Kermit and Family

The frogs!

There must have been hundreds of them in the marshy area around the wooden walkway during our retreat on Whidbey Island.

Every evening and morning, the LOUD Kermit family serenade brought a non-stop smile to my face. We could hear them from the building where we ate dinner. And when we walked on the boardwalk, we walked amidst the choir of frogs.

It's a rare moment when this Colorado girl gets to hear the Frogalujah Chorus.

It sounded like this:
(for the effect most like the experience I had, turn your sound up as loud as it will go).





On my last night on the island, we all met for singing meditation. During a pause in our singing, FROGS continued the chorus while being accompanied by the beautiful hooting of an owl.

Oh. Life doesn't get any better than that.

Undoing

I landed in Denver yesterday after the most sweetly relaxing flight I've ever known. For one who "never can sleep on a plane", sleep silently and softly moved in without my ever knowing it. With iPod earphones in ears and a beautiful woman's voice explaining how to look at the world differently floating through my head, I somehow slipped into that completely different world. Or, I should say, no world at all.

First, I was taking off from Seattle, completely absorbed in the complex flavors of the "Cherry Pie" Lara Bar I had found in my bag, then I was landing at the Denver airport, amazed at the snow-covered mountains which are so beautiful from that distance and which I'm not able to see from the close proximity of my home.

How like life, eh? We can't really see the beauty when we are too close to a situation - or too close to the mountains or to other people. We have to step back, sometimes by waiting for a period of time, sometimes by travel to a new environment, and often just by letting go of preconceived ideas and seeing the situation or mountains or your significant other through new eyes.

I have traveled for these classes six times over three years. Throughout these years, I have been swimming in the ocean of study by reading many writers and through phone conversations with classmates and teachers. Each time we have met, I have sat in class, the silent woman. I haven't yet known of anything that I needed to say, nor how to say it should something come to mind. Yet I sat there, staying totally present to what was going on around me and especially to what was going on within me.

So many changes have occurred. Like the silent fog moving in, like the sleep that I never knew was coming until it left, transformation has been slipping through this life, unannounced and unobtrusively.

Not going to say much more about all of this today. Maybe it will unwind into more words over time.

I know people who unpack as soon as they arrive home. Not me. I leave the suitcase for the next day. Unpacking so soon seems like a harsh landing. Some people dive straight into a cold pool. I walk slowly into the pool, allowing my body to adjust, one part at a time. I guess I'm a slow transformer.

Today is the day for unpacking and washing and stepping slowly into the cool pool I call my life in the Denver 'burbs.

Auf Wiedersehen wieder

Goodbye again!



Headin' to the northwest where my hammock is awaitin' me.

Hubba hubba.

Who I Am

My cousin recently sent me a song that reminded him of me. It was neat to see (hear?) how he perceives me. I had, just the day before, gone to the funeral of our neighbor. Our neighbor's family members had chosen to have a few songs played there that they thought would represent their loved one.

All of this got me to thinking about what songs would describe me. What songs would I want played at my funeral?

Below are three songs that demonstrate how I see myself. I think that I could add another hundred songs and still not feel complete, though. There are no Talking Heads songs here although they are definitely in my top ten groups. Their music cannot fail to put a smile on my face.

Well, without further ado, heeeeeeeeere's Carol!

From my youth (and I still haven't figured out what war is good for):




The video to the song below is a little cheesy. Sorry. I LOVE watching hawks and eagles. When I see a hawk soar overhead, not only do I hear this song in my head, but I feel like I, too, am flying free.




Thinking of Thomas with this song, although it's been one of my favorites since it first came out. I would sit on my bedroom floor and play it over and over again. When we don't like what's going on, we tend to like the fact that all things must pass. The true test of letting go is in how we accept that ALL things must pass. There is true freedom in celebrating that fact.




Dear Mr. CFP,
When I die, please play these songs at my memorial. And you know the poem they passed out at Phyllis' funeral? The one that said not to remember the mistakes, but only the perfection of the person after he/she dies? Well, forget about stuff like that. Have a great time laughing at all of the stupid things I did. Like leaving the house while beans were boiling on the stove and then coming back to a house full of toxic, black smoke. Like diving into relationships too quickly and too easily and then finding out that some people drain the life out of others, so needing to figure out a kind way of getting out.

Please enjoy my perfect imperfections as well as the things that I did well (if you can think of any). They are all a part of what made me Carol.

