Fleeting

 This morning on my way to get a warm-up on my coffee, I noticed the sky.

I took my coffee and granola bar out to the lanai, and sat with the sunrise. It was remarkable. I felt calm and brave. An osprey came and sat on the porch next door, keeping me company.

Then the osprey and the brilliant sky were gone. Another reminder on how fleeting beauty and companionship can be. Best to recognize it when it is here. My total time outside probably wasn’t much more than 5 minutes. This is what was left:

Good * True * Beautiful

 Meditating on this quote today….

GOOD

…those who care for others

…those who help us see the way

…those who tell us of our gifts

TRUE

…where connections bolster, not break

…friendships and marriage

…where souls and spirit meet inside of us and between others

BEAUTIFUL

…our natural selves, the way we were created

…our compassion and love

…our genuine trust in the universe to provide all we need

We are never without

GOOD * TRUE * BEAUTIFUL

Doing My Job

 

First, the positives. Yesterday I received this card and flowers from the my school in condolence for Wayne’s passing. Beautiful, and many personal messages on the card for Jim and me.

Second, the Behavior Specialist came in my chaotic 5th period so I could meet with each student about their project. If she wasn’t there, I would have never gotten through them all. As it was, it took up to the very last minute, and some students were absent. I am tremendously grateful for her support. I won’t be seeing these students their next two class periods, and I needed to be sure they had a clear direction. It’s the way I do my job.

But the day was a whirlwind, and started out a bit frustrating. Here is what I wrote in my journal:

I cried in frustration AGAIN during PLC and I hate that. Everyone tells me I shouldn’t be the teacher I am. I know it is supposed to make me feel like I can take the pressure off of myself. Yet, I’m tired of that message. And I’m also tired of “solutions” that do not work.

I knew from the start the intensity of this project wouldn’t be fruitful for all kids. WHY IS THAT SUCH A BAD THING TO ACKNOWLEDGE? I don’t think they should have to be left behind because my life blew up.

I believe if I have flexibility and do what I can to reach all learners, I am doing my job. Giving them alternate ways to learn the same skills seems a natural part of the education process to me. I push against other teachers telling me it isn’t necessary. 

I think it is. If I’m doing my job. And despite my constant absences, I am thoroughly dedicated to get the job done. Call me crazy…but I don’t think that will change. 

If/Then —the empty sky

For a couple of days I’ve been reading a Rumi poem called “Out in the Empty Sky,” and wanting to write something as response. (Read the poem here). I know I need the message, so today I decided the only response was to do a breakdown on it and put in my own words what it says.

IF………I can sense God in any real way it takes me to a place which is wide open and free. 

I can see all beauty and my inner mirror gets clearer and clearer.

 

THEN……..…I have no fear of loss, no anxieties about everyday difficulties. I can interpret anything in song and stories when God lives through me.

 

 

A Million New Versions

 When I reviewed my writings here from last week, I felt a bit annoyed with myself. Why do I change every day? Why am I seemingly always setting a new course? I had told myself to tamp it down already.

Then I read a poem called “Unlearning” by Nikita Gill, where she posits that womanhood is about unlearning all you’ve been taught. Now, this isn’t a new thought to me, but the words here got me:

how to understand 

there are a million 

new versions of you 

hiding under your skin

This immediately made me feel less crazy about my process, and helped me understand that’s the purpose of living and growing. We are all doing it all the time…I’m just vocalizing it.

So welcome to the Monday January 22, 2024 version of me. She comes with beauty and purpose and yes, a little fierceness. Every day can be a tiny celebration of something newly discovered.

Your Gifts

Every morning I read a selection from a book called A Year of Miracles by Marianne Williamson. The readings are based on the book A Course in Miracles, of which I've been a longtime student.

Earlier this week, on a page entitled For Reflection: On Where to Put Our Talents, I read the following:

We're not raised in a society that asks, "What are your gifts, and how can they make the world a more beautiful place?" We're usually asked something more like this: "What will you do to make a living?" This knocks us out of our natural rhythm, because the soul simply doesn't think that way.

I decided right then and there I would ask my learners the two important questions.

