To Diane

A wise man said:
"There is nothing I can give you
which you do not have:
but there is much, very much, that
while I cannot give it, you can take.

No heaven can come to us unless our hearts
find rest in today. Take heaven!
No peace lies in the future which is not hidden
in this present instant. Take peace!

The gloom of the world is but a shadow.
Behind it, yet within reach, is joy.
There is radiance and glory in the darkness, could
we but see,
and to see, we have only to look. I beseech you
to look."

Fra Giovanni

Alas, Christmas

In this season of remembrance,
of a light whose expression
had never before been imagined,
I wish you the peace and love of God
which passes all understanding.
May you be well and happy,
Connie

Swami Words of Wisdom

This weeks Words of Wisdom from Sri Swami Satchidananda:

“Let Us Come Together”

“Let us hope that one day we will all realize the unity in diversity and live as one global family in peace and joy. At least let us come together as spiritual brothers and sisters, because God is our unifying factor. We can understand the fundamentals of our own faith, and at the same time allow everybody else to follow their own approaches. May Yoga help us to maintain a disease-free body and a peaceful mind so that we can express our own true divine light by our very life itself. The Bible says, ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.’ The mind that is freed from selfishness is a pure mind; only such a mind can reflect the image of God in us."

Dear Brandon:

There are those among us who seek incarceration as a door to the path toward a God of love and light. You seem to be one of those members of the human race who have found no other way of beginning that journey, other than the supremely humiliating experience of having your freedom and dignity stripped from you like bark peeled from a tree.

Brandon, you're in jail again for one purpose: to climb the mountain toward salvation and redemption in the face of a loving God. The sooner you begin that journey, the sooner you will earn your walk with freedom once more.

Your journey begins in base camp where you get on your knees and admit what you've done to so royally fuck up your life. And darlin'? It's O.K. if you don't get to the top of the mountain in this lifetime, but for God's sake, buckle your boots and start climbing! Your soul does not want to spend yet another life as a slave to your will and desire.

You are in my constant prayer.

You are loved,
Connie

This is why I became an ordained minister. Although the flags and symbols may be many,
the truth, finally, is one.

Roots

Growing up, my father left us when I was two, in 1960. The pinnacle of masculinity was my grandfather, James H. Devine and he was the symbol of father with a capitol F, of provider with a capitol P and font of love and affection with capitol L and A. I adored my grandfather and I like to think he delighted in me. He never teased me like some adults did. He never made me feel like I was a nuisance or in the way or not wanted. I remember feeling this from many adults in my life, but never my grandfather a. He called me "snicklefritz" and in my eyes he could do no wrong. My grandfather never disappointed me or let me down until the day he died at 86.

Dream Journal

While dreaming two nights ago I asked Michael Mattson to dance. I went to put on my skates. He left and a young woman told me he'd left my ring for me.

Last night I walked through the gates of Del Mar Elementary school in Santa Cruz CA, dressed in a brocade robe with a hood. It was very dark. I pulled the hood over my face and when I took a step my feet lifted off the ground and I could float several inches off the ground. I trod down two sets steps to the 7th grade level where my purpose was to steal a microscope from a science room. Instead, I rounded a corner into a dance rehearsal. I wanted to be invisible, but II lost my balance among a tangle of bicyles and glass bottles. I completely disrupted the dance process.

Tom Farley

If I could find my cell phone, I'd call you and tell you:

I love the color and shimmer of your wings.

Thank you for being one of my own.

Namaste`,
Connie

"There are angels whose only job is to make sure you don't get too comfortable and fall asleep and miss your life."
Brian Andreas storypeople.com

The Fifth Chakra

A year ago I began a journey into the shadow side of my character. As a guide and Totem animal, Black Panther walked beside me. As a woman/child who creates daily, her own little world of color and light, the shadows were a very scary place for me to go.

It started with an intensive weekend workshop that sold me the idea of learning what my soul journey was all about. I am happy to report that I learned the lesson. The lesson is

GO IN PEACE TO LOVE.
AND SERVE MY GOD.

Grateful am I to have graduated from deep rooted desires to sabotage my journey, to the next rung up the spiritual ladder where the will becomes stronger than desire. This is the lesson of the 5th Chakra; the color blue, the shade of Virginia sky. Divine will and the will of desire live in the same place! At the base of our neck, through the voicebox, up the throat, words spoken, never to be revoked. Oh, the leap off the cliff of desire? the padded landing I enjoyed? Thrilling, to say the least, a sensual reminder of the excitement the human body is capable of experiencing.

Ultimately, the shadows taught me to choose love over physical desire, for today anyway.

I love people, I always have. I believe in a basic good nature in all human beings. I believe we choose our paths with free will but with a hand of divinity on our shoulder, whispering "turn left here", "slow down", "pedal to the metal to make this yellow light". If we are fortunate enough to hear the voice of god with humility and more silence than wagging tongue, the path has the capacity to become very clear and gorgeous. This anyway, has been my experience.

For this I am truly grateful.

Coming and going,
In Peace,
Connie

Mist

What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
Book of James Ch 4


And since you know you cannot see yourself,
so well as by reflection, I, your glass,
will modestly discover to yourself,
that of yourself which you yet know not of.


William Shakespeare

A Blessing for Elizabeth

I've read somewhere recently, and I cannot find the quote, but the essence of the message is that we are presented with obstacles in our life in order to discover the specific gift we were given in grace to meet that obstacle and go beyond it.

I see the image of the mountain, Everest, perhaps...and it's very existence for some is motivation enough to want to climb it. What are the gifts required to mount what may seem, for some, the insurmountable? Ambition, stamina, physical strength? Everest may not be the pinnacle of your ambition but like the mountain climber, you hold within you the very gifts required to overcome what may seem like insurmountable fear and anxiety in the face of major change that you had not planned for or anticipated.

What I see is a beautiful dancer, seeking the music that allows her feet to lift off the ground, and her spirit to soar beyond the mundane and comfortable existence that she has created for herself in recent years. I have always seen beauty and grace in Elizabeth Gay. These are the gifts you were given at birth...you have many others, but these two are all you truly need in this situation of dynamic and sometimes terrifying circumstances of creating new space for you and your daughter to grow.

Your parachute in this fall is beauty and grace...you are floating gently to the ground now, into a new landscape that offers tremendous rewards that you have not yet imagined. You are safe, my dearest, you are loved.

Namaste`,
Connie


"Meditation is when you sit down and do nothing. Poetry is when you sit down and do something."
Norman Fischer

Love Proclaimed

Dear Christo:

If love proclaimed begs
an uttered response in
kind,
Then I will love
you silently,
eternally, unconditionally,
as thou hast loved me.

Connie

In my dream Daphne asks me when I'm going to deal with the back door of the studio. She says that Lyle left a key there, "sewn to the top of the mountain" that is painted on the door. Sure enough there is a key at the top of the mountain and a note from Lyle written in red ink. I start to read it and it mentions Steve and her toddlers and I'm just waiting for her vitriol to begin and I stop reading.

