Pilgrimage

It was  Spring Break and I was going to Key West. A high school friend, one with whom I'd recently reconnected, and I were gong together.

I wanted to go to the very end end of the Keys - set out to do at the early 70's - and only got as far as Marathon, FL - 50  miles short of arriving at the most southern point in the USA at the time.

My friend and I were going to become Episcopal nuns when we were in grade school - we were drawn to the hierarchy of the Angels of that tradition. Our horizons expanded soon after we discovered boys.

I had a pilgrimage planned so to arrive at a Spiritual destination at the end of the week. I had simply assumed that El Nino would let the sun shine for the whole week. If it didn't, I had a Plan B that kept the significance of the pilgrimage as a journey with Spirit.

I do have to say that my friend might not have been as into the pilgrimage context as I was.  She was the one who chose the perfect eating places and tours that added some most pleasurable content to this journey of ours.

This was  not my first pilgrimage. I do this at each turning point of my life - that almost completed journey to the end of the Keys being the first self-conscious trek.

Each pilgrimage has been the most important thing I'd ever done up to that point of my life.

.Each has been the turning point I needed in my life. Here again, I anticipate the transformation, the letting go of the past, receiving the gift of joy for its entire experience, and a readiness to embrace a new phase of life.

We arrived.Thanks to my friend's immersing us in the stops along the way and my own sense of sacred pilgrimage, it was one of those meaningful occasion's on the journey of a life's time.

When is a time for you that you wouldn't have missed it for anything, especially since you partner on the journey brought along a different  perspective?

Donner Pass

I had just been told a story of the wagon trains going over Donner Pass (northern California), of their having to disassemble the wagons and hoist the pieces - plus the cargo - plus the animals up one side of the mountain and down the other.

I was told this story just before zooming down I-80 through the pass.   It's only been 170 yeas or so since those wagon trains were there.  Much has changed since then, as was brightly obvious that day.

  We live, still, in radically changing times.

Expect to be dancing in the wonder of it AWE!   (LOL)

What's awing you these days?

 

Seeing Red

The 18 voices of the "Sweet Adelines" were harmonizing on the stage of a district gathering of Beta Sigma Phi Sorority. They all wore dresses of shimmering red.

500 women of all adult ages were mesmerized by their  animated sound and coordinated movements, as was I.

Because of the commanding presence of this group of singers, or the first time, in I can't remember when, I felt that I belonged where I was at that moment in time.  

Red, a color popularly used to interpret as anger, wrong answers, and, in some traditions, death,  now had an entirely different meaning in this moment.

Of course, there are red valentines, red holly berries, red-nosed reindeer, red white and blue, 5th City's red and black, lady in red is dancing with me, etc. Red isn't always used to represent those more ominous entities.

Here, in this moment, was red harmonizing powerfully, touching the deeps of a room full of women.

I find myself reflecting on the song, "Some people wait a life time for a moment like this", and I realize there have been hundreds of moments like this in my life's time.

Reflect on these moments in your life's time when you felt like you really belonged where you were.  Which stands out as particularly significant?

What is a Soul Mate

 

Dear One, you are an exquisite soul.

I have known thee of old from once and future time.

How precious and light is your heart.

How generous and soft are your words.

How true and clear is your vision.

Blessings to you.

This post was sent by a woman to a man she obviously felt powerfully connected with. We all have a soul mate of some sort or another.  For some this is a real person, for others this is a celebrity of recent or of yore.

I had a soul mate from a very young age. This soul mate was a real person who I adored. He was a musician, a photographer, great story teller, tall and handsome, and a unique independent spirit presence. When he was near, I felt whole and perfect.

 For years, I never saw him and, on rare occasion, I'd hear about his latest adventure, but he never went away. When I was most alone, my imagination brought him near to me. When I was lost he was there to guide me in the right direction. When I was creating - painting, writing, coordinating a project - he was right there creating with me. Let's face it, he was ALWAYS there for me - in my imagination. I held him in high esteem. He was my hero.

Now, the truth is, we never did much together - I would get to tag along with him on occasion, and as a real person, he was not always there for me.It isn't that he didn't like me, but, well, I guess I could say, I was like a "groupie", had he been Bob Dylan - which he wasn't!

