knocking on my own door

In my marriage, I've felt for years this gnawing emptiness.  For many years, I played the blame game, feeling my husband was not showing up enough in my life, either physically or emotionally.  This was hard for him to hear, of course, and though there was some truth to my complaint, I began to see the light of my own absence in my life, like a spotlight on stage and no one in it........

I'm shifting the focus of my life and times now.  I'm going it alone, or will soon be--have already set out on the path, in my Heart.  Me and the fellow I've been married to will remain close friends, on whatever stage we find ourselves on.  Hopefully we can find some new script that retains the old characters, but shows them being more authentic.  We can now pare away the old counter-productive crust of frustration, sadness, blame, anger, and the lonesomeness that we've both experienced in our best efforts to act out what the other wanted or deserved.  It's been difficult with all that crust to speak our own lines with clarity and confidence, or even to see what they are.  When lines were spoken, they fell on ears that did not process one another's language.  Like a situation where my bank only processes quarters, his only processes dollar bills.  We can both offer what we have in spades to the other, till the cows come home, but it's not what the other can use, and we each get completely bankrupt.

I want very much for him to be happy, but that's up to him now.  I want a chance to create my own happiness, unencumberd by the effort to create his, and for now, I'm taking the initiative to show up in my own life for awhile, knock on my door and see who's there, be my own best partner, best listener.  A little disorienting at nearly 60, but why wait even longer.   The stage under my feet that was starting to feel like nothing more than clouds of wishes is beginning to materialize with lights, action, and daring-do!  


Deep breath.....so many doors, so many colors, no costume any longer, just be me.......

Sickness As Grace

There's a bug going 'round here, that whollops you over the head, kicks you when you're lying there with stars spinning, wondering what just happened, and every time you think you can stand up, it knocks you flatter than before, more bruises, and every time it flattens you, stomps all over you and spits you out, foul and dazed.  There's very little breath left; no pride; your color is translucent gray, and the stuff you thought you knew about life is in pieces, like a scattered puzzle, with some of what you need now missing.  And weeks later, you're still sick.

Me?  I did everything right.  I got big-guns tea from the Naturopath, OTC's and Rx's from my MD; I took just enough Golden Seal and Zinc, starved it when I fevered, rested till the chores piled high, drank water till I thought I'd pop.  It's the beginning of the fourth week of illness for me.  I think I'm on the upswing, but I've said that at least 5 times before, I've lost count of Hope.  Tomorrow I could find myself just flying by the guy who holds the 'Stop Ride' switch, wishing he'd at least NOTICE that I am a desperate rider, flailing, scared gray, and who threw up a few rounds back.  You know the look.

Well, it came to me that there must be more to this illness than just the virus.  There's some other component, something that needed to be figured out--those missing pieces--that have to do with my inner life and how I face it, and ways I need to grow, STAT.  I felt this way because everytime I started to feel better, I'd gingerly step out of my bedroom and try to do something I'd been wanting to do for some time (weeks is a long time to be sick), and the illness would not allow it, would trounce me again, laughing in my face. 

The last straw was yesterday, when a professional, internationally known teacher I had asked to come to Portland a year ago had finally decided to come, and was going to teach classes on a subject I really wanted to learn FROM HER.  When I found out she was coming, I was so thrilled!  Finally!  I get to study under this woman!  What a golden, shining chance has arisen!  It also looked like I might even get to take her up to the sacred mountain, Mt St Helens, 'Apu Loo Wit', Sacred Grandmother.  I'd never met this woman before, just heard great things, and this opportunity was unrivaled in my excitement: to be able to openly converse with her for hours on end.....AND show off this region's Great Spirit...!

I got sicker than ever.  High fever, cough that wouldn't let me breathe.  That Golden Shining Chance disappeared as fast as it had presented itself.  Drat, and I'm starting to get just plain pissed off.  Weeks of sickness, energy supply gone aways back, and this woman was not going to be here forever, this authority I had invited, and waited nearly a year to see. 

I couldn't go to the classes I had signed up for....so took one more chance and decided to sign up for her last class, on the very last day she was to be here.  I drank my cough medicine, though the fever was gone (again) I took two aspirin, a few cough drops, my note pad, and drove off into the sunshiney land of High Hopes the day of the class.  "Angels", I said, "Please!  PLEASE!!!  Let me do this ONE thing."

