We are spiritual beings...

Spirituality and Creativity

   Sorry I haven't been HERE, because I've been HERE instead.  For the last 5 years, I have been on a conscientious, deliberate mission of spirituality and more simply, marrow-hunting.  Over the years of my life, I've found meaning in writing, dance, nature, most recently my child, and most-most recently, photography (while I wait for my body to resume its dance-ready shape).
     I have always separated creativity and spirituality (and science which is my work) and have finally realized that the river, the source, God, consciousness, whatever you want to call the animating force that unites all living things, can be fed and can be synonymous with creativity.  In the B'hai faith, acts of creation are equated with prayer, as you are accessing the same force of creation hypothesized to animate us.
    With that said, I've been doing all of these things while breaking from the spiritual blogging - but you can find the details here:  To the Right of My Left Brain

    What did you love to do as a child? What do you do that steals your time away, where you get lost in the act and even failures don't dissuade or frustrate you?  I highly encourage you to invest in it - buy the equipment or materials, take the class, join the meetup.com group... go further than internet research.  Connect to the human side of the thing you love... the marrow's there for sure.

Bloggus Interruptus

     We interrupt this spiritual blog for a couple of weeks for the Mama with limited, precious free time to take an online photography course.  Hip Hip Hooray - see you in August!

Community

     In many religious traditions, devotees or monks practice solitude and aestheticism to eliminate worldly distractions and deepen faith and understanding.  On a personal daily level, I find that if I have daily solitude, I'm happier, more connected, and more available and open.
     This weekend I spend 24 blissed out hours with my beautiful, glowing, radiant, present dance community who are all so radically different from one another but are woven together by the common thread of dance, and before that, they are all women who seek and deeply drink the marrow of life.
     If you haven't spend time with your community recently, find them, invite them, go to them, do whatever you have to do to surround yourself with the inspiring energy of your deepest community.

Spiritual Diet

     One huge obstacle for me (and pretty much everyone I know) is.. that extra 10/20/30 whatever... POUNDS.  If I lost the baby weight, I'd be happier.  If I lost the baby weight, I'd feel better.  If I lost the baby weight, if I lost the baby weight... 

    

     Is that true?   Byron Katie  asks us to do "the work" - a short process of inquiry designed to liberate us from obstacles, beliefs, and blocks that hold us back (and doesn't she have the most peaceful website you've ever seen?) Let's try it!!  Choose a belief and ask yourself:

 Is it true?

 Can you absolutely know that it's true?

 How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought? 

 Who would you be without the thought?

Turn around the concept you are questioning, and be sure to find at least three genuine, specific examples of each turnaround.

I'll show you mine if you show me yours!  

The Obstacle Challenge

     Thanks to my readers on Facebook who helped fuel my creative fire!  A few weeks ago I asked for your input as to what prevents you from drinking in the fullness of each moment of each day.  Some wonderful responses - and I hope to get to each - provided me with wonderful food for thought.  The Marrow of Life was originally created to help me keep track of my efforts to bring spirituality to a more realistic plane.  It seems that there are two camps - the totally dedicated, morning meditating, super composed, present, and esoteric folks who eat, sleep and breathe this stuff.  If you ask them if they believe in God, they usually serenely say something like, "There are many names for God, consciousness, presence, grace... yes, I believe in a higher power in the universe that connects all living things.. "

    And, well, the rest of us.  The ones that are still kind of a train wreck, have a pretty grounded idea that we're all connected, who can Be Here Now on a daily but not consistent basis, who would rather pull out their toenails than meditate for even 5 seconds, and who just desire for more meaning in life and an ATTAIN ABLY conscious way of living.  Usually if you ask us if we believe in God, we are all, "Um, well, sort of but not the bearded guy" and we leave it at that.

     This blog was intended for the "I don't relate to the bearded guy" crowd.  I thank my readers for their submissions about the obstacles that get in the way of feeling the deep miracle of every day.  It reminded me where this blog was supposed to go - and where it was supposed to come from.  It was not supposed to come from the 5 minutes I have to squeeze out of myself.  It was supposed to come from contemplation of the literature and resources I have, and how they relate to daily life.

     I'm afraid you guys have been treated to "JJ Lite" - the free version of the app that is supposed to lure you into the paid version with better features and interface.  Someday, I imagine that life will be settled down, I'll have a little designated, inspiring writing spot from which to still-full-ly (like "Skillfully," get it?) create inspiring blog-fodder for y'all... in the meantime, thanks for your patience with "Marrow Lite".

     Your challenge and mine for the week:  Write down the obstacles that get in the way of peaceful living.  For example, I discovered a HUGE one during this inquiry: PMS.  I swear to you that I cannot bring myself back from the brink of homicidal, small-me mindedness when I have PMS.  This is a new phenomenon to me, because I was on the pill for basically my entire reproductive life.  Just figuring that out has helped tremendously - I know not to take my Very Serious Emotions quite so... Seriously.

