With the publication of this short personal essay, Alton Parker, a dear friend of mine, and talented writer presents “Remembrance of a Gravestone,” about a monument he saw while on the road from Flagstaff, Arizona to Los Angeles, California.
Thank you, Alton, for considering publishing, for the first time, on my blog. I love this story.
The setting sun gave the distant mountains a glow of flaming amber. Heading to their far off vista was a straight asphalt highway, cracked and pitted with age. On either side of the highway, a plain of gamboge prairie grass stood. It did not complain about being split by the road; it simply was. Utilitarian power lines were strung alongside the highway, periodically interspersed with poles stretching up into the twilight. Upon one of these, a speckled falcon perched, scanning the ground intently for its next unfortunate meal. Vultures circled the violet sky.
An unusual monument stood at a point between destination and beginning: a gravestone. Long ago, eons for all I knew, a car accident had killed two people here. Artificial flowers had been collected. The roses must have been a striking crimson at some point, but they had long since been sun bleached into a dull depressing grey.
No one stops to pay their respects. No one cares about the gravestone beside the asphalt highway. The names of those deaths have been lost, the files rotting away in the archives of some forgotten local newspaper.
I wonder what their names are.
I feel a burning need to know who they were and who they left behind. Does anyone remember them? Does anyone care anymore? I continue my journey towards the amber mountains, now disappearing into ink black night. I remember the gravestone beside the asphalt highway.
The prompt for May 6th of this year was based on a reading from a book titled The Beauty of Everyday Things by Soetsu Yanagi. In it he discusses mingei, literally a word that means crafts of the masses. He talks about how art, a visual appreciation driven by aristocratic tastes, opposes everyday use, but he asks the question, why? Why should everyday use be merely functional and not also beautiful?
Then he makes the argument that beauty is not just visual, beauty is also defined by function.
Everyday Things – AV Singer 5/6/2024
I wonder if concepts of beauty are universal or if economic status plays a central role in how relationships with everyday things develop. Yes, I have fine china, gorgeous crystal, beautiful linens, but I don’t use them much. I use the hand-me-downs: family objects that have endured time, that are easy to store, easy to wash. I hunt thrift shops for balanced, well-crafted beauty. If a spoon is balanced and well-bowled, I am inclined to use it everyday with appreciation though it is mass-produced from simple stainless steel. I prefer stainless steel to silver. Stainless does not contribute an extra taste to the food the way sterling does and it’s easier to clean, and easier to store. Although I have both, I use the mundane everytime, but I chose it with the eye of someone who appreciates beauty.
I have nice mugs, but the ones I use everyday are green-stamp cups from the 1950’s: one green, one white molded translucent glass. The heft is comfortable even when filled with liquid. The handle is balanced perfectly on the vessel, and because it’s mass produced, both are exactly alike except for color. They are easily cleaned. My finger joints don’t hurt after nursing a cup of coffee.
Utility.
They are like friends. The favorite spoon, the favorite mugs, ones I have lost in the past – mourned like family members. I hunt for new pieces to fill the empty space. I learn to love another chosen piece, cherishing time spent together. This is beauty to me. The fine china, the crystal, and the silver sit in my cupboard, occasionally used for special occasions. I no longer have the linen, which was so hard to care for.
I reach for my shimmering, translucent cup of coffee, take a sip, appreciate the warmth and the comfort of a treasured object. I wonder if my grandmother felt the same about it when she used it. What does that say about me?
My writing sisters understood his words with their own experiences. For the first time I was asked, “Will you share this on your blog?” lI felt so honored.
Betsy Rich Gilon – Clay Bowl
I have a bowl, a simple bowl
Its clay body textured
With undulations of the fingers
That caressed bowl into life.
I hold a bowl between my hands
Bowl beckons for me to touch
As it pleases my heart, bowl lies cupped.
I have a bowl, a simple bowl
Beauty awakens
Shari Anderson – Appreciating Beauty
Appreciating the beauty of everyday things requires time. It requires allowing a spacious
moment in which to notice the weight of a cup in your hand, its shape and texture.
Time – to feel the heat radiating from the luscious Chai within, the steam caressing your chin
and cheek. Time – to smell the cloves, the cinnamon, and sigh with pleasure.