Affairs of the Heart

And now here is my secret, a very simple secret;
it is only with the heart that one can see rightly,
what is essential is invisible to the eye.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Mr. CFP and I braved yesterday's blowing snow to get to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science's exhibit of Body Worlds - The Original Exhibition & The Story of the Heart.

Yesterday morning I had read Mark Morford's latest article, written about his love of the mystery. It included these two paragraphs:

It's just a hint and a whisper of an idea so far. But it turns out, when measured electromagnetically, the brain isn't the organ that gives off the strongest, most complex or dynamic signal. It's the heart. By a factor of, oh, about 5,000.

In other words, so strong is the heart's signal, so overwhelmingly dominant in the body is its pulsing electro vibe (its rhythmic field "not only envelops every cell of the body, but also extends out in all directions into the space around us," says one summation), it's possible that we all have a completely different powerhouse processor/informational hub, potentially even more illuminating and influential than the mind, the function of which we have yet to begin to conceptualize. How gorgeous is that?

I realized that I wanted to see this Body Worlds exhibition, which would include much about the heart, with the awareness that the heart is more than a mechanical pump. Just like we tend to give the brain all kinds of attributes, acting as though our very "I-ness" resides there, I wondered if I would be able to sense how the heart, in Antoine de Saint-Exupery's words, "sees rightly".




I have to say that it was a challenge, but I was helped by beautiful quotes on large wall hangings in each area of the exhibit. Quotes from Gibran and quotes like the one above by de Saint-Exupery.

Alongside preserved healthy hearts, enlarged hearts and translucent slices of hearts, we also saw posters of many attributes of the heart, from those given in scripture to an acknowledgment by a physician that, truly, one can die from a broken heart.

Doing a search for "heart, religion" brings up about 112 million results. One example: "Search me, O God, and know my heart" from Psalms. For almost-ever, it seems that we have thought of the heart as more than a pump. If the brain is the "I", the personality, the logical part of ourselves, then the heart is the place where we feel - love, sadness, grief. It's the place we look to discern if someone is a good person. Do they have a kind heart?

Maybe we are still in the "earth is flat" realm when we think the heart is more than a pump to keep the body alive.

I don't see any harm there.

If you agree with me, you are a person after my own heart.

If you don't agree, don't break my heart by letting me know.

But then, if you have a change of heart, by all means, tell me.

I will love you, no matter. Cross my heart and hope to die.

Love,

Carol
A bleeding heart liberal

Over a Cup of Tea

Life has been, well, just life.

This is a brain dump. Surely there is some kind of theme running through it.

***

Tomorrow we will go to the funeral of our across-the-street neighbor. It will be at the same church where I went to her husband's funeral about four years ago.

We have lived here 13 years and in that time, five of our nearest neighbors have died. Their ages have ranged from 20-something to 80. I know that life is like that - AND it seems like a lot. Maybe that is because it hasn't been a year yet since the traumatic death of our next-door-neighbor Jonathan. I still can't believe it. I still miss him.

I'll miss Phyllis, too. I was her Mrs. Kravitz. Because I could see her house as I stood at my kitchen window, I would notice when her garage door was open for too long, which would lead me to call her to ask if she really meant to leave it open (the answer was always "No, I forgot about it."), or I'd go pick up her trash can lid when the wind blew it off the container. I was the nosy neighbor who kept track of her and sometimes shared neighborhood gossip with her. Well, SHE gossiped. I just. Listened. :-)

And now she's gone.

I should be sure that when Phyllis' daughter puts the house on the market, she remembers to list "Your Own Personal Mrs. Kravitz" on the features list for the house.

***

In a couple of days, we're going to go to the BODY WORLDS & The Story of the Heart exhibit at the Museum of Nature and Science. I saw Von Hagens' Body Worlds exhibit a few year ago, and if it hadn't been so popular as to pack the place full of people, I could have stayed and oooohed and ahhhed for hours and hours.

Hmmmm... first I write about dead people that I've known and will never see again. Then I write about dead people I've never met, but who have donated their bodies and allowed them to be preserved in ways that will allow me and others to see them so that we can understand more about the fascinating miracle of the body.

***

I have to admit that sometimes I don't find the humor in this existence, but mostly, I find the whole thing pretty darn amazing. Sometimes, like this morning, I can just be standing at the bathroom sink when a wave of joy - for no apparent reason - floods through my body.

Sure, I'd like to move to the little desert hermitage where I recently spent a week. Suburbia is definitely more of a challenge for me. But when I slow down and notice, I find that this is as miraculously beautiful as the desert. In it's own way.

