The Best Christmas EVER!

On second thought, maybe the best Christmas I've had in my life so far.

Well...  maybe the best Christmas since my son and daughter were little.

Anyway...

Today, twelve of us silently stood on the street corner for PEACE.  Four people were visitors from Sweden. 

How special that Christmas would fall on Saturday, our vigil day!

It felt so unifying, meditative, peaceful, so very, very RIGHT.

And near the end, a little piece of rainbow appeared in a cloud.  Auspicious???

I hope your Christmas Day was the best EVER, too!

What I Love About This Time of Year

I love ice.

I love perfectly smooth ice

and artful ice.

I remember a time when I was hiking next to a pond and the ice started singing.  I'm not kidding.  It sounded like angels were humming all around me.  (You may say that it was all in my head, but I had a hiking buddy who heard it, too!)

I am not a cold weather type of person, but I have to say that I love this time of year (don't ask me about January and February).  

I love that people come together, they think about each other more, and sometimes they out-do themselves with kindness and giving.

I love the sounds of bells and laughter and music.

My favorite Christmas song is O Holy Night.

This little girl does a beautiful job of singing it (and I like her little girl faces and moves).

What do you love about this time of year?

What is your favorite Christmas song?

Presence (Not Presents)

This we have now
is not imagination.


This is not
grief or joy.


Not a judging state,
or an elation,
or sadness.


Those come
and go.


This is the presence
that doesn't.


- Rumi




Reflecting on a night when the moon turned a rusty red before my eyes,
remembering the 145 people who died on the streets of Denver this past year and the acknowledgment of their lives that we attended last night,
thinking of the grief, fear, love, and frustration that moved like the earth passing over the moon during my dad's recent illness,
and recognizing that it all comes and goes
without my control,
and all that stays constant is
life
love
the ever-now-ness.
Never touched by the comings and goings.
When I connect with that,
I know peace.

Winter Solstice Lunar Eclipse

Yesterday evening Mr. CFP drove me and the Buddha dog to the park for a little walk. I almost caused a heart attack and/or accident when I yelled out "Look at that!!!!" as I first viewed the full moon rising over the city.

In Colorado, the beginnings of the eclipse took place about 11:30 p.m.

I slept for about an hour and a half before getting up to watch.

We put a blanket on the sleeping garden bed and, lying on our backs, we witnessed the most astonishing show.  

 

I couldn't help but think about how, even though we know it's not true, we on this planet live, not only individually, but collectively, as though we are the center of the universe, .  

You and I are a part of one celestial body in a universe beyond imagination.  

We are as beautiful as this rusty red moon, as sacred as every planet and star, and yet, we are barely a fleeting breath within the whole miracle of it all.

As The Light Moves In

I'll be up tonight - from about 11:30 p.m., Mountain Time, until about 3:00 a.m. 

I plan to attend the great performance of the lunar eclipse (and maybe let my inner coyote howl a little).  I'll also allow my Tibetan bowl to soak up some extraordinary moon energy.

Before the full eclipse begins, I'm going to leap and hop on my Moon Shadow.





Then during the eclipse, I plan to meditate and pray.  Are you going to be up watching the eclipse tonight? 

If so, I'll meet ya there!

Twas The Week Before Christmas

The traffic was busy
more shopping to do
people on cellphones
rushing on through.


They couldn't be bothered
by women with signs.
Twas as though they were rushing
to stand in more lines.


A man he approached me,
I don't know his name.
He asked me some questions,
he was playing a game.


Are you for or against
abortion he asked.
I said not a thing
So he took me to task.


Shake it or nod it
he said of my head
and when I didn't
he went on and said


If you don't shake your head
then I'll tell you, I know
that you're pro abortion,
and away he did go.


I was standing for peace,
but he had his agender
Thought he could read minds
and, well, this story ends here.

Life Is But A Stream

Prescription for when things feel out of balance:

Take one solo hike as often as necessary in order to alleviate symptoms.

Infinite number of refills.

No ill side effects.

I hiked alone today at the open space park that I love so much. I passed one runner. Other than that, I was THE LONE HIKER, except for the magpies and gulls and little creek.

It has been very dry here - we may break all records for lack of moisture this time of year. There are two creeks that run through my open space park. I say "run", but truthfully, they are now just trickles. But I love the sound of trickling.

Mr. CFP recently bought me a little flip cam and I brought it with me today and recorded the beautiful sound of the dancing creek. You can hear it here:




I didn't follow paths the whole time I was at the park. I followed the lead of my body. I threw rocks on the lake. They broke through the thin skin of ice and took with them my frustrations and anger and sadness.

