How finely tuned we each are...

I often underestimate how sensitive the larger spirit is and how willing it is to help us in every minute and intimate detail -- when we explicitly ask. Yet, the other day I was surprised again. I had an unhappy spot that I had been suspicious of for a while. No matter how happy I was the previous day, at times, a dullness of spirit was present on waking. I am now suspicious of the influence the iPad I watch at night might have on my spirit first thing in the morning. I want to wake in elevated feelings like joyful purpose and a merry, eager heart.

Crawling into bed at the end of a day, I usually catch the news, an interesting interview or podcast, and am asleep in five minutes -- which is a real perk. Thus, I was not looking forward to putting the iPad out in the hall. Besides, would it do any good anyway? Would something larger than my human self hear? Plus, habits are hard things to break, especially when you enjoy them.

After pondering it a few days, and another touch of dullness, I set my intention and asked for a little spirit intervention. With the iPad out in the hall the next night, I try for sleep. An hour later and much churning, I am still button-eyed  At some point I must have dozed off.

Usually, on waking I literately roll out of bed to the floor and meditate. However, just before waking this morning, I am floating in water with kayaks (one of our fun activities on the lake) passing me like sandpipers when swimming at the shore. I love the feeling. Then the experience changes. I am floating on my back watching this lit candle floating in front of me. The experience leaves me with a serenity, sweetness and indeed, a light and merry heart.

Waking, gratitude and excitement weigh in. Something in me did hear! I roll out of bed laughing, realizing this morning there is not much difference between waking and meditating. No dullness, only the hum, and feel of spirit. I asked and was responded to! A coincidence maybe, yet, I know this land too well and have experienced it's magic too often to say, "Nay."

Truly every hair on our head is counted. An invisible reality/that great love does care, hears and responds to the smallest intention and littlest act. At the same time, in each of us, something larger than our humanness also hears and responds. Indeed, how finely tuned to the divine we each are and what magic we can discover by setting a resolve and asking. Dullness can become candlelight.

The night the sheep got it's hind foot caught in the hedgerow style...

The days were golden and the memories are still there in my veins...
Ahhh,  that were my childhood days...
                                                      ~ Aanchal Valecha

My Grands have stayed up late to toast marshmallows over the outdoor fire pit. They now are just tucked into new beds, in a new room downstairs. Two aunties sleep in the guest room across the hall so they can intercept if the kids (now eight and ten) are uncomfortable with this new sleeping arrangement.

After all is quiet, I tuck into bed upstairs with tea and cookie. It's been a full day. I even got an end of September swim with the youngest. My eyelids are heavy.  Before tea and cookie are gone, footsteps on the stairs.  The door opens and two Grands are standing at the end of the bed, each with a twinkle and a grin. "Grandma," they announce decisively, "we can't sleep!"

Not so enthusiastically, I ask, "How did you get past your aunties?"
I am informed, "We looked in but they are asleep." Now, it is about ten-thirty. We chat and then I tuck them in again. Going upstairs and just dozing off, two little silhouettes appear at the end of the bed. Now, I do know they honestly cannot sleep. So out we go for a snack. Food works, sometimes. Not this time. So another try, then another, and another with books being read in between. Finally, back to their beds again. Then, one asks if I will go right to sleep when I go back upstairs. I assure them, I will "in a blink." It is now going on three in the morning.

That did it -- oh, me of little forethought. Both sit straight up, stating, they can't sleep if no one else is awake in the house! The final solution. Upstairs they come. One crawls in with me and the other falls asleep in the bed across the hall.

Yet, I still have this little face on the pillow looking at me with the sweetest smile, all buttoned-eyed. What to do? Sheep, I haven't tried sheep. I explain how it works. We will count sheep jumping over hedgerow styles -- counting back from ten to one. I begin, taking my time describing what a hedgerow might look like (with a little embellishment) and then we got those sheep all lined up and ready to go. Eyes are shut, little hands are up under the chin as if in prayer.

