By Debra Basham, on May 5, 2013
I began, like so many of us, in a household where
it was somehow my job to be the lightening rod for the family’s tensions
of unexpressed emotions.
~ The Book of Awakening:
Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have
by Mark Nepo
I have come to believe that one of the causes of mental illness is having universal experience and thinking it is somehow worse for you or unique for you. Perhaps we are looking more at spiritual disease than mental illness, but without a doubt, it is a source of deep distress.
Mark Nepo is describing the reality of being born into a human family. Infants are lightening rods for the emotional experiences around them. This was not just a report of his personal life, it is a fact of each of ours.
Previously (including in my book Falling Together in Love: Stories From My Heart for and about YOU), I have written about the emotional climate I was born into around my mother’s having discovered she was pregnant for me at the same time she was told she had gotten syphilis from my father. It is quite easy to imagine the emotions I was a lightening rod for in those first weeks and months in the womb….
Brent Haskell, in Journey Beyond Words, says it like this “The past is the creator of judgment. Without a past, and without your judgment, all people are equal.” This is probably true about our experiences, too. Without a past and without our judgment, we are free to just experience life.
I have been working on an up-coming tip for well-being around the importance of the practice of meditation. The benefits are being proven by science more and more every day. For the tip, I have developed a core line, “You must be present to win.” We must develop the ability to be present to our own emotions, including those we took on from our family of origin, to win at the game of life. What you win is inner peace and stability and the joy of living.
As Emily Dickinson put it:
To be alive is power,
Existing in itself,
Without a further function,
Omnipotence enough.
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| Like clouds moving in water, problems make me forget I am clear… The Book of Awakening, May 5 |
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Water reflects everything it encounters.
This is so commonplace that we think water is blue, when, in fact, it has no color.
Amazingly, while soft and flowing, water—as ocean or lake or even as the smallest puddle of rain—takes on the image of the entire world without ever losing its essential clearness.
~ Mark Nepo
By Debra Basham, on April 29, 2013
It has not quite yet been a month since we arrived back home in Michigan. Today I am somewhere beneath the hustle and bustle of the world of spring and window cleaning business. The sun did come out to lure me away from my lists of tasks. A pair of ducks seemed grateful the April showers of the past couple of weeks had left a puddle about the size of a two-car garage on the property at the corner. They were not so sure I meant them no harm, and much quacking between them made me think one of them must have told the other, “Get out of the water. Now!”
Waddling along the edge of the puddle, she was the first to slip back into the water. I am guessing he was the one who had given the warning, much like the Lost in Space robot’s calling, “Danger, Will Robinson!”
But taking her lead, he soon joined her, with an still-ever-so-subtle attention to my whereabouts.
In my mind I am watching the two ducks who often come to visit outside my window so I wonder why they did not recognize me as the one who watches them with a heart full of wonder and a fist full of corn.
As a tribute to all of nature, including my own human nature, I will share a poem.
I Found A Feather
I found a feather on the ground
Who left it there for me?
Was it a gift of yonder god
To see if I can see?
Do I miss the other gifts
While busy in my head?
Planning what I still will do
Rehearsing what was said?
I pray I find
One soon fine day
I am right where I am
I put the feather by my bed
As I lie down to sleep
I dreamt of love so sweet
Indeed, it nearly made me weep
Now when I look up to the sky
Each winged one I spy
I pretend within my heart
I know the reason why
That lovely feather came to me
To call me to my heart
That I may live in peace and calm
Today’s the day I’ll start!
2/5/2013 by Debra Basham
“All ducks have a grace upon water, and as a totem they can help you to handle your own emotions with greater grace and comfort. They serve to teach you how to maneuver through various waters of life. Many psychologists and therapists could do no better than to have a duck as a totem to assist them in helping others move through their emotional tangles.” (Ted Andrews, Animal-Speak, p. 136)
May today be the day all beings start to live in peace and calm. That will be just ducky!
By Debra Basham, on April 23, 2013
Legend has said that one day many centuries ago, Tara was meditating and chanting her mantra in her Lotus Buddha Field, when some monks happened by. They felt her powerful vibrations and profound meditational energy, and they said, “Oh, Yogini [female practitioner], you are such an excellent spiritual practitioner. In the future may you be born as a man and become a Buddha.”
