Maitri's Notes, Quotes & Flashing Thoughts...

This blog will be closing...

2009-11-17T22:39:00.000-05:00

Dear Ones,

It is with some regret but also necessary that I close 2 of my four blogs so that I am not spread too thin. My mother is about to pass in the next few days and when that happens my life is going to be drastically altered and past getting through the experience just ahead I will be moving. I will be leaving the blogs up for some time but will not be updating them, and the subject matter in those two blogs will be incorporated in the other 2 blogs.

My other two blogs, Maitri's Heart, and Life at Dragonfly Cottage will still run on, and I hope you will visit there.

I wish you all blessings, love and again, I thank you for your kind support.

Maitri Libellule

Vintage, Odd, and Just Plain Peculiar Things...

2009-11-08T17:50:00.033-05:00

If you like this light, come sit by me...

You have to be a true aficionado of the odd, the peculiar, and the just plain unimaginable to appreciate this light. I loved it dearly but finally it went the way so many things do in a house with parrots. Henry, my beloved African Grey parrot whom I lost -- oh Lord, I just looked at the calendar and my heart sank, it was one year ago to the day, sigh... -- last November, used to sit on top of his cage to play and he got too close to the lamp and would nip the bits off. Finally it lost it's magic without all of it's green and purple birds, flowers and stars intact, and more and more empty holes, and down it came, but I had it for a number of years. I bought it from a little old lady on eBay who made them to sell. I paid $5. When I got it in the mail I was so enchanted I was beside myself.

You see the light was made of a white plastic pot turned upside down and screwed to what would have been the little tray the pot sat in. It was an ornate sort of plastic and the fixings of a lamp went inside with a hanging light cord. THEN the dear woman -- someone would have had to help her drill all of those holes -- put what look very like those little plastic pieces you would put in one of those children's "Lite Bright" sets, and they were purple and green stars, and flowers, and birds. Now, in a house full of birds that was very special! At night when it was dark I would just have that one light on and I would stare and stare at it mesmerized. Oh, I miss that light. I was bereft when a friend helping me organize things around here made me throw it out. I don't do well parting with things.

Closeup of the Magic Lamp.
The pink and green circles
were stars and flowers &
lots of the little green ones
were birds.

Then there was the most enchanting light that a little lady at a farm stand had made. She was round as a pumpkin with very pink cheeks and wiry grey hair up in a straggly bun. I wanted to squeeze her she was so adorable. She made lots of them in different colors and when I brought mine home, proud as a peacock, people were absolutely in shock that I paid money for it. I wish I had a picture.

You see, what she did was take a ton of those clear plastic cups you buy with picnic ware, the small ones, and she put a strand of Christmas lights all bunched up in the middle and it made a huge ball with lots of those little cups connected together, the clear plastic glowing in the dark with the colored lights shimmering through. I chose one with blue lights -- it was a blue Christmas with a Christmas tree full of blue lights and strands of blue lights everywhere in my tiny cottage.

My two lights. I think those two lights were the grandest things I'd ever seen.

And then there are the flamingos.

I have a flamingo hat that I have actually worn OUT to the horror of a great many people...

And once, just for fun, I wore a string of flamingo lights as a little joke. I thought I was hilarious. Others did not...

And we can't forget the flamingos on top of my refrigerator...

And I have a passion for the pink plastic flamingos in the garden...

I don't know how they got on my patio. I think they liked the antique stone mermaid. She kind of makes me swoon too. And they got into my Christmas tree the year of The Pink Christmas...

A friend of mine sent me pink lights for my tree and
I just loved them. So did the flamingos and they crept
in and crawled into the Christmas tree. I bought little
birds from the craft store, all different types and colors,
the kind with wires on them that were just perfect for
wrapping around the tree branches. Oh, that tree was
a marvel!

Yes, I have a passion for flamingos. Gnomes too but I'd best not go into the gnomes. We have secrets, the gnomes and I, and I'm not telling them here. Nosirree, you'll never get it out of me. We might have been arrested if the police saw us. At least it startled the neighbors who I think are afraid of me, but I think it's best that way. I say If you can't seem weird to your neighbors, or scare the hoo-ha out of them on occasion, you're probably doing something wrong.

There are so many screwball things that I have collected over the years like vintage teapots in the shape of snails, chickens, a woman in a ball gown whose head comes off to fill the teapot and so many other things. You can see some of my teapots at Flickr.

I could go on and on, but by now you are probably either nodding off or calling someone to have me taken to the funny farm (I bet I'd have a ball there! I'd fit right in!). It's my theory that I fell down the rabbit hole with Alice and decided to stay there. I mean, really, who would ever want to leave a Cheshire Cat, a rabbit who is always late, and a Mad Hatter who gives tea parties. Yes, they would be just the kind of folks I'm comfortable with.

Never try to be "normal." What's the point really? I never want to be normal I'd be bored to death with myself. Next time I'll tell you about my (live, cut) Christmas tree that I had for a year.

My favorite t.v. show is coming on now and I don't want to miss it. I know you will be waiting with baited breath, but I'll get to it soon...

Tiny Frog, Present Moment, Wonderful Moment...

2009-10-31T02:13:00.009-04:00

"Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life."

~ Thich Nhat Hanh ~
Vietnamese Buddhist Monk

It was just past midnight last night. I was out on the patio as two of the dogs, Big Moe, my lab-doby mix, and Sampson, my Velcro pug, snuffled about in the grass to find just the perfect spot to do their business. This is very important. Dogs are very mindful, and they were single-minded in their pursuit. It was just then that I saw a glint of bright green against the white stucco wall of the patio. I stood, barely breathing, and stared at him. I thought he was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. In each moment there is something perfect, beautiful, unimaginably tender and touching, if we are aware, and present. For a single moment I was one with him, his bright eyes locked with mine. It was perfect bliss...

I held my breath as I slipped in the door to grab my camera, and took several pictures of him. He stood quite still as if posing for me. The camera flashed and he will be with me for all eternity in this photograph, even though moments later he jumped through the air so fast that I blinked and he was gone. I saw one flash of a tiny green leg disappear through a crack where the patio wall meets the cottage wall. Morning glories slip through this crack, and beetles, lady bugs, spiders, and the little green lizards we have in abundance here. I live in harmony with each and every one of them. These are the simple things in life that I treasure, the ephemeral things that disappear in a moment. Present Moment, Wonderful Moment -- that is the title of one of Thich Nhat Hanh's books. His books are slender little volumes, his words are a whisper in the air. You hear him in your ears as you read. I have several video and audio cd's of him speaking and his voice is mesmerizingly soft and gentle. I hear his voice when I read the words in his books.

I came in with the dogs, the tiny frog gone wherever bright green nocturnal creatures slip off into in the night, and I sat here with only one small reading lamp on, but I didn't read, I didn't turn on the computer or the t.v., no, I sat here to meditate on that miraculous moment, when one tiny little tree frog and I met, a moment that I will forget, sadly, but that one single moment will remain part of me forever.

Present Moment, Wonderful Moment. I bow to Thich Nhat Hanh, in Plum Village in France where he lives, I bow to the wee little frog who disappeared into the night, I smile at the sleeping pug attached to me who is settled deep in sleep and snoring softly. I listen to the air, the soft whoosh of the Hepa air filter moving particles that sparkle in the dark. If only I were a frog I could see them. I listen to my breath go in and out, in and out. I slip into a meditative state and behind my eyelids there is a sea of bright green. I float in it, and only when I open my eyes again do I realize that it was a frog meditation, and for one single moment I was as green as my tiny visitor.

As I was writing the above I looked down and smiled. I am wearing a soft lime green cotton caftan, the color faded with age, and on my wrist are three beaded bracelets, all green stones -- prehnite, green turquoise, aventurine, and peridot -- all powerful, healing, comforting stones for me now. It is a green time for me in my life. Green is the heart chakra color. It is a heart time for me now, as my mother, who just went on hospice faces, in peace, her final days. She talked softly today about the end, which is near, and I have never felt her more at ease. She is prepared for her passing. I wear these green stones so that my heart may be healed as she makes her final passage.

In the last moment I spoke to her I said the prayer for her that she loves. I say it to her now every time we speak, and she loves to hear it. I first heard it in Unity Church in Roanoke, Virginia, more than two decades ago.

"The light of God surrounds you,"
I tell her, almost in a whisper...

"The love of God enfolds you,"
I can feel her relax into the moment
as a tear runs down my cheek...

"The power of God protects you,"
We are one spirit in this moment,
mother and daughter, for what may
be, at any time, the last moment...

"The presence of God watches over you,"
We both face toward the golden light
of God's presence, and the light that
will draw her home in the days ahead...

"Wherever you are, God is, and all is well."
I feel her tender smile, I am in awe of
the total peace she radiates in these,
her final days. When we get off of the
phone, I say the prayer for myself,
that I may feel the peace that passeth
understanding when my mother crosses
over into the light.

I will sit here for awhile before I go to sleep and I will close my eyes and breathe in the gift of green that the little frog brought to me, I will feel the soft green cotton against my skin, and the sparkling green beads and stones around my wrist. As I closes my eyes I feel my belly rise and fall as I become all breath, rocking gently, like a baby in her mother's arms, and pray as I get ready to turn off the light and go to sleep...

The light of God surrounds me...

Present Moment, Wonderful Moment...

My heart beats in my chest, my breath slowly moves in and out, and for one singular moment I feel the peace that passeth understanding, and all is well...

Turning Off The Computer, And Weaving The Art I Will Wear Over My Heart...

2009-10-24T18:50:00.038-04:00

Yesterday something happened to me, and I don't know why, or what caused it to happen just then, just the way it did, but I am thanking God for it today. I spend too much time on the computer, as if clinging to life itself. This afternoon I called to speak to my mother to tell her I love her, but she was not able to come to the phone and my aunt said it was a very bad day. My heart just sank. I realized that in the year ahead I will heal my heart by doing my art. I think there is no mistake that the word "art" is part of the word HeART.

I use crystals and gemstones for healing. For a long time I made jewelry that I sold in my etsy store called Stone Medicine Jewelry, but I no longer make jewelry to sell and my etsy store is currently on hold. I had one for a long time closed it, opened it again and had to close it immediately after selling only a few items because of my mother's cancer. I just didn't have it in me. Everything went numb. I was frozen in the middle of my own life.

I believe very strongly in the healing power of these stones. They are energetic minerals from deep in the earth, and bring with them different kinds of power and frequencies that have been used in healing since ancient times. You needn't believe in the healing power to appreciate their beauty, but if you are interested you can look at this wonderful page, Crystal and Healing Properties of Gemstones. I keep this on my toolbar for when I'm ordering but have a vast library of books of these stones and their healing powers.

And so I knew that I needed Flourite. (Scan down the page until you find this stone.) It is a very gentle healing stone, and I have had this puffy little flourite heart for some time. I have carried it with me everywhere in my purse. I always wanted it near me. I turned off my computer all afternoon on Friday and worked on this piece. It is not finished, but this will show you a little bit of my process. I will keep you posted along the way. And in the process I started writing a book that will be a year of the healing process ahead through my art, of many various types.

The Flourite heart on my wrist so you can
imagine the size...

I held this gentle precious stone in my hand for awhile and just closed my eyes and meditated. It was so soothing I almost drifted off to sleep. I think of the people who find it near quackery to believe in the healing power of these stones, and yet they believe in the flowers and herbs and plants of this earth for their healing powers, their beautiful properties. The gifts of this earth are many, and if they seem strange to some who don't understand them, that's okay, but at least, if you are a spiritual person, imagine that nothing was put on this planet without a reason. These stones have their reasons, their place. Enjoy their beauty, if nothing else. You will find that you will be drawn to certain stones for reasons you can't imagine, but don't question it, simply enjoy it. If you choose to, you can study more about these stones, and there are many books on the subject and sites to buy them inexpensively.

This piece that I am working on will use many different techniques, among them spoolknitting, crochet, beading, and finger weaving. By the end of the piece, and when it actually turns into a long necklace, it will be quite an elaborate piece, with all the stones I need to heal my heart. The act of making the piece will be the most important healing process of all...

A Hand carved spoolknitter, a gorgeous butterfly,
made by my dear sister-friend, Noreen Crone-Findlay.
You have just got to see her amazing work. Some time
back I showed the collection of crochet hooks that
she handmade. I almost exclusively use her tools in
my work. And she has several other sites, a daily
blog, and an etsy shop, but her magical main site
remains my favorite...

Spoolknitting with pink wire, I ease the heart
down into the spoolknitted section to check
for size...

For those of you who have never spoolknitted it is one of the most calming artforms on the planet with endless possibilities for making things, easy to use, and you can buy them in all shapes and sizes. I have a red plastic one I bought a year or two ago at a craft shop for $2. They usually have them wherever you can buy sewing notions and supplies. In days gone by they used to be called "Knitting Nancies." Spoolknitting is also a contemplative art, very meditative, and I have spoolknitted lots of long tubular pieces using all types of materials for spoolknitting from yarn to string to twine to soft grasses, long thin strips of leather, suede, to unspun wool or strips of old clothing. Sometimes my closet is the best place to find odds and ends for my art, and what a wonderful way to recycle!

Once the spoolknitted heart was taken off of
the spoolknitter, I used a tiny antique metal
crochet hook to crochet it shut. I rarely ever
use this type of hook, but each project has it's
own needs.

Then the really joyous work began, and this
will be long work and by the end of this entry
you will see the heart given a good start but
nowhere near the end! Here I am beading and
fingerweaving the wired and knotted beads
around the flourite heart in the spoolknitted
"case." The stones I am using are flourite in
many colors and my favorite current stone
which calls to me deeply, peridot. You can
read more about it on that page, and much
more in wonderful books, and on the web,
but it is, among other things, a heart healer.
People think of pink as the color of the
heart, but in chakra work, the heart's
color is green...

The flourite heart at it's very beginning
of what will be a long journey...

For those of you like me who spend too much time on the computer, one of the most healing (and I believe truly essential, increasingly so...) activities you can do is turn off the computer and move on to other pursuits. Work in the garden, read a good book, take a nature walk, even do housework, but turn off the computer, and live your life. I plan to do this more and more. and will still be spending mornings and evenings and once in awhile spottily on the computer if I need to check on something, but I am writing my book by hand as I do my art, and it will all get moved to the computer when it is good and ready. Writing by hand is also a lovely thing, a lost art really. I am also going to start collecting long lost addresses, and put something in the mail to a friend everyday. A post card, a letter, a tiny treasure. Reviving the lost art of letter writing, believe it or not, is part of my ministry. It is connecting with real people in real time, and giving them something that they can hold onto and cherish. Something tactile, something that is not ephemeral and disappears as soon as you push a button.

I will continue to share this journey with you as the "Healing Heart" progresses, and then I will wear it as I work on the book for the next year, and when my mother passes I will be wearing it over my own heart, allowing the stones to heal me, and the work of my hands will bring me peace...

Blessings and Love to one and all...

Living Your Life Backwards...

2009-10-19T11:40:00.032-04:00

"Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier.

The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want."

~ Margaret Young ~

I live with piles of books all around me, the current ones I am reading and a number of them that I go back to for quotes or references when I am writing. I have thousands of books collected over many decades. The thing that always amazes me, and I'm sure you all have experienced this as well, is that you can read the same book ten times and each time you read it, it's almost like you are reading a different book. The book hasn't changed, you have.

I have been a journal-writing teacher for over thirty years. I have seen it time and time again with now somewhere in the thousands of students, and I always told them the same thing. Some exercises, like the one I shared a few entries back, "At this very moment..." which is a standard exercise that many writing teachers use to just get the pen moving, is really not only the bedrock of our writing foundation, but a touchstone in our lives. If you were to write "At this very moment..." every day for a year, and a year later go back and read all of them, you would have probably felt, before starting, that not much changed from day to day, and that overall it had been, given no extenuating circumstances beyond our control occurring, pretty much the same old, same old. What you would find would be very different.

What you would find would be that not only does each day shift a little, over the course of a year you have shifted quite a lot. Track that over five years, over ten, and you would simply be dumbfounded. As a person who has hundreds of journals in boxes and lived very close to this process since I was a young girl, I am acutely aware of the fact that huge changes are happening over time, but as they are happening over time, we don't see them or feel them, unless we encounter one of life's heart-wrenching circumstances like the death of a loved one, the loss of a child, a close friend who was like family, a divorce, loss of a job you felt would be your lifetime job when you had never thought of or prepared for anything else, unless those kinds of things happen to you, you are shape-shifting all the time, in every moment and are, for the most part, completely unaware of what is happening.

So through these difficult days and weeks and months with my poor mother's decline stepping up it's pace every single day, it has been one of those times when someone sits down and takes stock. A time when one notices things that they hadn't stopped to look at before.

I wrote, just last night, on my Unimaginable Dreams Made Manifest blog, that I was coming to the time in my life when much that I had been dreaming and hoping for all of my life was about to start happening, but that after I go over the first big hump, it will be a tremendous lot of work to do, meaning the foundation will have been laid to allow me to do the work, but the hardest part will begin when I finally face and have to live out the, "If only I could..." Well, now I'll be able to, now I'll actually have to, and all of a sudden I was scared to death.

And so last night I "slept on it," or rather slept on it and half way on a pug who is always attached to my person and I am either leaning against him or he is halfway on top of me. I thought about the dreams and wondered if I had done what I needed to all of these years to prepare properly for what lies ahead. I mean I'm 55 after all and while I don't consider that old, have never been worried about age, and am in good health, I am also very well aware that as the years keep marching onward (and there's been a lot of marching already...) you have less time to get things done. It's time I started.

So, circling back around to the beginning of this piece, I found this quote, and it made me sink into my chair and take a big sigh of relief. I have done exactly what I was supposed to in her definition of what you need to do to achieve what you want, but I did not do it consciously, more to the point, and as the poet Louise Bogan was often quoted as saying, "Let life do it." meaning that you needn't worry so much about what to do about every little detail, life will just be what it will be for you, and sweep you along downstream, and there will be a sense of momentum that comes from you know not where. So "Life did it," in the manner of my having been a mother raising and homeschooling three children and all the while, right next to them, I was writing, publishing in magazines and newspapers, I had three small presses and a rubber stamp business, I did art of all sorts and I was always doing "my work"right along with them as they did their school work. A decade ago my husband and I separated and my kids grew into their own lives and met their partners or spouses and I have spent a very hard decade both financially and trying to figure out what I was going to do, and then it came to me, I have been doing it all along.

I had to be all of who I was because what else can you do? I lived my way forward through college, marriage, children, and onward, being the best person I could be with all of my oddities and idiosyncrasies, trying hard not to make the mistakes my parents had but making my own instead, and all along the while I was doing what I needed to do without realizing it. What a shock to realize you might have done something right, even if it was by accident. When you are a SAHM (Stay at home mom.) you are sadly not taken seriously, although thank God I see this changing all around me, and my writing and art were thought of as "nice little hobbies" and because everyone else treated me and what I was doing that way, and even though I knew inside that they weren't just "hobbies" but my life's work, I kind of felt embarrassed and while I kept trudging on and my belief in myself was strong, I finally stopped talking a lot about it to those closest to me who pretty much just had that, "There she goes again..." attitude when I started writing another novel or small business or whatever, but I knew, as I have known these past ten years on my own, that I was, indeed, working toward something. I was doing it in order, and not the reverse, and of course in order works differently for each and every one of us.

So here I am. I have raised my family. I am divorced and have teetered through the past decade pretty much just hoping I would survive, and I have made it through to a place where I will now have a kind of security I haven't known in my life, where decisions will be in my own hands, and I will have the wherewithall to lead the simple, gentle little life I've always wanted, surrounded by my animals and my garden, writing and doing my art, praying and meditating and having my quiet little "barefoot ministry," wherein I can walk metaphorically barefoot through the world touching anyone I can with love and kindness, and, considering the whole world my "congregation," for lack of a better way to put it, no matter what their religion or spiritual path or none at all, I will love those I meet, pray for all and sundry, and finally be able to take myself and my work seriously because there is no one to tell me that I can't.

I have been, all along, who I really am, warts and all, I have done, inasmuch as I've been able, to do what I've needed to do, and now I am at the the threshold I will soon cross into the life that I want and it will all have happened just exactly as it should have. I "Let life do it," even when I didn't know I was doing so.

And so here I am, at the crossroads. I know which path I will take...

Memes Gone Cattywompus...

2009-10-10T15:16:00.007-04:00

Dear Ones,

I just wanted to let you know that I haven't forgotten about my memes, "Mysterious Monday," "Wisdom Wednesday," and "Serene Sundays," but I will not be able to do them for a little while ahead. My mother is going on hospice on Monday and her end is very near. This is, as you can imagine, a very hard time, but actually doing my blogs has been a lifesaver and helps me hold on to something. The thing is, I never know WHEN I am able to do things right now, so holding to some kind of "Gotta do it TODAY" schedule won't work for now. I do, as a matter of fact, hope to update this blog later today, but I felt I needed to put a little note here about this issue so you didn't think I'd stopped them. Those who are doing them, keep on, that would be lovely, and I will certainly be back to them when I can. The memes have gone cattywompus, and there's nothing I can do about that now.

Thank you for your understanding...

I Was Going To Let The Pugs Write Today's Entry, but...

2009-10-03T15:57:00.022-04:00

I had counted on Coco, a more sensible
girl than some of the others, but she is
notsomuch a morning girl, and she hid

on the stairs and went back to sleep
and no one could find her...

It's so hard to get a pug to be useful when you really need them. Oh, I might have had 2 hours sleep when they are ready to go potty first thing in the morning about 6 a.m., and they'll get me back up again at 7 to go out again and get their milkbones, by 8 to 8:30 they're up for good (or one would imagine) and they go out and then eat their breakfast. Then they go back to sleep for awhile. Then they have to go out again. Then, just when I need my latte, and think SURELY, after all I do for them, ONE of them could handle the job, nosirreebob, it just ain't gonna happen.

I thought I might have better luck with Babs, who, though she is fourteen, blind as a bat, and deaf as a door, is like a little black Mexican jumping bean and literally hops straight up and down barking her fool head off when she wants something. Surely, I thought, I could count on Babs. But...

She poked her head out from under the
covers and scowled at me and said surely
I wasn't daft enough to ask her to do a
single little thing before she'd had HER
latte and read the New York Times. She
gets the Braille edition and it takes her
awhile. This time is, for her, sacrosanct,
and I should have known better. Sigh...

I mean truly, I did get the pugs for companionship and they were rescues that I wanted to give a loving home to, and I simply adore them, but I don't see why they can't pull their weight around here a little bit. Is that unreasonable? And then I thought, SAM, Sam the Man, my Velcro Pug, who spends 106% of the day on my person and truly adores me, unless I'm about to ask him to lend a helping paw. I started out with that voice that is dripping with honey.... "Oh Sammyyyy..." (... this was accompanied by smooching noises and that batting of eyelashes, but there's no charming a pug who doesn't want to do something, like stay awake, or help around the house...), but he only looked at me like this...

When a half awake pug, still under the covers,
raises his head for a millisecond and looks at
you like this, you might as well hang it up...

But then I had the GREATEST inspiration. You see, wee little Harvey, who is the youngest pug in the house at 9 years old, and was here one year in September (the others had been here two years by then), is the sweetest little pug of them all. He is a little timid and shy, but he so wants to please that he will do just about ANYTHING for you. "Yessirree, that's the ticket!" I thought, I'll ask Harvey. He'll probably want to make my latte first, and then let me get settled in comfortably while he goes over to the computer and writes the morning blog entry, but, much to my shock and dismay, I found him looking like this...

Cripes, he's been here too long and the others have
gotten to him. Another one bites the dust...

I'd rescue a few more but Pug Rescue won't let me. They know I'd have a herd of pugs around here if I could. They cut me off at four. (I thought that was a dirty deal, but I did get tired of Big Dog Moe always trying to eat the newest pug and me having to go all Dog Whisperer on him when he's been my boy for 15 years, since a wee tiny puppy from the Humane Society.) He and the pugs look like "The Jolly Black Giant and The Little Niblets," and they sure looked tasty to him, kind of like chicken nuggets I think. And Moe is just useless. I learned long ago that if I asked Moe to do anything he just flopped down, rolled over on his back, paws in the air, looking for all the world like "The Most Submissive Dog In The Universe," and then I don't have the heart to bother him. He's got my number, they all have.

I went back to Coco and thought maybe I'd use a little reverse psychology on her. I told her that if she got up and moved around a little, they wouldn't call her a "Stylish Stout," at the groomers, but she looked at me and it was all too clear what she was thinking. She looked me up and down, and mumbled under her breath, "Well, you're not even stylish," and the implication was all too clear. Stout but not stylish. I thought that was rude.

So I would have written this entry but I got so tired looking at all of them that I went back to sleep, fiber work all over Sam and the chair and I, and if I ever get my latte it might be some time next year. Right now I think (yawn) I'll just maybe (yyaaawwwnnnn) rest my eyes for a minute and then get up and make my latte and write an entry here, but for now.... (....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...)...

.......... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ..........

Mind and Matter and Being ... YOU!

2009-10-02T14:43:00.019-04:00

“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.”

~ Dr. Seuss ~

Click on the above image to see a larger size. Put on
your sunglasses. Squint a little. Take an aspirin. It's
just GLORIOUS!!!

Are you afraid to be all of who you are?

Don't be.

Are you so much wilder and magical than you'd want people to know because you'de be afraid that they would think you were loony. BE LOONY! WEAR IT LOUD AND PROUD.

