Category: Reflection

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The Color of Our Light

UnknownI am a little preoccupied with souls. The protagonist of the novel I’m writing is a soul named Alex. Alex, dead from an accidental heroin overdose, has a lot of karma to reconcile as well as a jones to be born again that rivals his heroin addiction. Suddenly life is so very precious.

Part of what Alex confronts in his immediate afterlife is his new appearance. He has to ask another soul what color he is.

“Lily, what color am I?”

“Oh, Alex. Any other time I might find your narcissism completely outrageous. For now, you’re somewhat refreshing. You’re a soothing pale blue with a hint of green near the heart. Can’t you see that?”

“Well, yes, and no. I’ve only seen my reflection twice here, and it was cloudy. I see a little color but not as clear as yours.”

When we leave this realm, it is doubtful we will retain the color of our skin. Our physical appearance is here and now which, let’s face it, is not eternity.

I think, like Alex, many of us are feeling a little cloudy these days. We are wrestling with a wound that goes soul level deep and consequently is uncomfortable and impossible to ignore. Good.  What’s also uncomfortable is confronting the reality that our degree of control is an illusion. No one among us can single-handedly stop the pandemic or wave a wand and erase the mirage that the color of our skin makes us different. Nor can we control what others think or do.

As we ride this wave of what we can only hope is a seismic change for the better for humanity, we have the chance to course correct. That much is not an illusion. We need to be Lily-clear with our energy, not cloudy or mystified. Our invisible connection to one another is whisper close. What if we all looked in the mirror and at each other and tried to see the color of our light?

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Love in the Time of Always

dove+with+band“They were together in silence like an old married couple wary of life, beyond the pitfalls of passion, beyond the brutal mockery of hope and the phantoms of disillusion; beyond love. For they had lived together long enough to know that love was always love, anytime and anyplace, but it was more solid the closer it came to death.” Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez

Love in the Time of Cholera plays out against the backdrop of a cholera outbreak in what is probably Columbia between about 1880 and 1930. The plot revolves around a love story, one that takes a circuitous route after a star-crossed beginning.

As young lovers in a secret epistolary relationship, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza are forced by her father to separate. Fermina moves on, marrying a renowned doctor, Juvenal Urbino. Florentino, meanwhile, holds steadfast in his love for Fermina, even after she rejects him and weds another. While he is not carnally faithful, he is in spirit, in heart. More than a half-century later, after both have lived full lives, when Dr. Urbino dies, and Florentino and Fermina are well past their prime, Florentino makes his move again, rekindling the passion from their youth.

During the story Florentino’s mother thinks he is infected with cholera, but it is love that is an affliction that consumes him making him physically sick. When later his mother tells him the only disease he ever had was cholera, his response is “No, Mama, you confused cholera with love.”

Diseases and viruses attack not only the body, but the mind and spirit. It can be hard to hold fast to the spirit now. People are suffering at every level. The usual illnesses and losses do not take a backseat; instead they are a parallel pain to the macro pandemic. The inability to physically comfort one another is another layer of our very personal and collective despair and bewilderment. New worries—economic and otherwise—compound the struggle to find peace, to hold steadfast.

We have our lifeboats—family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, amazing strangers. Bearing witness to the profound dedication and courage around us is at once buoying and heart-wrenching making our unbreakable bond to one another manifest. Nature, throughout it all, reveals anew the beauty and continuity of life, the strength and certainty of it in this time of great fragility.

Beyond love is more love, limitless love. We are called to lead with love always. Everything that happens—whether perceived as good or bad—is a reflection of, and held by Love—the Divine, God, Buddha, Grace, Higher Power, Your Best Self—whatever you choose to name it (or not). Our souls, much like Florentino’s unwavering, fearless love, know no fear. They know that love, our essence, never really dies; it transforms but lives on always.

 

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A Contender at Times

images-1It had been several years since I made my way to the middle of the country in a car, more often looking down on the neatly quilted squares of farmland from 35,000 feet. From the road those squares blurred into a smooth white blanket whose edge began at the nearest rim of vision and extended to an endless horizon. Like most blankets, it was comforting while holding the potential to smother.

