October 17, 2008 - Morning Glories

Before sunrise, Em and I get up and walk to town for coffee and tea. Everywhere is quiet and ours. Back at the Tin Roof, (the name of the vacation rental) Sheryl and Laura are up and out front when we return. They are fresh-morning-girl-weekend-day-one-beautiful. My heart warms seeing them. The birds are late sleepers in this vacation town. I am on the patio in back now--waiting for their songs and the sun. Morning-cornflower-blue-glories surround this space and down surrounds me because it is chillicious. The girls inside the main house are telling stories and laughing big, gorgeous HA HA HA's. Laura is extra animated, true, completely, to her perfect self. Sheryl, content to be entertained and loving a good story, sits under the lamp with her latest expression of the divine that spills from her always. I also hear girly-girls talking upstairs. Jenny just "wooo-woooed!" I love right now. I love these women and everything they teach me, and every way they love me and themselves and each other. They are warm and honest and tolerant and creative and interesting and funny and happy and FABULOUSLY-FORMED-EXPRESSIONS-OF-DIVINE-BEAUTY.

No one wants to join me out here...yet....they will come with the sun. Oh! There is the Blue Jay whose song is an umbilical cord to this town's part of me. My eyes are doing that thing again - where another presence is using them - curious and enormous. You can stay. I am quite sure I don't mind. What blessings surround us...just like this down blanket, the raucous Blue Jays, and (as suspected, right along with the sun) all these morning glories:

This is a page from my notebook.

October 16, 2008 - I Don't Make Lunches, and I Won't Dust Your Bobble-Heads!

I was recently (yesterday, 6/25/12) out to dinner with my sister's friend, Jean, and we were discussing girl trips and the way women can always find things to talk about. Jean was telling me about how this raised the curiosity of her husband, and that he couldn't figure out how we could still have things to say to each other after many days of togetherness. Well, this one's for him...
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This year's Fall Girls Trip brings together a new group. I suppose it has every year. This year, we have the special treat of JENNY, who I got to ride up with. Driving up with Jen was a JOY. We were thinking aloud about how we overuse the word "awesome" and we were trying on some replacement words. (These are our beautiful problems. We need to say "awesome" too often.) I decide the word "scoops" is fun and different and pretty freakin awesome.  We can then say, "that was a bowl of scoops," or "that was two scoops!"...we joked about "wild asses" and "having nuts all this time." I am in love with this day. I am in love with this sacred time. I am in love with how Jenny "love, love, loves" her patients, and how she makes you feel like all your cazy ideas are two scoops.

We met up with Jen's friends Susan, Kathy, and Sharon for lunch on the way to Saugatuck. We discussed very important things we will and won't do for the men in our lives. Susan proclaims emphatically, "I don't make lunches, and I won't dust your bobble-heads." This makes us laugh until it hurts. I'm in love with laughing til it hurts.

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So there you have it, Mr. B. The secret is out. We women folk get together and make each other laugh. We support each others crazy ideas. We inspire each other to think. We create a safe place for stupid. We discuss and respect and break down each others boundaries. We learn how to be many different kinds of kind. But, mostly, we make each other laugh.

October 6, 2008 - After "Church"

Today is one of those brilliant fall days in the upper 60's. The smell of pencils, forest, maple, and cooking food floating around my music filled head. Everyone is lost in it, smiling, happy to be part of something so beautiful. Sometimes I look out my eyes and nothing seems like it is related to the me I've been thinking was me all this time...like it's someone else watching everything through my sockets. It feels like that right now. My hand is mine, moving around on this page, but it feels like my eyes are watching it, with this little book on these denim legs, this chest -- with the iPod cord linking a pocket to something the eyes can't see -- moving up and down as this body breathes with the gentleness of the tree's fall bouquets rustling in the mini-breeze. Whose is this experience? The watcher is curious about this attention it is getting here on this paper. It is not missing this moment. Where is Gina? Can we let her go? Can we connect her again, over and over, to Everything? To this observer?

I let the watcher guide, and little Gina sort of evaporates...is that the right word? and unfolds into big me, into Everything, into rightness...not to be confused with rightousness...which is for little me only. 

September 27, 2008 - Song by Leonard Cohen

On this day, I copied a poem by Leonard Cohen that I fell in love with:

Song

I almost went to bed

without remembering

the four white violets

I put in the button-hole

of your green sweater

and how I kissed you

and you kissed me

shy as though I'd

never been your lover.

