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