Are you different? THANK GOD!

Are you 50+ years old and you still love Play-doh and blowing bubbles and swinging on swings and do just LOVE being peculiar, but you only let your full self shine behind closed doors? THROW OPEN THE DOORS, RUN OUTSIDE, PUT YOUR FLAMINGO HAT ON, AND GET JIGGY WIT IT.

It doesn't matter what or who or why you are, just live it all, live it fully, admit everything, hide nothing, celebrate everything, and remember...

"... those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."

Isn't that something? What are you waiting for? I'm going to go to fax some things now and mail a thing or two and leave the pugs and parrots and big Moe home alone for a few minutes and, yes, I'll admit it, I let them watch The Home Shopping Network while I'm gone. It's okay, I cut up their credit cards a long time ago, but they still call in and try to buy things with Monopoly money. It never works but they never get discouraged. I just love that.

I talk really well with animals, but clam up around people who often scare me.

It's okay, everyone knows, by this time, that I am so odd, they either join in the fun or run for their lives. Here, have a flamingo hat. Let's do the rhumba. Let's listen to Petey the macaw who snores like the pugs.

I grow African violets bigger than anyone has ever seen. They think I'm magic. I am.

I've got to go now. I've got to get my flamingo hat now, and my playdoh bracelets and my pink boa and my clunky lime green Crocs. You know, they just love me at the Post Office...

... skipping out the door with glee...

Feeling Very Quiet, Very Soft, Very Small, Serene, Calm, Still...

2009-09-30T22:38:00.010-04:00

It has been a very quiet, serene day at the cottage. There is something about being not quite well, at a time when there are huge and heavy things going on in your life, and you find yourself having a day that seems like a break in all the clamor, the worries, the fears, and a deep calm comes over you, and you just kind of glide. That has been my day...

The parrots, the pugs, and Big Dog Moe felt it too. They have been very quiet and peaceful and sleeping a lot of the day. We all seemed to be in a dreamy sort of place, and I found myself feeling free of everything outside of my own body and my own little home. A gentle release. One of those times when you realize that your whole body is tense and then you consciously relax from the top of your head to the tips of your toes, like at the end of a yoga class as you lie on your mat perfectly still with your eyes closed, just breathing. That's the kind of day it's been.

It is been a day of silent prayers and waves of love going out to everyone I know, to my dying mother, to my children, and their spouses or partner, my grandchild, friends, and somehow I felt connected to the whole world without sorrow, or worry, or pain, or grief. It has been, really, a miraculous day, a day after so long, so many months and longer, of feeling so much pressure from so many directions I felt as though I were being flattened and could barely breathe. Today my breath is rhythmic and relaxed, I listen with a soft smile to my sleeping pugs snoring all around me, and every once in awhile a little flutter of wings as a sleeping parrots settles himself in a different position without waking up. I am happy, it is a day of grace.

It is the kind of day that you can't plan for, and you can't make it happen, and you don't know why it happens, but you are grateful for the gift of this soft space to rest in. There is no big news here, I just wanted to share it with you. Maybe if we know these kind of days exist we can consciously watch our breath and remember to relax our bodies, consciously let go of tension, let it flow out of our bodies and feel, even if only for a moment, like a swath of silk blowing gently in the breeze. I always think, on these rare precious days, that I feel like a frog on a lily pad in the middle of a stream just resting and watching as the rest of the world goes by. Maybe I am a frog today. Maybe this chair is my lily pad.

I don't know why but all day long I have been thinking about writing this quiet little post, just to share the gentleness of this day with you, maybe, I thought, I could send little waves of peace and kindness, love and compassion, tenderness and grace out to all who stumble across this blog, at least that has been my intention in writing it, and surely I have been doing it, sending out ripples of stillness and hoping it can bring you back to your center if only for a single moment, to hear the still small voice within, to witness your own life, and all of the people, places, and things in it, and for once just let it exist, and be, and glow softly, like the one light I have on here as I write, in a mostly dark room, with all of the animals sleeping around me, no television, no music, no sound save the soft whooshing sound of the air purifier and a humming inside my body that you only really feel when you are very still and very quiet, at peace with yourself and the world, no matter what it may bring, I have this moment, I have had this whole gift of a day, and I believe I will sleep smiling, feeling the soft air from the overhead fan, and I'd like to think that this day will soften the days ahead, and as I meditate I will feel myself here, I will try to carry it with me, like a magic elixir, and drink from the tiny bottle that I carry in my pocket, just a sip, to help me let go of worry and fear, to remember that such a day can exist, and if a single day can be this way, so too might it spread through our lives if only we allow it.

Of course we forget, and then we remember, and when we least expect it a soft quiet day slips into our world and we wake up feeling it from the start. This has been my day. I wanted to share it with you, and send you love, and wish you peace...

"Mysterious Mondays" Will Still Continue...

2009-09-29T16:55:00.008-04:00

I have received a lot of notes from people saying "Don't Discontinue Mysterious Mondays!" in response to my saying "Mysterious Mondays Are A BUST!" in yesterday's post. I should have worded that better. What I meant was that what with the shingles I hadn't been able to do "Serene Sundays" and you could just forget "Mysterious Mondays" (from ME for now) until I feel a little better!

So no worries folks. I love "Mysterious Mondays" even though with the things that are going on in my life MM have been a little funky and cattywompus! Mysterious Mondays are here to stay!

... still trying not to scratch!

Shingles, Movies That Make You Think You're Going Out Of Your Mind, and DON'T SCRATCH!!!

2009-09-28T21:31:00.006-04:00

What a few days it's been... The tense over-riding fear as my mother's death grows closer, so many changes happening faster than the speed of light and more, the stress finally got me in a physical way. I have a whopping case of the Shingles and I am in pain and exhausted. I want to touch base and explain what happened to the Sunday and Monday memes. It seems that life just will happen, and there's nothing you can do about it.

And the trouble is that I am in the contagious phase, so no one can come around me, and it's on My back and moving around under my arm. Itches like mad and if I try to scratch it ever so lightly pain shoots through me like a lightning bolt (I don't think that's fair play. It should either itch OR hurt, not itch so bad you think you will go insane and then the least little scratch sends shooting pains that seem to go through your back and out the front.) Be careful, don't let it land on you!

So if I don't write for a few days you'll know why, and I wouldn't want you to get too near me and get some horrid disease because I would feel guilty for the rest of my life and frankly I've got more than a lot going on. (Shrug...)

So take care of yourselves, stay out of trouble, don't go near contagious people, just knit or watch a movie or something. I'm self-medicating with movies. Good Lord, I tried to watch the Tom Cruise movie "Vanilla Sky" and I nearly went insane. Watched it over 2 nights and just couldn't go any further. I felt like I must be on some bad acid trip and I've never done drugs! Maybe it was the shingles. No, I think it's just a weird movie. I think I'll crochet a little and hope tonight's movie is better.

I'm about to get out my little violin and sit on my pity pot so I think I'd better go...

... itching, but not daring to scratch... sigh..

"Wisdom Wednesday" ... A Day Late & A Dollar Short.... Oh well...

2009-09-24T08:19:00.012-04:00

Well, you see, here's the thing. If I have any wisdom at all, I have encountered one little fragment in the last 24 hours, just a bit of wisdom, and I think it's something about taking care of yourself.

You are not a slave to your memes (Or anything else for that matter.). I love the ones that I set up and they are very special to me but when your mother is dying and your life is topsy turvy and you are in a bare subsistence mode in a place you're absolutely certain the health department will come in in any minute and shut down, and you are absolutely vehement that the animals are to be taken very good care of but you don't do the right things to take care of yourself because you are mostly found either curled up in a ball in your over-sized "womb chair" either crying, depressed, frozen and unable to move, breathe or think, or just a blob of leaking matter making a mess of the only piece of furniture in your little place filled with old furniture that you truly love.

And so what I am saying is that yes, I love this Meme and shall continue to do it as I may. The time ahead is iffy at best, and when the worst happens, I will be very gentle with myself and allow myself to let everything go. It is a very surprising thing that the world can get on without you. I shall likely be a ball in a chair for some time. So I do the best I can, I give all I can, and I simply won't apologize for not being what people expect me to be.

This is wisdom too. Be good to yourself. Take precious care of yourself. Learn to say no, and remember that no matter how caring a person you are, you can't give from an empty well. That is one of the basic teachings of my ministry, The Maitri Ministry, which is not based on my name but on the teaching of maitri which was my impetus for changing my name legally to Maitri 5 years ago. Maitri is not only the teaching of loving-kindness and compassion, but it is first and foremost the teaching that you have to take care of yourself, you have to have compassion towards yourself and love yourself and fill that empty cup inside of you before you have anything to give to another. We are not slaves to life. We are participants in it, part of a larger world. And as everything and everybody change in every moment of the day, when you need to pull back to nurture yourself, there is someone else who has just filled his or her cup and is ready to go out and share that love with the world. Your day will come again.

So I am not so much doing Wisdom Wednesday as I am putting a stake in the ground with a rainbow ribbon on it and saying, "This is where Wisdom Wednesday takes place. The three memes in all each have specific days in which I might get the job done on time, but if I can't, I can't.

So those my thoughts for my day late and dollar short meme. I have three memes who each have a state of free-flowing, in the moment, on the right day and the right time sort of thing going on. Oh, they'll be here, and will make every effort to use the day of the week it has been set up for, know that it's going to float a little. And you know what? That's just fine with me.

The greatest wisdom of all is to listen to your own heart and intuition and never stray from it. If you don't learn anything else, learn that. It will save your life...

It is essential that you only register your link here if you are an original content blog that plans to participate in the meme and not just try to advertise your blog. Also no blog will be accepted with sexual or other questionable content. The blogs are checked constantly and those who do not comply will be eliminated with no further comment. We appreciate your understanding. This is for fun and friendship, not promotion. Blessings to all...

Use This Exercise Everyday, or Whenever You Need Grounding...

2009-09-23T03:49:00.009-04:00

When you feel as though you've lost your footing in life, when you need to ground yourself, when you need a practice to set you straight, reclaim your life and your presence upon the earth, or simply need to check in with yourself, write, "At this very moment..." and keep going. It doesn't matter what comes up, or if it makes any sense. Don't judge, just keep writing.

I have been a journal-writing teacher for over 30 years now. I have taught in churches, colleges, women's centers, in the offices of therapists, ministers, to AIDS patients, to pregnant women, in person and online, large groups and one on one. These are only a few of the mediums I have taught in, as well as writing circles in my very own living room. I write very detailed classes with new material for every class. They run roughly three hours long and may contain up to a dozen writing exercises, but the most important one, an exercise used in many journal and writing classes, is "At this very moment..."

As a student of Buddhism for thirty years as well, I constantly practice mindfulness. It is a never-ending practice because you keep falling away from the present moment into outer space and get lost in your very own life. You can become agitated, depressed, anxious, or at "loose ends" causing you to become very nervous. It's an important thing to practice mindfulness and meditation, coming back to the present moment, but it is even more important to write it down, to ground yourself in words. Black words on white paper is something with weight. You can touch it, feel it, you can breathe and relax once more because you have placed yourself back in time and space and are tethered to the ground. I do this exercise very often, even in my mind driving down the road, but it is best done on paper.

I need to do this right now because my Circadian rhythms have gone all askew again. From the time I got up this morning (yesterday morning!) until I went back to sleep in the afternoon, I could barely keep my eyes open. I took care of all of my animals but I didn't even have the energy to make coffee. I kept falling back to sleep, or dozing off. I finally gave up about 1:30 p.m. and went to sleep and slept until late afternoon. I was disoriented and off kilter. I got up, got the dogs out, took care of the parrots, and then walked out across the way to get my mail just to help me wake up. I gathered up and took three bags of trash out. I made coffee. I had my morning coffee at 6 p.m. It is now 4:05 a.m. and I am wide awake. I am drifting because I am at odds with the world. I need to do this exercise so I won't drift right off of the edge of the planet. I need to try to figure out where I am and what I'm doing. I need answers to questions, and I need to write stray thoughts down so that I may gather them up as if I were carrying a basket over my arm picking apples. If I gather them up like this they won't run about all asunder. And so I shall begin.

At this very moment... I am sitting in my big over-sized chair with my feet up on the huge ottoman. I am covered with a cherry red fleece blanket and have 2 huge pillows on my lap which are a substitute for a desk. My velcro pug Sampson is asleep on the arm of the chair. The arms are very large and wide and soft and a perfect pug size. I have his flannel blanket on the arm of the chair and eventually he will slide down against me as we curl up together to go to sleep. Sam is my living teddy bear, or puggy bear as it were. I am not afraid of the dark, afraid to go to sleep when my body is ready, with Sam near. I haven't slept in my bed in so long I can't remember when I did. This is because of a childhood of night horrors, that led, as an adult, to my bed not being a safe place. This chair is a cocoon. I am in my cocoon with my soft, warm, snoring teddy bear. I am typing this to you, whoever you are out there, and mostly just for me.

At this very moment... I am comforted by a number of stones, different stones and crystals that I use for healing, wearing some, and having laid a few carefully picked stones on my chest and belly so that as I sit here I can write feeling protected. I am a stone healer. They are living, vibrant beings, and they do heal. I don't practice this on anyone but myself, but it works and is very comforting. My energy is lifted, in this moment, by peridot, angelite, prehnite, aquamarine, morganite, several "aura" crystals -- aqua aura, rose aura and ruby aura. Amazonite, clear crystals, amethysts and lepidolite. At this very woman I am a healer, and I am being healed. By stones and snoring pugs and stirring parrots who sometimes talk in their sleep.

At this very moment... I feel my book moving about inside of me, the one I have been writing for a decade inside my organs with dangling participles hanging off of my ribs, metaphors floating through the four chambers of my heart, sentences going straight down my legs bumping into muscle and bone, and whole paragraphs nestle in my belly. This book has been like a very long pregnancy, the gestation period needing lots of space and time for a book to grow, one ten year marathon to live through, and now, now I am about to cross a threshold and then, and only then, will I be ready to give birth to the book. I have done a lot of writing through these years, but it wasn't the book. At this very moment I am collecting syllables so that I can put them together like puzzle pieces into words. It is now 4:25 a.m. and the pages of the book are fluttering about so that I feel like I need to take alka seltzer, but I don't have or take it. I don't drink soda and I don't have any bubbly seltzer water. I hope those pages don't get caught in my throat when I go to sleep, just before I have to get up to get the dogs out in a couple of hours...

At this very moment ... I am wondering what you are supposed to do with your time when your mother is about to die and she waxes and wanes and almost drifts out to sea and then the tides push her back up on the shore and on it goes. It is a time out of time experience, and I feel myself floating out to sea as well, trying desperately to hang onto something, anything, a piece of driftwood, so that I might have a chance to live through all of this and make my way back to shore intact. I am using this time to do simple tasks and to try to finish things. I keep updating my blogs because I feel better when I write and it's not time for the book. It is still growing appendages and at this stage it would be a premie and might die if born too soon. I rest and elevate my legs so the book won't slide out before it's time. That could be the death of both of us.

At this very moment ... I have just realized that the cord has fallen out of my laptop and I hope I can keep writing awhile before I have to fish it out of wherever it is. The computer wants to go to bed but I am not ready.

At this very moment ... I am longing to get myself back into my art. It has taken the hardest hit these last several months when my mother's decline has, after 4 1/2 years, picked up it's pace so that something in me froze up and my crochet hooks, knitting needles, spindles, Navajo weaving tools, beads, buttons, stones, feathers and hatforms, and vintage dressform and more have all frozen in time. They are deep in a block of ice the size of an apartment building, and they won't start slipping out of the melting ice until my mother has passed.

I don't know why but I can't get to it no matter how hard I try. I have my 10' by 10' project in my large carpet bag that I always keep near me, just in case, along with my hand-carved wooden crochet hooks that I showed several entries back. They are life-like and keep whispering things to me. "You'll feel better if only you would just start..." Maybe when your mother is about to die you are not supposed to feel better. Maybe you are just supposed to float and drift and sleep and cuddle pugs and watch your spider sister, a banana spider you've named Bella who is the size of your palm as she weaves her web so big it stretches between bushes and all the way up into the limbs of the tree above and down farther than the eye can see. She is getting ready for new life, the time when her spiderlings will hatch. I am preparing for death, for the time my mother drifts through the portal and out of this world to the one beyond. Will she be sitting "up there" on a cloud strumming a harp, or will she be in some crystal lined holding cell waiting to slip through the "veil of forgetfulness" into another life when she is someone else living a life I can't imagine and don't know.

Approaching 5 a.m. your thoughts are airy and floating around you and through the house. They slip out of a window or door to get some fresh air and you begin to make less and less sense. At least to other people. At least I do. But it all makes perfect sense to me.

At this very moment I am becoming very tired. Writing has once again become the sedative I needed, because it emptied my mind and put all my words in a little block in an imaginary world where people I shall most likely never meet might read in the days ahead. Or not.

At this moment I just found myself stopping and rubbing my eyes and going into that place that has no name when we are not awake and not asleep but definitely heading in the direction of the latter. So in the next few moments I shall brush my teeth and ready myself to sleep with a snoring teddy bear of a boy, with a chorus of sleeping pugs all around the room snoring off key, just what I need to to lull me into a few hours sleep, if I am lucky, before it all begins again...

... yawning ... and ...

Mysterious Monday, and the Mystery Continues...

2009-09-21T20:10:00.000-04:00

I think there is something we were meant

to learn about Mondays, and it may be one
of the most important lessons of our lives...

You know, long before I was a 55 year old woman, living in a little cottage with parrots and pugs and Big Dog Moe and all the other little creatures who just will show up here, way back when I was a little girl, I realized that Mondays were special. No matter how your weekend went, you got a fresh start on Monday. If the week before hadn't gone well, Monday heralded a chance for a new beginning -- "Once more into the breech!" -- as it were. And have you ever noticed the widespread phenomenon when people try to do something like lose weight, stop smoking, etc, they always start on a Monday, and if they "blow it" through the week, they don't dare start again until the next Monday. Some people find this kind of lame or lazy. Not me. I think it's magic, and it surely is mysterious.

I think there's something buried deep in the twenty-four hours that make up a Monday that propels us on to greater things, and continually comes around every seven days to keep encouraging us. To start diets, to have a better week at work, at school, with the kids, with anything that we chucked aside in despair. Mondays bring with them good cheer and an air of hopefulness. I almost breathe a sigh of relief that the weekend is over and I'm back securely into the routines of the week. Of course I am a rather odd person and cling to my schedule like a limpet on a rock, and the weekends, though usually wonderful in their way, can also leave me in a state of free-floating anxiety when nothing is as it should be, anything might happen at any time, someone is liable to ask you to do something that they would never ask you during the week, and you feel oddly off-kilter even when you are having a good time. I don't get my sea-legs again until Monday and I move about quite cautiously until I am firmly footed in Monday morning. Anchor dropped, coffee made, a new week begun, phew!

Of course not everyone is as peculiar as I am, thank God, but I think most people, if they are honest, will admit to having a good little feeling inside when Monday rolls around again.

I wanted to make this piece impressively scholarly, so I went to Wikipedia to look up Monday and fell, like Alice down the rabbit hole, into a whole world of things that just made my head hurt. If you can make anything of this page, more power to you. It near startled me half to death right off as I opened up the page expecting to find all sorts of interesting facts about Monday, and the first word I saw was DOOMSDAY, and somewhere they called my precious Monday "Noneday," and then I had to take an aspirin after 15 minutes of trying to figure out what in the world they were going on about with their Gregorian calendar, the Julian calendar, math, astrology and solstices thrown in, and just as I was gasping for air and hoping there might perhaps be something like the Mayan calendar (which never showed up) I tripped over a ghastly thing called, "Poem Explaining The Doomsday Rule," and like some dumb cluck (now, I don't even know what that means, but I've heard it all my life...) I clicked on the link and was tossed out of the rabbit hole and went down with the Titanic.

I don't want to know any more. I don't want to be the least bit enlightened about any of that mess, and I don't want anyone messing with my Mondays and using Doomsday in the same sentence, shudder, as my favorite day of the week. I am simply aghast, exhausted, dismayed, and I think the color has drained completely out of my face (or perhaps it's just my usual ghostly white skin which I've got enough sense not to look at in the mirror and so I forget.).

As it stands, I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date (Putting the parrots to bed and making dinner.) and I should most surely rather be doing those things than looking up anything more about Mondays. They are too mysterious, and now I'm frightened.

...who shall undoubtedly sleep with a passel of pugs
tonight and stay away from Wikipedia forever...

Note: If you sign the Linky List below, it is assumed that you will take part every Monday (or close to it) and if you don't you will be removed from the list. This is simply to keep an active group and you are always welcome to come back and sign in again if you can't keep up now. I will not delete you if you miss one Monday. I have been bumped from these sorts of things when I couldn't keep up which has been a lot lately due to family issues. But if you are signing up just to promote your site and it's obvious that you don't have the kind of site that participates in regular original postings and is not here to participate, you will be removed permanently. Thanks for your understanding...

It's Serene Sunday Again. Serenity Takes Many Forms...

2009-09-20T23:27:00.012-04:00

There are serene Sundays that were meant to recharge our batteries and prepare us for the time ahead. They are days that we lay low. They are the days that are the calm before the storm. That's what this Sunday has been for me.

I've talked to my mother 3 times in the past 2 days. She is slipping away faster and faster. She will be gone soon. Somehow, even though she was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma over 4 1/2 years ago and given a very short time to live, she has been hanging on, even as she went blind, and her health declined and declined, and we went through numerous times of being told "this is it," and still it wasn't, and still she's hung on until now she is continuously in pain, and the great divide is getting wider and wider. I thought I knew. I thought I understood. But I didn't until I heard her voice this weekend. And when I got off the phone I wept like a baby. All night long, last night, I was shaken to my core. And then I got up today, and it was Sunday, and a sudden calm came over me.

When something first hits us our instinct is to fight it, to try to stop it, and from that vantage point we will never win. We have to let go. We have to breathe our way through it, we have to free-fall through time and space with our arms wide open, we have to glide to safety, even as tears fall from our eyes.

When a sailboat goes far out into the sea, where land cannot be seen in any direction, and there is no wind, and the water appears still like glass, and there is no movement, it is called a dead calm. It is a time of suspended animation. Nothing moves, until the winds pick up again.

I think grief must be like that. We are suspended in still waters. We must wait it out. It can be very frightening. But if we let go we can relax and be still and feel it, feel all of it, lie on the deck and feel the boat rocking on the water. Soon the wind picks up again and there is movement. But we are changed for having been through that time out of time experience, and we can carry it with us as we move forward. The next time it hits us we know we will survive.

My time is coming. I am in a dead calm. I know the seas ahead of me will be choppy and my very life will feel close to the edge from grief, but I know that I will make it to the other side, and life will start once more. I will never be the same again after my mother dies, but I will go on living.

Sometimes you need a calm, serene Sunday to think of these things so that you might face them when the time comes. All the way through the minutes and the hours I have concentrated on my breathing, on relaxing every muscle in my body. Only then can the knowledge that I will survive, arrive.

It reminds me of what happens here every summer. I live in an old town by the ocean. Every year warnings go out about the rip tides and what to do when you get caught in one. People panic and in their panic to swim in to shore they drown. But, as we are reminded, a rip tide is only a short distance and so you must swim parallel to shore, not straight in, not until you pass the rip tide, and then you can swim in to safety. How often in life do we know the safe way, and yet die, in one way or another, because we move, out of panic, in the wrong direction, even when we know better?

Sundays seem made to think about these kinds of things. I just stopped and thought about what I've written here, and I know that I've been talking in circular patterns that may make no sense at all. Maybe it just makes sense to me. I think I just had to write it.

My mother is dying. There is no way to stop it and no way not to grieve. I am just trying to prepare myself, inasmuch as I can, to survive the time ahead, and swim parallel to shore until the rip tide passes.

These kind of thoughts were made for a Sunday...

Serene Sundays...

Sundays are a day of rest, a day far away from the madness of the world, for most of us, although now with everything open seven days a week, not so much for everybody. I have always loved Sundays, and thought that this might be a quiet gentle thing for us to share. So share with us your peaceful Sundays, tell us what you do, even little things. Tell us what "Serene Sunday" means to you, and what that means in your life...

As always, the list will be closely monitored. Please only sign up if you intend to participate. Do not sign up just to promote your blog. Thank you.

The First Ever...

2009-09-16T13:14:00.015-04:00

Okay, so here we go. It's Wednesday and I'm here ON time, on the ACTUAL day. Whew! The way my days are going it might be any day at all so I'ma thinkin' that if I set up a meme for each day of the week it might help me remember what day it is and while I'd love for people to join in and have fun with me, I can play all alone if I have to. I have been demoted to first grade again and it seems I am just learning the days of the week. But as I am babysitting my 5 year old grandson, I'm fairly certain that he can help me if I get stuck.

And while I'm on a theme, and here at my daughter's (Said grandson is watching something his mother allows him to watch on PBS so I have to be quick because when it's over, so am I. Here, at least.), I thought I might share some wisdom I've learned from my grandson, or some thoughts I've had related to how young children think and act as opposed to we grown-ups who have pretty well fallen out of the magical world of childhood and into the box society puts us in so as to make us all Stepford Wives, or Robotic Human Beings who act, dress, work and eat by pretty much the same code. My grandson, at 5, is still in that Magical Child phase when all things are possible, trees can be colored purple with orange polka dots and nothing seems strange about it, and they pretty much say anything that comes into their mind without filters. This can get sketchy, but mostly I find it charming, adorable, or outright hysterical. For example...

