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Sacred Friday

A day of remembrance 9/11 9/11 quotes september 11 quotes september 11th quotes… | Remembrance quotes, Remember quotes, September 11 quotes

As you age, you come to realize that there are certain traumatic moments, and surreal time periods in life, that you will never, ever be able to completely forget. These sensations and memories are particularly amplified when everyone you know has been affected to at least some degree, and is hurting along with you. We are living through one of these types of time periods right now. We were devastatingly scorched by one of those time periods back in September of 2001.

9/11 was a horrible, horrible, horrible day and experience, but we survived it. We will always remember it, but we overcame it. We got temporarily knocked down, but we rose back up. Beside all of the disbelief and horror and pain and shock and loss and soul scorching anger, there was a pure beauty that came out of that day. I never felt more unified with my neighbors and my fellow American citizens, than in the rest of that year, and into the new year of 2002. I never felt prouder of being an American than on those surreal days after 9/11, when we healed our trauma, together. We held our heads up high, in sharp defiance of evil. I remember for days that turned into weeks and then into months, the feeling of unification was everywhere. People were kind to each other. People focused on how akin they felt to each other. People did whatever they could, in order to heal and to memorialize this awfulness, in a most graceful, dignified, sacred, all encompassing way. People from other countries spoke only of our country’s greatness, of our unmatched generosity, of our beacon of hope which we give to everyone all over the world. We put aside our differences, during that painful time, because we knew that to become whole again, for the raw vulnerability to be cleansed and to be healed, that we needed the support of the whole body of our great country.

Today, we will get set back into our grief a little bit again, but let us also remember the utterly amazing, awe-striking unified Phoenix that rose from those lowly ashes. Let that defiant Phoenix of destiny, which rose and soared above all that which was meant to destroy us, be an example and a reminder to all of us, of what we are capable of doing with our current fires and traumas and fears. We owe this to the people who gave up their lives on 9/11, and to the families who still grieve their appalling sudden losses. We owe this to future generations, to give them an example of core strength and hope and the proof that love and respect for each other, is really what conquers all. Our future generations will need a positive example to fall back on, a wisdom to thrive from, when dark days happen again in their lives, and in the history of America. We need each other. Today, as Americans, we all embrace each other in comfort and compassion. Let’s find more strength and power and energy and onus, in today’s embrace. Let’s all look outwards, together, from this embrace into a unified vision of the beautiful country that everyone who has fought for, and who has lost their lives for, believes in. We aren’t where we need to be yet as a country, but we can get there. It won’t be from fighting each other, though. We need each other.

We healed over the acute pain of 9/11. There will always be a sharp ragged scar, which will always hurt to the touch, but we survived it, and then we thrived. We know that we are a country that is capable of great, great things. We’ve proven that to ourselves, and to everybody else, again and again. We rise from the ashes, and we continue to do so, every time that we are called to do it. Let’s try now to give our collective healing from our current pains, some wings of unity, dignity, love, respect, kindness, empathy and hope, and let the rest of it all – the divisiveness, the inequalities, the failure to work together, the closed minds, the focusing on all of the negative without putting major energy towards the solutions – let’s let all of this negativity that is no longer useful to our country’s greater good, just smolder away in the ashes of what does not serve us. We are the people of a great democracy. We decide what matters. We need each other.

(I apologize for not sticking with my traditional Friday format, but honestly, not really. Thank you for understanding.)

Pleasure and Peace

Hi friends, thank you so much for spending some time here today at Adulting – Second Half. Your time is precious and I appreciate you giving some of it here. It means a lot to me, in ways that I don’t really have the words to explain. My heart goes out to my west coast readers. Please stay safe and well, amidst these roaring fires. Prayers and love to you.

I keep a lot of paper journals and such, full of words and pictures that have held inspirational meaning and interest to me. I picked up one journal which I kept about a decade ago, which as you recall, was during the Great Recession, another stressful, precarious time for a lot of us. The physical journal itself is kind of gaudy. It is made of a dark red brocade that actually has stuffing inside of it. The cover has large plastic, brightly colored gemstones (some that have fallen off), sewn on to it. It is one of those things that you look at it, and you ask yourself, “Did I actually think this was pretty at one time? What was my mental state at the time of purchasing this?” It is one of those physical reminders to ourselves, that we are constantly in a state of change, always opening up from a new cocoon of ideas and perspectives, sometimes even on a daily basis.