     Let's pay close attention to these marrow-suckers.  Some of mine: On a molar level (what we call "setting events" in behavior analysis): Being deprived of time alone, on a daily basis.  PMS.   Lack of creative time.  On a molecular level (what we call antecedents): Tantrumming toddler.  Condescending tone of voice.  Getting home too late.  All of these precursors send me straight to the edge of the "it's all about me" cliff.

    Report!  And, on a little-me note, if you're reading, please let me know, even with just a "present" or "accounted for".  I'd love to know you're out there!

  
  

Help me readers, help, help me readers!

    I need to hear from you!  What are your greatest obstacles to drinking in the fullness of your day? Is it other people's negativity? A bad life situation? A relationship that drags you down? Traffic jam? Job you hate?  What is stopping you from experiencing the fullness and wholeness of the deep, divine YOU, every day.. even every MINUTE of every day?
   For me, it's energy. I'm an energy absorber and I am easily sucked into other folks' "stuff"....

Accepting What Is

What if we thought about accepting what is more as acknowledging what is?

Sponge

Please forgive my mini-hiatus... I've been DOING instead of WRITING... absorbing lots of new ideas and materials to bring to you.  Have just ordered Simple Abundance to include in my family's spiritual practice, and am listening to lots of spiritual podcasts (remember car as vehicle of instruction?  Found a great way to use the time...), so much inspiration out there....

Be back soon!!

Birds

      What are they doing up there?  There are two birds circling one another, perfectly in slow, graceful time to this song "Gravity" I am listening to right now.  They brushed one another midair after a long, luxurious, unhurried series of concentric circles, then they equally slowly went their separate ways.  Did they exchange phone numbers? Was one asking for directions? Were they sniffing each other out as potential mates?  How would life be if we did everything at an equally unhurried pace?  As breathtaking as the dance I just witnessed?
     I just took a huge step in my post-baby (and post-hamstring tear) life, and put the dance pole up in my house. My kind husband took the baby out for a couple hours.  I cranked up the tunes I've been collecting for the last couple weeks as my inner woman started to poke at me from the inside out.  First of all, when was the last time you cranked a favorite song - in the car, in your house (please not in your iPod - hearing damage, people!)  In a funk?  Immediate song marrow, right there.
     My dance experience taught me to move on the "wave" of the music - not the beat, but the slow pace underneath the beat.  The almost half-time beat, but a little behind.  Quite a little drunk looking, actually.  I settled down into the floor, bringing my breath into that drunken half-beat wave.  Music and movement - to me, those two things are like sipping the meaning of life right from the holy grail.  The return to movement caused a bubble of pure glee and laughter to crash out of me.
    Imagine my delight to find two birds dancing at the same pace as me!  All this meaning stuff - apparently it IS for the birds.
  

Zen Driving

     I drive a lot.  At least 3 hours a day, usually more than that.  You might remember from the Consciousness Challenge that it made to my List of Tedious Things to which I'd like to bring mindfulness. I've developed one small practice that lifts me up while I'm driving, even on the Garden State Parkway (which in the summer, earns its name while we all sit on the hot asphalt wishing to be home, at the beach, or anywhere but here - the opposite on Being Here Now).  Sometimes instead of being caught up in either a) charging the 100 devices that allow me to do my job on the road or b) staring mindlessly at the bumper in front of me and zoning out or c) listening to the radio on scan, hearing a snippet of a new tune every 7 seconds....
  
     I look up.  I look at my whole windshield.  I have great visibility in my beloved purple Mazda3 hatch.  No matter the weather, there is always a sky-scape to lift my spirits - either grey, or blue, or cloudy, or stormy, or bleak, but always big.  Suddenly all the cars are just a small, unified group moving in harmony under the magnificence of the atmosphere.  The same exhilaration you get when you look up in a city and marvel at the skyscrapers, or when an airplane lifts off and everything beneath you is suddenly a grain of sand.

     I came across a book I bought in high school when I got my driver's license.  It's called Zen Driving, by K.T. Berger.  You can bet that happy accident is a whisper from the universe - I haven't seen this book in 15 years, and suddenly it's everywhere - displayed on the front table at Barnes and Nobles (I ignored it), popping up in my recommendations at amazon.com.. and out of no where, on my nightstand.  (The universe doesn't like to be ignored, I guess).

     I'd like to share a passage that I think speaks to whichever "vehicle" you're in - the car, the subway, the job, the home.  "Sit behind the wheel, relax, take a few deep breaths, and realize that all further progress is now in your hands: the vehicle of instruction is the vehicle you're sitting in". Office chair?  Yoga mat? Dance pole?  What's your vehicle of instruction today?

     Mine will be the car (again)... I'll spend a total of 3 hours on the road if today goes well.  I've downloaded some new tunes from the fabulous Aerial Amy blog (all things pole dancing, one of my other vehicles of instruction) to inspire me, and additionally I'm going to use some of that time to let my vehicle literally be an instrument of teaching me to develop mindfulness in one of the most tedious tasks in my day.