A coughing fit crashed in 20 minutes into the class, and I had to leave.  The freeway was stop and go for the next 2 hours.  I am so pissed off I am crying, spitting, kicking, swearing.   I get home and I start THROWING the groceries into the fridge.  Literally.  Yelling, furious, like a half-grown mountain lion that's had it's dinner taken away for the last time MAD. 

...........................................Now I'm also deeply embarrased.  I go down to the river, my meadow in the trees, my bit of the creek where the fish know me, where the trees and aromas hold me, and the breeze on my face is caressing, familiar.  I sit for some time with these forgiving friends, seething still, until I can breathe.  Praying to whatever!! hears.  I WANT THOSE MISSING PIECES, AND I WANT THEM NOW.

NOW. " I'm done 'trying' to get well, you jerk Universe.  I've got it thrashed out that I need just a couple vital bits, now GIVE THEM TO ME."

I go up to my room.  Two words come to me, so strongly do I hear them that they have color, have tenderness that's palpable.  I've known them both for so long, thought I deeply understood them, believed them, leaned on them for years like old familiar walking sticks.

Not so much.  That was book-learining.  Now they hit my heart.

Acceptance.  and Hope. ...................... Huh.   .......................................................................
The moment I hear these land in my soul, I feel them plant themselves there--it's a physical sensation.  I know I am getting better.  And I have more than Hope.  I have Faith, which is Hope, grounded.  Faith that whatever the Great Creationist doles out, it's OK, no matter what shit comes down.  No Matter What Shit Comes Down.  I know I ain't seen nothin' yet.

Easy for the Monk to be all holy and kind while he's up on the mountain--bring him down into the thick of things and we'll see what he's really made of.

I intend to be the best, the person I Most Want To Be.  Now, and again Tomorrow.

Glad I got sick, wish I'd looked for those pieces sooner.  But then, I wouldn't have noticed them--I'd thought I already knew them.  They'd have blended into the familiarity of the path.

Now I think I really Get it.  Tomorrow when I awaken, I really will be well.  ALL well, ready for service again, to myself, and to others.  The Puzzle is complete.  Thank you for hearing me, whoever.

Thank you for this dreadful Grace.

Courage, even for the small things

This morning I wrote a piece about Courage, but deleted it because when I thought about it, it felt like I was making a mountain out of what probably sounded like a mole hill.  Not to me: babysitting my grandson has recently afforded me some difficult lessons, and it's been a long time since I was tested so profoundly. 

I got to thinking, and decided to write this instead.  Difficulties come in all shapes and sizes, and what may seem easy to one person is an act of great difficulty to another.  This has been the case with this 'opportunity'.  I was beating myself up about not being more like my best girlfriend, who is the quintessential grandmother: always peachy sweet, always available, forever patient.  Something to aspire to, eh?  For sure.

Me?  I'm passionate, demonstrative, inventive, funny, and 'mostly nice'.  But not as evolved as I like to imagine I am--I've been surprised to discover I still have my limits, despite years of daily 'spiritual' work.  The other day when Gavin screamed his head off for all 10 hours (he had to poop and couldn't, we later figured out), I was not who I most strive to be, for that last interminable hour. 

I raised my voice at him.  I shredded myself afterwards, and still cringe deeply to think I could do this.  He's adorable, and he has the toughest job: being away from his Mom for five days a week, 10 oddly estranged hours each of those days.  I'm partly furious about a system/economy/circumstance that makes it almost impossible for a young, smart, hard-working mother (my beloved Kate) to be with her own baby.  This is so basic--what kind of civilization IS this anyway?!?   But I've found myself aching about it, yearning to understand and be the one who fills in the problem area with a loving service, to find the source for Patience, and a way to tap into it. And I've had some serious, tearful words with the Angels.

They answered. 

"COURAGE", they said, very clearly.  And just the sound of the word strengthened me, and allowed my heart to instantly tap into that stream of energy that raises my heart up, and flows through my every action and word.

This is no small shakes at all.  I am profoundly moved, and strengthened.....and grateful for prayer, for being heard, for being a child of God, learning to listen.

A Man is Born

The baby came in about two and a half months ago.  He's a man-child, a new grandson.  When I am with him, I get flashes of my grandfather William and my father, Jack.  I asked him one day if we knew each other....if he was perhaps my grandfather.  He threw his head back, wide open baby mouth, and laughed a man's laugh.  When his head came back 'round, he was a baby again, sweet, gurgley, fat, pure.....