True enjoyment is just that, bringing joy to the moment. With attention, involvement, and
gratitude, our physical, emotional and ethereal senses take in what each moment offers us.
We then experience the blessing.
Dianne Chapman McCleery – The throw away society that we live in.
When did possessions take the place of safety and security? You can buy t-shirts at big box stores for $2.95. How long do they last? Not long, I imagine. I’ve never been a fan of the latest fashions. If I buy something, and it takes on the value of “I really like this” after I wear it several times, I wear it until it falls apart.
A problem would often pop up when I would buy new clothes from stores. After washing, often their shape would change (or mine would). When my kids were little and money was tight, I discovered resale stores. Shirts for $2, pants for $3. And they were already washed and often worn into comfortableness. The major downside was that oh-so-comfortable pair of jeans would wear out sooner than a new pair would, but that was the price I was willing to pay. After all, there were always more at the resale shop.
Lynnea Paxton-Honn – Seeing (experiencing) beauty is not the same as being attached to that which is being seen as beautiful.
I have built my nest slowly through the years, learning what gives me comfort, what fulfills my idea of beauty. In the process of my nest building I have found beauty in the creating. Seeing the beauty in work that others perform with materials: smelting, molding, painting, weaving, the growing of the basics from which the materials are birthed. Scores of farmers, harvesters and craftspeople go into the creating of my home. Because of thrift stores and yard sales I can gather a quality that gives aesthetic comfort. I have my mother’s silverware. It is not super high-end but sweet and special. My house is old, well used, just the right size and shape.
“Just the right size and shape.” We end with Lynnea’s words about aesthetic comfort. Those items we use everyday mean something to us, and therein lies the reason to find those things to use everyday that give us not only pleasure when we use them, but also a sense of beauty, a sense that using them makes our lives richer.
Four writers from the collective, Wise Women Write share thoughts about Spring and creating space for light.
Beauty of Spring
Amel Tafsout
After so many weeks of rain, I feel revived by these first spring days. The sky is wearing its azureus color, and the trees are waking up from their sleep. In one day, they transformed themselves, dressed in their most magnificent shimmering leaves and letting their blossoms burst to celebrate the awakening. The lawns covered with fresh grass look like a velvet jade carpet of bright green with tiny wildflowers. People are coming out of their homes starting to work on their garden making sure to decorate them with the gorgeous colorful flowers. Singing Birds are flying, interacting with each other, and announcing that the spring is back. I love seeing the tree blossoms in white and pink; the tulip tree rising, opening its gorgeous pink blossoms looking like bells of silk petals.
The weeping willows are wearing their lacy leaves, bending on a small lake giving shade to everyone. Why do they have such a sad name? I would call them the lacey whispering willow. Life is back, joy is here. My heart is open. Let’s breathe the spring breeze!
Anne B. Jeffries
The cherry Blossoms
Lilt white around their edges
Pink tunneling down
Silky plum petals
Spiral towards their soft centers
Brown stamens stand up
Lynnea Paxton-Honn
New blooms in this vintage yard – surprises. Tiny white blossoms climb the wire fabric draping the cement wall. Clusters light the drab gray. “Look,” I say, “Look, we have new blooms!” I am excited. Every Spring the yard presents us with something brilliant and new – a treasure missed by the weed whacker or mower. The soil is so moist, and nutrient filled, home to earthworms accidentally uncovered as weeds are pulled.
I am entranced, enchanted, bewitched, charmed, enamored.
AV Singer
Bumble bees
Connect dot to dot
Flower to flower
Not a care
About dallying visitors
They earn their name.
Honey bees
Make plans
Hovering
Deciding, diving
Or flying elsewhere
Unceasing, determined.
I pause
Sit on my walnut stump
Mesmerized warm
By sunshine
Lulled by beesong
The exquisite dance
Brings peace.
Peace
Follows me indoors
Baby lemon trees
Stretch on a windowsill
Safely sprouted in
An empty Toasted Nori container.
A young grapefruit tree
Reminds me with
A sweet scent of citrus
I am thirsty now.
Please water me.
I counsel
A tiny avocado
Growing next to an older
Brother
I am going to trim you
Right here
Be prepared.