Although it turned out to be a challenge for some of my young people to understand they had a gift to give the world, most of them dove right in with answers. Since we are an arts school, many of the 146 responses had to do with art, theater, dance, and music. And there was a smattering of sport and video game related responses.

We often don't get to talk about these things in school, and I think it was a wonderful exercise for them to have to think about this.  By the way, one person did ask what my gift was and I said writing! Doing it, teaching it, reading about it. I am a writer, for sure!

I have selected 20 of the responses to share here:

I am funny and sarcastic. I can make people laugh.

I'm good at being nice to people. I can help give the world more kindness.

I am great at math and can become a math teacher.

I'm good at running in football and soccer. I can make kids healthy again.

My gifts are intelligence, music, imagination, and courage. I can help the world by making new medicines and other amazing achievements.

I am good at acting and academics. Theater makes people happy, and academics advances the quality of life.

My gifts are kindness and generosity. I can spread more joy throughout the world.

I am good at basketball, and I can show my dunking skills when I'm in the WBNA.

My gift is being smart. I can make schools for people who can't afford them.

Art is my gift. I can make spread beauty by creating art pieces for the world to admire. 

 

Even the ocean gives us a gift we all enjoy! 

I am good at reading and academics. I can be a teacher and help people understand things.

Dance. I can perform and entertain people for their enjoyment.

My mom says I'm a big-hearted person. I care a lot for my friends and family and strangers.

My gift is styling clothes. I can help style and inspire other people.

 

Reading, swimming, public speaking, being kind, and making friends. I can help make people feel more welcome at school.

Music and patience. I can listen to people's  problems and comfort them, then I can show them some awesome music.

I have a gift for makeup and creativity. I can create a makeup line and spread positivity and diversity in the makeup community.

I am a positive person. I can pick people up when they're feeling down, and help them feel more confident and happy.

I can make some mean fried chicken. I can make people's bellies feel great.

 

I'm good at violin, figure skating, soccer, gymnastics, dance, and singing. My friends say I'm funny and kind. I can't fix the world, but I can make my friends happy, and they can spread the positivity.

*

You can bet I'll be doing this activity again!

The Return

 The day I’ve waited for finally came today. I was able to return to Bunche Beach in the early morning hour.

I found myself breathing deeper than I have in a while. I couldn’t take enough pictures! So delighted to be among the sand and gently lapping waves and shorebirds skittering the edges, the newly lit Sanibel Island Lighthouse blinking from across the bay. Sunlight streaked the sky as I made my way down to the point, the place I always go, seashell in hand, to my prayer tree. I had no idea if it would be there. 

It was! Battered quite a bit, but now with an even bigger hole to slip my prayer shell.

It was a homecoming.

On the way back I found a place where someone had drawn a circle. I drew a heart within it to represent my return…with love. 

Something About This Morning

It is evening, and I’m moving toward getting dinner going and settling in with some television, which is our nightly routine. It has been another wonderful summer day of balancing reading and art and taking care of some things around here. 

I began the day by finally getting out for a walk at Bunche Beach, something I’ve wanted to do for a while, but was just too lazy to make happen. Plus the weather has been ungodly hot and humid, even in the wee hours, keeping me in the AC.

But today, miraculously, it was a little cooler. I arrived at the beach at 7:15 a.m., and there were only two other cars. That never happens! I practically had the place to myself. 

What was different about today was the affect it has had on me. I took my usual cache of photos, but there is something about this group that feels different to me. The color of the sky. The sunrise on the clouds over Sanibel.  The pelican lolling in the outgoing surf. The osprey feather I found. 

I posted a few pics on Facebook, and all day as people commented on them, they popped up again in my feed. And each time I was delighted all over. Each time I was so glad I had made the time to go and be with nature. 

So I decided to document this morning of joy for what it was—a bit of midsummer magic.

 

My arrival

 

PELICAN SEQUENCE

My walking path

First time I've ever scored an osprey feather

When I got back in the car, a meaningful song came on: "If Tomorrow Never Comes."  I felt blessed to know that if tomorrow doesn't come for me, at least I spent the last day doing what really matters.

