Winter Solstice

Sun rising on new fallen snow.

While a seed deep within the earth.

Sleeping in mindful anticipation

Of flourishing rebirth in Spring.

Sprouting as a new beginning.

A new perspective on ancient wisdom.

A new form for earth's well being.

Recently, at the mercy of an east coast snow storm, I became mindful of the opportunity to practice living in the present moment - mindfully. After a seven hour wait in Union Station, WDC, I boarded the train headed to Florida. After an hour or so of waiting there, I fell asleep, waking seven hours later only one hour from WDC. The woman next to me said we'd been there for two hours. We were there for two hours more. People were getting antsy and complaining. There had been the same anxiety in the station and several outbursts of anger at the delays and lack of information.

The previous morning, before the trek into the new fallen snow to get to the symposium I was in WDC attending, I had meditated on three questions provided by Pat Webb of the Silence Foundation: 

(1) What is alive in me today?  I experienced an abundance of gratitude for this snowy day ahead.

(2) What am I open to receive?  I was looking forward to experiencing each personal encounter.

(3) What am I willing to give?  I experienced my heart opening to send love's light into the day.

I grew up knee deep in snow, but it has been years since I experienced being right in it. I was delighted with the experience, inconvenience that it was. When feeling discouraged by the waiting time and empathizing with the frustration of others on the train, I did share with a few how thankful I was for being able to participate first hand in what I might otherwise have only seen happening on TV this storm of the century. Needless to say, occasionally, this was not well received.

While the train was moving ever so slowly through the snow, I was able to take many photographs - pictures which hold nature's awe and allowed me to step outside the tension and frustrattion. This is one of them accompanied by the poetry which gushed from my heart's light.

Mindfulness practice is such a healing activity. I become silent, listen to the silence, and listen to my heart.  What's your mindfulness practice?

Healing

Beau Bear and Bo Ceefus are two old himalayan long haired seal points.  Bo was a feral sort retreived from the woods. Beau came from the animal shelter, coming with telltale signs of having been spoiled. They used to spend their days in a very rural area and their nights in the garage or in the house.

 Nowadays they live in a small town where cars, trucks, and motorcycles  and new buildings going up, all interfer with their sense of safety and interrupt their daytime sleep. At night, they have to hide from the possum and racoon.  As a result, Bo sleeps in the boat when the days are cool and in the ferns when it's hot. Beau spends most of his day in the. At night they'll stay on the railing or go find a boat to hide out in.  Bo knows how to avoid danger and how to keep himself clean.  Beau doesn't. As a result he has a notch in his ear, a scar across his face, and a cronic rash. I used to give him a full bath weekly and take him to the vet for shots. I gave up on that because it didn't cure the problem. Nor would not agree to being an inside cat.

Frustrated by my conflicting feelings about how to care for this hopeless pile of white fur whose face looks like a bear, I began to talk to him. Turned out to be a most productive passing of the time. I had read a book once about psychic communication with animals. Recalling it, I "talked" by visualizing what I wanted Beau to be doing. I visualized his healthy body and safe and clean places he could sleep.  I also fed them both tuna fish and shrimp for a few days so they both would want to be around me. (Let's face it! What cat in his right mind would want to come near someone who was going to give him a water bath!!)

As Beau Bear began to feel it was safe to sit in my lap again, without getting carried off to the tub of suds, he'd jump up into my lap for a sit and a purr. So,  I began to use my hands to send him healing energ.  Now,while Beau Bear is sitting in my lap, I mindfully pet him with the intent of sending healing energy. I mindfully visualize calm, safe, clean, healthy ways for my cat to feel safe.  And, I will just mention that  I keep on feeding them tuna fish and shrimp!

I believe my Beau Bear is improving and Bo Bear, the feral one, loves to sit on my lap as well. He, I believe picks up on the purr-time energy of Beau. In fact, like the old days in the country, we did occasionally pile up and purr on the porch at night.

Of course, it might be the tuna and shrimp. But, I prefer to look at it this way. What cat who knows where its at would pass up some hands on healing and some good conversation?

The three old men on the porch!

How do you practice mindful healing? -or-  How do you pet a cat?

Being tested

Master Sgt. Randy playing digeridoo!

