It’s All So Simple (but not easy)

As I left work this morning, I drove by a house where a friend used to live who has since passed on.  There were young children coming out of the house, and I thought about how nice that would be to see the big house filled with activity, laughter, and the sounds of a growing family again.  Then I thought about the house I live in now and the fact that there were babies born in this house in the early part of the 20th century who grew up, raised their own families, and have since left this earth.  All part of the circle of life –  sad in some ways, but strangely comforting in other ways.  Birth, growth, expansion, adding our little bit to this world, and then passing on and leaving the newer members to carry on.

This little scene in my mind helped put things in perspective in a way.  What would those who have gone on have to say to us today?  I think every generation has new tasks and challenges, and often the old ways of doing things don’t work anymore.  I also think that what’s really important doesn’t change – relationships, connection, love, taking care of each other and our planet, putting people before profit, and each person living to express their unique purpose.  Can we in this generation put these things first or are we so concerned with being right and controlling things that we can’t see the forest for the trees?  We will never move forward in a healthy way if we refuse to connect with those we think are our enemy.

Can we be brave and wise enough to let down our guard and dialogue with people we think we have absolutely nothing in common with?  Can we take the first step and be real and vulnerable and honest so others can do the same?  Or are we too afraid, too distrustful?  Are our minds made up that only WE have the answers?

A few years ago, I read about a local man whose elderly aunt lay in a coma, close to death.  At one point, she sat up, opened her eyes and said, “It’s all so obvious, it’s all so simple”, then she lay back down and breathed her last breath.  What was she seeing to bring that message to her family?  I don’t know, but I think she was seeing that somehow we are all connected and part of a greater whole.  I think she was seeing how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together, how the tapestry was woven and we were all part of it.  Our enemies are not people – they are outdated ways of thinking, ideas of separation which bring about fear, greed, and the need to control. We can do our part to stop greed, oppression, violence, and power gone crazy, but we have to do it in a way that recognizes that people aren’t the enemy.  And sometimes we have to trust that karma is at work and that people who won’t learn the lessons will bring about their own undoing.

The first step is believing that it is even possible to connect.  When we think something is impossible, we will make no effort to see it happen.  Think about the love you feel for your spouse, your children, your grandchildren.  Then extend that love out a little further to make a bigger circle, then a little further until you see that no one can or should be left out –  not the “greedy corporate CEO”, not the person of a different race or religion that you maybe once felt didn’t deserve to be included, not the murderer on death row, not the nosy neighbor, not the member of your family that you’ve been feuding with for years, not the dirty homeless person you walk by every day, not your political “enemy”.  When Jesus prayed “Our Father who art in heaven”, he wasn’t just talking about his little band of followers.  We are part of a bigger family, and, although we will have our differences and our sibling rivalries, we have to remember that a house divided against itself cannot stand.

Open Mind, Open Heart, Open Hands

Sometimes it’s important to set goals – to run a mile or 2 or 5, to save a specific amount of money, to obtain a certain job, or to move to a new location.  I think it’s just as important to set goals for how we want to live our lives and what kind of a person we want to be.  Writing it down often helps us to gain perspective and set things in motion.  I’d like to set these things in motion: to have an open mind, open heart, and open hands.  Here’s why.

If I can’t consider that someone else may be at least partially right, can I at least consider that I may not be 100% right?  Often those of us who consider ourselves the most open-minded aren’t that at all.  We’re only open to a very limited set of possibilities within a very narrow realm.  And then there are those of us who don’t even want to be open-minded.  We think it is a sign of weakness or indecisiveness.  I can have strong opinions, but I always want to remain open because those ideas may need adjusting from time to time.  A closed mind can’t allow anything else to come in.  I don’t have to allow everything else to come in, at least not all at once –  wisdom and discernment are qualities I want to have too – I think I just have to be open to new possibilities.  I love open windows because of the fresh air and light coming in.  Sometimes my mind may need refreshing or it can become like a stagnant pool of water.  Not good.

One thing I want to be absolutely sure of is that I never close my heart to anyone – ever.  I may need at times to maintain a physical distance from someone for safety reasons, and I know boundaries must be set in my life to protect my time, energy, and emotions, but my heart, in my opinion, should never close to anyone.  That too is for my own well-being.  Keeping an open heart promotes physical, emotional, and spiritual health, and, again, is not a sign of weakness.  It may be one of the most difficult things I will ever do.  It doesn’t mean I have to have that person in my life – it simply means I acknowledge their humanity and their inherent worth and try to understand that if their actions seem cruel or evil, there may be reasons beyond my present awareness.

