The Light Found Me

 

I read a while back that a good practice to stay calm and focused is to notice where there is light, especially small bits of light that might be overlooked. It’s a reminder of faith and trust and knowing we are never alone.

I haven’t been practicing this. But yesterday it found me.

On the way home from lunch at a friend’s house, I was on Daniel’s Parkway waiting to turn left onto Six Mile Cypress, an inordinately long process. My attention turned to my left and the woods of the Slough. In the midafternoon light, the trees had gentle light filtering around them. A few leaves were brightly lit diamonds in the indirect sun. I couldn’t take my eyes off the scene. I just kept looking and enjoying and feeling centered and blessed.

That evening I had yet to close my blinds when suddenly a brilliantly peach-colored full moon jumped into my vision before some clouds covered it again. It seemed to be playing hide and go seek, or peek-a-boo. I thought again how the light had come to me, and I said hello and goodbye to the moon for the night, as I closed the blinds. 

I will keep seeking the light, as well as allowing it to reach out to me. It’s such an easy practice and has huge payoffs to the heart and soul. Perhaps the easiest way to remember that all will be well.

Intuition

 Way back in 2003, a friend gave me a dystopian novel called Just a Couple of Days. This book has been on my shelf all these years and I finally read it over this past month.

The book held my attention, although I actually wouldn’t recommend it. But last night while I was reading, something jumped out at me and it made me wonder… How is it we find what we need at the exact moment we probably need it?

It was this quote on page 329:

Faith is the genuine trust in intuition.

This year I have thought a great deal about faith and trust, but I haven’t thought a lot about intuition. But isn’t that what’s always happening?

Yesterday was a great example. Right before I went to church, I was having trouble with my printer. I looked up how to fix it according to the error code I was getting, and decided that I would figure it out when I got home from church. There appeared to be several steps that were unnerving me. This caused me anxiety. Right now I don’t need anything going wrong, even an error code on my printer. I would just like to get through a day without having to handle some kind of a crazy thing.

So it was on my mind while I was at church, and I found myself praying for an answer. I’m not sure why it had me so upset, but it did and I was trying very hard to hold it together.

Near the end of the service, I heard a little voice tell me that when I get home do research again and go from there. I realized that the information I had was from 2019, and I thought well, I’ll look and see if there’s anything more recent. Well, there was and it fixed the problem pronto with a couple easy steps. Where is my faith? My trust? Am I selling myself short?

Were my prayers answered in church? Or was it my intuition?

Are they the same thing?

Don’t Know

 I haven’t written in a couple of days because my mind is whirring. One day I think I know the direction, the next I see different possibilities. Nothing is defined and so many questions people can’t answer.

I want to do what is best for Jim, but it feels impossible to know what that is. 

This just came across my FB feed and I related 100%. I’ve been doing this…and once again, I know that I will know the right decision when it is time to know. Back to that word…TRUST.  

Hospital Day 10

 I am going crazy here without my journal.  I had considered having my neighbor bring it in, but didn’t feel like there was anywhere good to keep it. I had her bring me pads of papers and pens, but have yet to try them. Since she did bring my iPad, I thought I’d come straight here.

The point here is not to rehash everything. All of this is beyond my mind to even comprehend. I am forced into the moment because these previous days have been tough, and the future is terrifying in so many ways, I dare not go there.

Jim and I feel like we are hanging on by a string together. I told him last night I just know we will have a chance to hold each others’ hands again. Could God have brought us all this way together just to drop us in a lonely sea? I think not.

A chaplain who saw Jim came to see me. He didn’t have much to say, but he did recite my favorite quote:

All will be well

And all will be well

In all manner of things will be well

I colored these bright flowers today. Sunflowers have been a guiding light to me for many years. They remind me that joy is always at hand. That when we are together we are more powerful. That we can stand tall and strong. And turning our face to the sun, our beautiful source, is a necessary spiritual ritual every day.

Owned

I have absolutely no time to write today. Heading to the hospital in a bit. And nothing was presenting itself, anyway.

Then in FB memories, this popped up (click on image to read):

To say I’m being owned by the journey is an understatement. I cannot count all the times I cried today, including when trying to secure a doc appointment and they made excuses why they can’t see me. My tears got me an appointment.

I seriously did not know our healthcare system was this effed up.

Also in FB memories are pictures of travels Jim and I took over the years. It’s making me nostalgic and sad, but happy, too. They are great memories.

Off to journey through this day. Can’t promise there won’t be tears, but I’m still riding on faith, hope, and joy every time I can remember. I feel the prayer wind of people everywhere praying for us. I just got to keep in mind these days won’t last forever.

Swirling

Today I’m contemplating Jon Batiste’s words about brutal reality and unwavering faith co-existing.