All ten get over and eyes are still shut. Yeah, it worked! Then, eyes pop open with a little giggle. Resigned to my fate, I sigh, "Ok, let's start at twenty." My turn to pray. Fifteen sheep make it, I glance over, not a twitch in that little face. Sleep has thankfully arrived. Testing time. Without breaking cadence, now didn't one of those darn sheep get its hind foot caught in the hedgerow style at number five. Holding my breath, I wait for a response, none. Silence and gratitude twin my moment. Oh, a little giggle but not from me.

I am out of ideas and now it is three-thirty. Defeated, I turn out the lights, drape my arm over my Grand's chest hopefully for comfort and suggest we just lie still. Five minutes later, without sheep, books, or food, we both succumb.

I could look at the night as a bit of a disaster if I had wanted rest? Yet, we had twinkles, laughs, and stories. Eventually, they didn't know how to solve the sleep problem any more than I. We were indeed bonded in helplessness.

At the family dinner the next day, my youngest Grand turns to me and announces with excitement and a giggle, "Grandma, it was the number five sheep that got its hind foot caught going over the style."
"Indeed it was, Granddaughter."  Hmm, a little gold tint from a sleepless night -- maybe a childhood memory?  

Could it be in years to come, my Grands will say, as Valecha observed,
"The days (and even the nights) were golden and the memories are still there in (our) veins...
Ahhh, that were (our) childhood days..."

My first inkling, the seeming death of my father...

We only part to meet again.
                                         ~ John Gay

My first inkling there may be life after death happened the afternoon my father was buried. He was fifty-seven and I was twenty-eight. Being brought up a Protestant, I had accepted by word of mouth, there is life everlasting. My acceptance was too surface to have anything to do with belief and certainly nothing to do with experience.

For months before my father died of a brain tumor, he disintegrated before our eyes and before his own. He went blind within weeks, lost his body functions which embarrassed him greatly, and shortly after that, his ability to speak. It was horrible and his death was a relief. My mother, his devoted younger brother and I had been traumatized by merely watching his dying. I could not imagine what he had been going through.

Coming home from the cemetery after the funeral, feeling the darkness and angst of the past months and the grave, I started to plod my way upstairs to change my clothes.  As my foot took the first step, there on the third step up was my father -- as clear as if he was standing in the flesh. He was laughing! Shocked still, with no time for disbelief, I watched him, captivated. He was looking directly at me. His mouth was open, his head thrown back and his face was full, not skeleton-like as he had been for months.

 He kept on laughing, a happy, joyous laugh. It struck me on the spot, "My father is discovering a great surprise, he lives!" His aliveness permeated the stairs. Then, what seemed like minutes of me staring at him, he was gone (at least beyond the limits of my human eyes).

As I climbed the stairs, laughter began in my stomach. His happiness was contagious. As I reached the top of the stairs, joy was changing my insides. I was laughing out loud. I could not believe it -- joyous laughter juxtaposed with grief, pain, and darkness of these past few months. The graveyard feeling an hour ago was now culminating with his and my laughter.

My awestruck spirit felt pixie-light for the first time in months. I knew my father was great. At core, I just knew he was alive and swell. Amen.

We are all it ~ and the cactus couldn't resist.

The other morning I woke into the most velvet feeling moving through my chest. It felt material, tangible, alive, and it didn't even feel like a feeling! I didn't want to call it love although it landed me in that place, that aliveness which rather felt like a river flowing through my chest.

Generally, I hop out of bed, sit for prayer, and start the day. Not that morning. I was spellbound. And thankfully, it was the weekend; I didn't have to move. After a while, I grabbed a pencil and wrote the following, "Stay here, here, here in this alive, living flowing, captivation. Draw it in, in, in, like a substance, thick and breathtaking." Maybe this is what every Buddha monk sits in, what every yoga and mystic experience. Maybe this is why they can sit or stand in meditation all day if they choose.

