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Pawns in the Game

Did you ever feel like you were a pawn in someone else’s game? Did you ever look way up into the sky expecting to see the puppet strings and the puppeteer? What if you are that pawn, though? What if you are a pawn in the enormous, strong, beautiful hands of a brilliant, kind, masterful, omniscient player? Is it possible that in those times that you feel deep, intuitive impulses to do something for someone else, or for yourself, or to do something about a situation in your own life or in your community, it might actually be “the player” using your individual talents and your particular position on the board to elevate the overall masterpiece of the game? Is it possible that you are a major part of the game that is constantly leveling up?

I am a believer that we are a mixture of our own free will, and the overall will of the point of the game – love, creation, joy. We can be stubborn little pawns and we can say, “You know what? Nope. I’m not moving. In fact, I’m going to take a big step backwards, so there.” And the player says, “That’s okay. You do you. I have other moves that I can make with other pawns. The game will go on . . . . And by the way, I love you and I am happy that you are part of the game. When you are ready to take a step forward again, I’ll be here to lift you up.”

Picture credit: Dicebreaker

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

Monday – Funday

I love our dogs. I mean, I adore our dogs. But Josie, our collie causes more fur-formed tumbleweeds than a major storm in the Mojave Desert. And our dogs can’t look out our glass sliders (which form most of the back of our house) without making absolutely sure to having their sloppy wet noses touch the glass. (And of course, our dogs are all three different heights: small, medium, and large) The bottom half of our sliders are translucent to opaque, on a regular basis.

My youngest son questions everything in life. (I wonder where he gets that from. Hmmm.) He once said, “I love our dogs as much as any of us do, but don’t you think it is kind of weird that humankind has evolved to have animals living with us, in our houses? I mean, does it seem a little strange?” (Despite agreeing with him, we all kissed the dogs and ignored our son the rest of the day. 😉 )

Bottom line is, I love my dogs and I love Oreos. They are worth the never-ending cycle of cleaning up after them. Have a great week!

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. May today feel like you are immersed in your own poetry.

I’ve been a little under the weather the last few days with a bug, and I’ve noticed that the strange blessing of feeling unwell is that it slows you down enough to notice things that you normally wouldn’t notice. The other day, after a big rainstorm, the sun was catching the raindrops on our screened lanai and made them dazzle in their reflection on the pool. I was so intrigued that I took a video of it.

After Many Springs by Langston Hughes

Now,
In June,
When the night is a vast softness
Filled with blue stars,
And broken shafts of moon-glimmer
Fall upon the earth,
Am I too old to see the fairies dance?
I cannot find them any more.

Readers, I am happy to report that I am not too old to see fairies dance in June. Are you?

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

Tide Turns

“Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.” – Harriet Beecher Stowe

I think that this is the perfect description of what it means to finally “Let go and let God.” We usually fight tooth and nail to hold on to control of outcomes that we want to happen, and then, when we finally get to that exhausted, exasperated state of throwing up our hands in surrender, usually something which we never even could have planned for or foreseen occurs, and then “turns the tide”, as Harriet Beecher Stowe proclaims.

I’ve shared this story before, but it is worth repeating again. During the Great Recession we were stuck with an underwater house in a different state, where we never planned to go back to again to live. The house, which was once a beloved, carefully conceived treasure, became an enormous, nasty albatross around our necks. When I was complaining about the situation to a friend, she said, “You need to let this go.”

“I have let it go!” I pronounced a little too hysterically. “There is nothing I want more than to be done with this house and this situation.”

“But you haven’t let it go,” she said quietly and confidently. “Look at how your stomach flinches when you talk about it.” And she was right. And from that moment on, I did what I could towards the situation, but I let go of the outcome of it all.

And a very little while later, the house situation was resolved in ways that almost seemed miraculous, and it ended up benefitting so many people, besides just ourselves.

Use today’s blog post as a gut check for yourself. Is there something in your life that has you utterly and completely mentally and emotionally played out? Is there something in your life that is not resolving in the way that you want it to, despite all of your best and every efforts? Is there something that still makes your stomach lurch even when you tell yourself and others, that you don’t care about it anymore? Harriet Beecher Stowe is right. Hold on. This is just about the time, when the tide is bound to turn. Let go and let God. Everything is going to resolve for you, in ways you could never have foreseen. Believe it.

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

Pet Rock Friday

Good morning. I am still in a NyQuil haze. First I’d like to send a birthday shoutout to my aunt today. She is that “cool, stylish aunt” who everyone needs to have in their life. She bought me my first phone (rotary, pink) and took me to my first ever concert (Olivia Newton John). She’s always been incredibly supportive of my family and of my writing. I love you, AB!! Have a great day!!

I’ll cut right to the chase to my favorite for today because this damn virus allows me the energy of a sloth. Today’s favorite is the adorable Pet Rock seen above created by JellyCreativeCo on Etsy. I gave her to my youngest son who works remote, since he is already entertaining the idea of getting a dog for his new apartment that he moved into earlier this month. (I am totally to blame for this, I understand. We have three dogs, but still . . . .) Anyway, I hope that this adorable pet rock staves off the dog idea for a little while, since my son is still getting settled into his new digs, new job and new routine. The adorable pet rock comes with an adoption card and everything. Everytime my son looks at it smiling up at him, my son will remember that his mama is rooting for him. Good rock!!