Jim started his chemo. We’re entering a whole new routine. 

It’s easier to have faith when reality doesn’t intrude! 

Never mind I’m still trying to figure out what this means for my work life.

I’m in this weird spot. I honestly cannot even think about what I’m thinking.

Doing the next right thing—in this case, getting his lunch together to take to the chemo pod.

Sitting with it all again, as reality and faith swirl around and around.

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.

Quotes That Keep Me Going (7 Lines/7 Days #86)

#108Weeks

January 3-8, 2022

From Kara Vereen

Will you lose your balance?

Will you stumble and fall?

Don't give up

You have a reason to carry on

Lucinda Williams

 

 

Literacy is power.

Kylene Beers

 

 

One energy connects us all,

linking us soul to soul and heart to heart

Julia Cameron

 

 

All I've got to do is to love you

All I have to be is be happy

All it's got to take is some warmth to make it

Blow away, blow away, blow away

George Harrison 

 

 

I am alert to the good in every moment.

Julia Cameron

 

 

You can't just love your country when you win.

Joe Biden 

Beneath the turbulence of daily living, there is a longer, slower pulse of perfect timing

It is to that rhythm I give my soul.

Julia Cameron

 

Love & Faith & Joy (7 Lines/7 Days #84)

 #108Weeks

December 19-25, 2021

I've been revising my reading goals for 2022, and liking the direction.

I came face-to-face with the fact that I need a major mental adjustment.

Atomic Habits by James Clear is helping me make small changes to get my physical strength back in a manageable way.

On Solstice Day I wrote this: I commit more fully to the life I know I can 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 and beautiful moment, encounter, and feeling -- as TEACHER.

I must continue to look at each moment with love and faith and joy. I'm calling it WILD JOY.

Progress, not perfection.

Have faith and be the change!

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

 

Begin Again (7 Lines/7 Days #82)

 #108Weeks

December 5-11, 2021

 

 

I have not even thought about Christmas, and haven't even gotten my music out, let alone any decorations.

On Monday, feeling positive and strong.

On Tuesday, trying to recover from all the Monday irritations.

On Wednesday, trying to recover from a fight in my classroom.

On Thursday, I was feeling sad and edgy.

On Friday, I reflected on an unexpected conversation with my 3rd period.

On Saturday, I knew I had made it through and all is well in my world.

Thank you, Holy Spirit, who reminded me to just "begin again."

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.

 

Be the Joy (7 Lines/ 7 Days #78)

 #108Weeks

November 7-13, 2021

 

 

There is a way, and it's called Surrender to God.

I spent most of the week with little energy.

This quote from a young adult novel* I was reading stopped me in my tracks: What if the whole world is actually powered by secret rage?

My spiritual landscape has been made anew.

I have faith I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.

I read an essay** by an elementary educator in Alaska and she came to the same conclusion I have come to: We must be the joy we want to see in the world. No one is coming to save us.

Saturday I woke with a return of my energy. I am grateful.

 

 

* Of a Feather by Dayna Lorentz 

**Anyone who knows or cares about teachers should read this blog post: https://jenabenton.com/2021/10/21/its-time-to-talk-about-whats-going-on-in-school/

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

15. Spirit Walking

 

#66Challenge

Written 11/3/2021 after reading these lines in Joy Harjo's poem "Spirit Walking in the Tundra"

This is what it feels like...

when you spirit walk

there is a shaking, and then you

are in mystery.

I've been through a kind of shaking

and now I am in mystery.

My spirit walk through this thing

called my teaching life continues

to morph and change.

I am aware that being away can

skew the reality -- well aware.

 

Yet...

some things point the way

toward a peace with the facts.

I mean, what is the point of fighting?

 

I must remain spiritually healthy

to do my work. That was

what I was missing. It was what

led to this breakdown of my

immune system.

 

Yet...

I can rise.

 

I had a revelation. My learners

need to be supervised by adults

and

loved by adults.

One cannot supersede the other. 

There is a huge gap to fill, a place

that fell away back when

they were in elementary.

It's different for each one, so it

leaves us to not even know

how to begin to repair.

What I do know is love and

kindness are never wasted.

 

And all things work together

for good

and it serves me.

 

 

14. Faith

 #66Challenge

I took two days off work and after much meditation, contemplation, journaling, questioning, and reading Lynn Ungur’s poem “Hawks,” I came to this place. My heart is calm. My mind is at peace.

Today I breathe easier

as I take a rest

in the quiet here

sun out, busy world outside.

I gave myself the gift of this time

so deeply needed

to heal my tortured soul, to see more clearly

to find FAITH I’m in the right place always.

If I’m here, this is where God wants me.

Today I realize it’s okay!

Today is a gift of grace to myself.

To be fiercely present.

To feel the winds of change.