"Several hours later, and here it is still humming, moving, and there doesn't seem to be any little me in the way. It feels so tangible, powerful. A thought, I am going to soak-pray every one I know in this liquid, oceanic love. Ah, then it dawns in me, this is who and what each person is made of. We don't have to be a monk, a yoga, or a mystic to experience this. I merely happened to wake in it."

Just breathing this pure feeling of high love, loving, moving kept reminding me of ocean waves hitting the shore endlessly, ceaselessly -- still coming and still humming. Certainly unnameable in every way yet, so beautiful I could have died in it and been in bliss. And, I was already in bliss, whatever bliss means.

If we could only know this is who we each are but it gets covered over with life stuff -- dents, conditioning, upbringing, education, and old patterns.

By next morning the feeling was beginning to fade, as I hunched it might.

Dropping in on a reader a day later, I began telling her my experience, that we each are this love, loving but we just get covered up with life-stuff dents. When concluding that this must be what every Buddha, yoga, mystic and an enlightened person sits in; she pointed over my shoulder and suggested, I turn around.

I honestly had to look four times. There was her garden Buddha and it appeared the cactus could not resist. It was growing toward the figure, wrapping its tentacles over its arm and around its neck. We both laughed at the seeming absurdity.

Yes, and isn't it great. We are all it -- at core, at essence, at soul -- this river of moving love flowing through this chest, this being, and this room is what we are made of, is our essence. Expanding as it does out beyond time, matter, and any me-ness. I say it, feel it, and have written it but this time the question is like God asking, "But do you really get it, Augusta?"

How old is love-age?

I don't believe in aging. I believe in forever altering one's aspect to the sun.
                                                                                                         ~ Virginia Woolf

My daughter's friend asked her a few weekends ago, "Is your mother seventy yet?" Actually, sixty-nine was a while back. Yet I can hardly relate to any chronological number. My wrinkles tell me I very well maybe one hundred and fifty but that is not so, either.

 Physical age feels so black and white, so rigid, so solidly yes or no, and so obsolete. Actually, if I didn't look in the mirror, I might not be able to get the number right. So if no number was involved, would I truly know how old I am?

However, what I do know is,  I want to be the best age I can and live whatever magical-mystery this living purports to be. Yet, there's a problem, a number has been put on my age for the next year and now, in a culture of ageism, I have to live with its stereotype.  I hear of someone that is seventy and I think, "Oh they are old!" Then sobering, I reflect, "Oops, I passed that a while back." Thus, this solid-age-thing is tricky for my identity.

 Stereotypes issue from musty patterns of seeing that come from a climate of social conditioning which cultivates racism, sexism, gay-ism and a host of other isms that have nothing to do with our true identity and too often rob us of our natural selves.

So where do I find agelessness? I have no wish to be a fake-young or a fake-old. The piano takes me to an ageless place. I get a bit crazy. The beat, rhythm and incoming life force just cannot be contained in one small carcass when playing a little honky tonk. Then I catch the look in the eye of my ex who has a type of dementia, I feel my inner-outer eye and his are one. I feel his love flowing and suspect he feels mine. To my young grandchildren, I am just Grandma, fun and ageless. No value judgment attached, no over-the-hill-ism because their eyes too are apparently ageless.

I lost a dear friend a while back. Yesterday I was driving past her house and love, sadness, sorrow and memory in all their freshness awaited. I was ageless, she was ageless. No number for that as it was all alive and well.

How old am I?  People might as well ask me if love is old, if joy is old, or is laughter or sadness  old. I stop, look, and feel.  Nope, can't put a number to it. When I am in joy I feel nothing but joy, when in love, that's it, no age. Sorrow is sorrow, pain is pain, in fact, every feeling and emotion I have is ageless. I stop, breathe and wow, breath has no age either which begs the question, What age am I really? 

