You see, I have this weird, but in my experience, validated faith that if I surrender myself to my own words, the ones that came without too much cogitation or premeditation, they will lead me to a place I didn’t know I’d be visiting; they will show me 1) What I didn’t know was on my mind when I started, and 2) What I didn’t know I knew about that particular subject.
Sydney Lea, page 195, The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop, by Diane Lockward.
Sitting in my Snowbird Poets group, I placed my fingers on the keyboard barely breathing and witnessed The Aftermath.
Time is nonexistent, Dear One, non-exist-ant
Standing barefoot
I am aware
of things I am too young to know
Stripped of my innocence
when he climbed on top of me
in the courtyard
beneath the Viburnum
That snowball bush was in full bloom
while I was not
yet
but soon would be
Ten years later
I hear from some
deep drug-induced fog:
“If we don’t get her awake
she is never going to
have this baby!”
Then: “It’s a girl!”
53 years later
my twenty-year-old granddaughter
takes off on a bicycle
as a sinking feeling
of fear
flashed fast across my face
Of course, she was right
I would have let her brothers go—
without so much as a second thought
But the Viburnum will bloom
again and again
unlike a young girl’s innocence
Pearl Bailey says there’s a period of life where we swallow a knowledge of ourselves and it becomes either good or sour inside.
Bailey’s words sing the truth. I had come from a legacy of women who had worn the shackles of sexual shame. My mother had a first marriage she did not tell us about, and I did not learn until I was in my forties that she had discovered she had a sexually transmitted disease at the same time she found out she was pregnant for me.
I became pregnant on New Years Eve, three weeks before I turned sweet sixteen on January 22, 1966. I got married, and I was forced to leave high school in tenth grade. (See Loved and Wanted: Listen to Your Mother.)
My daughter, and my granddaughter have carried that legacy of sexual shame, but none of us need carry it any longer. It is time for all women to be free….
A Course In Miracles
LESSON 60
God is the Love in which I forgive.
God does not forgive because He has never condemned. The blameless cannot blame, and those who have accepted their innocence see nothing to forgive. Yet forgiveness is the means by which I will recognize my innocence. It is the reflection of God’s Love on earth. It will bring me near enough to Heaven that the Love of God can reach down to me and raise me up to Him.
For too many of us, feelings of shame, even self-hatred, are paramount. No one of us has a fully untarnished past. Every man, every woman, even every child experiences regret over some action. We are not perfect. Perfection is not expected in the Divine plan. But we are expected to take our experiences and grow from them, to move beyond the shame of them, to celebrate what they have taught us.
Each day offers us a fresh start at assimilating all that we have been. What has gone before enriches who we are now, and through the many experiences we’ve survived, we have been prepared to help others, to smooth the way for another woman, perhaps, who is searching for a new direction.
We can let go of our shame and know instead that it sweetens the nuggets of the wisdom we can offer to others. We are alike. We are not without faults. Our trials help another to smoother sailing.
I will relish the joy at hand. I can share my wisdom. All painful pasts brighten someone’s future, when openly shared.
Our granddaughter spent this past week with us. It has been six years since she had done that, and it was quite a week! As her mom said, “You cannot spend a week with Gammie without processing!”
Our first processing was my bout with an intestinal bug the day she arrived.
The second processing was my missed opportunity. Stacey and all the kids refer to a winter visit with us as retirement training. True to form, our big evening event after watching Wheel of Fortune was a game of 500 rummy at the dining room table, during which Courtney said, “I am wishing I had my car.”
My missed opportunity was to just be honest with her and let her know I understood her feeling. Instead, I launched into an unskillful articulation of why it was best for us that she not have her car.
We did not have an overt scene, but there was definitely a loss of rapport, and as soon as the game of rummy was over, she retreated to her room.
I took the lump in my throat to bed with me.
The following morning, I continued processing as I sat with my journal (See Writing Down Your Soul).
Gratefully, after she got up, Courtney and I sat on my bed for over an hour just talking heart-to-heart about LIFE. I shared my painful history around the sexual double-standard. I admitted to having been unskillful the previous night, and I thanked her for not giving up on me.
