Life in Totality

I was pondering the preciousness of the moment as it was, the simple abundant moment of now. There is nothing I can do to change the past. The future cannot be held. All I have is this one moment. To meet it fully alive and aware. Looking up, there she was. The grace of the moon mid afternoon beautifully haunting against the blue sky. The illumination of dark sharing the illumination of day. With a smile and chuckle, what better image of meeting life in its totality, this moment, now.

As Is

The dance of the drought hardened earth's dust and wind shrouding the mountain, in so many ways, took my breath. The invisible made visible. The visible almost invisible. And as my fingers touched the dust resting upon my face, I had to giggle and wonder in awe, "Where my friends have you come from? How many miles and years have you traveled, now to kiss my cheek?" The wonder of the present moment, without story or judgement, simple awe.

Now's Dare

The whisper so simple and yet it startled. Would I think that Source, God, the Divine or Creator would be content or desire to be put on hold til tomorrow, some day when, or if only this? This moment, right now, perfect as it is and abundant in its gifts and awe. Not even the tree's bud felt it had to wait for spring.

Nature's Cake and Candles

Some birthdays and celebrations are welcomed with cakes and candles. Others are welcomed alone with a quiet stillness and gentle sparkling light. Nature's soft shroud or shawl that offers a slight but strong touch of presence.

Fear is courage waiting to be seen. Weariness is but strength waiting to curl like an ocean wave. Home is but familiarizing the unknown. And the gentle snow falling like streaking candles, the diamond sparkles glistening in the night, is the celebration and birth of Now. I have now walked 240 seasons and none more precious than the one birthed with this breath.

Karios Magic

The plane was packed on Christmas Eve. The line of passengers and luggage stuffed in the overheads made me think of clowns in a circus stuffing themselves into a tiny car. A young woman paused to let her child sit between she and I. I smiled but no recognition was returned. Their coats were too thin for the winter. Her very presence, coughing, watery eyes and flushed face painted the image of a mother not feeling well. She all but collapsed in her seat. The little one's excitement was quickly met with a stern "Be quite!" I stared out the window as the plane rolled across the runway and then to see the earth get smaller and smaller.

Glancing at the mother I saw she had fallen asleep. The little one clutched her toy, eyes fixed forward and tears rolling down her cheek. I nudged her with my elbow and smiled. Hesitant she just stared. For the next hour we played silently with her doll and magical creatures we created with my gloves. The coffee stirrer became a magic wand. A napkin became a cape and her doll learned to fly. Only a few soft whispers were exchanged. As the plane landed the little one's eyes looked up with such wonder and awe I almost cried. The mother took her hand and wearily said "Let's go." I gathered one of her bags to hand to her and in her hand I pressed all the Christmas cash I had brought me. With a wink to the little one, I waved the magic stirrer. To this day I still hear her giggle. There a moments now, over 4 decades later, that when I open my wallet I still see her eyes.

We can think of time as chronos - linear, always rushing forward ticking away seconds we cannot get back. Or, we can think of time as karios - the pregnancy of the moment filled with opportunity, possibility, love, and being. The picture attached looks like a magical forest. Or, you could see the truck that passed by stirring dust upon my body and in my eyes. Our journeys require different eyes and different ways of measuring time. The forest IS magical. A 60 minute plane ride has spanned 4 decades. A plastic stirrer still makes my heart laugh with magic. Today, may you hear only the ticking of karios and know the magic of time filled with presence, love, an open heart, and possibility. The magic of karios.

Fullness Beyond the Lens

And what picture would or could I dare to use?

This day. 

This minute. 

This second. 

This moment. 

This breath. 

Tis all there is. 

And yet it is filled with the vast infinity of life.

Costumes of My Mind

Like a two headed arrow, the deadline sharply approached as my ability to finish flew the other way. The whispered question, “What is my intention?” To get it all done. “What is my intention?” The whisper asked again. To get it done. And yet a third time, “What is my intention?” My hands fell softly into my lap as my breaths slowed and deepened. To love this life with an open heart. To see the miracles, wonder, and love streaming past me each moment. To see all that touches my life as my Teacher.  The whisper smiled. The silence transformed the arrowheads into the sun’s first stream of light. We create our misery. We create our bliss. To let them both go and with love and the mystery of awe, joyfully embrace and learn from what is.

On this day of tricks and treats, may I let go the costumes of my mind.