Again, I stop, feel the feeling. How old is love-age? How can I put a number to it? I spill over everywhere -- and discover the truest part of me is formless. Thus, I am concluding, like Virginia Woolf, "I don't believe in aging. I believe in forever altering one's aspect to the sun."

Taking my Funk out to lunch...

Most of us feel down at times. Sometimes this sluggish energy waits for us on waking and other times it just moves in for a little. A reader and I were talking about this recently. How emotions dip and one is left feeling like a squashed tomato.

She began telling me how she had handled her funk a while back. "I tried to move it for a couple of days, which is rare for me, but I couldn't get rid of it. So I took Funk to town and visited several art galleries I had wanted to see. We went to the Maud Lewis exhibition. And God, if anyone needed a funk it was her, yet she kept right on painting.

"After Maud, I decided to take Funk out to lunch at the restaurant across the street. The server asked if there was two of us. I said yes. She gave me a puzzled look and brought the extra fork, knife, and napkin. Funk and I actually had a delightful lunch. By the time I arrived home later that afternoon, Funk was nowhere to be seen."

I asked why she thinks to take her funk out for lunch worked? "Well, it was crying for heaven's sake. It was like a little being that needed attention, needed to be important. Besides, it didn't like Funk food.
"Good land, what's Funk food?"
"Oh, doing the same old, same old all the time. It needed something fresh and new that was different and something we both wanted to do. It needed to hold court, to be honored. Lunch out just seemed to fit. Besides, if I had asked Funk if it wanted another day of the same old, same old routine, it would have rolled its eyes and said, "Right!"

Later, I pondered the same question, why was taking Funk out effective? As she said, "For two days, I was fighting it but couldn't rid myself of it. I had to do something. So I put it outside of me and objectified it. Then I listened.  It was crying and wanted change. It didn't want to know what came next, and next, and endlessly next. It wanted to be acknowledged."
I quired, "That's it?"
"Well partly, Yet seeing the funk as other than me, I was freed from its identity which left my beautiful, natural, larger self in charge.

Looking satisfied, she added, "And next time Funk comes back, I am taking her to Winner's and buying her a new outfit."

Oh you rascal day, what music will you play?

Hello Day, you little rascal. What have you in mind for this small box called me? Will I feel your early freshness like an inner morning skin? Will I pause to see your skies and hear your laughter in the wind? What music will you play?

Three hours later, lunch. "Ohhh Day, not once did I come out to play, or see your sky, or hear your wind. Too much to do."  

Yet now that I have paused, a delightful discovery, I am breathing! Ears hear, and eyes begin to see. Five minutes ago, I didn't know I had a chest, hand or heart. In fact, except for coffee and chore, I and everything around me ceased to exist. Ah, there is the ping of mesquite needles dancing on the roof as this red geranium here on the deck is shocking desert sand. 

I slow my breath.  How differently I feel; a little more awareness, a little warmer chest. Now comes this breaking wave of sweetness, a place of sacred space -- with a giggle waiting there.

"But Day, some days aren't so fun where tear and pain await; where light and merry heart can share no hope. What sayest thou, then? How will I avoid the inner cactus needles and dodge the snakes on evening walk?  And oh, that I don't fall to sleep again where hand, cloud, and all go missing except for chore."

Ah, and Day responds. "I am your strength, your comfort, your balm of Gideon. I am love in spite of worry, I am in your tear but not your tear, and in your fear but not your fear. Cleave the rock, the pain, the loss, I am balm to be discovered and invited as I dress your wounds while reaching deep.

"So, come on -- come with me. I am your magic-mystery tour -- skies will open, spirit-winds do run wild, and laughter does pass over this earth.* We will live and play this day and in my music, you will climb your hills and dance your song.  For as you see, I am your rascal Day. I am your seeing heart.

* a suggestion of paraphrase from Tagore's Gitanjali's reflections...