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This poem still fills my heart with a rush of love mixed with nervous, sensual excitement. How do words do that? Thank you, Mr. Cohen. I've remembered to remember many beautiful moments because of your song.

September 9, 2008 - God as Stem Cells

The book I'm reading describes God as undifferentiated stem cells that can individuate into anything all-at-once...the MOTHER of all stem cells. This makes some sense to me especially because of the way my own cells understand what God isn't. My cells understand God-lies the same way they detect bull shit and creepiness. The first time I felt the positive of this nagging negative was when my cells decided on their own to do a week long service project with my dad and our church youth group at a time when I spent hours scheming to get away from both. I was asked to describe the experience in front of the church the Sunday after our return. I said...without any idea I was going to say it..."I felt God alive in all my cells." And I did. I did not find God at church, in anyones good deeds, on TV, or even in the bible. I found what I finally FELT was God right inside my own being. I found God being ridiculously beautiful in the matter all around me. The following is an incomplete rendering of when I notice that same gorgeous feeling:

• On and off throughout my experiences with the Appalachian Service Project
• When I get it right in the classroom  

• When I provide guidance to someone seeking it from me
• When I prepare for, and really mean what I am saying
• When I hang out with my sisters
• When I walk with my iPod
• When I am noticing something special in nature and sometimes with people 
• When I give something away
• When I see and hear birds

• When I am creating a gift
• When I am composing a greeting card
• When I get a clear rush of Bob's love and/or admiration
• When I'm dancing

                               

• When I spread my arms wide when walking
• When I'm riding Sissy 

•  When I'm beating Joe at poker
• When I'm reading spiritual stuff that makes sense 
• Almost every time a breeze visits me

• When I smell big, hot rushes of Lily or Lilac or Lavender
• Sometimes when I'm writing, or when I get a strong sense that I should be writing
• When I talk with Jenny on the phone in the morning
• When the scenery around me is so big it shrinks me out of my self

• When I hear a natural water source...brook, stream, rain, waves, the clunk-bloop of a docked boat rocking, the slow quiet laps that move around a body entering a pool during the night, the swish of a watery-duck-landing. 

• When I hear live music in an unexpected place
• When I am loving someone unselfishly
• A few times during meditation
• After the initial anxiety of being miles outside my comfort zone subsides, and I get to see something new about me
• When I see the glow of honest happiness on someones face and/or hear it in their voice
• When I can let go of judgement of another and any personal intention for another

• When I am around others who have no intention for or judgement of me
• When I see God godding

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When do you feel God alive in your cells?

August 25, 2008 - Not Taking it Personal

Monday-Perfect weather day. At school, I try practicing not taking anything personal. I do well. Sometimes it was very challenging. I felt the energy and space change when I became aware that I was making assumptions about some giggling. First I started feeling defensive, then I caught it and let it go. Turns out the girls were laughing at a fart...not at me. I also wanted to take Diamond's whining personal. When I stopped, so did she.

Later, on my walk in Beverly Park, four big guys, all in white t-shirts, were picking up acorns and throwing them to try to get them into the drinking fountain. My love would have me believe they were gang bangers and they were getting ready to flash mob me. If I wanted to keep walking the track, I'd have to pass them. As I walked by, I teased them about only making 2. One boy asked me if I was a teacher. It turns out he's Donald Gatson all grown up. He introduced me to his 2 cousins and little brother.  Relieved I resisted assumptions, I continue my walk, happy to be part of this universe.

Thank you Don Miguel Ruiz and Mary-Tina Vrehas!

Thank you for 1000!

Today, actually this day we are in, not one in 2008, my blog has been looked at 1000 times. This entry is devoted to those readers who find my musings amusing.

I am made of all of you. You've contributed to my sense of humor, my ability to see beauty in almost everything, my sanity and my insanity, my values, my beliefs, my strength. You've nurtured my gifts, you've tolerated my flaws, you've loved me without judgement and taught me what that looks like so I can do the same for others. You give me the freedom to be who I can for each of you. You don't pressure me to be something you want. You find joy in my joy, and I am so very pleased when your dreams are flourishing.  We are independently dependant co-creators. I am in love with everything I learn from you. Thank you for letting me be the stew of you and for allowing me the greatest privilege of adding to your brew. Here's to you: