Soul Whimsy

Somehow You Found Me Again

2011-12-20T00:23:00.000-08:00

My request is that You remain, steadfast and ever present, a priority in my mind and my heart. When I forget that You exist, that You, though incomprehensible to my intellect, are none the less a reality, I begin to falter. I lean on my own understanding. I forget to rest in the ease of your grace, the respite of redemption. I try to work things out for myself and through so much effort, I usually end up needing a do over. Steady me in your spirit, sweet Father. Stay me in your bosom, loving Mother. I am asking that You capture my mind, retrieve my attention, turn my vision back to You.

     What matters more than this? That I am Yours. That You walk along side me, with in me, as me.
That there is a purpose to Your creation. There is a plan, and I am a part of it. What else is there? Let me lose myself in Your plan. Let me live in acceptance of Your way, Your power, Your Story. I am a letter upon your page, a scribble in your tablet, You are the Author. Let me be written.
     And let me continue to ask: You gave me a task. Lord, I am a mother. I'm scared. A lot of the time, I'm afraid that the decisions I make, the anger I bear, the fear I walk with, will rub off on my two precious children. I'm afraid of society, and prejudices, and poverty, and I'm afraid to find love again. Sometimes I think I'm all blocked up inside with fear that any move I make will be the wrong one. If my confidence lies only in me, then I have no confidence at all. I am alone.
     Without You. Yes, weak. Without You. Afraid. Without You. Immature.
     I wonder if I can keep it up, juggling survival, motherhood, getting over the past, finding friends again, finding love again, finding purpose again. I panic because it's all up to me, we are poor because of me, we are struggling because of me, we are alone because of me. Chest pounding I am lost, I am done. And that's where You find me, in the closet of my worst fears, and you whisper something to me... something about peace, something about trusting, something about remembering.. to ... just breathe...
     And the girls are alright. We have a home, we have eaten, they are tucked away safe in bed, the christmas lights flicker on the tree, I can rest. You found me again. Thank You.

Have I lost my Eros?

2011-10-12T08:35:00.000-07:00

Have I lost my passion? Have I lost the easy inspiration that gave me my sense of something to say?

I can remember when I used to be able to get caught up in the drama of dating, of mating. How easy it was to collect muses. How I always seemed to have something relevant or tragic or beautiful to write about. I remember how easy it used to be to write about yearning for “his” touch, “his” smile, that sweep of hair on the nape of his neck. I would long for his presence, his opinion, his kiss.

At any given moment I could imagine my feathered fingers skimming the surface of his skin. I could imagine drawing his scent into my nostrils, filling my lungs with his essence, his being, his aura. I would lie in wait for him, a text, a phone call, or an email stating,

“I need you. I need your touch.”

All those “hims” those many men that pricked my soul, awakened my deadening conscious, slapped me around with the fullness of themselves. Now today, untouched and uninspired, I am suddenly wondering if it was never really the men that I truly loved but that aching, burning desire to possess what could not be possessed. That fire in my belly to attain that which I could not attain. That longing to have something to write about.

It was the yearning that brought me to life, not the object. It was the burning, the itch, that desperate emptiness that scratched beneath the surface of my reality begging for a drop of water. It was the feeling of being that proverbial rich man in hell crying,

“Abram, please send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame!”

It was that energy, the stuff of tortured love songs, that I could draw from in order to pen my heart upon paper, emote my language into text. To always have that torment was to completely feel the craving of that un-met desire sticking like glue to my ribs. My own unique brand of anorexia.

Oh the muses I have journeyed with in the past, the many Pisces’ who have bowled me over with their wisdom, their compassion, their deep energetic sexuality. And I, knowing that Pisces flee from being penned down, have purposely tried to cage a few. I have made an attempt at taming the dragon, capturing the Wapiti, netting the eagle, of course, to no avail. But oh the poems I have written in my anguish.

And what about that hungry Virgo, his innocence reflected in my eyes, his passion burning with just a touch of my hand. I wrote sonnets to his beauty, to his virile sexual prowess. I dreamed of the late night visits in the stillness of my bedroom, his body slowly devouring mine in the heat of our blazing copulation.

But who was I to continue in those wanton ways? I was a fraud, knowing that it was never love that I was seeking, Knowing that I just needed the drama to fill my pages, blank and white, with the words that would create an illusion of a life.

Have I now lost my passion? Have I lost my reason to write? Do I have anything more to say? I’m done seeking, I’m done longing. I’ve found myself and it seems like it’s enough.