     What's your vehicle of instruction, something that is ordinary or extraordinary, but is a teacher to you?

Challenge: Holding Space

Here is a beautiful summary of a skill that would make the world a better place!  Click here for a relaxing read:

Buddha Becky

How can you be the holding space for yourself this week? For one other person?

For myself, I can try to stop the thoughts about my inadequacy, about being unable to give 100% to work, daughter, husband, mom and dad, and sister and friends, 100% of the time.  Instead, I can let those thoughts reside in a space of non-judgement.

For one other person, I can be the holding space for my sister.  She is an amazing young woman with lots of ideas and lots going on as a recent college grad, and sometimes I still give unsolicited advice or chime in with my "elder's experience".  Who needs that?  (Hi, Aunt Doo Doo).

How about you?

Check In

Blog abandonment! Blog abandonment!

My husband and toddler and I spent last week in Colorado - Denver, Boulder, and Brekenridge (then Denver again).  What a magnificent state!  It's hard to imagine living nestled daily in the presence of those mountains.  They're so large you almost feel that if you peeked around back, they'd be held up by wooden kickstands, a la Hollywood set.

I wonder how often folks look up with the sense of awe and wonder you feel when you contemplate the stars or moon?

Sugar Plum Fairies

     My beautiful, talented "little" sister graduated from college today.  I'd like to say I had some startling moment where I realized she'd gone from my baby sister to a young woman, but quite honestly, there was no such dramatic moment.  My sister has just ... continued to become herself.  When she was wee, she was .... herself.  Now she is still herself, with a college degree.  I know she has a lot of gifts to bring to the kids in her future classroom, and that she will touch many lives because she has conviction, passion, and kindness.  And she's really, really pretty.

     If there's anything worthwhile I can say to you, sister, it's found in the same words I hope to raise my own daughter with.  Especially in the trenches of education, Land of Egos... over my years I've found it boils down largely to this: "All we have to do, is be brave, and be kind" -The National
  
     Welcome to the beauty of the great unknown!  Congratulations, what a wonderful time, when all your possibilities are shining like sugar plums waiting to be plucked.  College grads, love your limbo!

The Consciousness Challenge

     Yesterday we talked about bringing awareness into the tedious parts of our lives.  Did you make your list? Here's my daily activities, hateful ones in red, tedious ones in yellow, things I like or love in green:
Shower
Dry hair
Makeup (sometimes w/ baby, sometimes without)
Snuggle, bottle, Sesame Street with baby
Dressing/brushing teeth (both of us)
Running around gathering everything 
Drive to daycare
Dropoff
Drive to work, an hour

     I don't think I can get rid of dropoff at daycare, so I have to accept that as what it is.  There are plenty of yellows for me to consciously try to bring my attention into: Dressing, brushing teeth, running around gathering everything, and driving to work.
     Post your lists!

Challenge: Change

     Oh Tama Kieves, I love you, why did you come into my life?  All these years I have been jockeying myself into my dream job, thinking I loved the content of my work but not the job itself.  All these years I have been filling out my "red" and "green" cards a la Marcus Buckingham, filing my "strengths" and "weaknesses" into little red and green piles.  All these years I have been working and re-working the framework of my life: my job responsibilities, my clients, my colleagues, my continuing education, my location.  Rearranging all the components in the expectation that one day, I will wake up, leap out of bed with fiery passion for my work.  Guess what?! In October, I scored my dream job.  Guess what else? I still hit the snooze button with all the fiery passion I should be using to leap out of bed.

                                                                        Fail.

     I remember that fiery passion feeling. I've had it before - when teaching kids in a 1:1 setting. Just me, a kid, and potential for change and growth.  I've had it when introducing women to the mystery and bliss of pole dancing for the first time.  I've had it when giving a workshop and seeing the entire paradigm of people's ideas about teaching and children drop out from under them.  You know it too, I bet.  The rush. Time sliding by, unnoticed.  The tingling aliveness under your skin and through your body.  The seamless transition from moment to moment.  Powerful.  Alive.

     Thanks to This Time I Dance, I'm itchy.  That itch that keeps you awake at night, scratching until you bleed.  No amount of packages of frozen peas or other temporary salves can make this itch go away.  I see a future filled with outer purpose that fuels my soul, and I want it.   I don't even have the skill set for it - I haven't danced in years, I'm a lousy photographer, and my writing is less than organized and inspirational.  I want it anyway.  How do I get there? I need skills, I need marketability, I need a life coach (MOM!)

   Until I can secure my mom's services, I open my favorite guidebook, A New Earth.   I hit this page right away.  It is a long passage, but can it help us bridge the gap between what our outer actions look like now, and the blissful future vision?

"Here is a spiritual practice that will bring empowerment and creative expansion into your life. 

 Make a list of a number of everyday routine activities that you perform frequently.

 Include activities that you may consider uninteresting, boring, tedious, irritating, or stressful. 

But don't include anything that you hate or detest doing.  That's a case either for acceptance or for stopping what you do.... 

