Monday – Funday

Good morning. One of the favorite parts of this time of year for me, has nothing really to do with twinkly lights, and sweets, and celebrations (although all of these things are great), but more so, it is a time of deep reflection for me. It’s the end of a year. My birthday falls in this month. Last night I spent some time going over my journals of the last two years. This really helps me to pinpoint things that I want to keep investing in, and also, circumstances and habits that I want to change in the new year. It helps me to get clear on my goals and my visions for the new year. This time of year is the perfect time for reflection, gratitude, and renewal. I hope that you can find some quiet space in your calendar this month, to do the same. The winter solstice is on the 21st, which in the northern hemisphere is the darkest day of the year, but after that day, the light just keeps increasing and increasing and increasing throughout the beginning of the year. The winter solstice might just be the perfect day to decide where you want to pour your light and energy on this year, and what you are ready to lay to rest in the shadows of what is now in the past.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Soul Sunday

**** Happy Birthday, BEB. I love you with all of my heart.

Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. Sometimes I sit and I try to wordle my words into a poem of my own, and sometimes I try to learn about new poets and then read and share some of their offerings. A British poet, named Benjamin Zephaniah passed away this month of a brain tumor at the age of 65. He was quite famous in the United Kingdom and he wrote poems for adults and children alike. I only learned about him because someone on X, posted a long, thoughtful letter which he had written back to her. This poster of the letter (Jess Green, @jessgreenpoet) enjoyed writing to her favorite authors, when she was a child, and she said that he was one of the few writers that ever wrote back. This is the letter that he wrote back to her:

I feel like I know Benjamin from just reading this letter, don’t you? I still have a hard time believing that Artificial Intelligence will be able to mimic “the voice”, of a heartfelt, genuine, authentic letter. Below is one of Benjamin Zephaniah’s poems. This short, direct poem struck me as a reminder of how much has changed since I was a child. We can argue that some of the changes that have happened over the years in society are puzzling, and questionable, but many, many of these changes have been good, and productive, and have moved the world forward. To change the world, we must change minds.

Who’s Who

I used to think nurses
Were women,
I used to think police
Were men,
I used to think poets
Were boring,
Until I became one of them.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Saturday’s Solicitudes

I have a lot going on today so my mind is like a whirligig (this is a weird, fancy word for a pinwheel). When I come to the blog on a day like this, I go to my photos and I find inspirations which I have found on other days, that have struck me as funny or poignant. Today, I am leaning on the funny side.

I really do have an expressive face. My face does not know how to do “the poker.”

Ugh, the holidays really brings out the crowds, don’t they? Kevin Kelly’s book, which I wrote about on Thursday, says this, too: “Cultivate 12 people who love you because they are worth more than 12 million who like you.” On the 12 days of Christmas (December 25th through January 5th), write one person’s name who loves you on each day, and think about how much that you love them, as well (this can include people who have passed on – these people deeply live on, in our hearts because of the love that we have shared with them). I believe one or more of these 12 can be our pets, as well. Dogs do the act of love better than almost any of us, in my mind. You are welcome to include me on one of those days if you like, because I do love you. Coming to read my blog is an act of love which I very deeply appreciate. As I also wrote about earlier this week, being “seen” is perhaps the biggest act of love that we can give to anyone. And when you read my blog, you make me feel seen. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Another big hint for this “12 Days of Christmas/12 People Who Love Me” activity: Add yourself to one of those days. If you don’t love yourself, ask yourself, why? How could you not love yourself??? No one has lived it all with you, and stuck by your side more than yourself, ever. Why are you not every bit as lovable, and deserving love, than anybody else on your list? This is a really good time of year to ponder, how can you better show love to yourself, and to those 11 others in the upcoming year. Could we pick each of the 12 months to devoting one month of the year to sending daily loving thoughts and prayers and immense feelings of gratitude, especially to one of our 12 people, in each of the 12 months of 2024? Wouldn’t that feel good? Get your calendars out and write a name next to each month. Fill your year with gratitude and love.

Enjoy the rest of your day, friends. See you tomorrow!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Friday Fire

On Thanksgiving evening, a few friends and I were texting and it turns out that we were all doing the same thing in different places, from all of the way up in Massachusetts, down to Virginia, and finally all the way down to here in Florida. We were all outside, sitting around fires with our families and we sent each other pictures of our families, with everyone’s faces glowing in the beautiful, flickering firelight. I love beautiful, intriguing fires. I am a Sagittarius, which is a fire sign. My husband is a fire sign. Five out of six of our immediate family members are fire signs. (Yes, things can get really loud and bold and igniting at our house, really quick. I do sometimes feel sorry for our poor little less combustible Cancer son, who does his best to put the fires out.)

So with firelight in mind, my two favorites for Favorite Things Friday on the blog, involve fire. My husband reads the paper version of the Wall Street Journal every day, so he decided he would make use of the paper, by making newspaper briquettes to burn in fires. So every once in a while he sits with a pile of newspapers and a bucket of water and he uses his heavy steel newspaper briquette maker/newspaper log maker, to make bricks/logs to help fuel our mini-bonfires. You can find different models of these ” newspaper brick makers” on Amazon. Ours is made by a company called “Bits and Pieces.” To get the fire started, I like to use Maxwell’s Mystic Matches. These matches are admittedly a bit of a splurge. They are wide, thick sticks of Palo Santo wood that when struck, make an enormous, immediate flame. I love the smell of the Palo Santo as it burns. To start the fire with flames from these matches, makes the fire seem extra special and almost “sacred” in a way.

I hope that you enjoy a warm, passionate weekend, with the homefires burning! Happy Friday! Have a great weekend! See you tomorrow, fireflies!!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Wired Wisely

So this morning I have some appointments, and so I felt some angst about figuring out what I would write about in the blog today. (I am typically good about limiting my commitments in my mornings because I like to have my mornings devoted to leisurely reading and writing and thinking, but sometimes I have no choice.) Anyway, my email today from the Daily Inspiration included this quote:

Kevin Kelly is the editor of Wired magazine. Oh boy, I love a quote like the above that really makes me take some time to ponder it. So immediately after reading the quote, I felt the need to learn more about Kevin Kelly. I found out that he wrote a book in May called “Excellent Advice For Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier. (Kevin Kelly is 71 years old.) So of course, I’ve already downloaded this book to my Kindle as an early Christmas present to myself (When I looked at excerpts from Kevin Kelly’s X page, this book is clearly right up my alley!) I take the above quote to mean that we enjoy our passions for ourselves, but they become our purpose when we make our passions our gift to the world.

Here’s another quote from the book:

My husband and I have often discussed why it is that many famous bands and singers seem to have their “heyday” of amazing songs, and then they kind of stop creating really great new stuff, and they rely on their old standbys to retread again and again at their concerts. Is it possible that these rich and famous people may have lost their hunger? How do you stay hungry if you have reached a certain level of security and fame? I love the idea of “Stay hungry.” It is another one of those “simple, but not easy” edicts of life.

And here are a few of my other favorites to share, before I go hop into the shower:

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

See

“1. Being a great listener isn’t genetic and it isn’t magic. It’s a skill set that can be taught, learned and practiced.

2. Don’t be “that guy” at the bar. Ask questions.

3. Beware of stacking…where you take one thing you know about a person and stack up all the other things you assume about them underneath.

4. Treat attention as an on/off switch, not a dimmer. All or nothing.” – from Kelly Corrigan’s takeaways from a conversation that she had with author, David Brooks whose latest book is How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

So, I read this synopsis this morning in my email, and so I have now added another book to my long queue of must-reads. But in the meantime, my curiosity got to the best of me and I read a whole other manuscript of an interview with David Brooks about his latest book.

David Brooks claims to have written this book because he is concerned of the epidemic of loneliness and despair and separateness that many various statistics and anecdotes point to, in our society today. He claims that we must learn to look at each other with open minds and open hearts, and to be vulnerable enough to share our own open minds and open hearts with others. Below is one of David Brooks favorite quotes that inspired David himself to become more emotionally available:

“In the middle of life, I learned that if I seal myself off from the pain of living and from the emotions of living, I’m sealing myself off from the holy sources of life itself.” – Frederick Buechner

And so David says this:

“I realized along the way that to see others well, you have to be open-hearted. You have to open up your heart to other people.”

The interviewer asked David Brooks why paying attention, which seems like such a simple act, is actually a really profound moral and creative act?

Brooks answered that there is almost nothing better you can give to a person than the gift of just being seen, without judgment or expectations. He said that a friend had an a-ha moment when David Brooks was trying to explain this concept. His friend said this:

“That’s what we do with our grandkids. We just behold them.”

Wow. That’s beautiful. What if we just “beheld” people? What if we really did utilize the “namaste” idea that “The Spirit in me beholds the Spirit in you” with everyone we came in contact with today? I have a sneaking suspicion that if the majority of us did this on a regular basis, the world would be uplifted in ways we never could have imagined.

David Brooks also said this in the interview: “We like friends who are linger-able. People you just want to linger with.” Isn’t this the truth? Aren’t there certain friends and family members that time just flies by with, and you sometimes wish that it would never end? I have certain friends whom I have lunch dates with, that I learned not to schedule anything else for later in the afternoon, because I am so excited to linger with these “linger-able” people as long as possible. I think that I might spend some time today on what traits makes certain people so “linger-able.” And I will spend some time in gratitude for the “linger-able” people in my life who find me to be “linger-able”, too.

What are the different practices of diminishers and illuminators? – Another question asked of David Brooks by the interviewer, Cherie Harder of The Trinity Forum.

“. . . diminishers, first, they don’t ask. So if you’re not a question-asker, you’re probably a diminisher. Secondly, they stereotype, and so they have labels. And thirdly, they do a thing called stacking. And stacking is when, if you learn one fact about a person, you make a whole series of assumptions that you think must also be true of that person.”

Wow. I know that I have sometimes been guilty of being a diminisher and making snap “stacked up” opinions of people. I also know that people have “stacked up” me. I find it interesting and amusing when people are shocked to find out that I am a deep thinker/writer, or that I love hiking, or that I have three sloppy dogs, because on the outside I’m also a stay-at-home spouse of a banker, who likes pretty clothes and accessories, and enjoys riding around town with my convertible top down. So they have already pigeon-holed me into a certain stereotype. To add to this point, the most right-wing leaning, conservative in their politics person whom I have ever met, lives in California, gardens her own vegetables (and she’s been a vegan longer than anyone I know), is a tech expert, shaves her head, does not wear make-up and wears the same t-shirt/jeans combination “uniform” every day of her life. And she’s not a lesbian or a transgender person (even though she has been confused to be these labels many times). She’s in her sixties and she has been married to her husband for decades. Hmmm. Categorizing and pigeonholing people sometimes makes navigating our lives and our experiences easier and more streamlined, but wow, do we miss a lot, when we smugly assume that our assumptions are the unquestionable truth. If we treat each person as an intriguing world unto themselves to explore and to get to know, we will never be bored.

Number 4. on the list above is a big “ouch”, isn’t it? As a mother of four, I have often prided myself on my multi-tasking abilities. “I’ll listen to you while I’m doing the dishes, or folding the laundry, or secretly thinking about my grocery list in my head. In fact, I’ll listen to you as I’m doing all of these tasks at once.” I need to remove the “dimmer” option on my listening switch. It’s not helpful for any of my relationships.

I’m going to end this post with some poignant quotes David Brooks uses to remind people who are in the throes of depression, that they are still very much needed in this world:

“Life has not stopped expecting things of you.” – Viktor Frankl (Viktor Frankl was a Holocaust survivor. If you are still here, there is a reason for you to be here. Make it your purpose in life to find that reason, and to be it.)

“Without your wound, where would your power be? Your low voice trembles into the hearts of men because of the wounds you carry. In love’s service, only wounded soldiers can serve.” – Thorton Wilder

If you are in pain, if nothing else, try to use that pain for love’s service. You know pain intimately, so another sufferer will feel “seen” by your full attention and understanding, more than from anyone else. Your pain will not be for nothing, and perhaps it will be alchemized into another molecule of deep, authentic love that our world sorely needs.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Tuesday’s Tidbits

+ I saw this on-line. It’s a good poem. I didn’t want to wait to share it on Soul Sunday, so here it is to enjoy.