Perhaps I will grow a second nature, and use a different language. Perhaps my energy will now attract a different kind of muse. Maturity has set in, a peace has quieted my soul and my days are more solid, more grounded. I am not distracted by the urgent energy of Eros, that false alarm begging me to consider the possibility of a heated flirtation, a purposed love affair, the long and dramatic beginning to another poem. I am, instead, settled. I’m ready for a strange and new exploration of sentiments and emotions in which I, instead of some Gaston-like stud, am the hero of my own story. Perhaps there is a new chapter

Abrade: to Remove Outer Layer

2011-08-30T22:01:00.000-07:00

Sudden urges overtake me. Crying. Sometimes tears form in my chest, my body convulses, a wail escapes the rib caged hollow of what I think of as my heart. From miles of distance deep with in me I hear a sob. It stops me. My face is wet. I don't know what is happening.

Out walking tonight for exercise, breathing paced, hips aligned, arms swinging rhythmically, strong, controlled. Focusing on the music from my ipod, I wasn't noticing my surroundings. Just walking, fast, hard. Then as I went around a bend in the road I caught a glimpse of the lake. A torrential blue dazzled me for a moment. Then the lake seemed to be coming alive. Sudden waves were bouncing up against the shore line. Trees began to sway in the wind, bending and bowing from their rooted origins, branches cracking, leaves hissing off into tumbling cartwheels. The grass whisking and whispering below as puddles formed and turned its earth into mud.
I was suddenly caught in the rain, surrounded by the turbulence of nature, safe in the camouflage of an abrupt storm. I was alone. Did my knees give out below me? Was I weeping in the grass on the side of the road? Surrounded by rumbling thunder the answering bellows of my own despondent sobbing were small, meaningless, solitary.

There is no reason for an eruption like this. There is no justification. I have no right.. no right... to give in to these suddens whims of my emotional being.
And yet... I am undone. My heart is broken.
It's broken for the life I thought I was going to have. It's broken for the fear I feel in a constant stream of waking moments, restless upon torn up sheets at three o-clock in the morning. Broken because I am unsure of myself, broken because I can't rely on choices I'd made in the past, broken for myriad reasons that I don't even know of yet and broken because if I stop to try and figure it all out, I may never get up again.
It's broken because change... the kind of change that really means anything .. hurts.

I had a dream that I was in prison and the prison guard was gripping me by my innards and scraping my skin away from my skeleton. I wailed out in pain. Then he said, "You asked for this. You asked to have your old life scraped away." Then my cries turned to tears of shame that I was still so desperate in my clinging to what I have always known, what I have always been. The prison guard who once had looked like a monster, now appeared to be an angel. Still scraping away the very flesh from my body, but doing it out of love.

I caught a glimpse of the blue fresh freedom of that lake dancing in the storm and it was my collision with some deep yearning in my soul. "I want to be out there. I want to be done."
But my own footsteps betray. I am walking toward a life that feels like a prison cell. I can't be let go until the scraping is done.

Brother, Sister, you are ME.

2011-08-25T21:17:00.000-07:00

As long as I still hold a person or a group of people in contempt, as long as I have negative judgements against someone.. anyone.. that person or group of people will remain a steadfast placement in my life. In order to judge someone I must give my attention to them. In order to hold them in contempt, I must continually give them my attention over extended periods of time. I have to take the time to think about who they are, what they've done, why I dislike them, why my judgements are justified, and I need to keep thinking about that so I can continue to justify my stance against them.
Even if I don't see that person, even if I don't associate with that group anymore, they are still a part of my psyche, a part of my existence everyday as long as I am in judgement of them.

This is a non-productive way to live because when I give my attention to that which I think I must hate, I am giving my power away as well. Where my attention goes, my power flows.

But to notice who I have negative judgements against can also be a very helpful tool. I am realizing that the things that bother me the most about other people are the things that are the most intense problems I have with in myself. The people I give my attention to are the people who most closely match myself. The people that I have strong emotional reactions to are the people who are most like me.

So I'm starting to see that there are people, or groups of people who will continue to be a huge part of my life until I no longer have strong emotional judgements against them. And the only way to discontinue those judgements is to recognize that, in truth, I'm only seeing a problem with them because I really have a problem with me. The people that I am choosing to judge are really a gift to me in that they are helping me to see what I really am. They are helping me to recognize what I really need to work on with in myself.

Here is how I understand the real truth behind that famous saying:

2	For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. Mk. 4.24

This of course comes after the verse, "Judge not, lest ye be judged."
Which so many people mistakenly think is a commandment from Jesus urging us to avoid discernment. Non-emotional awareness of what is right or wrong is a completely different thing from negative judgement of another person. But I don't think these words attributed to Jesus are a command.
Instead they are a statement of a Universal Truth. "What you judge in another is only what you ARE in yourself."

