living on my own, my mother was dying, my father was doing all he could to stay strong and care for my mom, I was back in school working on my fourth degree and felt as if what was keeping together was my commitment to just taking it one day at a time, sometimes one minute. My first semester in seminary I was told to leave my church, my mom died, my car was stolen, and my son had a near death experience.
Read moreOnce again, I have learned how easy it is to be sucked into the power of the past and forget that none of us is the same person we were in the past. The other day, my son called crying and then hung up on me and immediately I became concerned for him, his caregivers, and the other young man in his life. Why? Because I remembered all the other times he had lost control when he was with me and how he was. I remembered the time he nearly hit me over the head with a 2 x 4. I remembered all the other times he had become angry and became physically aggressive with myself and others and I assumed that this was what was happening again.
The next day when I spoke to his caregiver, I learned that he had not been physical at all. He had been far more appropriate then I have ever known him to be.
Read moreThe goal for today was to plan this great adventure to some place we want to go and go there. my great adventure is to go ride the ferries in New York state. I love ferries. We were to write about what permits us or doesn’t permit us to have what we want right now. We were to write down what the world of our wealth is right now. She also suggested we right about how the state of your birth, the feelings of your future, and eh wanderings of today affect and show who you are. Write what you know about rebirth in living. Write what your soulful self wants you to know.
So if I were really going to have this grand adventure, I would do one of two things.
Read moreI have been thinking quite a bit about this whole notion of life, birth, and rebirth. Life for me is the entirely of my journey from birth to death. Birth is the moment I came into this world, until then and since then I was and am a work in process. For me, the time in between birth and death I am in a constant state of rebirth, whether it be conscious or unconscious. Every moment of every day there are countless cells in my being being regenerated, so physically at the end of the day I am not the same person I was when I woke up that morning and I am not the same person I was when I went to bed the night before.
The same is true in every other aspect of my self, every movement that I make in my life consciously or unconsciously which takes me to that higher place of spiritual evolution is about my being reborn
Read moreI have to say I have been struggling with this word acceptance. I think in part it is because it brings me back to a time in my life when in the midst of trying to be of service, I found myself also being hurt. More honestly, allowing others to hurt me. it brought me back to a time when I allowed others to hurt me and continue to hurt me until I was able to see that I was the one who was allowing them to hurt me and found the power to leave. It brings me back to this place of feeling like a round peg in a square hole. It reminds me of all the times people told me I was too much of something or not enough of something. It reminds me that God does not say as I have accepted you, accept one another, but as I have loved you love one another. It makes me feel as if there is something I need to accept. And yet at the same time there are things I need to accept in my life. no, it is more then accepting. It is knowing.
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