Nature
Inside and out
Becomes my family
My heart swells with love
Love for bees
Love for trees
Love for Spring.
Simplify to Amplify
Amel Tafsout
All my life I moved to various places, cities, and countries. I packed and unpacked, repacked then packed, repacked and unpacked again. I needed to get rid of so much, pieces of memories, giving books and clothes away, leaving furniture behind. What an amazing feeling to be able to do so. I remember my nomadic ancestors, who had nothing, they faced hardship and challenging weather and managed to live with less. The feeling of simplifying my life starts with having less.
I never heard the term “hoarding” until I came to the US. Why keep so much stuff when it would be great to let other people in need enjoy it, and feel the freedom to have less?
Having the flood in my storage unit enabled me to release more stuff.
The more I give things away, the more I amplify my life. I feel light, free, and at peace. My life is amplified with my memories and my life experience. That is what I will take with me. Loving people, beautiful moments, laughter, and kindness.
Anne B. Jeffries
A jutting cliff edge
My body the narrow ledge
Itself
Nothing beside
Or above
Or below
Except
Everything
The sea, a perpetual cycle of depth and layer
All metaphors exhausted
The sky
A wide, domed light show that shoots
Gulls across its face
All the previous noise released as music
Lynnea Paxton-Honn
How could she get this across to her audience? Such a big concept – PEACE. Too many words just detract – words create unrest as brains worry to get understanding.
PEACE
Even one thought can distort the unity and cohesion of PEACE.
PEACE is unconditional Love. Is that too simple? PEACE is not the absence of antagonism but the fullness of Joy. It is our true HOME – our infinite, eternal dwelling space.
AV Singer
Pesky fleas jump. Their burning bites instigate a purge, an urge to rid this house, and consequently my mind, of all that no longer matters.
Demented flies swim upside down across the newly serene floors in a mad attempt to capture my attention. “Persist, adapt, transform.”
I text my children. “I feel a burning desire to simplify.” They’ve seen it before, this need to get rid of dusty, outgrown treasures to amplify Light.
If you are interested in reading more from the writers in Wise Women Write, here is the link:
Thich Nhat Hanh wrote in his book, Interbeing: Fourteen Guidelines for Engaged Buddhism, “in this piece of paper is a cloud.” Inspired by his words, Anne B. Jeffries gave the women in my writing group this prompt on August 28th: In this tear is everything.
Lynnea Honn wrote:
Foretelling
Foreshadowing of
winter shadow stretches out
and yawns Preparing
Shari Anderson wrote:
Cascading
Sounds, tones,
Ideas, words
Water-falling
Pummeling
Cleansing
Rubbing
Wearing away
His-story
Revealing Myself
Wholly New
I wrote:
In this tear is everything – every story ever told, from the inception of our Earth until this very moment, and this one, and this one, and this one…and…this…one.
Writer’s block is not a myth. It exists. Most writers experience it. What is it? In my opinion, writer’s block is a symptom of all our tears – the backed up stories carried inside – stories one does not want to face.
You know what I mean. We all tell ourselves stories to get through life. When we tell them long enough, they seemingly become truth. I bet writers have more than their share because they tend to narrate moment by moment.
As a writer, I dumped bits and pieces of my story onto my characters and into their plots. I’m beginning to wonder, can I continue to pass off my life to imaginary others or should I own up to my stories and claim them? By claiming them, might they become part of your story as well, just as yours would become part of mine?
My neighbor worried that my fig tree was giving up. There were several reasons: I cut her back so she doesn’t have to work so hard while Californians ration water. She lost the shade to which she was accustomed when the large companion tree that sheltered her was trimmed. As a reluctant gardener, my plants fend for themselves. I am not heartless, instead I am desperate to help conserve our water supply, so I wait and watch wondering what grows here naturally, and hoping some of it will be good to eat.
Who will survive the new, harsher conditions?
My Black Mission fig leafed earliest. The first inflorescences began to bud late this Spring.
What makes her so successful?