On that note, my husband buys me one of those Awkward Family Photo Calendars, every year, for my stocking at Christmas. I love it. It guarantees me at least one daily laugh, but what I like best about it, is the reminder of people’s humility. The people who send their pictures into the calendar company have the ability to laugh at themselves, and that is a lovely trait in a person. Yesterday’s picture was a professional portrait of a young woman, obviously a product of the 1980s, with an enormous heavily sprayed nest of bangs, that could have managed to be its own head of hair, itself. I thought to myself, this woman is laughing at her 1980s self, along with the rest of us, but on that day, she put a lot of time and effort and money into her “look.” She felt good enough that day, about how she looked, to pay a professional photographer to take her picture. Her real beauty shines through all of that sprayed, elevated, shock of hair, because she has self reflection enough, to not take herself too seriously. She loves herself at every step of the game, and that is so refreshing. She’s beautiful.

Back to my point, despite its over-the-top physicality, the garish journal is filled on the inside with words and pictures and inspirations that have shaped my life. I even have some fortunes from fortune cookies taped in there, and cuttings from newspapers, magazines, and elementary school newsletters. When I was filling up this particular journal, I did not have writing a public blog in mind, so unfortunately I don’t have the sources of most of these wisdoms. Still, I believe all wisdom, comes from a higher source, and those of us who write stuff down, are usually just quirky little scribes and messengers. Anyway, this has just been a long way of me saying that in this flashy, showy journal, that at one time caught my eye and I must have found to be physically pleasing enough to claim it as mine, I found a quote yesterday that was cut out of magazine that explained what I have been trying to say in all of these paragraphs above, maybe even in all of these blog posts, for the last couple of years. At the very least, it describes my precious and precocious inspirational scrapbook/journal perfectly:

“I miss my mother, and I find myself walking through her house in my memory, remembering her ways and seeing beauty. Beauty, for her, was a mix of the deep and the superficial: that which gives us pleasure and that which gives us peace.” (source unknown)

Picking out and purchasing my ostentatious journal, and filling it up with words and images that have helped to mold me into the current version of me, gave me great pleasure. And the words inside of it, still give me great peace. Maybe life is meant to be just that simple, a happy mix of pleasure and peace. It’s quite possible. It’s certainly not a bad way to live.

Like a Roller Coaster

I mentioned before that my youngest son is epileptic. The first major seizure that he suffered was hell. It was hell for him; it was hell for our family. The day that he had his first major seizure is easily in the top five worst days of my life. I don’t want to spend too much time dwelling on the worst days of my life, so I am not going to really try to rank them, but that day was hideous. Luckily (depending on how you look at it), he’s only had three major seizures after that one. And as awful as the subsequent seizures were, they weren’t as bad as the first one. Why is this? The subsequent seizures weren’t as bad as the first one, because we mostly knew what to expect. We had been through the experience, and we knew that we would get to the other side. We knew that we could handle the pain and the uncertainty and the fear and the worry. We knew that processing all of the feelings that result from his seizures is tough and necessary, but we also knew that we were up to the challenge, because we have already proven that to ourselves. People think that negative, grueling experiences toughen you up, but I don’t really believe that. I think that negative, grueling experiences prove to you, just how tough you really are and have always been, but you just didn’t know it. You forgot. Tough experiences reveal to you, your true inner core of strength. And the beauty of going through some extremely hard stuff (which almost all of us have gone through, by this middle stage in our lives), is that you have that knowledge about yourself. You know that you can handle almost anything that life brings to bear. Your inner steeliness becomes your recognizable outer armor.

I read a quote the other day that said this, “Even cowards can endure hardship; only the brave can endure suspense.” There is a lot of truth to this statement. I always say, “I know in my heart that I can handle anything, but I hate being in limbo. I hate wondering. I hate the times of indecision and waiting. That’s when my self-torture starts.”