(This part of the dream seems to be about my past, i.e., the back door, what is behind me, the past. Her note, the written word and my own fear of what lies there in all my 32 years of journals I know I'm meant to read again. )

In another facet of the dream, I'm in my studio up stairs but on a higher level than the top of the stair case. I seem to be with students, I am a student. I am immersed in that world but people keep coming into the studio, and I have to go greet them, attend to them. Some, two Jeans, try to come up the stairs and I tell them they are not allowed; to turn around and go back down. There are new artifacts in the studio, things, treasure I haven't seen before. The studio never feels like it's in Norfolk.


Chris and I with Lucy on a leash come into a petrified forest. The trees are fallen and on their side. Down a winding set of natural steps we come upon furniture that's been carved out of the wood. There is a huge, beautiful chaise lounge, like King size, but I think, gee, that wouldn't be comfortable to lie on. Everything is close together. Chris lets Lucy off the leash and I'm afraid she'll get lost, there is another dog off leash as well...

In a convent: myself, one burly, hairy man and three other women are asked to put on the pants that the nuns wear. They are hand crocheted sailor pants and I put them on and they feel and look fabulous. The man has a hard time getting his on and he's so hairy! Beastly, really, but benign. We each wear a different color. Then we're in a kitchen and an old French nun is going to teach us to cook. I'm in the front row, far left seat. She needs my chair and asks me to assist her. Then a woman stands up and asks if anyone is hungry and the classroom dynamic falls apart. I tell them nun that she's lost her hold on the group. Every one wanders off but I really want to learn how to roast a chicken from this woman.

I'm following Chris through a mall-type campus...we look at calenders. We're looking for room 2727 and have to go through a lot of other rooms to find the right one. I almost step into a hole in a red carpeted floor. There are many door we pass through. When I reach his class room, there is a flimsy set of white steps that I choose to pratfall down as my entrance. Everybody laughs, and I know I am loved.

In the dream I dream that I wake up and say, "I must remember this dream". I write the key at the top of the mountain part down with a huge black pencil.

As I lie awake this morning, remember the dream, I recognize that I am being asked to surrender to something higher. Before we went to bed last night, Chris and I were having a conversation about Crowns at the Stage Co. and what a spiritual journey the process of mounting the show has been for him. He referred to the analogy of the top of the mountain; at the base of the mountain are all the choices and pathways and religions to chose from but the journey is up the mountain, not hanging out at the base and once we arrive at the top of the mountain, well, we're all the same and that which we have been seeking is indescribable. The God at the top of the mountain is beyond the breadth of language.

So, as I lay there this morning, remembering a rich and multi-faceted jewel of a dream, I allowed my self to open to that higher level of learning and the one word that came to me was Divine and I felt this flowing into me, from the top of my head, an exquisite peace and knowing that what I seek is so far beyond what any religion can teach me. What I seek is beyond the realm of language. What I seek is....

Miracle

I believe in miracles, and the miraculous news today is that an entirely new bird species has been confirmed in India. This from the New York Times:
"The multicolored bird, Liocichla bugunorum, was first sighted in May in the remote Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary in Arunachal Pradesh, a northeastern state near the border with China, by Ramana Athreya, an astronomer as well as amateur ornithologist."

Mr Athreya says that he first saw the bird in 1995. This makes me wonder where Liocichla had been hiding before then. Is it possible that a new bird just gets created one day? Is this just Darwinian evolution and some freak mutation has taken affect to differentiate this ornithological wonder from whatever it evolved from? Or what if this multi-colored little beauty has been flying around, un-named and undifferentiated for 1000's of years and now that a human has managed to sight, capture and document the thing, it now actually exists in a manner that it did not before it's labeling?

Jesse: "Does God Love Me?"

For years Jesse and I, after goodnight "tucking in", a kiss, and
lights out, have veritibly shouted at each other from
upstairs/downstairs:
"Goodnight, I love you even more than God!"

The duality of this statement did not escape us for long.


Do we love each other more than we do God?
Do we love each other more than God is capable of?

~~~~~~~~~~~~

We hadn't been to our church, St. Paul's Epsicopal, Norfolk, since July 2.
For ten years in the Episcopal church, I did not understand the
concept of "taking the summer off" from church.
I get it now.

Chris and Jesse and I went to St. Paul's again yesterday and
it was like a whole new church. New location, new leader,
more intimacy to the settings, same words as have ever been
and will ever be uttered by millions, all day long, all over this
exquisite island we call home.

Driving home, he asked me, "Does God love me?"
"Yes, of course he does".
"Why?"
"Because you are exactly what he meant to create"
"What do you mean?"
"I dont' know..."

Long Pause.


"But what I do know is that God is Love and
Love is God for me this time around. "
~~~~~~~~~~

I find myself on a rung of the UPWEGO ladder
(or is it a spoke on a revolving, ascending wheel?)
where contemplating the inner feminine Divine while
simultaneously pondering the exterior male Christian god
just seems a little challeneging for a mind as unevolved as mine.

So, here's the question, "does God live within me",
(which is not to ask "Am I God?"), because if ever there were
a prepostrous notion, that would be it, wouldn't it? Ok,
so how did Jesus get away with it?

My current answer is, "how the hell should I know? "
I'll get back to you on this.

I am happy to entertain comments on how to answer
the 12 year old's question:
"Does God Love Me?"

Namaste`, Amen, Shalom`, Whatever, No Problem, No Worries, Mazol Tov, Aloha, Ciao Baby, Adieu!

Ambition

I woke up on Sat. morning to the startling revelation that I no longer have anything to prove to anyone. I guess I've spent a lifetime, thus far, trying to prove to my family, friends, the world, that I am a successful human being. But that certainly begs the question, "successful at what?"

I will undoubtedly remember my 47th year as a mid-life crisis. Although I can't imagine living to the ripe old age of 94, I've come to terms with the idea that this life is half over. I've spent the past year living in the future, living in the past, hardly present for more than a few moments at a time in the here and now. Yeah, it was difficult and painful but who cares, really?

I encountered some old friends, made some new friends and became intimate with a stranger or two. I have been referred to as a diva, an angel, wise and foolish, "a magical spirit", a teacher, a healer, self-important, self-centered, melodramatic. All true, to the extent that others have experienced me in those ways and I can recognize all those facets of myself without shame. But is the pride part that really teaches.


In my hubris, I was self-important, assuming that I knew anything at all about the affects of my various travesties and leaps off cliffs; assuming I knew one iota what grace is, where God is and what love has to do with everything. I did not walk my talk and I did not protect my integrity, which, a year ago, I would have put at the top of my "values" list. I am not one to hold up that particular spector any longer, having thrown mine off that cliff that desire pushed me off of. So what do I find at the place where I landed?

I find a peaceful landscape, a clearing, where I am dwarfed and humbled by the stature of the silent trees that rise all around me, bathed in some ethereal light that gives me hope of making it through another year in a life no longer defined by what others believe about me, but by the truth I have learned about a shadow side of myself.

Dream Journal

Sept. 1, 2006
In my dream I'm a teacher in a vast auditorium. The room is filled with people, mostly adults. We are waiting for the assembly to begin. I'm in a alcove off the main room, I'm dressed like a teacher, there is a desk and I'm anxious to get started. There is a track of too bright light shining on me and I remove myself to the bathroom where I sit on the edge of the bathtub and wait. I hear the first chord of music from the organ and stand up to join the others. We all start singing The Star Spangled Banner but all those around me are tone deaf or flat or off key. It just doesn't seem to fit. I close one ear and try to sing on key.