We spoke of significant things including: my mother’s having hidden a first marriage; my pregnancy at age 16; the culture that forbade my attending school because I was sexually active and a bad influence on the other girls; Courtney’s mom’s divorce from her dad.
Generations of sexual guilt and shame has been carried by the women in our lineage.
Courtney and I took turns with the tears…
Thursday night she sang karaoke at the American Legion and she killed it! One women came over to our table after Courtney’s first number and said, “My husband has an amazing tenor voice. Your singing moved him to tears.”
At the end of her last number, the DJ took the mic and announced, “We have taken a vote, and Courtney R. cannot go home. We are going to adopt her so she can stay here with us on Pine Island.”
It was such a HUGE night of affirmation for all of us.
Retirement training continued….
Friday morning Courtney played shuffleboard with her Gampie and all afternoon she sat in our TV room with him and a half dozen of his senior citizen friends playing mountain music and singing.
After the music, Courtney decided to ride her bike over to Ragged Ass. She did not ask to use the car. She said she would go for a little while before dinner. She asked me to send her a text to let her know what time dinner would be.
Our rockin’ Friday night was to be spaghetti dinner and dominoes with some of our Michigan friends. Her last night of spring break.
As Courtney took off on her bike, I had a sinking feeling. I could not even tell you exactly what it was, but our good friend, Nancy, saw it in my face and asked me if all was well. I said, “We will see how it plays out.”
A few moments later, as I finished putting the house back together after the music gathering, I could not find my phone. I had John dial my number. Courtney answered! “I took Gammie’s phone by mistake.”
As we hadn’t finalized the time for dinner, and now I did not have my phone, I asked John to send a text message to our friends asking what time we were planning to eat. Dinner would be at 5:30.
Because I knew we would be out for the evening, and busy off-island all day on Saturday before taking Courtney to the airport, I had several things needing to be attended to. I asked John to send Courtney a text message telling her I needed my phone. He did that.
She did not reply.
A while later, I asked John to clarify exactly what he had said to her in the text message to about my phone. He had written, “Gammie needs her phone.”
More time went by and still no response.
I looked at John’s phone to see what time he had sent the message.
He had also sent her a message saying dinner was at 5:30 so she needed to be back to leave at 5:15.
I told him it was unfortunate he had done that as it had given her an implied permission it was OK to not return home with my phone before then.
I was trying to calm down, willing myself to accept what was happening, but as time went by with still no reply to the text messages, I was having a harder time finding my center.
John and I were both becoming more and more triggered, and clearly we were reliving a difficult event when Courtney had come to Michigan the previous summer.
John grabbed his keys, headed for the door saying, “I’m going to get her. I’ll throw her @$$ in the car and put the bike on the rack.”
(The bike rack was on the car, because we would be returning her borrowed bike to the friends we were having spaghetti dinner and playing dominoes with.)
I told John going to get her and embarrassing her would not be kind to any of us and would only make things worse. Already after 5:00, it was too late for me to take care of the things I had wanted my phone for, so we both needed to just calm down.
I called Courtney. “Baby, I need you to come home. Your grandpa and I are in a big drama that all started because you took my phone and then didn’t answer our text messages. Since you’re in the middle of it, we need you to come home and help us work through this.”
When she came in, she was red-faced from racing home on the bike in the heat, and she was obviously now upset too.
Fortunately, it only took us a couple of minutes of processing to realize John had been sending the text messages to my phone — thinking that was the only phone she had! She obviously was not checking messages on my phone.
We all saw choice points….
Courtney said she could have returned with my phone as soon as she realized she had it.
John said he could have asked rather than assumed if she had her phone too.
I said I could have used John’s phone to send the text messages myself rather than asking him to send them. I knew she had her phone.
It would have helped if I had noticed he was sending the text messages to my phone rather than hers when I had looked at the time of the messages!
It was important to me to have Courtney know her Gampie had been so triggered that he wanted to ‘drag her @$$ out’ and I had stopped him from doing that.