And Tara replied to those arrogant macho monks, “May I throughout all my lifetimes always take female form. Until all beings realize the nirvanic peace, bliss, and freedom of full enlightenment,
may I always embody the sacred feminine and be a female Buddha.”
Awakening the Buddha Within: Tibetan Wisdom for the Western World (p. 247), by Lama Surya Das
This story catches my eye (and heart) quite fully right now as I was just reading a powerful poem by a woman writing about the sacred balance of ebb and flow of human live—some lives ending all too soon, and some lives beginning all too soon, yet each coming and going in just the perfect place of no-time.(The nuclear disaster in Chernobyl occurred in April of 1986.)
The Years We Will Know Them
Soon I will know if I am pregnant.
I watch my blood, so willing
to fill the vial, and the tiny blue bruise
that instantly forms
where the needle entered.
In this waiting room I sit
with a Lifemagazine—
Victims of Chernobyl in bold
and photos of men without hair,
skin peeling as if they’d lain
too long in the sun.
Some glance hopefully at us, wide-eyed,
a part of History.
But how young—
they must have mothers
who’d want to hold such heads and weep
for the years they have known them,
the ones they will not.
Each morning nurses collect the hair
in great clumps from the pillows
till each bare scalp gives up
boyhood scars and birthmarks,
a shell bony and domed.
Uncovered, the nape of the neck
is a place a woman remembers
putting her lips to.
My name is called.
Soon I will know if the tender bone
of a skull is bedded
like a pearl in my womb.
—by Lauren Mesa
What strikes me as significant about this poem and the story of Tara, is the truth of how each of us is capable of touching life with such awareness that our very breath tells a story of our larger destiny.
Recently I was playing a game of dominoes with some friends. This was the third game over a few weeks with the same five players. It became obvious one player was playing AGAINST me even though I was not winning. I was aware that did not feel good. After shifting into a more neutral observer, as she was even saying things about the focus of blocking me, I mentioned what I saw that was happening: “You are playing against me as though i was winning.”
Her reply was, “It feels like you are.”
At the moment I was able to acknowledge I was experiencing my own energy from the previous two games…. I offered up a silent prayer for this awareness and wrapped my heart in forgiveness as I remembered my higher purpose was to enjoy the game.
I am witnessing one dear friend support her beloved husband as he navigates a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. She sees the challenges as opportunities for love and respect and tenderness and patience for both of them.
I am also watching another dear friend (long since grandmother age) raise a baby. She finds delight in each busy moment rather than feeling overwhelmed by the responsibilities.
I also hold that space for Carol after the transition of her beloved daughter, Lizzie.
No matter what we do for a living, the purpose of our lives is to use our heads, hands, and hearts to help others. Thank you, blessed friends, for doing that day after day….
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| Daffodils in bloom: Walking the labyrinth at Still Waters with Carol. |
By Debra Basham, on April 16, 2013
I was blessed to spend the weekend at a “no-frills” meditation retreat at the Howell Nature Center with nine others. The format for the weekend is silent practice. In fact, you have precious little free time, but I found amazing freedom.
The schedule mixes sitting meditation with active meditation, and much of the weekend was cold and rainy, so I practiced walking meditation up and down the stairs, sometimes with my eyes open, and sometimes with them closed; sometimes going backwards with eyes closed. It was my version of being led on a trust walk, only there was no other doing the leading.
During the Friday evening opening I learned that a woman I had met on two previous meditation retreats had died in March. I remember her as a wonderful spirit. I knew she was undergoing treatment for breast cancer but I admit that I was stunned to hear of her transition.Godspeed, Shelia….
I kept my phone plugged in, watching for text messages from my friend Carol, who was bedside by her 27 year-old daughter, Lizzie. (See previous blog) I knew the family had been called together and the process of easing Lizzie off life-support had begun.
On Sunday morning, the weather was cool but it had stopped raining, so I went out-of-doors for my walking meditation. As I turned the corner, coming out of the parking lot, following the “wrong way” signs, I saw this amazing piece of art: a single heart-shaped leaf was floating in a mud puddle. The puddle was surrounded by gravel, each piece seemingly having been placed there by some artist for its sheer aesthetic value. The tree silently standing watch had been reflected in the water in such a way you could imagine you were seeing the arteries from that heart.
It was so beautiful, it almost took my breath away.
I had the immediate knowing, “Lizzie is free.”
