Connected and Committed

more gerbera goodness

Tuesday afternoons make a big difference

I turned 50 recently.

More frequent AARP mailings are testimony to that fact.

What genuinely marks the occasion for me however is the profoundly pervasive feeling of anticipation and wonder and awe at just how incredible being alive on the planet can be.

When I turned forty, I felt like my life had really begun, finally. I started making choices that reflected who I wanted to be and where I wanted to go. Ushering in this newest decade, the bar has been raised and the possibilities fully engaged. The dreams that I dreamed for myself and kept alive, experienced as hopes and wishes, are part of my reality now. I'm proving to myself on yet another level what focus and intention bring about when we allow them to.

The subterranean work that went into that effort was sizable. Fists were pounded on table tops, and groans of frustration were set free into the atmosphere plenty of times. There is no way around the investment of time and energy and committing to a process that in the beginning seems nebulous and inchoate at best, unfathomable on the worst days.

But really, what else have you got goin' on a Tuesday afternoon that's worthy of your attention?

Sometimes that's what it all comes down to.

Crossing that line in your head, moment by occasionally endless moment, til you've got thirty or forty or fifty candles lit up in front of you.

Tuesday afternoons make a big difference.

crack me open

I've been using this mantra lately--"Crack me open, universe."

Putting my energy into not pushing-against is what made this phrase hop into my head.

It's a version of let go and let god, I suppose.

I've wanted to get to some new awarenesses, new emotional set points, new platforms from which to create. You know, have something different in my experience than what I've usually gotten.

The old ones, well, I've out-grown them to the point of being bored with them. And they are so tedious.

There's another phrase that people use in this situation--"Be careful what you wish for."

The beliefs you hold around what you wish for are what color the version that shows up, not what you wish for. If you don't believe you're worthy of it, or that you don't deserve it, or that someone else will go without if you get what you want, then you do indeed need to be careful.

This crack-me-open strategy apparently went beyond all that. And I've not been disappointed in what the universe has arranged for my energetic entertainment.

Notions I've practiced over decades are coming up for serious review, and I'm experiencing shifts in ways that I wouldn't have been able to conjure on my own mortal time.

The process continues, and my life will most likely be unrecognizable to me.

And that's the whole idea. 

a box that was designed by someone else

This is when Sister A sprang into action. She was so furious that the hair under her veil was soaked and sweat dripped down the back of her neck. If there wasn’t a commandment that said, Do Not Kill, she would have her hands around Margaret’s meaty and evil little throat in a second.

 

She came around the corner so fast that Meggie had no idea what hit her, and she was definitely hit. Sister A backhanded her across the face, and there was an instant welt on her right cheek the exact size of Sister’s knuckles. The slap took the wind out of her and for a moment she thought she would faint.

 

No words were spoken. Sister A grabbed Meggie by the arm and dragged her across the gym, down the brown-tiled hallway, and threw her, actually threw her, into the teacher’s lounge. No one Meggie knew had ever been into the teacher’s lounge, and this is where Meggie discovered that nuns go to the bathroom. This is where she also discovered the potential cruelty of the human heart.

 

The room was empty. Sister Aloysius backed Meggie against the concrete wall and pushed her face against Meggie’s. Meggie could see down her throat and she sensed something so horrible that she had a hard time breathing. Evil. She sensed something evil.

 

“Who do you think you are?” the nun hissed. “Do you really think you can be who you want to be? Do you?”

 

Meggie could not speak. She was afraid she was going to wet her pants. She prayed, because prayers were supposed to save you, but there was no saving her from Sister Aloysius.

 

“Girls are nothing, absolutely nothing. We are here to serve the men, the priests, the men who will be lawyers and politicians and who will always rule the world. We clean the bathrooms and take what is left. What makes you think you can have the kind of life you talk about?”

 

There was no answer from Meggie, who was crying like she had never cried before. What if Sister was right? What if she couldn’t be who she wanted to be?

 

“You’re A’s mean nothing and your talk means nothing. Until you humble your spirit, you will have and be nothing. Girls? You are crazy. We are dust on men’s feet, and it’s time you realize your sinful ways and beg God for forgiveness.”

 

Begging was something Meggie thought she could do just then. She did not want to be hit again, and she wasn’t. What happened next was worse than hitting.

 

Sister A opened the supply closet, the closet with no lights in it, no place to sit, no bathroom, and she pushed Meggie inside of it. Without a word, she locked the door and left.