As a man, he is successful, he radiates a confident presence, he has a gentle soul, and most of all, he still has a great sense of adventure. Today, he is famous in his own right and has managed to tell his life's story to reflect the wholeness of his life's time.

Of course, I have a secret wish that I could be like him and that he would adore me as I do him.Truth is, he's just another elderly gentleman. And, if I look in the mirror, I might just see myself there as clearly as I feel his presence in my Soul.

Soul mates are like that. If I didn't understand him as being my animus, a reflection of my own potential, I  would be obsessively yearning. But, I'm satisfied, with this inner personification. I recognize him in my real time relationships. This is good.

Who is your soul mate?Why is your soul mate so powerful to you?

Harvest Moon

Harvest Moon. Sunset.

Earth suspended between the two.

Summer's end. Solstice.

2010
Equally positioned on opposite horizons, the moon  emerges from the eastern horizon in full sunshine.  Its color, a brilliant yellow-orange, yellow, and red-orange blend together - similar to a peach. The sun is painting watercolors of changing gentle hues in the west as it ends its blazing day overhead. Clouds mingle like a crowd on the eastern horizon. Trees, hail the end of day on the west.


2000
Oceanside on the Atlantic. Foamy waves drift in and return to the ocean in a predictable rhythm. The darkening blue sky is clear.
A gigantic  red-orange orb emerges. Birds, suspended in their flights, behold in awe. The silence in this sunshine leaves room for the imagination to hear a great rumbling as the moon arrives and rises into the sky.  The great orange moon hangs gracefully in the darkened sky, as we, driving inland to home, keep a watchful eye on its beauty.

 2010.

Cypress and palm trees.

Bulk heads, sea gulls, and wooden docks.

Harvest moon. Sunshine.

A gray heron struts across a lawn. People are fishing off the grassy public dock while marveling at the moon's brilliance. As the moon rises into the sky, shrinking in size - or so it appears - it becomes a glowing spotlight that will last through the night.

People suffering.

World of opposing perspectives.

Tension increases.

Sun rises. Moon sets.

Equidistant and opposite.

Same two horizons.

Memory of the moon.

Silent. Vibrant. Magnificent.

Lingering in me.

What has happened to stop your world lately, giving you a moment to reflect on the Beauty of Soul' creating Dance?

Blank Page - New Page

Photo compliments of Gaute Mehl, Norway.

I began to write a book about reuniting with Caroline, my daughter. I had completed 140 pages, which I was saving on  an external hard drive. I simply do not know what happened - but the next time I opened it up to work on it, it was gone,

Blank Page

I had cried through the writing of every single scene. And in the reflective process involved in remembering back 46 years, a lot of stuff came up that I had long since forgotten.

Fortunately, I have enough training and experience to  process.  One main question I asked myself was, "How did I get so wild?"

Well, those who know me, know that is my basic nature, subdued as I have a tendency to be. The added element, which I have since learned not to include in my life, was weekend beer, booze, bourbon, and bacchanalia!

When my mother threw me out of the house, after I graduated from high school, I set out to make it on my own. I went through four or five jobs while going to school, and as many apartments, but only one Loose Relationship,  before I woke up pregnant. 

I was happy to find out I was "with child", unreasonable and illogical as that may seem. Dear sweet Loose Relationship and I, as sure as I was that he was the love of my life,  had parted ways by the time I was about to sober up (in other ways, too) and get it all together.

A whole lot of guilt, regret, humiliation,  if-onlys and self-condemnation came up while I was remembering way back then.  I began to wonder how I could look myself in the mirror let alone go on with this very successful life's time I have come to be living.

With  the book gone, I began to see that while writing it, I had acknowledged the reality of and let go of  the closet called book of secrets and whose door is called judgment.  I had opened the door, flooded those secrets with light, and let that period of my life come on out.

While I was dancing this new freedom, within that Presence available to everyone - that which is beyond reason and logic - I had an insight which carries me know into the future.

New page, yet to be written upon.  Write the book from a healed-now perspective.