Figs have fed hominids and others throughout history. Uniquely adapted for harsh conditions, it grows where other plants fail. Technically, that which we call a fruit is actually an enclosed collection of flowers. Stem growth forms a bulb within which this cluster of flowers develops. Each blossom is destined to become a single, tiny drupelet. Encased within a protective womb, they do not need to fight heat or dry conditions. Some species, forming both male and female flowers, do not need assisted pollination. Others invite a miniscule female wasp into their chambers to spread pollen while she lays her eggs. These flowers then grow into a cluster of drupes, all encased within their pristine environment. (No worries, the babies escape before we eat the figs.)
This year, a few flowers ripened early, oh so sweet. I await the others. My fig thrives in this hot, dry climate and can live a century. Planted during my lifetime, she will be my companion as long as I am here.
On Monday July 17th, Shari, one of the members of the writing group to which I belong, threw us this prompt: fig leaf. A short ten minutes later, we had the following offerings. I am thrilled to present my writing sisters and their responses to her prompt.
Fig Leaf – Shari Anderson
When I was a young child, my father planted a grapevine and a fig tree in our backyard. It was
biblical
“Every man under his vine and his fig tree”
inspired.
I don’t remember the grapes –
maybe they never fruited, but the figs were juicy and delicious. The leaves of that tree were
wonderful,
unusually shaped with lots of rounded edges, sensual, with female curves.
Why a man, under his fig tree? Why not a woman? Why not just the fig tree itself, shapely,
verdant, simply divine?!
But, my favorite backyard plant was a wild cherry bush, which we used as a hideout, gorging ourselves with fruit while fighting off attacking pirates.
Fig Leaf – Dianne McCleery
The other day, I had to duck under fig leaves to reach Valarie’s front door. And I loved it. I love the hugeness of fig leaves. I love their shape. And, of course, I love to eat figs, especially since they are really flowers, not fruit. I’ve always appreciated adding pansies or nasturtiums to salads, but their tastes are “eh,” not like the deep deliciousness of figs. Yes, I am a fan.
Fig Leaf – Joyce Campbell
The fig leaf reminds me of an outstretched hand
Welcoming and offering a space to land.
Winged beings pause there, some large and some small,
And those with vibrations I can’t see at all.
Hidden below in the cool of the shade
Sprout tiny green nuggets, a prize for their fame.
Soon to be wrinkled and golden with age,
Dried to perfection a treat with no shame.
Fig Leaf – Anne Jeffries
As far as I’m concerned,
Eve’s “transgression” freed humanity
From an unconscious tunnel of an existence.
Imagine Utopia:
Yours different than mine, I suppose
But however that flowered garden is laid out before you
Without the snake
Slithering it’s SINewy offerings
There is no Will
No humanness at all:
Our choices and failings, our triumphs and joys, our sufferings and lessons.
Eve took us, perhaps out of our pure animal nature.
She gave way for the fig leaf of shame
To eventually free us from innocence
Fig Leaf – Amel Tafsout
Covered with a gentle morning frost.
Stretching your fingers to many directions
The lines of your open palm
Go back to the beginning of creation.
Your soft green color soothes the sight
Attached to the blessed tree.
You share shade generously.
You hold your sweet biblical fruit with care.
Then leave with the wind.
Blowing to a new world
Moving with lightness
Dancing your way freely
Ending on Adam’s private part
Covering up Humankind
Living in the complexity of reality.
Afternoon Delight – Barbara S Thompson
Do you remember the scene from
A Woman In Love
When the meal slowly unfolds
at the garden table
like luscious lovemaking?
As guests
caress and stroke
kiss and swallow plump red grapes,
black olives and
cheeses, soft and hard.
In slow, sultry nibbles.
Alan Bates leans back in his chair
with heavy lidded eyes
preparing to explain
the proper way to eat a fig,
It is an English garden after all.
When Eleanor Bron selects a smallish fig
piercing it’s base with one long, elegant finger
splitting it open to reveal the pale purple fruit within
Heavy with seed and fragrance
Slowly she opens her mouth
biting into the flesh
her soft moan echoing around the table.
Fig Tales – Betsy Rich Gilon
Ancient one, your leaves flutter,
The desert wind murmurs,
Camels leave footprints.
Would I have felt
The stories you tell,
Had I bitten into your flesh
Fig Leaf – Symbol of Shame? – AV Singer
Protection from sun
Invitation to hunt
hidden treasures,
Oh, fig leaf,
Why you?