Then, whenever you are engaged in those activities, let them be a vehicle for alertness.  

Be absolutely present in what you do and sense the alert, alive stillness within you in the background of the activity.  

You wills soon find that what you in such a state of heightened awareness, instead of being stressful, tedious, or irritating, is actually becoming enjoyable.  

To be more precise, what you are enjoying is not really the outward action but the inner dimension of consciousness that flows into the action.  This is the finding the joy of Being in what you are doing." (Tolle, p. 300)

     The challenge this week is to bring alertness, aliveness, to the tedious moments that bog me down, to help me act from a place of inner purpose and aliveness, to myelinate the pathway to aligning my inner and outer purposes.  Let's make our lists of daily activities!  Ready, set, go!

     (Hey, did anyone notice that sneaky little sentence about stopping what you hate?)

Attachment

We're selling our beloved cottage.

We donated a bunch of our daughter's toys to her daycare.

     Events have a nice way of lining up to teach us a lesson.  I'm just weeping about selling our beloved house.  Our daughter is obsessed with her toys being at daycare.  She doesn't want the other kids to have them.  I am thinking about how someday I can explain to her that nothing is really ours.  These material things we identify with, these things we believe communicate information about us to others, these things the ego desperately wants to hold on to - whether they go to daycare, the recycling bin, or become lost - these things are not our things.  They're in our possession and then they move along.

     The house isn't "mine".

Faker faker!

Turns out that beautifully stated quotation attributed to MLK Jr is not his quotation at all!  It's still a beautiful sentiment and I hope the true author will step forward.

Something that was attributed to him:

"Are we seeking power for power’s sake? Or are we seeking to make the world and our nation better places to live. If we seek the latter, violence can never provide the answer. The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." ~ Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

History repeats itself

 ‎"I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that" -Unknown Author

My Ego

     Because you have stuck with me for so long, I am going to share a deeply embarrassing, personal piece of information that might be up there with "I wet the bed... last week".  The only other person who knows this about me is my boss, who reminded me of it yesterday.

  

     My ego's name is Bueleh.

    During a particularly trying, long conversation with one of the parents I work with, my ego just wouldn't sit on its haunches.  "Down, boy, down!" I cried over and over, while the parent continued to criticize every. single. aspect. of a huge home program I'd designed.  This parent had been very, very wronged.  This parent had two children severely affected by autism. This parent was afraid.  This was clearly not about me, but I simply could not still that horrible rising up that caused me to eventually snap a little defensively at the parent, "It really sounds like you think we might not be the best fit for your home program! Is there anything going right?"  Not my proudest moment.

     When I got home and told my mom (who we call the Dali Mama) about it, she said "Name it".  "Angry, defensive, insulted!" I cried indignantly.  "Your ego.  Name your ego."  "Bueleh," I said, instantly.  I have loved the name Bueleh since I read it in a baby book.  It seemed like a nice name to give such a big monster.

     Funny thing - something with a name is much more manageable.  "Down, Bueleh" and "Heel, Bueleh" go much better than "Hey pipe down you!"  Bueleh lets me feel compassion for myself and my ego.  Bueleh lets me recognize it as an entity when it arises.  Bueleh is practically solid matter, whereas a nameless ego was an insidious, icky slime.

    Sounds like I'm giving myself Divided Identity Disorder?  Next time you feel that tension rise up in you in response to someone else, next time you feel yourself snapping or getting defensive or feeling offended or insulted, take notice of that tense feeling, where it resides, how strong it is.  Give it a name.  Watch it grow legs and walk away.


     How do you keep your ego in check?

Spring

     Easter and Christmas - I've always struggled with them (once I got past the Santa Brings Presents and Eater Bunny Brings Chocolate stage).  They're religious holidays, but they're grossly commercialized, so they belong up there with Valentine's Day, but they're deeply meaningful in some religious traditions... it's too much for me to wrap my pea brain around.  I'm not good with mutually exclusive concepts dwelling on the same date.
     I wanted to find ways to create meaning, since the days aren't going away.  Some options: do nothing and just be straightforward with our daughter about it from the get go.  Plenty of kids don't do Christmas and Easter and they live to tell the tales.  Or rather, to not tell tales, since we're throwing in Lying to our Children on top of Buying a Bunch of Crap.
     That's not very fun though, and we like fun.  Another option is to just put my blinders on and go for the gold - Cadbury eggs and all.  Can't really spiritually quest that way, though.  Since my whole goal is to find meaning and marrow in the ordinary things, I had to do better than that.
     So, for lack of creativity, I decided to do a little non-candy basket with a few books, a DVD, and some funky forks (she really likes tableware, what can I say?)  My mother in law also got the baby an adorable little few things so we put that out too.  I covered the coffee table in a red gingham vinyl table cloth, you know, the kind you take on a picnic.  And I decided to see what happened.  My only goal was to get outside into nature.
     There is such a grace to letting life unfold and give you answers.  For starters, our daughter was totally underwhelmed, cranky and woke up way too early.  My husband nearly went to war with a sippy cup.  If I was married to the idea of the idyllic Easter, I would have been crying by 6:30am.  Instead, I wrangled the family, banned the iPhones, poured bowls of goldfish crackers, and made everyone watch the DVD.  Voila! An Easter tradition of snuggling and snacks was born.
     Still not sure what to do with the rest of the day, we took a blissful 2 hour family nap - another Easter tradition born, one centering around rest and renewal.  I can get on board with that.
     Later in the day we went to the park and rejoiced in the movement of running, climbing, swinging!  We then took a lovely long stroll down the creek in the park.  We looked at all the small signs of life - the buds on the trees, the daffodils, the way the water runs under the bridge, the fresh tiny green leaves.  We literally hugged trees.  I can't imagine a better way to introduce my toddler to Easter - traditions centering around new life, renewal, Mother Nature waking up and washing her face.
     That's how we drew some meaning from a day that doesn't have a lot of authentic meaning to me.  Last year I spent it in the church vestibule bouncing a way too heavy child and commiserating with another similarly miserable mom.  I didn't find new life in that church, heavy with male leadership and incense.  I found it in the green grass, the light of life in my baby's eyes, and the sweetly blue sky.