We have a lot of limbo going on in the world right now. The uncertainty is so wide and has been happening for so long, that it feels like being stuck on an incredibly tall roller coaster going up, up, up, climbing the metal tracks, ever so slowly . . . clack . . . clack . . . clack, gazing down below, if you dare, to all that you could be crashing down into, at any moment. Lately, life feels like living in the constant build-up stage, to the crescendo of a horror film. Our imaginations run wild as we watch movies like this, as the characters in the story pick up the phone, or open the door to the basement, or hear a fearsome rustle in the bushes outside. The anticipation of what could happen is terrifying, especially since our human nature often takes us to the worst case scenarios. But in reality, what almost always happens at the end of a roller coaster ride? We end up safely back at the wooden gates, laughing and smiling and exhilarated for what we have been through. And even if we didn’t like the amusement ride, it is past us now, and we have that notch in our belts, for having survived the experience. Retrospectively, the roller coaster ride ends up being a lot shorter than it seemed, while first crawling up that first big incline of the ride. And to the same point, what generally happens at the end of a thriller film? Usually, the crazy lunatic is finally stopped in his or her tracks, by our favorite hero or heroine, and we all can breathe again, as the movie ends in a feeling of relief and reprieve and calm. And even if this is not the case, as we parents always assured our children, “The movie was just pretend.” The worst case scenarios rarely, rarely come to fruition in the movies, or in life. A happy ending is almost always assured for us. The point of getting on to the roller coaster or us watching the thriller is because we like the excitement. These are some of the types of things that make us feel acutely alive. Some of us prefer small doses of thrills. The merry-go-rounds and musicals are enough for some of us. And others prefer bungee jumping and hatchet films. And then there is everything in between. Still, we each enter into these experiences because we want to feel the strong exhilaration that they create for us. We want all of the sensations of feeling alive in every state of our being. We feel the tenseness of our muscles, we feel the alertness of our minds, and we feel the relief and the letting go, the very peace of our inner spirits, when the ride safely ends, or the movie is over and complete.

I think that life is a lot like this. I like to believe that we entered into this earthly experience with the full expectation of thrills and challenges and calm periods, and being able to notice and to feel the distinctly different sensations that all of these unique experiences bring to us. I like to think that we step into the ride of our lives, or start the film of our lives, knowing that we will go through all sorts of ups and downs, but in the end, everything will end up alright. We step on to the ride, or we confidently press the start button, because we inherently understand that we are created to be strong enough to handle anything (the good, the bad and the ugly) and we want to give it a try. I think that probably the hardest challenge of this ride of life, isn’t the crazy ups and downs, it isn’t even the horrifying suspense moments, but more so, the most grueling part of this life experience is facing the reality, of how fast this life adventure really goes, as it heads towards the journey’s safe end.

Flavorful

“The world needs this right now, we have received thousands of comments from people who say this has come at such a perfect time,” said Klein about the treasure hunt.

Did you read about the founder of Jelly Belly brand jelly beans, giving away one of his Candyman Kitchens, with a golden ticket/Willy Wonka style? How fun! How intriguing and inspiring and heartwarming and charmingly evocative!

Most of us would agree with David Klein, the inventor of Jelly Belly candies, in his statement, “The world needs this right now.” But what is “this” that he is referring to? What is the golden ticket that the world needs right now?

Is it fun? Is it a focus on the light-hearted, happy stuff? Is it excitement? Is it smiling, bright-eyed anticipation? Is it curiosity? Is it wonderment? Is it sweetness? Is it frivolity? Is it sugar-coated happiness? Is it innocence? Is it faith, hope and love?

Whatever “this” is which we all seem to agree that the world needs more of right now, we can try to be a little bit of “this“, today, right now, in our own spaces and our own places. If the world needs more of “this” and we have the ability to give the world more of “this“, why not try? Why not be a golden ticket in our own corners of the world? At the very least, we can be our own little flavorful jelly bellies. (I’ve been working on my jelly belly since quarantine started. It’s coming along nicely.) What flavor are you today? I think that I will be “this” flavor, just for today.

Come Alive

(greeting card by Ingrid Goff-Maidoff)

Every day is a new day of a new version of ourselves. The experiences we had over the weekend, our emotional responses to those happenings, and the wisdom we gleaned from both our experiences and our responses, have added a new layer to this energy, we each call “me.” This morning I have curated quotes from my many inspirational quote journals that sort of go along with this same theme. I am sorry that I am not sure who to attribute these quotes to, but I don’t claim any of them as mine. I am just thankful for their inspiration and sagacity.

“You can’t go back and write a new beginning, but you can start from here and write a new ending.”

“I may not be there yet, but I am closer than I was yesterday.”

“Today is a new day. Begin it well, and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”

“If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.”

“When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That is what the storm was all about.”

“When you are a better character in your story, your story gets better.”

“Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about un-becoming everything that isn’t really you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.”

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today, I am wise, so I am changing myself.”

“Your past is meant to be a guidepost, not a hitching post.”

“Believe with all of your heart that you will do what you are made to do.”

“I am my only project. Fully embracing this idea gives me so much freedom to do the many things that I have been born to do. Others are in our lives for a reason, but they are not present as our works in progress.”

“Never think of yourself as a self-made person. Thousands of hearts, souls, hopes and hands molded the form that became you.”

