The Artist

Quote from Ohiyesa (From the book, One: Essential Writings on Nonduality):

I once showed a party of Sioux chiefs the sights of Washington, and endeavored to impress them with the wonderful achievements of civilization. After visiting the Capitol and other famous buildings, we passed through the Corcoran Art Gallery, where I tried to explain how the white man valued this or that painting as a work of genius and a masterpiece of art.

"Ah!" exclaimed an old man, "such is the strange philosophy of the white man! He hews down the forest that has stood for centuries in its pride and grandeur, tears up the bosom of Mother Earth, and causes the silvery watercourses to waste and vanish away. He ruthlessly disfigures God's own pictures and monuments, and then daubs a flat surface with many colors, and praises his work as a masterpiece!"

Here we have the root of the failure of the Indian to approach the "artistic" standard of the civilized world. It lies not in our lack of creative imagination - for in this quality, we are born artists - it lies rather in our point of view. Beauty, in our eyes, is always fresh and living, even as God, the Great Mystery, dresses the world anew at each season of the year.

Ahhhh... we live amongst a collection of art created by the greatest artist of all!

Ramblings on Home and Connection

My two-day-a-week job is with a company that designs websites and then positions the sites on the search engines. We work to make websites show up on the first page of Yahoo or Google or whatever.

I do Quality Assurance. It takes me about 8 hours to go through a website with a fine-toothed comb. My job is to be very critical. It's fun! I feel like a super sleuth.

There are a lot of things that can be done to improve most websites. I've been thinking of two important items that are not always found on a site - or are not always easily found: a Home button and a Contact Us button.

I NEED a big, obvious Home button.
I need to know where my home is. I may not go home for a long period of time, but I need to know that I have a home and how to get there. What is it like for the people in Gaza or Iraq or New Orleans who no longer have a home or any of the material possessions that made their house a home? Do people who voluntarily give up their homes in order to travel and be free of ties feel at home no matter where they are? I don't think that I have that ability.

I need to know that I can communicate with someone.
I need to know that there is a way to communicate and someone that will hear me.

Oh, the frustration of not being able to be heard!

I used to volunteer at a hospice. In my previous life, before my thumb and shoulders fell apart, I had my own massage therapy practice, and each week I would spend a half a day giving massage to the people who were spending their last days at the hospice near my home.

One woman, who looked to be in her 50s, had been deaf all of her life. At the time I worked with her, she had cancer that had metastasized into her spine, causing her to lose control of her hands so that she could no longer communicate through signing. She had an alphabet board, but over the few weeks that I knew her, she lost the ability to control her hands enough to point to the necessary letters for communication.

As she traveled through the experiences of her illness, she couldn't hear and she couldn't communicate. No listening to words of comfort, no expressing fear, sadness, or pain.

I went to her room one day and indicated that I wanted to know if she wanted some massage. The woman was obviously very agitated and she was trying to tell me something. I tried and tried to understand what she wanted as her arms flailed all over the alphabet board, pointing to letters that didn't spell anything. I called in an aide that knew sign language, but she left shortly after realizing her attempts to communicate were unsuccessful.

Finally, after what seemed like a very long time, after I thought I'd guessed every possible thing that could be thought of, I gave up. I quit trying.

Then, something inside me led me to turn off the light. As soon as the lights went out, the woman relaxed and closed her eyes.

I think that I learned an important lesson in listening that day. There's more to communication than words.


(But websites still need Contact buttons.)

I'm so thankful for ears that hear, eyes that see, a voice that speaks, and for whatever is inside that (sometimes) hears the messages that come silently.

A Diamond in the Forest

Maybe you do this too: When someone mentions a book or a person or some music, I will do a search on that particular subject. Then what I find there may take me to something else. After awhile, I am lost in a beautiful forest of rich and interesting sights.

I was looking for a book on Amazon and one thing led to another. Somehow, I found a book called One: Essential Writings on Nonduality. I ordered a used copy of the book and yesterday it found its way into my mailbox. Inside the book, were words that touched a place in me that was waiting to be discovered. I found those words in a part of the book written by Jerry Wennstrom, an artist who, in 1979, at the age of 29, gave up his art and everything he owned to begin a new life. (Researching him for this post, I just found out about Wennstrom's book, The Inspired Heart - another tree in the forest that I want to check out.) Wennstrom writes:

"...A saying by Lao Tzu goes something like this: First, we must do our own personal work, then we tend the necessary work of our family, then our community, then our world - in that order. Most of us go about that process quite backward, first jumping into the world and bringing our messy, unresolved issues with us. The attempt to do anything significant in the world before we have been deeply changed ourselves is a way to avoid real change. Good intention counts for very little in the mythic journey. Doing our own work first leads to our true and unique participation it the world we wish to serve.

"We all change together in ways that are not under our control. We cannot know the outcome of the difficult work we are required to do. We simply have to trust the process. What we can unconditionally trust about change is that ultimately beauty creates beauty. However beautifully we can stand alone in what feels like death is how beautifully we stand in the new life. Our courageous stance in the face of death creates integrity in its truest sense. We cannot impersonate true integrity."

A couple of years ago, I began to feel a certain discomfort as I observed myself and others while we participated in activist work. I watched my ego, my attachments, my need to be right. It felt messy. As a result, I have pulled back from activism and began studying my spirituality more earnestly.

Wennstrom's words - in the above quote and in the rest of his writings - offer a truth that I need to hear. I know a truth that I'm ready for by the tears that come along with it. This morning, reading Wennstrom, the tears flowed, washing away some useless beliefs that I have held for a very long time. When those beliefs were erased, I saw beauty and potential that I sensed existed, but had not seen before.

I am very, very thankful that so much wisdom is available to us. What a gift!

Buddha says: Imagine Love & Joy!

A Fresh Start

Oooooohhhhhh! This feels YUMMY!

It feels like I moved to a new town where nobody knows me so my past is erased.

I like it very much.

I am starting this new blog because of a strong pull to let go of the walls I felt when writing a blog that labels me a social justice activist. I began CarolForPeace.com when I was in the midst of activist work to stop the Iraq war. The Carol that wrote in 2005 is a different Carol than the one typing this post today.

This blog will be my song of peace, A Peace Carol. It's not just about a lack of violence and war. It is about finding out who we are, thus stopping the war within.