+ Last month I read about the concept of “logos”. Many of the ancient philosophers believed that “logos” was an all-powerful force that ruled the Universe. The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday gives the following analogy to explain “logos” : “We are like a dog leashed to a moving cart. The direction of the cart will determine where we go. Depending on the length of the leash, we also have a fair amount of room to explore and determine the pace, but ultimately what each of us must choose is whether we will go willingly or be painfully dragged. Which will it be? Cheerful acceptance? Or ignorant refusal?”

Interestingly, I read an article over the weekend by Rabbi Rami Shapiro who talks about a similar concept which he learned in rabbinical school. The teaching was from an ancient sage called Akiva and it goes like this: “Everything is foreseen, yet freedom of choice is given.” Rami Shapiro says that this means that we make our own choices in our individual lives, but the Universe/God/Lifeforce already knows in advance what our choices will be, and thus also, how the outcomes and consequences of these choices turn out for us.

What do you think? Do we have complete free will in our lives? Is anything or everything about life preordained? Is fate already completely set, and are we just puppets going through the motions?

These are the types of questions that plague my mind when I would probably be better off being more focused and concerned about writing out my Christmas chore list, and then doing said chores. But I think that God knows this about me and my messy mind already . . . .

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Monday – Funday

Our youngest son was here at our house yesterday, helping us to put up Christmas decorations and to watch some football with his Dad. I asked him what he thought about yesterday’s blog.

“It was great,” he said.

“What did you think about the poem?” I asked.

“Mom, I didn’t read the poem. I consider you to be like a version of SparkNotes,” he responded.

That gave me a giggle, and then I started thinking to myself, wouldn’t that be a wonderful pseudonym to write under: “Spark Notes.” ” Sparky Notes.” “S. Park Notes”

In other news, I mentioned that I read a lot this weekend. An amazing artist and painter, Paul Lewin, was interviewed in Spirituality & Health magazine, and he was asked this question:

“What would you tell readers who are interested in making art but just don’t know where to begin?”

His answer: “I would suggest starting with something simple and enjoyable, something that is free from the pressure of needing it to turn out “good.” Learning to enjoy the process is one of the most crucial aspects of living a creative life.

When I was growing up, the concept of having hobbies was much more popular, something that you did for pure self-enjoyment either by yourself or with friends for a fun time. Nowadays it feels like there is a constant pressure to make everything “good” enough to post on social media. I couldn’t imagine having such high expectations for my art during my early years of creating art.”

The author Matt Haig talks about his when he came back to playing the piano after years of staying away from it, because he felt that he would never be a good enough pianist to become famous. He writes this:

” . . . I have access to the ability to play music, and enjoy playing music and that is enough. The joy of the music is in the music. The playing of it. The listening to it. And it is a joy with a wide open door, welcoming all.”

I have recently started taking art classes after a long hiatus of doing any type of visual art. It was something that I dabbled in more when I was younger, but then I became a mother of four and that’s when I put my focus more on my children’s art and their creative abilities. (and this is not something that I say with pride. If you are a young mother or young father, keep up with your own creative pursuits and interests, as well as you can, despite your busy schedules. It is honestly not fair to yourself, nor to your family, to “lose yourself” in them and their pursuits.) I honestly started taking the painting class that I take now, out of curiosity and for the excitement of lighting up my creative spark. And I love the class. But I have noticed that there sometimes is an air of “I must achieve” in the classroom. Comparison of end-products happens. People discuss their art backgrounds, and art degrees, and level of competency, and ability to sell paintings, and making “framable” works, and I’m not immune to this underlying feeling of competition, and also insecure feelings of inadequacy. Interestingly, it is the days that I go to art class, feeling just the vital need to get “lost” a little bit in a creative pursuit, with no thought as to the outcome, and no notice of the distractions outside of me, that I often produce my best work. And the end-product doesn’t even matter at that point. Usually I just smile down at my painting, and it smiles back at me and it seems to say, “Yep, you enjoyed the process of getting lost in making me, didn’t you? Wasn’t it fun? Wasn’t it magical? Isn’t life just grand?”

