the messenger...

"Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels/messengers unaware."*

My wallet is gone this afternoon. Several credit cards, vehicle registration, insurance and health cards with it. Where did I last use it?  I had it this morning.  A frantic search of house, car, coffee shop, plus a call to the police confirms the loss.  With visions of someone having a splendid time spending my credit, I cancel the cards.

Supper is a down cast affair. A knock comes to the rarely used front door which tells me it’s a stranger. Opening the door an older women with the broadest smile and missing several teeth burst into the vestibule. “Augusta”? she queries. I nod.  "I have good news for you." She gleefully holds out the wallet. Excitedly, I keep thanking her. She assures me everything is there.

Her name is Lilly.  Apparently, she saw several teens pick up the wallet from the sidewalk and start rifling through it. She told them her aunt lost the wallet so they gave it to her. Then she spent part of the day searching me out as my new street address was not on my licence.  Watching her tell the story, she appears work-worn rather than old. I wonder if she had to think twice about returning money. Her bills may be more pressing than mine

She certainly seems as thrilled as I. We take each others hands, and instantly move to a hug.  As we step away our eyes are moist. She virtually glows.  Joy, relief, and love flood the vestibule. I give her half the money in the wallet. We hug again, and she is gone.  My friend, who observes our encounter reflects, “I think I've seen her picking the plastic bottles out of the garbage around town.”

Several days later:  I still feel warmth from this messenger of honesty, integrity, and goodness.  I think people do glow when doing lovely acts. This encounter was not about credit cards, licence or money. I am still feeling her caring, her spirit. Yet what is disturbing is -- if she had come to the door for anything else would I have even been friendly? I also wonder how many times I passed her on the street, making split-second social judgements, staining my spirit.


*Hebrews 13:1-2
** written several years ago
*** image resource: painting by Raffael, commonswikimedia.org

climbing the liquid mountains of a night sky...

"It's wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. Behind me and before me is God and I have no fear." Helen Keller

The evening was Tucson-warm. On the deck no street light lit the night. The mesquite tree rested, barely detectable, against the dark sky. Countless times I've raised my eyes to this gorgeous display of a billion, twinkling stars. And I have marveled and wondered.

Yet this night was different. The stars, acting like a large, sky-vacuum cleaner swept me up -- transporting me into a trillion little pieces as numbered as the stars themselves. Mixing and mingling, I felt an exquisite sweetness, an astonishing merging with love. What can one say about the indescribable?  Yet, I knew instantly, this feeling is what it will be like when I "die". I just knew.

This was not a cold dark sky embedded with twinkling distant planets, unknown lifeless solar systems, out there. This place was different. No cloud cover here in this intimately known vast beauty of milky ways and black holes of twinkling lights and pieces of me. I was not separate, there was no two. I was a billion pieces free.

Moving back into my skin I felt the comfort of the solid deck under my feet. I still wanted that form in the dark to be the mesquite tree when morning came. However, I also knew I had just "climbed the liquid mountains of the sky," experienced life without my bones, old habits and conditioning. I was here, there, in, out -- countless  little parts of me yet one beating-heart.

The starry night feel will dissipate, yet let me remember to experience it again when my "dying" comes. Then "behind me and before me" is love's Presence and I will not fear.

photo source: fotolia.com

the car-care clinic...

"The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected." Robert Frost

The other night I attended a women's car-care clinic. Surprisingly, twenty others showed up. The person who gave the workshop gathered us around a car on the heist.

I learned about transmission fluid, air filters, and all good car-care practical stuff. After her talk we each went to work. Lifting the hood we checked the oil, fluids and battery terminals. As I hunted for the psi number to check the air pressure in the tires my picture was taken as it had been rather frequently.

Arriving home two hours later, still feeling the excitement of the power I now had over my little Toyota, I was happy I had gone. As I washed the grease off my hands, I caught a reflection of myself in the bedroom mirror and remembered how many times the camera, during the clinic, was pointed my way.

Why?  The face in the mirror with it's wrinkles, sags and spots was not gorgeous or young -- nor was my mechanical expertise impressive. The other participants were younger by a decade or two or three. Then it dawned, "They think I am old!" It was such a ridiculous thought I started to laugh.

