at first glance,
this rock that sits perched
is small,
colorful,
pretty,
of a non-descript shape.
but
upon closer inspection,
well,
just look:
when we take the time
to get close,
when we slow down
and take a good look,
this stone
is more colorful
than we imagined.
its surface
is filled with
bumps
and crevices.
outer crusts
are breaking,
falling away
to reveal
even more
color
and complexity
and beauty
and
there’s even
a bit of sparkle
to boot.
this one-of-a-kind stone sits perched
behind my kitchen sink
where i see it several
times every day.
and each time i gaze upon it,
i think of you,
my beautiful friends,
my brave friends,
my creative friends
i think of you,
my friends
who are strong
enough to be vulnerable,
willing
to reveal
more and more
of your
deepest
sumptuous
selves
every day,
bridging
the chasm
between
your inner self
and
your outer self.
i see all of you,
who are
learning to
speak up
and dig in,
to soar
and rest,
to trust yourself,
and, most important of all,
to cherish yourself,
and i sing.
loudly.
and with gusto.
and hey, lest you
take offense
to being
represented
by a rock,
one word:
bedrock.
tonight i am angry.
deeply
fiercely
hugely
angry.
as close as i’ve ever come
to being
consumed
by anger.
and you know,
it feels
pretty damn
good.
so
i’m laying
it
on my altar
tonight
without avoidance
or
apology.
without giving
a rat’s ass
if it’s
ladylike
or not
to be
angry.
without
wasting one
nanosecond
wondering
if i’ll still
love myself
in the morning.
i assumed the role of family historian at an early age, carting around an old camera with a flip top that I held down around my belly button so i could look, focus, and snap. then came the adorable little brownie camera with the big silver flash compartment, followed by the instamatic with the flash cubes. eventually came the nikon compact digital camera (which by today’s terms, wasn’t actually all that compact), and so on through the ages till i arrived at the iphone 4 and the fabled photography community called instagram where i travel around the world several times a day.
as a young girl, i photographed friends, family, and pets – the black and white photos now curled around the edges and fading into lighter shades of gray. when i became a mother, i snapped photos and videos of the children – enough to keep us in laughter and tears for decades to come.
now i find that i’m more interested in snapping my surroundings, clicking on the run and over my shoulder and on the spot because clouds and trees and water and such don’t wait for me to frame, focus, and shoot. i can’t line them up and stage the shot. i am seeing my world differently, slowing down to appreciate – deeply appreciate, i’m talking about down to the cellular level – the beauty that wraps itself around me constantly.
sometimes i peep through the lens and am surprised by what i see . . .
of late, i am smitten with the macro lens, finding that just like people, so many things are beautiful to look at, but spend a little time and get close enough to see them as individuals, and their uniqueness, their specialness will take your breath away . . .
photography opens doors for me . . .
gives me time and space to reflect, sometimes allowing me to see above and below at the same time . . .
sometimes the reflection bounces off of something else, like – oh – say a windshield . . .
my grandcats are even cuter . . .
and while grocery store roses may not smell, they delight just the same . . .
sometimes i see things differently when they are in relation to something out of the ordinary . . .
the most banal things make me smile . . .
the most familiar things that i see every day become new and unexpectedly delightful . . .
and sometimes nature just takes my words away, leaving me with nothing to do but stop and applaud . . .
How we feel about events, respond to them, transform them and judge them, is a matter of the shape of our spirit, the corrugation of the feathers in our wings. And this, the shape of our spirit, our way of reflecting the world, is something we must work to create and tend, day after day after day.
~~ Kathleen Dean Moore ~~
How did you shape your spirit today?
Reflect the world?
Create and tend?
“We all have within ourselves a chispa or ember, a spark of divine creativity. and because of this spark, whether we have never even produced a work, we are still in our essence artists. Clarissa Pinkola Estes suggests that even when that ember is not actively tended, it still remains glowing within us, just waiting for the breath to ignite it and bring it to a leaping, dancing blaze.”
~Christine Valters Paintner~
::~::
POP QUIZ:
Did you breathe your spark into a flame today?
Did you treat the world to the warmth from your spark?
What did you create?
What did you want to create but didn’t?
Why didn’t you?
How did it feel to create . . . or not to create?
Tell me about it.
Tell me everything.
when a friend
told her it was
something
practiced by
a foreign
religion,
she dropped
out of the
meditation class,
forfeiting
her registration fee
on account of
such short notice,
even though she’d
signed up for it
because it
sounded like something
she could do to
relax and
fall asleep easier
since the lavender-scented eye mask
and the hot milk
and the bubble bath
didn’t work
and the sheep
kept running around
the room,
hiding under the bed,
and jumping out the window,
refusing
to be counted.
and when she
learned that
the little bronze-ish
statue she liked
so much when she
first laid eyes on it
so many years ago
is actually
a buddha,
she gave it away
for fear she’d
been inadvertently worshipping
a false god
all these years.
scoff if you will,
chuckle if you can’t stop yourself,
but me?
i admire
her unwavering conviction,
her abiding allegiance,
her deep faith,
her commitment
to live what she
believes.
In the past, I’ve skirted around grieving, sashayed away prematurely (though outwardly nobly) because I didn’t want to endure the muck and messiness, the tenacious, persistent roller coaster of emotions. I am a planner by nature, and to not know how I would feel from one moment to the next was just not something I could bear gracefully. At least I didn’t think so. Plus I didn’t want to burden others who prefer to be around a funny, lighthearted me.