Spirituality and the Feminine

     Why struggle when you can swim?  Since I resumed my menstrual cycle after having my baby, the days around it have gotten darker, more volatile, and almost violent.  During that time I fight against my ordinary life like a WWF wrestler in a steel cage match.  I try to turn to my best old standby, A New Earth, and the whole thing falls flat.  Cognitively I  understand that in these troubled moments driven by hormones and whatever else is going "wrong" in my body, all I am supposed to do is accept what is, dwell in that moment, and eventually come out peacefully on the other side.  Realistically, the best expectation I can have is that I come out the other side not having broken any dishes willfully.  The model of inner peace and enlightenment that is set forth by all the teachers I've read is one that feels unattainable to me.

    Recently I have been reading This Time I Dance by Tama Kieves.  Her writing thrills me.  It talks of passion and power (the inner kind, not the dictator kind).  It talks of peace driven by fulfillment.  It talks of harnessing the energy - violent and otherwise - into your life's work.  It talks of swashbuckling, risky, feather-in-my-cap kind of inner peace.  Now we're speaking my language!

     The dovetail to Tama Kieves seemed to be a revisit to Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes.  Says Pinkola Estes, "Feeling extraordinarily dry, fatigued, frail, depressed, confused, gagged... without inspiration.. chronically fuming, volatile,... to be self-conscious... drawn far into domesticity..."  These descriptors point to being out of synch with the "wildish force int he psyche".  In other words.. to be a woman.  To live in modern society, especially here on the east coast in new jersey, means to inherently live out-of-synch with our wildish psyche.  It means to drive a car from point A to point B.  It means to straighten our hair, it means recycling is some remote thing done far away. It means that the beauty and power of our ocean and its sands of times is relegated to an onslaught of summer beach dwellers half heartedly glancing in its direction.  It means the struggle to seek marrow in an ordinary existing is like Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill.

    Well! No wonder this woman is ready to tattoo her face with desperate messages of escape! Rescue me! I have no desire to live peeing in the woods, believe me.  I don't want to hunt deer for food and forage for berries. I like most of modern life - I like elongated seat toilets, I really love hot showers.  I don't like bugs, inside or out, and most wildlife scares me.  It's only that the pace and standards of life right around here are counter-supportive to living a full, feminine life connected to Mother Earth and one another.

     This is all to say that the men seem to be talking more about peace in the moment and stillness, the women seem to be talking about passion and movement, and I live in a place that seems counter-supportive to any of the above.  To women living out a fulfilled, authentic life, this society I live in is polite enough to quiet its collective mouth but will give you a brutal side-eye.

    Do you think that emerging women's spirituality would do better with female teachers?

  

Tuesday is the Day of Karma!

     According to that sweet little guidebook, Tuesday is the day we teach our children that the seeds we plant today bloom into flowers tomorrow.

Monday is the Day of Giving...

     Remember Monday? The day of giving, as per this post:  Monday is the Day of Giving and as per Deepak Chopra's wonderful little parent-sized book, The Seven Spiritual Laws for Parenting.  I love the simplicity and repetition of assigning each day of the week a spiritual theme.  It helps me to depart from raising a child in an organized religion - one of the appeals is the organization part, isn't it?  Sunday is church and Sunday School.  Saturday night is youth group.  The religious practices have an order and a time set aside for them.  Trying to raise a child with spiritual practice often falls apart for me because there is no time set aside for it.  It's an all-the-time effort, but I do think my child needs some rules, repetition, and special time set aside for spiritual practice at her level.
    Which brings us back to Monday.  This morning, she shared her precious Bink with her dollies and her Elmo stuffed animal.  We made a big deal of that!  She gave some of her snack to a friend at school.  These are the small things that I hope will help her learn how wonderful giving feels, how happy it makes others.
    Now, if I could only remember what TUESDAY's theme is!!!

