hope and windows

Lately it seems my mind is fixed upon doorways and windows.

It's been a trying Winter ... only a handful of days left so hope is in sight, right?  Except I seem to recall majority climbers on Mount Everest die in the region just before the summit.  Hilary Step I believe it is called.  But that is a metaphor for another day.

 No, my response to "How are you doing?" in these Hilary Step days is to mangle a favorite line from a John Irving novel, "Still passing the open windows."  Actually, I am glancing out those windows, eagerly awaiting the day I can open them up and air out the mental dust bunnies of my home and head.  To mis-quote another memorable line: Hope Floats. (It is actually "Sorrow floats" - Sorrow being the family's beloved black Labrador retriever stuffed after death, a symbol of hope amid suffering.)  In my case, Hope is a droopy, repotted house plant in shock.  The intention was revival, the outcome remains uncertain.

I can relate.  As I bear witness to the end of another season, another cycle in my life, I am aware of how quickly these months fly by.  My experience is akin to those spiral wishing wells often positioned in the entrance of Children's Museums.  Drop a coin in at the outer edge and it spirals slowly and hypnotically around and around until it reaches a point closer to the center when suddenly it rapidly whips through the few final circles before plunging into the hole and disappearing.  Coin gone, game over.

Being a self-proclaimed optimistic realist, I choose to focus upon the many doors and windows ahead of me.  I just hold a healthy sense of urgency or importance to those choices.

"the doors have always been there/to frighten you and invite you" (David Whyte, Everything is Waiting for You)

There is the moment when I pause, looking back over my shoulder at the doorways I have passed through and remember the ones I passed by. I don't choose to dwell upon regrets except when I catch myself fumbling or stumbling upon another threshold. In the past what has held me back can be boiled down to fear and doubt. Two familiar gremlins who have squatted far too long in the back alleys of my mind.  I have taken time to get to know them - in day light it is amazing how puny and weak they appear to be. Their power resides in shadow and making a mighty racket to camouflage their diminutive stature.  Well, I've cultivated some allies to help me flush these pests out into the open.

All of this is to say, another season and another chance to reach for that brass ring.  Which in my mind is really any gesture of reaching, exploring, trying, daring, believing, doing or tempting that has me stepping through another door.  Or opening a window and leaning out, feeling sunlight upon my face, hearing the bird song, sensing the pulse of the world waking up around me.  

There is no such thing as creative people and non-creative people. There are only people who use their creativity and people who don't. Unused creativity doesn't just disappear. It lives within us until it's expressed, neglected to death, or suffocated by resentment and fear.  Unexpressed creativity is not benign. It metastasized into grief and illness. (Brené Brown) 

A great man once said the only true sin is that of an un-lived life. 

There is a secret destiny for each person. When you endeavor to repeat what others have done or force yourself into a preset mold, you betray your individuality. We need to return to the solitude within, to find again the dream that lies at the hearth of the soul. We need to feel the dream with the wonder of a child approaching a threshold of discovery. (John O'Donohue, Anam Cara)

There it is again!  That doorway, another threshold.  

Each time I choose to get up off the couch, to counter inertia with action, to reach for the art journal, paint brush, pen or paper, it is another step through a doorway.  Sometimes I am shuffling ... sometimes all I can take is baby-steps ... sometimes it is a stumbling, lurching kind of movement ...  but whatever the form, whatever the gesture the impulse itself is guided by Hope, Faith and Trust.  

It doesn't have to be complicated.  My faith is in the birds, in the tiny shoots ready to burst through hard soil, in the energy that animates this face, this heart.

My trust is in the cycles and seasons within me and around me.  A trust in myself to spiral closer and closer to my truth, my light, my source.

And hope ... well, he sleeps with his tongue sticking out, he awaits another walk, another day to love and to simply be in my presence.  

Starting soon ... a chance to step through 21 different doorways and create with some incredible teachers and guides.  

On Sale Now! Starts April 1!

I will be there ... and I will be immersing myself in the play, indulging my inner child in discovery and adventure. 

Each day we stand on the edge of a new adventure, possibilities waiting to emerge.  What is germinating right now within your heart, your soul?  How are you tending to it?

believers ...

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. (Henry David Thoreau)

We went to the woods to gather some acorns.  It has been a long day indoors with much studying ...
 

"Brain bender" takes on a whole, new meaning after working a word search ... in Chinese!

Remembering how lovely a time we had in the nearby woods last week, I decided we should make a mini excursion back to our favorite, quiet spot.  As we pulled into the entrance we were immediately greeted by a welcoming committee ...

Not just two ...

turkeys doing their version of Abbey Road

not just three ...
 

but a dozen wild turkeys crossing the road!

