A Vivacious Cycle

"Live with intention. Walk to the edge. Listen hard. Practice wellness. Play with abandon. Laugh. Choose with no regret. Appreciate your friends. Continue to learn. Do what you love. Live as if this is all there is.” ~mary anne radmacher

Sometimes I feel like I'm absurdly gifted with things nobody wants. Like, "She is really good at climbing trees and painting turtles" or "He can correctly guess the weight of your grocery bags - separately or all together!" Yet the awkward talents I possess, my own unique gifts, please me to no end.

Where does my gifted spirit best meet this corporeal world? How can I spend my limited time here on earth loving what I do and serving others as well?

My spirit meets this world at it's verges - on the edge of all boundaries where no man or women has been before. This is the spot creativity meets joy and beauty. This nexus is my place. This is where I belong.

If this is true - then how should I see those pernicious companions of mine called Sorrow and Tears? Their significance cannot be ignored or denied.

Tears are tools I am told. We use them to whittle away at the rough edges of things. They hone our sensitivities and help us reveal what is smooth, easy and true. If we pay attention, they can make clearer what is most important in our lives.

If this is true - then I am waging peace for unencumbered Beauty and Joy with ease and comfort knowing this spiritually vivacious cycle begets only more of the same. Perhaps this will be of service to someone in some way someday?

My accountability to you is lighting the candle and being the flame. I am alive in the moment. I am the placeholder for wonder.

Now... what's for breakfast?

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Becoming Wide and Open

"Your beliefs become your thoughts 

Your thoughts become your words
Your words become your actions
Your actions become your habits
Your habits become your character
Your character becomes your destiny"

~mohandas ghandi

There is an energy that is spoiling my peace. It crackles and shifts the silence within me. And deep down and all through everything I know - I know this energy is good.

Even though I feel nauseated by its unusual character and unfamiliar tones. Even though I know nothing about what is to come. Even though I feel afraid...I am willing to endure the uncertainty of cascading next events because deep down and all through everything I know - I know this energy is good.

I am opening to the changes of Spring.

I am open to the casting off of my cocoon. 

I am open to the emerging of my new me. 

I am open to the merging of the flows - the flow of my soul's river with the flow of the rhythms of the world. 

I am open to the merging of the flows because I know deep down and all through everything I feel - this merging is good.  

I am wide open.

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A Teaching Creme Brûlée

“I tired of the routine of eight years in one afternoon.”
― Charlotte Brontë

I am no innocent bystander. Everything I do, say, think and believe affects my life. I had a teaching creme brûlée last nite. I knew it was OK to order it, but I did not pay enough attention to the description on the menu. It read, "enough for 2 or 3 people." So when the oval tart dish arrived - it was the size of a clown shoe - we were all very surprised. It was then I had a choice and I did the right thing. I ate just the right amount and had the rest wrapped up to take home. (I did offer to share it with my friends, but they so rightly would have none of it. I hang with very enlightened people!)

But I was again tested at home as I took the pudding from it's shiney folded black paper box to place it in a more durable container. "Gee - that is not as much as I thought," I thought. "Gee - that spoon tastes good. Ya know - I think the burnt sugar may dissolve before I get to it again tomorrow. Perhaps I should finish it tonite?"

Don don don donnnnnnn! Oblivious to the forbodding Beetoven-ish chords playing over me and the dish and the spoon, I carried my doom with me up the stairs to my bedroom. Yes - it was eaten. Yes - there was a belly ache. And yes - I had totally disregarded all my inner wisdom. 

I am no innocent bystander here. I created all of it just like I am creating this message to myself today, as a reminder. I am not powerless. I am NEVER powerless. All the choices I make bend my life forward!

Knowing this Truth I move onward being more aware in the moment of every single MOMENT!

What thing needs more of your attention today?

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Good Purposeless-ness...from Other Voices

"like the lovely, free-form edge of a bird's wings, we cultivate our essence, an alchemy of soul.....this, simply by being present and alive.....yes, fully alive...…" 

~ in the blue

Our Strength Found in Fragile Depths 

"I am especially struck with the idea

of the purposeless life,

filling the well with snow.