Whispers from the Universe

     Don't you love little sweet nothings from the universe? Don't you love how you can go half asleep through each day, then one day remember your connection to all things living and wake up again?  Don't you love that when you do wake up, the universe is right there sitting patiently like a mother watching her child sleep and waiting for the moment when he wakes, like a mother relishing the sighs, restless tossing and turning, sweet closed eyes of her child? How like a mother, the universe cherishes us just as much, sleeping or awake, and eagerly awaits the moment our eyes pop open, we rub them, we look up and stretch our arms out to be lifted up?  And how the universe will always, always hold us close when we ask.  Don't you love it?
     How do we know?  Those little sweet nothings.  When we decide to stretch out our arms, we open are ears and hear coincidences, come across a meaningful quotation, get an email from a friend that says exactly what we needed to hear.  We get a shining sun day, or a grey contemplative day - we get what we need.  Little sweet nothings.
     I received this today: "Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves" - Rainer Maria Rilke   I was regretting opening my arms to the search. I often start down the seeker's path only to become overwhelmed and intimidated by how far there is to go, remembering that as far as I go, I have to get back, fearing getting lost.  I like my rabbit hole, the safety of knowing and not doing.  This time out, I see that I can't go back - this time the path is overgrown by the bramble of dissatisfaction - there is no way back to the place of unhappiness and unfulfillment.  This leaves me stranded out in the middle of the way, with my arms stretched up, listening for whispers from the universe.

Can of Worms

    This was my fear all along.  A calm and silent acknowledgement, I don't want to do this anymore.  Just the flutter of hummingbird wings in my mind one morning.  This drains me.  This does not strengthen me.  The small flutter that sent the small ripple that sent the river flooding that sent the ocean coursing through estuaries that with years of repression carved themselves so deeply that the waters of inspiration and truth are now rushing through me.
     How do we go from day to do with this deep dissatisfaction, wonder, and awe?

Thursday Challenge

     It's the end of the week.  Clocks don't really tick-tock anymore, but if they did, each tick and tock would bring you closer to the weekend.  The future is near! Freedom!  Hour after hour of not having to listen to The Man! or the Woman!  I know that as much as I may enjoy my work, by Thursday I am so ready to spend every minute drinking in my daughter and all her new developments.
     My challenge for myself tomorrow: Bring more into alignment the contrast between weekend and weekday.  If my spiritual practices were taking hold, wouldn't it be harder to differentiate work from play? Wouldn't I be deeply drinking in every minute of my time with other people's children too?  Wouldn't I feel the same sense of fulfillment on Thursday as I do on Saturday?
    I'd like not to be counting the seconds!  Help!

The Present Moment is Sleeping

     I have come finally to this moment.  I have rested, I have slid into warm water after 12 lifetimes of driving, lifting, holding myself erect, bringing myself to her level.  I have nourished, I have dabbed myself with sweet mimosa because the only person I have to think about right now is me, and me wants to wear perfume.  I have chosen a spot.  I have turned around 3 times before nestling into the cozy bed of creativity.  I have opened the taunting fresh page. I have generated at least 8 sentences and topics while going about my day this morning.

     And I can't get past the rustling of my daughter in her sleep.  She. might. wake. up.  She WILL wake up.  She will wake up and cry for mama just at the moment that I get moving, really rolling, when the waves in my sea of thought are crashing, she. will. wake. up. 

     The peaceful, resting sheet of calm that drove me to this cozy corner yielded to the old paralyses of fear - what if I run out of time? Why begin what I can't finish?  Shouldn't I do laundry, something with a clear beginning and end, something that would have an outcome - clean clothes and space where the Jabba The Hut-like mound of dirty clothes has spilled its fat belly out of the closet and into my bedroom?

    There sounds the discontented cry, a lost bink or a loud noise - I pause then type faster hoping to catch it all before the foghorn of the most important sound - my baby - blasts the non-mommy thoughts right out of my head, reels me back into the carousel of: clean diapers?What do I give her for lunch?Did she have enough dairy today?Vitamin?Babysitter's coming, what's the pediatrician's number?  The carousel I love to ride, reaching for the brass ring of my daughter's rare and sweet kisses.  And these rare minutes alone - maybe 60 of them, maybe 120 - a frenzy of thought and action, wearing myself down with the act of trying to nourish myself.

     Anne Morrow Lindburgh, referring to Virginia Woolf's proclamation that all women need is a little money and a room of one's own, modernized the requirements.  She offers that all women need now, because we've come so far, is time of one's own.  A week out of the year, 20 minutes daily, however a woman can demagnetize the shavings of the world sticking to her.  These women yearned to create, to share their messages about sculpting, moulding, babying our creativity, our Selves.  They sent messages, personal and political, to their lineages of mothers and sisters and daughters, whose traditional duties are not the ones that feed their souls.  The work of a mother and wife delight me, repay me in greater heights and depths of love and sweetness than any other work.  That work does not feed me, me who wears mimosa blossoms and gazes out the bay window at the hideousness that is winter into spring, bare scrawny tree trunks with scraggly patches of evergreen like a thinning scalp.  Me who sometimes looks at my hands on the wheel, and adores them.  Me who remembers to lift my head up, to lok at the tops of buildings, to look at the open sky spanning out above the trees on the highway.  This me who on most days has no right to live.

