Hydration

“I don’t understand.” How many times uttered.

Every element, force, relationship and atom that exists in this world as we see it today, existed billions of years ago, unshaped and unformed. Did billions of years waiting pass slowly? Did the stardust and whirling unformed galaxies say “I don’t understand”? Or were the elements, the emerging stars, planets and life so immersed in the creating and creation they never thought to ask?

“I don’t understand” shall be my cue to lift the cup of creating and flow. A reminder I’m dehydrated and need to drink. To lift the cup and celebrate the galaxies waiting to emerge.

Centered Pendulum

To realize how totally immersed I can become in depression, fear, anxiety and even excited anticipation such that no other thought or sensation fills my thoughts and body. Then, with the heart's gentle hand, to still the pendulum's swings and return to center. To exit the two lanes of someday I will and one day I did.  To dive deeply into this moment, this breath, the sounds, sensations and know all is well. To see life alive now. Indeed, tis the only reality.

A Tempting Day

Softened eyes seduce a smile.

To move through this day, a teasing seductress.

Small Bigness

I sat in meditation for the world to know peace and the earth to heal. A truck's sputtering and clanking shattered the silence and then created its own. Opening my eyes I watched an old man get out of the rusted truck body, open the hood and stand. In that moment, suspended in time, the world at large was transformed. A gifted moment of grace and smile. I sat in meditation for a rusted old truck to start for the peace of its path. My mala beads shook with laughter as it began to purr down the hill. 

Either Way

Much like pulling on a push door, I can greet the day. I can slow down, notice and enter with ease. I can crash into, notice and then enter.  Either way I will enter. Giggle,

Mattered and Remembered

I ponder the lives of Buddha, Jesus, Allah, Mother Theresa, Ghandi, St. Francis of Assisi, and others. It was “easy” for them. After all, they were Buddha, Jesus, Allah, ……. Me, I’m just me and the frailties of me are ever so obvious. I can strive but I am not them. And then I ponder the immersion, attention, effort and abandonment we throw ourselves into creating the perfect wedding day, job interview, first date, taking the first child to college, a work presentation, even knitting or tending a garden. We completely surrender ourselves to those moments. We absorb each breath and moment. We lose ourselves and yet each moment is knitted into the fabric of our mind, body, and spirit. Should my attentiveness, love, joy, hope and open heart be any different for this day? Should I be any less alive? 

Maybe, I wonder, that is what Jesus, Buddha, Ghandi, and all the others were trying to say. You can do it. You have done it. The only difference between those days and moments, is your intent and desire to make them matter and remembered. May this day be so mattered and remembered. 

Heart Pod

And would my heart, when touched by an ill or benevolent wind, be like nature's pod, and release her seeds of compassion and joy to the earth, life, and others.

To Giggle with Bubbles

Do waterfall bubbles giggle when they soar in the air? How do trees dance in the wind but clouds stand still? How does the sun, rising above the mountain, paint the clipper clouds orange sherbet, but when it reaches the mountain peak they become billowy whipped cream? No doubt there are answers and wisdom. But for today, to be a child of awe and simply wonder and see. Giggle...is that not how wisdom begins.

Mirrored Question

Pondering Joseph Campbell's words, "Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer" I had to giggle. If you mirror a question mark...you form a heart.

The True Power

Facing the situation, facing the emotions, facing myself, I heard the whisper. 

"There is no duality in life. There is only choice."

Goldilocks and the Full Moon

I felt like Goldilocks. This spot too hard. This spot too soft. Could not capture the moon's fullness. Then to pause and see leaves that are unseen at night framing the moon's illumination. Darkness framing light. Light giving shape to darkness. Like Goldilocks, I giggled... this spot is just right. Changing not where I stand but what I see.

Magic Wand

And were it true that I had a magic wand that I would wave throughout my day...what would I do?

Wait! Giggle.... I DO!

It is my heart and the power of choice. Get ready world... my wand is waving the day's wonder and awe.

Morning Gift of Laughter

My cell phone stopped making calls. Ring. Hello. Disconnect. On my way out to retrieve another phone life inserted the gift of laughter. Please note...the skunks were really there. The imagination did the rest. May your day be filled with seeing the humor despite what is in front of you....

911: Emergency services can I help you?

hobbit: I can't get to my car.

911: Have you fallen again?

hobbit: No there's a covey, pack, flock or whatever more than one is called of skunks by my car.

911: Pardon?

hobbit: They are eating the seed and I can't get to my car to go get

click

hobbit: [insert bad word]. I can't get to my car to go get a new phone. Mine has stopped making calls. Hello????