∞
Fingers of mercy
on palm so large,
how long
must you
hide me?
∞
Figs ripen
hidden behind
green curtain.
Why is this
forbidden?
Please connect in the comments, or by clicking on the Like button. For more information about figs, follow these sources:
I am very grateful for my sisters of Women Writers of the Well. If you are an aspiring writer reading this, I recommend the idea of joining or creating a group of like-minded people who meet with the intent to support each other’s writing efforts. The magic of connection is everything. It’s a miracle. Without the support of these women, it would have taken much longer to find my way out of the dark, uninspired hole into which my creativity fell. They shone a light into that darkness and helped me crawl out step by step. I am still climbing, but I can see the way ahead.
In an effort to get me working on this blog again, I asked my writing sisters to share work with me any time they wanted it published. Anne B. Jeffries shared my last blog. This blog I share with Shari Anderson. She sees the Light everywhere and shines it brightly for her students, her musical sisters and brothers, her family, and her friends of which I am so blessed to be considered. Shari combines musicality within her prose and poetry. She isn’t afraid of experimentation. She publishes songs and chants, and is a beloved performer in this lovely area of California. She is one of those people that prefers to see the positive even when others can’t see it. Here is the sample of her writing she has sent to share with you:
Meditation Writing
Her voice –
warm and compassionate
Magically weaving wisdom and breath
Loving head to knowing heart
In, through and around
A creative dance from impulse Divine
traveling as words into our minds
Shari Anderson
2/6/23
Family Dynamics
Why does the word, dynamics, when paired with family, feel so very different than the same word applied to music?
“Family Dynamics” feels complicated, determined by emotional responses and past triggers, but talked about with rational, linear vocabulary completely insufficient to the task.
Dynamics in music evokes: expressiveness, freedom, flow, creativity, give and take, communication.
Maybe the key to better family dynamics is a musical approach, an excitement, a curiosity, an impulse to dive in so we can soar.
Shari Anderson
2/6/23
“So, we can soar.”
I agree with this wholeheartedly, having come up with a different viewpoint from the prompt “Family Dynamics” using words such as: responsibility, expectations of generations, fear tactics, grief dynamics, frustration with education, anger and growth – family – it is what it is: life shared.
The fact is, we all come out of families with a better understanding of who we are, and how to love.
That is cause for celebration. That’s enough to make us all take flight.
Shari is the one that pointed out that my attempts at creating acrostics with the word ‘practice,’ amounted to a journey through a lifetime study of music. My words take flight here because she found the value in them. I didn’t read these in this order because I didn’t write them in this order, but she saw it this way and now I do too:
Thank you Shari.
Thank you Readers. May you take flight until next time you land on my blog space.
In June of 2020 I ‘graduated’ from teaching. Teaching requires mindfulness and extreme focus, a one-hundred percent investment of love during time spent one-on-one with a child or with a group in the classroom. It requires setting aside self to see and hear others instead.
One of my sister writers, author of “Cross Roads,” Anne B. Jeffries, agreed to post on my blog this week. She had just finished a full day of commitment at school but she came to write with us. She is adept at pouring Heart. When she attends our Wise Women Writing group, she feeds our souls. In a mere ten minutes, she addresses each prompt with profound honesty. Her act is an inspiration for the rest of us. She demands authenticity for herself, while maintaining curiosity, joy, love, and compassion for the rest of us.
Dear Readers, I don’t know what some of you do, but I do know that if you are reading my blog you have a sincere desire to connect with heart. Anne’s heart makes a big connection.
Anne, thank you. I feel honored that you have given me your words to give to my readers. Fellow teacher, fighter for children, fighter for people, Anne, I love your heart. You pour out all it carries every day and I know your students feel your intent. Your writing takes away my breath and reminds me that teaching is something I still love to do.
Memories Sleeping
It’s not just my memories sleeping,
It’s all of it.
A honey drip slowness.
I can catch up tomorrow.
Just want to sink down in sleep.
Rest.
Like a frenetic fall.
What is the charge?
Is it my nervous system that signals the experience to fizzle,
Lose its edges?
Then, sink away in categories and compartments,
With no present security access?
Where is my agency?
Who is filing these memories and who granted permission for this protocol?
Or, maybe, it’s all chaos and no “thing” has access.