     

Tell me a story

Tell me a story today about how unconditional love has touched your life, changed it, lit up a piece of you that had been in the dark... did you submit a daring "What I did this summer" essay only to have a teacher pull you aside and say, "That was terrific and daring!" Did your parents give your room to do whatever you wanted when you grew up, without a backup plan?  In big and small ways, how has love without limits affected your life?

Do small things

   STALL.  I've been picking up this book, putting down this book, picking up that book, looking for something to catch my eye to share with you.  The weather is so blindingly blissfully crisp that I can't even think about flat words on the page.  The sky is blue! The air is clear! The wind is fresh and delicious!  It's so good I'm practically illiterate.
     A silver touchstone caught my eye, a small medallion that belongs to my mom.  It was sitting on the counter in a ziploc baggie, for whatever reason.  It says, "Do small things with great love.  -MT"  In this incredibly busy time when I feel I have very little emotional resource for my family, never mind myself, I have been searching for some kind of big time contribution to my spiritual life.  Listen, we are maxed out on time and there are some non-negotiables, like exercise and food that have to be fit in to the madness.  There is no spiritual hour I can eek out of each day.  There is no half hour of morning meditation unless I want to see the wrong side of 5am - which I do not.  No amount of meditation will make me a peaceful person at that level of sleep deprived.
     The universe will always provide the experience you need to evolve - even in the small things you see when you get out of your head and into the present moment.  DO SMALL THINGS WITH GREAT LOVE.  Of course.  Meditation in movement. Meditation in dishwashing, car locking, wallet coming out of the purse.  Presence with the person behind the counter, with the day care providers, with my husband.  Presence and love to my daughter in the frenzied act of trying to get through a grocery store with her.
    Says the universe, get your head out of the sand!

The Summer's Day

"Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"

from New and Selected Poems, 1992
Beacon Press, Boston, MA

Copyright 1992 by Mary Oliver.

Just some food for Monday thought - a day we mourn the end of the weekend, dread our Monday obligations... "What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

Easy Street

     These are the easy days, right?  Sun is finally shining, you walked out of the house without that extra puffy coat on this morning, you didn't have to bundle the baby, you took a walk outside, you didn't have to heat up your car in the morning.  It's easy to look upward or inward and feel gratitude with each breath of fresh almost-spring air.  It's easy to remind myself that life is good with the windows open and my favorite tunes cranking.
     What a change!  Just last week I could.not.bear.one.more.day.of.winter. Nothing's changed except I now have a book on tape to enrich the looong hours of driving.  Same house, same family, same job, car, circumstances, empty bank account.  Something about the beauty of the weather day lifted the dark funk that settled over me during the winter.
     Why does the weather alone have that effect, and how can I bottle that up for the rest of the year?  How do you put a "spring" in your step even while being housebound for weeks?  Do you think the great spiritual leaders had the same fluctuations in their deep joy of living based on things like weather?  I know it's small talk, "How 'bout this weather we're having?"  It's small talk because it's that important to us!
     I do know that it makes breathing and coming into alignment with my breath more automatic - except when I'm next to my daughter's stinky feet after a day at school.  ICK.

Be JJ?

     In The Happiness Project, the author's first "Personal Commandment" for herself is to "Be Gretchen".  Initially, I didn't relate to that.  I get it, be authentic and you'll be happier, but of course I "am" JJ, right?
   Oh, the "am".  The great, "I am".  My belief is that I "am" only the river of life that flows through me and all the rest of us and all living things, the energy that animates the form I'm in right now.  The big "I AM".  We call it "god," "consciousness," "holy spirit," "grace," "buddha nature," "life," "energy"... those words all point to the unnamable river.
   Gretchen is referring to the little "I am," the form, the story, the memories that compile our book, beginning to end.  The little "I am" that is SO BIG for us that we will do anything to defend against threats to it.  Loss of a job - devastating!  Yes, because it threatens survival, but the emotional devastation?  It threatens our little me.  Unemployed? That doesn't fit with my identity.  I was a teacher/broker/driver/dancer... Getting tailgated?  Of COURSE they drive a BMW, how entitled they are, who do they think they ARE?  We sort and analyze and categorize US and THEM to avoid threatening what we think we know about our"selves".
     How I can "Be JJ" to get happier, while at the same time recognize that "JJ" isn't who I am in the big "I AM" sense?  If I truly believe that the big "I AM" matters, how can it be that the life of the little"I am" makes me unhappy sometimes?  Why should it matter that I change my circumstances in a way that is more authentic in order to influence my happiness?  The only answers I can think of are that a) I am still more heavily identified with my little "me" than I think I am, and b) my outer actions aren't aligned with my inner purpose somehow.
     Anecdotally, I can say that finding ways to use my time in the car (I drive between 3-6 hours a day) by listening to podcasts and audiobooks was a great "Be JJ" way to increase my happiness - it removed sources of boredom and enriches and stimulates my mind.  For what it's worth, little me is a little happier.