Dream Journal

In my dream I'm at an airport that feels like a maze. There are stairs and tunnels, an amusement part water-ride distraction and the ever present pressure of running short on time. I find my gate, finally. The sign above the passage way reads "Santa Cruz". Although I'm relieved to find the gate, I realize I have to go get my luggage, which is stored in a locker somewhere. I feel a certain sense of futility at finding my luggage and getting back to the gate in time for the flight.

In another dream, last night, after watching "When the Levees Broke" on HBO, I dreamt of being suspended from a crane with another man as we inspected the broken levees. At one point we were inside a cylinder and could push against the concrete and watch it break apart.

Dream Journal

In my dream I'm in my kitchen (but it's a motor home kitchen part of the time). I peel a raw egg and it holds its form without the shell. I show my female guests how incredible it is. One woman shows me how to pierce the egg without breaking it...a small drop of emerges from the tiny hole she's created. I drop the egg into a bowl of pancake batter I'm making. The yolk splits and transforms into a swirling miasma of white and golden yellow yolk. It mixes itself and I'm relieved to remember that the dry gets added to the liquid for fluffier pancakes. I'm fascinated by this stellar performace of movement in a mixing bowl. And then, an animated blue and white orchid-like butterfly emerges from the bowl, floats into the air, fluttering about to everyone's amazement and then POOF! it's gone, like in a cartoon, with little star trails where the butterfly used to be. We stand around speechless. Then my father in law tries to show us a magic trick with black smoke. We women are unimpressed. It's kind of embarassing, since his magic falls so short of butterflies born of eggs.

Leaving them Behind

I dreamt of Michael Mattson last night.
I have been dreaming Michael Mattson for 34 years,
since he extracted my virginity with his finger while I slept.
On the symbolic dream level, he represents my animus, my male sexual, warrior energy.
I met his mother last night in the dream time.
She came to me as a crone with politically radical views.
Michael lived to make her life and her work, work.

Images from the dream:

Four women standing at the window of the screened back porch, watching the four men in the backyard get high.

Mike in the kitchen, preparing food, kissing me on the lips, my desire rising, in time wtih his penis.
He said we needed to wait because I was ovulating.

He spelled his mother's name for me:
Pogue.

I returned to his home, unannounced.
He was grilling meat/ beef specifically.
Thick steaks that were mouth-wateringly attractive.
I became conscious that his anger and energy were not a healthy choice to engage with.
I looked him in the eye with love and told him I hoped he'd call me.
I walked away down the dirt driveway...at the end was a tall juniper.
As I turned left I was illuminated by the headlights of a fire-truck.
I looked to my right, a huge yellow moon rising up behind tall pines.
The truck passes, followed by a smaller one.
There is a fire in East.
I walk down this road, into the West.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Later:
I am trying to arrange to be transported to Philadelphia by curling up in the bottom rack of a freezer.

DREAM JOURNAL

Very intense dream this morning; I was very relieved when I woke up! I was out on a date with a man name Savajeen Alexander. He took me to a coffee shop that was frequented by journalist and news types. I had coffee, but didn't drink it. He left fifty cents on the table. Then I'm outside and a young woman I've never met is laying her life story and woe on me and then she's showing me her room in a boarding house and across from her room is where her daughter Kristy sleeps and I say, "oh, you're a single mother". Then Savajeen is showing me the old house and I didn't realize he was a boarder also. It seems kind of pathetic. I started telling him that I really needed to get home

Then I was driving a car and drove up onto the corner lot at 38th and Colley instead of driving across the intersection. I said "what just happened" and I answered myself, " I really need to concentrate on what I'm doing". So now there's a black woman passenger with me and I start to drive off the lawn, but the tires get a little stuck and I shift into low gear. Suddenly we're on a dirt road, not 38th street and driving through a neighborhood with very unique and funky houses. To the right is this gorgeous verdant green valley and hills rising in the west. I tell my passenger, who is new to town, that we have to find her a house in this valley. I'm amazed that such a place exists in Norfolk and I never knew it.

Then I'm back with the Alexander guy and it's hours later and Chris and Jesse don't know where I am and I'm telling him that I really have to get back home. Then we're on Boissevain, in his car and it's 9:22 am and Amber is dropping a friend off in front of my studio and they hug and kiss and Amber says thanks for leaving this and she's got a lipstick and says "I'll just check this off" and draws boxes on her windshield with the lipstick and puts check marks in the boxes.

Savajeen and I are finally in his car, heading up Colonial Ave and I tell him I absolutely need to be home by 10am because I know that Jesse is now home alone. But then we're at the boarding house again and it's like a maze inside, all these rooms, and no one will listen to me that I really need to leave now and I keep trying to herd Savajeen to the front door but he's always stopping and talking to other people in the house. He is completely oblivious to my needs. I go out the front door and sit in a pond and just starting howling. People in the house look at me and I see that they think I'm nuts.

Then I'm watching a play that this man has directed and when it's finally over I start yelling at him to take me home and we start walking to his car which turns out to be blocks and blocks away. On the ground I find a string of large jade heart beads which are truly beautiful. Then we're in front of a board with listings and he's looking to see what floor of the parking garage his car in on. I'm incredulous that he doesn't even know where he keeps his car. It's on the 8th floor. So we get into a decrepit elevator and start riding up. But instead of coming to his car, we get out on a floor that has a restaurant and once again we're side tracked from my purpose....to get home!!!

And then I wake up.

Loyalty was the Lesson

You probably have figured out for yourself by now that the reason we are human is so that we can learn, in this beautiful class room and playground, what it is to serve a Divine purpose. I came from a family with devinity in it's name, which may easily be an ironic and laughable coincidence, or, just perhaps, i a symbolic reminder of the level of power I am capable of holding and channeling. I get so overwhelmed sometimes by all these choices and gifts I've been given. I often feel as though, in order to 'succeed', I must produce, must create, must make a name. And that's when my ego goes flying out of my body, screeching with a piercing call, that yes! I want to be rich and famous!

Yes, I admit it! I'm a product of the culture I was raised in, and it only dawned on me yesterday that I'm a hippie; which, politically, means I believe that the ideals of peace, love and understanding through non-violent communication is an ideal worth staking your life's work on.

I don't know about the Romantic Nihilists, but the meaning to my life is earn a symbolic Ph.d. in this condition called humanity. What I know so far is that love trumps everything, everytime.

Namaste`,
Connie

Divorcing God

Last night I shared a meal with a lovely woman, Alexandra, who told me about an experience she had where she was asked to write a divorce decree from the God she was currently struggling with. Isn't that a fascinating and probably very productive exercise?
The most beautiful advise Christ ever gave was "love one another". It doesn't get any simpler than that. Those are three words that have traveled 2000 years and still hold the truth that if you will only attempt to love your neighbor, your friend, your enemy, your ugly step-mother, you're going to feel a lot closer to God, because in my book, in any moment that you are experiencing LOVE, that is the moment that you are in direct communication with God and all the goodness of Divinity can flow into and out of you via that conduit. As you receive, so you give. Annie Lamott, in Traveling Mercies, says that to "be loved is for giving and that for giving is to be loved." I know this is very simplistic, but I like my God that way.

