-- a journey into awareness
I was held…
caring wishes, cards
a lunch
a garden solar lantern
expressions of appreciation
Our oneness, my belonging
May I remember
reach out, connect
It’s ok to be awkward
OK to be me
It’s not OK to stay separate out of
fear and shame.
Strong back, open heart
Welcome my friends,
those I know and
those to come
Welcome
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Picture from Tiffany Shlain, Declaration of Interdependence
“Man, sometimes it takes a long time to sound like yourself.“ ~Miles Davis
When we start, we make sounds but we’re surrounded by others who are also making sounds. We listen. They tell us how to play, tell us what we should sound like. They argue among themselves about the right way to play. So we play. If we can, we play with others. Some of us find ourselves playing in a jazz group, others in a symphony, others in an alley behind where we live, and still others play alone in the shelter of the woods.
Overtime we begin to notice what feels natural. Our music starts flowing through us. The notes start coming from deeper place, somewhere inside. And we begin to appreciate that this is what we’re here to play. It’s our music. We appreciate other’s music but we don’t try to play like them. And we don’t tell them to play like us.
We develop confidence, not because others approve or because they change but because we know it is our music to play regardless of results. This is faith.
“Only in “the cave of the heart,” as the mystics are fond of calling it—does a person come in contact with his or her own direct knowingness. And only out of this direct knowingness is sovereignty born, one’s own inner authority.” —Cynthia Bourgeault
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It’s hard to hear the news and not go down the rabbit hole of things you don’t agree with, are fearful of, or get angry at. What you focus on you tend to create and attract more of. Focusing on what you don’t want only gives it power.
So, I’ve been asking myself what do I want for the world. Here it is:
Intention for the World
There is only one God, one Life flowing through each of us, through every animal, bird, tree, mountain, the ocean, sky, the Earth, the Universe.
We and our leaders have a reverence for all life.
Everyone’s personal freedom is honored.
We find ways to live with diversity, knowing it is an expression of our love for who we are, the source of creativity, and the way we each express our purpose here on earth.
Love is our motivator. We seek wisdom not just knowledge.
We understand we are all connected, interdependent and seek to understand the nature and laws of the Universe. We collaborate.
We actively support the health and well-being of everyone, all ages.
We find creative ways to help all people find their own power, purpose and agency.
Everyone has healthy food, clean water and air, clothing and shelter.
We measure our success by the level of happiness, peace and joy we embody and share with others.
This is my intention. I focus on it every morning. And then ask the Universe, “What is mine to do?” What is yours?
It’s the end of August
Official month of
“It’s ok to say you are happy”
I’m not a “Debbie Downer”
or, in my case, a
Barbie Bummer
I stand for the right
To be happy in the midst
Of world chaos
I watch the sky
Pet animals
Smile at people I don’t know
Paying attention
I read headlines but
I stay with facts
Drama helps no one
Being scared and worrying
Changes nothing
Thoughts become things
What we believe we become
Where we focus we follow
All life is precious
I find beauty and
good everywhere
Peace is a choice
I ask and I’m guided
And, I believe Love will Prevail
The wind whipped around and through
The tree limbs followed, wildly dancing
Swaying, twisting, bowing
I felt Thunder in my bones
“Danger, go inside”
But in awe I couldn’t leave
Powerful, wild, alive
My heart was drawn in
Connected to this dance of life
This storm was trying to tell me something. In the chaos and tragedy going on these days, what do I see? What does my heart connect to? Is there always a choice between fear/anger and something more? Is there always beauty in the chaos?
I’m being told to move away from either/or, right/wrong, good/evil. Can I hold it all?
The heavy rains came
Even the thorned Barberry
Bowed down under the weight
Gray days hovered
Everything heavy
Then this morning
in the soaked grass
The bare dandelions
seeds washed away
became Starbursts
These times are hard. After Friday’s storm, the Roofer came and checked. He said the fallen tree limb hadn’t damaged the roof.
This morning City Workers filled the potholes in front of my drive.
And today once again, mothers are mourning their dead children and
communities the loss of their cherished members.
The routine of life cut open by the horror of killing, rooted in prejudice, racism, and the acts of the wounded who are acting out their trauma and illness on others.
I pray to experience what the mind cannot define or comprehend; the love of God that can hold all of this.
I pray that I remember we are all connected, that there is no “other” unless I close may heart.
I strive to avoid language and words that create the illusion of separation: e.g., they, whites, blacks, liberals, conservatives…. Labels that lump people into faceless boxes that are too easy to dismiss and belittle.
I strive to love myself and to learn what it means to love others: starting with accepting and seeing the person as they are and who they are. “And may that love move me to co-create justice and well-being for all.” bell hooks
Like a rusty hinge
the news these days grates
It needs an oil of acceptance
mixed with an ounce of heart
seeing possibilities
instead of apocalypse.
This poem/prayer came to me in my meditation after a struggle with that part of me that always wants to get it right, the “I’m supposed to be better than this…” part of me. Each line speaks to me though they aren’t words I would have chosen.
Receive!
Back strong.
Heart open.
No begging.
No collapsing in.
Grace flows.
Just because.
You are His.
I say it when I start to forget how blessed I am. I say it when I remember my intention to keep my heart open to Divine guidance and then to actually follow it. I say it when I feel myself start to physically slump, caving in on myself. I say it when the old “I’m not good enough” belief vies for my attention.
I share this as a reminder. We always get what we need often in surprising forms.
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
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.