“Anything I can go through, I can grow through.”

“Don’t worry about what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

The Shield

(Twitter K. McIntire)

*****My heart and my prayers are with all who are affected by Hurricane Laura.

I so appreciate the picture shown above. It shows the humanity, and the empathy of the people who I know, and it depicts the good hearts of the many, many people who I have met, throughout my almost 50 years of life. This has been such a terrifying, painful, unbelievable year for so, so many people, all over the world. Today, let’s just rise above the noise, and the hatred, and the fear, and the anger, and the judgment, and the loneliness, and the bewilderment, and the need for control, and let’s just hold each other tight. I am so thankful for all of you who read my blog. Please, just feel me holding you tight. Close your eyes to all of the frightening appearances, close your ears to all of the competing, senseless noise, and only allow yourself to feel the soft, peaceful, yet impenetrable embrace of Love. Rise above it all and let Love sustain you. You are Love. You are filled with Love. Love cannot be destroyed. Let Love sustain you.

One of the more hip, modern daily horoscopes that I read, told me that today was a day that I needed to “Shield My Field.” There is no greater shield than the power of Love. Today, let Love “shield your field”. You are made of Love. It replenishes. Give Love freely to yourself, and to others, and to the clear, bright-lit vision of what the world really is, underneath all of the maddening noise, made by the weaker side of humanity (hello, egos), to provoke fear and helplessness. You have all of the materials that you need, to “shield your field”, every single day. Embrace that fact, and walk boldly into your life today. You are shielded with the most warm, calming, powerful, peaceful, eternal force that has ever been, or will ever exist, until the end of forever. Accept your shield. You can do whatever you need to do today, with the power of your shield. You are protected. The lower parts of all of us, and in all of the world, cower in awe and humility in the face of Love. And Love picks up those low, low, scared, trying desperately to control, hopeless, full of fear, full of pain, parts of us, and Love embraces them, and Love shines a Light on them, and Love cleanses them until they disappear as if they never existed. Because they don’t. They are just figments of our own imaginations, in stories that we have made up about our lives. Love shows us that we can always take up our shields and walk away from the shadows. This power of Love has NEVER left us. The world is just the world. We can pick up our shields and we look at the world through the lens of Love, or we can stay mired in our dark and fearful thoughts. That’s our free will. I think what the world needs now, is for more of us to pick up our shields of Love, and to walk confidently and calmly, with the force of Love. When we remind ourselves of the reality of what really makes us, and what really sustains us, forever and forever, others cannot help but to be reminded of that fact, too. Others are reminded to pick up their shields of Love. When we are holding our shields of Love, and we do this all together, we can open our eyes again, and we can open our ears again, and we will see a whole, new beautiful vision of the world. We will see our world as it actually is – Love. Nothing more, nothing less. Pure, Beautiful, Eternal Love.

Gift from the Sea

Anne Morrow Lindbergh Quote: The sea does not reward those who are ...

Yesterday, I was reminded of one of my favorite little tomes of all time, Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. We had a family boating day, and while my husband and my middle son were silently fishing, my eldest son and my daughter and I swam over to a tiny little island to explore what treasures might be found. My gift from the sea, yesterday, was a lovely, surprisingly vivid, pink feather. My gift from the sun, yesterday, was a not-so-lovely pink sunburn. We used up an entire can of 50 level sunscreen, and yet still, the entire family is donning our (in various shades of pinkish tan, all the way to glaring red), badges of shame. It’s disconcerting to reach the age in life, where you have lived an entire cycle of boastful pride to shameful mortification, for the exact same behaviors. When I was a kid, having a tan was a badge of pride and honor. Any level of obvious sun exposure to your skin, suggested that you were lucky and prosperous enough to visit somewhere (even if it was just the neighborhood pool) to have enough leisure time to lay out and bake in the sunshine. We didn’t have iPads or phone games back then, so picking at our peeling skin was a strangely satisfying past-time. Now to be clear, I have witnessed family members and friends, deal with various degrees of skin cancer, so I know that where we are in the cycle of “it is shameful to have a suntan”, is where we should probably stay. Progress is not a backwards motion. Lately, it seems to me that rapid changes in societal beliefs and technological advances and scientific discoveries are happening at such warp speed, that it makes me feel like perhaps in a lot of ways, in a lot of my life, I was doing everything entirely wrong, and that I was often looking at things through a faulty, cloudy lens. But that’s not really true, is it? Growth happens all of the time. We start from a tiny little speck and we grow from there, constantly being influenced by internal and external forces, that help mold us into our latest uploads and versions of ourselves. We are works in progress, all of us, and that is true of all living things. Most of us are doing the very best we that we can, every single day. We deserve to give ourselves a break, like perhaps a relaxing day on the beach. Only next time when I give myself a restful day outside, I’ll bring two cans of sunscreen and a wider-brimmed hat. I’m not too prideful, to learn and grow from my experiences, in order to become the latest, best version of me.