Apparently, a "slight of... eye" trick was played on them and maybe on me. I was so engaged learning, exploring, researching how to maintain my car I hadn't noticed age. I felt inspirited just wiping the grease off my hands.

After the mirror visit, I said to my daughter, "They thought I was old tonight." Then added. "I think the universe tricked us because, I am not old." Silence. She looked at me cautiously, not quite wanting to deny the truth that stood before her. Catching her look, I modified my statement, "I am old yet I am not old." All the great life running through me felt ageless -- a bit like the "energize-bunny"  but not quite.

I knew I had presented her with a quandary. Observing each other in silence, she contemplated this life-force with the wrinkles standing before her. What could she say? What could I say? We both started to laugh. (I am not sure at what.) Yet, maybe the afternoon does know what the morning never suspects." Maybe...


*image resource: fotolia.com

stepping out of thought...

"When you no longer believe everything you think, you step out of thought and see clearly that the thinker is not who you are." E. Tolle

Then who am I if thoughts are not my identity? What is left? I think constantly? My descriptions of who I think I am, my identity, are endless. One time I think, "I am good, generous, and thoughtful, another time, "I am neglectful, selfish, and thoughtless depending upon mood or event. Morning, I feel one thing, evening another about the same situation. Thoughts, feelings, emotions, change like the decal flashing a bird or a dollar sign on my credit card -- depending on which way it is tilted.

Thoughts  are quite willing to manufacture me an identify. As an artist there are times in a painting where it feels/thinks like "give-up-time", I am no artist. The colors or composition are off and the waste-basket is handy. Yet when staying with it, saying no to the "I can't" or "I am not a ..." the painting works. I am an artist again. Similar thoughts like, "I am bad, good, fat or gorgeous" imprison me, thus creating a false sense of self connected to my emotional history or social conditioning. I need to allow the imperfections without making them an identity.

What is "real" in me that does not change.  Who is behind or under my thoughts, feelings, emotions, skin?  How do I find out? Tolle instructed a young man who asked a similar question, to feel inside himself for the one ingredient that doesn't change, to listen in alert stillness, listen in a moment of inner spaciousness and find oneself beneath it all -- not thinking but aware in timeless Presence.

"Live a life without thought." an ancient friend also instructed me a few years ago. Puzzled, I began observing my thinking. Her suggestion was to "Briefly step out of the voice in your head, stand back from these thought-processes and their reflection in the body as an emotion. Breathe consciously, center yourself in the moment and a rising inner spaciousness manifests where before there was the cluster of thoughts and the turmoil of emotion." I discover thought is separate.

Stepping out of the voice in my head, into a heart place that never changes, into a Presence that is always here and an awareness that watches this personality called Augusta, I know "the thinker is not me." To paraphrase Lao-tzu, if I name God I haven't got it. If my thought says, "I am sad, happy, artist, grandma with a period at the end...," I haven't got it either yet sacredness always waits in each for my presence.

photo source: fotolia.com

a thought has weight...

"Thought is reality, if you think it is beneficial, it will be. If the situation is seen as negative then you will move into that." Continuing, my ancient friend leaned forward and pointed her finger at me, "It is how each one thinks reality is, is how it goes. Thoughts are concrete. As you think, you are."

After talking with her, I wrote in my journal, "Imagine, thoughts being as concrete as the chair I am sitting on. If I can believe that, the implications are enormous. My prayer for another person could be as real as a physical hug. However, my negative thought or judgement might be felt in another's being like a physical punch. That is sobering. (This conversation and journal entry were written several decades ago.)

The idea that a thought is as concrete energetically as an object was shockingly new to me, then.  Today such an awareness is a common fact. Scientists, shamans and my own experience bear witness. Thought has weight, form, and a life force strong enough to create our realities. Just because we can't see it's form, like the kettle on the counter, does not mean it doesn't exist. When I think of biting into a lemon, the mere thought of it causes my saliva glands to start mobilizing for the coming onslaught of sourness. A friend of mine is scared of heights. To merely think of looking down from a high building produces beads of perspiration on her hands.

Thoughts also have the power and weight to change our feelings and our perceptions. When thinking I cannot do something, I generally can't. Playing the piano these past two years after decades of "can't" proved that. However, if I think I can do something the thought leaves me feeling more intelligent, able and accomplished. I might muff some notes but I love playing the keys. Also when experiencing creative, caring and loving thoughts a largeness of spirit often follows and presence waits.