***

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers. It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and of death, in ebb and in flow. I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life. And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment. - Rabindranath Tagore

But I'll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you'll come to understand that you're connected with everything.
- Alan Watts

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.
- Rabindranath Tagore

Oh, Deer!

I ask people why they have deer heads on their walls. They always say because it's such a beautiful animal. There you go. I think my mother is attractive, but I have photographs of her.
- Ellen DeGeneres

Holy Ground

I can't really say that any ground is holier than any other. As far as I'm concerned, it is all holy, sacred, beautiful.

So, if I were to obey the above sign, which is posted in the entry to the chapel of the Carmelite Hermitage where I just spent a week, I would never wear shoes. Which is fine with me, because I, Shoeless Carol, am not enamored with cumbersome things on my feet.

This sign isn't just talkin' to anyone named Moses, though. Everyone is asked take off their shoes before entering the chapel. I'm guessing that the reason has a little to do with the holiness factor and much to do with the fact that out in this desert land, it's pretty impossible to enter a building without bringing in at least a few ounces of sand with you. It's holy sand, but still...



This is the third year that I have done retreat at this Hermitage. I'm not Catholic and I don't attempt any Catholic practice while I'm there. Any Catholic symbols, candles, writings or photos around me are incorporated easily and wonderfully into the beauty of my whole experience.

For some reason this time, I felt drawn to attend the Sunday mass, even though I had been keeping to total solitude for a couple of days. Oddly enough, it didn't seem that attending mass would break my sense of solitude. There was something that was calling to me and I'm all about listening to the call.

The service was so precious! About 25 people were there. Our hymnbook was a little notebook of photocopied words - no notes. It was fun to follow along when I had no idea where "along" was leading me. Oh, and it was all a Capella, so I didn't even have an organ interlude to get me going!

The young woman next to me had on an above-the-knee-length gray plaid skirt and white knee socks. In the winter. In Colorado. At 8,000 feet. Makes me shiver just to think about it.

One of the men across from me had an almost belly-button-length gray beard and he wore gray sweatpants, with navy blue cut-off sweats over them.

Another man, who was probably in his mid 60s, wore a suit. When communion time came, he walked up to the front in his nice suit, his well-groomed hair, and some big, honkin', blue, down-stuffed slippers (Remember, no shoes on this holy ground).

When he walked, the swoosh, swoosh of the slippers sliding against each other added to the sweet disconnect of "dapper" and "lounge".

I don't remember much about the sermon (is that what they call it in a Catholic church?), even though I enjoyed it immensely. Here is what I remember most:

Listen.

and

We can live in prison, even if we are not physically imprisoned.

Amen.



After mass, I put on my shoes, walked the holy road back to my little hermitage and listened. For a very long time.

Almost Heaven

Full moon setting over the mountains

And She Emerges Out of the Desert

Yesterday, after a week of mostly solitude, except for the rising and setting of the sun and moon, along with the dust and deer of the desert, I landed in a cement desert of dust and parked cars.

After a week of being surrounded by exquisite beauty and living in a slow pace that seems to be my body's natural rhythms, I walked into an office full of people who appeared to have an urgency about whatever it was they were doing.

It was all amazingly beautiful.

I walked outside this morning on my way to my acupuncture appointment - a great way to begin my life back here in suburbia. I was immediately hit with the LOUDEST din from the traffic on streets some distance away. I remember that every time I come back from Quest or Retreat, I am amazed at how loud and foreign the din sounds. I know that a week from now, I will rarely notice that noise that surrounds me every day here.

On my way to my appointment, I waited for oncoming traffic to pass so that I could make a left turn onto another street. For some reason, an approaching car stopped and the driver motioned for me to go ahead and turn in front of him and all of the cars behind him. He had no obvious reason to do that. I drove the rest of the way wondering who that angel could have been. Kindness for no apparent reason.

I am home now, Buddha (the dog) is asleep by my feet. A few moments ago, I heard Flickers pecking on the telephone pole outside.

I used to think that desert life was more beautiful than that found in this city. It certainly is quieter. It's more pleasing to the eye, for the most part. And it feels more spacious. Still, I'm coming to understand that peace and beauty aren't found outside of myself, and in this cemented, car-infested, LOUD place full of kind people, peaceful Buddhas and wild Flickers pecking holes in anything they can find, all that I hunger for is already right here this very moment.

How did I ever get to be so lucky?