We were all over here at Rachel's, my daughter's house, with she, her sweet husband Jeremy and the "baby" (Man, you'd better not call a 5 year old THAT!) as we all must come here because the rest of us have dogs and this poor wee little boy is so allergic to everything, especially dogs, and has such terrible asthma, that we congregate here for holidays and such.

Well here sat Grandma (That would be me.) on the couch and Lucas came over, climbed up in my lap, and squeezed me very hard and told me he loved me the muchest in the whole wide world. I smooched and squeezed him so hard it's amazing his head didn't pop OFF. Well, he got nice and comfy and was all snuggled up to me and suddenly he sat up, looked me directly in the eyes, and said...

"Grandma, you're fat..."

I saw my daughter's look of horror as she came running but I was laughing. I mean if an adult had said this I might have blacked their eye if I were a violent person, which I'm not, just overly sensitive, so I probably would have made a fool of myself and cried. Lucas had a very serious look on his face when he said this, as if there were far more behind it, and then he looked and me and said...

"I'm so glad Grandma, everybody else is all "straight up and down" (thin) and you're the only one that's really comfortable to sit on. "

That just about tickled the Granny Drawers offa me!

For almost 4 months now I've been on Nutrisystems which I love and which is the only eating plan I have ever been able to stay on in my whole life. In less than 4 months I've lost 40 pounds and counting. I simply adore it. So I walked in here to babysit today and my daughter gave me a big hug and said, "MOM, you're really losing weight. 40 pounds is GREAT!"

Lucas looked at me askance. Then he kind of muttered, "You're not going to get TOO thin, are you?" He looked worried. He might lose the only soft lap worth sitting on.

I smiled, and said, "No, not too thin." I mean, on my best days at my best weight I looked like I should have long yellow braids and be working in a German beer garden. I'm half French and half Polish. The polish side mainly wins out physically, and my backside has won trophies in the "Biggest Polish Arse Hall Of Fame." No, I'll be curvy, but not skinny. Ever. Which is fine by me (and Lucas).

The Fact is...

WISDOM WEEK PEARL OF WISDOM #1...

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, and those that don't appreciate our beauty are also missing all the beauty that lie inside. (Not to mention the soft lap.)

Here's to soft laps and beauty everywhere, both inside and out...

Love,

Grandma...

It is essential that you only register your link here if you are an original content blog that plans to participate in the meme and not just try to advertise your blog. Also no blog will be accepted with sexual or other questionable content. The blogs are checked constantly and those who do not comply will be eliminated with no further comment. We appreciate your understanding. This is for fun and friendship, not promotion. Blessings to all...

A Lame Attempt To Make Up For Lost Mondays....

2009-09-15T20:51:00.010-04:00

Well, this is my lame attempt, and tonight will be brief, to toss out a few thoughts that should have been on Monday's meme-ish sort of day, but as I was late and may be again I have devised my own back up system (Inotherwords to cover my butt, and for those who wonder, it is quite fine for a minister to say "butt.") so that in the future if I am running late I shall have a back-up plan...

Okay, here's a few things that I was thinking might be kind of mysterious, given that the last meme for Mysterious Mondays probably wasn't mysterious at all, just plain peculiar....(shaking head sadly...).

* You would have to read my blog Unimaginable Dreams Made Manifest to understand at all where I'm going with this, perhaps, but then I believe that this is a bit of a universal experience that sadly, all too many people have had.

Okay, there you are, all excited. You know you have to take your time and be reasonable about looking, don't jump at the first thing you see, and if an owner or a real estate agent (other than your own) is around, you kind of move slowly, conjuring up a very concerned expression, and make lots of notes in a notebook you carried in with you. It's okay if it's your grocery list. THEY are going to think you are making a list of things you DON'T like, or feel unacceptable, or at the worst might have to be fixed. Yes, buying a house is psychological warfare, and woebetide the owner or seller who doesn't know how to play the game and gives too much information away. You might as well just tear up the contract, apologize, and say that you screwed up and you know it, and walk out. Of course this could work too because sellers these days are SO desperate that that they are practically giving houses away so they might run after you, fall on their knees, and beg. Pitiful really, but if it works, so be it. All's fair is love, and war, and buying houses.

Ok -- now hold on to your horses, I'm getting there. Sheesh, everybody is in such a rush these days... Ok, now here's the kicker. You and your realtor spend so much time online and otherwise looking for appropriate houses to look at, and in the pictures that they show up you ooh and ah, and are CERTAIN that THIS is the house you have been looking for all of your life.

(Note, having had a terrible experience with this sort of thing last Friday, which you can again read about on my blog Unimaginable Dreams Made Manifest and even SEE some of the houses we were looking at, you will understand what I mean when I say that they take pictures that make it look all warm and cozy or like a palace, and when you get there your heart falls down to your feet and out of your toes before you are even out of the car.

The little blue cottage of my dreams, built in 1910 and remodelled in the 70's that after I wrote the piece about it and included the picture, hordes of people wrote in to say, "OH, that's just the kind of little cottage I've wanted ALL my life. You're so lucky. I hope you get it. " I so appreciated their kindness and support, but believe you me, if they saw it they would run for their lives.

We were so excited we went there first. There was no front yard, it fronted on an alley, and we had to park the car on a concrete slab. This did not bode well. Still, I was not giving up on my dream. We went inside. First, we were nearly knocked over by the stench of mold, mildew, and I'm sure I don't want to know what else. Everything was falling apart at the seams. I gasped in horror and I would have leaned against the wall but I was afraid to touch it. The arched window I fell in love with outside were supported by rotted wood with the paint falling off, and when Jeff walked out the rear and said, "C'mere a minute Maitri." I knew it wasn't going to be good.

As we stood precariously on the wee bit of back porch, Jeff pointed out quite a number of holes. Honey I'm talkin' holes that went all the way through the walls and let the rain in. I'm sure the rats had a ball, but I was horrified.

We walked around the house with great difficulty. I mean it when I say there was NO yard at all. AT ALL. And what little was there was weeds, broken glass, and worse.

What I'm getting at -- and I do have a point in all of this -- when Susan and I went today to look, the house we thought we wouldn't care for was the house we loved, and the house we thought would be a dream was a bust, and it all came down to the pictures in the catalog. So herein lies The Mysterious Monday part of it... (Anybody who says "A day late and a dollar short," is going to get knocked on his or her keester!)

Why, oh WHY, do the people who take the pictures of the houses for the catalogs and whatnot of these houses put pictures at odd sneaky angles and write a charming descriptions, causing you to drive all over creation, only to find out that is is a dump and nothing LIKE the picture.
I know this is mysterious. I believe that this is a crime against humanity or at least homebuyers. I don't care how great the pictures and descriptions are, I'm telling you that you need to go look, be prepared for it not to be what it seems, pray tell DO look, because you might be surprised, but know that there are some shady realtors out there who will cheat and get you to go look at a dump. But to what end? You're GOING to see it. YOU'RE going to know. Why all the subterfuge, lost time, and in today when gas prices are ridiculous, you are going to waste a lot of gas tracking down shacks.

I find this mysterious. Why do they do this?

Finally, I was going to tell you how I can read fortunes in the latte foam, but I'm just going to save that for the next Mysterious Monday which I hope really comes out on Monday for sure...

... who hopes to heaven she made up for the muck
and the muddle of Mysterious Mondays anyway...

Mysterious Mondays Are Indeed Mysterious! (Well, pretend it's Monday anyway. Okay?)

2009-09-15T01:10:00.013-04:00

I don't know what happens to Mondays...
They're slippery and they can get away
from one before they know it, sneaking
from Sunday to Tuesday in the blink of
an eye...

I began to write this last night almost on Monday, sigh, it's was actually about 12:30 a.m. I thought maybe I could sneak it in and pretend like I wrote it on Monday. (Oh NO you did NOT say that Maitri. You're a minister for goshsakes....) Well the thing is, I was in my big comfy chair, pug snuggled into me, laptop wide open on an enormous pillow on my lap (my comfy chair desk) and I was JUST going to rest my eyes for a minute, and the next thing I knew it was TUESDAY.

Now that's mysterious...

And just after I updated my Maitri's Heart blog on Sunday about having been in a fugue state for a few weeks and now things were much better and normalizing, darned if my Circadian rhythms didn't go all wonkified again and have me up half the night (I think that's curious if not mysterious...) and so tired I'm not even human the next day. I get up and down and up and down getting dogs out and in and in and out and out and in from 6:15 on (When you've gone to sleep at 4:30 you are sleep-walking at 6:15...) and they get treats the second time and breakfast between 8:30 and 9.

The six parrots need fresh food and water, and still kind of sleepwalking I get that. I go back to sleep. Finally about 10 the animals have had enough. I kind of open one eye and see Moe's big black nose in my lap (He's the only dog in the house with a real nose, the rest are pugs.) and he stares at me making me feel all guiltified (I know it's not a real word but I'm using it anyway. I make up words...) and so I get up, kind of off-kilter and staggering about, the dogs start jumping about all happy and excited, "MOMMY'S UP!!!) AND Petey, (Hahn's macaw) and Solomon (Blue Crown Conure) start hollering at the top of their little voices, "Good morning, good morning, good morning!" I moan and mutter and stand there for a moment, stupified, wondering where I am, and then lean against the kitchen counter staring at the espresso machine for awhile. It looks back at me. I think it laughs like Vincent Price.

I'm pretty sure that's mysterious. Espresso machines are not supposed to stare back at you and make you feel guilty because you're late. Geez, I think Moe was talking to him. (The espresso machine. His name is Othello. I name everything, and no, if that's some horrible Shakespearean name so be it. I'm so old I forget most of Shakespeare except for Romeo and Juliet, and A Midsummer Night's Dream just left me baffled. My brain is so jumbled up and cluttered these days I'm lucky to put my shoes on the right feet. I've been a published writer for 30 years but I have trouble with Shakespeare's English, and you can just forget Chaucer. Poo. Might as well be trying to read Chinese -- nothing against the Chinese which I'm sure is a beautiful language but I stand on my head trying to read those columns of little pictures and it just leaves me mystified and makes my head hurt.). (I also write more and longer asides than anyone in the history of the universe ever has, but that's kind of the way I think and talk, and talking in a circular pattern might be due to my bi-polar disorder, but I can't really tell because now that I'm medicated and so much better I can't be sure.)

I think that's mysterious. When you're bi-polar everything is pretty much mysterious. I wonder if all bi-polar people lose Mondays?

Well, gosh darn it, It's 7:15 p.m. on Tuesday night. I am embarrassed and I haven't even had my morning latte. I'm going to make it now. I'm going to pay for that later. You see I was being picked up by a realtor at 10:30 a.m. and I did well to take care of the animals and get a shower and dressed in time, and I rode glassy-eyed down the streets grateful that she was driving. With no coffee and very little sleep, you don't want me to me behind the wheel of a car. That's not mysterious, it's just kind of pitiful, or sad, or scary, or all of the above.

Well, tomorrow is Wisdom Wednesday, and I think I'll manage that just fine, not being a Monday, that's if, having had a latte at nearly 8 p.m. I sleep at all.

Pray for me will you? Wish me luck. I'm just hoping I don't wake up tomorrow and think it's Monday. I'm beginning to think all of my days of the week got put in a huge container, shuffled around, and I pick one out each day not having the least idea whether it's really that day or not.

Now I think that's at least a little bit mysterious? Isn't it? If it isn't don't tell me. Be gentle. I'm confused enough as it is, and you'll just confuse me more...

Almost, hopefully, just a little bit...

And For Sundays...

2009-09-13T17:43:00.016-04:00

All throughout the day today I was thinking what a serene day not only this day today is, but how Sundays are usually very serene days for me and for others as well. For some people it is their church day, for some, a day off work, for others, a quiet contemplative day, and for many, a kind of reverent hush falls over the day that is not conscious, but is felt. A day of rest, a day far away from the madness of the world, for most of us, although now with everything open seven days a week, not so much for everybody. I have always loved Sundays, and thought that this might be a quiet gentle thing for us to share...

So share with us your peaceful Sundays, tell us what you do, even little things... do you drink coffee or tea, watch the birds at the feeders, read the paper, attend a church or spiritual service of any kind, and what does that mean to you?

As always, you can share "notes, quotes & flashing thoughts," those things that flit through our brains (often in the midst of our writing something else) and seem insignificant, but can be a very powerful sharing and really touch someone else.

So I shall share a few of my Serene Sunday thoughts for today, and I will look forward to hearing about yours too...

* One thing that has been a long-standing Sunday activity is to begin reading my Sunday New York Times, (It's so big I read it all week and only get it on Sundays...). It is not only a real treat but I save The Book Review for last, like dessert! Also, I save the papers because there are a world of things to cut out for collage and art projects.

*After reading a bit of the Times, with about 1/2 of my latte left, I head outside with the dogs and check the garden, do a little deadheading, maybe cut a few flowers for a bouquet, and visit Bella, my Banana Spider whom I wrote about several entries back. Her web is now absolutely huge and she is a very busy little mama, getting ready to lay her wee little eggs from which the spiderlings will hatch. I am fascinated by her, and I say, "Ciao, Bella," as I pass...

* Sundays have also always been days for classical music, fiber art, meditation and prayer, and other contemplative tasks, even some housework. I love spinning yarn on Sundays, or weaving, or working on any new project, often shuffling several at once as the muse moves. Chop wood, carry water, as the saying goes. The wheel keeps turning and the household must too.

* Funny things... Sundays are usually the days I cut and color my hair (Yes, I buy my hair color for $3 at the Dollar Store,) and do a facial mask and maybe a homespun pedicure. No polish, just soaking and sloughing and buffing and cutting nails and massaging the feet. Your feet are so important to your well-being and are so often forgotten, just something down there that we walk on. Of course I wear wildly attractive shoes. I have worn Birkenstocks for 30 years, and the last year or so have gone WILD for Crocs. Here's one pair. I have them in several colors and have never had anything more comfortable on my feet. Of course after 2 foot surgeries wherein I couldn't walk for a year, and then several years later, shattering both of them (The doctor said, "Honey, you didn't break your feet, you shattered them..."), needing 2 casts and a very long recovery period, not walking unaided for another year (Talk about foot karma???) I didn't think I'd ever find something that felt good on my feet EVER. Here, I proudly present my wonkified feet in their favorite shoes...

Yes, I'm the woman outside with five dogs -- four puglets and Big Dog Moe -- carrying around a plastic bag for "Poody Duty" and looking about as odd as one can, with a ratty caftan blowing in the wind, my Crocs in a color that just doesn't match (Red, Blue, Purple too. I had an orange pair that I gave to a friend and now I grieve their passing. Likely orange will find their way back into the fold and probably pink too. My Birkenstocks are my "dress up" shoes (Stop Smirking, I saw that!) and I just got a new pair of Arizona's for my daughter's wedding at which I was both the mother of the bride as well as the minister performing the ceremony. "The minister wore an ankle length midnight blue dress and Birkenstocks." Lord, I think I looked smashing! And shocking to a few people too. Crocs are definitely Sunday footwear. And by the by, I buy both my Crocs and Birks on eBay. I got FOUR pair of Crocs in different colors on eBay for the price of one! In my Bigfoot size even. Just paid $40 for a brand new, tags on, in the box pair of $125 Birks.

I'm sure this must be a Serene Sunday topic somehow. At least it started out to be...

* Sunday is also a day to write and call dear friends, to share the love and touch base. My sweet mother, in her final days, told me today she wanted me to always have close friends, and cherish them, and make an effort to keep in touch. She said that keeping up with friendships can take some effort, but oh, what a pay-off. I told my mother she'd better be talking to me from "up there," and she said she would. I will always need my mother's wise counsel. But I hope she doesn't notice my footwear. She wonders where she went wrong as a mother that I would end up wearing such footwear, and she gave up bringing me nylons when she came to visit after realizing that all I used them for was the outside dryer vent, help on by rubberbands. Boy was she miffed. But at least I didn't get any more nylons...

And so dear ones, those are a few thoughts from me today, what are your Serene Sundays like? I'd really like to know. Sign up even if you can't start until next week. I'll look forward to seeing you..

... with a serene snoring pug on her person...

Coming This Week... "Wisdom Wednesday"...

2009-09-13T15:42:00.011-04:00

COMING THIS WEEK!!!

Well, I've had this set up at Mr. Linky and deep in my heart for the last few weeks but they have been wearisome at best and I've been slow going (... not to mention last week when I got fouled up on my days and missed Mysterious Mondays altogether... sheesh...). What I find, during these trying times, is that blogging and being in contact with my blogging friends is one of the best heart-healers and soul-soothers I have found (Plus my Facebook and Twitter Friends!) and to prod myself along I am going to create these little meme's and in this way prod myself to at least update this blog a few times a week which delights me no end!

I am just giving you a head's up here so maybe you can join in in time for the first week and be a part of the fun from the beginning, and I just love the idea of this one.

You see, it occurred to me that in this time when so many have lost track of the way they were raised, of "The Golden Rule," or just plain and simply helpful advice perhaps handed down from grandparents, parents, teachers, friends, our own children (very often) and much more, it would be nice to share a little list each week as a reminder. So I have created Wisdom Wednesdays.

You can list short lessons, long teachings, stories that inspire, quotes, anything that speaks to wisdom that guides us in our lives. I think (God help me and the saints be praised, as my little Irish Catholic aunts used to say!) I have it set up so you can put the meme on your site if you want to so we can all join in on each other's sites, but this is the main site here.

So stay tuned, join in, and share your wisdom...

Love,

Uh-Oh, Where Did Mysterious Monday Go?

2009-09-08T15:59:00.010-04:00

Well, ahem, you see, the thing is...

I am one of those people who are completely flummoxed by three day weekends and keep getting the days confused and I thought all day long yesterday it was SUNDAY. (One dear participant of the Mysterious Monday Gang wrote to me to tell me that she'd gotten her first piece up. I thought, "Well isn't she the anxious little chickadee. It's only Sunday." Talk about the joke being on me.) Truth be told, I was rather busy. I think I was...

... Chatting up my friend Tallulah,
who is, yes, a street-walking sheep,
but times are hard for sheep too, so
I wouldn't be too quick to judge...

and playing with my toy chicken...

while waiting for my facial mask to dry...

... which is surely a very Sunday thing to do.

Well, you just can't imagine how embarrassed I am. But I will be back NEXT Monday to provide you with yet another dazzling list of mysterious things that happen round here, and I know you are waiting with baited breath, but perhaps you can give yourself a facial mask while you wait...

A very peculiar and lopsided...

Don't Let That Innocent Face Fool You. ~ And then there are the other little hooligans...

2009-09-05T23:35:00.026-04:00

It's always the innocent looking ones that are the sly ones...

Harvey, 9 years old. Meek, mild, innocent,
timid... and sly!

Everyone knows that I live with a bevy of munchkins. Well, 4 munchkins plus Big Moe. We'll get to Moe shortly. And this, of course, doesn't count the six parrots. As an interfaith minister with an outreach ministry based on loving-kindness and compassion, animal welfare is one of my most important and passionate missions. Hence, I live in a cottage full of little hooligans, and I wouldn't be without one of them.

Harvey was the last of the pugs to come. He came a year ago this month and the other three came the year before in August (Babs, who is now 14, blind and deaf...), September (Sampson, now 10, my velcro pug.) and November (Coco, now 13, and deaf when she wants to be.). Big Moe came from the Humane Society when he was a wee tiny puppy, 15 years ago, and is a Lab/Doby/Perhaps a little bit of Shepherd/And likely a sprinkling of this or that, for good measure sweetheart of a boy. He was always so laid back, submissive, and sweet, a big lump of love, at least he was until the third pug came, and after that he started trying to eat them and I had to go all Dog Whisperer on him. Sigh. Gentle, but to the point. Finally he settled down and stopped trying to eat puglings for snacks, but before he could catch his breath, in came Harvey.

Harvey is so timid, shy, and sweet that I wanted to wring Moe's neck when he attacked him, but I was always there to go into Dog Whisperer mode and stop the fracas. Harvey was never hurt but it scared the poop out of him, almost, and sometimes, ahem, literally. Finally, about 3 months ago Moe gave up. There were pugs everywhere and the best he could hope for was that there would be no more. He can rest easy because this Senior Citizen Home For Puglings is full at the present, and I can't walk into my shoebox sized kitchen without tripping and plunging headlong into the sink and almost out of the little kitchen windows for all the food and water bowls.

So Moe finally calmed down, and Harvey noticed. For awhile he would go upstairs and sleep on a bed I made for him on the little landing because he got tired of almost being eaten alive and was afraid of Moe. After Moe settled down for the most part (Praise the Lord! I thought the day would never come... Phew!) Harvey started getting bolder. He tiptoed down and would sleep almost on the bottom step. For some reason the carpeted stairs are one of Harvey and Coco's favorite places to sleep. They like to watch out the front window at the bottom of the stairs and bark like mad and pretend that they are the size of Great Danes and could take any neighbor or UPS man that came near the door. Of course the fracas of five dogs hurling themselves at the door and barking as loud as they can turns anyone's hair white as they run for their lives. The UPS man practically hurls a package at the front door and sprints back to his truck posthaste.

From the bottom step Harvey moved to the spot in the hall just outside of the kitchen where there are three cushy fluffy beds and he started sleeping in one of them with the girls next to him. Moe sleeps next to me on the floor and Sampson sleeps ON me wherever we are, so Harvey wasn't about to get that close. At least not yet.

Came the day that Harvey moved straight down the hall and lay down on the other side of the chair opposite Moe's side and I got him a bed for that spot (No one, man nor beast, has had as many beds at the same time as Harvey.) and he sleeps there rather smugly. At first Moe would inch around and sleep in front of the ottoman and stare at Harvey and a few times tried to eat him (Man I was getting tired of putting on my Dog Whisperer suit...). Harvey would run off and then Moe would look smug. Then came the day Harvey stayed on his bed on the left side of my chair and kind of stared Moe down. Moe shrugged and gave up the ghost and went back to his bed on the other side. We have had only one or two incidents since when Moe tried to eat all the pugs at once because they came too near him when he was NOT in a good mood. The last time, as I was separating them, I was almost laughing because as Moe tried to eat them, Sampson, Coco and Harvey all went after Moe and ganged up on him. Between my heroic attempts to stop Moe while trying to shove the pugs out of the way, hollering (just a little bit) "You idiots, get off of Moe or take the consequences." They backed off, Moe laid down on his bed in kind of a stupor, and I collapsed in the chair and watched Coco and Harvey retreat and go to their own beds. Sampson, of course, jumped up on me. I am his bed.

Lately -- and I can't help but snicker a little -- Harvey wants to be the first one out the door to potty, and he almost rushes in when Moe goes out and heads straight for Moe's bed so full of attitude it's positively hysterical. And he will keep sitting there -- quite a bold move if you ask me, given that Moe has almost taken parts of his body for souvenirs on a number of occasions -- even as Moe comes in. By now Moe is simply worn out by the whole thing. He sits there looking kind of dumbfounded as this little pug, about the size of Moe's head, sits smack in the middle of his bed and won't move. Moe stares. Harvey stares. Moe gives up and lies down where he is, and when Harvey has made his point, he trundles off, pug-like, to his bed on the other side of the chair. Talk about bold. We've come a long way in a year!

Big Moe who hardly tries to eat a pug
anymore. Hardly...

Coco, who is always half asleep somewhere,
and can't be bothered by everybody else's
shenanigans. She just wants her treats, her
meals on time, and some comfy place to
sleep. Stairs by day, bed by night...

Then there is precious little Babs...

Babs, who is actually wearing that hat,
which I made for a funky little handmade
doll. Babsie is the tiniest pug here, and
is grouchy a lot, and for all that - she is
completely blind and deaf - you could
skip your alarm clock if you have to get
up for work. She awakens us with loud
barking every morning at 6:15 a.m.

Then there is Sam. Sammy. Sam the Man. My velcro pug, my love pug (Note the heart on his forehead...) and who, in this picture, as he often does, sneaks down off the big arm of the chair just where I was sitting, re-arranges the pillows, slobbers on one until he gets comfortable, and then starts to doze off. This is a bit irritating when I have only gotten up for 3 1/2 seconds to get a glass of water. I have to hoist him back up on the big, soft, wide arm of the chair, fix up all the pillows (We are pillow people here.), and settle myself back in, at which point he snuggles over, puts his head and front paws on my shoulder, and goes to sleep. This makes us both feel like everything is in it's place and all is right with the world.

I talked to the dogs one day and told them that some people actually have no dogs. They were shocked. And when I told them that some people actually had cats, they shrieked, all of them, with horror. I said, "Count your blessings, I love cats, I'm just highly allergic to them, or you'd have furballs batting at you and, all superior like, wondering how in the world the household ended up with a bunch of low-life idiotic dogs. They might even smack you around a little and then take your favorite places to sleep." I stopped there because the poor pugs were nearly having strokes or heart attacks, and it's hard enough to give all the old folks their pills and medicines and whatnots without calling Pug-911 and having the little white pug ambulance pull up at the door.

Finally, with Sam snoring so loudly on my shoulder that a friend could barely hear me over the din, above said friend said, "Why do you have all those old dogs. The mess in the house, they snort, snuffle, snore and need all manner of medications, and well, they are just a lot of work. If I had dogs that pooped and peed on my carpet, I'd get rid of them."

(I had to take a deep breath and calm down so that I might be able to be civil as I answered. Even ministers get riled you know.)

