-- a journey into awareness
Different identities
They rise up
There’s the fearful one
The controller
The loyal wife
The caretaker
All reactive
Ego driven
The Observer
says “return to
Center, sit in silence,
Listen”
So who’s Dying here
Who’s letting go?
His life ebbs
But mine is torn
Stripped as
mini deaths
Force me to Truth
His life, God’s life
One life, our life
It directs us,
guides us
If we Listen
How to stay in that
Knowing that flow
Is this my lesson?
His gift to me
Even as he lies there
dying?
Words always compromise the experience we’re having. But we try anyway.
What is being present: now, today? What is being aware, awake, fully alive? How do you experience it? What does all this mean in difficult times anyway?
TODAY’S THE DAY
Cheers erupt
in triumph.
Tears fall
in disappointment.
Fears hover in the
shadow of what’s to come.
But I feel a place
of stillness, just
Spacious Stillness.
From here I know
love in action.
From here I know
it’s only in our
wandering off
that we forget
we’re connected.
Mirrors for each other,
loved by the very Universe
we’re scared of.
Loved beyond our possessions,
successes, our failures.
Hell is not being crucified!
Jesus died in love,
connecting and forgiving.
He died showing us
how to live…
no matter what…
It’s all about the Love
you are, the Love that you can share.
the Love that’s beyond understanding.
Peace!
For a while, I haven’t written. I wondered why. Nothing seemed compelling enough to write about. OK, actually no ideas were coming at all.
Rilke wrote in Letters to a Young Poet, “Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write…ask yourself…must I write?”
Elizabeth Gilbert in Big Magic, writes, “Ideas are a disembodied, energetic life-form…driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner.” p. 64 She goes on to say, you can say “no” when an idea comes, but it will move on to someone else.
So I waited, trying to be alert to what might offer itself to me. One morning, the words started to come. I understood, at least for me, my writing. And, I started letting it happen.
WRITING
You write where you are
Not where you are forever,
Just where you are
in this nanosecond.
Words flow through, Spirit, waiting to play.
To give voice to the words
that comes through you.
Traveling fast, as if sent
urgently from a distant place.
The ones that pay a surprise visit
as you’re about to fall asleep; the ones
urging you to write them down, to
hold them to a page so they can’t fly off.
Sometimes you think them
too bold for print, you fear
what others might say.
Still, you write the words.
A understanding, a phrase…
not for forever, just for right now
for this nanosecond
for this poem.
besliter, January, 2017
The world is our mirror. Our unresolved issues are reflected back to us through our circumstances, our lives, and in others. Lucy the cat…my teacher. She was one of our daughter’s two cats we took in until we could find homes. But two cats were one too many. Lucy was the youngest and most easily placed I thought. But my conflict about letting her go was palpable. I finally realized the reason: she was too much like Kelly. So, letting go–well, it has been messy. One home didn’t work out, another now looks promising.
In the meantime, I’ve allowed myself to see again how things are always interconnected.
Lucy
Thrown outside, found
in a tree – rescued.
Abandoned by death
taken in – rescued.
Still curious, innocent,
Still trying to learn
to be herself,
Explore, taste, hunt
Sleep on bed.
Chase off competitors
Somewhere deep inside
always trying
to convince herself
She’s safe
She’s OK
She’s loved.
Reflecting
“not enough”
I don’t know how to play,
to comfort the deep wounds
not of my making.
Shipped off again
looking for the perfect home
It doesn’t work.
Suddenly knowing
there is no perfect anything.
Just love, just trying,
and the tears fall.
After my last post, I realized that I’ve still been waking up with a sadness weighing down on me. Perhaps it’s from bearing witness to the confusion, anger, and fear that fills the news and our consciousness.
Trying to sort it out, I sat down to meditate. I found myself doing something different. I asked Jesus, “Were You ever sad? I know you were angry, I know you were scared..but sad?”
The answer came: “My Mother was sad.” And, I felt her.
She knew sadness.
How pointless it all can seem.
How powerless we can be to stop it.
“They know not what they do”
The nurturing Divine Mother, who understands her children only too well.
Destroyers of life, beauty,
too busy,
Blinded by things,
Grasping for power,
Fearing loss, of
not being enough.
“They know not what they do”
Let our hearts break open! With nothing left to fear and everything to love, may we rest in the mystery and wholeness of life. Until then, we’ll push away, condemn, claim it’s not us, create artificial cracks in the wholeness of life. Until then–
“We know not what we do”
What’s the difference between trust and faith? In talking with a friend recently, she referred to faith as the concept she connects with God. It got me thinking about something I’ve told myself for a long time.
Some background: I always thought I had a trust issue with God. I questioned if He’d be there for me, as I knew he was there for everyone else. Feeling alone as a child, I thought I’d too often prayed to God and didn’t get an answer. It was a story I knew well.
This morning in meditation however, I realized something different.
Faith: 1) Complete trust or confidence in someone or something;
2) a strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on a spiritual apprehension [understanding] rather than proof. (from Merri-Webster)
I do have faith that there is something bigger than me, a Divine Presence who created the Universe, Who is behind its magnificent unfolding. So often in my life I’ve experienced grace, help that came to me when I needed it, something that seemed a problem working out for the best…. So where does this lack of trust in God come from? What is it about?
Trust: a firm belief in the sincerity, reliability, skill & ability, and credibility of someone (from my Newfield Network training).
My “aha” moment: A child’s parents are like gods to them. Totally dependent, you accept much of what goes on as the truth about how the world works. Wouldn’t God treat you as your parents did (our Father who art in Heaven?) It hit me that my trust issue was never with God but with my parents. Growing up, I felt I wasn’t enough….I gained favor through my accomplishments not for who I was (or at least as I interpreted it).