Changing Strokes

A true morning giggle and opened eyes. Is the image a duck or a rabbit? If I see one and then the other, has the image changed? Each stroke the same, not a one moves yet change is what I see. Perhaps Wittgenstein was drawing neither. And if my brain's perception can be so fooled by simple strokes, how does it see others, events, actions, even my body in a mirror, and the cornucopia of Life itself? 

*image retrieved from http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/glue/longman/2/duck.gif

Leaving the Remote Control

Norman Fischer notes the Zen slogan of "Observe everything, no matter the cost" as applying to spiritual practice but more importantly, to daily life. Poets, writers, dancers, singers, the theater, and artists plead, beckon and try to shake us awake and shatter our complacency. Rumi said "don't go back to sleep." Nature with the bright sun, the glistening moon and stars, wind, floods, tornadoes, gentle breezes, ocean waves, and fall colors, like a mother tries to teach us to see, observe, to walk and explore, to leave the floor of crawling and to grow to our potential. To leave our cubes, safe rooms, beliefs, and put down the remote control. "Live your life with your eyes and heart wide-open. No matter what" ~ Norman Fischer.

Transmuting Moments

The sun has journeyed over the mountain hill, it is in a different place this morning. The wind is dancing with the trees. If this were the only moment of sight and then sight would be gone, the colors and shapes of trees would be so different from that gifted with the same moment in just a few hours. Who would be right?  And even if the moment of seeing the trees and sky were done at exactly the same time every day throughout the years, still the vision would be different as the earth moves around the sun. Like the proverb of blind men defining an elephant, one only feeling the trunk, another a leg and another only the tail. Whose sight is right? Whose wisdom and perception the truth? A reminder of how little we see. Only this moment is what we have. To be mindful of how we define ourselves, our day and others based only upon this one moment. But an even better and magnificent reminder of the expansive wonder and awe that is before us.... waiting, waiting, for us to see.

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.

This Moment...I Am

Holding the mala beads in my hands I begin to chant Aham Prema – I am love. It occurs to me that my awareness is only on the mala bead of the current chant. I am not aware of the beads that have already been chanted and moved. I am unaware of the beads yet to be touched. My awareness is focused only on that one bead. My fingers rise with its shape. My fingers fall gently in between that bead and the next. The bead is moved and my attention now is on the bead I am chanting.

I can think of probably more than 108 reasons why I do not think of myself as being love. But for this one moment, this one chant, this present breath with no others guaranteed, this single bead, I am love. And for this day, Aham Prema, one breath, one bead, only this breath, only this bead.

Presence Being

Good morning little one

Deer this morning. They were in the lower yard eating what seed the birds and squirrels had not eaten. Four doe. Beneath the New Moon. I was looking upward and thinking how bright the stars seemed upon the New Moon’s sky. Felt a movement and then saw movement in the drive way and then on the other side of the fence walking up the outside of the yard, up the street back to the mountain. A straggler followed and then turned and stood still beneath the street light on the opposite corner and looked towards my direction. I do not know where she was looking but to see her stand beneath the light took my breath away. An artificial moon showed her winter gray coat.  Giggle, I sometimes forget how big deer are. 

Oh little one, they belong in the mountain area not where cars fly upon the streets not expecting deer. And yet, I giggle, why should we not expect them? This was their home before homes for human forms were built. Before cities were carved into the mountains, the mesas, this was their home. Yes the drought has called them from where they have gone to escape the cars, the cement and human activities, they have left the small areas where they can still live and returned in search of food to where they used to roam. The bears will soon be here as well.

Sometimes I think we are like the deer. Life, definitions, roles, responsibilities, desires of the hearts moved further and further away from nature’s own, until we become remote to ourselves, where our tribe used to roam beneath all the moon’s faces and starlight. Every now and then we forage outside the fences of safety to see if perhaps the geography our heart remembers has returned, is there. Our feet upon the cement instead of the earth. And yet, and yet, as I watched the doe beneath the moon we created, her body still, her head gazing this way, I wondered…what did she see? And I knew, beneath the new moon she saw what she saw…… her Tribe roaming freely, grazing, dancing beneath the New Moon and stars that celebrated the New Moon in their brightness, offering back to her the light she constantly gives to them. She stood and saw past what I was seeing in fear…cars, dogs, homes and cement. She saw what was, what is, and what will forever be….nature’s sweet call to be as one is, as one was, as one will always be…free and unconfined. She and the others had heard the Tribe’s call just like the blades of grass growing up through cement cracks, tree roots lifting sidewalks or holding firm in the side of a mountain. The heart of the Tribe, of Life, not to be denied. The New Moon sang and they left their space of fear to stand and see. To leave their presence Now with, upon, and One with the All. 