In my daily relationships at work and with those I care about deeply,  deciding ahead of time to keep an open heart will go a long way to help in healing when conflict arises and will help keep those relationships strong and flourishing.  Most of all, living with an open heart just makes me more fully alive, experiencing the love and richness life has to offer.

I never want to grasp anything so tightly, whether it’s material possessions or an opinion I have, that it prevents me from opening my hands to someone else’s needs or opening them to allow myself to receive something new.  Stiff, rigid, and clutching are not how I want to live my life – open, kind, generous, and free are.

I have work to do – the work of remaining centered and keeping my goals always before me, the work of examining myself daily to maintain a pure, open channel for light to pour through.  These are my goals, and I can’t tell anyone else they have to live this way.  Each person has to make their own decisions about how to live their life.  Writing this down is my first step, and I know I’ll receive grace to continue.

The Summer Porch

Fall is officially here.  I love this season and am glad to be moving into cooler weather, but I am sad to say good-bye to the summer porch.  We don’t spend much time out there when the weather is really hot, but I walk through there often because I love the colorful room.  It’s one room that I just have fun with and I try to bring a lot of nature and color into it.  My plants seem to love it too – it has a lot of sun for the plants that need it, but less sunny corners for the plants that don’t like bright sun.  Soon I’ll have to bring all of them into the house and try to find a place for them.  They never look quite as nice as they do when out on the porch.

I bought this plant with the big leaves at an antique store in Iowa in May.  It was a tiny little thing then, and, as you can see, it’s grown a lot!  I am not sure what it is – the woman at the store had taken cuttings of several of her plants, and this was one of them.  I think she said it was a type of begonia. The little pots of begonias in the background are thriving!

This week I’ll be searching the countryside for dried weeds, leaves, berries, etc. to bring into the porch, and with some pumpkins, gourds, and maybe some mums, the porch will be beautiful.  After that, the sparkly winter things mixed in with pine cones and evergreens will be lovely too.  In my mind though, nothing quite compares to the summer porch.  Good-bye until next year!

Day 30 Heavenly Days

This is a book that I ordered and got in the mail yesterday alongside a feather I found by the river yesterday.  I happened to set them both on the table, and it caught me by surprise how similar the feathers were.  Coincidence, synchronicity, God speaking to me?  I really don’t know, but at the very least this picture shows a little bit of what is important to me right now – being out in nature,  and the way we respond to crime and conflict.  The things we surround ourselves with speak so much about our priorities and passions.

Synchronicity means “the apparently meaningful coincidence in time of two or more similar or identical events that are casually unrelated”.  When things like this happen, I try to pay attention and make a mental note of it.  Maybe down the road the feather and the book will end up being connected.  I know that there is a story concerning a feather in the beginning of the book that I have used for an opening in my restorative justice circle.  (I’ve borrowed the book several times from someone and finally got my own copy.)  Maybe there’s absolutely no significance to seeing the two together yesterday.  I guess it really doesn’t matter at this point.  What matters is paying attention.

That’s what I have tried to write about for the past 30 days.  Open your eyes to the world around you.  Don’t wait for the big vacation, the cruise, the trip to Europe, or the lottery win to begin paying genuine attention.   Don’t wait for the “right” person or the dream job to begin being present to your life.  Chances are that if you aren’t being fully alive to the life you’re living now, you won’t be when you take that amazing trip either.  Each day, each moment, each person in your life is a gift – maybe a gift to bless you or teach you – appreciate, give thanks, learn the lesson.  Wake up to the beauty that is all around you.  Spend less time listening to and talking about the bad news and more time paying attention to the good.  Bring more light to the world around you and be aware of the grace running through all the days of your life.

Day 29 Heavenly Days

My husband doesn’t often read my blog posts, unless I ask him to because I want to run something by him, so I think I’m safe in posting this today.  Actually, I don’t think he’d mind too much if I shared the note he wrote this morning.  I came home from work to find this on the table:

He knows that these are things I love to do – drive in the country, hike, and have picnics – and they would not be in first place on a list of things he loves to do, so this is especially meaningful to me.  Trust me when I say that, as thoughtful as my husband is, he has never written a note like this in our almost 36 years of marriage.  It sure sounds like a heavenly day to me!

Day 28 Heavenly Days

When something does not insist on being noticed, when we aren’t grabbed by the collar or struck on the skull by a presence or an event, we take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.  -Cynthia Ozick-

Do you think that statement is true?  Is it only the loud, the noisy, the flashy, the big that get our attention?  Is it only those that deserve our attention?  If our life is not full of the big and flashy, is it an unimportant life?