My consciousness just sifts above it all like a metal detector pulling up old coins.
What about the pieces made of wood and plastic?
What loosens those?
Eternal Minutes
He said it’s like wearing a lie on his face.
I feel that way all the time.
In class- with him- with them.
Like I’m a puppet driven by a motor I did not program, or know how to run.
Today,
For hours,
I peered out from below the lip where I stuffed myself down into a pouring cup,
Until all the drops of the eternal minutes,
Ran out against the automaticity
Of that forced time.
Family Dynamics
There is something about the inability to walk away.
A fabric woven together?
Fabric doesn’t work
because it’s made of thread that can be woven into something else.
My sentiment is too deep to separate out –
Like color in the sky?
Nope
Color is only light.
What holds us together?
Is it, in fact,
A choice?
Check it out
If you would like to read more of Anne’s work, check it out here:
Author’s Notes: Writer’s block. Everyone has heard about it, jokes made, condolences offered. It’s a real thing, a time most Creatives face. The well of ideas runs dry, the lake of inspiration empties and a desert of despair stretches farther than one can see. I had it bad, wandering that desert for at least six months.
One of my writing sisters sympathized, stating her creativity had recently become dormant. We discussed the idea. She was taking a course by David Whyte who offered a solution.
She shared it with me. “Ask yourself, what do you want to say that you are not saying?”
It is a question any creative person can mold to unblock many avenues of stagnation. For an artist, “What do I need to see that I won’t look at?” For musicians, dancers, actors, “What do I need to feel that I haven’t allowed?”
When Lynnea Paxton-Honn shared this with me, my re-awakening began. “What do I want to say that I am not saying?”
In California, where we live, January roared into our state with a deluge capable of filling dry lakes and ponds, and creating new ones, seemingly overnight. It ferociously filled rivers, washing away many things. Tides surged, waves plundered. From Earth’s perspective the rain was needed even though it was so destructive. From a spiritual viewpoint, it was a physical expression of the need to wash away all that no longer serves, a process that caused great grief, but also opened new solutions and opened hearts. It awakened memories, and filled our creative lakes and wells with words for both of us…I am thrilled to present Lynnea’s poem Memories Sleeping.
On September 6, 2022, authors that know or work with DC LIttle Publications are having a launch party on Facebook from 10:30am to 8:00 pm. You have a chance to meet many authors, win prizes, and play fun games. Use this link to find join in the fun.
For those of you who follow this blog you know that, once a week, I meet with a group of writers who meditate together. We write from our hearts, and then tackle weekly prompts. We share what we write each taking their turn in our circle of love. Each of us has come to this group for our own purpose, but I speak for the group when I say, if you are a writer, the best thing you can do for your craft and for your soul is to meet with other writers, to write and share your words.
You know I am all ‘about the magic.’
Something magical happens when we are together.
After meditation or with particular prompts the group responds as if it is one organism with multiple viewpoints. Those are my favorite meetings. The “connection” is strong and we write with one heart.
This was one of those times.
Marilyn Crnich Nutter
Undoing, undone – downfall or disentangle? In free-fall, it’s hard to know where one is headed. Crashing towards oblivion? I like to think of it as an unraveling—like a knitted work that doesn’t take shape or form and needs to come apart so it can be made whole again, or splintered porcelain pieces which we can’t use but can artfully piece together in new form that will please the eye and fill the heart. It’s part of life’s pattern of being, our longing for wholeness and beauty, making sense of our broken and fragile world.
Lyla Fain
you’re overreacting
but this is how I feel
you’re being too sensitive
I feel insulted
they say, sorry you feel that way
I say, stop using language as a weapon
Anne B. Jeffries
I’m the Un-Doer right now
As I glance up,
And take in the tops of your heads
All bent in your own space
In your own minds,
I think,
Maybe I’ll just watch this unfold.
Be the Un-Doing,
Not the Doing.
But I cannot remove the Un-Doing
As I analyze the Doers.
That’s just it,
Isn’t it?
It is only in the Un-Doing
Where the true action takes place.
No subject.
No object.