I don't like wasting my attention in judgements against others. I don't like that heart clinching feeling of hatred toward another person. I don't like feeling that I am separate from other people. When I use my contempt against others to try to feel superior, it ends up making me angry, tired, grouchy, and unhappy. When I buy into the notion that someones behavior or attitude or words can negatively affect me, I feel powerless and with out control. I judge them and hate them and separate myself from them because I believe that somehow they have more power than I do. I must believe that because I'm giving them the ability to affect my happiness, my peace, my joy. I don't like wasting my life in that lie. I don't like living in that illusion.

I don't want to hate others. I don't want to negatively judge others but I do want to have clear discernment about my own faults, my own issues, my own problems. So I continue to have relationships with other people and allow myself to sink down into the unfoldment of the drama of human life, but I do so grounded in grace. I try to relate to others and respond to others through the filter of forgiveness.

Forgiveness: I only see in you what I AM. If I see sickness in you... then please pardon me for being sick. If I see pride in you... then please pardon me for my pride. If I see sin in you... then please pardon me for being sinful. If I see hatefulness in you... then please pardon me for being hateful. If I see greed and selfishness in you... then please pardon me for being greedy and selfish. If I see haughtiness, vanity, sneakiness, and deceit; If I hate you for gossiping, immaturity, and lies; If I think you're slothful, lazy, and undeserving of respect...
Then please, please, pardon me for my haughtiness, vanity, sneakiness, deceit, gossiping, immaturity, and lies. Please pardon my laziness, slothfulness, and lack of worth. I am sorry and in need of grace. I am sorry and in need of hope. I am sorry and in need of love.
So I extend grace to you, and hope, and love. What I want for me, I desire for you also. You are my brother, you are my sister, you are me.

I need a shorter MIssion Statement... : )

2011-08-24T08:54:00.000-07:00

"Je n'ai fait cette lettre - ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte"
Blaise Pascal

"I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had time to make it shorter."

I walk a quarter of a mile to and from my classes and my apartment each morning through the bike trails at Diamond Point Park. On my way to class my mind is full of dreams I'd had the night before or memories of past relationships and experiences, on my way home from class my mind is dancing, alive, alight, thinking new thoughts never before thunk by me, inspired by professor's lectures, text books, slide presentations. I want to capture it all. I want to hold on to it all.

Being intellectually stimulated is an utter thrill. I feel as though I'd been wandering around in the desert for years and now have finally found an ocean of clear, pristine, spring water. I'm excited. I'm happy to be a thinking creature again. The thoughts flow through me and I want to write them all down in my passionate response to the path I am now being exposed to. Then I sit at my computer screen and none of it seems relevant except that I am joyful, I am grateful.

I want to hone my craft for writing. I want to be able to succinctly capture whole fields of ideas in just a few focused phrases, to take a shapshot of a strain of thought and stamp it into tangible form with one or two well formed sentences, punctuation perfectly placed. I now see writing as a craft that I can sharpen, that I can practice, that I can get better at. That's what I'm doing here.

My writing is a metophor for my journey. I want it to be more focused, more purposed, more useful, more succinct. If there is no other reason for me to be on this earth today, let it be that I have made an indellible impact on my side of the Universe. Let me make a productive impression on humanity. Somehow.

That's why I'm here.

To try... or not to Try... that is the question..

2011-08-22T19:31:00.000-07:00

Did you know that in the great Handbook of Life, there is no rule written that reads, "You are never supposed to fail."
When Moses found those two cement slabs hidden behind the burning bush, with ten edicts for the ideal in human behavior written by the almighty hand of God Himself, there was no commandment that said..

"Thou Shalt Not Fail!"

Why are we so afraid of this notion of failure? Why do we look at it as though it's the worst thing that could possibly happen? Or... am I the only one who had adopted the attitude that I must do anything at any cost to avoid the shame of failure.

The thought of failure was so crushing to me that I kept struggling along in a life that was causing me consternation and frustration, rather than admit that maybe, just maybe, it wasn't working. Maybe I had made some decisions along the way that weren't leading to the success that I had hoped for. Why did I hold on so stubbornly to my old choices for so long with bleeding nails and shrinking pride?

What a relief it was to finally let go, to realize that underneath that burning bush were the ashes of redemption and that failing is a unique characteristic that only belongs to those who actually try.

I tried. I had tried. That in itself should be worth celebrating. I am a person who tries.

I found myself in the rubble of a broken life. I mourned the losses and agonized over the dashed expectations. I had to look at myself in honesty, own up to the mistakes I had made, create a new assessment of where I felt I wanted to be, and how I would get there now. Then I had to some how pick myself back up again.

It took months for me to go through that process.

Dr. Wayne Dyer states, "You can never solve a problem with the same mind that created the problem."