Harbingers of much abundance (dare I believe a month for each turkey?  A whole year of blessings ahead?) With perhaps only a little ruffling of feathers involved?

Then Cowgirl spied her friend ...

Each trip to the park, she sees a doe (or two) so she claims deer as one of her totems (but turkey is another as he always appears when we are together.)  

Feeling pretty satiated with blessings and good luck, we were ready to grab some acorns and head on home.  But wait ... there's more?!

Oh yes ... if ever we had doubts (and we are mother and grandmother to a 2 month old dragon named Blaze Thunderbolt, so our faith was fairly certain) we are firm believers now! 

Yes, as The Man might point out, while I don't require it,  I do like my statues to move and talk.  

Just little signs of the mystery, always welcome and reassuring, you know? 

"When you begin to sense that your imagination is the place where you are most divine, you feel called to clean out of your mind all the worn and shabby furniture of thought. You wish to refurbish yourself with the living imagination so that you can begin to see, so that your thoughts can become what Meister Eckhart calls "our inner senses." (John O'Donohue, Awakening the Mind, Awakening the Soul)

the effort and ease of awakening ...

 "Why must we answer the call to awaken? Why must we follow the questions of our soul? Because it is through habitual, non-inquisitive living that we lose our sense of wonder. Because eventually, even the strangest or most magical things become absorbed into the routine of the daily mind with its steady geographies of endurance, anxiety, and contentment. Left to our own devices, curiosity dims and fear of the unknown binds us; we cling to the known. Only seldom does the haze lift, as we glimpse for a moment the amazing plenitude of being here in the heart of the greatest story ever told—our own lives."

-John O'Donohue, Awakening the Mind, Awakening the Soul

Sometimes all it takes to connect with Magic is to step outside of routine, making a detour but still staying in one's own backyard (or nearby park) ...

So simple and maybe that is why I so often miss it ...

Or maybe it is my habit to  over- complicate matters, fixating upon my shadow when all I need to do is turn and behold the source of my light ...

 What is required is to stop moving, pause, look around (down, up, over, within) and allow that indeed I have all that is needed to conjure magick:  a curious mind, alert senses and a heart open and willing to receive ...

All this in a half hour of my day.  Returning home full and nourished, fortified and resolved to stay awake and to leave room for the mysterious to curl around and within me.  

Thank you Mel for the much needed inspiration and reminder to get thee outdoors!

anatomy of a dream

All of the very best decisions I've made in my life were the result of a flash of an idea, an instantaneous knowing this is what I should do. 

Which is not to say doubt or obstacles or what the hell are you thinking? doesn't immediately follow upon the heels of inspiration.

The trick has been to speak out loud the idea, to bring it into light of some kind (ideally involving another person who then holds me accountable to my plan) and to began making movement towards the dream, all the while acknowledging but tactfully disregarding the gremlins of doubt who whisper a steady stream of reasons imploring me to cease and desist.  

Confirmation of the rightness of my plan comes with each step I take towards it.  A frisson of excitement and fuck! I AM doing this! mingle with the ever-fading gremlin's taunts. And then there comes a moment when I step fully and completely into my dream and the weight of any doubt or fear tangibly lifts off of my being and I sail forward into a technicolor Now.  

Growth and vitality and heart-full expansion are possibilities held within the seeds of such dreams.

There is nothing more technicolor brilliant than the embrace and smile of a dear friend received in the green of her world.

Leaving my job, embarking upon uncharted territory of self-employment (or radical self empowerment?) has been a disorienting experience and as things have turned out, I completely upended myself by traveling down under the next day after my departure.

It seems it was the perfect time for a new perspective upon my life.

Traveling to New Zealand (a bucket list item if ever there was one!) I brought with me wise companions whose words helped frame my experience (the following quotes are from John O'Donohue's Greenbelt festival talks):

An interesting question to ask yourself: How open are you to the mystery of your own beauty and the incredible depth that is your life? 

Behind every face there is something eternal going on and that's the magic ... no one has seen the script for anyone else's life. What are you doing to the life that you have?

You are a custodian of sacred thresholds on which you alone stand.

 

If you were to clearly explain to your heart how brief your time in the world is, what are the things your heart would make you stop doing right now?

What (or who) would you immediately embrace?

 


If you look after the hungers of your heart, then everything else comes alive around you. 

 
Every person is the holder of incredible possibilities ...