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Soul Sunday

Good morning. Welcome to Poetry day on the blog. I read the poem shown below, just this morning and I thought, “Wow, what a perspective wake-up!” I also did a lot of reading yesterday, and I read about “mind stalking” in an article from Spirituality & Health magazine. It talked about the importance of fervently stalking your own thoughts to discover which ones are causing the most negative emotions in you. Chances are that these thoughts which are causing you pain from negative emotions, come from these four categories: judgment (of yourself or of others), self-pity or pity for others, i.e. the victim seat (with the understanding that compassion is different than pity), fear (and if these fears are mind stalked, they are often seen to be irrational fears created by the mind) and self-importance (sitting in the high throne of “knowing” how others ‘should‘ behave).

Yesterday, I also read an interview with Barbra Streisand. (she has an autobiography coming out that is around 1000 pages!) Barbra has been married to James Brolin for 25 years. She claims that they have very different natures and she believes that he will live for a long, long time because he doesn’t worry about things. Barbra tends to find fault in almost everything, and she says that James wakes up every morning with the attitude of, “Oh wow! Hooray! I get to live for another day!”

The poem below speaks of the idea that perhaps our greatest happiness comes from being in the moment of doing the simplest things, such as crossword puzzles, with other people whom we love, and with whom we like to enjoy experiences and adventures. The rest of it all is truly out of our control (and the poet even suggests that this might be a good thing. We humans have a tendency towards pettiness and messing things up). So just for today, be a mind stalker. Stalk your thoughts and snipe the bad ones so that before you know it, the major constant thought in your mind is, “Oh wow! Hooray! I get to live for another moment!” And then sit happily, staying right in the very moment, doing a quiet activity with someone whom you love (even if that’s just with yourself).

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Bad Men

Detective Martin Hart:
Do you wonder ever if you’re a bad man?

Detective Rustin Cohle:
No. I don’t wonder, Marty. World needs bad men. We keep the other bad men from the door.

The scene and the written dialog above is from Season 1 of True Detective. It’s one those inconvenient truths that when we are resting in our most idealized selves, we don’t want to believe. We don’t want to believe that the amazing freedoms that we have in our lives were sometimes hard won by people who were capable of doing things that we, ourselves, might not have it in us to do. It often comes down to the question, do the ends justify the means? And that’s a squirmy question.

I come from a family that has a lot of military veterans. So does my husband. I am proud of how much military service is in the history of my family. I remember, many years ago, getting into a heated discussion about something related to peace and war, during a book club meeting with another club member. Her background was that of a long history of academics and professors. I respected this member quite a bit. I considered her to be a friend and an interesting, thoughtful, intelligent woman. And I believe that she felt the same way about me. After making the whole book club feel immensely uncomfortable, we quieted down and we agreed to go out to eat together, and to talk about our different viewpoints further, with just each other. It was a nice dinner. It was civil. Nothing stands out about the conversation to me. Neither of us changed each other’s mind. But the friendship lasted. The mutual respect lasted. There were a lot of viewpoints that we completely agreed on, in different matters that we read about, in other books. We still exchange Christmas cards to this day.

I admittedly sometimes get into my woo-woo/yogi girl states of being, and I belt out John Lennon’s “Imagine All the People” at the top of my lungs, and I fervently wish that I could manifest this state of peace instantly for all of us. I don’t believe that there are many people in this world who don’t wish for peace and abundance for all. However sometimes, my romanticized, utopian view of the way things Should Be sometimes clouds my vision for truly seeing the way things are right now. And yes, I believe that we all can do our individual parts to “be the change that we want to see in the world”. (attributed to Gandhi and Joseph Ranseth) That’s really the best that any of us can do. And this “being the change” often looks like different things and different roles for different people.

We creative types love nuance. We love to see things in a different way and bring these “different ways” into fruition with our art and in our general ways of being. But sometimes we forget that looking at things “different ways” for other people, in other, more rigid, mechanical fields, other than that of the creative arts, can often be about having to make difficult, snap decisions between the lesser of two awful evils.

Perhaps instead of condemning others for their “stupidity” and their “war mongering”, we might be able to find some level of gratefulness for “the “bad” men who keep the other “bad” men from the door”, so that we are able to do our art, and our protests, and our comfortable day-dreaming about a utopian world where “bad men” don’t exist at all.

“The older I get, the less I know. By that I mean the less I am sure of. I view people with strong opinions on the big stuff with distrust. I don’t think we should have certain certainties on faith and politics; I think we should be open-minded.” _ Pam Ferris

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.