It's evening now.  This day was spent in his company, all day, 11 hours.....what a deep joy and deeper question it is to be with him, Gavin, 'Alert Hawk'.  When my daughter, his mother, came home, we shared some wine, and she mentioned a recurring dream she has had about this baby-man.  In the dream, he is an old man; he sleeps in a bed next to hers, and she cares for him, feeds him old man food, like baby food.  She loves him deeply, this old man.  When she awakens, her baby boy is sleeping close to her.  He coos in his slumber, gone to the world.  When he awakens, she remembers her dream, remembers the old man whom she loved and cared for.  She wonders about agelessness, about this relationship, soul to soul. 

When I am with him, I feel we are equals, he is just stuck in this infantile body.  He wants to get his legs under him and start working, start running, telling me the jokes he has saved from the time he was the old man, burst his lore out onto this plane with all the power of the rising Sun, and when he does, I will listen like I've never listened to any human before.  This mystery of a man, this roly baby with the River running in his direct gaze, sun dancing on the ripples of his laugh....

Use Me

For the last many months, I have been asking the Universe to give me all the responsibility I can handle.

Someone snuck a fan in here somewhere, because this prayer has 'hit the fan' and I am busier than I have ever been.  Every day, I get to work for people who are in varying arrays of sadness, pain, illness, confusion, fear....with astonishing results, even for one who believes in Reiki. 

The technique I learned in William Rand's Master class, which he calls an 'Aura Clearing' (WAY too gentle a term for a very powerful action--I call it an 'extraction') has proved to be the lightning cracker for opening up a person's etheric field and removing any and all of the above, to varying degrees, admittedly, but for the most part, greatly.  Repeated sessions, always followed by Reiki, yeild dramatic changes for the better in the lives of the people who have all but lost Hope.  Honest!

Oddly, 'distance sessions' seem to work the best.  There's a fellow in Canada, about 300 miles from me, who has Multiple Sclerosis, and after three sessions, is practically dancing, and certainly laughing.  There's a fellow in Montana, who suffers from kidney stones, and began to pass sand after I did a 'distant crush' on them.  A woman, also in Canada, who has lost her deep depression following the first session we had, and her pain has been lessened to the point she can get out and enjoy life.  Another couple of people in the UK who are progressing well after their initial sessions.  Time will tell where all this leads.  For now I am living in a state of amazement and gratitude. 

Somebody, turn off the fan.  I can do this, it's just all coming at me so fast......and if this is my place in the Grand Scheme of things, I want to do it well, with focus and calm.  Love is the key.  Angels, stay with me, and thank you.

The Mystery Unfolds

Lately things have been appearing in threes, good things.  The two most notable are one from yesterday, when I was drivign home thinking about how my Reiki practice has begun to take off, and when I looked up in the sky with my thanks, three eagles soared high, white tails flashing moment to moment.  The Incas would say "Condor Blessing."  It doesn't get any higher than that.

Then today, I went down to our lay-line river to say my usual prayer.  I took a stone with me, placed the prayer in the stone, asked the angels to magnify and direct the energy, and placed it in the water, white and rushing now with the recent torrential rains.  IMMEDIATELY, a huge fish, probably nearly two feet in length, jumped out of the water, once, twice and then three times, right in front of me!  This has never happened to me before.  I mean, I get a wee fingerling maybe twice a year doing this, but this creature was strong and magnificent, heavy, bristling in his flash and flop! 

I shouted out my joy and surprise, tears springing up in my eyes! 

Wild.  WILD.  Yummmmmm...........................................!

The Two Kittens

It was a dream.  But the kittens are real. 

I found them, one at a time, out in the new yard, in the driving, cutting rain.  One's about 5 weeks old, very tiny, and feisty, thinks he's big.  The other's about 3 weeks old, way too small to be out there, almost too small to be seen, just a puff.

I bring them into my daughter's house, one at a time, out of the pouring rain and away from the danger of being swooped up by a hawk or freezing to death in the cold.  They get fed, dried, then tussle and tumble a little before falling asleep, unaware for now of the danger they face.  Whose are they?  We cannot keep them, can we?

I am a visitor to this house, a house in great turmoil and pain.  I'm trying to deliver some peace, some Way back to home-ness for the people who live inside.  The kittens have appeared like some great responsibility not taken.  The dears.  The pain of abandonment.  Their lives.  THEIR LIVES.

I am leaving, and leaving behind my prayers for this house, these people, constant prayers that never end.

Please, you who live here: I beg you, take care of these kittens.  They are yours, I have come to believe.