some things i'm learning

"i'd rather learn from one bird how to sing 

than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance."

-e.e. cummings

i'm a lifelong learner.  how about you?

i'm currently learning:

• how to be a yoga teacher (currently working on my 500-hr teaching certification and it's gloriously intense)
• how to hold space and build resilience for humans affected by trauma (by this time next week, i'll be fully certified to teach trauma-informed yoga)
• how to house-train our newest canine love, kiki, with extra patience and love.  we adopted her and she has an unknown history, but we are suspecting some abuse or neglect history as she is super smart but is inexplicably resistant to peeing outside and chews power cords and she startles, cowers and hides when we try to address it.  
• how to navigate the differences between co-creation, collaboration and competition in my community, while maintaining authentic connection.  
• how to build a geo-dome.
• how to refinish wood floors.
• how to read tarot cards (i've been intuitively reading them for years, but now i'm getting some official training).
• how to build resilience in communities within a context of collaboration rather than using and/or falling into the trap of the savior/hero model.
• how to keep bees.
• how to let go and move on with grace and good will.

sunday grace: the path

this was my path.

even before i could name it.

when i was much too small and american to know of buddha

or pema chödrön .

my sense of wonder saved me.

all the unknowable things gave me reason to stay.

sunday grace: trust

once again, this book.

the art of attention

i experience a lot of resistance.  it's that complex but often oversimplified phenomena that looks something like this: i want/need to ______; but i'm going to do everything else that is possible to do on this good green earth of ours and in this good green head of mine to avoid ______.  resistance pops up for me on a pretty regular basis.  i have resistance to doing my work.  i have resistance to exercising and eating nourishing food.  i have resistance to personal accounting and records-keeping. i have resistance to housekeeping.  sometimes i have resistance to taking a shower.

i even experience resistance with activities i love:  yoga, creating, writing, walking with my dogs, cooking, gardening, spending time with friends.  some days it feels like i am resistant to life.  

i have done a good deal of work in the past year becoming more aware of when i am experiencing resistance.  more work is needed to increase my understanding and to start breaking through it in meaningful ways.  this year my friend and master yoga teacher cyndi lee will be helping me address my resistance to yoga through discussions that we will publish in a collaborative series of blog posts.  

i wanted my word for 2015 to reflect my movement through resistance, to be a little anchor for me during this year. what is the opposite of resistance?  how would the antidote to resistance be described in one word?  i went through discipline (too rigid), practice (all i could hear was my mom nagging me to sit down at the piano and do my scales), action (made me want to take a nap), focus (feels like a work word), many renditions of "go with the flow" like fluidity, water, river (these began feeling way too loose than what i'm looking for).  by the way, if you are interested in a peek into my own special brand of resistance, the one i employ hundreds of time throughout the day, reread this paragraph.  it just happens to be overthinking.

sunday at 2:30am, i lay awake with an unusual touch of insomnia.  i wanted to read but didn't want to turn the light on and really didn't want to leave the warm bed.  so i grabbed my kindle. you guys, i even have resistance to my kindle.  good books that are stored on there have been neglected.  i've since abandoned my trial period of electronic reading and returned to the paper book, but i admit that it comes in handy at times like this.  

i turned on my device and navigated my way to the last bookmark i placed back in april:  chapter sixteen of karen maezen miller's hand wash cold.  chapter sixteen is about consistently showing up every day to do the work of our lives, attending to the details and maintenance of our ordinary lives.  

it is about attention.

hello word.

hello 2015.

"attention is the most concrete expression of love.

what we pay attention to thrives.

what we do not pay attention to withers and dies.

what will you pay attention to today?"

-karen maezen miller, hand wash cold: care instructions for an ordinary life

one word

a lovely word, a token for a thousand more:  a l i v e n e s s.

i was pretty pleased with myself because i thought i made up this word (this is not unusual for me, the making up of my own words).  the word enters my mind now and then when i work to describe a moment or feeling, bright and shiny and safe and vibrating.  and even though it felt a bit silly using a concocted word, it also felt very very right.

alas, it's a real word, official, in the dictionary and all.  who knew?  and its definition is almost precisely how i was using it.  it's my spirit word for twenty-fourteen.