 

Meggie stayed ion the room for five hours. She heard people moving outside the door and heard the bus leave, but Sister Aloysius knew that Meggie walked home. Meggie cried and she prayed and she begged God to forgive her and she promised that she would do whatever it was He wanted her to do. She didn’t have to go to college and save the world. She didn’t have to go to law school. She would cook and clean and do whatever she had to, if only she could get out of the dark and scary room. She promised over and over again, for what seemed the longest moments of her life.

 

When she heard the door unlock, she waited before she pushed it open, and then ran all the way home.

 

Margaret Joan Callie never told anyone about what happened that day. She never spoke to Cynthia behind the bleachers or anyone else ever again about what she believed or didn’t’ believe. She sat perfectly still during Mass and she slowly carved away the edges of her dreams until they fit into a box that was designed by someone else.

~Dancing Naked at the Edge of Dawn by Kris Radish

This doesn't have anything to do with being Catholic, or female, or a dreamer.

It has everything to do with the fact that everyone seems to have defining moments like this that shape who they become. Moments in childhood, moments in adulthood, moments that change the course of our lives, our expectations for how those lives will be lived.

Some of us never recover.

Some of us nurture unconsciously an invisible spark that ignites later, when the time is right, when we have had enough of the limitations we built ourselves, based on the thoughts we played over and over for decades about something that happened, something just like this.

The human spirit can only take so much. We either curl up, numb out and die to one degree or another, or one day find ourselves unable to proceed as usual. Rage may be the fuel that takes us over that expanse from impossible to possible. Whatever the fuel or incentive is, an amazing resolve appears seemingly out of nowhere that carries us through to the other side.

We make it through to the other side.

 

lingering piles of efficaciousness

They're everywhere, those lingering piles of snow, dense with dirt and sand and all manner of other geological and cultural residue, huddling in the corners of parking lots and on the sidelines of streets.They've accumulated the weight of our winter comings and goings, sort of like the layers of crud we accumulate in our heads over the decades we allow certain kinds of thoughts to travel through them.

They solidify as beliefs that seem insurmountable to overcome.

That's the power that we give them over ourselves.

A blast of positive thoughts, some kind words, some excellent friendship, a walk with the dog out in the sunshine, a great movie, a really good piece of chocolate cake and a glass of milk--all of these things could begin to melt away that insurmountability, we could take a breath of blessed relief, and maybe even envision a better day ahead.

Those moments of clarity and truth-telling--"it's not true, this sludge and crud I tell myself over and over again"--and choosing them just as willfully as you do the other kind right now, are what will save you.

When they start to accumulate as densely as the negative stuff can, things will start to shift in your head, in your heart, in your experience.

Here's to starting, or fabulously contributing to, your own lingering piles of efficaciousness today.

I'll leave the bread crumbs out for you

Thank you, Irreverand Diva Carla for supplying me with this most excellent resource--an interview from NPR with Rick Hanson, the co-author of Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom. I've only been listening to the download for 20 minutes or so and am already pleased as punch about the work this man and his colleague have been doing to explain the link between the bread crumbs that wisdom traditions have been leaving for us for millennia, and what happens in our physical bodies when we follow those bread crumbs.

Evidence. It's not necessary for everyone. Some people arrive at this kind of information without fanfare and without angst. It just is.

Some people need to hear what qualifies as "proof" many, many times over before it sounds "real".

Maybe this material will serve that function for you.

And when you're ready to do something about it, when you've crossed that line in your head and heart, contact your neighborhood Thought Chaperone for some expert guidance on how to finally pull it off.

I'll leave the bread crumbs out for you.

window

outrageously blissmongered recipient

My friend Cris over at The Benefits of Positive Thinking.com is a fan of my Resistance Toys concept and has posted a review of the book at her site.

Thank you, Cris!!

You can see how she rolled with the ideas and incorporated the power of humor and human will into her day-to-day through her art. Photos included. Amazing stuff.

She also thought it would be fun to give away a copy of the Resistance Toys e-book. So that's what we're doing! Someone will be the outrageously blissmongered recipient, who has the best answer to this question:

"What outmoded beliefs could you begin to retire from your repertoire if you knew how?"

I can think of a few.

Check out Cris's site and fill in the form with your answer. We'd love to be sending YOU the book.

Promotion ends March 21st.

No restrictions apply that I am aware of.

Just bring really juicy answers.