28 days ago I decided to consciously look at the small, the ordinary, the quiet,  as things that deserve to be noticed, deserve to be appreciated, and then magnify those things, write about them, photograph them, so I and others could look at them in maybe a different way.  I wanted to see if I could learn to love and appreciate my life more once I became more aware of the small, amazing, and beautiful parts that make up the whole.

I think it’s working.  Some days I thought I had absolutely nothing to write about, and then I started looking around, noticing.  I started thinking about the people and places in my life and seeing the good and precious things about them.  I’ve known several people who have died during this 28 days or become very ill, and it’s made me want to enjoy and be grateful for each ordinary day.

As I pulled over to the side of the road yesterday to look at this scene, I thought to myself that it was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen.  The cows, the water, the grass, the sky – it really seemed heavenly to me.  It was so peaceful, so serene.  There might have been a time in my life when I would have driven right by it, scarcely noticing.  Or I might have thought “There are some cows close to the road, that’s unusual”.  The scene yesterday just drew me in, almost as if I was part of it.  Maybe that’s what nature does – it draws you in and, in turn, you draw peace and strength and beauty out of it to enhance your own life.

Alex Grey said “It is very easy to take for granted the phenomenon that we are each alive.”  Of course it is.  Sometimes we become so aware of struggle, pain, questions that all we can think about is how to get those questions answered, how to deal with the pain, how to get out of the struggle. When our attention is solely on the struggle, sometimes we need someone or something to show us that there’s more. If the things we put our attention on grow bigger, sometimes some of the struggle is lessened by focusing on what’s good and what’s right.   My heart goes out to people who have chronic, physical pain and disability.  I think some people were put on earth to ease pain and lessen other’s burdens, and I’m thankful for that and for new treatments that help people with pain.  I also think that nature is a healer in many ways for all of us, and, while it can’t take away all pain, it can make it more bearable.

So, is it aging that gets us to wake up, to want to get all the magic and beauty out of the rest of our lives that we can?  Maybe, but I’ve known many older folks that were still quite asleep to the marvels all around them and had pretty much resigned themselves to a life of “quiet desperation”.  And I’ve known younger people who were determined to make the most of each day and were able to see grace all around them. I think it’s more about making the decision not to let life slip past you, not to let it go by unnoticed.

There’s nothing wrong with the big and flashy.  It’s fun for some people to make a celebration or a special event “over the top”.  We can make things special by the care and attention we give to them, and some people excel at that so the rest of us can enjoy them.  Life is made of ups and downs, big and little.  Maybe the point is to be there for all of it, to avoid taking anything for granted, and to remember that there really are no little things because when you put them all together, they make up the days of our lives.

Day 27 Heavenly Days

My husband is on vacation this week, and, except for having to go in for a few hours to facilitate my restorative justice Circle, I have four days off.  We are alternating between days spent at home on projects around the house and yard and day trips doing whatever we want to do.  Yesterday we went to check out a resort for next summer’s vacation and spent the rest of the day browsing in antique shops.  Neither of us are that knowledgeable about antiques, but it’s always fun to see what we can find. He likes to look at coins, old records, and “guy stuff”, and I love furniture and, of course, dishes!

In the second store we were in, I spotted a bench underneath a pile of quilts, and it had been painted the perfect shade of aqua blue to go in my front porch.  I could visualize people using it in the winter to sit on when removing and putting on shoes and boots, and I could see it holding a big pitcher of wildflowers in the summer.  We looked around the store for a while longer, and, just as I was going back to pick up “my” bench, I heard the clerk say to a young woman, “You’ll really like the bench because it has storage inside”.  There were dozens of benches throughout this huge store, so she couldn’t be talking about “my” bench, could she?  I went over to where the bench was sitting, and, sure enough, the quilts had been taken off of it and the price tag removed.  My sister would have said, “You weren’t meant to have it”, but I sure thought I had been meant to have it – it was perfect!

It took a while for my loss to lose its sting, but, of course, we went on to have a fun day.  We purchased a couple of gifts and two small items for our house. When we got home, I realized the clerk had forgotten to put one of the items in the bag, so I will try to call the store today to see if they can send it to me.  We ate at a nice little bistro and just enjoyed the beautiful fall day.

On our drive home, I convinced my husband to stop whenever I’d see something I wanted to photograph.  He’s starting to catch on and will sometimes spot something before I even do.  We found a farm selling pumpkins that still relies on the honor system – they had a big wooden box with a slot in the top for money and a sign with the prices on it.  And, of course, what every self-respecting pumpkin stand in America should have – an American flag!