gift from the sea Archives - Bookish Illuminations

Clawde

Rare blue lobster caught off Maine coast - YouTube

Did you read about Clawde, the blue lobster, who was almost someone’s dinner at an Ohio area Red Lobster restaurant? Clawde was saved by an employee, who saw the lobster in the tank and realized that Clawde’s blue color is a one in two-million anomaly! Clawde now resides and is lovingly lavished on, at the Akron Zoo and luxuriates in an enclosure which they have dubbed “Clawde’s Man Cave”. (despite the fact that Clawde is actually a female lobster) In short, Clawde will never be anyone’s dinner.

There are 7.8 billion people on Earth at this moment, so that makes you, one in almost 8 billion. There is no one who is exactly like you on the face of this Earth. You are a blue lobster to the nth degree. You deserve a man cave or a she-shed, and tons of adoring onlookers and witnesses to your utter beauty, your unique qualities and your unrepeatable example of another amazing living miracle that the Universe has lovingly created and nurtured and cherished. Realize this. Let the truth of this fact, seep into your core. Be yourself, in all of your own authentic glory. Don’t you ever let yourself be anybody’s dinner.

Dire Needs

I read this on the internet the other day. I think that this quote was from Think Smarter (Twitter), but I can’t say for sure:

“There are two types of “tired”, I suppose. One is in dire need of sleep, the other is in dire need of peace.”

What are your dire needs this weekend? Attend to those needs first. Your body will lead you to where it needs attention, with a crumb trail of little aches and pains and stiff knots and cravings. Your mind might just need some relief from the difficult life challenges of today, with a little more focus on fun. Your mind might enjoy having inconsequential things to figure out, like crafts and puzzles and games, and the victorious feeling of completing something hard, yet relatively insignificant and manageable. Your spirit probably just needs to be noticed and recognized. Your spirit just wants to remind you, that you can always rest inside your heart. Try resting in your heart and in your spirit, a little bit this weekend. Stay still in prayer or meditation or just purposeful awareness, in a space or place that you consider to be very peaceful, and notice that your spirit is a plentiful, gurgling, clean fountain of renewable energy and joy. All that your spirit ever wants for you, is to remember that it will always sustain you, if you allow it to flow.

Balancing Act

“Anxiety, heartbreak, and tenderness mark the in-between state. It’s the kind of place we usually want to avoid. The challenge is to stay in the middle rather than buy into struggle and complaint. The challenge is to let it soften us rather than make us more rigid and afraid. Becoming intimate with the queasy feeling of being in the middle of nowhere only makes our hearts more tender. When we are brave enough to stay in the middle, compassion arises spontaneously. By not knowing, not hoping to know, and not acting like we know what’s happening, we begin to access our inner strength.”
– Pema Chodron

The above quote arrived in my in-box this morning. It is the Daily Peace Quote. Yesterday, when thinking about things which I wanted to write about in my blog, I jotted these three words down: stabilizing, equilibrium, balance. The Daily Peace Quote goes along with those three words quite nicely. Something/Someone is trying to get the message across, I think.

This is some of the definition of equilbrium – a state of rest or balance due to the equal action of opposing forces. equal balance between any powers, influences, etc.; equality of effect. mental or emotional balance; equanimity.

We all know what it takes to get to our own mental and emotional and physical equilibrium. It’s not rocket science. Sleep, good nutrition, removing toxic people, places and things and habits from our daily lives, exercise, nature, breath work, spending time with people and pets and activities that bring us joy, prayer, meditation, gratitude, are all things that help to bring us back to our beautiful heart centers. Where are you out of balance right now, in your own life? What can you do to bring that area of your own life, back to center? We are right in the middle of what has turned out to be an unprecedented and difficult year. This is the perfect time to look at our own personal scale of equilibrium, and see if it is tipped too far, in any one direction. Then we can carefully and purposefully, place our intentions and actions, on the opposite side of the scale, to get our beings back into a peaceful, centered space.

Euripides quote: The best and safest thing is to keep a balance...

Quotes about Balance and moderation (25 quotes)