“What if this is what it looks like while my dream of the end of Apartheid is happening? What if my being in this very situation is… part of… my overcoming?”~Nelson Mandela about his imprisonment“Just how do we deal with agitations of the dark? How do we make our way through the tangle of being […]
Get Busy Livin’
“Life presses upon us, forever challenging us with new forms of vitality that threaten the status quo which feels so good with its stability and peace. Religions seem to hate Pan and his vitality. Often, they prefer the death principle. Let things be as they always have been. No intrusions of vitality, please. I think […]
Monkeying around with Religion
“The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we see in them.” Thomas MertonThomas Merton was a trappist monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani, Kentucky, he was a poet, mystic and a student of […]
Enlightment at Gunpoint
Looking back, my Religious/Spiritual timeline begins with casual Sunday School for one summer followed by communion and a photo of me in a dress in front of a huge pink azalea. NO inner connections were made. Everything was external and ceremonial. During my teen years I was hit by a car and felt my soul […]
Valentine’s Day
I do not fit snugly into a world built on principles of clock time and corporeal senses alone. I may appear eccentric if I write about things like “straddling eternity.” But it is in the effemera I feel most hardy. My strength seems to build upon itself in the light of my spirit. What do […]
Thinking About Contemplation
I am struck by the difference in the participants when one contemplates verses when one meditates. It seems to me meditation requires joyous wide and vast emptiness and contemplation joyously lets in all comers. Both allow for emergence of higher understanding. Both require an acknowledgement of an inner life and willingness to see. I am […]
A Messy Life
My life has made (and is making) a transition as we speak from orderly to NOT. And I am becoming accustomed to it somehow. Through grief I have warmed to uncertainty. Is this why folks want religion – to acquaint themselves with the roiling of life? And to make friends with it? I recall letting […]
Resistance
Lots of pain and lots of tears and lots of strategies employed to get through a rough patch. I am so weary of revisiting these dark places. But by claiming and naming them, by the simple passage of time, and with help from those who care about me – I am slowly coming back […]
I am on strike!
Seems creating requires focused alone time, and since (currently) I abhor being alone — not alone like having no pals or neighbors, but alone like not having a confidant, an intimate buddy who sincerely listens and who sincerely cares & shares in return — I am finding myself on strike! And so since creating is one […]
Tête-à-Tête
“Beauvoir lent Maheu a recent English novel she had enjoyed, The Green Hat, by Michael Arlen. She admired its independent heroine, Iris Storm. Maheu did not. ‘I have no liking for women of easy virtue,’ he told her. ‘Much as I like a woman to please me, I find it impossible to respect any woman […]
Square 1
I am hoping this day finds you well and well loved in your lovely abode. I wrote this about one year ago. Seems appropriate to revisit it for I am feeling like I am here again – at square 1 – today. February 10, 2013 I am approaching the beginning of week 3 of experiment Lani. […]
Collaborating with Doubt
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves…” ~ Rilke In agreeing to Collaborate with what is, rather than combat it, I arrive at a warm and welcoming threshold. Even if ‘what is’ is uncomfortable. Not sure why, but I have been working against myself. I confoundedly keep […]