 
From Pema Chodron The Wisdom of No Escape: Navajo teach their children that every morning when the sun comes up, it's a brand new sun. It's born each morning, it lives for the duration of one day, and in the evening it passes on, never to return again. As soon as the children are old enough to understand, the adults take them out at dawn and they say, "The sun has only one day. You must live this day in a good way, so that the sun won't have wasted precious time."  Acknowledging the preciousness of each day is a good way to live, a good way to reconnect with our basic joy.

This was a week of dreams.  Reflecting upon the process of how I got from here to there, I appreciate all the signs - the excitement, the doubts, the anticipation, the questions - that remind me I am on to something big, something important, something that I believe was a possibility made manifest.  

An ancient master said, "I do not say that there is no Zen, but that there is no Zen teacher." You must trust yourself in all endeavors and have faith to put your feet in motion. (Karen Maezen Miller Hand Wash Cold)

Simply stated: I had a dream, really an inkling of a dream.  I trust in my dream and in myself.  I took a step - many steps - and found myself received by a beloved friend.  Another friend recently wrote me, marveling at that very word beloved which I had stamped onto a prayer flag for her. The one we behold, we love but what I hadn't thought about and which this other dear one pointed out is that broken down, it becomes  be loved.

Listening to my heart, following its guidance, seeking my beloved friend, I opened myself up to being loved. I fully and gratefully received that gift ... and now I dare to pass it on.

What journeys might your heart implore you to follow?  How can you take a small step forward today?

Not the end, but a new beginning (and I cannot resist ...)

So much gratitude for the generosity, the beauty, and the immense and fierce love that is Jane Cunningham.  Thank you sister for sharing with me your world and for fortifying my heart.  Not enough words to encompass all that I want to share ... but I know, you know ... deep in the stone ... you know. (to learn about Jane's upcoming and always amazing e-courses, visit her at Women's Soul Workshops.  Her Facing the Minotaur e-course has been rocking my inner archetypes  ... in a good way!)

the "in between" time

I've been having these recurring dreams in which I am gathering with others in preparation for a big feast or celebration. It seems like night after night I am meeting with a new group of people - people I actually know - which is unusual for me and my dream life. Usually my dreams involve bears speaking like Hugh Jackman or cameos by celebrities but rarely people from my world.

But my current dreams involve real people who I am excited to be seeing. The overall mood is one of anticipation, celebration and excitement. I've even wailed - in my dream, of course - "Oh, I've forgotten my camera and I know this will be a photo-worthy event!"

Needless-to-say, my waking life has been more ordinary with excitement being a long awaited (and welcome) root canal or an adults only dinner out while Cowgirl attended a birthday party. It has been an uneventful winter and while hints of an early Spring are everywhere, I am feeling like burrowing deeper into my cave.

no, Cowgirl did not have the root canal;

hers was the usual rock star cleaning.

However, this Winter I saw the dentist enough times to ask about a punchcard.

I think it is the fact that a tangible sense of time and season is missing. Remember when seeing strawberries in the grocery store signaled Summer had arrived? Or blueberries? Up until last year it seemed peaches and nectarines were only available late July and August but just this week the store had all four summer fruits in abundance.

adding to my discomfort have been the excessive winds blowing everything out of place

I am feeling like I am being prematurely awoken; a Spring bulb being "forced" to bloom before her time. There are still two weeks left to Winter and I am feeling this need to hunker down and enjoy the waning moments of this in between time.

patience epitomized

I mean, the best part of any party is the anticipation, the preparation and the lead up to the actual event. I am not wanting to rush past these weeks of preparation. Exactly what I am preparing for, I cannot say. But whatever is awaiting me down the road I want to greet it fully rested and revived. I want to have my camera ready with eyes and mind clear and ready to see and capture the magic.

Naturally, I turned to The Man for a little support (oh Mr. O'Donohue, how do you always know what I need to hear?):

You have been forced to enter empty time.

The desire that drove you has relinquished.

There is nothing else to do now but rest

And patiently learn to receive the self

You have forsaken for the race of days.

(-A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted, John O'Donohue)

This morning I heard the geese flying overhead, on the move. And the robins have been caucusing in the trees around my neighborhood. But I am still cocooning. Peeking out occasionally to see what is going on before burrowing back within.

Snippets from my world ... or is this the dream?

favorite activity du jour: the remote controlled helicopter

in our Em Falconbridge skirts

blissfully making postcards for a swap

and enjoying the bounty of soda bread that March brings

Is anyone else feeling this pressure to awake before they're ready? Time may be speeding up, but over here we are slowing down. Be warned: we are grumpy when prematurely roused.

[Explanation of Cowgirl's Scooby Doo band-aid: while it is covering a scab that needs to be left in peace, she also believes it makes her look tough. Oh to be young and the maker of one's fashion statements!]