911: Emergency services can I help you?

hobbit: I can't get to my car.

911: Skunks?

click

back door opens .... 

hobbit: shoo skunks! shoo skunks!

skunks: click. ..... [skunk giggles..... munch munch munch]

back door closes..... sound of a new pot of coffee being brewed

Truth begets Playfulness

 To choose the wonder and awe that enfolds when filters and judgments made of the past are released. To know what was thought was just that a thought. Now, to see a mountain basin, and in the cleansing awe of Truth, to ponder that Life perhaps sat down upon the mountains and giggled with delight wondering if anyone would notice the seat She made. The cloud shadow a throw for Her feet. Truth begets playfulness.

Disproving Truth

In the world of objectivity, one exception can disprove a truth.
 I remember as a small child eating a hot dog. Every time I bit into the hot dog the "hot dog" would move towards the back of the bun. All I got was a mouthful of bun. I can remember looking up at my parents and probably with a scowl, announced that I could not catch the hot dog. Vivid is the memory of them laughing. Vivid is the memory of my noticing. Vivid is the memory of me smiling.
I felt loved. I felt happy. In the world of objectivity, one exception can disprove a truth. In the world of subjectivity, two annihilate.

Mala Tag

Today my heart shall play tag with the world. All I see, touch, feel, hear and taste shall be tagged with metta, compassion and love. To create an infinite mala necklace of light. To giggle... "You're IT!" to everything.

To Ask then to Live

If I focus on the mountain, the beautiful flowered sun is blurred. If I focus on the sun striking its reflection the mountain is blurred. So many questions. Where to put the focus the intent? And then the whisper - "capture only what your heart sees, worry not about the sight of the eyes."

"...I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."  ~Rainer Maria Rilke,  Letters to a Young Poet

Forward Gathering Backwards

There are two points on my mountain trail walk where I stop and walk backwards with my hand to my heart. To gather in all that I have seen and whisper thank you. Though it appears to be walking backwards, I am, in truth, walking forward...the body moves forward and the eyes and heart like the tide drawing the wave, gather all and carry it with me. Much like the touch of a lover's hand upon their beloved's...a gentle, soft whisper.

“What would happen if the wonder of existence was experienced as the primary capability of a species. Well we are what happened. And that is what it means to be human. …. The unity of the world rests on the pursuit of passion” ~ Brian Swimme

The Answer is...........

There is a ponderous question I answer with every thought, every to do, every breath and word spoken. Every meeting or action I take or do not answers the question. No one is exempt. Do I truly, really believe that my life matters? That my happiness, my fulfillment, my joy and worth are so precious to Life, God, the Divine, that I was created uniquely at this moment and time to experience? My answer is what I whisper every moment into the eyes of Life Divine.

Can Do

I can enumerate the aches, pains, burdens and to do's. I can wax poetic upon the should've, could've, wish'd and maybe's. I can cover my eyes to shade the sun. Even close the blinds and turn on the AC to submit the warmth. I could... But the only reality, the only, the only thing that will enact change is the creativity of saying 'yes' to this moment right now. La Chaim! Amen, so be it. En Garde! And so it IS.

A Thousand or More Words

I sit with mala beads in my hands and my heart in my throat. How to pray? How to pray? To open my eyes and realize the gift of life this day. And in the drops of night's rain clinging I see the reflection in one drop. Clinging. Reflection. Renewal. Release. I sit with mala beads in my hands my heart embodied in a flower. This is how I shall pray.

Child to Child

We cherish the moments we walk with a child. Hands holding soft but firm. We adjust our stride to meet theirs. We look for danger. We give them strength but encourage their own. Time passes so slowly and life fills abundant and gentle. We change our voice so it is soft, gentle and encouraging. We remember how to laugh. We remember how to see. We notice. We listen. All because we walk with a child. Would that in all our walks, whatever the age of the one we are with, we would see the child. And with a soft whisper, reach out our hand, and say, “Come walk with me.”

Without Filter

I call the sun orange not blue. That is what I was taught. The night is black not white. That is what I was taught. At the moment of the Big Bang every element necessary to form a galaxy and a blade of grass were present. Only the form and label, what we see, were absent, yet we cannot deny they existed even then. Today, may I release the filters, definitions, and judgment and see all is All, and All is here. Creativity creating unfiltered unveiled.

“This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet” ~ Rumi

Life Startled Alive

As the sun rose the clouds were definitely fall schooners. With sun rise summer returned. Then to see the first flock of migrating geese as the earth got warmer and fall crisp yielded to heat. May your day startle you such that you dance with Life folded, entwined and alive.

“To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.”

~Emily Dickinson~