Between the Branches

 [Note: Sunday morning I arrived at Six Mile Cypress Slough, read David Whyte’s poem “The Thicket,” walked and meditated and took photos, wrote this, and then added quotes from Whyte’s poem in italics.]

I took my meditation to the slough…

free and observant

Contemplated the nature of all things being evolutionary and revolutionary…

surveying the tiny stages and the curtained dramas

Such as the Spanish moss hanging from tree branches…

 every further stage of vision leading me back to smaller and smaller worlds

The Pilated Woodpecker busy on his branch, finding breakfast, preening himself…

Always two realities…action or non-action.

never leave the branching world...a kind of enclosed womb-like eternity

What changes things?

Ideas. Curiosity. Faith.

The trees are both able to be touched and observed in a watery mirror.

Is the reflection telling the truth? 

searching between the branches... the knowledge of some immanence

When it was time to leave, the sun in the Cypress pond lit the way…

 

brought clarity to silence, set me to grow

Heart lifted. Exhilarated. A quiet mind.

Taking all the necessary actions

To meet the revolution.

Thinking Out Loud on an Auspicious Solstice Morning

 Written 12-21-21

I am finding inspiration and motivation from every direction.

A few days ago I realized I was ready to move on from the place I've been, which has been rather stuck. I knew this was coming, but I did not have a vision.

Today the vision began to form.

First, with Atomic Habits by James Clear. I'm thinking What kind of person do I want to be? And What habits will get me there?

This motivated me to get on my exercise bike, and I put on a podcast from Michael Meade called "The Cultivated Heart: In Loving Memory of Robert Bly."  I have met both of these men before, and Robert passed a month ago today.  In the podcast, Michael focused a lot on writings Robert did for a poetry anthology they worked on together called The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart. It has always been one of my favorite collections.

What was helpful to me is that the topic of cultivating our hearts caused Michael to focus on a few specific poems, two of which really spoke to me.

 

I think I will also take a moment to mention why I knew I was stuck, even as I knew it was time to move on. First, I had a meeting with some friends where I found myself blaming a lot of others for things I'm encountering. This left me emotionally reeling for at least 12 hours, and was not a pleasant experience.

Second, I met a friend for lunch and a Broadway show, only to find myself surprised that she brought me Christmas presents. Why I was surprised baffled me. We always exchange gifts. How is it that I have not even given it ONE thought these last few weeks when I knew we had this event coming up?  My only answer is that I have become ridiculously insular and selfishly focused that even things that should be evident go right past me. Not a good feeling. I blamed myself deeply for the neglect of this important exchange.

Another thing I encountered recently that brought me up short was revisiting other blog posts from Decembers of previous years. It is there I found something I wrote on December 9, 2017 called "On Questions and Contradictions." In this post I discovered that much of what I keep complaining about now are the exact same things that were happening then. Have I not even figured out how to do better?

In the blog, I referred to the poem "The Sunflowers" by Mary Oliver, in which she suggests we ask sunflowers questions:

Come with me
to visit the sunflowers,
they are shy
but want to be friends;
they have wonderful stories
of when they were young –
the important weather,
the wandering crows.
Don’t be afraid
to ask them questions!
Their bright faces,
which follow the sun,
will listen, and all
those rows of seeds –
each one a new life!

I then proceeded to ask myself a lot of questions, many I still have today. Things like...How do I get through to my students? Why do I go through this every year? What will make real change? 

And most importantly, Why can't I be you, Sunflower?

Coming upon this blog post was unforgettable in this current quest.  Leave it to Michael Meade to pick up the pieces for me when he read this poem:

This poem connected everything together -- all my tears, my grief, my vulnerability, my blaming of others, and a good comeuppance on how wrong my view can be. This is about seeds being cultivated. It has been too easy to tighten up and not let that seed explode into something wonderful. After all, everything real in life is about breaking open to the moment. Without it, there is no creativity, no innovation.

Michael goes on to explain:

[We must live] with immediacy of the soul, that rare sense that the next moment can break open. And that we must...marry it, step into it, and become ourselves in that moment of opening and awaking. If we fail to do that we have not fully participated in the world.