For sure, much of my weekend was tinged with the humble gratitude for my own life. I was reminded of the answer my friend Rabbi Rami Shapiro provided in his column (Roadside Assistance for the Spiritual Traveler) to the question, “What happens when I die?”
Where does an ice cube go in a tub of warm water? You are the cube, God is the water. For a while you seem separate from the water, but eventually you melt – you die – and discover that you, too, are water. Have fun being a cube; just don’t forget that all cubes are water, and everything is God.
I had previously shared with Carol another of Rami’s columns about our transition from this life:
Imagine that the universe is a rope and you, [and Lizzie], and all things are knots in that rope. Each knot is unique, and all knots are the rope. When we die our knot unties, but the rope that is our essence remains unchanged: we become what we already are.
Life after death is the same as life before death: the rope knotting and unknotting. The extent to which you identify with a knot is the extent to which you grieve over its untying. The extent to which you realize that the knot is the rope is the extent you can move through your grief into a sense of fearless calm.
For me, the rope is God, the source and substance of all reality. When [Lizzie] dies she relaxes into her true nature, and realizes who she always was and is: God. I believe this realization comes at death regardless of who we are or how we live.
As I pulled into my driveway, this message popped in from Carol, “Lizzie made a peaceful transition around 2:45 pm CDT. Her husband (AJ), his mom (Linda), Lizzie’s older sister (Amanda), and I were there holding her hands.” Godspeed, beautiful Lizzie…
Because I was alert to messages from Carol, I had my iPhone with me on my walking meditation. I am so thankful the sacredness of nature’s artwork was captured to be shared….
By Debra Basham, on April 12, 2013
Every day I say prayers for those I know are going through challenges of life. Sometimes is it for one of my grandchildren, navigating the potholes along the road from childhood. I maintain contact with friends and with colleagues and several “prayer circles” so I often share those requests for support. Prayer has been second nature to me, but since my own surgery in November, I realize how palpable that healing intention is.
Today I received a tender, touching, intimate photo of a my friend, holding the hand of her gravely ill thirty-something daughter. I can only imagine the agony of sitting bedside day-after-day, longing for a liver transplant, yet knowing that today your child is too ill to receive the very organ that is the hope for her life to be a viable option.
The following poem was written to honor my dear friend and her beautiful daughter, two women for whom I pray today. Two women whose hands and hearts are entwined in this sacred journey of their souls. It is a journey too profound for words.
Heart Breaking
Sitting here holding your hand
Heart breaking
Can you hear me calling you, asking you to stay a while
Where are you
Do you still dream
My mind wanders, but there is nowhere to go
Escape is not possible
Tears falling from my eyes
Heart breaking
Do you know I am here with you
I am here
I still dream
By Debra Basham, on April 5, 2013
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| Cover of Encore Magazine, picked up April 4, 2013, at breakfast book club. |
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At the age of 12, poet George Leslie Norris (1921-2006) says walls began to speak to him and his life as a writer was born! As he tells it, “I put my finger on the wall and it was rough and I could feel the individual grains, and then I put my hand against the wall and little grains fell to the ground, tiny things, and I suddenly knew that my life was going to be the recognition of solid things like this and making relationships of the real world, of the material world, and that the only way to do that was to have the words that stood for stones and rocks and mountains, and that the rhythms would create the formation of such things, and I was going to do this all my life”
I have loved Nature deeply for years, and I now find myself being called to love the Earth as though she is an entity. When I am very still, I can feel her heart beat, and I am inspired to write about the passion I feel as I honor the truth that my life as a writer has also been born.
How is it that my senses are so acute to you? Are we connected on some mystical plane that is hidden from both you and me?
I breathe and it is your breath I catch. I stretch my dawdling body and feel the sinews of your thighs tighten around me. I am held in the loving memory of your touch!
Does our being together stretch beyond time and space? Can we actually be present with one another when our bodies are separate? Is this sensation of oneness madness at my door or a peek into reality?
I dance with your presence and heat begins to rise within me. Oh, you are able to make me come out and play when my desk is piled with work and my phone is ringing! You can capture my wings and spread my legs at will! You are the devil himself come to force me to face the desire I have long denied!