I thanked her for helping us release not only the difficult time of her visit the summer before, but more importantly, an old pattern of the painful triangle of parenting between Debra/John/Stacey. John would let me be seen as the bad guy.
We all cried and we hugged and Courtney said it really bothers her to be yelled at.
I clarified that I had not yelled at her. I had been emotionally upset, but I had told her what was going on and I had stated clearly what I needed from her.
We were able to recover without any additional processing; and I think we all enjoyed our spaghetti dinner. I know Courtney enjoyed winning at dominoes!
She sent this precious text message while waiting at the airport:
“I loved my week with y’all! Even the processing…. haha.”
Here are two treasured photos taken at the same restaurant near the airport: the first in 2013 when she was 14, and the second after an amazing week of processing with this beautiful woman who calls me Gammie.
This may be the most significant week of processing of entire my life!
Art is remembrance.
It is love.
It is like a sword
that distinguishes
between appearance and reality.
~ Rupert Spira
I have been wondering just what it is that allows some people to find joy or see beauty or create art where it might have been missed by another.
Musing is jogged by such mundane objects as coconuts and trees and chickens! My sweet friend, Carol L. Myers, with her recent display:
Not only did someone take time to create these coconut faces (below), someone also displayed them where others could share in the joy.
And someone paid great attention to detail.
Artists are like that. Artists pay attention. An artist can see something that has been there all along, but not noticed, and an artist shares what is there with the world.
Butch Farubetti looked at a Norfolk Pine that had been cut down and saw a ‘hidden treasure’ inside.
In The Art of Peace and Happiness (Presence, Volume 1), Rupert Spira says this about art: An apparent object is never itself beautiful. True art is neither representation nor abstraction. It is revelation—the revelation that love, rather than inert matter, is the substance of all things.
You have to love it when lessons come so closely you are able to see both sides of a coin clearly…. That has been my recent experience around customer service.
Stopping by a Little Free Library, I was so surprised by the thoughtfulness of leaving a pair of reading glasses on the shelf!
The ‘readers’ came in very handy for my daughter, Stacey, so she could pick out a book for rainy-day reading as she enjoys retirement training with us for the week.
Although I had the receipt, returning a light switch that did not match my switch plate cover was met with, “You will have to come back tomorrow when the manager is in. She is off on Monday.”
Mentioning that I was 9 miles away, and that I had arrived by bicycle (I was wearing my helment), produced no mercy. I felt the annoyance, but once out in the parking lot, I thought to return as ask about any other times of business the manager was not normally there.
The following morning, I drove back, and asked to see the manager. A different cashier said the manager was in, but she was in the office on the phone placing an order. As I waited, she and I chatted between customers. She had been born in Mexico, her mom lives now in Illinois. When the time became L_O_N_G, she said, “I am going to just take care of this for you. You have waited too long, and you should not have had to come back in the first place.” She completed the transaction just as the manager came around the counter, still on the phone, making eye contact with me and nodding her head, yes.
When I got home from the hardware store, I realized I must have only received change for a $10 rather than my $20 when I had met friends for coffee earlier at the Getaway Cafe.
Driving back to the cafe, I excused myself, and said, “When I was in earlier, I think you may have given me change for a $10, rather than my $20.” Handing him my business card, I went on, “If you are over $10 when you settle your drawer, just send a text or give me a call.”
Taking my card, he opened the drawer, and handed me a $10 bill, saying, “You take this. I get busy and it is more likely you are right. If I am short, I will call you. You should not have to drive back because of my mistake.”
Later that day at meditation, I shared all of this as a way to notice how, looking at all of our interactions as customer service, what is the impression I am making in the world….
I am still doing morning ‘writing down your soul’ pages. This morning’s entry dealt with my sleeping with a bed hog. From my journal:
This morning as I got up, I again showed John how he pushes me over to a 12-inch slot of bed. I find that very unrestful.
I asked what Holy Spirit would have me know. Would I prefer my bed empty? I answered that I would prefer not to sleep pushed over.