Grief unattended is a tar baby, a sticky gooey mess of emotional debris.
In the short tenure of my dedication to see my 2012 words – stay and surprise – made flesh, I’ve been treated to all sorts of inexplicable, delightful happenstances. Or, as Quakers say, “Way opens.” Like this: last night as I muddled around in my journal about grief, as I tried to stay with the tumultuous emotions without falling into the familiar patterns of pointing fingers and defending myself and all that, I happened upon an online article about Ho’oponopono. Today, despite several hours worth of trying, I can’t find that link anywhere. Did it come from a friend’s Facebook posting? Did I stumble upon it? Why doesn’t it show up in my history?
I am perplexed.
And intrigued.
I google, and though I can’t find that particular article, I learn that Ho’oponopono is where we take responsibility for and clean with anything we perceive to be a problem. It’s the ultimate emptying, done with gratitude, openness, willingness. It’s a way to clear the tar baby of all old dramas, resentments, agonies such as things I wish I’d said. The theory is that it’s only from this point – called the zero point – that there’s room for new to enter . . . new ideas, new ways, new inspiration. It’s a way of accepting responsibility, expressing gratitude, letting go, making way by holding the emotion/situation/person/whatever and saying four things with utmost sincerity:
I love you.
I’m sorry.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.
Though being fluent only in English and Southern I know I’ll never be able to pronounce it, Ho’oponopono seems just the ticket now: a process resulting in detachment from the junk of the past, in clarity, in freedom. Things I seek. And so today I begin to create a new way of being, even if my tongue trips and tangles in the process.
my grandmother
was smart in ways
they don’t teach you in school.
she knew things like red rock ginger ale
is the best thing
on earth
for a stomach
that’s acting up,
and she knew
that the second day
after any injury
is when you experience
the worst pain.
after that,
the hurt begins
to subside.
women can be
so supportive of each other
and
women can be
so hurtful to each other.
today,
the second day after,
i lay my tender bruises
on the altar,
amid all the old junk
that rises
and the familiar patterns
that beckon,
and i grieve.
When we moved last spring, we dumped a lot of stuff on our daughter – things she could probably use, most of it good stuff, but still it was enough stuff to fill her garage, leaving her to park outside. Today we waded through the boxes and bags, tossing, giving, putting up.
Funny how good it makes my daughter and me feel to bring order to the physical chaos that surrounds us . . . now. Up until today, she has scoffed and called me anal. Up until today, I have made unilateral decisions about what stays and what goes, telling myself it was in the name of expediency.
Just at 5 p.m., while my smile remained strong but my energy waned, I looked up to see the sun setting. And just like that I thought of Naples, Florida where people applaud each sunset, dazzling or no. And I thought of Retreat – of the bugle that played every evening at 5 or 6 p.m. (depending on the season), of how everything and everyone came to a halt and stood in silence as the flag was lowered and the cannon fired. And though I am not on a beach and no longer on a military college campus, I stopped, snapped a couple of photographs, and in my own way, saluted the changing of the guard, sun to moon.
It was a good day, a good start. We cleared many layers of junk. We cleared more than a garage. It is a good and satisfying tired, and there is much to place on my altar today.
These are questions asked by Sally G. at her altar today, questions I ask myself regularly – questions I have asked myself for a long, long time. These are the questions at the top of the list of questions that enkindled 365 Altars.
What do I know, not What degrees do I have, but What do I know?
Who am I now – not who have I been, but who am I now?
What can I contribute, and not just in terms of money?
How does this longing look dressed in words?
Where do I go from here?
What does the culmination of all the things I’ve done look like?
and the ever popular: What is the purpose/Why am I here, anyway?
I look for clues in my childhood – what did I like that got shoved aside in the mad rush to adulthood? What did I want to do with my life when my life was the only thing that mattered, the only thing I was responsible for?
Inspired by Sally G, I place on my altar today a recording of the first record I purchased with my own money. I moved into the basement apartment that my daddy’s daddy declined to inhabit, and I took the record player that was replaced by a fancy new console entertainment center. On any given day, I’d put this 45 rpm record on the turntable, lower the diamond stylus onto the vinyl, and skate around and around and around the unfinished basement just outside my door, feeling completely free, completely in charge of my own destiny, completely sated. Anything was possible. I was capable, on the ready, and darn near invincible. It was enough just to be me.
It’s how I feel now only in the dark thirty hours on the occasional day.
It’s how I long to feel again on any given moment of any given day (minus the roller skating part, mind you).
As I skated, I knew with my entire being that this song was written for and about me. It’s still necessary to escape occasionally to go downtown and get lost in the crowd, to see brightly lit organized spaces filled with colorful goods that promise to make my life perfect (whatever that is). But I no longer want to leave home to dance. It’s no longer comforting, reassuring, or convincing, this notion that I can crawl through some escape hatch and leave all my troubles and worries behind. I am tired of being encouraged to live for the future.
I don’t want to have to leave myself to be myself.
So maybe I’m a wee bit further along on my quest to self definition, to self determination. And while the lyrics don’t hold what they once did for me, the music still beckons me to get up and dance right here, right now. (Which is good ’cause I’ve vowed to move more this year – preferring the word “move” eversomuchmore than “exercise.”)
And with lingering questions that outnumber answers, I leave you with Petula Clark singing the first record I bought with my own money: Downtown . . .
here ‘n there