It is obvious I have to do that which is really difficult for me -- truly open up, live more fully, love more actively. I have been saying this for years, and I think I'm doing it, but recent events have found my fault lines. And recent events have also taught me I have no time to waste. I look ahead and I see an end line. This is a new feeling, and one I must reckon with.

But Michael wasn't done. Then he introduced this poem, which gave me further marching orders!

To Be a Slave of Intensity (Kabir, trans. by Robert Bly)

Friend, hope for the guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think...and think...while you are alive.
What you call 'salvation' belongs to the time before death.

If you don't break your ropes while you're alive,
do you think
ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
Just because the body is rotten -
that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next life you will have the face of satisfied desire.

So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,
Believe in the Great Sound!

Kabir says this: When the guest is being searched for, it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity. 

JUMP INTO EXPERIENCE WHILE YOU ARE ALIVE.

BREAK THE ROPES.

I simply LOVE that! 

"So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is, Believe in the Great Sound"

Welcome it all--joy and sorrow. Don't ignore any of it. ENGAGE!

So the answer to Why can't I be you, Sunflower?

is

I AM. I just don't activate it.

*

I'm not quite done, even though that seems like quite a lot.

For the first time in a long time I pulled a Rune stone. And the word was perfect, of course: FAITH.

This is already a word I have embraced during the journey over these past few months. I discovered it when I did the 33 Question Cards to find my word. When the Rune divination said the same, well, I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

And I still needed these words:

Faith encourages us to believe that we can make a difference -- in ourselves and in the world.

And so, on this auspicious solstice day of 12-21-21, I commit more fully to the life I know I need to live. I commit more fully to vulnerability, innovation, creation, and joy. I commit more fully to cultivating my heart, leading with my heart, shining light from my heart. And I seriously commit to not blaming others or myself for what is. I welcome it all--every ugly or beautiful moment, encounter, or feeling-- as TEACHER.

I needed to identify the turning point, and this has been it.

11:05 am  12/21/2021

 

21. Pregnant

 #66Challenge

 

I had a dream I was walking along, then I sat down. A doctor (female, Indian) approached me and told me I was pregnant.

I knew it was the truth.

And I was happy. Ageless.

Nothing else involved, and no one else.

All I can think now is that I'm pregnant with the possibility of birthing something new in my classroom, somehow pulling together to grow and learn and thrive.

I'm pregnant with ideas on how to let the kids do the productive struggle instead of me constantly struggling against them. Breathing into, rather than holding my breath.

It will be much like those midnight feedings and even colicky babies you have to drive around in the car to soothe and get quiet calm. In other words, it will be rocky for a while, I am sure.

I am slowly giving birth to what I already know...and what I don't.

This is a sacred time for me, and I need to keep my mind on

love

wisdom

caring

listening

lifting

and recognizing the 

moments of 

brilliance.

 

Productive Brilliance (7 Lines/7 Days #81)

 #108Weeks

November 28-December 4, 2021

Orchid Bee photo by Kara Vereen. 2021

I dreamt of crystals again -- this time they were buried in sand

This week was a new beginning

I'm doing well keeping loving attention

I started privately giving "orchid bee" recognition to learners showing "productive brilliance"

My bottom line: I am a reading teacher who will stick with what she believes no matter the horrible curriculum sent her way

I realized (from journal entries) that the day I saw the two eagles on the roof was the beginning of this part of my journey -- it was October 5th, the day of my first meltdown

Friday tried my patience, but my goals for the week were met, so I am happy

Casting My Faith (7 Lines/7 Days #77)

 #108Weeks

 October 31-November 6, 2021

 

 The only thing I know is that I don't know

Obstacles will come like waves -- keep coming and coming -- you must learn to surf with unshakeable peace

The most beautiful form of courage is to be happy (Jeanne Lohmann)

Don't quit before the miracle

Beauty is the target -- spread joy or be destroyed

All my young readers are created in God's image, too. Little Godlings

I cast my faith forward as a light on my path