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

resurrected...

Timber-r-r-r...

"Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree..."

We put our Christmas tree up several nights ago, all eight feet plus. I missed the vertical launching. The grands were excited. I arrived back when they were leaving. My three and a half year old shouts as I get out of the car, "Grandma, the tree is up and it is awesome, the awe being drawn out. When I entered the living room I looked twice.

The angel on top had a slight lean toward the lake, and alas, so did the tree. However, we thought, not a bad lean, we'll straighten it later. After three days decorating it, this morning in all its tinseled and ornamented glory it was definitely "a symbol of good will and love." Two minutes before a friend arrived this afternoon, with no one calling "timber" I heard (what you have already guessed.) -- our "awesome" tree was horizontal  admist smashed ornaments, strewn lights and with garland where it should not be. "Oh Christmas tree, how could you, how could you?" be lying there resting so peacefully.

The door bell rings, without a word I invite my friend to see the living room. She looks, she gasps, saying, "I don't believe it." Neither can I. Then it strikes the bone that's funny. We begin to laugh. After she goes my daughter calls, I describe the scene before me. She chuckles. On Skype I show my horizontal tree, more merriment. Making my SOS call to our workman to raise it again, he laughs.

I sit here at my desk, amused and feeling different than this morning when decorating the tree to "get it off my chore list." Looking at the shambles before me, I think, "Oh me of little insight." Maybe the tree feels this human needs to "lighten up." Too much humbug in this house. She's forgotten Christmas. Let's call Timber-r-r-r... and down goes her-my hectic self."

"Tree, thank you. Getting it done lies peacefully with you on the living floor -- replaced by good cheer, merriment and warmth. Looking up I see the scatter pieces of colorful ornaments catching the lights from the manger scene -- almost beautiful in their weird shattered shapes and different positioning as am I.

A tune hums itself in my head or maybe my heart, "Oh Christmas tree, Oh Christmas tree... Shining light, silver bell, no one alive spreads cheer so well..." 

The Great Mandela. We live in a fractured world. Humpty Dumpty falls off the wall every hour and for the most part we feel hopeless to put it together again. Yet Nelson Mandela had the ability, the courage, the spirit to accomplish such tasks. 

"I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended." (From Long Walk to Freedom, 1995)

death as an adviser...

"Death will come for each of us and yet, with our realignments of time, we have an opportunity to have death move into a different position: death is now just behind our left shoulder. The reality is unchanged, but death now becomes an adviser." Francis Rico

I talked to my cousin on the phone yesterday. Two months ago I wrote "the crossroad..." about a choice she was given: to die within days or take "brutal chemo" treatments which had few guarantees.  She asked what I would do. Neither of us knew the answer. She is now home from the hospital although she still has to take the chemo once a month if she wishes to live.

Although much thinner, her voice is hers -- strong, inquiring with a humor that simmers but not quite fruits. I asked how she is, "I'm great. I am loving today and I am not dying right now. Besides, I want to enjoy my house. (She just had it renovated.)The way she said it was as if this one day was golden, glorious and glittering. Mine felt rather ordinary in comparison.  She continues to tell me of the meaningful conversations that are happening with family and friends who come from across the country. Hanging up I hear, "I love you."

Times gives us "an opportunity to have death move into a different position" -- to allow it to become an adviser -- time to adjust one's life, out look, loving and caring beyond self. I don't want to find that different mole or lump no matter how wise death is. I'd need time to "re position", to allow myself space to grieve what will be lost on "this side" and ponder what awaits on "the other". I know that death is not an ending but another beginning, an act of love, an act of birthing into a larger consciousness.

I  also do not need to have an illness to walk with this great adviser. Experience and age rest it neatly on my left shoulder, now. An ancient friend from the "other side" once told me, "'Death' is not the word we use..." I asked why and she replied, "As it is merely passing from one life experience to another life experience."  And when she pointed her finger at me, somehow I knew it was true.

So like my cousin I trust death will illuminate with light, change mountains into molehills
and teach me again that the moment is precious. I have a choice of response right here, right now -- a major act of power.* I don't have to wait. Maybe on posting this writing, I will invite this wing creature who will take me into a larger awareness to rest softly on my left shoulder. Then as my cousin would say, "You, look and listen..."

my cousin on the right this past week-end

* Rico
image source: fotolia.com

watering...

“The geranium just died on the window sill but teacher you went right on talking.”
Albert Cullum

A little geranium here in the corner has not been watered for days. The flower is dried crisp. I had not noticed. How many times have I just gone “right on" typing?  My grand children want to watch a  program, so easy to let them while I "catch a few moments for myself." A senior down the street is lonely, I say “good morning” and keep on walking.  I read in the paper last week, a woman in Pakistan, had gone to the police station to report being raped by her brother-in-law and was pregnant.  She was sentenced to death by stoning. I have done nothing.

I consider myself sensitive, informed, and spiritual yet I have not written an email to the Pakistani government, stopped and talked to the senior or watered the geranium. I get spun off so easily by everyday-ness and too busy meeting my own personal deadlines. I console myself with cliches. In my busy day, “I can’t do everything or help everybody.” All trite but true. Even good posture like  holding my shoulders back, my stomach in are lucky to get any attention at all.  And they are right below my chin.

I get too thin in spirit, swim in a pool too shallow for resonance, presence, or thoughtfulness. Am I cold-hearted, selfish, or is it just I can’t be bothered?  Is it a momentary forgetfulness of who I really am, my soul-self, my relating self? Are these its choices?

I pause, letting my eyes drift slowly across this mahogany desk to the green curled leaves of the geranium being played by the breeze coming through the screen door. I wrote not long ago about Masuro Emoto's photographs that witness to how water responds to emotion or neglect. I would speculate it is the same for plants. I remember the worn face on the senior (and I am one). How different it begins to feel. Now the hand holding this pen, is coming to life. Relatedness begins to stir.

Everything thing resonates and beats the same heart. The dried flower is me when I stay in my busyness, when I keep "right on talking/typing" instead of watering. So I begin again, the geranium is watered, the justice email is sent and maybe tomorrow on my walk, I'll take more time than saying a "hello" in passing.

*photo source: fotolia.com