Utilitarian understated and underappreciated, that precious land—tilled and toiled over centuries and often enhanced by little more than a farmhouse, a barn, and sometimes a strand of bare black trees—is content to leave first prize in the beauty pageant to the mountains, canyons, ocean, rivers and lakes. But she shows herself a contender at times, unexpectedly bringing a showstopper through a meteorite shower or a stunning view of the constellations in vast, clear skies. Midway through Ohio, I saw a golden yellow sun blow up over the horizon in my rear view mirror like a child’s crayon drawing or a rendering on a cereal box. Distracting in a mesmerizing way, I watched until it became blinding. Little did I know then, it would soon become a longing.

I stayed 12 days in the small town in Illinois where I was raised. I had forgotten the punishing endless sameness of monochromatic gray white winter days. I tried to lean into it, wondering what my ancestors must have faced when they arrived in Nebraska and Kansas all those years ago. Was this land in my bones not only through the nutritional sustenance it had provided but at the deepest DNA and cellular levels?

We all taste the salt of the ocean in our tears and feel mountains well up in our bellies through the crowns of our heads when we are excited and awed just as we feel a ravine-like plummet when we are disappointed, the bottomless echo of a canyon when our hearts are broken. The plains provide a no-nonsense steady kind of love and measured discipline. They are the elusive sweet spot of a quiet mind in meditation. I was sorry to leave, more because of the people than the place. But the reality is I can’t leave either of them, no matter how many miles I drive away.

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Dear Diary

book-4806076_1280Several years ago, I told one of my cousins if I preceded him in death, he should make a beeline to my place and burn any journal he found before anyone else arrived. He said, “I’ll buy you a shredder, and you can take care of that yourself.” And so, he did. And I got busy.

Not all diaries are secret BFFs, confessionals or epistolary therapists. They are written for many reasons, and some have been quite enlightening in a historical, humanitarian or artistic sense.

After her death, through Anne Frank’s recorded thoughts and feelings, the world, including her father, came to know what it was like for her in hiding during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. Virginia Woolf’s famous diaries are autobiographical as well as where she experimented with and explored her writing. The diary John F. Kennedy kept as a young correspondent in 1945, in which he expresses his opinions about Hitler and the UN, sold for over $700,000. Historians believe it is the only one he ever kept.

Charles Dodgson’s (Lewis Carroll’s) family tore several pages from one of his diaries and mysteriously misplaced some volumes, only adding to speculation about the nature of Dodgson’s relationship with the Liddell girls, including Alice, who encouraged Dodgson to write down the story that became Alice in Wonderland, a book that’s never been out of print since its publication in 1865. Nor has Carroll’s contentious reputation been laid to rest since his death in 1898.

The impulse to keep time and to record fact, fantasy, delight, sorrow, guilt, secrets, and even shame, is not universally felt but sometimes universally appreciated. There is a Wiki page devoted to the many people who were diarists. They include writers, theologians, politicians, philosophers, artists, historians and others.

Whether a diary is intended to be shared or not, the voice is immediate and intimate, implying a sacred trust. The sacred trusts we hold in locked boxes and vaults imo pectore for ourselves and others make each of us diarists. These holy pages can never be shredded, torn out or burned. Along with love and loss, they forever change the narrative.

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New Year’s Blessings, Wishes and Dares

ahappynewyear3 copyRecognize the hallelujah holy you are, the glorious gift of life you embody. Praise all your perceived flaws. Your secret superpower is the blessing of saints and the protection of angels. Proceed accordingly.

The counsel you seek is poised and ready 24/7, desperate for you to ask. Lay down your sword. Offer the olive branch knowing it may be dropped. Speak the truth even if it means rejection. Take the leap of faith. Leave the boulder on the cliff.

Guilt and shame don’t play fair. Be wary of engaging. Wait for inspiration and hope. They will come uninvited to assuage fears and erase doubts bearing light for the next steps.

The present lives on the threshold of then and there in the same place excitement and promise live. Stay in it. Be a cool no-nonsense cat. They know what they are doing. Pretend same.

Earth and sea are home and hearth to all. Care for them. Respect! Reverence! Awe! Be a torch in the heart of darkness, let your presence be a balm to a stranger, of which there are none. Disabuse the illusion of normal used as a whip to judge. Listen. See. Feel. Understand.