And the most precious gift of all - my daughter in my life and I in hers.The book will be about the gift that we have been given.

When, for you, have such traumatic losses become opportunities to write a whole and perfect story?

On writing a book

 Forgot to remember from whence this photo came.

The class wrote a book. The students were all shadow children, those who fell through the cracks and weren't making it in the mainstream.

At the Manhattan School for Career Development, students 15-21 learned basics in the morning during their first year and experienced various hands-on careers, on a wheel, in the afternoon. By the second year, they had narrowed their preferences and spent their days on the job, learning the math and reading and other skills needed within the framework of their career choices.

One major trait of these students was their lack of interest in much of anything.  Learning opportunities were presented within an "interest" beckoning context.

Writing a book, beginning with a brainstorm of possible titles to focus visual art forms, students created "scenes" they wanted to be included in their book. The drawings revealed the stage of development, not to be confused with IQ, of each student. The eight students' conceptual development ranged from six years old, to highly symbolic spatial sense - slow processing to rapid repetition of design.

Each student told the story of their drawing as I wrote each word they said onto butcher paper and taped it onto the huge chalk board. Then we proceeded to fashion the pictures/stories into a cohesive story.

I typed it up, made copies, and we spent a few minutes each day for a week or so editing the story. Two boys wouldn't participate, so from the beginning, they were "assigned" to print and assemble the final product when it was ready for publishing.

Two students typed the story and printed the pages during their afternoon career experience. Each printed page matched one of the pictures.  I was able to find a color xerox machine in the neighborhood (a rarity in 1989), and with my own money (also a rarity in 1989), printed 12 copies of each picture.

The two boys printed the books, then collated and bound them in their afternoon class. They proudly delivered a copy to the Principal, and then distributed one to each of their fellow classmates. The students carried their books around for a week, pulling it out of their lockers each day.

Every once in awhile, I am tempted to publish the book. It would be a good children's book about how these shadow children feel. For me, it was an exercise in spiritual empathy. When I offered a suggestion for improvement, it was received with overwhelming approval. The human beings felt they were in a safe place. If they disagreed, we discussed it until we agreed. Their ability to imagine, I found to be  incredibly well developed.

Their pride in creating a book, was worth it all. These students were not even able to read a book yet - or couldn't before they wrote this one.  I don't know what came next. It was the end of the school year and I moved to Florida during the summer.

How have you found ways to accomplish the impossible and have fun while doing it?

Ode to a Basil Plant

My long-time friend, Penny, an award winning writer, advised me to keep these entries short. So, in respect of her wisdom, this one will be short and sweet.

Fresh basil, chopped fine, floating in extra virgin olive oil, wine vinegar, and minced garlic, covering bright red vine ripened tomatoes and small mozzarella balls. What could be finer ?

Fresh picked basil, pureed into a pesto along with with garlic, extra virgin olive oil, fresh parsley - maybe oregano or cilantro.  Best, when mixed into a fancy shaped cold pasta, tossed with  Italian black olives, fresh cut cukes or zucchini, peppers, tomatoes, and maybe some grated cheese or hard salami added into it.

Basil's aroma does an olfactory tango with the immediate air, when freshly picked or when a kitten plays with its branches as it waves in the wind from its pot on the porch.

I love you, sweet basil.

What is your herb of choice? Why is that?

Hurricanes

 

The Heel at Stonehenge

Compliments of Evelyn Philbrook

The year that my home was pounded by four hurricanes was a year of constant attention to details to say the least.

There was barely time to reflect and make temporary repairs  when another hurricane came by . These events  intruded on the day to day job deadlines and meeting of students' counseling needs in the school  Plans for the year I had made  for leisure time and avocation were cancelled.

Other catastrophic events in the world, and in the lives of people I  know well, that year had not eluded my compassion  either.

For sure the living dead had not eaten me up. But, chaos blew in as strongly and relentlessly as the hurricanes that Fall.  Let's face it! There I stood feeling paralyzed in a relative state of major pause.

What I found surprising is that I wasn't at all  going off the deep end - with my pain body raging like the winds themselves,

I wasn't making rash decisions - like a twister uprooting a tree.