Once calm, I said, loudly, over Sam's snoring, "You know, some day you're going to be old, and maybe in a nursing home. You will undoubtedly, and, full of shame, wet your bed or worse. You will hope and pray, at that time, that your caretaker or nurse will be kind and gentle with you, treat you with respect, and love you all the same." My friend did not say another word on the subject and I'm not sure if it's what I said or how I said it, but if you knew me you'd know that I barely ever get angry. And when I do, I speak softly, with a firm tone in my voice. That will surely stop the offender in their tracks far more quickly than if I were shouting, and shocks them to see me in this state.

I will not bear someone harming or being cruel to a child or an animal. It should go without saying that no one should be unkind or abusive to anyone, human or animal, but the little ones, the innocent ones, need protection, and I'm telling you I have no compunctions about stepping in to stop that kind of thing instantly. I might not shout, but I make my point just the same. I won't abide it, and people get that pretty quickly.

It is now after 1 a.m. Everyone, dog and parrot, are asleep. All the pugs are snoring in various different tones and remind me of the frogs or crickets you hear outside at night. Sitting here this late it is comforting and soothing. I love these wee little creatures so much I don't know what I'd do without them. The have given far more to me than I ever could for them. I think dogs are the only unconditional love we will ever know.

Today was pug-squishing day. That's when you grab a whole pug and squeeze them, squishing (ever so gently) their soft wrinkly faces, and kissing the wee little almost-noses all to pieces. When a new pug comes in they have to get used to this right away. At first they are horrified, and then they kind of take it, but with a stiff upper lip and a sigh of relief when it's over, but now they just kind of let themselves be squished and kissed and I think they're grateful that there are so many of them since that shortens the length of their squish time.

Moe is too big for serious squishing, except for his nose. He's the only dog in the house with a real nose. I squish it (very gently) and give him lots of kisses on his face, head and snout, not to mention his little black rubber ball of a nose, and he tries to look dignified, but truth be told, I think he's embarrassed in front of the pugs. We all have our trials, I tell him, but he is not quite convinced. Being the only big dog surrounded by a herd of puggywumpers is no easy task, and aggravating at the very least for a dog who was once an only dog. I see him smiling in his sleep sometimes, and I know what he is dreaming about. He is lost in the past when there were no midgets without noses all over the house. But I think he's gotten used to them, even when Harvey sits smack in the middle of his bed and won't move. I think maybe he even respects Harvey a little bit more, or he's just too tired to care. Me, I'm just glad that they are all here.

People often ask me if I get lonely (meaning my children are all grown and off into their own lives, and I am divorced...) I look and them, look around the room, and kind of shrug and laugh and say, "I might, if I had the time." Lonely, I'm not. Satisfied, happy, fulfilled and well loved, not to mention fortunate, that's how I feel.

Now, it's time for me to nuzzle the muzzle of a snoring pug, cuddle up to him, and go to sleep. I hope you all have a good night's sleep as well, and I hope to heavens you have a warm, furry little someone to cuddle with. You would be so lonely without them.

... with a pug on her person, reaching over to turn out the light...

Intricate Spider's Webs, Spiders As Totems, Weaving As A Tool For Healing & Spinning Our Own Universe...

2009-09-04T12:16:00.029-04:00

"The spider has shown up in myth and lore throughout the world. Usually its symbolism has been very similar wherever it is used. In India it was associated with Maya, the weaver of illusion. It has had connections to the Fates in Greek mythology and the Norns in Scandinavian lore - women who would weave, measure, and cut the threads of life. To the Native Americans, spider is grandmother, the link to the past and the future. Spider teaches you to maintain a balance - between past and future, physical and spiritual, male and female. Spider teaches you that everything you now do is weaving what you will encounter in the future. In the tarot deck is a card - The Wheel of Fortune. This is a card that has to do with rhythms - the rise and fall, the flow and flux. It is linked to the energies of honor and fame, and the sensitivities necessary to place ourselves within the rhythm of Nature. Meditation upon this card would be beneficial for anyone with the spider as a totem. The spider awakens creative sensibilities. It weaves a web of intricate and subtle fabric, as if to remind us that the past always subtly influences the present and future. Often the webs will take a spiral shape, the traditional form of creativity and development. The spider found within the web reminds us that we are the center of our own world. The ancient mystery schools had one precept inscribed above their portals: "Know Thyself and Thou Shalt Know The Universe!" Spider reminds us that the world is woven around us. We are the keepers and the writers of our own destiny, weaving it like a web by our thoughts, feelings and actions. The spider, because of its characteristics, has come to be associated by mystics and in mythology in three predominant expressions of magic. The first is magic and energy of creation. It is a symbol of creative power, reflected in its ability to spin a silken web. It is also associated with assertiveness of that creative force, of keeping the feminine energies of creation alive and strong. The third predominant magic of the spider is associated with its spiral energy, the links with the past and the future. The spiral of the web, converging at a central point, is something to be meditated upon by those with this totem. Are you moving toward a central goal or are you scattered and going in multiple directions? Is everything staying focused? Are you becoming too involved and/or self-absorbed? Are you focusing on others' accomplishments and not on your own? Are you developing resentment because of it - for yourself or them? Spider is the guardian of the ancient languages and alphabets. Every society has had myths about how the different languages and alphabets were formed. The Chinese alphabet is attributed to Ts'ang Chien, the god with the dragon face and four eyes. He formed it from the patterns of the stars, the marks on the back of the turtle and the footprints of birds in the sand. The Norse god Odin created the Runic alphabet after hanging upon the great tree of life for nine days and nights. After this time, the twigs fell off and spelled our certain formulas and words. To many, there was an alphabet even more primordial. It was formed by the geometric patterns found within spider's web. To many this was the first true alphabet. This is why spider is considered the teacher of language and the magic of writing. Those who weave magic with the written word probably have a spider totem. If spider has come into your life, ask yourself some important questions. Are you not weaving your dreams and imaginings into reality? Are you not using your creative opportunities? Are you feeling closed in or stuck as if in a web? Do you need to pay attention to your balance and where you are walking in life? Are others out of balance around you? Do you need to write? Are you inspired to write or draw and not following through? Remember that spider is the keeper of knowledge of the primordial alphabet. Spider can teach how to use the written language with power and creativity so that your words weave a web around those who would read them.

"Spider"
Excerpt from Animal Speak
by Ted Andrews

The Miraculous Spinning Of A Spider's Web...

What a time it has been for me. As I am the Phoenix crashing and burning, and just beginning the inevitable rise that comes afterwards, a time when doors are closing and windows are opening, Nature's smallest creatures are coming to me to teach me, to guide me on my path. First, the tiniest of tree frogs, so tiny they could sit on my big fingernail, spoke to me and told me their secrets. I wrote about the frog as totem several entries back.

Now, the spider has come. Several times a day I go outside to look at Bella (I first called her Betty but came to feel that that did not honor her beautiful, mystical place in this Universe. Now, when I leave her to come in, I whisper, 'Ciao Bella,' and I think she understands that I am honoring her, that I love her, that I am trying to protect her, and that I bow to her in gratitude as she has come to me as teaching.
Grandmother Spiderwoman spun the web of the world. Ted Andrews tells us that spiders as totems teach us to spin the web of our own destiny. It's time for me to weave again.

A few years back I was going through a very painful time, a learning time, a metamorphosis. I got out a small hexagonal loom (... smooth worn wood from much use, made in the 40's or 50's. They were made to be potholder looms...). For me, weaving one is part of the spiral journey that leads me into the center of myself and back out again with the answers I seek. Every night I would weave until 2 or 4 a.m. I sang, softly, sacred weaving songs from the Dine (Navajo) from centuries ago. It was a very hard piece to weave, tightly woven and going round and round in a spiral pattern, and by the time I got to the middle my fingers hurt from working the weaving needle in and out and round and round. But as we get closer to our center, the place where the mystery of our being lies, is it not harder and harder the closer we get?

I called this piece Ariadne's Web, and have had many people who wanted to buy it, and while I do sell my weaving, it has become more and more personal to me, so that the lessons I learn with each piece are part of the map of my journey, and the legacy I will leave my children and grandchildren. A story woven for them, how one imperfect woman could make her way through life, acquiring belief in herself, and as she begins the journey into Cronehood, comes to realize all that she is as a woman. I will leave my children, grandchildren and their children the knowledge that it is never too late, and that the effort to achieve your dreams is a thousand fold more mysterious and miraculous than you could ever dream at the outset.

I meditate upon Ariadne's Web, and Bella, my spider guide, right outside my front door, is leading me back into my writing and art after a long dry spell, when I was so frozen by life and grief that I was caught in a web of my own making and could not move. I will cherish this small piece of weaving for the rest of my days. It will have been one of the greatest teachings of my life...

Now, I am working on another kind of fiber work. It is freeform crochet, crocheted with my amazing set of hand-carved and hand-painted crochet hooks by the amazing artist, designer and writer, Noreen Crone-Findlay. These are magical tools, and in it's own way, crocheting in this manner feels very like a kind of weaving to me.

The piece I am working on I started many months ago, but when the gloom descended I was not able to create, and it caused me great pain. This piece is so big it could take me 2 or 3 years because much of my other work will be done alongside it as I create things to sell and write the book I am working on. The piece is 10' wide and will be 10' long. It is enormous, bright, colorful, and it is telling me a story as I go, and helping me working my way, with fibers and wooden tools, into the next phase of my life. It will be felted which will shrink it some, and I call it "The Magic Carpet." It will be part of the new life I will be creating in the little old cottage I am hunting down now. I will have begun it here and end it in the cottage I will spend the rest of my life in, in a tiny sea town on the coast of the Carolinas. It sits folded in a very large, very heavy, Mary Poppins-ish carpet bag. Here are a few pictures of The Magic Carpet in process...

And so the weaver weaves, and the dreamer dreams, and I weave my web where I will sit at the center and plan my new life. Look in your garden. Surely you will find me there.

Ciao Bella...

DON'T YOU DARE TOUCH MY SPIDER! Or her web. She has come to comfort and teach me...

2009-09-02T09:54:00.010-04:00

"The golden silk orb-weavers (genus Nephila) are a genus of spiders noted for the impressive webs they weave. Nephila consists of numerous individual species found around the world. They are also commonly called golden orb-weavers, giant wood spiders or banana spiders. In North America, the golden silk orb-weavers (see also Nephila clavipes) are sometimes referred to as writing spiders due to occasional zigzag patterns (stabilimenta) built into their webs, though these occur much more frequently in the webs of Argiope..."

~ From Wikipedia ~

My favorite summer spider, the Argiope, which I've always called "Zipper Spiders" because of the distinctive zipper down the middle of her web. I just cannot imagine how she makes that and it is so astonishing beautiful if you see them in person, you will never forget it. I have these all over my garden in the late summer and we co-exist quite happily and I'm honored that she finds safety and solace in my garden. To see the babies emerge later is precious beyond compare...

If you had told me a spider was ANYWHERE near me when I was little, I would have gone into a screaming fit running for my life. As a young married woman if a teensy little spider was walking across the ceiling, I could not go to bed and would shriek wildly for my husband to come and get it. I would be near hysterical saying, "It's going to fall on me, it's going to FALL on me."

My husband was good about getting them, but he'd always kind of chuckle as he left the room saying, "Spiders don't just FALL on you..." Perhaps it was just taking an evening stroll, but to this day I don't like a spider creeping across the ceiling over my bed.

I've never seen, thank God, a brown recluse spider and may have seen a black widow outside once, but they've no interest in me and try to hide from me. I think I heard one say, "Dear Lord, stay away from that woman, she's a big freaking idiot and will break your eardrums just before you are caught in a jar and put out. It's just not worth it..."

I have gained a bad reputation with spiders.

Then came the day, after putter-gardening (You know, a little flat of pansies or something stuck in a barrel), that I became a REAL gardener. I have spent 2 decades studying horticulture, botany and outdoor creatures. In one quarter acre garden where I planted 60 roses and every kind of annual, perennial, flowering bush and tree, I became quite used to finding very large garden spiders. I must admit to being a little alarmed at first but they weren't bothering me and I wasn't bothering them. They were just living their Garden Spider-ish life and I was just sitting in my chair studying up on planting rare seeds and where the best place would be, micro-climate wise. Then, came the day I first saw the Argiope (zipper) spider. Well, I mean they are BIG. Quite large indeed. And instead of running I stood mesmerized by her beauty. A black and yellow spider, with very long legs, building not just a very large web but one with a zipper, plain as day, going straight down the middle of her web (see picture above.). From that day forward I fell in love with them and looked for their summer arrival. We've had them all over the place and stood entranced as she worked on her web, a true work of art.

Well, the last couple of years here in the Carolinas everyone has been all abuzz about "The Banana Spider." My daughter, who has always been terrified of spiders, said, with a shudder, "Ew, they are all over the neighbor's yard." Well, that got me, I was fascinated. I kept meaning to come home and look them up to see and read about them, but when I get home from anywhere I am met by a big black dog and 4 puggish little people hurling themselves at me like they were sure I had left them FOREVER and they were CERTAIN that they weren't going to survive, and then 6 parrots all start chattering and screeching and by the time I get 11 little hooligans taken care of, dogs out and in, all I can manage is to flop in the chair and breathe.

A couple of days ago I found, in my yard, and slanting backwards away from me, the largest spider web I have ever seen. Attached to a big bush, a little bush, and a tree, many feet away. That is the most beautiful and intricately woven web I have ever seen. I stood absolutely still without so much as breathing and just gawked. I am a weaver, you see, and I will never get over the spider's web, a truly beautiful won. And of course the Native American weavers from centuries back have told stories about Grandmother Spider, also Grandmother Spiderwoman, who wove the web of the world, and is sort of the patron saint of weavers. Now, when I see a spider out of doors I feel very protective.

So I've been going out to watch her progress and I imagine she's gearing up for babies, because she eats like a horse. Yesterday I watched her catch a bumble bee, do him in, and this morning he is rolled in the white filament that insects, too busy bumbling about to realize what is about to seal their fate, fly right into a spider's web. I swear, I think a lot of them need glasses with the predicament they get themselve into. That bee is supper and it's too bad, but the big spider looked quite pleased with herself. And yes, she is a Banana Spider.

I love that they are also called "Golden Silk Orb Weavers," and when I read that they are also called "Writing Spiders" I just giggled like a ten year old. I am a weaver and a writer. This spider and I are somehow related. And watching her build that giant web is just utterly fascinating.

So here I've been, communing with my Banana Spider whom I call Betty, and there were workmen outside yesterday and I caught one of them throwing something in Betty's direction. I rushed out the door like a madwoman (People just love to ruin their carefully woven webs, preparing for their babies, and woebetide the person who makes the mistake of doing it in front of me, and to Betty of all things!) flailing my arms about in a ridiculous manner and said, "Did you throw something at her??? YOU LEAVE MY SPIDER ALONE!!!" I think I'da jumped one of them and smashed him on the ground if he'd have hurt her or her web. Luckily, my crazy act scared the men so badly they left in a hurry, with Betty and I chuckling in the dust they left behind them. I told Betty she was doing just fine and I'd run the hooligans off.

Now I keep checking on her. I have become fiercely protective of all the creatures outside who inhabit my little corner of the world. When I moved in here I was warned about working outside making my garden because there was a BIG TERRIBLE SNAKE OUT THERE and all of the neighbors were terrified of it. Everyone had seen it and it apparently liked living around my place. Well, I gardened in ever nook and cranny and never saw this BIG SCARY SNAKE anywhere. I kept getting warned. They were a-feared for my very life. So I started asking questions, "What does it look like, how big is it, etc?") By now, I was imagining horrific poisonous snakes dangling from trees like in the amazon jungle. Turns out, I realized, after talking at length to my neighbors, that it was just a common black snake who not only is not poisonous, they do good things out there, and them don't come chasing you down to kill you at the first opportunity.

Now, mind, I still don't want a spider to "fall" on me, but I've said this outside and heard spiders laughing at me everywhere. I think I heard one particularly rude spider say something along the lines of, "Does she really think we'd want to fall on HER?" I think it shuddered.

In any event, you'd better stay out of my yard and away from my spiders or I shall have to TAKE STEPS. You don't want me to TAKE STEPS because with my feet taking a step has often propelled me through space and I'd probably fall on YOU and flatten you. Spiders don't fall, people do...

Maitri, spider protector and champion of other outside creatures, even the fire ants that we have here in the south which you surely want to stay clear of, but you've got to admire their diligence...

Mysterious Mondays ~ Mysteries, Questions & Quandries...

2009-08-31T19:48:00.011-04:00

~ My Mysterious Mondays List ~
The Last One In August, 2009

(And, fyi, the mysteries need not have happened
ON a Monday, we are just designating Mondays
as the day to speak about these awesome, mind-
blowing mysteries, and in the process we might
save the Universe...)

* I have been wondering all manner of strange things this week, which has a lot to do with my current state of body and mind which you can read about over on Maitri's Heart, my other blog that I updated last night. Bear with me because this may go from the ridiculous to the sublime -- well, I'm not sure that it will come close to the sublime, but I'm almost certain some of it will be ridiculous. Let me start with toes.

I am one of those people whose 2nd toe is longer than the big toe. I've been told that that means something but I'll be goshdarned if I can remember what. I mean, really, all of our toes and fingers are different lengths and sizes. Why does that second toe somehow change our fate and the whole tenor of our lives? If this is true I would like someone to write in and tell me why, what this means, and if the meaning is fractured like my feet have been, having had serious surgeries on my feet, then falling down the stairs and shattering them (My doctor's word for it, not mine... He said, "Honey, you didn't just break your feet, you shattered them."). He wasn't just whistlin' Dixie either. I couldn't walk for a year and my left big toe will never bend again, and my feet, like various other parts of me, have turned out cattywompus and lopsided. I'd like to know how the 2nd toe theory is affected with these mysterious things factored in?

* I find it mysterious that places like grocery stores keep the air conditioner low enough to give you frostbite during the 100 degree weather in summer. It's foolishness to have to carry a sweater with you into the grocery store and then as soon as you step outside again your glasses immediately fog up and you run someone down with your cart. It can't be good for anybody to go back and forth between heatstroke to frostbite and back out again into the former. What were they thinking? I think it is a plot to make you do a 180 and have to go back in for cold medicine, but that's just my theory and I haven't found a way to prove it yet.

* I found it extremely mysterious and unseemly when, having grown up in the midwest and then spending over a decade in the Blue Ridge mountains where we actually had 4 seasons, that to drop down only one state it would be so warm at least 9-10 months out of the year that you can get your Christmas tree in shorts. That's just wrong. I'd speak to God about it but I think he has more important things on his mind these days. But while my family in the midwest is snowed and iced in, I have been outside gardening in January in 70 degree weather. Now, I've sort of liked that part, though I'm loathe to admit it, what with the poor family having icicles dripping off their noses while I'm planting seeds, but I've wondered if I were going straight to hell when I talked to them on the phone and they were moaning and depressed because the weather was dreadful, and then they'd ask, "How's your weather there?" I start fidgeting at that point, cross my fingers behind my back and say, ahem, "It's cold here too, brrrrr.... why, they're predicting snow any minute."

I grew up Catholic and I'm sure that must be at least a "venial" sin and I'll spend time in purgatory for it, but not being Catholic anymore and having no one to go to confession to over it, I think I'm doomed. You have to be more forward thinking about these things. It's too late now though. I haven't gone to the Catholic Church since I was 20 and now I'm 55. I think that means I'd be in the confessional for 3 years trying to wipe the slate clean, and be out in a pew afterwards saying "Our Fathers" and "Hail Marys" for the rest of my life to make up for it. I just look heavenward and say, "I'm sorry about everything, even the things I've forgotten, but don't send me to purgatory because I've already been doing a kind of penance for some long time now. I have to go outside in 100 degree weather, when things smell worse than normal, and do 'Poody Duty' for five dogs several times a day, year round, no matter what the weather. Phew. If you don't faint from the heat you will from the smell. That will wipe at least part of the slate clean, won't it?" I'm so confused about these things.

* I find it mysterious that a fairly intelligent woman, such as myself, could have started something called "Mysterious Mondays," and then only the third week in do nothing but bellyaching and moaning not to mention blathering on about the weather, and that's the best I can do. I feel the need to direct you, once again, to the post I wrote last night on my Maitri's Heart blog. I think I have written this in my sleep (again, refer to, you got it, Maitri's Heart.) I'm embarrassed to look so bad at this only three weeks in, but I guess some weeks are more mysterious than others. I'll try harder next week. If I can. If I remember. If I haven't moved to Mars. These days, no one has a clue when they wake up in the morning where they will go to bed that night. Now that's mysterious if you ask me. At least I hope so. Or perhaps no one will notice. That's the ticket. Maybe the readers will be sleeping when they read this too. I think I'll go to sleep now and read with you...

Not so...

It's Mysterious Monday Again...

2009-08-24T21:26:00.023-04:00

I started to think about Mondays, and how mysterious they always seem to me, and that if I started a "Mysterious Mondays" list others could join in and we could all talk about the strange and mysterious things in the universe. You know, important things, the tiny things in the world we might miss if we don't slow down and stop going at break-neck speed... So I am going to jot off as many mysterious things as I have captured in the net of my imagination and daily life from one Monday to the next. I hope you'll join we who find Monday's mysterious, and the world mysterious, and are seeking the answers to the unanswerable, and all that is magic and wise...

My Mysterious Mondays List...

(And, fyi, the mysteries need not have happened
ON a Monday, we are just designating Mondays
as the day to speak about these awesome, mind-
blowing mysteries, and in the process we might
save the Universe...)

* I have been witnessing miracles this past week. I am coming to life, vital and alive at 55. Very much has changed in my life this year and very much more is going to change in the months ahead. Most of these things are so tender and dear I will hold them very close and protect them under my old, worn shawl from Guatemala, worn softer and softer with time. This shawl is
The shawl is mysterious because when I put it on my world changes. I don't even remember where I got it and in the context of my life it is ancient. When I put it on my pug Sampson who sits with me in my big over-sized chair with the plump, soft arms comes and snuggles into the shawl. He puts his two little paws and face on my shoulder and his puggery face kind of spreads out. I write more, and better with this shawl on. In any case, this shawl is It's a bit tattered now, but I will never get rid of it, and I will never understand why things change when I put on this shawl.

* The last two nights I have been having very alive, sensitive, awake moments under the moon and the stars when I am out with the dogs. On my patio there are tiny frogs everywhere. They look just like the tree frogs that I love so much in the spring, bright green, their three wee little suction cup toes clinging to the outside of the glass on the kitchen windows. I stand mesmerized, washing dishes, and stop with a dripping dish in my hand staring at the tiny frog. For a brief shining moment time stands still and the frog seems to be staring at me as I am at him. Finally, I go back to doing the dishes and every time I look up he is still there, looking in. Perhaps he likes to watch a human do dishes. In any case, I find this Last night was particularly fascinating because when the dogs and I went out for the last time before bed, with the patio light illuminating everything on the white stucco walls, there were three of these tiny frogs and I stared at them for the longest time. These were a kind of brownish grey and I wondered if they were different kind of frogs. I read about them when I came in and if I'm not mistaken what it said was that the color changes as the frog begins to grow and metamorphose into a larger frog. I talked to them and told them that they were beautiful. I had never seen them before these last two nights this year, but we've had a lot of rain of late and the water forms little rivers that stand for a day or two in little gullies, and run-off water stands inside the big concrete tubular supports that go under the road. I wonder if these tadpoles-into-frogs were spawned there? I ran in the house and grabbed my cell phone and used the camera to try to take their picture but no matter how I adjusted the light setting they would not show up. There were just blank pictures. I remembered reading that native people in many tribes and cultures of the world did not like to have their pictures taken because they thought the pictures stole their soul. I wondered if the frogs were protecting their souls when I tried to take their pictures. I turned around and saw a much bigger and very beautiful frog on the glass French doors going into the cottage. I tried to take his picture to to no avail. I came in with the dogs disappointed, but as I believe that there is a reason for everything I thought no more of it. It was the frog's business, not mine after all.

The dogs and I have just come in again from our nightly walk, and there was only one wee frog, so tiny you would have missed him if you blinked. Again, he stared right at me, unafraid, and looked right into my soul. He had a message for me and this time I felt it. I believe in totem animals. The dragonfly has long been mine, but I've felt a new totem coming.

Recently I found a Zuni fetish, a frog, that I had purchased in New Mexico made by a renowned Zuni carver of fetishes some time ago, and brought home. He has lived with my collection of fetishes for many years. I liked him, but he didn't speak to me the way some of the other animals did. But now frogs are coming into my life and I had to know why. My little frog friend hopped off the wall onto the top of the handle of the broom leaning against the wall and then disappeared as the five dogs came trundling in, and I got everyone settled for the night and then looked online to see what I could find out about the frog as totem animal. When I read the information below on this website, my jaw dropped open. Every single word is so true of my present life that I knew I had been given a great gift. The gift is my new totem, friend and guide on the journey ahead. My life is about to undergo such a great transformation that it will be life-changing in a way so huge it is almost inexplicable, something that I have waited for all of my life, and it has been happening since the beginning of the year when I was ordained. I felt it when I married my daughter and son-in-law a week ago Saturday.

And something so extraordinary happened to me just this afternoon I had to call my best friend and tell him right in the middle of the grocery store what had just happened. My new totem is the Pied Piper leading me into my new life just ahead. The frog, as totem, represents Transformation (... not unlike my dragonfly totem which seems to be a theme in my life.). When I saw that I was so startled it took my breath away. That I would find him now, this presence in my life just on the threshold of a whole new life when I will move to a little cottage by the sea to write my books, is just as it should be. Surprising and not surprising at all. Just right. This is what I read...