Yet, I am appalled at how often my good nature let's loose a weighty-thought in the form of a judgement, label, or opinion toward someone. And worst still, I do this knowing what I know. The neighbor whose dog barks too often, the relative who is critical and the homeless man on the corner are all in danger of losing their sacredness -- muzzle the dog, the guy is dirty, the relative is destructive. These thoughts sail around as if they owned the air.

Yet the good news is -- no matter how heavy the thought, "The thinker is not who I am."* Humans are much larger than their mental concepts. We have a deeper and vastly more intelligent heart from which to choose, alter or guard-against any thought we produce. An old sign reads, "Be alert, we need more lerts." I will continue to try.

*Eckhart Tolle

photo source: fotolia.com

God is under the porch...

"The more I tune into this life I realize God is everywhere and the extraordinary is waiting quietly beneath the skin of all that is ordinary. Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond...and the water dripping from the drainage pipe. Yes, God is under the porch as well as on top of the mountain...if we are willing to be (here).   Mark Nepo

Hurrying by the living room to catch my flight in time for Tucson, I felt a surge of gratitude and the urge to bow. The tree, mantle, presents were still emitting Christmas magic, the piano was standing stately that had given me so much abandoned joy. I turned to the kitchen that had cooked so many meals and then the foyer that had welcomed friends, family and strangers.  I felt reverence, relationship and almost said out loud, "How 'You' have supported me." I bowed.

While still in this feeling of grace/awareness at 36,000 ft (the woman pilot informed us) I ponder my earlier experience, thinking, "Oh how palatable and lovely it still is." None of it feels inanimate as if mere objects -- solid, lifeless. Each seemed to resonate with a presence beyond their physical form. In the paradigm I grew up in, objects where mere objects so supposedly was water, light, plant and tree. Now, I am asking the latter if I can drive a nail into it to hold the bird feeder -- knowing it is a throbbing life in tree-form.

The mystics and quantum physicists know there is a level of awareness where all is essentially, One. In other words, there is no solid, no dead, only transition. The essence of life bare, is light. As a spirit guide suggested, we could think of light as a living presence. Ask, ...and it will respond.*

What if we saw objects beyond their labels, attempted to experience them differently from another dimension of awareness: maybe God/love is waiting beneath the skin of the ordinary -- alive, caring, supporting -- energetically. Having just felt in relationship with a piano and a foyer, it begs the question. What if objects have their own kind of spirit, energy, light? What if?

Entering my Tucson home hours later, the table, desk, sofa, covered with months of desert dust definitely looked inanimate. My earlier awareness had dissipated as I guessed it might. Where are my heart-eyes, my heart-feelings now? Gone. My life would be transformed if I could change the channel of my awareness at will but I can't. Yet, rather than explain it away, I want to take this magical path to a deeper truth which understands that more than humans hold sacred space. Then maybe the ordinary will dance and life will live me.

* Sanaya Roman
image source: fotolia.com

What child is this?

Children are full of joy, giggles and holy presence. As we say, what is Christmas without children? They may not know the stories, have life experience but they certainly know the feeling.

My two grands, four and two arranged the manger scene on the mantel last night.* They've never been to Sunday school, are not taught religion and yet the figurines were handled with excitement, great care and feeling. The donkey lost an ear, the Babe bounced from the mantle to the floor twice but both proved to be hardy. The children did not care, their eyes glowed as the two wise men and one wise women, the Mon and Dad took their place in the manger on the mantle.

The one foot Santa was unwrapped next. As the red suit and beard emerged -- an intake of breath. Eyes widened and mouths formed a perfect 0. A high octane sound of pure glee, innocence and deafening aliveness filled the room. Two children bursting their skin with an ecstasy welling up in an instant from a deep, deep land of joy, love, and aliveness.

Christmas is feeling and magic. "The deepest things after all are intangible."** All that matters to the two grands is the feeling -- the surge of joy, sweetness, and love from somewhere, some land within. Maybe this is the child our souls know about without religion, theology, without a face or a word, always waiting and always ready to birth in our mangers.

* Christmas 2012
**Nepo