I was alone and yet I have never felt so enveloped and embraced.

You would have liked it, I think.

I Understand

When my mom said that she wanted to be well now and it was only a couple of weeks after she had broken her shoulder, the wonderful orthopedic doctor said, "I understand."  I have heard him say that so many times since then. 

Mom wants to be 100% rehabbed NOW. 

"I understand." 

The doctor doesn't tell her why that's an irrational want and he doesn't say that she'll have to wait until such-and-such a date.  He just says, "I understand."

And my mom thinks that he is a really good man.

He is!

Even though I admire that man's ability to just empathize without adding to, or subtracting from, the story presented him, and even though I would like to have his communication skills, I have yet to be able to let go of whatever need I have to be right or smart or impatient or argumentative myself.  I have yet to say, "I understand" when my mom feels tired or sad or impatient about her health or about my dad.

I haven't said those two words once to my mom or to Mr. CfP or to my son or to my daughter or to anyone else.

Even though I can't think of anything that anyone needs more than someone to understand, I still can't get those two simple words into my head.

Maybe a tattoo on the back of my hand will help?  Or better yet, on the back of my eyeballs? 

I feel a little frustrated about this.

Oh, you understand?  

Gee, thanks!

No One

Jason Shinder died of cancer at the age of 52.  According to Wikipedia, he had put off going to the doctor to get the lumps in his throat checked.  Then, he was negligent with his chemo and meds.  In his poem, Company, he wrote:

I’ve been avoiding my illness
because I’m afraid
I will die and when I do,
I’ll end up alone again



I wonder if in his death, he realized his deepest fears of aloneness or if he found that those were only stories made up in his mind.  Or, did he vanish into the big, beautiful nothingness where no beliefs are real?

I found out about Jason after reading this poem that was sent to me yesterday:

Alone for the Fifth Day

When I look at the ocean for a long time, the blue

and restless driven waves, I keep looking, I keep looking,
I keep looking at the waves swaying in the wind

like a metronome, wired for the sound of a sleeping heart,

and I keep looking with the silence of the sun
on the windowpane, and I keep looking and do not stop

looking deeper into waves as if into the middle

of a woman's body, where the soul and spirit
have no human bonds, and I begin never to turn away

from looking though I am frightened but keep looking

beyond what I know until I can hardly think or breathe
because I have arrived, with the need to be me disappearing

into the beautiful waves, reflecting no one, nothing, no one.

 - Jason Shinder

Poetic Healing

Reading The Sun Magazine before falling asleep last night warmed my heart.

This article about poetry spoke to me, so I decided to call on the few poems that still rent apartments in my head.  Throughout the night, they comforted me in my confusion and grief.

And at one point, I visited all of my family members and wished them happiness, seeing that I have no idea what that means to another and being real fine with that.

It mostly seems that there is no rhyme or reason to things (although maybe there is, but I can't see it).  Poetry brings us together so we're not so alone in the Don't Know.  It even makes the Don't Know beautiful and friendly.  Intimate.

I think this will be the next poem that I will allow to take up residence in my noggin:



WHAT TO REMEMBER WHEN WAKING

In that first
hardly noticed
moment
to which you wake,
coming back
to this life
from the other
more secret,
moveable
and frighteningly
honest
world
where everything
began,
there is a small
opening
into the new day
which closes
the moment
you begin
your plans.

What you can plan
is too small
for you to live.

What you can live
wholeheartedly
will make plans
enough
for the vitality
hidden in your sleep.

To be human
is to become visible
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others.

To remember
the other world
in this world
is to live in your
true inheritance.

You are not
a troubled guest
on this earth,
you are not
an accident
amidst other accidents
you were invited
from another and greater
night
than the one
from which
you have just emerged.

Now, looking through
the slanting light
of the morning
window toward
the mountain
presence
of everything
that can be,
what urgency
calls you to your
one love? What shape
waits in the seed
of you to grow
and spread
its branches
against a future sky?

Is it waiting
in the fertile sea?
In the trees
beyond the house?
In the life
you can imagine
for yourself?
In the open
and lovely
white page
on the waiting desk?

- David Whyte

Happiness

Today was a day to fill myself up.  Have forgotten about fun and friends for too long.  I called a friend and we went out to breakfast, then I stood with our Women in Black vigil.  Much healing occurred.