Fall days – ordinary days- heavenly days – the days of our lives. . .

Day 26 Heavenly Days

Many of the most deeply spiritual moments of my life haven’t happened just in my mind or in my soul.  They happened while holding my son in the middle of the night, or watching the water break along the shore, or around my table watching the people I love feel nourished in all sorts of ways.  -Shauna Niequist-

Day 25 Heavenly Days

I’ve always been drawn to botanical illustrations because of my love of the natural world and the thought of the time and care it took to make those illustrations.  Yesterday, as I grabbed a bunch of books to set on top of a project I was gluing so it would dry flat, I noticed on the top of the pile, the book, The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady.  I bought this book a long time ago and almost forgot I had it.  I began looking through it and once again remembered why I liked it so much.

It’s a nature journal of a year in the life of Edith Holden, the year 1906, and in addition to her illustrations and observations, poetry is on almost every page.  I think I would have liked this woman!  She was slightly unusual for her time – she attended art school, had drawings published in several books, didn’t marry until she was around 40, and had no children.  Like many of her time, she died at what we would consider a young age, 49, but not from illness – she drowned in the Thames River while gathering buds from chestnut trees.

Off and on throughout the day, I thought of what life would have been like for a woman in 1906.  The world was certainly smaller in many ways.  Without technology, she would mostly have known and concentrated on life around her.  So much of our time is spent on the phone, texting, reading articles and news online, on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, and reading and answering e-mails.  Maybe she spent time writing letters and reading the responses, and the letters were probably several pages long, not the page, or at the most, two, I manage to write when I do write a letter.  Obviously she had a lot of time to spend outdoors, and the majority of her time was probably spent drawing.  She had to be an introvert!

There are things I would have liked about daily life back then – fewer distractions, the slowness of the pace, the importance of the here and now (for one thing, people didn’t live as long, so maybe each day seemed more important, and when you didn’t know what was going on around the world, your attention would be more on where you were).  There are things I like about the present time – being connected to people around the world and having more knowledge about the way the world, our minds, and our bodies work.  There is still a lot we don’t know, but I think there is less superstition and fear than there used to be (or maybe the things we fear now are just different!).  For them, I suppose it didn’t seem like they lived in simpler times because the times before them were the simpler times.

I felt a connection to this woman from long ago. Did she, like me, feel wistful when hearing the call of the dove, the owl, and the crow, almost like they were a call from another world we once knew?  Did she, like me, almost feel moved to tears by the lilac and the lily of the valley when they appeared in the spring?  What would she have thought if she had known that her words and drawings would have an effect on someone over a hundred years later?  What effect, if any, will my life have on people in a hundred years?   Well, I know that we all have an influence on those around us, and we all affect our environment.  We can’t all be artists who create drawings and paintings that people will see centuries later, and we will  probably never know all the ways we affect our world.  The effect we have on today is what matters, and, while I think we should be conscious that we are having an effect, our key influence comes from simply expressing our true nature, the person we were created to be.  I definitely think that is what Edith did!

From her journal in the month of October:

O God of mountains, stars, and boundless spaces!

O God of freedom and of joyous hearts!

When thy face looketh forth from all men’s faces,

There will be room enough in crowded marts.

Brood thou around me, and the noise is o’er,

Thy universe my closet with shut door.

-George Macdonald-

Day 24 Heavenly Days

The ordinary acts we perform every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest.   -Thomas Moore-

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.  -Ralph Waldo Emerson-

Don’t just drag out of bed every morning.  Get alive and awaken your mind and body for the gift of a brand new day wrapped with sunlight and air.  Not just another ordinary day; it is the day of new opportunities.   -Phoebe Kites-

The more present you can be, the more you can enjoy, and you can root yourself in the self-existent delight.  -Michael Murphy-

But love, I’ve come to understand, is more than three words mumbled before bedtime.  Love is sustained by action, a pattern of devotion in the things we do for each other every day.   -Nicholas Sparks-

Each new day is a lifetime event.  How much more exciting would our lives be if we embraced this truth and lived accordingly?  -Steve Maraboli-

Not a day goes by that I don’t still need to remind myself that my life is not just what’s handed to me, nor is it my list of obligations, my accomplishments or failures, or what my family is up to, but rather it is what I choose, day in and day out, to make of it all.  -Katrina Kenison-

O with what freshness, what solemnity and beauty is each new day born!  -Harriet Beecher Stowe-