I was then reminded how all of life is connected, and how much I enjoy hearing John’s music, and how much I appreciate the life we have generated. When asked if this sleeping is major or minor, I admitted that it is overall minor, but it feels major when I am trying to sleep.
(Note* In my journal, I use a marginal notation of ‘D:’ for what I am saying and ‘V:’ for what Holy Spirit is saying. Here is the rest of my entry.)
V: OK. What allows you to bring kindness to both of you and have you say, “Honey, please scoot over. I am on the edge.”
D: The desire (choice) to have both of us matter.
V: You see how your sleeping in resentment is not kind to either of you. Saying exactly what you need will allow a new pattern to emerge. Be willing to say it gently over and over until the new pattern is stable.
As I closed my journal, I opened email to read this ‘Thought for Today’ from the Brahma Kumaris:
Your expectation will hold others back.
Your acceptance will let others fly.
P.S.
As I posted this, and went back to email, my next message was this:
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to setting.
~ Robert Herrick
My fingers have been missing in action from the keyboard as I have enjoyed spending time with a precious friend. We played dominoes, went sightseeing, dined with decadence, and shared about dealing with pain.
Today I am catching up.
This is the beginning of the February 6, 2019 daily thought of David J. Bloyd:
“Memories— the one thing that can never be taken away from us. Make lots of them! “
—Catherine Pulsifer, Canadian author; age not provided
wiseoldsayings.com (website)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
But be careful…very careful…because it’s just as easy to form a bad memory as it is a good one. I recall a story I read many years ago. A family was on a trip in their car, carefully planned regarding timing and distances, and on-target to fulfill those plans. Their little boy was in the back in his car seat playing with his favorite stuffed toy. His window was open to give him fresh air. Suddenly he cried out that his toy was gone. The father asked where it went. “Out the window”, the boy replied. Now the father had three choices: Chew the little boy out and keep driving; just keep driving and let the little boy suffer the loss; stop, turn around, and go back to look for the toy. He chose the last option.
Later, when with friends, the wife told the story. One of the friends asked the man “Why? Why did you ruin your schedule over an inexpensive teddy bear?”
The father smiled and said “Because the toy was his favorite.”
Now why is that important?
Because whatever choice he took, it would have created a memory for the little boy—either a sad one or a marvelous one. We have future memories in our control. Whatever we do today we’ll re-live tomorrow.
Reliving pleasant things is very pleasant. I have been doing some of that around my last week. Reliving unpleasant things can be even more unpleasant than the experience itself.
My friend, Sheilana Massey, wrote Peace Has No Space for Memories. The book encourages us to live in the moment of right now, without dragging in the past or living in the future. She says we can live with Love for what is, not for what was or what will be. From this space our planet will move into Peace, Love and Joy for all Creation.
The Buddha taught that we cannot prevent pain, but we do not have to suffer. “In life, we cannot always control the first arrow. However, the second arrow is our reaction to the first. And with this second arrow comes the possibility of choice.” (A search for ‘the second arrow’ will yield lots of pages, or check out How the Buddhist metaphor of ‘the second arrow’ can help you to be nicer to yourself.)
This is often summarized as, “Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.”
My friend is enduring a lot of pain.
Amidst the pain, however, she is ecstatic about her new life with her new husband. She eats with enthusiasm. She loves music. She laughs a lot.
My daughter is teaching a class at her church. The assignment was to identify something you know as absolute truth. It is an amazing experience to look at what you believe and why you believe what you believe.
The absolute truth I came up with years ago was that life does not begin at birth or end at death. I was naïve about how much holding this truth central in my awareness would change my beliefs.
Absolute truth is true across platforms. For example, the truth that light dispels darkness. We certainly experienced this truth standing in Mammoth Cave. All lights were turned off. We stood in pitch black before our guide lit one small match. It was incredible how much that tiny flame illuminated the space.
“This too shall pass,” is another truth we talked about.