Lynnea Paxton-Honn
Isn’t that what we are doing now? Undoing? I love the concept, the practice, the awareness of Undoing. It is the purpose of our Elder-years. To Undo until we greet The Wonder of Who We Are. The Undoing—so dramatic in the essence of itself. The Undoing sets us free–Undoing the scaffolding about our egoic constructions.
There is no Undoing to be done in Presence with a capital P, in Stillness with a capital S, in the essence of Soul Self with a capital SS.
It is the Great Undoing, the Great Awakening, the Portal to Who We Really Are. (or The Truth of our Being.)
Laurayne Mae
There is birth, the entry. Then decades of doing that follows. Should we grow into emotional maturity we acquire wisdom. Wisdom is the antidote of doing. Wisdom is our conscious undoing.
Joyce Ann Campbell
Too much of humanity’s progress has left a trail of destruction across land and sea, below and above, within and without.
The undoing of so-called development will not be a simple task.
But undoing is one of Nature’s talents. Wearing down mountains just takes awhile and building them up can be a blast.
Amel
The sound of undoing takes me to the dance of life
A waltz where a 1,2,3 syllabus is moving
In the rhythm of a simple word
A lonely movement of myself
Doing, redoing, undoing of my heartbeat
Undoing the leaves of a tree
that shows itself with its beautiful lacey shape
I undo in facing the shadows
That haunt my dreams
In moving images of an unknown story
With its hurting steps
after the dance of my own truth
Shari
Undoing is much more difficult than the doing that is being undone.
Especially, if that original thought or action has become habitual.
It’s like trying to untie a knot in a necklace. Everything is entangled in
such an intricate way, that even finding a start seems impossible.
But— maybe the beginning of ”The Great Undoing” of our fearful manifestation, is just to start laughing. That laugh sparks another laugh, which sparks another, which quickly becomes viral.
A viral belly laugh to shake away the doing.
DC Little :A sneak peek from Mercy Rising: The Deliverance
The undoing of Mercy came on a day that had begun warm and bright, full of promise. They sat on stumps or rocks in small pods throughout the camp, discussing how well yesterday’s battle had gone.
Mercy stood up, feeling hope rise with her, as she bade her exit from the group. The need to feel the sun on her skin and bask in some time alone grew, besides if she stayed amongst the others too much longer, her head might bloat to an uncomfortable size.
The need to stay humble thrummed within her, and where else then spending time with the Creator to help her remember that?
She glided through the camp, smiling at those who said hello, but she kept her intention focused, finally coming to the newly planted garden. Small green shoots had burst through the tilled earth overnight, uncurling to receive their first touch of the sun.
A deep satisfaction filled her, her purpose realized, her calling answered. She allowed the sensation to infiltrate her, shedding tight throngs of fear and burying the worthlessness that had plagued her.
Just when she began to believe everything was falling into place, she picked up on a frantic heartbeat, racing too fast, tight with fear, dripping in horror.
Mercy jumped up, instantly alert, hand drawing her bow without thought and scanning the area the emotion embarked from, searching for any slight movement or sound….
AV Singer: Connection
Time is not linear.
We like to think it is because logical progression is easier for our emotional systems to handle, but this has been an undoing.
Most of us operate on three cylinders of a twelve-cylinder engine, never questioning our inability to ‘get up to speed.’ We mosey along, secure in our own shells like snails seeing only our own paths. We do not understand that thought can transmit simultaneously with the thinking of it.
And thinking is slow. Emotion is faster, the difference between 10 and 102.
The world is Turmoil right now. It seems criminal to add to the angst. Imagine how quickly an emotional actuality of serenity can travel. Imagine transmission of trust, or a whole-hearted knowledge of what peace feels like. (When I was younger, I imagined the absolute silence of falling snow blanketing the Earth to get in touch with peace. That imagined event helped me get in touch with how quiet the Earth can be: how peace feels, like a quiet in-breath, an in-between place – profound rest.)
Those of us not fighting for our lives owe to those of us fighting, a door that opens upon that space of Peace, where Trust reigns, and Serenity holds us in comfort. It takes as much energy to “feel” despair as it does to hold that door open.
I implore you, if you are not fighting, join us. Recharge your batteries with intentional filling of your cups every day. Keep up your strength. Hold open doors. Connect.
We would love to hear from you. Leave a message in the comment box.
Connection 