Coming Soon: Spring!

Spring is definitely on the way! I can feel it in my bones. Yesterday I was in the backyard filling the bird feeder. I just casually looked up at the branches over head and I saw it... the leaves are just beneath the surface of the wine colored buds. My heart sang for joy!

I enjoy winter. I love the cold air on my cheeks, the hearty foods of winter the snugglily feeling of being in a warm house, the cold floor on my feet, the world blanketed with snow and the muffled sounds and deep quiet.. I enjoy these things. But, spring is near and I love that too.

The forsythia will be blooming very soon, I haven't yet seen one, but I'm sure the crocus are starting to push their way to the surface. The grass is already showing its delight and turning green. Life is coming back.

What a gift God has given us. Spring. But, it's not just the physical aspects of spring that is the gift, it's the renewal of life. God has shown us through the cycles of life that there is always a new beginning. Just as sure as day follows night, spring follows winter and birth follows death.

So, spring is on its way. Birds are singing dancing around the bird feeder and life is coming back. Thank you, God. Life is truly amazing!

Paradox

I have been thinking about paradox lately. It seems that all of life is a paradox. There are two sides to everything. There is light and dark. Good and evil. Male and female. Love and fear. According to the Tao, the world is made up of opposites or paradoxes and the world exists because of the tension between the two.

I get it. I see it everywhere. The world is so beautiful, it takes my breath away on many a day. Today is one of those days, we had a heavy snow last night and the vista from my bedroom window is incredibly beautiful.

Is there anything more inspiring than seeing an eagle soar? Or a lion basking in the sun? Yet, they are killers. The kill to survive. I have always struggled with this. I sometimes say that as a planet we will become enlightened and see God on the day that all creatures become vegetarians. Yet, I know that isn't going to happen. What I am beginning to see is that the pull of the polar opposites is necessary to creation. The killer is majestic, just as the lamb is majestic too.

Perhaps the tension is more about surrender. Perhaps it is in the surrender that we know God. Whether it is a surrender to love or to the talons of and eagle. One season surrenders to the next, just as every day we are shown the surrender of day into night and night into day. One can't exist without the other- what would day be if there was no night? Or perhaps it is about being a witness- one side of the paradox watching the other side, as a way of knowing oneself through seeing the opposite.

It is a puzzlement, as the King of Siam used to say in The King and I.

I feel that that one of the biggest elements of the spiritual path is surrender. What does that mean exactly? Father Bede Griffiths, according to Andrew Harvey, died into love. His union with God was complete once he "died into love." It means giving up the false self, letting go those things that bind us to us. I feel that in my life I have let go of so much. I allow God to take the reins often (at least, that's what I think I do, but do I really do that?). 

According to so many people throughout history and today's spiritual community talk about the "Dark Night of the Soul" and the necessity of experiencing it in order to progress along the spiritual path, it is the only way in which to achieve a union with God. Is that so? If there are paradoxes, and polar opposites, then why isn't it possible to achieve a union with God through a "Light filled day of the Soul?" 

These are my questions today. I look out my window and see the glory of God in my backyard, snow deep enough to almost touch my knees. This is God. God is right here right now. My questions are meaningless in the face of the beauty that I see. All is beautiful and all is perfect and that includes me as well. I don't need to strive or flail my body with whips to understand God, all I need do is to allow God to move within me, open my eyes and see the beauty and the horror that is mine to see. 

Easy, right?

This and That

There is freezing rain today and the trees are wearing a thin coat of ice. It looks beautiful. It will turn to rain soon, but right now I am enjoying the glistening branches. With my daughter, I am taking my granddaughter to the dance school this afternoon and signing her up for ballet, jazz and gymnastics class today. How do they get all that in just an hour lesson? I think she will love it and it will channel her exuberant energy in a useful direction. Izzy loves music and loves to move, so it should be a good combination.

I look at Izzy and I am instantly filled with joy. I think granddaughters are the greatest thing ever invented. She delights me in every way. She is hilarious, she is incredibly deep, she is a goof, she bounces off of the walls with all of her energy, she is very loving, she is very sweet, and very girlie, she loves music and sings raucous songs, she shakes her butt when she is delighted by music and she does a cheesecake pose sticking out her butt. Words really can't describe how special she is. And yet I know she is no more special than any other three year old, they are all special and all the same. However, to me she is the most wonderful child in the entire world and I love her very much.