The God I would like to divorce is the one that promises that my suffering will be rewarded in heaven. I divorce the God that says once I die my actions in one lifetime will determine whether I enter heaven or hell for eternity. I divorce the God that says women will always be weaker than men and must submit and obey their fathers and husbands and sons. I divorce a God you uses guilt to manipulate the masses. I divorce a God that uses anger to drive a point home. I dismiss a God who says love is only sanctioned for heterosexuals. I divorce a God who gifted woman with the honor of growing human life but would condemn them for choosing not to do so. I divorce a God who has only one son named Jesus who he loved so much he had him tortured and killed to prove his love to the rest of us who apparently, aren't really his children. I divorce the old and wizened, flowing white-haired Roman God image on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, male, reaching out to male. There's probably more....I'll come back to this and then I move onto the God I'm willing to marry.

Namaste`
Connie

Hope in the Ashes

The day we arrived in the Adirondacks for vacation a house burned down. I was present when the owner drove up and said, to the volunteer firefighter, "tell me that isn't my house". Her first question was "what about my dogs?". She didn't know that her three children were home as well. They were rescued, unharmed, by a neighbor.

Jimi Hendrix

I'm wearing a Jimi Hendrix/Moby Grape/Captain Spped t-shirt today (Target: $9.99). Susan Sandage, my accupuncturist, relayed her images and experience of Master Jimi in Cleveland, shortly before his death. She said he truly brought himself to performance. I said that I believed he was a channel of Divine energy and that he (and Elvis) were beings wih the power to shift, like platelets, existing paradigms surrounding and "protecting" then-current musical theory. God, a lot of people really HATED it. Although I was pre-teen at the time, his influence on me is quite profound. Hendrix was a hero, an icon, for a generation who was sick and tired of the black box their parents lived in. To a generation that detested war to the extent that a draft was put in place, Jimi shook things up with his otherwordly ability to make an electric guitar sing in a voice whose virbational waves are still pushing out into an expanding universe.

Jimi Hendrix was a man, and an icon for social change. He was a prophet with a powerful and specific message to western culture: get outside the four walls your've surrounded yourself with and experience yourself and your mind. The message was to take some risks, on all levels and break forth with a new energy never seen or "experienced before". The 1960's were a time a tremendous tumult and change. Young people said No Way to established morals and morays.

Eric Clapton was defined as God. Time magazine mused, "Is God Dead?" on one of it's covers. We watched the Vietnam War with a candor that no one under 40 can even begin to imagine. The truth and lessons held in those images projected into our homes every night taught us one very true thing: there is nothing more deadly to human spirit than the violence and chaos of war. War is ugly, brutal and deeply disturbing for all involved. It's time to move on and because it is men who have led us into war everytime, and women who have enabled the behavior, it is in fact women who are going to be the solution. I don't know how quite yet, but I've got some ideas and I'll keep you posted, ok?


The teachers of the 60's were artists and a couple of guys from Harvard, Ram Dass and Timothy Leary. Who are the prophets today? What is the message? Who are your teachers?

Namaste`
Connie

Lighten Up, Girlfriend

I'm stuck here in the Adirondack Mountains, sleeping in a rustic cottage, overlooking Upper Saranac Lake, nothing to do but sit on the deck and read or talk with friends and drink a rum and tonic and I think to myself: the problem with vacations is it provides me with way too much time to think and then my next thought is : Good God woman, LIGHTEN UP!

I have spent way too much of my life taking myself far too seriously. I look at my son Jesse and he is interested in one or two things as the 12 year old life purpose: what makes people laugh and how can I master the acoustic guitar without having to actually take lessons? Turns out he's pretty good at both of those things and it inspires the hell out of me!

This spring, for instance, I made a complete fool of myself and total mess of my marriage and family life. WHY? BECAUSE I COULD! Because, for some reason, I had the courage to jump off of a cliff when the impulse to have a wild and passionate love affair overtook my brain to the extent that I was no longer in control. It was like be possessed! Possessed by some wanton chick I've worked really hard at quashing in my adult life, mostly cuz I didn't want to turn into my mother. But what a gas it was, riding that wave of libido and adrenaline. Regular life is so boring in comparison and there in lies the rub! I see now how people get addicted to things that are not good for them...It's a thrill and it's exciting and hey, who cares if it's bound for tragedy, it's a big freaking reminder that I'M ALIVE!!

Grace and how it enters

Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh said something like this:

"Grace is what enters when we release the illusion that we are in charge of our lives."

I truly relate to this sentiment. I found that once I gave over to allowing Divine intervention to take charge of my life, the state of grace I entered into somehow colored all my past experiences, both pleasurable and painful, into new shades of grace that I had not recognized before. It's as though once grace was embraced, my entire life began to look like a state of grace, even ifI wasn't conscious of the gifts at the time.

For this I am deeply grateful.

Namaste`~,
Connie

Buffet and Gates and the Soul of Humanity

My opinion? Bill Gates and Warren Buffet go a long way in balancing
pejorative public perception of the wealthy in America. I've felt
wildly embarrassed to be an American on many occasions in the past
several years; specifically by the likes of Kenneth Lay, Martha
Stewart, L. Dennis Kozlowski, Mark Swartz, oh, who am I leaving out??

I'm an independent idealist. I am not wealthy, but I am an artist with
a sensibility that is shamed by the blatant lack of compassion that the
ruling party/class has exhibited in the face of tremendous human
suffering brought on by an oil-based War of their own creation and the
pathetic response to Hurricane Katrina last September.

I loved the New York Times front page image of Warren Buffet on Monday.
There he is getting out a cab on 5th Ave to meet Bill at the Public
Library. No briefcase, no portfolio; just a beat-up manilla bubble
mailer which no doubt held the check for $31 billion (or is it 44)
made out to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Ah! HUMILITY! Thank you Warren
Buffet, thank you Bill Gates for choosing philanthropy at the height
of your power with the best interests of the soul of humanity at stake.
You have my blessing to go cure world diseases and help pay to educate
brilliant minds. May each of us be great stewards of wealth, in
whatever form we experience the word.

Night School

I had a first time visit with an acupuncturist, Susan Sandage yesterday. She was very thorough in garnering background information about my health. When she asked about my sleep patterns and habits, I told her that when I turn off the lights, I immediately begin to silently pray or chant or repeat a mantra and am able to fall asleep easily this way (unless of course, I am manic and obsessive and sleep just isn't even an option). Generally though, I fall asleep around midnight and wake around 4am from a dream. I've blog many dreams in this space and I find that during the full moon, my dreams are illuminated with a clarity that is unique from the rest of the moon's phases. I told her how clear the guidance of my dreams can be at times and she said, "oh, so you're going to night school".

Sleeping and dreaming as Night School!! Isn't that a lovely notion to people like me who feel that life is to be accomplished, not just lived! I've mostly "needed" about eight hours of sleep as an adult and I know there are those individuals who need very little sleep, but I love my sleep/dream time. I'm very attracted to this idea that even though I'm at rest, I'm still learning and experiencing in my dream life. It is said that the mind will believe anything you tell it and that our brains don't differentiate "reality" or imagination or "dreams" as separate experiences; waking, dreaming, hallucinating, imagining, remembering, it's all "real" in our minds. Hence, the very new age idea that we are able to create our own reality!

