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.