You may appreciate watching the talk ‘How Do You Define Truth?’ put out by the C.S Lewis Institute. The Institute is a nonprofit organization designed to develop disciples who will articulate, defend and live their faith in Christ in personal and public life.
The definition of truth given in this talk: A statement is true when it says what is is, or what is not is not. A statement is false when it says what is is not, or what is not is.
Other comments about truth include: Reality supports the claim truth makes.
Think for a moment about a thought like justice or love.
I appreciated the talk. Opinions can be fair minded. Reasonable people can differ about their opinions.
Truth is said to have three facets: Truth is descriptive; has meaning and application; and is prescriptive.
This past week I sat with two other poets. We have been meeting to write and share. After about an hour of writing, the discussion that followed began to paint the illusion of distance between us. Watching the illusion of this distance expand, I spoke of what I was sensing.
One of the women said, “I think what you are feeling is coming from me.” She went on to share the pain she has felt being ‘right-brained, living in a left-brained world.’ She described how she coped with the pressure of formal education by becoming a people-pleaser. She said she did whatever was necessary to gain approval.
I could feel myself holding space. Almost breathlessly, I watched these two women I respect and love speak from their perspectives.
As I sat holding space, I was aware of my own experience of not being allowed to attend high school because I was a female and married. John was a male and married, so he was allowed to attend.
What is truth?
That which cannot be argued with.
May our opinions — even those justified by truth — be recognized as opinions and not be confused or claimed as absolute truth.
Today is my birthday. I LOVE birthday ritual. This morning I wrote in my journal: Today is my birthday. And Wayne’s. It seems significant Claudia is feeling sad. She said Wayne always said, “It is what it is.”
What ritual is honest for me today?
I hear: “Draw a card.”
I draw a card. Angelic Messenger Card #12 Forgiveness.
Accepting responsibility for your life; releasing blame and the judgment of others. Immense beauty and opportunity live beneath your old emotional scars.
This time in your life represents the final pass-through for many of these persisting lessons.
You can truly know and appreciate only your own life’s journey and perspective.
Pay attention to the thoughts you have as you fall asleep ad those that are on your mind as you wake up. These thoughts embody the situations and the people needing your forgiveness.
“I forgive you, and I forgive me for being caught in the process of change and for our being unable to see each other clearly.”
Angelic Messenger Cards: Divine Guidance for Personal Healing and Spiritual Discovery by Meredith L. Young-Sowers.
“It is what it is.”
I draw a card. #54 Epona’s Wild Daughter, from The Fairies’ Oracle (by Brian Froud and Jessica Macbeth), in the reversed position.
“The wise person prays for guidance and actively seeks it. The answers we truly need are to be found deeply within ourselves. What do our nightmares tell us?”
The phone ringing woke me up this morning. I was dreaming I was at a training but had left the classroom and gotten distracted futzing in the kitchen. A little boy was now with me as I was hustling to get back to the classroom. Suddenly I realized the class had already ended. I had been thinking it did not end until 3:00, but it had ended at 2:00.
I draw one more card. Page of Water: Understanding from the Osho Zen Tarot: The Transcendental Game Of Zen.
“Move with the sweetness and gentleness of the present moment. Feel the fluttering within. Spread your wings and be free.”
I wrote in my journal how much I love these messages from the cards. They all point to the truth that freedom is here now.
The voice responded:
Of course, freedom is here now. If something had blocked your freedom, that IS no longer. Each moment is new. Each breath is NOW.
In your dream you thought the class went until 3 o’clock, but when you realized the class was over you were afraid you had been negligent, that you had missed something.
You had missed the awareness of completion!
The class had ended and you were still frantically trying to get there.
Give yourself the greatest birthday present ever—the PRESENT.
Allow yourself to bask in the luxury of this moment. No regrets. No planning mind.
This quotation by William Blake was hand lettered beautifully onto the whiteboard hanging on the wall. A fortunate few gathered at the Pine Island public library last evening for a presentation by Zan Henegan Lombardo—artist, poet, friend, and teacher extraordinaire.