I didn’t trust my parents to love me with all my flaws, with my thinking differently, with my being 
emotional (seen as weak), nor with having my own way in life. I didn’t trust them to support me the way I wanted/needed to be supported at that time. And, I confused them with God.
So even as my faith has grown stronger, there’s been this lingering notion of not trusting God to be there for me. This, in spite of all the ongoing evidence. Today, I know my parents did love me the best they knew how. I learned much from them. But they weren’t gods.
So understanding the distinction between trust and faith has been freeing for me.
It’s allowed me to let go of a story I’ve lived with very long time.
Grace in action. 
MOTHERS
birth mothers,
earth mothers
stepmothers
awkward roles assigned
archetypes embodied
stereotypes enacted
primal roots
patriarchy
tribal law
we carry bits & pieces
cluttering the present
with long forgotten fears
Maybe three years ago, Kelly decided she wanted to call me Mom. We agreed, but I had no idea what that would mean to me as time went on. That simple word turned out to make demands, stir fears I didn’t know I had, and trigger roles I didn’t know I would take on…
Nurturing Mother: As her disease progressed there were times she needed a nurturing mother, not a stepmother, not a friend. She wanted the “just hold me and make it all better” mother. The mother she needed when she was 3, 10 or 13 years old, but never had because of her birth mother’s illness. And worse, I couldn’t be that for her. I’m not a cuddler. I just learned how not to duck when a friend goes to kiss me. I can hug. But what I am wasn’t enough. I felt lacking in the deepest way. I’ve been working through my own sense of shame (I just figured out it is shame) that I wasn’t more in those times. It’s getting better.
Responsible/socializing Mother: And then there were those times I responded to “mom” by trying to socialize her (a little late in the game). She felt criticized, and she was. The unconditional love she needed was absent. On reflection what surfaced were primal fears of distant times when daughters who violated the tribal norms were stoned. Free spirits were not rewarded. It was dangerous. Mothers who failed were shamed.
Where did this deep compulsion, this tribal consciousness for conformity come from? My Mother’s version was “What will the neighbors think?”. How many generations has this fear been passed along, unconscious, under the guise of being a good mother? How did I not know?
Once seen I could shift and that surprised me as well. Awareness again brings freedom.
Mom: And then there were all the times when she was just my daughter, my heart open. 
It was clean, without old tapes. It was love. For these times, nothing much needs to be said. Actually, nothing much can be said. Those times just were. Love just is.
Life’s gifts: My time with Kelly was, and is, humbling. I saw how much I could give, but also how much I couldn’t. I was a doer. My caring could have a sharp edge. I’ve had to remind myself over and over, we’re all full of paradoxes and imperfections, and to not discount what I had to offer because of the things I couldn’t. I’ve had to learn to stop trying to fix me, so I could stop trying to fix everyone else. Self-Acceptance! Sounds so simple. I’m closer as a result of my time with Kelly: greater awareness and greater acceptance, even of what is unfinished….not bad.
I feel discombobulated. Grieving, yes. Fatigued after tracking bills, going to Doctors, organizing volumes of paper into files, yes. Helping my stepdaughter sell her house and move, yes. Looking over my husband’s shoulder to see how he was doing, yes. But it’s more, more than the long list of what happened.
It’s too many endings, no obvious beginnings, feeling lost in space. The unrest raising questions about life: why are we here, what’s the bigger picture? What does it mean to be alone and to see that possibility on the horizon. Are we here to surrender or to choose what we want? If you give up getting into heaven, what’s left? I don’t mean the polar opposite, but rather can you get excited about coming back to do all this again?
We are getting ready to scatter Kelly’s ashes next week. The spot is a park near Bowling Green, Ky called Phil Moore Park. Joseph’s cousin has been involved with the park since her son ran track around the perimeter. (he’s now taking his medical boards so it has been a while.) There is a tree we “donated” with Kelly’s name on it. Our tree died, Kelly’s is flourishing. The park has family connections and is the only place Joseph thought was a fit.
Both of us are coming to grip with all that transpired over the past four months, over the past year and a half, and even over her life. She passed May 12th. She would have been 55 on May 16th.
What keeps coming home to me is how complex a person’s life is. How many different lens you can see it through, and while looking through one, how you miss “the rest of the story.”
My lens are many. Much was triggered. I’ll be writing about my questions, my learning, at least I think I will. It’s a way to process, to come to peace with paradox and complexity.
Everything written will be just a point in time seen through a lens. Not the truth, not a lie…..just a story to make sense of experiences; writing to sort through the intertwining of lives.
A recent post on Improvised Life highlighted the work of Kate Conklin, a performance coac
h. She asks the question: What are the qualities that make a performance extraordinary? What are the things that happen that make both the performer and the audience feel like they’re flying? …like these aeralists from Cirque-du-Soleil.
Well the answer, she found out was not just in the desire but in the work that follows. Deep down, what do we care enough about, desire enough to, as Kate says, “Respond to that desire and do the work to support that response.”
It led me to wonder, how many of us really want extraordinary? extraordinary lives, work, relationships….
Hard and persistent work in service of what we want is not what most of us want to hear. We want easy answers, magic pills, miracles. It’s OK but chances are it won’t be enough for the Universe to deliver the result we want….and without a shift, we’ll settle for mediocrity, for less.
So, I sit pondering, “What do I want?” Want enough to do whatever it takes?
And if nothing comes, I wonder, what is that all about?