I've believed for a long time now that the reason I am here is to learn how to become a whole and healed and loving human being. I believe that once I achieve that, in however many life times that's going to take, it is at that point, Nirvana, that my soul will no longer seek a human body and will be absorbed into the greater Divine consciousness some of us know as "God/dess". This is my reality, welcome to it!

May you enroll in Night School,
Connie

Jesse's Contribution

In The Jungle Watch it now on StupidVideos!

Food as Fun?

I was following a Nabisco truck down Llewellyn Ave. this morning and found my view of the greater world blocked by this specifically "Nabisco" sentiment: Discover a World of Fun: Nabisco World. I'm telling you, only in America is the desire for entertainment so insatiable that we attribute "fun" with "food". How many other nations in the world have the luxury of such a ludicrous mindset? Do the French eat for fun? No, they eat because they love delicious foods dripping in butter! Do the Italians eat for fun? NO! They eat because they enjoy simple flavors that can be identified individually on the palette. Do you think the Chinese have the luxury of thinking that eating is fun? Or how about Ethiopia, or Zimbawbe where Robert Mugabe and his thugs have displaced all the white farm owners with cronies who don't give a damn about actually raising crops and livestock and therefore destroyed their nations economy which now has an inflation rate of something like 1000% and 50% unemployment and families who used to have homes living in corrugated tin shacks with grates over an open fire to cook with? Why? It's not because they think it's FUN to cookout!

Give me a break Nabisco! A world of fun? Oh yea, bring on the chocolate covered Oreos and let me watch the fun being had as three sleeves of sugar and fat get consumed in one evening by a family of four! Oh yea, that is great entertainment! In fact, let's make some S'mores now in the fireplace, with the damper closed, that would be fun, wouldn't it? Can you tell I'm a little incensed by the notion that eating is entertaining? What kind of an arrogant sense of entitlement is that? It's so pathetically American to confuse "fun" with "nutrition" or "nourishment".

And lest you forget: Nabisco is really RJRNabisco which used to be RJReynolds, now the ubiquitous "ALTRIA", which so happens to be the creator and distributor of the best selling killer known to humankind: MARLBORO! Hey Nabisco, is it "FUN" being the cause of millions of avoidable deaths every year? Is it fun being the pushers of nicotine as well as white flour, high fructose corn syrup, MSG, dozens of preservatives and genetically modified food starch? Dang! Forget the Nascar! Forget roller coasters, swimming in a mountain lake under the full moon or singing at the top of yours lungs just because if FEELS good! Why bother? Just get me a pack of smokes and some Triscuit, man, THIS IS FUN!

Healing Circle

I called together a healing circle on Monday evening for Leticia. Four of us came together to create a space of healing for the ovarian cancer that she has. We started with meditating to ground our intention for healing and wisdom to come forth. Once she was on the massage table, we surrounded her. I was at her head and began with a prayer, asking for a miraculous healing. We continued to shift our place around the table and each of us spoke to her or laid hands on her silently. When Elizabeth told her how unique and special she was, we could see those words touch her heart and the tears began and we just held a sacred space for those tears to flow and do their healing. When we were finished, we left her alone for a few minutes and walked outside. We were all moved by what we had experienced, by what we had made space for and for the healing that took place in each of us in our desire to heal another.

May you be healed, may you be whole,
Connie

5th Chakra

The time has come for me to say what I think I know about the 5th Chakra. I've been hanging out with this for two months now; experiencing things through the energy center located where the spinal column intersects with the base of the brain. This is a very power spot. My yogini Gwen says that it's considered the super highway of the energy system; it's the tunnel where the Divine enters the physical body? Naturally, it's next stop is your heart.

It was pouring here today, torrential Alberto (time for the males to wreak havoc with their fury this year) remnants. Imagine for a moment that every drop of rain that fell on your head today was a drop of Divine energy...liquid gold if you will. There it is dropping right into your crown chakra...right at the top of your head. Imagine now that the gold flows into your brain, stopping off at your third eye, the place just above your eyebrows and fills your brain with pure, white wisdom from the source of all divinity in the universe. Then it flows down to the base of your brain, the top of your spine.

Now is the point where your unconscious mind asks the question: are you going to honor divine wisdom or your own will? This is the essential question to ask when working with the energy of the 5th chakra. Is your neck stiff? Chances are you are blocking off divine wisdom and knowledge and allowing your rational mind to make far too many important decisions for you. It's essential to focus on that third eye, at least a little bit every day to remind your rational mind that you are open to the voices of Divine God/dess even if you're not sure you speak the language.

By the way, you don't need to be exceptionally spiritually intuned to receive guidance, it's available to anyone who makes it their intention to be guided. The key that unlocks the 5th chakra is SURRENDER. I had a big, huge surrender experience in yoga class today. We were in a heart opener pose, or crucifixion pose if you need a visual, and I allowed my 5th chakra to open up as I surrendered my will to the God/dess and agreed to be taken and used for higher purposes that I may not understand. It may be the first time I felt a true feminine presence in my experience of GOD. There has always been a detachment there in my experience, from the male, patriarchal GOD. I've tried and tried, but I just can't make "him" work for me.

I've been holding June 15 in my mind as some major transition day for me. It's been two months of healing from my most recent heartbreak, which means actually feeling and experiencing the pain rather than stuffing it down as it rises. I feel healed. I've been able to transmute that pain into a love that I send out to him, and through this process I've come back into myself, for I had surely taken flight once I jumped off a cliff with a romantic nihilist (oh! the drama of it all!) ;o} I feel whole again, which is the true blessing of June 15, 2006.

I send you love and blessings,
Connie

Pink Bathtub

Dream Journal:
In my dream I'm in an unknown bathroom with two shower/tub combinations. One is on the north wall, one is on the west wall of the square room. I'm not content with the experience in the first shower, the north one, in fact I have my clothes on. I get out and undress, step into the west wall shower, adjust the shower curtain; both the curtain and the liner are inside the tub, I pull the curtain up and drape it on the outside of the tub.

The water is running and when I look down there is two inches of water, tinged pink with my menstrual blood. It's a lot of blood but I think to myself, "oh, this explains it all".

Any one care to interpret this dream with me?

Connie

Life Must be Felt

Life must be felt, it must be experienced. We are not here to endure this life, we are here to live and grow into the life we agreed to incarnate into. We are here to manifest our highest possible good, while acknowledging our humanity and fallibility and hopefully, laughing at ourselves and the stupid stuff we do sometime.

I've been so afraid of moving up to the next rung on my spiritual ladder. I've spent the last nine months distracted by my past, distracted by the pleasures of the senses and the flesh, distracted by the need to rescue every wounded soul that comes my way. Enough I say! The guidance I am now receiving says to make time for silence and be still. Did you know there are birds that sing to each other all through the night? Last night, meditating in the hot tub, I listened to a most exquisite, musical and natural conversation between two birds in separate trees.....are they nightingales? The complexity of their language was mind boggling while in the same moment, awe-inspiring.

Their song is living in me now...in my heart and love for this natural, beautiful planet and in my auditory memory, in love with the sounds of silence.

Namaste`,
Connie

Ministry

WE ARE ALL MINISTERS TO ONE ANOTHER, WHEN OUR HEARTS ARE GROUNDED IN LOVE.