Once in a while, you are soooooo blessed to be part of something organic, unimaginable, and magnificent. Previously, I have written about Zan’s first 30-foot watercolor painting. Now she has done it again, this time with a piece about some of my favorite sentient beings: trees.
Here is the dazzling 4 foot by 30 foot painting, titled, “Dance of All This,” when it was hanging in the round at the Sydney and Byrne Davis Art Center, 2301 First St, Fort Myers, Florida:
And, shared with her permission, Zan’s amazing poem that goes along with the new painting:
Listening to the Lights in the Trees
With forehead pressed against the trunk
Where the music is embedded,
I make this request: “Please, sing to me about your angels.”
The slender tree responds with percussive impulse,
Pushing me squarely back,
Flaying my chest, exposing my heart,
Invisible wings flexing from shoulder blades.
A cacophony of sounds and light flash through me,
Full on,
Indecipherable.
I back off.
Old trees offer more seasoned melodies, I hope.
Gingerly stepping over gnarly roots to a
Welcoming section with thicker waist,
Gently placing my brow in contact with the weathered bark,
Silently, I ask.
This time I find myself in the heart of God,
Wings still flexing from my shoulders.
And the messenger says,
“The ballad is more than can be sung
In a single verse.
Our angels require you sit
In communion with us
Throughout your life
In order to internalize the lyrics
Of that which you desire.
It’s complicated.”
–Zan Lombardo, 2018
Zan led us in an exercise about listening, during which were asked to share a memorable experience we have had with a tree. Mine was from the 1970’s, when I was a camp counselor at Lake Louise United Methodist Camp, in Boyne Falls, Michigan. The theme of the week was ‘Acclimatization.’
The activities were designed so we experienced ourselves as a part OF nature, rather than a part FROM nature. We worked with a partner, who guided us safely in the woods. We were invited to listen, and let a tree call to us. We remained with that tree for some time, practicing hearing it, before being led out of the woods.
Once safely at the edge of the woods, our blindfold was removed, and we were invited to use our new-found listening skills to return to our tree. I did that! It was truly amazing.
We were asked by Zan to inner listen and go stand by the section of the painting that spoke to us. This is the section that was speaking to me:
You can listen to trees. Trees are sentient beings.
When I had my well-skin check-up in December, the doctor noticed a bit of light scaly tissue on my nose (solar keratosis or sun damage). She prescribed a topical treatment, for four days.
I asked if it was OK for me to wait a bit. I was scheduled to do a workshop at Open Door Retreat Center in Fort Myers the first Saturday in January. I did not want the participants of my Meditation as Healing program to be distracted by healing scabs. The doctor assured me it was OK to wait.
The presentation was this past Saturday. Monday morning when I got out the supplies, I realized I had some unanswered questions about the protocol. How to protect my eyes? (John used this same product last year with some HORRIFIC reactions…) Do I cleanse and moisturize the way I normally do? Can I apply makeup? What about sun exposure?
When I told John I had called the office with my concerns, he said, “Wait until you hear back from the doctor before you start. They are good about getting back to you.”
I did not get a call back from the doctor’s office.
On Wednesday afternoon I called again, suggesting it might be better if I send an email with my questions through the portal. I was informed they have a new portal, and they would need to send me an invitation.
Thursday evening, I still had not received the ‘invitation’ to join the new portal, nor had I received a call back.
Friday morning as I sat writing in my journal (Beyond Mastery Newsletter “Writing Down Your Soul”), I had an ah ha moment: I have been asked to be the FACE introducing all of the video presentations of my meditation teachers, Barbara Brodsky and Aaron. Final edits to the copy are being made now, and the video production is scheduled for the very near future.
Suddenly I had such great appreciation for the unfolding. If my questions had been answered when I asked them, I would have started the protocol.
It is such a Divine gift that I had opportunity to be a patient patient….
Voices from the past, “There are children starving in Africa.” Food is cheap, but labor is costly, so portion size is generated to justify price. World hunger barely matters. Our dinner plates are now the size of platters. Guilt generates so much waist. It is far better to let something go to waste.
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