Sometimes it takes another person to straighten out our crooked eyes, so the time shared at breakfast was more than food for the belly.  And I realized that virtual hugs are awesome, but the real human thing cannot be replaced. 


I have not mentioned that Mr. Carol For Peace has been out of town for most of the great adventure that has taken place this past week.  So there have been no hugs and no one but me to take care of Buddha.  Good thing the Buddha is so appropriately named.  He has been an understanding and supportive companion at all times.

While standing vigil alongside a street full of holiday shoppers, something within me opened up.  We are a group of women dressed all in black as a sign of mourning for the atrocities of war.  Today I could no longer be in a place of mourning.  I wanted to wish happiness to each driver and passenger.  I wanted happiness.  I wanted happiness for my family.  We can have happiness even when we have no health or wealth and when the situations of the world are not to our liking.  We can be happy with those who oppose what we say.  We can be happy just for the sake of being happy.  No conditions are required, being happy just because we are alive.


It was all so beautiful.  I couldn't help but to smile.  A lot.  I connected with drivers and and pedestrians, not with words, but with eyes - in a deep, human connection.

"Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy."
— Thich Nhat Hanh 

Happiness right now IS peace.  

"Each moment is a chance for us to make peace with the world, to make peace possible for the world, to make happiness possible for the world."
— Thich Nhat Hanh (Teachings on Love)  

 

 

 

 

(You have my permission to remind me of this post the next time I lose my footing, okay?)

Dropping Some Dimes

As I have been following Reed of "A Year of Giving",  I picked up the quote below.  Been meaning to post it and also to start leaving dimes in various places, but I've been a little distracted.  I haven't researched any further on this, but it makes sense to me.

    According to one experiment conducted by Isen and Levin, experimenters looked for helping behavior in unaware subjects after they left a public phone-booth. Whether or not the individuals helped a person in need was found significantly influenced by whether or not one had just found a dime in the phone-booth. In the initial experiment, the results for the 41 subjects are as follows (Doris 2002, 30):

    Found Dime: (14 exhibited helping behavior, 2 did not exhibit helping behavior)
    Didn’t Find Dime: (1 exhibited helping behavior, 24 did not exhibit helping behavior)

    These results suggest that morally significant behavior such as helping another in need depends largely on minute factors of the situation that are not in the control of the agent.

It doesn't take much to bring out the best in people.  Gives me so many ideas about spreading kindness!

 ~~~~

On the family front, everyone got sleep last night!  I got ten hours!  Stockpiling that stuff up for the lean times...

Yesterday (or the day before, can't remember) I told you about Amanda, the daytime caregiver who is Native.  Well, the nighttime woman is also Native.  Only she hasn't told me that: I just know.  She is young.  And get this:  She works twelve hour shifts - from 7 pm. until 7 am, THEN she goes to college!  Holy jamoley.  I have to think of her any time I don't believe I can do something.  She is studying to be a Physician's Assistant!  We are so lucky to have her, and the world is lucky to have this wonderful woman in the area of healthcare.

Maybe my dad is just doing this sick thing so that I can meet all of these angels...

:-)

This Sucks, And Other Fun Thoughts

Was I the one who wrote about this being a PRIVILEGE?

Never mind me.  I must have been out of my mind.

Last night I was thinking of the saying "wrung out and hung up to dry" and I added "...in the desert with vultures picking me apart".

I never want to do this again.

I never thought I would say it, but dementia sucks big time.

~~~~

We have had three shifts of caretakers since my dad has been home from the hospital. 


Amanda is the daytime caretaker.  She is 50-ish, short, somewhat round, with graying hair put up in a bun.  She took no time in telling me that she is Native.  I loved that.  Me, Ms. White Scotch Irish, would have said Native American, but now I think that that is an insult.  Her ancestors were here before any America could be tacked on.  That's our story, not theirs. 


Amanda was raised by her grandfather, a medicine man.  She sits by my dad and does beading for her grandchildren who are all Native dancers.  The photos of her grandson and granddaughter in full regalia are works of art. 

She is totally my idea of Grandmother.  Powerful.  Wise. 


She is teaching her grandchildren the Native ways.  How lucky they are!

When a grandson's classmates were making fun of him for his long hair, calling him a girl (like they used to do to my boyfriend in the early 70s) she gave the principal an offer:  She would speak to the class about her heritage for 1 1/2 hours for free.  The principal set it up.  Amanda asked her grandson to dance for the presentation. He did.  The class got educated and also saw the talent that the grandson has.  Now the kids think that he is one cool dude.  End of harassment story.

I love her...