Have a great weekend, friends!! See you tomorrow!

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

Sick Day

So for the first time in I don’t know how long, I have come down with a respiratory bug. (That’s what I get for bragging about my self-proclaimed super immunity, and my fanatically religious zinc intake) I was supposed to be getting a massage today and obviously I had to reschedule it. However, I am going to a reunion at the end of the month to see my best college friends whom I haven’t seen since before the pandemic started, so I guess that it is a good thing to get this sickness out of the way. There is a Buddhist parable that basically states for regular peace and evenness and happiness, you shouldn’t make a judgment on anything that happens. Just think to yourself, “This could be good, or it could be bad.” And then just roll with it.

When I was a kid in Pittsburgh, the sick day starter pack was exactly as shown above, except for one thing. We had Mint Ginger Ale, and it was amazing. Mint Ginger Ale is the magic elixir for most viruses and flus. Do they even make Mint Ginger Ale anymore?

Time for me to get back under the covers, friends. Sick day for me. See you tomorrow!

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

This is the Beginning

“– what would you be doing differently in your life if we were approaching the end of the year, rather than the middle of it? Well for one, you’d probably be celebrating! Two, you’d also be doing all those things making sure all the loose ends of the year are tied up and setting intentions for the next year.” – Cassandra Tyndall

Happy Summer Solstice! It’s that halfway point in the year. It’s a great time to hit pause and use the light from the longest day of sunlight, to shine the light on where you’ve “been” in 2023 already, and to reflect on how you would like to close 2023 out. My husband loves to listen to the Gerry Cinnamon song below, when we are relaxing by our pool during warm summer evenings. Sometimes I think that he overplays it, but I will say these last few days I have woken up to the start of the song, playing on repeat in my mind. And it stirs me. Deeply. I hope that it stirs you, too. “This is the beginning of the rest of your life.”

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

A Journey All Its Own

The painting above is called “Mountains and Sea“. It hangs in the National Gallery of Art and it was created by Helen Frankenthaler, a famous American abstract expressionist painter. I started researching Helen Frankenthaler because I read one of her quotes, and it reverberated with me. Here is the quote:

“Every canvas is a journey all its own. There are no rules. Let the picture lead you where it must go.”

The word “canvas” can be replaced by so many other words in this quote and still make so much sense. “Life” works. “Season” works. “Relationship” works. “Vocation” works. I think this is an utterly divine quote.

Helen Frankenthaler also said this:

“I don’t resent being a female painter. I don’t exploit it. I paint.”

To give this quote context, Helen was born in 1928. She did most of her major works in the 1950s-1970s. During this time period, art was still dominated by male artists. Today, we seem obsessed with labels. We label everything, even by giving people labels that essentially mean “label-less”. I think the people who are arguing for and against categorizing people in certain ways, are missing the point. Labeling anything takes away the individual essence of anything. So if anything, we need less labels. The quirky cardinal who frequents my yard and likes to noisily bark at me to remind me to fill my feeder, gets severely limited in the way of his own special individuality when I call him “cardinal” or “red bird.” Of course, he doesn’t give a damn what I call him. He doesn’t “resent being a male red cardinal. He doesn’t exploit it. He flies.”

“What concerns me when I work, is not whether the picture is a landscape, or whether it’s pastoral, or whether somebody will see a sunset in it. What concerns me is – did I make a beautiful picture?” – Helen Frankenthaler

Sometimes friends or family will discuss one of my blog posts with me and they will say “thank you, they really need to hear “such and such message”, and sometimes that message which they supposedly got from my post is a message which is equally new to me, as well. And I am so delighted by this. I believe that really good art, whether it be paintings, or poetry, or dance, is a medium that brings people closer to their own inner selves. Really good art stirs people’s emotions and inner worlds and messages from their intuition like nothing else can do. Really good art makes us more open to exploring what is behind the hidden doors of our spirit. The only thing that I ever want people to get from my writing, is a feeling of understanding and more intimacy with their own souls.

“In relations with people, as in art, if you always stick to style, manners, and what will work, and you’re never caught off guard, then some beautiful experiences never happen.” – Helen Frankenthaler

With this quote, I believe Helen is saying to live and to create with a little imagination and fearlessness. Sometimes you have to change course, add some extra ingredients, don’t get stuck on the “tried and true”, in order to experience magic in your life. Is there anything as cheerful and interesting as a “pleasant surprise”? Or as Helen Frankenthaler says it plainly in this quote:

“I’d rather risk an ugly surprise than rely on things I know I can do.”

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

Soul Sunday

Happy Father’s Day! We have a lot of plans for the next 48 hours, so tomorrow’s post won’t be happening until late in the afternoon. (please don’t worry, late is better than never) Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. “Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.” — Percy Bysshe Shelley This is my poem for my husband today:

I always knew that you’d make a great Dad.

You’re the perfect mix of who I’d want our boys to be,

And making our daughter feel so loved and protected,

That she’ll accept nothing less for herself,

because you have shown her the way it feels to be adored.

You have made so many of my dreams come true,

This beautiful family which we have co-authored,

Tells the story of the greatest of these dreams.

Three men and a baby girl, ours to treasure for eternity.

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