"The frog is the totem of metamorphosis.
It symbolizes coming into your personal power.
It reminds us not to become bogged down with day-to-day living.

It is the totem of water.
Its voice calls forth the rains.
Emotions are associated with water and
a frog totem may be telling you to get in touch with your feelings.

People with frog medicine give support and energy
where it is needed.
They can cleanse the negativity from an environment."

I found this stunning. I find it
* Finally, just as I was walking out onto the patio with the dogs I saw the most beautiful little spider's web attached to the outer door frame and the patio light. From the inside where the patio light light illuminated the web, the spider's web was luminous, each woven strand shimmered, and at the center was a perfect orb. I am a weaver. I am guided by Grandmother Spiderwoman when I weave. I was always afraid of spiders until I started weaving. Now I feel a kinship with them and a fascination for them. The bright yellow and black Argiope spiders that build their huge webs in the garden in the summer delight me because down the middle of their web it looks like a perfect zipper. I call them Zipper Spiders and I didn't see any this year. I felt sad about it. I so loved to see the eggs and the tiny baby spiders emerge for a brief time before they disappeared. You have witnessed true magic if you get to see this.

There were many minuscule bugs caught in this little spider's web, but no sign of the spider herself who may have run into hiding when the patio light went on and the door opened. I walked out onto the patio with the four pugs and big dog Moe and I tried to see the web from the other side, from behind the light. Looking into the light I saw nothing. I could only see the web when I looked out into the darkness. The dark of night is where the most

things happen. I love the deep dark velvet night.

There is mystery and magic all around if only we have eyes to see. Join us here and share your thoughts and experiences on our Mysterious Mondays thread. Let's enjoy the magic together...

"Grampy & You" Spreads The Love ~ The Incredible Blogging Community...

2009-08-22T13:13:00.027-04:00

Grampy Spreads The Love...

WEEKEND LINKY LOVE

One of the things that just blows me away is what the blogging community has come to mean in my life. I came to blogging just to open my heart and share and hope to meet a few like-minded people. I now know people all of the world, have made wonderful and dear friends that I feel as if I've known all of my life, and sometimes, more often than you can imagine, you come across a precious soul whose whole blog just makes you GLOW... Such is Grampy's blog, and you can click on his graphic link above to visit his site.

This morning I was visiting his site and saw that he had a new "Mr. Linky" list set up for "Weekend Linky Love" and I loved the idea. Weekends are more laid back for me and I have more time to write and just Breathe... I am going to update both blogs and add a number of things to them both, expanding favorite links and blogs, and you can bet Grampy will be one of them!

This weekend, even as I type, everything outside in the garden is being dug up and potted, everything that can that is, weeded, cleaned up, and pine straw put down so the owner after me will have a fresh slate. I will be moving soon to a little coastal community where everything is in walking distance and I'm looking at little cottages now. It will be a whole new start for me.

It's hard to imagine that this time last week I was both mother-of-the-bride and minister as my sweet daughter and her longtime love Jeremy got married on the beach at sunrise. It was simple, beautiful, and there wasn't a dry eye in the place except mine (try staying composed when it's your daughter you're marrying and tears are running down her cheeks through the whole ceremony... sigh...). I will never forget that morning as long as I live. It was moving and beautiful and so full of love words don't do it justice...

It is a very emotional time because just as my daughter was marrying the love of her life, and they the parents of my precious grandson Lucas, my dear mother, 83, who has battled Multiple Myeloma for over 4 1/2 years, a terrible form of cancer, is now in her final days. It has been a long, drawn out battle and she has outlived every prediction and expectation, but now the end is coming very close. We didn't know even as days grew close to the wedding if they might also be my mother's final days, and it was like two worlds colliding, very, very difficult.

Once the wedding was over and the newlyweds off on their honeymoon, I picked up a rescue pug puppy. Oh my gracious she would absolutely break your heart. She had been left in a closed car in the heat, was almost dead, had had a heat stroke and a fever of 109 degrees when she was rescued and taken to the Humane Society where the amazing vet saved her. She is precious beyond belief and I had her until last night. She is such a bright, joyful spirit and loveable and kissing all the time, I fell madly in love. I knew she'd only be with me for a short time before the rescue worker came to get her, but I fell so in love I wanted badly to keep her and cried like a baby for hours after she left last night. I think that there has just been so much emotion, every kind imaginable, and she filled something in me and gave me joy when I needed it most. I know that it was right for her to go and she will be a precious angel of a girl for her new adoptive family when she is adopted out, but I will never forget that precious girl, and she will always live on in my heart. Here's a picture of Chloe asleep snuggled into my neck after we had had a great big lovefest. Quality is not great because I took it with my cellphone, the only thing I could reach without waking her, but I love it anyway!

Mother Maitri & Chloe...

Everything happens for a reason, even if we can't see it at the time. Even though I badly wanted to keep Chloe, I had a growing sadness and realization that a bouncing highly energetic pug baby was not what we needed in a land full of seniors (including me!), that the other dogs wouldn't get the attention and love they needed and deserved if I was always chasing after a puppy bounding through the air (She popped off 2 laptop keys, chewed all manner of things up, and nearly licked your face off every time she came near you. A sweeter bundle of love I have never seen, but WHOO, I didn't have that much energy when I was a kid!).

So things settled down and I kind of went from soft sobs to burying my nose in my soft puggy boy's fur, Sam my sweet man that is my velcro pug, and already the stillness set in and I relaxed. I will never, however, forget Chloe, and I will never stop loving her.

I just looked outside and nearly fell over on my head. A lush garden is GONE and flat pine-straw covered ground. It hasn't looked like that since I moved in here 7 1/2 years ago, but everything changes, nothing stays the same, and I am on my way to a whole new life.

And gee, it's only a little after 2 Saturday afternoon. Who knows what the rest of the weekend will bring?

Hugs to one and all. Have a beautiful weekend, especially you Grampy!

"Mysterious Mondays"... Join Me In Exploring The Mysteries Of The World On Mondays...

2009-08-17T18:35:00.034-04:00

Having now joined in on Random Tuesdays, which I love and will be doing tomorrow, I started to think about Mondays, and how mysterious they always seem to me, and that if I started a "Mysterious Mondays" list others could join in and we could all talk about the strange and mysterious things in the universe. You know, important things, like what ever happened to those paper straws they had when I was little (I'm 55, if you're too young to remember these you needn't go and get nasty, just go, as my dear friend would say, "There, there, pat, pat...." and forgive us poor doddering old fools our childhood memories...) that were flavored, and when you used them to drink a glass of milk it would make them taste like, say, strawberries? I don't remember what they were called, but it was certainly in the era of penny candy in the big glass counters in the old mom and pop stores. Sigh... Now there was magic for you.

So I am going to jot off as many mysterious things as my brain can handle right now (... which might not be many, as I just married, literally -- I was the mother of the bride and the minister performing the ceremony at sunrise on Saturday -- my daughter Rachel and her beloved Jeremy, and I think I still have sand in my ears and in my drawers.) and I hope you will do it on your blog as well and refer folks to this page to sign up and use the logo at the top of this post on yours on Mondays that should be linked back to this blog. I will be checking so if you mysteriously disappear from this list, it will be because you're not playing along. You can't play jump rope without someone holding each end!

My First Mysterious Mondays List...

(And, fyi, the mystery need not have happened
ON a Monday, we are just designating Mondays
as the day to speak about these awesome, mind-
blowing mysteries, and in the process we might
save the Universe... C'mon, don't leave me
standing out here alone with my 8-Ball all
alone!)

* Did you play the ouija board as a child? Do you now? Did you believe in it? Don't you find it fascinating that people who scoff at the ouija board will hand all of their money over to stockbrokers, their whole life savings, and let them take a chance with it? I'd sooner consult a ouija board...

* One of the most mysterious things to me as I get older are these peculiar little things that might pop up anywhere and certainly will SOMEwhere called "Skin Tags." Isn't that a very bizarre kind of thing to be sprouting? And stranger still is that my pugs have more than I do and I've never seen them on other dogs. I think this is very mysterious.

* I find it fascinatingly mysterious that the plants you spend a fortune on and tend with loving care and cluck over like a mother hen over her baby chick, die on you every time, while the 50 cent African violets (at least for me) that have gotten kind of ratty looking and have no flowers, I hoard and bring home and clean up and repot and feed and then every now and again when I remember I water them, and they get ENORMOUS and shock people who say that they think African Violets are the hardest thing to grow. This is almost always because they over-water. Benign neglect works very well on a great many things and the older I get I'm treating most things this way.

* I find the Dollar Store (or whatever it's called where you are) one of the most fascinating, mysterious places on the planet. I buy my hair color there for $3 and it's a name brand I can then go in the drugstore and pay $9 for. If the $ store can afford to sell it for $3 and still make money, why $9 at the drugstore? Likely right about now you are wondering if there has ever been a more inane, boring person on the planet, but then one of the great thrills of my pregnancy was that my innie (belly button) turned into an outie at full term, and the amazing stuff that I could clean out that I didn't know was even in there startled and delighted me no end.

I'm an easy person to amuse, everything delights me, I find everything mysterious, and if I end up playing this game alone that's okay too because I play well alone, and I even find that mysterious...

Maitri, on the prowl for other mysterious matters... I think I shall keep a "Great Mysteries of the Universe," notebook... That's the ticket. C'mon out and play!

Random Tuesday Thoughts... (Naked)

2009-08-11T20:09:00.008-04:00

Dear Ones,

I have just joined "Random Tuesday Thoughts" and I think this is a wonderful idea. It will prod me to post on Tuesdays which should then prod me on to other days. You see, my life lately has been cattywompus and lopsided (which is how I describe myself after having "come down with" Bell's Palsy in 1995, having the worst case that three doctors had seen (Oh Joy!), and still only smiling on one side and having an eye that droops on one side, leaving the person talking to me kind of standing on their head to see me alright. (The first thing I taught my little grandson to say when he was somewhere between 2 and 3 is "Grandma is lopsided and cattywompus." I don't know why his parents weren't amused. I'm one of those funny grandmas.

(Naked)

Now, you see, I'm new to this and apparently you are supposed to have a "theme of the week" and this one's got something to do with being naked. As I am rather shy and startle myself when I get out of the shower and look at myself in the mirror, I'll just insert the word now and again so as not to stray too far and get kicked out my first week. Sigh ... (Naked)

Actually all the animals around here are always what you'd call naked, as I don't even dress up the pugs like some do, and when two of them got groomed last Friday they sent them home in snappy little scarves which I immediately took off because the pugs were blushing they were so embarrassed. I mean really. Give the boys a break. So I cut the sailor-ish looking scarves off but all the other nine animals (6 parrots, 5 dogs) laughed uproariously in an unseemly manner much to Sampson and Harvey's dismay, and they went slinking around in funny noses and glasses so as not to be recognized. It didn't work very well because now they were, you guessed it....

(Naked)

Then there's the matter of my kitchen counter. I am a lousy housekeeper as I believe I've said before. Taking care of 11 rescue animals, being a Minister-Writer-Artist, spending most of my day writing and answering calls, getting the dogs in and out 150 or so times a day (And doing "Poody-Duty" afterwards which takes awhile with 5 little poopers (That's almost Naked talk, I think...) does take awhile. In my little cottage the kitchen counter opens up into the living room and has longsince become a receptable for most anything I don't know what to do with which is, sigh, sadly pretty well everything I own. A poor dear soul came in to clean my little cottage today because the whole family and then some are coming in this week for my daughter's wedding. When she got finished and left I just sat here gawking. I felt a little frightened. After all, the kitchen counter was now -- say it with me -- Naked. It can startle a soul half to death to have a place so clean when most people who know you call you "The Absent Minded Professor" and at least in disarray you can at least find things (... if you are muddle-brained, cattywompus and lopsided especially...). I, however, don't mind if I never find anything again, because it looks so neat and clean that I just want to sit here and gawk like the Queen of England were coming for tea, and I can pretty much be sure that she wouldn't be Naked.

Add to all of this, this Saturday, the 15th, at sunrise on the beach, I am not just the mother-of-the-bride, but the minister officiating at the ceremony. I'm pretty sure a minister is not supposed to show up Naked, but I'm afraid I'll be so nervous at 5 a.m. when I have to get up and it is usually just about the time I'm going to bed, that I'll run out the door all rattled, and be.... Naked. I think I should put billboards up all around town with my phone number on them and have everyone in town call me at 4:30 a.m. and say, "Reverend Mother, don't forget to put your clothes on." I shudder to think about it.

I'm afraid I'd better stop here. All of a sudden I'm getting the urge to throw off all of my clothes and run around the neighborhood stark Naked, and I'm fairly certain that's an unseemly thing for a minister or anybody to do, so I'm going to sit here holding my clothes on with a death grip so as not to go crazy running in the streets, clothes strewn all over the living room floor. Perhaps if I wore my Flamingo Hat it would startle everyone that saw me enough that they wouldn't look at my 55 year old body dancing and twirling about buck Nekkid (I think that counts too?)

I actually have this hat and
have worn it, much to the
shock and dismay of my
neighbors, as I went out to
get the mail. A minister in
a flamingo hat walking 4
pugs, I imagine, is quite a
sight...

Wish me luck...

Reverend Mother (Completely Clothed) Maitri

As A Minister I Join Ranks With The Council Of Wisdom...

2009-08-01T20:17:00.017-04:00

We, the Council of Wisdom, affirm
• the spiritual essence of being and the magnificence of creation;
• the discoveries of science and the ongoing revelation of truth and wisdom through numerous individuals, institutions, works of art and literature, and systems of belief and religious practice;
• the inherent worth and dignity of every person regardless of race, creed, gender, economic condition or other distinctions;
• and our shared responsibility as members of the interdependent web of existence.
We
• renounce hatred and violence;
• support unprejudiced, empathetic dialogue leading to intelligent, humane, environmentally sound solutions to conflicts and problems in our world;
• and together reach toward a vision of global communion in peace and prosperity for all.

Mission Statement for The Council of Wisdom

I have been doing extensive research in my studies for building my ministry, and some weeks ago, I came upon The Council of Wisdom online. I applied to be a member and today found out that I was approved. Their goals are so in line with my own, I knew that being a part of their movement would help me help others, as my mission is global as well as local, it includes every race, creed, gender, sexual orientation and spiritual path around the world, as well as person to person, hand to hand, heart to heart. As I often write, Each one, reach one. Being part of the council will help me achieve my goals.

Two weeks from today I will be performing the wedding ceremony for my daughter and her beloved. At the same time I work online on the website, blog, and many facets of The Maitri Ministry. I will be working every day toward my goals, as I tend to my 5 dogs, 6 parrots, the garden, my studies, meditation, prayer, work in animal rescue, and tend the larger garden of the world. Every shape, color, and size. I extend my arms from an open heart to everyone I meet. As I've said, the world is my congregation, whether I speak to you for a few moments, counsel you for a period of time, or know you for the rest of my life, you will be precious to me. This is sincere and comes from the deepest part of me. This is my path for the rest of my life.

Performing my daughter's wedding ceremony is such a joyful thing that it has spurred me on to want to do more weddings. This includes alternative ceremonies of every type as well as those of gay men and women, or commitment ceremonies where it is not yet legal. All deserve the covenant of marriage, those who love and have a commitment to one another should have legal rights as well as the rights inherent in love and committing to a lifetime together. Those who belong to a church have a place and a manner in which to celebrate their marriages, and I celebrate with them. Those outside of the scope of organized religion need also have their union sanctified and recognized, and I shall be a minister who does just that. I am to unite the world in every possible way.

It is said that "United we stand, divided we fall." Never has that been more important than it is today. I dwell in unity, not derisiveness. In this fractured society I hope, in my own small way, to work toward wholeness, hope, compassion, love, and kindness. I believe that I can achieve my goals, for I shall join forces with the ranks of many others who are working toward just this in their own way. I am a minister of many colors, every color of the rainbow, not just one or two. I love, I give love, and, human, I seek love. You cannot move forward into helping another if you have not love for yourself. This, too, is part of the teaching of maitri.

I encourage you to visit The Council of Wisdom website. It is amazing. There is much to learn there, and, if you are open, it will help you grow and expand your thinking. All I ask, all I pray for, are open minds and an open heart. The rest will take care of itself.

With gentle love, with tenderness, with hope, and joy...

Moving Forward With The Maitri Ministry...

2009-07-21T23:03:00.024-04:00

"My religion is simple. My religion is kindness."

His Holiness, The Dalai Lama

As I move more deeply into my commitment to my ministry, and design the website and blog that will be the home of The Maitri Ministry, I realize that I am creating a non-traditional ministry that will not be understood by some people. I am at peace with that. I am creating a non-denominational, interfaith ministry that embraces people of all faiths and spiritual paths, and, offers, to others, a simple message, one that does not take away from an individual's preferred religion or spiritual path, or even the lack of one, but invites all people to add to their own beliefs a simple truth. That truth is that it doesn't matter what you believe, it matters how you live your everyday life. If you live your life with compassion, kindness, and a loving heart, that is enough to make a life a holy one, filled with grace. That is a way of life that blesses each of us.

For me, this ministry is a very simple one created by one woman, an ordinary woman, who has decided to live her life simply, and quietly, and yet reach out to every single soul that she meets with love and compassion and kindness. Not in a church or building of any kind, but simply heart to heart, hand to hand, each one, reach one. The lady at the checkout counter at the grocery store, a neighbor, those that we meet on our daily rounds of life as well as the people we encounter that we don't know. The simple, the ordinary, the mundane, a no frills ministry that doesn't just celebrate a service for one hour one day a week, but is a way of living in every moment that we are alive. At least this is the goal I strive toward. I may stumble and fall, but I get right back up and journey onward. The message, the teaching itself, will guide me, which is why five years ago I took the name Maitri as my legal name, so that it might be a constant reminder of what it is I am here to do. Every time I write my name I am brought back to the teaching I have been called to live by, the star that guides my course.

We are all imperfect human beings with faults and foibles, we make mistakes, we forget what we know, we get angry, we do not accept or love others because we cannot accept or love ourselves, and so we distance ourselves from the very heart and soul of our own Being. Our very faults are a blessing because they deepen, if we allow it, our understanding of what it is to be human. If we are open, we embrace that which we perceive as imperfect, and see the perfection in it. For years I taught about the Japanese concept of Wabi Sabi, the imperfect perfect. Now, I live my life teaching the practice of maitri, a teaching about loving-kindness and compassion, and that we must first have it for ourselves before we have it to give to another. My most important goal, in this ministry, is to hold up a mirror to every individual who reads my writings, or whom I counsel, or meet, and help them to see the beauty, feel the tenderness toward the man or woman looking back at them, to help them accept themselves, and treat themselves gently. When their cup runneth over with kindness for themselves, they will have an endless supply to give to others.

Ram Dass wrote about compassion-in-action. His life has been a life of service, gentleness, and kindness. He is a great teacher for me. I have learned from both Buddhist and Catholic monks, Christian ministers, Native American teachers, from the teachings of indigenous peoples who live the simplest of lives. I am open to what all have to say about what they believe, or don't believe, because I know people that sit in a church pew every Sunday and then go into the world and lead lives that don't follow their own beliefs. I know people that consider themselves atheists and agnostics who are some of the kindest most caring people you will ever meet. And so I choose not to label what I do as a religion, but as an outreach ministry, one that ministers to, reaches out, tries to make perhaps a single moment one of gentle kindness that might be remembered. I care. I care enough to commit my life to a life of service to others. I care enough to accept this unusual life of mine, and to make the most of it, to reach as many people as I can from where I am.

I rarely leave my house and I almost never stop writing and working. I answer hundreds of people every week, twelve hours or more each day. I care for a family of 11 animals and work with rescues to save the little ones. When I adopt a parrot or a little pug, I take the elderly, the disabled, the hurt or the frightened ones. I have learned from them more deeply how to love, how to accept myself, how to live in the moment (... and yes I forget, and then I remember, and I keep on moving forward...), and from my solitude I meet thousands of people.

The last decade my work has taken me around the globe from my own little cottage. I have come to accept myself and celebrate the life that I have. I rejoice in all the love that I am given by my family and friends, my animal companions, and people all over the world who meet me through my writing, or who have studied with me during thirty years of teaching a very healing journal writing class. Now, I work online, on the phone, through e-mail and in person. That's why this is an outreach ministry. I am reaching out from where I am. I am learning more, every single day, the reasons I must do this work, the importance of taking the life we have, whatever shape or form that takes, and making the most of it, of giving all that we can, of sharing what we know, and learning from others. I am 55 years old and my work is just now beginning in earnest, it is taking a more defined shape and purpose, even though I have done much of what I am doing for over thirty years. Now I am moving forward with more than 50 years of learning and growing, of working through difficult issues and celebrating joys. Now, I am ready.

In less than a month I will perform the marriage ceremony for my daughter and her beloved. It will be one of the highest points in my life. What a beautiful way to deepen my role as a minister, and sanctify the sacred, the holy, in this work of mine, in this life I have chosen to live. I feel deeply blessed and grateful. And through the portal I step, into this new life, with a congregation that includes all that I meet, that includes the whole world, as well as the little snoring pug next to me, and all of the sleeping animals around me. I cannot define my faith, I can simply live it, and I am content with my choices, and I love, from my whole heart, as best I can, from my imperfect perfect humanity and in this way my informal ministry formally begins.

Warm Regards and Deepest Blessings to All...

Taming and Responsibility ~ Rescuing 2 Hahn's Macaws...

2009-06-28T16:50:00.035-04:00

"To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world."

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The Little Prince

My "Angel" Baby Girl ~ Feathers plucked
down her chest and back...

Other side, Angel's gigantic nose hole where
a large blue and gold macaw nearly bit her
clean through. Look at her other side to see
how little it should be. Her beak is also
cracked on that side. She could have died.

"Petey, Petey, Peter Pan" (that's what I call him,
and after only 3 days he says, "Petey Pannnnn...").
His chest and back are almost completely plucked.

I have been rescuing and rehabbing parrots for nigh on twenty years. I had a non-profit shelter for disabled and unwanted parrots and had them shipped to me from as far away as Hawaii. They came paralyzed, limbless and more. A great many came from people who said that they were "mean" and "completely unhandleable." They told me I would never tame them. I did, and they became sweet, loving companions. It took months for some, and people just don't want to take the time. It takes time, patience, and a whole lot of love. These two came three days ago abused, frightened to death, they had been in a glass enclosure, housed together, were plucking and beating one another up, and NO perches to sit on. They now are housed separately and have lots of toys, branches, swings and more, and have a good diet and lots of love. Angel sat on my shoulder for 2 hours yesterday just loving and preening me. She was the one nearly killed by a Blue and Gold macaw (and how they got that close to one another I don't want to think about). It is a miracle that she survived.

They were with the same family for 5 years, belonged to the son, and he moved off and left them with his mother who had no idea what to do with them and was afraid of them. They were put in a dark back room and left there, fed and given water, but little else and no attention. Parrots are very feeling, very intelligent animals. They need lots of things to chew and play with and they need lots of time out of their cage, and to be loved and cherished. Too many people get parrots because they are "cool" or pretty, or exotic, or whatever, and haven't a clue what to do with them, end up not taking care of them correctly, the bird gets frightened, begins to bite, pluck, and the worse it gets the more the owner doesn't want to deal with the poor little soul who then gets passed around from one household to another until the parrots are so terrified and wary they do act like what we think of as "mean," but they have been abused, neglected, have become frightened, and some have given up hope and mourned themselves to death.

Buying a parrot is meant for the bird savvy person who has had many other smaller birds, and worked their way up to a parrot and done a lot of reading and study before they buy one. They also need to commit themselves to keeping the bird and working with them and loving them through all circumstances, barring emergencies and heart-breaking situations (for both the bird and owner) when they cannot be kept.

So yes, in the period of time ahead I imagine I will be bitten a lot, but I sit calmly, always talk to them softly, and slowly, barely above a whisper, "lower my energy," and sit calmly with them. Sometime I just sit a few feet away from them and meditate. They have to get used to your presence. You have to gain their trust. Trust is hard won and easily lost with parrots, and a person who has won the love and trust of a parrot has been honored and blessed beyond measure.

Angel and Petey came to me and he flew right to me and sat on my shoulder and started preening my hair. He was the one of whom she said "Nobody can tame that bird." (And truth be told he has since bitten the hoo-ha out of me on the hands when I feed him and get fresh water. If you are going to tame parrots you need to keep on hand a good supply of hydrogen peroxide, Bactine, Neosporin, bandaids and arnica gel.) Right now my hands are bitten up and turning purple just for trying to feed him. But I did not raise my voice, I did not act harshly, I put him back in his cage, closed the door, said, "No biting Petey," and left. Later I came back and sat outside of his cage and crooned to him softly and he talked to me and seemed much calmer. I have heard of people screaming and slinging a little parrot across the room or worse for having been bitten.

Rule # 1: Don't get a parrot if you are not prepared to be bitten.

You WILL get bitten at some time or other with the best birds, even those who are loving companions. They are wary animals, just a generation away from the wild, not like dogs and cats who have been domesticated for millennia, and they retain their wild characteristics. And their beaks, if you will, are their only line of defense. Also, you become their "mate" and they are very protective of you. They may become very aggressive around other people, or even nip you if they feel imminent danger. In the wild a parrot will nip his mate so she will fly off to safety. It is their natural instinct. You must remain vigilant and keep the situation calm and safe for everyone at all times. It is your obligation to those you love as well as the parrot himself.