The ones that make you a little queasy to think about.

Like that one.

Our job is to keep looking for the work that transforms us

I finished reading Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert. 

It took me forever to read Eat, Pray, Love, and when I did, it was, of course, amazing.

I'd heard that some of her readers were disappointed in Committed, because it didn't transform them like her other book did.

Not Elizbeth's job. Her job is to write the books she's meant to write.

Our job is to keep looking for the work that transforms us.

SPOILER ALERT--if you plan to read the book yourself, avert your eyes:

"Even the Stasi of communist East Germany--the most effective totalitarian police force the world has ever known--could not listen in on every single private conversation in every single private household at three o'clock in the morning. Nobody has ever been able to do this. No matter how modest or trivial or serious the pillow talk, such hushed hours belong exclusively to the two people who are sharing them with each other. What passes between a couple alone in the dark is the very definition of the work "privacy." And I'm not just talking about sex here but about its far more subversive aspect: intimacy. Every couple in the world has the potential over time to become a small and isolated nation of two--creating their own culture, their own language, and their own moral code, to which nobody else be can privy...

"We were shaping our lives in that particular form of partnership because we yearned for something. As so many of us do. We yearn for private intimacy even though it's emotionally risky. We yearn for private intimacy even when we suck at it. We yearn for private intimacy even when it's illegal for us to love the person we love. We yearn for private intimacy even when we are told that we should yearn for something else, something finer, something nobler. We just keep yearning for private intimacy, and for our own deeply personal set of reasons...

In so doing, I have finally found my own little corner within matrimony's long and curious history. So that is where I will park myself--right there in this place of quiet subversion, in full remembrance of all the other stubbornly loving couples across time who also endured all manner of irritating and invasive bullshit in order to get what they ultimately wanted: a little bit of privacy in which to practice [L]ove. Alone in that corner with my sweetheart at last, all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."

The idea of subverting the grid, the authorities, the culture at large, by participating in private intimacy against all the odds inherent in that bold undertaking, lights up every single blissmonger self-reliance corpuscle I possess.

So thank you, Elizabeth, for writing again in the wake of Eat Pray Love. And for doing it with intention. You chaperoned your thoughts to where you could be who you really are.

And all manner of thing shall be well.

gratitude

 

 

egregious error

I recently had the great fortune to be the recipient of not one, but two, arrangements of flowers, within 12 hours of each other.

Let me explain.

The first was ordered via one of those online conglomerate outfits that appear to have great deals. The delivery didn't happen the day it was supposed to. Nor the second day. When contacted about this egregious error, the company couldn't say for sure what had happened, other than that the arrangement was in the truck. 

So not a good experience.

Relationship damaged.

No attempt to repair.

Order canceled.

Business taken elsewhere, permanently.

Word-of-mouth currency as negative as it could be.

Enter second vendor, a local concern who, from the moment the conversation began, was 1000% more helpful, dedicated and able to create a magical experience for the person ordering and the person receiving.

First vendor delivery materializes anyway, in spite of previous inability to make it happen and the order being canceled.

Set side by side, the contrast between the two arrangements is stark. The first had tacky plastic tubing on the flower stems to keep them upright, too much foliage that detracted from the flowers, the water was stale from sitting in the truck for two days, in one of those standard, nondescript curved vases.

The second had inobtrusive florist wire implemented to keep the flowers upright, just enough foliage to augment the beauty of the flowers, an elegantly simple cylindrical vase, and it arrived exactly on time, when they said they would.

Now, of course, I will sing their praises and recommend them to everyone who asks.

Since we're dealing with humans here, experiences like these will continue to happen on the planet, just as they have for thousands of years.

A timeless story of business, services, follow-through, personal investment in outcome.

And that's just fine.

It helps preferences to be born, relationships to shift, ideas to blossom, work to change, procedures to improve (or not), appropriate employees to be found, clients to be garnered, talents to be discovered and expressed. 

All because something got left in the truck.

clouds of killer bees

Just in case anyone wonders if life in the blissmonger world ever hits speed bumps, Mack trucks or clouds of killer bees, the answer would be, "Hell, yes."

Like everybody else's. What might be different in my experience is that I tend to rally my persistence and dogged determination to take what I am able to from what has shown up and move on. As soon as possible.

Because I know the longer I allow myself to wallow in defensiveness or justification, the longer this  unacceptable situation is going to hang out with me. So I better get busy changing my story.

Now.