When I was 14

Summer is my favorite season of the year, it reminds me of my youth growing up in Santa Cruz, CA half a block from the beach. I'd stub my poor toes every day cuz I never wore shoes! I have sand between my toes eternally! At the bottom of the "gully" across the street, I'd pick blackberries with my sister and our caretaker Peggy would teach us how to make a blackberry pie. And with the left over pie dough? We'd roll it out, sprinkle it with cinnamon and suger, cut it into strips and pop it in the oven for a "I-can't-wait- two-hours-for-the-pie-to-bake-and-cool" treat within ten minuites. YUMMY!

Yoga Wedding

I had the extreme honor and pleasure of officiating (for the first time) at the wedding of my yoga teacher Gwen and her groom Fred this evening. The ceremony we created began with Hindu chanting and also included aspects from the New Zealand Book of Common Prayer, (Episcopal), as well as the Seven Blessings or Sheva Brachos canted in Hebrew from the Jewish tradition. It ended with the smashing of the wineglass under the groom's foot! It was truly a multi-denominational wedding ceremony.

I love being called to this ministry. I loved creating a ceremony that was meaningful to many people of various religious and spiritual practices. I have always enjoyed breaking out of the box and this was no exception. Every word spoken was unfamiliar to those congregated; i.e., they listened in a new way to the blessing of a marriage. Gwen and Fred share an beautiful and tender love and it was such a delight to officially marry them.

Creating a Miracle Day

This morning I chose to ask the universe for a miracle. I asked myself, "what kind of day do I want to create?" I answered myself, "something miraculous in the form of exactly what I need". So far, I have had many visitors today.

One of them is a young woman of 24 with an incredible amount of grace and light and Divine energy. She remembers her dreams! She is one of the most powerful dreamers I have ever met. The quality of the guidance that she receives is miraculous! There she is dressed entirely in black in an Antarctic landscape, her soul guide swathed in white.

There she is climbing a cliff to escape a tidal wave, with her spirit guide a few levels above her, guiding and supporting her path. She chooses not to go into the city, but allows the wave to take her and behold, she can breathe underwater!

There she in a forest clearing, a meadow effused with light, with a litter of kittens, naked with her husband, and the spirit guide comes out of the forest as a wolf man, his tongue lolling as he laughs, beckoning her to join in the joke.

Dreams are, in my opinion, the richest form of guidance we are capable of receiving. We are somehow hardwired to receive guidance from the unseen world in a way that does not include logic, or reason or a need for evidence. Every dream is a release from the world of time and linear thought; a glimpse into the way the mind of the Gods work. How amazing that we are invited into that realm each time we close our eyes. For me, who finds so much wonder and joy in the waking world, dreams are like the Gods saying, "hey, you think THAT'S cool? WATCH THIS!".

Wouldn't it be a great experiment to try to live your life the way you do your sleep? By passively entering into it, inviting it even, to take you to places and images you've never dreamed possible. Wouldn't it be great if the next time you wake up, you decide to wake up into a dream where you passively allow Divine guidance to take you where the Gods want you to go? Think about it! When was the last time you fell asleep wondering what you'd be dreaming in two months or two years from now? Do you worry in your dreams? Do you make plans in your dreams? I know I don't! Live a day like a dream; make it a day off from work. Assume every thing you think and see and experience on that day is a part of a dream sending you all the messages and guidance you need to live the perfect day, where all things are in time with Divine Right Purpose.

Dream your day! ENJOY!

Namaste`,
Connie

Carl Sagan Toked

After verifying the credibility of this piece, I am happy to share with you this epiphany. So nice to know I'm not...


"Scientist Carl Sagan smoked pot. "He believed the drug enhanced his creativity and insights," wrote Keay Davidson in the *San Francisco Examiner,* quoting Sagan's biographer Lester Grinspoon. "If I find in the morning a message from myself the night before informing me that there is a world around us which we barely sense," Sagan said, "or that we can become one with the universe, I may disbelieve; but when I'm high I know about this disbelief. And so I have a tape in which I exhort myself to take such remarks seriously. I say 'Listen closely, you sonofabitch of the morning! This stuff is real!'"

Forward and Past

I am so fortunate to have gone to a northern California summer camp in the 1960's and 70's called Camp Beaverbrook; I don't know why people laugh when I say that, but I was able to return to that hallowed ground last weekend and re-connect with a youthful, empowered part of my self that I am most grateful to integrate into my adult life.

I was at camp from the age of 8 to 15, for three weeks a summer. They were the happiest days of my childhood and the time I looked forward to all year long. No parents, no chores, expect K.P. and keeping your bunk clean...great friends to be made every year and others to reawaken with. Once puberty hit, camp became about who you'd sit next to at campfire , or who might ask you to dance on Saturday night. I felt my first love at camp, and my first heartache when I never heard from him again after camp!

Last August I Googled my camp and lo and behold, found a Yahoo group site with a 160 members! At the time I joined, the site had been up for two and something years and there were 4000 posts of memories and pranks and stupid camp song lyrics. And photographs! Since that time, I have been looking forward to the weekend now past, when a few dozen of us came together on the same land and had a camp out. Great food and drink, silly camp songs and campfire skits, walking through the hills to the old riflery range...a few intrepid spirits even went for a creek walk!

Of course things have changed there, Beaverbrook closed in 1985 and became a RV campground a few years ago. Things look different, but the sensory aspects of scent and sound and sight are still evocative of a halcyon period 35 years past. I've dreamed of camp for as many years and am so happy and grateful to have made that dream come true. Who ever said you cant' go home again didn't have a Beaverbrook, a place of the child where my spiritual roots are dug into ground as sacred to me as any I've ever walked.


Namaste`,
Connie

Love

There is no greater power on Earth than LOVE. It lives in your 4th chakra which includes your heart, your lungs, your breasts...don't ever stop loving. Stop thinking. Put your mind in your heart.

Don't ever be afraid to open your heart one more time. If it breaks, it's only cracked open further and bigger to give more love. Forgive those who have hurt you. Remember those you have loved you. I walk on this earth, knowing that I am loved and that I am a whole being as a result. Blessed be. Glory be to God.

Goddess

I dreamt last night that I sat at a table with a man and a woman: soul guides. They instructed me that now was the time to decide what my next artistic creation was going to be. I told them I had been thinking about creating goddess wands...stick with beads and fetishes to help empower women in the type of Goddess that they most relate to...i.e., Goddes of Love, of Home, of Healing. The guides eyes lit up and they said, "this is what you must do".

I am blown away by the level of Divine Guidance I receive.

For this I am very grateful.

Namaste`
Connie

Words of Wisdom

Words of Wisdom from Sri Swami Satchidananda.

“Clean Up Your Karma”

“When you encounter your karma, you have to go through it. But remember, it’s not there to bring you suffering. The pain that you go through when purging out the karma is wanted, because without that pain you cannot clean up your karma. So, if we know that the suffering is for our benefit, we will welcome it; we will happily undergo it--we won’t deny it. Pain is not given to you by somebody else. What we sow, we reap: we are the cause for our pain or for our happiness. So if pain comes, accept it. Say, ‘It is going to wash off my karma. It’s going to scrub away my karma.’