Looking back over the last three and almost a half years, I am struck by how much joy I have in my life and almost all of it is because of Iz. I saw her when she was just 15 minutes old. I took her tiny hand and held it and my heart was broken opened. Over the next months she grew and thrived, she had an ear infections that went undetected for a bit and we all thought she was a crier, but once the pediatrician discovered the infection and treated it she has been a delight. Her natural response is laughter. The kid is fearless in her pursuit of fun. When she was about five months old she felt her first piece of paper, it was love at first sight. She made such a funny little face, puckering up her lips as she touched the paper. She crinkled it and ripped, all the while concentrating very hard making this little mouth. She played with the paper for a good hour, never tiring of it. Today if she finds something new and unusual that she is exploring she still makes the same mouth.

Izzy has discovered curse words and we have great fun being bad and saying them. She laughs and laughs. Sometimes she makes up her own. "Oh, you're a dope and a shit noogie and you smell like dog butts." After she says it she always says something that sounds and awful like Homer Simpson's "Doh!" And then laughs and laughs. "Damn it! - Doh!" "Bitch - Doh!"

I love that kid!

This is how life is meant to be lived, watching your children grow and then playing with their children. All it is is simple joy. Life really is good.

Deep Meditation - Deep Peace

Today I went to the Center For Conscious Living for services. I had checked their website the other day for another reason and I saw that one of my classmates was singing in the service. So, I made up my mind I was going and I did. It was a lovely service and Rhetta did a fabulous job. She has an amazing voice that comes directly from spirit. I enjoyed the service very much and I will definitely go again.

During the service the minister did a guided meditation that took me very deep. I love when I am able to go so deep and feel nothing but the spirit within. I was at peace. It just a shame that it can't last beyond the meditation.

Life is beautiful. Meditation is a joy. Life is truly holy. I am at peace. So, maybe the meditation actually did last beyond the service.

A New Day, A New Year

Today is 1/1/11 and it's a new year. To ring in the new year last night, Jon and I ordered in Indian food and and we went to bed at around 10:00. We both slept through the night... for a change. We woke early and watched the sunrise, then we went to Starbucks and waited for it to open at 8:00. We were one of the first customers in the store so we got the comfy seats. As we sipped our coffees, Jon read the paper and I read The Times on my iPad. It was such a delight and so relaxing to just sit there with each other. Afterwards we ran into the grocery store for some breakfast food to bring home and cook. Later on we went for a ride in the country.

This is a good start to the year. A propitious start.

Life is such a precious thing. My life has truly been a thing of joy. It wasn't always like that, but I was being led. I am sure of this. My spirit or God was leading me to find the joy within me. Jon and I went through some really lousy times. Our marriage was in trouble. We had absolutely awful money problems. Neither one of us had healthy self-images. We were co-dependent. We were utterly clueless.

But somehow, perhaps through my meditation practice, spirit was able to to find a foot hole and all things changed. Slowly at first, but then little by little I found my way. Jon was doing his own work too. And here we are. Life is precious and totally beautiful. We still don't have tons of money, but we have enough and that's a good thing.

It didn't happen over night. It was a step by step process, it took practice and a lot of self reflection. I feel that I know myself pretty well today. I forgive myself. I love myself. All of this adds up to have a been pretty blessed. And I am grateful. I am so grateful.

So, as I start this new year full of hope, I say thank you, dear God, for all of my blessings. Thank you for my husband. Thank you for my beautiful and healthy daughter. Thank you for my amazing granddaughter, may she always be happy and healthy, living life abundantly and enfolded in your loving presence. I am grateful for my home, it shelters us and provides us with warmth and comfort. Thank you for my job, I am so very blessed to be doing this work. Thank you for One Spirit and my place there, may it grow and reach more people and may my role expand. Thank you for my dog and cat, I love them both very much. I am grateful for my car, which takes me where I want to go. Thank you for the abundance in my life. Thank for my friends. Thank you for it all. I am so blessed.

Happy New Year.

Happy New Year!

Well, it's New Year's Eve and in keeping with our long standing family tradition, we are staying in for the night. New Year's Eve has always seemed like such a contrived and forced celebration that we gave up trying to participate long ago. Our tradition has become to have Chinese food, eating it in bed, sipping champagne. Even that has changed in recent years. First all I stopped drinking alcohol about eight years ago, so champagne is out. Then we really don't much care for Chinese food any longer, it's just so oily and bland; everything is brown. so, now we eat Indian food, sip sparkling cider and we eat at a table because I don't want my father in bed with us.

Life goes on. Nothing is static. Nothing lasts forever.

This morning Jon and I went to a meditation for world peace it was a lovely event. I thoroughly enjoyed the meditation. I forgot how deep meditation is when you do it in a group. There were several readings that were just lovely and held a lot of meaning for me.

Lakota Instructions For Living Life

Friend, do it this way - that is,

whatever you do in life,

do the very best you can

with your heart and mind.

And if you do it that way,

the Powers of the Universe will

come to your assistance,

if your heart and mind are in Unity.