a l i v e n e s s of spirit:  present, aware, mindful, recognition, conscious, connection, bodhi, sentience, enlightenment, adventure, diversity, equanimity, daring, creating and loving art and story.

a l i v e n e s s of body:  movement, breath, groundedness, yoga, ease, lightness, being rested, energy, fingers in paint and glue, feet on forest floor and in pacific tidepools, clean and beautiful food.

a l i v e n e s s of mind:  intuition, knowledge, discernment, curiosity, reading, attention, experience, writing and hearing stories, focus, learning learning learning.

these are the things that make me come alive.  i'm ready to have/do/live more of them.

i painted a wee reminder of my word on a wood block and it's hanging right next to my bathroom mirror.

do you have a word for the year?  i'd love to hear it.  whenever i read/hear someone's word, i whisper it aloud and envision them being/having/experiencing it.  i love the idea of a million little whispered words floating through space like tiny white downy baby bird feathers.

sunday grace

"you're the only one who knows when you're using things to protect yourself and keep your ego together and when you're opening and letting things fall apart, letting the world come as it is - working with it rather than struggling against it. 

you're the only one who knows."

-pema chödrön

embrace the process

"life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. this is a kind of death."
-anaïs nin

inspiration

i designed this piece for the child protective social workers and supervisors i train.  (you may recognize it...it's the background of my karma garden sign.)  these words pretty much sum up the broad range of qualities needed in this work.  i plan on making magnets and badge wheelie-bobs to use as giveaways.  this is just one little part of my new job that i love:  creating and inspiration are considered as important as delivery of training and other technical bits of the work.

some days, especially when spring is near

"i imagine that yes is the only living thing."
-e.e. cummings

word of the year (take two)

i think 2013 may be a double-word year.  i chose happy the first week in january.  happy is a good word.  a good goal.  thing is, it comes with quite a few expectations.  so even though things have been mostly positive around here, i've found myself feeling less than adequate on those days when i'm not rocking the happy.

i'm participating in a year-long self-portrait group, 52 of you.  each week brings a new self-portrait challenge.  during week two, the assignment was "mantra".  so many words floated through my mind and heart (surprisingly, not one of them was happy).  the word soul kept reappearing and softly vibrating, while standing alone or within lines of poetry.

so there you have it:  the word is soul.  the question, "is {whatever} in alignment with what i know in my soul to be true and beautiful?"

it's good to have something deep and meaningful with happy as a backup.  :)

my word for 2013

what that means for me today:

• to be energetic and clean in my body and mind
• to be in real relationships, with honest connections and shared values and much laughter
• to have fingers covered in paint, dirt and/or olive oil several times a week
• peace and safety
• yoga and walks in the woods
• to be more delighted with our world, to shift from this persistent disappointment in humankind
• to learn many many new things

the purpose of early spring

as far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.
-carl jung

i go through this weird period every spring when i have a heaviness and a bit of despair about the human condition.  i believe it's a mix of some early traumatic imprint that happened this time of year, seasonal allergies and a call from spirit to slow down and reassess.  it sometimes feels very personal and adolescently dramatic, like my life is a total waste and i hate everything everybody does and says.  also there is the inevitable disappointment that my own emergence is not quite as automatic and beautiful as that which is occuring in nature.  these negative feelings take over when i ignore the annual whisper to withdraw and observe and ponder.

so i'm trying to rest more and join less.  listen more and talk less.  read more and internet less.  love more and fear less.

and read this again.

a curious girl

{image sources unknown; discovered on pinterest.}

a blessing for the new year

on the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

and when your eyes
freeze behind
the gray window
and the ghost of loss
gets into you,
may a flock of colors,
indigo, red, green
and azure blue,
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

and when the canvas frays
in the curragh of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

may the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.

and so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

-john o'donohue
to bless the space between us

{to hear the poet discuss his unique and extraordinary concept of beauty, click here.  he reads this poem at the end of the program.}

i love you anne lamott

"if my heart were a garden, it would be in bloom with roses and wrinkly indian poppies and wild flowers. there would be two unmarked tracts of scorched earth, and scattered headstones covered with weeds and ivy and moss, a functioning compost pile, great tangles of blackberry bushes, and some piles of trash i've meant to haul away for years."

-anne lamott, grace (eventually)

p.s. i look forward to meeting you in person on thursday if i can get out of this effing court hearing.