A good roux makes the gumbo. Use fresh ingredients, salt sparingly. Serve with French bread, love, and bon mots. Laugh often, even in your dreams. Hug and caress, turn the bitter to the sweet, harbor no grudges, be called good friend. May you find your anam cara.

Risk love in all her compassionate, expansive, endearing, everlasting, exhausting, unpredictable, demanding, fierce, fulfilling, provocative, painful, intense, devout, cheeky ways. Bet the house on her.

I wish you every good wish, every fine dare, blessings in spades. I wish you a Happy New Year.

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Follow Your Heart’s GPS

UnknownBrian Doyle wrote a wonderful book called The Wet Engine: Exploring the Mad Wild Miracle of the Heart. It was in this book that I learned a hummingbird, with its rapid heartbeat and two-year lifespan, has the same number of heartbeats a human has in a lifetime, and that at 5’ long, 4’ wide, 5’ high, weighing 400 pounds, the heart of the blue whale is the largest on the planet. The human heart weighs in at 10-12 ounces and is about the size of a fist.

“Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, what the heart can hold.” So said Zelda Fitzgerald whose heart, one imagines, experienced the gamut of emotions in her extraordinary and ultimately tragic lifetime.

Gratitude and wonder hold hands in the heart, wide-eyed and a little gap-mouthed, ready to be delighted and surprised at any moment. Stress and tension, handcuffed together, frequently lurk uninvited. Forgiveness fights fires. Grief, normally in chambers, engulfs when awoken. Favorite people wander the corridors, places and things take up space in different rooms. And yet, as Zelda suggested, the heart’s ability to expand and hold more is unknown but likely vaster than a blue whale’s heart.

When alert and not operating by rote, the heart possesses the extraordinary vision of a raptor seeing things in focus far and wide, making connections like the way the forces of darkness often push the better angels to prevail, and how the persecuted sometimes carve the path to compassion and change. It has the ability to hear like a moth, to float and flutter with the same grace. The heart feels best with arms widespread, guileless, loyal and loving as a child or a pet.

It truly has a mind of its own, which is in constant communication with the brain in our heads. When heart and head are in sync, we have greater mental clarity and intuitive ability. When the heart experiences emotions like compassion and appreciation, its rhythm becomes more coherent and harmonious. So next time you feel adrift, take a quick minute or two to listen to and follow your heart’s wise lead. She’ll get you where you need to be.

 

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Summertime

fpZU5EQDistracted by the dreamy placid river, broody clouds deciding whether to unleash a storm, fighting an obsession, looking for a hawk, seeing only turkey vultures swooping and gliding, widening their circles, tasked with doing what none of us will, startled by a young buck at the edge of the road in the fog. Come here.

Surprised by the unexpected, annoyed by it, too. Alarmed I thought I knew what was going on only to realize I didn’t know a thing. I didn’t know you. Or you. Or you. How many times did you, and you, and you feel the same about me? Please tell me.

Missed the full moon lost under a banner of opaque gray in New Jersey. Again. Crazy New Jersey. Thwarting anticipated beauty, spotlighting it where I least expect it, gifting me in spellbinding ways. Pacts we made before I arrived. Are you the coyote trickster, Jersey? I hate you. I love you. I’ll go away. No, wait… I’ll stay.

Finally, fireflies at night, butterflies in daytime, glimpses of the woozy, intoxicating, ethereal world between here and there. Their buzz, their light, colors and patterns unmatched, diverting my gaze, leaving me tipsy with wonder. Take me with you.

The visceral lines between opposites—love/hate, war/peace, joy/sorrow, confusion/clarity, sick/well, sacred/profane—are blurred. Yes. No. Maybe. Of course. Is it okay? Ah, what will be will be.

I want to settle into a hammock, lie back on a sailboat, get lost in the sky, the stars, leave expectations I don’t comprehend and fail to fulfill behind. I want to catch whoever needs catching there, hold and rock them. Still anxiety and fear.

You and me. We are no different whoever you are. Except for the shape of your lips and the curve of the lines, the hesitancy or lack thereof, we are the same. I recognize the disarming language of your smile. Hello.