When one sits in the Hoop of The People,

one must be responsible because

All of Creation is related.

All of the hurt of one is the hurt of the all.

And the honor of one is the honor of all.

And whatever we do effects everything in the universe.

If we do it that way - that is,

if you truly join your heart and mind

as One - whatever you ask for,

that's the Way It's Going to Be.

Love it! The least of what we do reaches out and effects all of us. We are in the Hoop of The People whether we accept that or not. There was another reading that I want to share as well. I think this one had the most profound effect on me. It is:

All things share the same breath - the beast, the tree the man...

the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports.

Human kind has not woven the web of life.

We are but one thread within it.

Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.

All things are bound together.

All things connect.

Man does not weave this web of life.

He is merely a strand of it.

Whatever he does to the web,

he does to himself.

~~~Chief Seattle

My morning meditation that I do for my prayer call brings in the concept that we share one breath and this breath is the breath of one life. I feel so separate sometimes from the rest of human kind. I connect easily with nature... it's humans that I have a problem with. But, I'm sure that is true for most of us. We are hurt the most by other humans. Animals bring us only joy. But, I'm working on loving all of human kind too and mostly I am succeeding. I see myself when I look at you. I am the light of the world and I choose peace.

Happy New Year!

Since my job has dried up and I am sitting in the house quite a bit; it wouldn't be so bad except that I have no privacy here and I attempt to hide. Which I realize that this was a pattern of mine since I was a small child living in this very house. I would hide.

I spent a great deal of time sitting in closets fantasying that this little spilt level in the suburbs had secret passages that I could access and be safe and free. I had forgotten about my fantasies until we moved back here a couple of years ago to supposedly take care of my aging father (except he is too stubborn to accept help, so all we do is fight). Shortly after we settled in, I began to remember, "Oh, I used to sit in this closet." "Oh, I squeezed into this closet." Little by little the memories came back. It was an uncomfortable feeling.

Then I began to remember some of what I was hiding from. I don't think it is anything dramatic.  I don't think I was sexually abused, but I certainly was neglected and went through a good about of emotional abused. Mine was not a happy childhood.

However, I didn't come here to whine. My childhood is part of my story, it isn't the whole thing. I have come to terms with it and I am not my story. I really feel that I have moved past it and dropped those bags.

What is on my mind today is my job. I love my job. Being a hospice chaplain is such an honor. What concerns me is that it appears to be evaporating before my eyes. Budget cuts. Medicare oversight. I believe that hiring per diem chaplains was an experiment to begin with and now I think they are looking closely at the idea and deciding that it really isn't cost effective. Hence, I have been pared down to six patients, three visits a week. Not a lot of money. It's far less than I was making.

The powers that be say that full time chaplain must carry a patient load of sixty patients. If the census is only at 85, which it isn't even that at the moment, then that leaves twenty-five for me and the other per diems to split, assuming the patients all what spiritual care... which they don't. I think the higher ups feel that the full time chaplain should handle it all and if she can't then maybe they will start looking at whether they need her or not.

So, I worry about my job. There isn't anything I can do about it. I just have to ride this wave and see where it lands, but it leaves me stuck in this house with no privacy, no room and no where to go.

It's an opportunity for me to expand my ministry in some fashion. I would like to do a wedding or two. I love love to get some funerals to do too. I would dearly love to do spiritual counseling. So, this lack of work is an opportunity for me to branch out into those areas, only today I am feeling sorry for myself. I'm still in my pajamas. I thought of going out, but I can't think of anywhere to go. So, I am moping. Tomorrow, I will see a couple of patients and start to really think this through. But, today... I mope.

I spent several hours on Facebook looking through friend lists trying to locate people that I knew from the kibbutz. I found quite a few people and a I did some walking down memory lane. It's funny how people don't age in your memory. They always stay the same as when you them, but I saw how much they all aged, some worse than others. But, we are all getting old. I can't really say that I miss Israel all that much, I certainly don't miss the kibbutz. The kibbutz was a dead end for me. It was for Jon and Adrienne too. So, I'm not sorry that we left. Honestly, there weren't many people there that I would even want to see again. But, it was fun looking through all of the profiles and reading about what they are doing, etc. I know that life on my kibbutz is nothing like when we were there- I'm not really sure that it's officially a kibbutz any longer. I think many people work off of the kibbutz and perhaps keep their income, I don't know. But, it was good to catch up with these folks. I wonder how many of them remember us? Some I would suppose.

I don't like feeling useless and that's what I have felt this week. I will mope for a bit longer, but I need to find purpose and meaning soon. If my job doesn't pick up soon, I will need to come to a few decisions.

The time to meditate is now. Off to meditation I go. But, first I will get dressed.