I cease to struggle against the yearnings. I begin to fondle my thoughts and allow the memories to wash over my barren flesh. Hunger and thirst fade into lust. I long to be held by these memories and to merge into them in such a way that I am blind to anything else…
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| Double rainbow seen out my front window November 9, 2012. |
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Today, as I am here in Southwest Michigan working on the computer, I am looking out my window watching the birds feeding. The male Cardinal seems very red, the Goldfinch makes a lovely match to the kernels on the half-eaten cob of corn, and I see the beauty in the iridescence of the shimmering feathers on the head on the male Grackle. I am wondering if the reason writers thrive is because the mundane has somehow become supra-mundane, and you see more meaning in everything, where ever you are.
By Debra Basham, on March 27, 2013
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| Seen on the door exiting the exam room at Michiana Hematology and Oncology… |
The African Proverb, “When you pray, move your feet,” has often been used to encourage Christians, or other people of faith, to take appropriate actions in the world. In fact, faith is intended to guide our choices in ways that is consistent with a greater meaning of life.
As with other things, the truth of this idea is reflected in our physical world. All movement consists of two distinct (and seemingly unrelated) processes: relaxation and contraction. Relaxation is only half the equation for a meaningful life, because contrACTION is also needed. Here are the words to Mountain Top, by singer/songwriter, Amy Grant:
I love to sing and I love to pray
Worship the Lord most everyday
I go to the temple, and I just want to stay
To hide from the hustle of the world and its ways
[Chorus:]
And I’d love to live on a mountain top
Fellowshipping with the Lord
I’d love to stand on a mountain top
‘Cause I love to feel my spirit soar
But I’ve got to come down from that mountain top
To the people in the valley below
Or they’ll never know that they can go
To the mountain of the Lord
Now, praising the Father is a good thing to do
Worship the Trinity in spirit and truth
But if we worshipped all of the time
There would be no one to lead the blind
[Chorus]
Now, I am not saying that worship is wrong
But worship is more than just singing a song
It’s all that you say, and everything that you do
It’s letting His Spirit live through you
[Chorus]
Worship is more than just singing a song, and if you are to develop a life that has meaning, you are required to do more than to meditate in a vacuum. So as I prepare to reenter the world of my life back in Michigan, here are three actions I intend to take as a way of honoring the relaxation I have been so thoroughly enjoying this winter on Pine Island, here in Florida:
1. Get involved with the new Hospice at Home “No one dies alone” program
2. Work to bring Art/Poems (collaboration pairing visual artists with poets) to our area
3. Join and/or create a writers group/s to keep me inspired and writing
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| Patty Reddy representing Stories at the Women’s Expo in South Bend. |
It is exciting to face the changes that greet me on my return, one of which is welcoming my sister, Janis Smith, to the office space where I practice at 815 Main Street. She has a massage therapy practice and has rented the room right next to mine. I look forward to being on her massage table, and to our walking downtown together, and sharing life. What gift that we get to be neighbors! Additionally, I will start getting our home ready for sale and start looking for a mobile/modular home in the park on Glenlord Road. We plan to downsize and make it easier for us to continue to enjoy spending winters in Florida.
The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it,
move with it,
and join the dance.
Alan Watts
By Debra Basham, on March 19, 2013
I am not preoccupied with death, but it would be true to say that I have a hyper sensitivity to mortality, meaning to the passing from the current. The reality is that everything changes form, but it does not mean an end to us, it means a new beginning: “…the caterpillar has the heart of a butterfly.”
InThe Anatomy of the Spirit: The Seven Stages of Power and Healing, Caroline Myss writes of the parallels between the sacraments (Christian), the chakras (Hindu), and the Sefirots of the Jewish Kaballah. Growing up as a Protestant, reading her book was the first time I heard the term extreme unction, but I already knew the blessing of prayers for healing and anointing with oil.
Extreme unction today is associated most often the forgiveness of sins and preparation for physical death known commonly as “last rights.” In the Roman Catholic sacrament the anointing and blessing is of the organs of the five external senses (eyes, ears, nostrils, lips, hands), the feet, and, for men, the loins. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, the sacrament is done by multiple (seven, five, or three) priests (when it is absolutely necessary it can be done by just one); anointing the forehead, chin, cheeks, hands, nostrils, and breast. You can certainly see why Myss associated the sacraments with the chakras.
The crown (seventh) chakra is located at the top of the head, and is the energy from which our physical manifestation is said to come. It is seen as eternal, having neither a beginning nor an ending, and is the expression of our devotion (as in to a deity or cause), prophecy, and inspiration.