I suppose all life is just that anyway,

but we are obsessed with purpose" 

~Thomas Merton

____________________

"The longing to live free from care, or to live what Merton in his letter to Suzuki calls the purposeless life, should not be mistaken for a simple disregard for others or for the world, or a willingness to live without care for persons or things. Rather, it expresses a hunger to discover a more honest, free, and open way of living in the world that enables one to see and respond to the other without succumbing to the temptation to think of such relationships only in terms of their utility and purpose. 

Indeed, one of the fundamental questions raised by the contemplative tradition has to do with how best to understand purpose and utility in human life, and whether the meaning of things depends on their having a purpose or a use. Also, whether an insistence on the fundamental value of utility and purposefulness undermines our very capacity to see and notice and respond to the world in its own terms. 

At its roots, these are also questions about what kind of value we attribute to things like play, imagination, attention, and prayer; and whether they can be understood, at least in conventional or economic terms, as having any purpose at all. Especially important in this regard is the cultivation of the kind of capacious awareness that can help us learn to feel and take in the beauty and power of the world for its own sake and refrain from evaluating it purely in terms of its utility. 

And while the cultivation and practice of such awareness may not be sufficient in itself to help us redress the pernicious effects of our utilitarian and acquisitive culture, the recovery of such capacity will almost certainly be necessary to the kind of sustained imaginative, ecological, and spiritual renewal of the world" 

~ Douglas Christie

_______________________

"liquid life in motion

So from the ground we felt that virtue branch

Through all our veins till we were whole, our wrists

As fresh and pure as water from a well,

Our hands made new to handle holy things,

The source of all our seeing rinsed and cleansed

Till earth and light and water entering there

Gave back to us the clear unfallen world."

~ Edwin Muir

In Blue | October 15, 2014 at 6:03 am | Tags: aliveness, awakening heart, awe, beauty defined, deep kindness, deep longing, deep play, fragile beauty, free spirit, fresh perspective, inner divinity, nurturing beauty, sacred awareness, seeking the sacred, spirit in flight | Categories: Beauty | URL: http://wp.me/p1Wc4z-2J5

Good Work and Wonder

Woke up concerned with everyday life. The unperturbed flow of living. The feed the dog, pour milk on the cereal, kiss goodbye, go to work life. I love this life. I miss this life. I have gotten too used to living lopsided. Shoved side to side by wide capriciously swaying emotions, I am ready to assail this grief riddled mayhem for a more cooperative way of being. It is not so much that I am tired or that my broken heart is completely healed. I just miss regular-ness. 

How can I do this? Can I just chose to shift my intentions like that - like so much furniture in a room? Just move this attitude over there by the window so it gets more light. And get rid of that old wobbly chair that no longer serves? Heck ya!  

This morning I salute a thing called Wonder. It is that small surprise or regular happening that when you string enough of them together creates a joyful life. Today I recognize Wonder as sacred. This is a fine direction for a new-ish life.

The second directive from myself to myself is "No more Toiling." I will follow my intuition and let my emotions move freely without resistance.  "Feel Deal and Heal" is my motto! It is hard work but it is Good Work... which is nothing to do with Toiling. Good Work expands. Toil diminishes. Manifesting itself under the supervision of misery and sorrow Toil is never finished. Good Work has no such taskmasters. And Good Work is always completed.  Whether hard or easy, painful or fun, Good Work leaves you sated and transcendently satisfied with no regrets. 

Like yoga, Good Work stretches you a little each day until the old you is nothing like the you who awakes today. Changing small bits is best, but we don't always get a choice. A car spins out of control, there is a fall from a cliff, or we discover a fatal flaw in ourselves or others that makes it impossible to continue. Then it seems change descends upon us. 

The philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote, "Growth and change are hard. In fact the only thing harder is not growing or changing." 

However we arrive at change let's wave our flag high and proud. Daily we become more our selves when we agree to pay attention, have fun, let go, not toil, good work, feel pain, stretch and change.

Finally a hopeful post! I have been waiting a long time for one of these. I deserve one. You deserve one. We all deserve to roll around in the grass like happy puppies. No extra points for suffering. Life is pass fail. You will do what you are gonna do. Are you gonna do it well and joyfully or undercover in darkness and shame?

Look beyond the darkness for the light. I am ready to do more than be a survivor. I am ready to actually enjoy surviving. I am ready to live in Wonder. I wonder how Love will show up for me next? I wonder what new experience will stretch me today? I wonder where Abundance will spill into my life? I spend my day looking for answers to these wonder-filled questions!

What do you wonder?


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