God bless you. Om Shanthi, Shanthi, Shanthi.”

Spiritual Madness and Redemption

It was into the shadows that I descended back in February when I set out to find what part of myself needed healing. I had been pulling the Black Panther card from Jamie Sam's and David Carson's Medicine Card deck for at least a year. The black panther was part of the Caddo tribe culture in the bayous of Louisiana, with her medicine of facing our fears and dark behaviors. "Darkness is the place for seeking and finding answers, for accepting healings, and for accessing the hidden light in truth.

She was a silent night stalker, waiting patiently for an initiate to seek out her protection for ventures into the darker recesses of the psyche and personality. She was the courageous totem/guide who took me into the depths of a spiritual madness that characterized a passionate foray into the realm of sexual obsession and she is the totem/guide who brought me back out again. Granted, I was temporarily broken and battered by the painful end of that particular adventure, but ultimately, I am DEEPLY GRATEFUL for the lessons I learned, the profound healing of old and buried wounds, and especially for the protection of grace in the form of Black Panther Medicine.

Namaste`

Phoenix

Like a phoenix rises from the ashes, I'm at least conscious enough to know that I am in the process of healing. I see myself amid the ashes at this point, but gaining headway everyday with a good measure of peace and calm.

I began the Bhagavad Gita on Sunday evening and have found great comfort there. I have created a new mantra for myself that keeps me focused on God, which is the essential point of the Gita.

All that I need dwells in me.
All that I am dwells in my heart.
All in my heart dwells in God.
I honor my Godly self.

The Gita also teaches that to do our work without attachment to reward is the way to keep ones focus on God. I do my work because it is what I do, not for gain or ego or reward. This is a novel concept to our western minds, but it's a goal I'd like to attain.

I've been saying for years now that my purpose in life is to learn the lessons of the human form, regardless of how many life times that takes. The ultimate goal however, is to be set free from the birth-life-death cycle and be absorbed into the "God" consciousness that is infinite Divine energy in the universe. If I'd found the Bhagavad Gita before now, I would have known that my theology is Hindu.

WHO KNEW, HINDU?

For this I am deeply grateful.

Connie

Dream Journal

Dreamt of Costco again. Shopping. A bag of soft wheat bread. I open the bag and take a slice to eat. Put the rest in the cart. I notice that there are new aisles with cold cases of fresh foods. Rows of fresh salads that are covered with huge leaves because you can't start shopping until 11am. People are lining up near the things they want. It's getting more and more crowded and competitive, I look down a spice aisle and decide I'm just not interested...in any of it. I take a tall cart stacked with Nestle Tolls House Morsels (those rich, dark and sweet treasures) and start manuevering my way out.

Dream Journal

Last night I dreamt of shopping at Costco in a wet bathing suit and one flip flop. The dog food we were there to buy cost $44.67 because there was a $20 shipping charge. I picked up a package of steaks and took a bite. Over in the east corner was a big sign that read SALMON.

This from the Medicine Cards (Jamie Sams & David Carson): Salmon: Wisdom/Inner Knowing

"Salmon is the sacred keeper of wisdom and inner knowing who, despite strong river currents, will always return to the place of it's creation. Its determination is driven by the wisdom of instinct and inner knowing, which yields a sense of purpose that cannot be thwarted by external forces. Coming full circle, Salmon medicine people finish what they begin, bringing life's events and cycles to closure.

Salmon medicine honors every encounter in life as a gathering of wisdom.

Behave in a manner that honors your path. The proper use of inner knowing comes when you flow with your authentic feelings, embracing all the experiences you encounter in life as learning lessons rather than hardships. Salmon teaches you to see every bend in the river as a new adventure, with a lesson you need to learn in order to grow. That knowledge becomes authentic wisdom through applying these truths to your life."

Last week in a meditation, I was asked to focus on a natural image and I chose the river behind my house. I was asked to BE that river and it being a tidal river, I described myself thus: "I am fluid and flow in and out, guided by the moon. In sunlight I glisten with sparkling jewels. I nurture and support myriad life forms, but since you cannot see to the bottom, the richness at my core is evident only when tide is low."


Haleleujah in a hard time!

The 5th Chakra

The fifth chakra encompasses the neck, the throat, the shoulders, and the mouth. It's the center of communication and the center of willpower. The lesson in the 5th Chakra is to surrender to Divine will. The fourth and fifth chakras, when balanced, work together in a beautiful way that allows the power of the heart center to listen to the power of Divine guidance.

I dreamt last night that a woman named Carol, a fellow parishoner at church, did surgery on my neck and vocal chords. This being a dream, I was watching the surgery and realized once she had cut me open and exposed my "voice", that she didn't know what to do next; that she wasn't trained in this type of surgery and had to leave me, exposed, and go research what to do next in the surgical process.

Swift Karma

For the record, Karma was swift and painful in this matter of broken hearts. I may not be out of the woods, but I'm strengthend and on a new path of discovering just what it is I truly seek in human relationships.

Return to the Goddess

For women, there is only one source of power: the Goddess who lives in each of us. There is nothing outside of ourselves, no source, other than the stregnth of the feminine to sustain and nurture life. We are the womb and the tomb, to us everything will return.

Endurance

Endurance is the lesson of the third chakra where I am experiencing this particular fall from grace. In my guts, I am paying the energetic price for having risked and lost my sense of integrity and honor. Not to mention the heartache...theirs, mine, ours. I feel so humiliated by my desire to "live out loud" and break the rules. For this has surely been nothing but an act of rebellion against the institution of marriage. Rebellion of an adolscent proud in her boldness. God forgive me.

Remorse. Regret. Shame. Humbled.

Remorse sets in now. Outrage at my own arrogance takes me over and shames me. My blatant and willful disregard for the heart and feelings of others astonishes me, given how much I've invested in my own self-made notion of self-awareness. Arrogance has been one of those characteristics that remain in the shadows....at least to me. Others see it all the time I'm sure.

A few years ago Christo shared a song he'd just heard with me, Norah Jones' , "You Humbled Me, Lord". I've been singing that song for two years now; calling out for a humbling that might help me better understand the nature of pride. This is one of those times that I'm deeply grateful to worship a God of Love and Forgiveness.

Tender Mercy

Connie –
 
However much we need to discover and rediscover for ourselves as a couple, I consider myself unusually lucky that in a life as fulfilling and accomplished as my own, such profound joy can still be found in sharing the night’s wonder beside a soul that joined mine seventeen years ago.   
 
I only hope as much for our son in his life.
 
Christo

The Flip Side of Healing

So, the confession.

The flip side of being a healer is finding myself causing harm. Harm is the incoherency of the act of healing.

I have spent the past two months in a soap opera. I hate opera. And I especially eschew soap opera. But I found myself cast in one of my own making...taking messages from the dreamtime...weaving them into waking time...spinning a web, I suppose.

Have you ever seen the writing spider? Those HUGE eight legged, hour glass shaped, black and white with a big yellow star kind of spiders, that reveal themselves in Virginia, round about August? According to the Lakota, she was given the medicine of keeping the alphabet, which allowed the stories of the tribes to be permanently recorded, which of course, changed everything and the tradition of story telling soon took on numerous and ultimately, inane forms of communication. She is the totem for the writer, hers is our medicine. But I digress.