I bowed with open hands to my heart, a tear melting upon my face, like the snow, giving drink to my smile. As I stood to turn back into the house, one last gaze back and I saw her turn, heard her footsteps upon the cement and upon my heart as she slowly walked back…to the mountain, beneath the New Moon and luminous stars. And I whispered, when the sun kisses the New Moon goodnight, may I be graced to see the Tribe as did she. To know wherever I walk, I do so upon sacred ground meant to be experienced. May I answer the Call of Being she stood and saw.

30 minutes

Good morning Sweet Life. Thank you for eyes that opened this morning. Thank you for eyes that could see dark turn into light. Thank you for awakening in a warm bed within a house protected from the weather. Thank you for a home with an address. Thank you for a body that arose out of bed without assistance. Thank you for legs that could slide off the bed and touch the floor. Thank you for legs that supported my body to walk. Thank you for a kitchen that I can enter and be fed. Thank you for coffee and hot drink. Thank you for hands and arms that can reach for these gifts of abundance. Thank you for the computer that connects me with the world. Thank you for the electricity that turns lights, computers and coffee pots on. Thank you for a couch to sit upon. Thank you for the earth which gifted all the materials for this home, bed, food, and drink. Thank you for music. Thank you for the sense of touch and ears that can hear. Thank you for all the hands that touched, worked, and created all the things I have already touched, I see and hear. Thank you for clean clothes to put on and all the gifts of the threads from the earth. Thank you for each beat of my heart already passed unnoticed and for each breath that sustained me through the night and continued to beat when my eyes opened.

Thank you sweet life that at this moment, this very moment as I write, 7 billion people are waking to their day or gathered in the sleep I have awakened from. We each are in this moment right now held in your sweet hands. Thank you for the earth that is holding each 7 billion of us and all of nature, plant and animal life maintained by the air, sun and moon. Thank you sweet life for the 30 minutes of arising as one with all of life. Thank you sweet life. Thank you sweet life.

Thank you sweet life for the miracles of these 30 minutes. Thank you for the gifts of this day and all minutes filled with abundance and joy no different than these 30 minutes recorded that I have called mine. Thank you sweet life that each minute that follows will be as sacred and mine to choose how, what, where, of all I will see, feed, smell, touch, hear, and move towards or from. Sometimes it amazes me all the minutes that can occur in such a short span of life. How these 30 minutes become 24 hours and flow one after another. How will they flow? Once I put this pen down how will I move? What will I see? What will I feel? What will my heart record as “happening” to me? What will I record as gifts? What will I record as grace? What will I ….will?

Stillness Standing

I will not stand my ground. I will stand quietly in Love so that even the deer have no fear and eat in the midst of Love's stillness.

A common phrase I say and hear, "In the end....." There is no end, only Now. The beginning, the end, the middle and beyond what even my little brain can comprehend, all rest in Love's tapestry of Now.

In the pre-dawn silence, standing beneath the stars, two deer came into the yard, so very close and had a breakfast of bird seed. Our stillness whispered, "A tear is but the heart's caress upon the face so that the smile of Love may drink."

Take off

It matters not from where or how I learn to fly, to unfold my wings and take flight to whatever is to be my destiny. It matters only that I unfold, take off.... and fly.

I want to remember the feeling of flying taking off from my knees.

That simple

Joy.

That's it.

That simple.

Hidden face

Exhale the "One day" the "I wish" the "Why?" and "If only" so you can see my face 

as the clouds follow your breath's release. You believe in the clouds that cloak and cover, will you not likewise believe in Me and the gift of Life awaiting your belief?

Breathe.

Time to ride

Together they went to arrange her funeral.  Wearily they returned home only to find, parked out front, a Harley with a side car and a classic Mustang convertible – top down.  Lifting her weakened body from the car, their friends carried her and then snuggled her in the Harley’s side car wing.  With goggles and blankets, a classic escort, she sprouted wings of her own and flew with the wind to sit with the waterfalls.

Such a simple act of grace, compassion, laughter and truth.  I, who confess I am a squirrel, forever stuffing treasures in my pockets, ask you sweet Hands of Life, for yet two more pockets (and perhaps a stronger belt to hold my pants).  To carry with me always, a pair of goggles and a side car.  Would it not be grand to imagine putting goggles on the faces of all those I see during the day and lifting them into a side car to let them fly and then sit by the waterfall?  Why should they have to wait?  And if they cannot believe, my arms will still carry.

Yes, my child, why do you wait?  Put on your goggles, time to ride……… My arms will still carry.