I was amazingly constant, incredibly present, masterfully organized in planning and implementing a response to this new and chaotic reality.

My storage shelves had fallen over and all the mahjong tiles, dominoes, chess pieces, puzzle pieces, files filled with  partially written essays, boxes of paints and brushes, carefully organized books and CDs, years of photographs and slides, decks of tarot cards, and all sorts of things I'd forgotten about, all fell to the floor and got all mixed up with each other because the winds blew them all around the house.

I slowly and deliberately gestalted all the pieces into their original order - probably even more organized than they had been, picked up the storage shelves, and replaced everything that was still good.

After I took out to the street, three huge bags of trash and two boxes of useless or destroyed stuff, I took a deep breath, sat on one of the boxes,  and sobbed long and hard right there at the curb.

Life is like this. Winds of change stir everything up in our homes,  occasioning an opportunity to, well,  clean house, renovate, and redecorate.

I threw away that which has been rendered useless by the wind and rain, reorganized what I wanted to keep and found place for it in the house.

I got a new roof, front door, insulation, ceiling plastering, fresh paint on the walls, carpet cleaning and  a couple of other renovations, I might never have gotten around to doing.

But, most of all , I was very grateful for a fresh perspective.

Where did I learn to respond to crisis with calm?

From a deep source of wisdom, indeed.  

Have you ever been in a hurricane - if not literally, then metaphorically?  What's different now?

Good Men in East Harlem

 Photo compliments of Diane McCabe

Driving into the city from Connecticut,the old orange van was loaded with gifts from my mentor, Martha Crampton - chic accessories from Italy,  hand-made Quaker bed, lamp, cushions, framed pictures, books to read, etc. She was down-sizing to move into an apartment in the city and I was setting up living in an an apartment after living out of two-suitcases for many years.

At the time there was a gas shortage. I stopped at a gas station on the Hutchinson River Parkway, got the ten gallon max, and gave the  attendant my last ten dollars.

This amount should have been enough to get to home on the lower east side of Manhattan.

However, as the sun was setting in East Harlem, I ran out of gas. Anger at the gas station for cheating me wasn't going to solve this problem, so I tabled the rage I felt for the time being.

I  pulled off the highway, which fortunately was on a slight decline, so I was able to steer to the curb near a store with a phone booth.

This  was before the day of the ever ready cell phone. I searched for a dime to call home for help, but the search didn't even result in two cents.

As I was contemplating my next step, five young men surrounded the van. Terrified by what might happen, I was ready to bargain for my life. However, when I explained that I didn't need my windows washed and why I was sitting in East Harlem at sunset, one of the men offered to go go get gas for me.  I told him, emphatically, that I had absolutely no money and suggested we bargain for a goods exchange.

This bargaining phase was not accompanied by self-confidence and a steady delivery. I shook and tears were running down my face. The one who offered, said, "No problem, " and took off to get the gas while the others stood by the van while he was gone - while I sat there expecting the worst.

The man came back with a red five gallon can filled with gas and poured it in, then told me how much it cost him. I explained once again that I literally had no money and offered him to choose from the contents of the van. Neither he, nor the four others,were interested.

So, while expecting it, but hoping they would not just take the van, contents and all, I offered to repay him by sending money in the mail.

He agreed to that. I gave him paper and pencil. He wrote something down and returned the paper and pencil. I put both in my pocket, thanked them all, and started the engine.

As I drove off still shaking, I  pondered the miracle I had just experienced. Not only was I in one of the most dangerous hoods around, and not only was I still alive, I had been treated like a queen.

When I got home, I took out the piece of paper to write the name and address on an envelope with the money.  I looked at the name and laughed in astonishment.

But, of course, what else could it be.

The man's name  was Angel -Angel Ramos. 

I'll never forget his name. I will never forget  that day after sundown in East Harlem where, to my disbelief, I was as safe as a baby in a crib!!

They responded to a real need, and I acknowledged that place where trust abides - in this case - beyond my biased image of men from East Harlem.

When is a time your own biases have been challenged, and you

have been gratefully humbled by the goodness of people?