I needed to Change My Mind. I needed to Find A New Way of Thinking. I needed to recreate my relationship with reality. I told myself that no matter what happened, I wasn't going to make one more move, one more decision until I could hear the voice of my Soul Purpose. I told myself that I wasn't going to move in any direction until I reconnected with my Spiritual Source. So I cried a lot, wrote a lot, slept a lot, looked at myself in the mirror and spoke to Me a lot, I prayed a whole whole lot.. I found meditation again, I slowly found forgiveness again, I began to open up to a deep willingness that had me in a state of surrender.

I found myself saying, "What ever it is, life, that you have in store for me, just know that I am ready to participate."

I finally realized that my purpose was all about the willingness to be a part of this life. I only needed to be here, be present, be right now. I no longer needed to know the answers for tomorrow. I began to feel things with my heart, my gut, my intuition. I started to move in the direction that made me "feel" the most expansive, instead of doing things that kept me comfortable. I started moving in directions that were based upon a deep inner yearning to be in union with God rather than forcing movements based upon an outer intellectual idea of what I should do or shouldn't do. I started listening to the quiet voice of my soul, rather than the loud clatter of what other people said. I started paying more attention to how my heart felt rather than what I thought other people were thinking about me.

I found strength that I'd never known before. I was strong enough to be honest with myself, with others. I found courage. I was brave enough to be vulnerable with myself, with others. I found grace. I was humble enough to forgive myself, forgive others.

And then, finally there was a question, "What Next?"

My "What Next" landed me back in college. For all of the fear and intimidation I agonized over at returning to college so late in my life, this is also the only choice that really feels right.

I have snatched my daughters and myself away from the life in the cities, close to family and friends that we were comfortable with, and we have moved to the frosty northern newness of Bemidji, Minnesota. We are starting over from scratch basically. A new adventure. Another try....

A life in Shambles.

2011-08-20T13:01:00.000-07:00

A month ago I was sitting in the shambles of what I remembered as "my life." My business had crumbled, my savings were dwindled, the rent on my apartment had not been paid, the third job interview I'd gone on had come to nothing, my daughters were afraid to ask any questions about our future anymore because my answers were now coming out in sqeaky tears of "I don't know, girls. I honestly don't know."

It isn't that I was shocked. I knew the day would come. I was running on empty even from the very start of my career. I can remember on my very first day of classes at the Mpls School of Massage and Bodywork the instructor said, "You need to really ask yourself if this career is for you. It means long lonely hour long stints in a cramped studio where you don't get to talk and you have to give all of your attention to the person on your table. What are their needs? What do they want? The work of massage is a selfless business and you really need to be a giver."
My first thought was, "Shit. I'm in the wroooooonggg field." I'm a communicator and I've learned over the years that it is very important to me that my voice be heard. Hah! I ignored my voice at that time and threw myself into school and after graduation, I went head long into different businesses, growing my skills as a massage therapist, ignoring the gnawing awareness that I was not happy.
When I began my own massage business I cared more about profits and attention than I did about ethics or my own soul. I fell asleep, and zombie like, I made all the motions of growing my business and spending the money. But lost all sight of my genuine self.

Then one day after five years of making a good living, I woke up. I was miserable. I was lonely. I was a liar. I hated my life. I broke down with my eyes wide open and lost everything. I couldn't make one more move, couldn't take one more client, couldn't make one more decision that led to my holding on to a life that I simply did not want anymore. I dropped out. Of Life. Dropped out.

I lost my chic two room office in Minneapolis. I lost my clients. I lost my reputation in the circles of colleagues that I networked with. Then after a few months of doing nothing, or failing at any attempt at something, I began to lose other things, my cell service, my cable. I sold all my good furniture. I was losing my apartment, my two beautiful little shit-zus, and the respect of my daughters.
My face was tear streaked when I went down on my knees in my closet and, broken-hearted, wailed,

"God. I failed. I'm a failure!"

God said, "I know."

Flight Interrupted, Land Here!

2011-08-20T07:47:00.000-07:00

If it were up to me I should like to remain in the skies, gazing at the stars, in fellowship with the eagles, resting on the clouds. I would float through life high above all the devastating annoyances of being a human. I would never feel the aching pain of working my fingers to the bone, scraping for pennies that are spent before they are earned. I would never burn with the humiliating fire of rejection, or dashed expectations, or never have cravings go un answered.
If it were up to me I should like to get back to my Spirit Roots and STAY THERE! Hah.
But wise voices visit me in my dreams and they tell me, "You, my love. You asked for this! You asked for human experience."
Sometimes I forget why.
And so, here I am. Not floating along on a spiritual high in the sky, but plodding, ox like through fields of effort, trying to let go of past mistakes, carrying a heavy heart broken by dissapointment in myself, and starting over, once again starting over.
The wisdom speakers tell me that Forgiveness is the only way to move on from the past. And I wonder if maybe my life, this life-time, is just a long, drawn out study in redemption. Forgive.... starting with myself first.