MY actions and choices of the past two months have colluded with another to create tremendous and unspeakable heartache. For this I am deeply sorry. I have been blind, selfish, inconsiderate. Such is the language of Desire, I see now. I apologize. May I be forgiven. May Karma be swift and fair.

Kevin Hanna Quote

My wildly gifted, phenomenally talented sculptor, eccentric as a loon brother in law had this to say about passion:


"Until it becomes fanatic, passion isn't even interesting."

Right on my Brother!

Weighing in on Pitbulls: Angels in Disguise

I was at a low point at 7pm this evening, feeling overwhelmed by the affects of limerance and alcohol. If you don't know what limerance is, Google it...you might find it illuminating. In short, it's a "crush" condition that looks like mental illness.
Let me tell you, it's not a good mix for a girl whose gone on and off anti-depressants in the past 9 weeks and rides daily hormonal tsumani's as my middle aged body tries to figure out just what the hell is going on in here.

I was praying, begging on my knees, seeking relief from misery, and my dog Luke, the monster dog white German Shepherd with the big heart, starting going bullistic with barking as if there were a 747 landing in our front yard. I heard a police car horn WHOOP but didn't bother to look outside, because hell, it's dark. A few minutes later, Luke is at the front door, barking-no roaring-insanely. I look outside and there are two pitpulls on my front porch.

So what do I do? I go outside to greet them! This is genuinely my first instinct. I notice immediately that they have collars and tags, but inspite of what I see, my perceptive my mind jumps to wondering if they've been dumped in a "good" neighborhood. This prejudiced perception on my part is a cultural knee-jerk reaction to finding two pit pulls at my front door, and I'm embarrassed to even admit it, but there you are! I'm talking to the dogs in a happy voice and they respond by running at my heels and jumping up on me a little bit, "great", they think, "now we've found some fun!" Just a little twinge of fear seeps into my veins, but I keep moving and say, "You guys gotta go home! Where do you live?" Ok, in Virginia, that sounds like, "all y'all gotta go HOME!"

When I get to the street at the end of my driveway, the dogs hang a right and run straight into the headlights of two Norfolk Police cars. One is backing up toward me: I flag him and ask, "where are these dogs are from?"; as if he would have the answer! And it is somehow comforting to have "the Law" on board for what was turning into a very compelling situation. Next thing you know, there are three cop cars and one of the officers is a little reluctant to leave the safety of his vehicle cuz, "one of them growled at me when I put my hand out".

Another officer, who appears to be taking charge of the predicament, says he's called Animal Control and they won't come out. I decide that we need to get a hold of these dogs and read the pertinent information on the tags attached to their collars. By now the neighbors are at their windows and doors. I cajole with the happy voice the younger female of the two and grab her collar. She is so darned cute! Her head is tucked down, her back end is rotating like mad, and every inch of her is saying, "LOVE ME!!". The officer whose taken the initiative in the dynamic shines a flashlight on the i.d. tag, and tells me my eyes are better than his cuz he doesn't have his glasses on! I read off the number: 589-5382 (photographic memory). I read off the address: 105 Beverly Ave.

The dogs are only a couple of blocks from home, maybe a 1/4 mile. Officer with initiative says, "lets put 'em in the back of the car." Sweet thing jumps right in and is happy as any pit pull on a wayward adventure could possibly be. But now it's time to deal with the older male, who seems edgy, distrusting and full of fear; he's quaking at the new situation, causing my own fear to seep back into my veins. But hey, I've come this far, I'm not gonna give up now. So I put on the loving voice and clap my hands and get down to his level and low and behold, he comes to me and my hand is on his collar which is way too loose and gonna come off in my hand and we'll lose him if I'm not careful. With both hands on the very thin collar of a 70 lb. mass of muscle and bone, I tighten the buckle and lead him into the back of the police car. He jumps in and the cop shuts the door.


As I turn away to head back home, one of the neighbors on her front porch thanks me. I laugh and smile and say, "I'm the dog whisperer" and she says, "you'll have to advertise your service". I'm thinking, "what the hell is she talking about?", those dogs just saved my life!

Communication from my Beloved

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other,
doesn’t make any sense.




Connie my love,

This is what I came across last night, among much else within Rumi’s transforming wisdom.

Am I right that this is the field we’ve been seeking for some time now, but have found all the wrong words – or, wrongly, tried using words at all - in trying to express for each other? How many Virgos does it take to analyze a bulb’s light?

My soul longs to lie in that grass with yours. Perhaps beside; perhaps entwined. Again, just words.

I am moistened by our dew.


Christo

Rumi: The Book of Love

If you have not yet acquired a copy of Rumi's Book of Love, I urge you to do so now. This is the pinnacle:
From: "Where You Love From"

In your light I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.

You dance inside my chest
where no one sees you,

but sometimes I do,
and that sight becomes
this art.

Religion

"Religion is a way of walking, not a way of talking". Dean William R. Inge

I find this quote a profound statement and agree with it wholeheartedly. It seems to me that those among us who feel compelled to "evangelize" their religious beliefs and invest tremendous amounts of energy into converting the unconvinced (or the merely content) is a folly of grand proportions and I can't help but wonder about the basic insecurity in one's faith if one needs the validation of others in order to feel safe and secure and "right" in that faith.

As a neo-pagan, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Taoist, I believe that my greatest gift to the world of faith is to simply walk in the ways of love and compassion and pray for balance and harmony, for myself, for others, for the world. I don't believe in sin, I find it a silly and immature notion. I do believe in Karma, but I don't believe it sneaks up on us and whacks us over the head for something we did or didn't do in a previous incarnation. For me, the most important thing in the ways of faith and religion is to keep things as clear and clean as possible. It's important to finish each day and be done with it. It's important to forgive myself, and others, fallibility and humanity. I'm quite fond of John Lennon's "Instant Karma":

"...Instant karma's gonna get you
Gonna knock you off your feet
Better recognize your brothers
Eve’ryone you meet
Why in the world are we here
Surely not to live in pain and fear
Why on earth are you there
When you'’re eve’rywhere
Come and get your share"


Why on earth am I here? For the same reason I've been "here" over and over: I'm a healer, and according the the Buddhists, what I am is what I will be and what I will be is what I have always been: a healer and at 47 years old I'm beginning to understand just what gift I have been given; an ability to see the pain and hurt and disease in others and with that ability, a desire to do something about it, through acts of love and prayer and song. I am so deeply grateful for the people who come my way, and for the gift of being a force of healing for myself, and for others.

For this I am truly, deeply grateful.

Connie

Intuition

"Intuition is the treasure of a woman's psyche. It is like a divining instrument and like a crystal through which one can see with uncanny interior vision. It is like a wise old woman who is with you always, who tells you exactly what the matter is, tells you exactly whether you need to go left or right. It is a form of The One Who Knows, old La Que Sabe`, the Wild Woman."

****
" Ask within for her advice
She is the Mother of the Ages
Nothing surprises her.
She has seen it all."

Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Women Who Run with the Wolves

I do not have permission to use this quote. If I have offended, I apologize. It seems to me the information is important enough to be desseminated in whatever means seem appropriately intentioned.

For this I am grateful,
Connie

Sit down write

Live. Love. Life.
Sit. Down. Write.

What I accomplished this week