Abundance

Just knowing this pile of apples exists makes me feel rich.

Breathe Me

"Breathing in, I calm my body
Breathing out, I smile.
Dwelling in the present moment
I know this is a wonderful moment"
-Being Peace, Thich Nhat Hanh

     My toddler is old enough to start practicing with me some of the teeniest little breaths inserted into the space between her very active activities!  Her mind is so open, her eyes so wide, so observant.  She picks up my phone and knows how to hold it, using her little thumbs like a stockbroker in the throes of a deal.  She holds it up to her ear and says "Hel-LO," walking and talking just like the busy adults around her.  She pointed out my eyebrows today.  I have no idea where she learned what an eyebrow is.  She sees everything.  She hears everything.
     I yelled at her for the first time.  I thought she would stop dead in her tracks, I've never raised my voice to her.  She didn't even flinch.  She didn't even look at me!  Feelings of dread and guilt washed over me - I never wanted to raise my voice to a toddler, who doesn't know better, who is there to be taught and who doesn't yet even know what disobedience is.  I decided I had to cultivate other strategies to have at my fingertips, and immediately this beautiful, simply, childlike quotation arose.  "Breathing in, I calm my body.  Breathing out, I smile.  Dwelling in the present moment, I know this is a wonderful moment".
     Early on, when she was tiny and I was experiencing post-partum depression, feeling overwhelmed and incompetent, when the simple act of changing a wriggly baby would reduce me to tears, I would repeat this quotation to myself and aloud to my daughter.  I wanted to be a happy mommy to her, and give her experience with calming breaths.  After a while, as I became a more fluent parent, I forgot about the quote.
    I picked up Being Peace and I can't remember why, but there in Chapter 1 was that darling little quotation again.  Like the spring breeze yesterday after the longest, snowiest, slushiest winter, that little quotation saved the day.  When I feel my temper rising, breathing in and smiling out mentally and physiologically bring me back to my daughter, who is doing exactly what she should be doing - testing me.  And now I feel like I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing - staying calm, loving her deeply while she pushes my limits, and showing her another way.
    Today in the midst of a "Get me out of this high chair now" screaming mimi fit, I said to her quietly, "Honey.. what do we do? Breathing in we calm our bodies..."  She came to a screeching halt, looked me in the eye like she viscerally recognized those words, and the tantrum was over.  Children know what adults have to rediscover.


     A couple other things I've tried to bring to her:   This morning, we also started family lovies as a Sunday spiritual practice.  Although we no longer attend religious services on Sundays, I wanted to set aside some time for family spiritual practice.  We held hands in a circle and each looked at the other and said, "I love you".  At night, in lieu of lullabies (she has finally caught on to my terrible voice and begs, "No, no no no mama no!" when I start to sing to her), we have started doing "Send loves".  "Send love to Grammy, send love to Nana..." Something I am looking forward to creating is a breathing corner.. a kind of spiritual replacement for Time Out - a place where all family members can go in the heat of the moment to breath, meditate, be in a calming space and come back to themselves.

    If you have a spiritual practice, how do you bring it into your family life?

All we have to do...

     Thank you to my classmate who introduced me to The National who introduced me to this beautiful sentiment: "All we gotta do is be brave, and be kind".  I don't think there is any other sentiment that boils it down so succicently (how do you spell that? Spell check wants it to be succulently - which is also appropriate).  In many hard ethical and moral dilemmas I've been in, that's what the decision comes to.  Handling a parent who is ripping me a new one? Be kind.  Handling the same parent for the 5th time? Be brave enough to stand up for myself... and be kind enough to hear the fear in their voice.    
     An unlikely source of the guiding wisdom of a lifetime.. what have you gotten from pop culture or pop songs that you go back to over and over to shine light in a difficult time or decision?

Goodbye, Facebook

     If you haven't picked up The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, grab it!  It's a lovely little pragmatic year's journey into happiness by someone who was mostly happy... but not happy enough given all the blessings in her life.  Reading it made me nearly suffocate with all her tiny resolutions, and how they must have added up to one huge project that would have made me well, miserable... but I took away one big message: Don't waste my time on things that bring mediocre happiness.  So, I deactivated my Facebook account.  Maybe I'm going to be socially disconnected.  Maybe I'm going to miss knowing every time a "friend" gets a job, loses a job, has a bad day, has a good day, goes down a steep escalator, sees a funny sign, posts a picture of their child (OK, I will really miss the pics of my friends babies)... Since I don't know what I don't know, I think we'll all survive without my virtual presence.
    Which brings me to... back to... the blog.  Back to the pursuit of meaning, spirituality, connectedness in all things living... in this tiny microcosm I dwell in.  Hi  blog, I missed you.
xoxo