More than anything else while a  public educator, I preferred to not be evaluated. I  experienced it as wasted time and pure aggrevation. In addition, the more I was scrutinized the more I did what I so wasn't supposed to be doing.  Any judgment, positive or negative, that an administrator had to conclude about the observation, I perceived as projection  and/or transference of the evaluator/s own stuff, , invalidation, weilding power, naive perceptioins of what was happening there, and other such  relationships to the whole process. 

Much of it had to do with my own perception of what is valuable - someone else's feedback on my performance not being of value. I do, however, appreciate and am grateful for feedback when I am in the process of creating something new.  What I was creating, of course, is never included as important in the traditional performance evaluation process in public education.

Over the years, there, and in other types of commmunity, of which I was a part, I would often be referred to as creative - as in "My, how wonderfully creative you are." It was a put down. Yes, it was. Do not protest.

I just finished reading (audio, yet unabridged) Dan Pink's A Whole New Mind.  In this book, he proposes that there is a place - in fact, a preference for - emerging for those with dominant right brains. He posits his theory with substantial back up.  I am relieved that here, at the other end of my life, I and the majority of people on this earth who share this dominant right brain, are no longer "afflicted. Instead, we are now "in demand".

Pink further proposes that there are six senses. I thought he was going to reiterate the traditional five senses and then go into depth on "the sixth sense". Instead, he proposes that the six senses are: design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning.  He includes a myriad of websites and other resources to look into which confirm his thesis to beyond a doubt.

The book is an easy read. I recommend it for your consideration. I say, "Yeah, Dan Pink". You wtote another of the books I would have written. And you did it so perfectly.

However, I sense there are more senses that are valuable for creating the world we want today. 

What would you propose is the seventh sense?

The passing of a collegue of Yore

I connected with an old friend on facebook this summer. I also connected with her two daughters. So, I have many recent pics and activities to bring me into the present staus of the family. I talked to my old friend on the phone one day - she was about to begin a new round of chemo. She never said how long she had it, but I knew the time was drawing near to her passing into the light, by the conversation. Our conversation included how to write down for the girls why she had lived the life she lived. It was close to my 65th, and inspired me to go deeper into my reflection on this whole journey. She wrote on facebook on Nov. 18. We were in the Sequoia National Forest on the 20th and as near as I can figure, just about the time that she was passing into the light. I had the urge to raise up my arms in ecstasy and sing the Hallelujah chorus and I imagined angels in the trees singing it for me. Silly, I know, and sounds a bit flaky, but it is the truth.

I did not know what happened that I didn't hear from her anymore.
Sometimes, my whole body just wrings out dry when I remember that I, too, left my sons in the care of others for so long while I was off changing the world. While they have assured me that all is well the feeling overwhelms me on occasion. Truth is they are all the better for it - as to which they will attest. I do remember her asking me how I could leave my children on one continent while I went to another. Then she left hers in the care of colleagues - for the Mission, we told ourselves.

Contacts such as this, after so many years - almost thirty in this case - bring up memories, sometimes in abundance, pouring into consciousness all at once. I remember her passion for music and having studied with Nadia Boulanger; community arts festivals; wine for communion for the first time ever on Maundy Thursday; her needing kirschwasser for a fondue; posters of radical revolutionaries hung for a Sunday of social action; me yelling at kids when it was my turn to care for our childrens' spirits (!) during our morning meetings and her having a talk with me about it; the building a new church from the stones of an old brownstone church - one of the many ends of the underground railroad, and a partnership of Scotch Presbyterian and the mystical Waldensian tradition; she and I attending a women's lib meeting, our corsets keeping us looking trim - never to wear them again!! Those were intense times of wild spirited social change. Broader social strategy that it was, the ICA we soon all became part of was boring in comparison . This grieving time for my friend-in--common-mission is appropriate, but it is also a time of letting go of the youthful exuberance and boundless energy we once had. How we live our lives today, is totally appropriate. All is really well.

I am so grateful to have been able to to have reconnected. We all have since lived a life of Mission in new ways, with the same intent -- to care for the coming into being of a new social vehicle - a new earth.

I have a deep appreciation and gratitude for the life we, in fact, lived fully.

Create a timeline of your own life's expenditure. What has been the underlying intent, the learnings, your reflections?