Privilege

My friend sent me this little card yesterday and it made me cry:

Tomorrow has already come.  I am no longer the daughter.  I am a partner in a journey.

What a privilege to be a caretaker of my sweet, sweet dad in these most intimate of times.

Four Hawks

Life was feeling overwhelmingly hard

until I drove to the airport and back


on the drive

four different hawks

in four different places

eyeballed me

three on light poles

and one on the branch of a tree

how can we forget

the goodness of life

when sharing this planet

with such majestic beauty?



I already know it's everywhere

even in times that feel hellish

there is something sweet to notice

but the birds

they give me more strength

than any super hero

ever dreamed of having.



In deepest gratitude to the wonder...

Milestones

I come from a family of tight-lipped, "we can do it alone" people.  To honor my parents' dignity, I have protected their secrets.  At my own expense.  It's hard for them to accept community and support, and as I play along with their story, I am not able to receive the support that would be helpful for me.

Now it's all breaking down.

Less than six months ago, my dad and his four brothers were all here with us.  As of last night, three of the five have passed on.  My dad and his youngest brother are all that are left. 

That is, if you consider my dad "here".  He has been in the hospital since early Friday morning. I think that he is getting a little better, physically.  Mentally...  his dementia is over-the-top now.  My dad has not been "here" for a long time.

Now that there is only one brother left - and he is a brother that my parents speak with a lot - I am free to talk about what's going on.  I'm free to speak the words that bounce around in my mind. 

My uncle who died last night was the uncle that I spent the most time with as I grew up.  His family lived less than an hour away from my early childhood home.  But in those days, the trip seemed to me like a 500 mile trip.  You had to plan for it and give up a whole day.  Well, I really didn't feel like I was giving anything up, because Uncle Wallace was the father of my favorite cousins.  My cousin, Kathy, was the same age as me and we really had a girlfriend thing - almost like sisters.  It wasn't so much fun with the boys.  As boys can be known to do, they enjoyed picking on us girls, but now that we are adults, one of the male cousins is a good friend who I am so glad to have in my life

Uncle Wallace liked to camp and he was an excellent camper cook.  I remember gathering wild strawberries and other berries (whose types I can no longer remember) with my aunt and cousin. Then Uncle Wallace made berry cobbler on the Coleman stove. Major yum!

And when my brother substituted a rubber hot dog for one of the cousins' grilled hot dogs, Uncle Wallace, who was in on the joke, kept a straight face as he urged his son to just bite a little harder, since sometimes hot dogs have tough skins.

Sometimes it seems like a line of dominoes got set off.  As my uncles have fallen so quickly, I find more preciouness in the family members that are left.  Talking with my one remaining uncle today, an uncle I haven't communicated with much, I find a new place of love and support.  We are a smaller family now, so we have to take care of each other.

And today I let go of the stories of a need for independence that I have lived under for so long and I open up to the beauty of transparency and receiving love from wherever it wants to come.

Michael is listening to a video of a flash mob in the next room.  They are singing the Hallelujah Chorus. 

I dedicate that song to support Uncle Wallace in his liberation.

Pay It Forward Day

I have to say that thinking about all of the possibilities, and then the logistics for those possibilities, is more fun than actually carrying out the Pay It Forward deed. 


On Facebook, I saw that some guy named David is hosting his 2nd annual Pay It Forward Day today.  I'm all over that! 


And so are over 535,000 other people!  Just think, one person suggests a day of action and a huge chunk of the world changes. Over a million people will either be paying it forward or receiving an unexpected act of kindness.  And those are just the ones that we know about!


So last night, it took a long time to go to sleep, because my mind was sifting through various scenarios of how I could best use this PIF day.  I came up with the idea that I would keep my act close to home.  I know someone who lives nearby who is not doing well financially and because of that, not doing so well stress-wise, either.  Today I will send the person a gift card that will help with groceries.


Oh, I am so excited!


I've been following Reed as he has journeyed through A Year of Giving.  He has been giving away $10 to someone new every day for almost a year now.  He doesn't just hand the $10 out of his car window as he drives by a person with a sign that asks for money, he gets to know the stories of his recipients.  That has made an impact on me.  People need food and money, but they need to be heard and to feel connection just as much. 


Because I am paying it forward anonymously, which is definitely called for today, I won't get to spend time with the recipient of my gift.  But I have done that many times already.  For me, today is about not needing to hear a thank you.  It's also about re-igniting hope in my recipient and offering the knowledge that this is a kind world.

Have you had any memorable experiences while paying it forward?