I have 4 little pugs that came from a rescue, and they were elderly or infirm when they arrived. My wee little black Babsy is almost blind now, and completely deaf. She is nearly 14. Coco, 13, is deaf, and my little Sampson and Harvey, nearly 11 and 10, were so abused that Sam sticks to me like glue and Harvey is very timid. But the lot of them have come around and we are a family.

At first it was thought that these two little macaws should be separated and go to different homes. It quickly became apparent that while they may have beaten one another up in the same cage, they were very bonded. They were raised together as babies and have lived together for 5 years. They call to one another, they talk to one another, to seperate them would be cruel. Also, he is going to be a real handful and a long term job to "tame" and once I do he is going to depend on me. That is not the time to foist him off on someone else, even the best of homes.

I take animal rescue very seriously, and consider it to be one of the most important parts of my rather unusual ministry. God gives everyone gifts. Every one of us. I have had the gift since I was very young to work with animals, and I do not take this lightly. I follow the work of St. Francis, even though mine is an interfaith ministry that accepts and opens it's arms to everyone of all faiths and beliefs. Part of my "congregation" are animals of all sorts. I don't find this odd or unusual, though many people are going to think a lot of what I do as a minister is unusual. I am blessed with what I call "Direct Communion." I don't wait for God to give me signs, I talk to him all the time. I will be guided in this ministry of mine, and I hope to bring together people of all faiths, their friends, families, and animal companions. I want them all to be loved and cherished, to know that they matter, and to discover their gifts and take them out into the world. I will keep up with my work here, even as I go for the Neosporin and bandaids.

Be kind, be gentle, to everyone, most especially, the beautiful creatures of this world who cannot speak for themselves, but must come to trust us and depend on us. As Saint-Exupéry wrote, we will need one another, and we will be unique to each other in all the world. Only take in those beloved creatures you are willing to share your life with completely. They are not a "thing" to cast off when they get old or difficult (as we may be or become ourselves), they are living, sentient beings with feelings.

Angel and Petey are both sitting on their swings. They've never had such a thing. They are both completely enamored of them and spend a great deal of time on them, even though they have many branches and perches. This life is new to them, and a wonder. And I am in awe of them. Animals have much to teach us. May I always be open to their teachings...

On Being A Minister, Walking The Earth Barefoot and Uncloaked...

2009-06-22T11:40:00.023-04:00

"All of the different religious faiths, despite their philosophical differences, have a similar objective. Every religion emphasizes human improvement, love, respect for others, sharing other people's suffering. On these lines every religion has more or less the same viewpoint and the same goal."

~ His Holiness, The Dalai Lama ~
From The Path To Tranquility, Daily Wisdom

Some of you know, and many of you don't, that I am an ordained minister. If I am to use my full title it is Reverend Mother Maitri Libellule. I was ordained online through the only place that felt legitimate, and my ordination took place in a church. I did not do this for anyone else, I did it for myself, and in doing so, I took my commitment to walk in the world as a solitary being, spreading compassion and loving-kindness all the days of my life, in every way that I could, seriously, and with my whole being. It would be an outreach ministry, practiced online, so as to reach as many people around the globe as I possibly could, having a sacred time to pray and meditate, daily, for all those that needed prayer, asked for prayer, and for all of those whom I hold deeply in my heart.

I was not ordained to impress anyone, to use the title to get attention, or to start a church in a physical building. I rarely leave this cottage, and my work here is very deep. I walk in a simple caftan, barefoot, and live amongst nine rescued animals, hundreds of books, and the material for my fiber art. I spin, weave, knit, crochet, among many other fiber arts, and I paint. Anything I sell, plus the few donations that I receive (I am too small to be non-profit, these are considered goodwill/love donations.), keep me going here. I am deeply grateful and satisfied with this way of living as a simple holy person, ordained but unnoticed, quiet and lovingly caring for these precious animals that are elderly, disabled, or unwanted by others, and to constantly read, study, pray, meditate, and "minister to" those who come to me for quiet listening, support, and prayer. No one would recognize me for anything other than what I am, a woman with a compassionate heart, filled to overflowing with love and kindness waited to be shared, as well as a very human woman who, due to many things that too place during my childhood, and since, have led me to the solitary life that I lead.

On my knees I thank God on the worst days. It is not an easy life. I would have it no other way. Our lives were not meant for all happiness and bliss -- though surely we do experience that and it is glorious -- our lives were meant to be a series of learning experiences, and to come to understand how to step out of our own skin, out of the boundaries of our own lives, to reach, and touch, and love one another. Or so I believe.

I was ordained on January 9, 2009, and struggled for months thereafter with the title. My heart, my mission, my goals, and all that I held inside of me were and are intact, but could I use the title Reverend, although it says that on my legal and sanctioned certificate of ordination, as well as the i.d. badge I carry in my wallet with my full title? I was very perplexed about this and uneasy. A dear friend questioned my purpose and did not like the fact that I was ordained online, feeling that it was not legitimate, but it is in the eyes of the law and the church I was ordained in, and in my heart it rang true, but I myself knew that I was a much simpler and quieter woman than the name Reverend might imply. My faith and dedication are strong, my heart open and willing, my intentions are honorable and true. I do want to "minister" to people, but in a quiet, almost unnoticed way. And as a mother and grandmother, the name Reverend Mother rang most true in describing what it was that I felt in the deepest part of myself, the most sincere and apt description of what I wanted my life and calling to be.

I dropped the use of the title Reverend and was simply called Mother Maitri which many people still call me. But the name of my outreach ministry was confusing for people. In 2005, after my divorce, I changed my name legally to Maitri, which is the Buddhist teaching of loving kindness and compassion. I took the name not because I thought I had achieved it, but as a guiding star to remind me of my purpose all the days of my life. I named my outreach ministry The Maitri Ministry, NOT after myself or my own name, but for the teaching, because my goal was to focus on a ministry that spread compassion and loving kindness the world over. However, too many people thought that I was either naming the ministry after myself and to that end was pompous or at the least, irreverent. People told me you had to have years of study and training and "do it" in a church.

My heart sunk. Perhaps because of my own doubts, coming from outside pressure, and perhaps because of my fear of not being able to live up to all I hoped to accomplish. At the same time my mother was losing her battle to cancer, and as we speak is just about to go on hospice, so the end is very near. Rather than continue on with trying to form a ministry, I withdrew inside myself, drew back from trying to form something that the outside world would not undertand, and concentrated all of my energies to loving and supporting my mother in her endtimes.

Recently, something has happened that sparked something in me that I have not felt in months. My solitary practice will become public in August when I perform the marriage ceremony of my middle child, Rachel, and her long-time partner and love, Jeremy. They are the parents of my precious 5 year old grandson, Lucas. I was surprised and delighted that they asked me, and somewhat stunned, a little nervous, but ready. As it is said, "The Lord works in mysterious ways." Once you perform a wedding ceremony, signing the court and marital documents with your full title and intent, with a heart beaming with love and pride, you open your heart and your arms to the world. I still prefer the formal name Mother Maitri, if I am to use one, but I think Maitri pretty much says it all. It is the teaching as well as the woman that I am. It represents the goal that I have for my life, to spread loving-kindness and compassion through my work, as I walk in the world, a solitary practitioner. My writings are my gospels, if you will, to the world. They are simple, mundane stories of real life, as I walk through my own experience and hope that the message will have meaning for others.

I was raised Catholic, have been a student of Buddhism for over 30 years, have studied many religions and modes of spiritual practice, feel deeply moved and close to the Native American traditions, and pray to the saints, the angels and my spirit guides every single day. I read, study, and practice constantly. And I am a woman, a flawed human being, and in the end, it is my very flaws and struggles that have helped me, the very most, to be empathetic and compassionate to others. I have been baptised by the river of life. I have been ordained on my knees in the garden or carrying a tiny blind and deaf pug back and forth outside to the potty, kissing her all over, and telling her how much I love her. She may not be able to see in the normal sense, but she knows. She waggles her tiny self, her wee little curly tail going 90 miles an hour whenever I am near her. She hears with her heart, and I respond to her with my own. And this is how I minister, if you will, to the people around me, as well as the countless thousands of people who have been reading my writings, or taking my classes, for over 30 years.

In the months ahead, after my mother passes, I will be moving into a larger cottage where I will have more space and the time will be right to formalize my work. (In an informal way...) You will not see me, but you may feel my presence. You may never meet me, but we will know one another through my work. I will hold out my hand to you and our fingertips will emanate a kind of loving energy that can be felt around the globe. Yes, I am a minster, and yes it is very real, and sanctioned in a church, although not in the traditional sense, and I am walking my talk, even if not in the way one might expect. And I have a heart brimming over with love. I walk in kindness.

It was the Dalai Lama who said, "My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness."

This is the closest I can come to explaining what I feel in my deepest heart, and what I practice in daily life. And I think of all the religious leaders and teachers we have known through the ages who have not tried to be more than what they were. "Saint" Francis, whom I love very much, was once just Francis, living simply, loving, and leading a life that many would follow, calling themselves "Franciscans" as they were part of the religious tradition that honored the once simple man. No greater or simpler leader ever walked this earth than Jesus Christ, and his life and teachings would spawn so many different churches and interpretations of his teachings as to almost be impossible to count. The Buddha sat barefoot under the Bodhi tree when he experienced the profound revelation of the enlightenment that would begin the Buddhist tradition that for many centuries has been followed by millions around the world. I am humbled by the Native American Fathers, Mothers, Grandfathers, and Grandmothers of the Indian Nation who taught of the holiness of the earth and many traditions that still hold forth today. I am a weaver who has for nearly 2 decades studied the teaching and writings of the Native American weavers, and Grandmother Spider Woman, who wove the web of the world. How can I not open my heart to all faiths when each has something to offer me? How can I not enrich my own teaching and writing with all that has come before.

For over 30 years now I have taught a very healing journal writing class, working with ministers, therapists, artists, teachers, housewives, musicians, people from every walk of life following every spiritual path imaginable. I helped them get in touch with their inner feelings, to come to terms with them, and even to honor them. Now my work has shifted and my goal is to help people honor the intuitive feelings that they have in their hearts into their lives, the silent guide within us that needs no name. The human heart is the holiest instrument that we, as humans, have.

And so yes, I am Reverend Mother Maitri Libellule, or just Mother Maitri, or perhaps easiest of all, simply Maitri. That one word says it all...

Blessings and love to each and every one of you...

I see the train a'comin' round the track...

2009-06-13T14:01:00.012-04:00

"Signora, between Austria and Italy, there is a section of the Alps called the Semmering. It is an impossibly steep, very high part of the mountains. They built a train track over these Alps to connect Vienna and Venice. They built these tracks even before there was a train in existence that could make the trip. They built it because they knew some day, the train would come."

From the movie, "Under The Tuscan Sun,"
Book by Frances Mayes

Under The Tuscan Sun is a movie so dear to me that I own a copy and on days when I have been swallowed up nearly whole by depression, I have watched it over and over all day. The only other movie I watch like that is Chocolat, with Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. But it is Under The Tuscan Sun that has given me so much hope, lifted me up and made me realize that dreams aren't just imaginary things that drift off into the wind, but vehicles, like the train tracks on the Semmering, that are built with the knowledge, with the belief, that someday, the train will come. And I see, off in the distance, my train finally making it's ways up the tracks. I see it's little form moving closer to me, slowly, very slowly, but finally, there is a train that can travel these tracks. I will make it.

There are so many things I have dreamt of. Things I couldn't imagine possible in the life that I have known, and all of a sudden all things seem possible, not all at once, some dreams may take years, but if I've learned anything at all in my life, and we've all heard this at some time or another, "It's not the end that matters, but the journey that matters in the end." I have already taken steps. For the last few years I think that, unknowingly, I have been building those tracks. I had dreams, and I had to believe that they would one day manifest, but my spirits would flag and there were many obstacles in my way. But then I thought of the men who built those tracks.

Can you imagine what might have been in the minds of the men who braved steep, snow-covered, icy slopes to built train tracks through a part of the mountains that was thought impossible by many, a pipe dream by most, and no train, yet, in existence, to even cross those tracks. I have been swimming upstream in my own life for so long, never quitting, ever moving forward, when I couldn't even imagine what they outcome might be, that I was not unlike those men building those tracks. Because of the circumstances of the last years I have seen many dreams fall through, but I continued moving forward with a belief in myself that few could understand. Some thought me crazy, some pitied me, but on I went and on I'll go. I don't know how long it will take for the train to come round the bend and into the station, but I'll be ready, and when I hop on that train no one will be able to stop me!

I think of this quote so often I have used it before in my writings, and will again. It's one of the reasons I watch that movie so often because you see a woman go through terrible trauma, leading to what looks like a ridiculously impossible dream, only to end up finding everything she was looking for.

I've always loved trains. Now I'm preparing to ride one into my new life and my steamer trunk is being packed slowly, in my mind, so that I take only the things that I need, and can begin again. The train is coming round the bend. I've known, somewhere inside of me, all along, that someday the train would come...

Your Life Is An Occasion. Rise to it...

2009-06-07T08:56:00.024-04:00

"Your life is an occasion. Rise to it."

From Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

Last Thursday I was babysitting my five year old grandson. We watched a delightful movie that he had seen before and wanted to see again, the enchanting movie "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium". With what has been going on in my life lately I was perfectly delighted to sit snuggled with this wee little curly haired towhead boy who is all gangly, with skinny arms and legs, and cuddlier than one can imagine, and all full of magic himself.

Dustin Hoffman was absolutely enchanting as Mr. Magorium. I have always loved Dustin Hoffman, and after watching the movie, I thought, this is so incredibly magical it could be this part of history's Wizard of Oz! And Natalie Portman as the whimsical adorable Mahoney, Mr. Magorium's cohort, who works in the store is so, so, well, there just isn't a word for it without repeating all of the words I've used 6 times over!

At the end of the movie (And I won't be a spoiler and give anything away...) Mr. Magorium gives Mahoney a piece of advice. When I heard it I got tears in my eyes and a shiver down my spine. It was so on target for me in my life right now it nearly startled me out of my seat. He gently looked at her and said, "Your life is an occasion. Rise to it." And I was dumbstruck.

I have done a lot in my life, but I have also been very fear-based about doing the things I most wanted to do, sort of low-balled what I deemed possible for me in my life. All of that is changing and I am being a little more bold and traveling into new areas and returning to work that I have loved and missed but for some reason, something inside was holding me back. Oh sure, I could give you a whole laundry list of "good reasons," but the truth is, life is always going to be life, filled with joys and sorrows, and hard times, and everything in between, and it is going to be busy and there are always going to be a million different reasons why we just can't do what we really want to do in our secret's heart desire. Phooey! Mr. Magorium was telling Mahoney that EVERYTHING is possible and MAGIC exists if only we believe and we shouldn't just slip-slide through life wishing and wanting and hoping and dying sadly disappointed at all that might have been.

When I see my mother in her dying process, I see a woman at peace. At nearly 83 (July 21) she has lived a very full life. She has loved and been loved. She has worked and been a hospice volunteer for 30 years and had many wonderful friends and traveled the world and she said that she has had a very full, blessed life. Her life has been an occasion, and she has risen to it!

It also reminds me of a wonderful passage in one of my dear friends, May Sarton's, books. I searched for the quote this morning, but could not find it. What she essentially wrote was that she was not afraid to die, because she had lived a full life. She had taken risks, she had found success, experienced failure, joy, sorrow, and all that life could hold. She too had traveled the world, having been born in Belgium and grown up in the United States she went to Europe often. She went to Japan when she turned 50, a long-held dream. She said that the people who were afraid to die were those that had not really lived, and were coming to the end with many regrets and lost hopes. That is my rendition of the quote, and it holds, I think, the meaning of what May said. It is certainly what she meant. I will have to find it and put it here some day.

I am a great lover of quotes and save them by the thousands. Two of my favorite writers to quote from are Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Helen Keller.

Emerson wrote:

"People wish to be settled: only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them."

And Keller wrote:

"Security is an illusion. Life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing at all."

I think Mr. Magorium would have loved these. Why, he lived 243 years! I'm sure he knew them all in person! I simply know that somehow, in these last few years, and more and more each day, I have taken the albatross around my neck and set him down, wished him well, and walked on. I am dancing down the yellow brick road of my life, and at the end I shall sail away in a hot air balloon!

Live your life fully. Rise to the occasion!

Don't wait to live your life...

2009-05-27T19:37:00.007-04:00

“Don't wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.”

~ Mark Victor Hansen ~

I woke up recently and realized that I have been waiting to live my life. My finances were not in good shape. I've gained quite a lot of weight, and my cottage is a mess. I've been waiting for that one perfect day to make it all come together in some magical perfect way and the longer I waited the further and further I drifted away from my goals. I was in a sorry state and I had let myself slide right into it. It wasn't all conscious, and I had many "good excuses," but you can't wait to lose weight until your mother dies, allowing yourself to wallow in grief and depression. You can't wait to get your finances in order, for your own peace of mind and stability. And you can't wait to cleanse and purge your life of all that has been weighing you down. You'll be six feet under and on your tomb stone it will say, "I might have made it, if only I'd tried." Or so I imagine it would have been for me if God had not spoken to me so loudly the walls shook, and angels on both shoulders were tugging at my hair saying c'mon, c'mon, let's get to gettin'. Geez. Alright already.

I got counselors to help me with my finances. Today I joined Nutrisystem. I have been, quite inexplicably, cleaning my house. Even the pugs look at me as if they are proud of me. Now that's something. Impressing a pug is no small feat.

And so tonight I am drifting on clouds a bit. And I'm making pages of notes full of things to be done. I've done quite a bit of cleaning, made several important calls, and promised myself that I would update both of my blogs this evening. This one is easier because they are short pieces of things that occur to me in the moment. My dear blog, the blog closest to my heart, Maitri's Heart, are longer writings, very deep for me, intensely felt, full of deep truths for me in my current life. Things I'm learning and things I want to share. Sometimes it takes me days to come to what feels right there, and as my mother has been in and out of the hospital 4 times in the last 2 weeks, my heart has hurt too much to stay there long. But, as I've written before, my mother, through 4 1/2 years of cancer, going through the worst of it, would tell you if you called her and asked how she was, "Every day's a good day, it is what you make it." How can I not follow her example?

And so tonight I will feel really good about myself. I may be just at the beginning of many of these changes, but I think that more than half the battle is simply making a firm decision to do it. When I got off the phone after signing up with Nutrisystem, I don't think my feet touched the ground. Amen. Hallelujah.

In one of my favorite Dr. Seuss books which we read many times over to our children, and I now read to my grandson -- Marvin K. Mooney -- Seuss wrote, "The time has come, the time is now, Marvin K. Mooney will you please go now!"

I'm going Dr. Seuss. I'm going...

Onwards and Upwards!

I Lost My Words...

2009-05-25T17:39:00.011-04:00

Where Did They Go?

They went to the place words go when you feel empty inside, and kind of numb and sort of depressed and you need to COME BACK TO LIFE!!!

I let my little kid inside come out and play!!!

It's this kind of time that I need to turn to the wordless pursuits and my paints have been calling me.

Now, mind, I am not an artiste, no, I am a 55 year old woman who wanted to be an artist as a little girl but got bad grades and raps on the knuckles by a nun who taught art class because I "colored wrong." (Purple trees with orange leaves, people with 2 different colored eyes and socks that didn't match, pink dogs, periwinkle blue cats... my favorite colors in the big box of crayons were always magenta and periwinkle blue... it makes me feel tinkly and giggly inside just thinking about it...)

I don't paint much differently these days and am very shy to show them to people. They are little girl paintings. They let JOY out. They make me giggle. I even smile. My paints mostly look messy like this...

... and my brushes kinda look like this...

... and most of my watercolor paint sets are for kids except a couple of sets of better watercolors that have deeper and more vivid colors.

I have books and books and books of funny dear little drawings. I feel very tenderly toward them. I have decided to do a painting a day, and I might need to be sharing those here until my words come back, and don't laugh and be nice because they are shy little paintings and I am working harder at finding my way in more visual forms. Sometimes my brain gets tired from words, like when your mother is dying you run out of words like an air out of a balloon, or when you feel lonely on a Saturday night because they one you love is far away and you haven't been able to talk in a long time. Sometimes it's just good to paint.

I can paint outside the lines if I want to. I can paint turquoise hair if I want to. I can stand on my head and paint if I want to. I can let Sampson my velcro pug paint with his paw if I want to. So there Sister ______. He he he...

Ok, here's one wee little painting I must have done lying down on my side. It must have been a contemplative "lying on your side" sort of day. It asks a question. Can you answer it? If you can leave a note after this post...

Don't you wish you had a cup like that? I need BIG cups for my lattes.

I'd chat more but I ran out of words and now I'm going to paint. You can paint too if you want to. You can get kids paint boxes cheap at the drugstore, and your paintings will be perfectly sublime because they are yours. I know mine are. He he he...

Maitri, having a play day...

I feel like a slug... I look worse...

2009-05-21T20:23:00.007-04:00

Today is one of my "out" days, meaning, as I barely leave the house, when I do I try to get a jillion things done so I don't have to go out again, sometimes for days. Being a reclusive artist and writer makes for a peaceful and soothing life, except on days like today.

Now, the day started off wonderfully well when my sweet daughter Rachel, my middle child and mother of my precious 5 year old grandson, came over for coffee after dropping Lukie off at pre-school. This was a very precious time to me because Rachel is working on her Master's Degree (she work's with autistic children) in Clinical Psychology and with her family besides life is pretty hectic for her. Added to the fact that she is the only one of my three children that live in town, our morning coffee's are very special.

The day continued on very nicely when I went to babysit said grandson while Rachel was working with her little kids for part of her Master's thesis, and I got to spend time with my wee little man. It was afterwards that the tension rose and my body fell.

I go to Sam's to get my meds because they are so cheap there and do a fair amount of my grocery shopping there as well, and I go about twice a month, always after babysitting. As you walk something like 1500 miles to get everything on your list, and then stand in line for 3 days to check out, and with my stamina flagging, I decided to sit down for a minute in an especially comfy looking recliner. Ooooh, the soft cream colored material, the chair plush and plump and I think my sigh was heard across the entire store as I sat down. I made the mistake of cranking up the foot rest and I thought, "I am never going to get out of this chair. I am going to spend the night here. Maybe 3. They will have to remove me bodily and I will likely get arrested. I wonder if Jeff will bail me out of jail for refusing to get out of a recliner in Sam's? I wonder what kind of fee this crime will cost me?

Finally, I remembered the five dogs at home who were probably, by now, desperate to go out, or worse had gone in. I hauled myself up and out of that recliner woefully, shedding a tear, and pushed my cart up to the front where I believe I was 70th in line. They filled my refillable bags and I wheeled them out to the van and prayed that 10 strong men would show up to put the huge, heavy bags in the van. No luck. I moaned and groaned and it likely sounded like an animal was being killed what with all the noise I made getting them in the car.

It felt so good to sit in the car I thought I might not have the energy to turn it on and start it up, especially since I knew that once I arrived home I would have 5 dogs hurling themselves at me while I shouted, "Mommy's Hooooo-oooommmme." There is a frantic shuffling about with me trying to set down the first bag while trying not to trip over 4 pugs, and then get them all out the door with Moe tagging along wondering if the pugs might ever disappear if he closed his eyes and wished hard enough. I go, bedraggled, with the dogs and my handy dandy plastic bag to do "Poody Doody," and once all the little hooligans are back in I get the rest of the groceries. I put all the refrigerated and frozen foods away, left the 3 Sam's reusable bags sitting in the kitchen floor, and, hurting all over I got a glass of wine and sat in my chair. Sam, my velcro pug, flew up into the chair happy that I was home and he could drape himself over my shoulder. He always acts like he's sure I'm never coming back, even though I only leave the house at most 2 afternoons a week. We are both sitting here together, sluglike, and now I don't know if I can ply myself out of this chair.

Ah, but there are groceries to put away, a shower to be had, a clean but soft raggedy caftan to put on, dinner to be made and dishes to do. And then I will sit like a rutabaga watching mindless t.v. until I fall asleep, most likely, right in this chair. If I root in place and start sprouting you may never hear from me again, but most likely you shall since the dogs get me up for the first time between 6 and 6:30.

It is now nearly 9 p.m. and I have not done any of the above so I guess I shall have to stop here and get my evening chores done before I poop out completely. If I can just get up out of this chair, which at this juncture is looking more doubtful all the time...

The Leaf Blower School of House-Keeping... and ... Living The Way You Really Want To Live...

2009-05-18T11:03:00.045-04:00

My favorite piece of house
cleaning equipment...

Well, I'm taking a leap out into that iffy world where one admits their faults, foibles, and peculiar oddities...

I am a lousy house-keeper. For years I've liked to think of it as being "artsy." Ahem. I mean, my house is not filthy, it is more the clutter than anything else. But when you are a writer, an artist -- fiber, paper, beads, handmade books, etc -- and you have more parrots and pugs than you can count, and seeds and pug hair are everywhere, you have to, well, do things differently than if you were a common Jane who no matter whether she was a housewife or the CEO of a major corporation, still likes to have a house as neat and clean as the dear women of the fifties did.