Symbolically it represents the process of retrieving one’s spirit from the various corners of one’s life that still hold unfinished business. One calls one’s spirit back in order to end this world and return to the spiritual dimension complete.
The sacred truth in the seventh chakra is Live in the Present Moment.
As I organize and pack, in preparation for leaving Pine Island next week, I will hold loving intention for this home on Skipper Lane (and Katey, its owner), the kitties I have visited (Sonny and Hector), the Eagles, the Tortoises, Grandmother Tree, and each of the people I have met. I will remember Dave, from Pine Island Cycles, who brought me an innertube at 9:30 on a Saturday night so I could ride bikes on Sunday with Linda Higbee, visiting from Michigan. I will remember Scott and Diane Lampitt, owners of Earth & Spirit Garden Gallery, where I held a book signing and workshop around Stories. I will especially hold intention for the other members of Pine Island Writers, each of whom have touched my heart.
On my rides, I will sprinkle blessings of loving intention along the bike path just as the priests sprinkle holy oil on the specific areas of the body. I will be mindful of calling my spirit back in order to leave this sacred place and return to Michigan complete.
By Debra Basham, on March 14, 2013
Nature lets you create a cocoon of silence inside.
In an interesting way, the “sounds” of nature are part of what I experience as “silence.” Today I am listening to the wind. I admit that I love the sound. I am sure there would be an upper limit, meaning I am not delusional to think I would enjoy the sounds of a hurricane. I also value being safe and comfortable inside. To me, Nature isan inside job.
Last night I was treated to the most amazing cotton candy cloud formation. I don’t think I have ever seen anything just like it. I found myself (I love that phrase!) giddy watching the changing shapes and colors. One friend, humor author Sherri Conor, commented on my photo saying how cool it is that God never paints the same scene twice. Just like the sunsets, we are unique.
This winter has been a delicious time of self-discovery for me. I have been intentional about that, accepting the healing from surgery to be about a lot more than just having had that tumor removed (along with all of my feminine plumbing). It is not so much what happens to us in life, but what we make out of that. I chose to make this a time to reconnect to my core, and Nature has been the avenue for my doing that.
So what do you discover when you spend time with Nature in a cocoon of silence? You discover what you forgot: There are no accidents. Your life matters. You are loved. Life is worth living. There are myriad opportunities every moment to celebrate and be in joy.
Seeking nature’s truth for your life through quiet appreciation
offers you an important view of your own life
as tied to Nature’s support systems
and in turn to the spiritual support system of the Universe.
(Meredith L. Young–Sowers)
Angelic Messenger Cards: A Divination System for Self-Discovery
By Debra Basham, on March 7, 2013
“If you have a penny and I have a penny and we exchange pennies,
you still have one cent and I still have one cent.
But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange ideas,
you now have two ideas and I now have two ideas.”
– Unknown
It is wonderful, isn’t it, how you can give a blessing and then you have more than you previously had. I was pondering this idea while I was bike riding here in South Florida. The ride truly presented some interesting ideas, so I will share some of them with you.
We saw a tiny carcass on the side of the road. I took a photo of it, unsure what it was. A Google search for baby mouse images brought up one that looked just like this one we found, so I know that it was a mouse.
A grave marker beside the road caught our eye. It marks the spot where a young woman died when her car plummeted into the canal. Her family is raising money (and awareness), working to get a guard rail installed. There have been five crashes at that exact location in just seven years, two of them resulting in fatalities due to drowning.
As we were looking at a map, and the end of the bike lane, pondering whether to go on or turn around, a motorcyclist pulled over to the curb, hopped off his bike saying something about being stung on his leg. He unzipped his boot and a wasp flew out! It was mad as a hornet, and so was he! His comment was, “Too bad I did not get the satisfaction of killing the SOB!”
That got me thinking… so here is my “top five” list of things it is a miracle any of us survive:
1. Sneezing. We know your heart stops.
2. Anesthesia. We know your heart can stop during that, too.
3. Airplanes. It can’t be natural for something as big as a house to fly.
4. Slides. Why do they let a toddler climb to the top of an eight foot ladder?
5. Birth. How does a 7-10 pound baby get out of there alive?
Regardless, of why else, we survive because the highway of life is Miracle Parkway. Give thanks today… and every day!
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