 

 

 

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Knight’s Dare

thumbnail-1 2Several two-story high trees were felled in the woods on the Palisades after Superstorm Sandy; their broad, shallow roots useless against hurricane force winds. A mile into a walk, the massive root ball of one of them faced me, a fallen warrior as majestic in death as in life, lying in state holding a shield decorated in a mesmerizing pattern of intertwined roots and dirt. As I paid my respects, like something out of a fable, the brave knight dared me to steal a heart-shaped stone the size of my fist from the center of his shield. I accepted the dare and slipped the stone into a pocket.

At home, I rinsed off the dirt with warm water and put it on the windowsill to dry where it sat forgotten for a few days. But it lured me back. It fit perfectly in my palm. My thumb and fingers ran over the tawny marbled surface, turning it over and back, instantly soothing.

A jagged buttonhole gash marks the top of one side. On the other, there is a hole next to the left ventricle where scar tissue has formed in the shape of a shark’s tooth. Small pockmarked wounds create an uneven pattern of dots on both sides. Cracks and veins that didn’t create full breaks tell stories from before the storm. It is flawless in its imperfection.

Virginia Woolf committed suicide by filling her pockets with stones and walking into the river. The Hope diamond, one of the most precious and now belonging to the Smithsonian, was said to carry a curse that ended when Harry Winston donated it rather than sell it for profit. Canyons shaped by rivers, pebbles washed up on beaches, desert rock formations, greats like Gibraltar, Uluru, Stonehenge and Plymouth, pyramidal stones—storytellers all.

Hard, smooth and uneven, the umbo I hold pulses with life, the connector between me and the tree and the earth that warmed it. It tells me a story about how that knight held my heart in its fist, keeping it hidden and safe, returning it to me when I was ready, reminding me the consequence of accepting the dare is to risk again.

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Wild Heart

bd4c67dfc9786cd16c8719f0f80b8065--motorcycle-bike-biker-babesWild heart, strap on your biker boots and take me places I would never dare. Reckless, guileless, bold and brave, tell the voices and distractions to get out of our way.

Rev the engine and take Main through town to the dusty back road that leads to the top of the hill. Let gawkers gawk, because they will. Steal a kiss and give one, too. It doesn’t have to last, but make sure it’s true.

Soar eagle high, dive cormorant deep, catch me a star fish while you’re there. Set a seal and leave your mark, drop bouquets after dark. Go merrily, merrily, merrily. I’ll meet you at the shore.

Cast your net wherever you wish, but hold me tight when the waves hit. Carry it light, and we’ll not go down. Share all our bounties from the beautiful sea. She is us and we are she.

Weapons down, gates thrown wide, dance by the light of the moon, the moon.  Come close and let me whisper in your ear, you are divine, it’s true.

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Altarations for the New Year

UnknownTake all the secrets and shame from the vault and lay them open on the altar of compassion where they will be burned with sage and sweet grass, then rinsed away with a tincture of holy water, lavender and mercy.

Lie down on the granite altar of pain and offer your sorrow as sacrifice. Let the flying buttresses and the bowl of the apse catch your soul’s keening. Be soothed by the cool stone beneath you. Hold steadfast that a light heart will beat again.

Kneel before the altar of humbleness and receive the host of gratitude and forgiveness on your tongue. Sip bittersweet from the chalice of chance and experience. Rise up.

Walk down the aisle toward the altar of the flowing river draped in the morning sunlight. Slip on the ring of promise, and vow to start each day with a sacrament of beauty.

Dance on the refracted colored light on the floor of the nave before the altar of joy to a jubilant chorus raising the cathedral roof singing of your goodness.

Gaze up to the hawk’s shrill cry, follow flashes of cardinal and streaks of blue jay, glides of tawny sparrow to where they adorn the shrines of mighty oak and pine, and woodpeckers tap their praise.

Gild the altar of life with fragrant flowers, the finest threads and most vivid colors. In exaltation, summon forth courage and creativity; bless the arts and music. Welcome with open arms all who are bold enough to risk.

Dip inspiration into the baptismal font of hope where doubt knows no name. Process the ashes of fear out the holy door and down the avenue in a caisson drawn by white horses.

Worship in awe-filled silence in the sanctuary of your understanding. Glorify that which you feel to be holy. Come often to be centered and fed. Shout Hallelujah! Chant om, shanti, shanti, shanti. Namaste. Amen.