I am 55, I was born in 1954, I did not get the gene, and frankly, those were the days -- and it was very common then -- that a lot of people had maids. Even the Brady Bunch had one. We had a full-time maid and for 35 years I've been waiting for her to come rescue me. One day I woke up and realized that she was not coming. It was quite a blow. I sobbed for days. Then I looked around this little art and animal filled cottage and thought, sheez, how will I ever do this. And then I had a thought. Yes, a peculiar thought. I think I must have had the look of a mad scientist on my face because the dogs went running and cowering in every direction, the parrots hid in their furry nighty-night tunnels, and well, Mama got out the leaf blower! Mwah ha ha ha ha ha ha....

As I have mentioned before, all of the old nasty carpet was cut out of the downstairs and gotten rid of. The concrete was cleaned and painted. All of a sudden I had lots of space and concrete floors. Such a glorious sense of spaciousness. BUT, when the birds drop seed from their cages now the seeds hit the slick concrete floor and go about five miles in every direction. Tufts of pug hair, like dust bunnies under the bed, all of a sudden seem to appear in every corner and along the walls. I got tired of sweeping all the time (Okay, I didn't sweep ALL the time...) and just at the brink of despair I had an idea. Like the Grinch I had a terrible, awful idea. My mother, I can guarantee you, would be horrified.

I straightened up and cleared up the best I could and then I started at the front door (in my tiny place when you come in the front door you can see straight out the back door), revved up that leaf blower, and baby, I nearly blew everything but my 400 pound chair right out the door. Took 5 minutes. You've never seen cleaner floors in your life. Boy, was I smug.

It dawned on me that this is a brand new age, and not only can you come up with unusual cleaning tips that fit your circumstances, you can LIVE LIKE YOU WANT TO. Now before coming up with an answer too quickly, stop and think. What is your long-held dream about where you've always wanted to live? The possibilities are endless, and some of our dreams are not possible, yet, due to our circumstances, but that doesn't mean we can't implement many of the themes of our dreams into our own little dwelling.

What I've realized is that one of my dreams has been to live in one of those Soho like huge lofts where they have the old elevators that look like freight elevators that open up right on your floor. The whole thing looks like a warehouse, and other than private areas partitioned off, the huge space enables you to do absolutely anything you want to. I always tell people, and this is not an overstatement, that I don't work at home, I live in my studio. Well, this has always been the case, but it's about to become even more so.

The concrete floors and lack of furniture downstairs actually gives one a bit of a warehouse feel. I am about to make my whole downstairs a studio, and the upstairs will be the bedroom, full bath and the former studio, so small I couldn't get around in it or work in it anymore, is being cleaned out for a cozy little den. A dear one is giving me her used but still very nice looking over-stuffed couch and love-seat. Another friend has an old tv they are not using. We're going to pull some things out of the attic, and I can turn the lights out downstairs after the dogs are out for the last time and ascend the stairs to my private quarters.

The former "living room" which hasn't looked like one for some long time, is going to be a full on working studio. I have a corner where my computer table, books, shelves, printer, drawers full of yarn and fiber, etc, already exist. We are going to move my favorite, 1930's wooden table, sky blue and worn in many places, downstairs for what I call my "small work" -- painting, jewelry making, doing small pieces of fiber art that require the threading in of beads, buttons and whatnots with my ancient wooden toolbox that I found in a barn and bought for almost nothing, and is one of my most cherished possessions, sitting at the back of the table. It holds ink bottles galore, vintage and very old dip pens, paint boxes, paint brushes, little jars of this and that, sketch books, etc, and is so heavy that set toward the back of this table it makes the table even steadier and won't allow anything to roll off. Here is a picture of me creating one of my wild-woman pins awhile back in this space, which will soon be set up down here not far from where I'm sitting.

Tallulah, wild woman pin woven on a small
handmade loom, and embellished with vintage
and antique buttons and beads.

Another area that will be set up is space for my big Ashford tapestry loom. I will hang the handspun and hand-dyed wool yarns for my weaving that you see below (when it was set up in my upstairs studio) on the wall behind the loom and it will give me great joy to have it here near me. The nice thing about weaving a piece this big is that you can work on it awhile and then leave it to go do another project or write for awhile and you don't "lose your place." I can just move from space to space. Writing, weaving, small work, and last but not least, my beloved Gertrude.

The tapestry loom and yarns a'waiting...

Gertrude is my beloved old Country Spinner spinning wheel from Ashford, an older one with only one treadle. The thing is, while I have almost 50 spindles and have done exclusively one-of-a-kind yarns on a hand spindle...

... I have long wanted to get going on my spinning wheel but I haven't been able to get the hang of it on my own. Well, now I'm determined. I have a virtual barn full of beautiful fibers, some already dyed and some I still have to clean and dye, that the only way I am going to spin enough yarn to make it worth selling -- and all of this is moving toward selling my art online again -- is to use a wheel to be able to spin faster. I will always use my beloved hand-spindles, especially because I do custom orders for people and blend up to twelve different fibers in one yarn. Blending that many, I find, works very well on hand-spindles. But I long to get going on Gertrude...

"Gertie"

Herself again...

So there will be a real artist's studio downstairs, living quarters upstairs, and the leaf-blower a-goin' to keep these concrete floors livable. You've no idea how bad it hurts to step on teeny-tiny birdseed in bare feet. Phew. Some of it cuts like glass! And I'm here to tell you that if you need to eliminate stress, blasting through your house like The Terminator with a leaf blower really lets The Mad Scientist in you come out and play and then feel calm for the rest of the day. Or almost.

Today we are starting to move more pieces of the studio downstairs. I'm so excited. This is the kind of work that is sheer joy. And from a practical point of view since I cannot work outside the home, if I can't work, I'm sunk. And I haven't been able to work well with everything hither and yon, unable to get to it, spread out into every corner of the cottage. Now, I will. Onwards and upwards. I'll share pictures when it's all together!

Thoughts Over Monday Morning Coffee...

2009-05-11T10:28:00.016-04:00

The sublime Monday morning lattè...

Mondays are full of promise ... a new week full of potent possibility abundant, a week where anything might happen, a time to wipe the slate clean and start again. And we have the pen in our hand and can write our own story. I love Mondays. I think Monday is my favorite day of the week.

And the lattè... OH, the lattè! I wrote about the debacle with my poor French Press, I was way too hard on it. And the thing is, after a few days I got the hang of it and oh, yes, I remembered how wonderful French Press coffee really is, and it is strong enough to hold up well as iced coffee later. It makes wonderful iced coffee because it doesn't get watered down. Of course it will eat the enamel off your teeth in about 5 seconds, and your eyes will be big and round as a dinner plate all day, accompanied by shakes and jitters. But wow, what a great cup of coffee. And you've got to use real half and half with it. It scoffs at milk and you can't even taste it. Milk just makes it taste yucky.

However, April 30 was my birthday and my dear friend Jeff brought me a new espresso machine. I danced about in delight and went on in an unseemly manner and then I saw, out of the corner of my eye, my poor little French Press, shrugging it's shoulders, with a little tear on it's spout. I patted it and promised it I would still use it, and I will. It will make delightful iced coffee over the summer, and just for good measure, variety, and the delicate psyche of the French Press, will have French Press coffee now and again.

We are having a rainstorm here and it's such a relief, we need rain so badly. I can hear the garden sighing in relief. I don't like to water unless things are really dire because I'm big on water conservation, but doggone it when something starts to wilt and die just as it's coming into it's prime, then I have to step in. This kind of rain, which is supposed to go on all day, will soak the garden deeply, and I can't wait until the rain stops later today to go out and watch the droplets of water clinging to green leaves and dripping off, and the plants looking so dewy and refreshed. Even as it is raining I look out the window and everything seems greener.

Last night I updated my other blog, Maitri's Heart, and I told my readers about a wonderful poster designed by my friend Leonie. She has a fabulous website and when you click on her name you will go to the page on her site with the free poster called "12 Key Zen Habits." The poster is beautiful and whimsical and you can download it to your desktop for inspiration. I did so and am going to follow these quick easy points. It is Monday, it is a new week, and Leonie's poster is my guiding star for this week. You can read more about my thoughts on this as a life theme on Maitri's Heart.

Gracious, there's a break in the rain and a bit of sun. What this means is that I have to stop here and rush out the door with one big black dog and four tiny puglets. They won't go out to potty in the rain. You have to look for any window between rainstorms to rush them out to go. Here we go, "Moe, Sam, Babs, Coco, Harvey, let's get shakin'!" Chop, chop, it will be raining again any minute!

Living In Bubbles...

2009-05-08T19:32:00.017-04:00

You know how fighting fish do it? They blow bubbles and in each one of those bubbles is an egg and they float the egg up to the surface. They keep this whole heavy nest of eggs floating, and they're constantly repairing it. It's as if they live in both elements.

~ Audre Lorde ~

I have been living in two elements, parallel universes. I can see through one bubble into another and another and another. I have lived with many beta fish (fighting fish) and it is truly a wonder to see them when it's time to mate. The male tends the eggs, blowing a thick layer of bubbles and guarding them with his life.

We live in bubbles too, but rarely do we realize it. In the past few days one of my bubbles burst, a big one, and as I was slipping into a kind of despair I saw through that bubble to another one still intact with a rainbow egg inside. We are surrounded by bubbles that hold our dreams. Some will burst and some will float us out of our present reality and into another. The wonderful thing is that there are more and more and more bubbles all around us. Sometimes we are led to what feels like our ultimate dream and when the bubble bursts, we despair, but what if we were drawn to that bubble so that when it burst we could see our way to our true heart's desire? These are things I have been wondering about the last few days.

I had wanted, and planned, to move to Asheville, NC. I would still like to be there, but rather than sooner, it will be later. I can't move with my mother on the brink of dying, and there will be much to settle when the time comes. There are family members here and a move to arrange and it's harder when you are not married/partnered/have no help, and know no one there. That doesn't mean I won't do it. I went to Colorado on my own years back when I was accepted to Naropa University, the school of my dreams. I was then in my late forties. I knew no one and I arranged the whole move myself. It was wonderful.

So perhaps that bubble didn't burst, but got pushed back amongst the other bubbles, waiting to come to gestation until the time is right. There is so much here to love and feel grateful for.

Right now I am looking at a wonderful wild funky painting of a woman and a flamingo on my wall. I am looking at a piece of weaving I am very proud of. It took me many months to do it because it was a very intricate design. It was called Ariadne's web.

Made on a 1950's potholder loom, the circular
pattern of the weaving was painfully difficult as
I got to the center...

But perhaps that's how life is. As we get closer to our dreams, we are more challenged, perhaps moreso because we are being tested. Go slowly. Think of all the angles and the difficult turns in the road. Is it worth it, should I do it? Sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes no. I'm too far from the center to know right now, in my haste to extricate myself from too much pain here, I was rushing toward what I thought would be relief and peace, but there is no way around that weaving to the middle to know the truth. The truth is that the time is not right.

Weaving is sacred to me, never without a purpose, requiring concentration, skill, and mostly heart. I don't know what I am making when I start, but the story is revealed along the way. So it was with Ariadne. And so I begin again this night to weave, and in so doing, I will find my way home.

Keep believing, keep dreaming, but don't let a seeming delay in your plan discourage you. Look through to the next bubble, and see what still needs to be done before you can get there. Revel in your dreams, cherish the present, allow the continuum to flow with grace...

Love,

Folk Music, A Movie, Dreams, Ani DiFranco, and Knowing That You Belong In The Mountains...

2009-05-03T02:00:00.009-04:00

What if... you knew you were meant to be some place other than where you were? What if you were born in the mountains (in your heart, mind and gut), and had lived in two different mountain regions, the happiest, most grounded times of your life? What if you were 55, unhappy where you were, it seemed like as difficult a climb to reach your dream as to reach the mountain itself, but you knew you had to be there? What if?

In the last bit of time, my closest friend and I have talked about leaving this town where we both live, longing for other places. We will be heading in two different directions and no one knows but he and I what my heart longs for. It is not the time to tell anyone yet. We are riding big waves right now, coming in close to shore to face my mother's impending death. Time, it's all about timing...

I lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains in the country for 11 years. I traveled to New Mexico in 1990 and high in the Sangre de Cristo mountains I felt I'd found my destiny. I fell on my knees and I cried. I didn't want to go home, but of course I went. I was married with beautiful children and there was no question, then, what I should do. For twenty years I have wanted to live in New Mexico, but now it is too far, too expensive, too distant a dream.

In the year 2000 I moved to Colorado for a time, and rented an old farmhouse facing the Rocky Mountains. I would sit out on the wide front porch early in the morning on my old 1940's glider and have my coffee and wonder how I had ended up in Paradise yet again. My time there was short lived and I wept when I had to leave those mountains to come back to my ocean town. A lovely little city, a water city, with the Cape Fear River on one side and the beautiful North Carolina beaches on the Atlantic ocean on the other. Beautiful, but not for me. I need mountains. I need snow and cooler weather, not near tropical weather where the heat is past dreadful and there really aren't four seasons. I said it when we moved here in November 1992, "There's something wrong with living some place that you can get your Christmas tree wearing shorts." No, this has never been home to me, not ever. I don't want to die here one day.

I love Folk music dearly, and so when I saw a movie that I could rent called The Songcatcher I rented it, not knowing where it had been filmed or what the film was about except mountain music and a woman who went to study it. When the movie started I sat in shock to see that the movie was filmed in the exact location I have been telling my friend that I wanted to move. I was awestruck and tried to breathe the mountain air in through the screen. I wanted so badly for the movie never to end, and I felt a great sense of loss when it did.

I have such dreams. To live out my life in a little place in the mountains, to see it snow outside my windows as I decorate the tree, parrots and dogs all around me, a pot of soup bubbling on the stove, in the middle of writing my book with a basket of fiber and spinning wheel at my side. I have this dream and I intend to make it a reality.

After the movie ended, sitting in the silence, the room was too still and my emotions were rising too high, undone by the movie and being struck head on by images of the very place I've longed to see in person. I have been there before. Been through the area several times. Now, it is the Smoky Mountains that call to me, a town with rich culture, artisans of every type, the holy smoke anointing the sky over the mountain range, a place where a woman could plant flowers and herbs and vegetables, and pray. A place where a woman could write and perhaps look out of her window to see a doe and her fawn nosing about in the grass. A place so unimaginably beautiful it makes your heart beat faster and there is a lilt to your voice when you speak of it, joy floods your body like a warm river, hope of a new life, a new start, a chance at life when you thought you had given up. I need the mountain air to breathe. I need the rolling hills and mountain tops to feel safe. I am a mountain woman in a flat town surrounded by water. I have been drowning here.

Finally I decided it was too silent. 1 a.m. on a Saturday night, my heart was aching, and I couldn't imagine breaking the silence with the television and couldn't fathom that there would be anything of interest on but I turned it on, a sleeping pug draped over my right side, Big Dog Moe asleep on his bed next to me on the floor, the three other little pugs snug in the beds, and the birds all asleep. So I clicked on the t.v. and quickly found an Ani DiFranco special on public television and was instantly mesmerized. She was singing folk music. She is so amazing and wakes you up, shakes you up, and soothes the spirit and the heart all in a matter of a few songs. Too soon it was over. How can an hour pass so fast? Sometimes the minutes just creep painfully by, but I breathed in that music like a baby taking her first breath. In one night a movie and unexpected music settled in that place in my heart where the seed of my future life has been living. I sit here overcome with emotion, trembling with fear, poking at the dream to see if it is alive. It is very much alive in my heart.

I do not know how long it will take or when it will happen, but sometime in the next several months I will be living where I was meant to settle and start over, a place where I can live out the rest of my life, do my work, and let the solitude and silence echo through the four chambers of my heart.

I am going to get ready to go to sleep. I'm hoping when I close my eyes I will be transported to those mountains. And the promise of finding my way home will be a little closer in the morning...

I Am Afraid Of My French Press...

2009-04-26T16:31:00.013-04:00

Can't you just hear it. That eery Vincent Price cackling noise in the background. It quivers a little and I think I heard it whisper, "If you think you're going to get decent coffee out of me, you're nuttier than a fruitcake Missy!" I backed up and gasped! You see, here's what happened...

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a dyed in the wool latte drinker. The very thought of my latte in the morning fills me with glee, and after all the animal chores are over in the morning I croon at it, and pat it's little cap which I then take off to put in the water, and grind the beans and fill the little coffee basket which you crank into place, and Oooooh, the smell of that strong coffee brewing, well, I blush, it just makes me swoon. Then there's the frothing of the milk and that is an, well, one almost hates to say it, ecstatic experience. It gets you all flustered and red-cheeked and your knees wobble a little and your heart lifts as the foam rises and rises and when you can finally put the espresso and frothed milk into a latte bowl the size of Texas, well, there are not many things in life that can compare to that. And the first sip... Ohhhhhhhhhh.... (Do you hear the moaning and wailing?)

Three days ago, my espresso machine died. Just up and died. Left no suicide note, no, "It's been grand, I'll miss you," nothing! And to make matters worse it played tricks on me. I filled it with the coffee, the water, got the milk pitcher all ready, and turned the machine on. The light came on and so I puttered around doing a few things because it always starts slowly. But I kept checking and checking and it wouldn't do a thing. I drove down the road, in my tattered old caftan since I didn't have to get out of the car, and bought TWO lattes to go, just in case.

Now, mind, I was still reeling in grief, disbelief and denial, so the next day I turned on the machine again, still filled with the coffee and the water, because I was quite certain that it was just having a bad day and surely it would pop on and say,"Just kidding!" It was not kidding. It was dead as a doornail. It took me until today to actually take it out and throw it in the dumpster. Well, I can't tell you how totally grief-stricken I am. So I came back in and got out my French Press. I looked at it at an odd angle, tilting my head and squinting my eyes. It had a funny look on it's face and it rather unnerved me. It cackled that hideous cackle, it's plunger went up and down like in a Stephen King movie, and I quivered and ran from the room praying loudly and shaking like a leaf. "BE GONE YOU DEMON, BE GONE." Then, I heard the whimper...

It really isn't such a bad little machine, and truth be told, it's feelings were just hurt. I had long since stopped using it once I could afford my own espresso machine, and the poor little French Press was crushed. I tried to tell it I was sorry but it turned it's little spout away from me, sniffling. I told it to buck up! I've got enough trouble around here with the cockatoo eating through the wood molding around the door frame and the macaw trying to destroy my favorite antique mirror and there just ARE some pugs that despite how many thousands of times they go out and pee 15 times while out there, they will come in straight away and poop-de-doop right on the floor. Pugs are sly too. No matter what they do they look up at you with that little puggy face and you just don't have a prayer. Here comes the poop bag with Mama Maitri muttering under her breath, just to look up in time to see another pug, who shall remain nameless, and who is the chubbiest one of all, sneaking out of the kitchen after trying to eat other people's food.

Never mind the fact that I found a page online that was called "35 Symptoms of Menopause," and I'm fairly certain I have all of them. Nosirree, I'm heartbroken over the espresso machine and I'm not taking any attitude from the French Press.

Now, if I can just remember how to grind the beans the right way...

The World Works In Mysterious Ways ~ My Odd, Peculiar, Wonderful Life...

2009-04-23T22:07:00.020-04:00

I wear funny shoes in many colors. This
pretty much sums up my whole life...

And so yes, I live with a dozen animals in a tiny cottage. And I had assumed we would move well before now allowing us more space inside, a fenced yard for the dogs, a big room to weave and spin in, a big garden space, and so on. But life happens and right now it's happening to us all. For financial reasons I can't move for awhile. And the carpet has just been torn up down here but it's been cleaned well and is being painted a wonderful coffee with cream color. And there are area rugs all around and it's starting to look liveable. And then there's the fact that practically half of my household that was moved into a storage space to give me more room until the supposed move now isn't going to happen and it's all got to come back because keeping it in storage is too expensive long term. And Oh My God, today I realized that this is just perfect! Let me explain.

I have had my dearest friend helping me reorganize my cottage the last few months and he and his helpers really have done wonders, and I love him to pieces for it, but... I was feeling so overwhelmed because of a number of personal reasons, I let him pretty well take over and the outcome was that what he considered unimportant, and "messy" was the disarray of a working artist's life. My looms came down off the living room walls, all of the things that I was used to having around me were gone, packed and put in the storage unit, my fiber, spindles and spinning wheels were put in storage along with a lot of other things to make some very necessary space, but I do not do well with change and all of a sudden it looked like I was living in someone else's house. It looked sparer, for sure, but the things I held dear were gone. At about the same time my mother started taking a serious downward turn after fighting cancer for 4 years, and this week she has decided to stop the meds. The end is near and I am numb. And in November my beloved African Grey Parrot disappeared. I had hand raised him from a tiny baby and had him for 10 1/2 years and the bond between us was profound. I was like a sinking ship, and haven't been able to pull myself out of this deep blue funk for months.

I gained weight, my meds had to be raised because my bi-polar disorder went out of whack again and my clinical depression plummeted. But today... today something changed.

Jeff and I had a long talk today. And we came to the joint realization that the things had to come back and he is going to help me get it as organized as possible. He said he could see that I was suffering from too much loss, and that they had taken too many of my things. They meant well, and I appreciated it, but it was too much. I didn't even understand what was wrong. but other than the obvious losses past and soon to come. there was something more. And all of a sudden I looked at my concrete floors and joy flooded through my system. These floors are not only much healthier for the animals and I. This is an artist's home, and my art was gone. My heart and soul were deflated like balloons gone flat. For me, with my odd string of diagnoses, and being a writer spending most of my time in my head, my art takes me out of my head and into my hands and creates a balance that is very much needed.

And so today I thought what a funny little life I lead and yet how it works just perfectly for me. With my odd conglomeration of things around me, the animals, growing things and books and fiber and spindles and hand carved crochet hooks and all manner of looms, well, they make me feel complete. Jeff was trying to help me have what he considered a neater more balanced life, but no one can decide what we really need, no matter how much they love you and you them.

And so my things are coming home, and it will be crowded and artsy, and I will be filling my walls, once again, with my small and lap looms, skeins of yarn, big bunches of herbs hanging upside down to dry (currently there are several bunches of rosemary hanging on the walls and the aroma is heavenly), and I am cutting roses just as they come into full bloom to dry along with other blossoms for my handmade potpourri. I am puttering in my small garden when I'm outside with the dogs, and I am sniffing the roses and taking in their deep perfume, so heavenly, and then laughing looking down at my Crocs, these funny, odd shoes that not only are the most comfortable thing I've ever worn, after foot surgeries and breaking both feet and reinjuring them more than once, I don't care how they look, I care about having happy feet! I truly believe this is one of the glories of midlife, the acceptance of all of who we are, and living our lives proudly, even if few people understand.

So the losses will come and I can't stop them from coming, but with my fiber and art supplies around me, I will have something to balance the grief, and I seem to need small crowded places to feel cozy. I am going to need to have all the coziness I can muster in the weeks ahead.

So yes, the world works in mysterious ways, and for some of us, "normal" life is peculiar to the world around us, but the best days are the days when we know that "normal" for us is what makes us feel happy, safe, and fulfilled within ourselves.

And so the snoring pug on the arm of my chair, the big black dog on his bed beside me, and the other puglets in their new cushy beds, with sleeping birds all around me, and the knowledge that soon my fingers will be weaving fibers through the warp on my loom fills me with an unexplainable happiness. There is always a balance in life if we are honest, if we don't try to be other than we are, if we wear our funny shoes with pride, and think that the morning glories beginning to sprout might just be one of the most magical things in the world, and we don't mind gallumphing through the world rather chubby, with odd clothes, checking dumpsters for possible pieces of art. and cut and weave wisteria branches while still soft so that they can be a permanent loom for a special weaving after the wood is dry, and writing about all of my dreams and loves, foibles and feebleness alongside the joy that I find every day in some way. Yes, this is just right.

I am waiting, now, like a child at Christmas for my things to return. I want to bury my hands and nose in my fibers, and look forward to dyeing and spinning this summer.

Such a lucky woman am I, with this odd and precious life.

Revel in everything you are, and live your life fully with everything you have in you. Be true to yourself. And wear funny shoes. I highly recommend them!

Blue Skies, A Blade of Grass, The Soul Alive...

2009-04-18T16:26:00.014-04:00

"If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things of nature have a message that you understand, rejoice, for your soul is alive."

~ Eleonora Duse ~

A little patch of borage that I plant all
over my garden. Miraculous blue stars that
capture my heart with their simple beauty...

I am a garden writer and photographer and I have designed many a garden. I planted 100 roses in one garden and 60 in the next. I have planted many many kinds of perennials, annuals, plants in pots and plants from seed. Flowering bushes and small trees that will one day grow large, far up in the sky. The borage above grows easily from seed. I am constantly reading and studying. Holding tiny seeds, knowing that they will grow into great flowers, is one of the greatest joys ever. Here is a picture from a few years back when I planted all kinds of sunflowers in a vast array of colors, and many of them, like my hollyhocks, grew taller than me...

I grow organically and one of the great delights of spring is to order containers full of lady bugs and pods of praying mantis that will hatch. Gardener's friends, and soil friendly too. I also buy several containers of live worms to put into the soil. They will eat their way through soil making it more friable, leaving waste in the soil that is nutritious for the soil. When you live in the small things of the world, even the tiny, you are rewarded many times over with a glory unknown in this big, big world.

Small things that touch the heart and make one glad to be alive...

I am a very serious wisteria wrangler. I love them all out of proportion and covet them in a most unseemly way. Driving home from errands yesterday I saw several stands of wisteria that will be wonderful pickins in the dusky darkness. I never gather anything from anyone's garden, an abomination to be sure, the wisteria I cut are wild grown in little patches on the side of the road, long forgotten, in country spots whose owners are long gone, the house in a pile of ruins, and the enchanting wisteria taking over a large area. I bring home arms of wisteria that perfume the whole cottage. This is the season of wisteria. This is some I cut two or three years ago, not long ago, with a pruner in one hand and Big Dog Moe on a leash walking with me...

A small and tender thing...

Yesterday, while doing my errands, getting into my sweet old van and sitting outside the post office for a moment before leaving, I saw an elderly woman go just around the corner of the building with a small bag of cat food. She bent slowly and took handfuls of cat food and put them, here and there along the wall and the fence opposite. Then she walked ever so slowly back to her car and drove off. One of those little grandmotherly type people in an old car whose head one could barely see above the spinning wheel. She was feeding the feral cats. I spoke to her and told her what a lovely thing that was to do. She said she'd been doing it for years, feeding feral cats, that someone had to feed the little ones.

I drove home feeling blessed and renewed. There are so many wondrous things around us all the time, if only we have eyes to see. I hope I have that tender spirit and will perform those small kind acts all the days of my life. I do little things all the time that go unnoticed. Perhaps that is the greatest joy of all...

Mary Oliver asks...

2009-04-17T15:46:00.004-04:00

"What will you do with your one wild and precious life?"
~ Mary Oliver ~

I will plant Secret Gardens wherever I go...

Absolute Attention...

2009-04-17T12:08:00.009-04:00

"Absolute attention is prayer."

~ Simone Weil ~

I am in a state of absolute attention when I write. This is one of the ways I pray. I become very silent. Not just not speaking, but quiet inside. When I write I hear that "still small voice." When you look at the cat above you know that she is in an absolute state of grace, and it made me wonder how often we pay attention to the world around us, rapt attention, awareness, and how often, sadly, we race through life to "get it all done" and the world whizzes by and we miss so much. When the world is a blur we cannot truly feel the energy that surrounds us. We are numb. We are not fully alive. We are not complete.

And so I slow down. I watch my pug Babs, a wee little elderly girl, blind and deaf, and yet so alive, waggle herself because she senses me coming. I pick her up and hold her in my arms like a baby. I look into her clouded eyes and I can feel vibrant energy in this tiny little girl. I kiss her nose, her forehead, her closed eyes when she blinks. Babs makes me more aware, alive. Her energy awakens my entire body. I live with many animals, and they live in the moment, they give everything around them absolute attention. They see things we cannot see, and hear things we cannot hear. Their eyes widen and their nose quivers and their body is perfectly still as they concentrate on the world around them, what is coming, what is going, what is near. They don't miss a thing.

I have been having an interesting experience. I have written about my carpet being ripped out. It was very old, and stained 7 years ago when I moved in, even though it had been cleaned. But as the animal numbers rose it became more difficult to keep it clean, and the elderly pugs would have accidents that I tried diligently to clean, but you can never fully clean what penetrates carpet, and so for health reasons, for the animals and I, the carpet was ripped out and I am walking on smooth, cold, concrete floors. And here's the thing...

Last night I sat in the silence and I noticed things I had never noticed before. With no carpet to soften and buffer the sounds around us, we miss an incredible amount of little happenings every single moment. In a room with no carpet, sound echoes. Everything is louder, the parrots shrieking, deafening, the dogs toenails clicking on the floor, a sound I'd never heard before, not even on the linoleum in the kitchen and bathrooms. There was a liveliness around me that was palpable in the stillness of the night, and it made me acutely aware of how much I miss, how much we miss in this carpeted world. It was a profound moment. I meditated and the world around me felt more alive. I was in a state of absolute attention, I was in a state of grace.

I find myself anxious to find out what will happen once the floor is painted. One would think that would make no difference, paint on concrete, but I bet it does. Even a couple of coats of paint will change the sound of a pin dropping, an amazing sound in this small space, that tink sound as it hits the floor echoes off the walls around me, and I listen in awe.

This morning, as I meditated, I sat staring at the tall grasses just outside my window and watched the subtle movements as the soft breeze made the grasses sway, very slowly, as there wasn't really a wind blowing through, just a gentle breeze. I was one with the grass. I found myself swaying with the inbreath and the outbreath in rhythm of the swaying grass. It was a revelation.

In this moment I am listening to the sound of my cockatoo's toes and beak grabbing the metal bars of her cage, climbing up the cage and over to her playstand. I tickled me. I laughed. She lives in pure joy. She lives in the moment and reminds me to do the same.

I hear Maya, my blue and gold macaw, cracking a sunflower seed in her beak. I would not have heard this sound in the room once wall to wall carpet. I would have missed a moment of life that is precious to me, and I am in awe of her psychic awareness. It never fails that no matter what she is doing, if I sit very still and stare at her, really feeling her, watching the way she moves, picks a piece of food up in her foot to eat, she will stop what she is doing and turn and look at me, staring back. For a moment our eyes are locked. She knows. She has such an acute sense of awareness she feels a shift in energy. I envy this. She doesn't miss a thing. Parrots are prey animals in the wild and have the ability to hear very clearly for long distances. Their very lives depend on it. I wonder if we would pay closer attention if we realized that our lives depended on being that aware, and the thing is, our lives do depend on it, we simply do not take the time to realize this. Hours, minutes, seconds pass at the speed of light, and then days, weeks, months, years. I wonder how much I have missed? I realize that the slower I go, the more time I have. Our very lives are extended by absolute attention, and that which we notice is a prayer.

I am going to move through this day as mindfully as possible. I am going to let the concrete floor teach me what it will, because I will be moving some time in the next year or so. I won't always have concrete floors. I will be an attentive student.

I feel the almost invisible tiny hairs on my face move slightly with a bit of breeze. Again, a revelation. A kind of joyful aliveness I hadn't noticed before.

I am going to treasure this day because I know I will not always remember. I trust in my practice of mindfulness, when I don't forget, when I'm not caught up in my own humanity. Much of my life now is spent seeking more and more of that absolute attention. I want to pray...

The Bond Between Women and Animals...

2009-04-13T21:51:00.025-04:00

"I look around the small cottage where I live in Topanga, a rural area in the Santa Monica mountains, and wonder who I am and how I came to live here in this way. Animal images predominate. Bones, fetishes, totems, Mayumi Oda's Kwan Yin as the Goddess who gave names to the animals presides over my study. On another wall, there is a painting of a blue bull by Maureen Piper. Everywhere there are photographs of Timber Wolf, who lived with me for 14 years, and Owl and Isis, the hybrid timber and arctic wolves who are my companions now."

"... I want to be more than a tourist in the natural world; I want to change my habits of Western mind. This means shattering the ego and ideas of species superiority and privilege. This means recognizing animals as other intelligent beings who may understand humans better than we understand them and who live far better than we do within the net of Indra, the shimmering ecological relationships between of all things..."

Deena Metzger, "Coming Home"
from Intimate Nature: The Bond
Between Women and Animals

I have been reading this very dear book, a compilation of women's poems, stories, relationships, history, and ancient lore, with animals. I have found kindred spirits reading this book and it is so spirit-soothing it is like a cup of chamomile tea for the soul. We are creatures of the earth, as are our animal brothers and sisters, and yet many people treat them, even when they love them dearly, as less than in some way. They are not less than. They are our companions on the journey through life. I live with 12 animals and I never call them "pets." I call them my animal companions.

Also, when reading the quote from the chapter by Deena Metzger. one of my favorite writers, I felt like I was reading my own story, or a very close approximation thereof. I have feathers, fetishes, totems, statues of Kwan Yin, whom I adore, the mother of maitri or maitreya in Buddhism. Interestingly she is thought to be connected to the Virgin Mary in Catholicism. and her love of animals echoes the work of St. Francis. Many branches of many "religions" coming together in one flowing stream of spirituality.

I know that my animal family possesses a kind of knowledge and deeper truth than I do on many levels. When I lost my beloved grey parrot Henry in November, after handraising him and having him for over 10 years, the ever present parrot on my shoulder, I wept for weeks and all of my animals surrounded me, or were on me, lying next to me, all vigilant. They got me through the worst of my grief, and yet I will never stop missing my sweet boy. He was my heart and soul. He was my soulmate. We had a connection and communion I cannot describe. My heart breaks just writing about it.

I have written about, and laughed about, the peculiar way (in most people's eyes) that I live. More animals than furniture. Seeds everywhere and the elderly and infirm pugs I adopt do tend to have "accidents" on a regular basis, but I take in the ones no one wants, one deaf, one deaf and blind, two who were badly abused. We go outside many many times a day, but still, there will be those accidents to clean up. For all of the people (and trust me, there have been many) who say something like, "Well, I'D never stand for THAT!" They'd rather get rid of the "troublesome" dog than clean up after the poor little one. Just wait until the person who gave up the animal is in a nursing home depending on someone cleaning them up and perhaps they will understand. My animals are far less flawed than I am. I am blessed to have them.

Everyday I get up at least twice before I'm up for good because the three eldest dogs, Coco (deaf) the little fawn pug is 12; Babsie (Deaf when I got her and now blind but she gets around just fine because we have a small space here and she knows it well... ), the wee little black pug is 13; and my darling Big Moe, the lab-doby mix I've had since he was a tiny puppy from the Humane Society is now 14, and sadly beginning to slow down a bit, seem to need to go potty as early as possible. It might be 6 when we get up and go outside, but then Mama Maitri goes back to sleep and so do they. About an hour later all five of them have to go out, including Harvey and Sampson, at about 9 and 10 the middle-aged gentlemen. Everybody goes out again and this time I give them their milk bone treats and fresh water bowls and then, yes, Mama poops out again. I work very late or into the wee small hours so early morning is not my best time. Now, here's the thing. two things really, and I find them fascinating.

All of my animal companions are so in sync with me that people are amazed. Five dogs and six parrots, 2 of them big parrots, a cockatoo and a macaw, known as very loud birds, have fallen into my routine and they seem to know that I often have a hard time of things and my medications will wear me out, and so mid-day when I take a nap right among them, they are so silent you'd not imagine there was an animal in the place. In fact I've peeked and when I go to sleep they all do. As soon as I'm up they start peeping and cheaping and talking and the dogs are dancing around wanting to go out, but not a movement or a sound as long as I am napping, usually with Sammie asleep on part of me, which is dear and comforting, like a soft, warm teddy bear, whose breathing helps me drift off, pug snores and all.

Something that I noticed this morning is that the first time I go out, very early, not one bird, who are all around us, only Blossom the cockatoo needs covering, make one sound though I am up with the dogs. I am completely silent. We go out, we come in, I go back to sleep.

The second time I get up, an hour or so later, when I also get the dogs their milk bones and fresh water, it is enough activity that Maya, the macaw, and the smaller parrots notice and make some noise. Maya might even let out a few macaw shrieks, but I totally ignore it. I am totally silent, and within minutes so are they. I can sleep another hour or more before I get up, get the dogs out and in again, feed all of the animals and get them fresh water, singing to them the whole while, and let the 2 big parrots out. As long as I am home, even when I'm napping, they are out of their cages. They simply go to sleep on top of their cages. They are amazing.

This morning, after lying down for the 2nd time, Solomon, my beloved Blue Crown conure, started in with his loud conure call which got Maya shrieking to beat the band. I lay perfectly still, covered my eyes as I do once it is light, and lie there completely calm, breathing slowly and easily, on my side with silky warm Sam against me, and they didn't make a move. I knew that after a few minutes they would stop. They realize I am going back to sleep and they are silent as a mouse. I breathe in and out, meditatively, while they do their screaming, but it is soon out of their system. Again, they are in sync with my needs, and I with theirs. We co-exist as a near perfectly balanced family.

When I was going back to sleep from 8 to 9:30, amazingly late for me, I woke up in sheer silence. They would not make a sound until I was up. And I thought about the many people who have animals in their homes but miss this deep connection. They holler at the birds to be quiet, they scold or punish the little elderly dog for having an accident, and more. But I know, as I am lying there wanting peace and the parrots are having their little round of sounding off, that they are doing just what they are supposed to do. Birds herald the morning whether wild or domesticated. I am connected to their needs as well. And once again we go back to sleep together.

I am taking this all in as I realize that you can be ordained and yet not fully understand your direction, your vocation, your mission. As an interfaith minister. my ministry also includes the animal kingdom, domestic and wild, animals in need of rescue to loving homes, as well as animals in the wild on the brink of extinction. And so I walk the Franciscan path, follow the teaching of Kwan Yin, Mother Mary, and read the Bible alongside Buddhist literature. I am learning. I am learning what path I need to take, and very often my animals are my teachers. I am sitting silently and allow the parts and the pieces of the ministry I am building float to the surface slowly, oh so slowly. It will all coalesce when the time is right. And the animals have so much more to teach me.

And now it is nap time before my helpers come today. Life moves forward, but the animals and I lag behind a bit. We are never in any hurry. Sampson is already asleep and snoring beside me. The animals know, they just know. They pick up on my low energy vibe and become quiet and ready for me to say, "Time to take a nap," and then we all do, a family at peace...

Love and Blessings to all of you from all of us. It's time for our nap. I know you'll uderstand.

RUN, Don't WALK to this website as fast as you can....

2009-04-11T12:14:00.011-04:00

Well! This morning I was in the mood to peruse some of my favorite blogs. There is one woman I have been following for years and she delights me no end. And her blogs, multiple, that started out as one called Pioneer Woman With A Cell Phone, dazzled me, and she has several blogs going now, all linked together, and from the start I have most dearly loved her section on "Garden Art/Junk."

WELL, today as I was perusing her site I came across another site that KNOCKED MY SOCKS OFF!!!

You shoulda seen the birds dancing
and going to town from all the
excitement. Pugs of course really
only live for two things. Food, and
sleeping...

I really do want you to see this amazing woman and the house she built herself over 28 years. It is one on the most amazing things I have ever seen. And remember, next time you think, "Aw, I don't think I can do that," that one woman built a gorgeous, amazing, positively stunning house with her own hands. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, so to speak! And truly, we CAN do anything we want to if we put our minds to it.

So this amazing woman is Dorothy Ainsworth. Click on her name and go to her site. You will be breathless, you won't be able to breathe looking at the pictures, and it will change your whole outlook on life.

There is a wonderful quote attributed to Yoda from the Star Wars movies. He said,

"Do or not do, there is no try."

Since I heard that quote something in me really changed. Yes, you can choose to do or not do, but as soon as you say "try," you know good and well you are NOT going to do it. I'm sure Dorothy Ainsworth had her moments, but she did not "try." She did it.

This will inspire me for sometime to come.

The Tales of an Odd Person Who Dreams Of Living An Unusual Life...

2009-04-09T23:50:00.046-04:00

Click on the teapot to read it's
story, and see more enchanting
teapot and coffeehouse homes
and structures...

I am odd. I am peculiar. I don't want to fit in anywhere and I want to do things my own way. I am the kind of person who would go out to get the mail with my flamingo hat on. Trust me, you've no idea. Here's what the flamingo hat looks like in the ad....

The flamingo head actually stand up nearly 3 feet and the legs dangle over your breasts. It is startling to say the least. And I have gifted some of my favorite peculiar friends with these hats. They are about $5 on eBay, and there are several places that carry them. So I go outside with mine on just to irk or frighten somebody (If you can be the "mad woman on the hill" not much of anyone bothers you...) as I'm getting the mail. It's so much fun. I say if you can't startle or alarm your neighbors you're not living right. But that's just me.

Of course when I go out I do like to wear my favorite jewelry. I wouldn't take a room full of diamonds for this necklace. And Lord, I look so smashing in it!!!

Tell me the truth. Have you ever seen anyone look more fabulous? Lord, I rock in my flamingo light necklace. They are also around my kitchen windows and my garden is full of flamingos...

Anyway, I have gone astray and had a bit of flamingo madness. It happens to the best of us. All I was trying to point out is that somebody who not only decorates with, but wears flamingos, is not going to be the kind of woman who wants an ordinary house. Now look at these... (I'm going to pick one picture from the page but if you'll click on the house you can go straight to a world of fantastical houses. Alice in Wonderland would be thrilled!

Now who in their right mind would not want to live in a shoe?

And then there is Dan Price. This man stole my heart in the early 90's when I started to subscribe to his hand drawn and hand-lettered funky little 'zine called The Moonlight Chronicles. He still makes them today. You've just got to visit the above page. Click on the name and you're go to a land you never dreamed existed. You can also see and read copies of the chronicles online here. But the best thing of all is that Dan lives in a little Hobbit Hole in the ground he built himself in a meadow that he lives in, as well as building all kinds of other wonderful things. Please watch the videos below when you have the time. But I warn you, your life will never be the same again. They just bring with them an air of enchantment.

There are three wonderful YouTube videos that I urge you to watch. I don't want to put the videos here because they make the page load too slowly, but here are the links to the three I'd love for you to see....

Interview With Dan Price

The Man In The Hole

and

Part Of The Solution - Part 1

Yes, Dan is my hero, but it would be hard for me to live in an underground Hobbit Hole with 6 parrots, 5 dogs, a beta fish and 2 snails. Not to mention hordes of books, monstrous piles of fiber everwhere, not to mention the dyepots and the boxes and boxes of dyes, spinning wheels and looms everywhere. But I dearly want something odd.

I fell in love with an old yellow farmhouse but sadly before I could do anything about it, it sold. Still in all, I believe when the time is right, I'll find a shoe or a hat or a something or other to live in. I'm still on the hunt. Let me know if you find one, and I'll leave you with this hat house that is on the page of unusual houses above, wherein you click on the shoe!

So, it's time for me to go babysit my wee little grandson Lucas whom I try to teach as many odd and peculiar things as I possibly can before his parent catch on! And I will be dreaming of odd houses, and someday I know I will find just the right one...

Happy Days and Love and Joy to one and all,

... and one more ... it's an e.e. cummings sort of day...

2009-04-05T11:57:00.005-04:00

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)

i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

i carry your heart with me
by e. e. cummings

in just ... spring!

2009-04-05T10:47:00.016-04:00

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman
whistles far and wee
and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring
when the world is puddle-wonderful
the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing
from hop-scotch and jump-rope and
it's
spring
and
the
goat-footed
balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee: ~ e.e. cummings ~

When I was in gradeschool I was first introduced to e.e. cummings and I fell in love with him. And this poem was it! I was so in love with this poem I memorized it just so I could run around outside shouting it, and everything was mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful and I thought those were the two most wonderful words I had ever heard, and everything was "far and wee."

I'm quite certain I was a very odd child, and I much preferred books, my dogs, and nature to anything else in the world. It made me love hop-scotch and jump-rope, and I wanted to meet bettyandisbel and whistle with the lame balloon man and go running wild into a meadow holding on to balloons of every color!

And here's the thing... I will be 55 on April 30, and while I look like somebody's grandmother, which I am, I am still that giggly, giddy little girl inside and I shout out that poem to a room full of parrots and pugs and 2 snails and a fish and big dog Moe.

I was outside with the five dogs a few times this morning and while I'd fall over on my head and do serious damage if I tried, INside I was running far and wee, and the sun was shining brightly, the bit of breeze on this warm spring day just delicious, the earth is waking up and living growing things are everywhere! Narcissus and grape hyacinths and Siberian iris -- gorgeous! -- and the bright yellow flowers of the Japanese kerria are starting to bloom and roses are in bud everywhere.

... and the world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful...

And I hope I meet a goat-footed whistling balloon man today and we will whistle and play marbles and there will be piracies a-plenty! I feel giddy with joy. It's spring, it's my birth-month, spring is so full of hope and joy and new things -- potent possibilities abundant -- and the little balloonman...

Well, at least here the little pugs are snoring and the parrots are playing-eating-sleeping and I am about to go into the kitchen and make a latte the size of Texas and watch the wild birds in the garden just outside the windows while I froth the milk and though I am 5'8" tall I will stand up on my toes like a little girl trying to see out of the window better, and I will wait for that first enchanting night when I stand, late, doing dishes, and it is black outside, and the light over my sink draws moths to the window, but most especially delightful are the tiny spring peepers, the little green frogs that are so perfect, their little feet suctioning to the window, and he looks at me and I at him and his eyes grow wide and so do mine and the sink is running over with bubbles and the little lame balloonman is far and wee and it's beautiful and it's amazing and it's... just... spring!

I feel giddy and happy. I hope you do too...

... who just this week drove past a house with the whole front yard filled with those marvelous pink plastic flamingos and thought it was the most magical things I had ever seen. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.......

It is sufficient... It is enough... Boundaries, not walls...

2009-04-02T18:35:00.015-04:00

I have certain books that are always near me, they are like comfort food, food for the soul. Sometimes I don't even have to open them. I've read them so many times just having them near me reminds me of many things, specific passages, favorite quotes, and it just makes me happy. One of those books is Sue Bender's Everyday Sacred: A Woman's Journey Home. In this brief section she is speaking of one of her great teachers, Yvonne Rand, and Yvonne's gardener, Aloush. I would like to share this with you. The title of this little section is called Sufficient.

Sufficient

Yvonne has a gardener, a Mayan Indian from Chiapas, whose name is Aloush. He comes two days a week, works effectively but quickly, and knows a lot about plants. "I learn a lot from working with him," she told me one day. "I also like working with him because he is very quiet."

Yvonne and Aloush eat lunch together. Aloush eats a modest amount, which always amazes her because he works very hard. At the end of the meal he says,

"Sufficient, Yvonne, it is sufficient."

And the way he says sufficient is convincing and there is also a boundary about it. She is not to insist by putting more food on the plate or badger him to eat more lunch.

"It is sufficient."

This particular section really hit me, and it makes me feel very open, and very tender. It is also a reminder.

I put post-it notes on the edges of my computer as reminders. One that I have had there for some time says, "It is enough." I put this up as a reminder to me as it became increasingly important to me to simplify my life, and be very mindful about consumption of every sort. Whether it is eating, or spending money on unnecessary things, or any other place in my life where I might overdo. And no, I don't always remember, but I keep on trying.

It is enough.

And then, when I reread the above and was typing it out here for you, something really struck me and it was the difference between boundaries and walls. We have begun to realize that it is not good or healthy to build walls that separate us from other people that we love, or even those we dislike or feel unsafe with, because sometimes we cut ourselves off from too much of the world in doing this. Conversely, a great many people never learn how to set healthy boundaries. We have to learn to set boundaries that make us both feel safe and set us in the perfect center of our real lives. We need to learn to say No, kindly, but firmly. This is a good exercise. In the days ahead notice when you have put walls up around you, vs. healthy boundaries. Notice how both of these particular things affect you. Don't beat yourself up if you feel you've "done it wrong." There is no "doing it wrong," simply being aware, and learning more about ourselves and the world around us. Understanding more about our relationship to people, places and things.

And then let go.

Don't carry it with you. Note it, be aware of it, let it go. Each time you notice something new, note it and move on. In the process we learn more than we can realize or understand in the moment. That's okay. Just keep on keeping on, and one day you will wake up and see a new person in the mirror, maybe not so much physically different, but the soul inside burns a little brighter. We are new people in a whole new world.

It is sufficient. It is enough. We need nothing more...

Small Things ~ Great Love...

2009-03-31T17:40:00.014-04:00

"We do not great things, we do
only small things with great love..."

~ Mother Teresa ~

Tiny, days old Quaker Parrot, sent to me to try to save...

We all imagine that we should strive to achieve great things, and many would have wondered why one would get up all night long, every two hours to hand-feed a tiny little parrot who had little hope of making it. Well, that is at the heart of my ministry, to love and heal the small and unwanted, those thought "lesser than" and not worth the while.

This tiny baby, after a few months of hand-feeding, grew into a healthy little parrot who, for some years, has been a loving companion to a young disabled man. They are inseparable. They know a love that few will ever know. It is one of God's greatest blessings to me to give me the gift to handraise and care for these tiny birds. Five of my six parrots here I hand-fed and raised, and only the cockatoo, a rescue that came here a year ago, and was several years old, came to me as an adult. And she came with her own challenges and special gifts, and today is a great love to me...

Blossom came to me terrified and plucking badly.
Here she had just begun to feather in. This is almost
an impossible task. Once a cockatoo begins to pluck
it is nearly impossible to get them to stop. It is
amazing what love can do...

But today she is fully feathered, happy, out all day long with me, and is a tremendous love and great joy. The people that she was rescued from had kept this beautiful bird in a small dog crate and fed her dog food. This is beyond unimaginable to me. No creature too small. No love too big...

Fully feathered and my loving companion...

Consider no person, no task, no creature too small to deserve your loving help and companionship. Mother Teresa was so right. While others are building ships to go to the moon, I will be here saving, sheltering, and loving the little ones who need me. Sometimes our God given gifts are not what we imagine. Sometimes nurturing a tiny creature that fits in the palm of your hand is a larger grace than we can imagine.

Look down, not up. Jesus said, "Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do to me." I have helped a wee little turtle cross the road, or moved a snail to a safer place. Walk gently on this earth. When you look down as you walk you see a whole miraculous microcosm you have missed before. The miracle of a tiny bright wildflower growing up through a crack in the cement in the sidewalk, wee little tadpoles who burst into being in a rain puddle. A small child who takes time when we walk with them so that we cannot hurry can teach us much about the natural world, seeing miraculous things like a ladybug, a dandelion that simply must be picked for a tiny little vase at home because to the child (and to me) it is one of the most beautiful flowers on earth. An acorn cap that makes a perfect hat for a tiny handmade doll. The earth is so full of riches, if we only take the time to look.

Take time to treasure the fragile little things in life, and then give them all the love you've got. They are treasures beyond measure...

With tender love,