Heart in Context

A note enclosed with my order of raku heart beads:

"Connie-

The heart that you picked has gone missing. I looked everywhere!  I apologize and I've included two other beads for you and a new heart.

Let me know if I can make it up to you-

Kira"

Autism, cont.

This from my friend Mary Vickers, regarding her son C.J. who is wildly gifted and also
happens to have Aspergers.
"The beautiful young man in your picture (see below) was taken yesterday as he was leaving
Creighton University after completing a week long camp for gifted children. This
was a camp that he got into on his God-given strengths. As you know, we have
four children and CAMP for each of them is a little pricey, so this year C. J. applied
for scholarships and was awarded two, one
from the Nebraska Association for the Gifted and the
other was PTI a group that assists those with disabilities.
We are so proud of him for setting his sights on something he
wanted and then recognizing all that has been provided to him and using it,
instead of just seeing himself as autistic.

{MARY SENT ME AN IMAGE OF A PAINTING OF CJ's, I was not able to upload it)
Like most Aspergers children, he has a "passion": CJ's is weather.
"The eye of the Hurricane" is his interpretation of last years hurricanes
spiraling out from the central EYE. As in the case of wildly creative manic depressives
and schizophrenics: is it worth a cure to stiffle this creativity that God put into a soul?"

thanks
m

For this I am truly grateful,
Connie

Autism

In the New York Times recently, an article appeared on a familial rift that has taken place with the Wright family. The Wright family navigates the course of AUSTISM SPEAKS, "mega-charity dedicated to curing the dreaded neurological disorder that affects one of every 150 children in America today."

The rift was created when parents and child disagreed publically on the possible causes of Autism, i.e., environmental factors vs. genetics. I do not mean to sound insensitive to the families of Autistic children, however it is my humble opinion that Autism holds the key to much greater mysteries in the span of human kind.

How significant is the timing of this Autism crisis, in terms of human development? We've already replicated our brains into hardware and software, and today's children with Autism may well hold the secret to issues, concerns and problems that we haven't begun to conceive of, in response to the technological advances, shall I say, leaps, we have made in the past 20 years. I believe that Autism is a gift and grace and a karmic blessing. I believe that perhaps "curing" Autism is the wrong approach to a condition we do not know even about understand.

Yet surely it is a painful and difficult experience to parent a child with one of the myriad forms that autism takes. My deepest empathy is with those families whose lives center around the needs of their specifically gifted child and this is my point. Rather than viewing the condition as something to be eradicated, wouldn't it be a worthy pursuit to change our perception of autism into a blessing we do not fully understand or appreicate?

Thirty years ago Down Syndrome was of major relevance to our post-legal-abortion conundrum. In 2007, parents of some Down Syndrome children and adults are saying, no, don't terminate pregnancies with this particular genetic disorder. These people are very unique individuals who bring tremendous joy to the lives they touch. I'm just concerned that before trying to eradicate Autism, we first take plenty of time to understand it and it's possible positive affects on the human race. The Autistic are specially gifted, wired, if you will, in a totally unique way that may hold the answer to a problem they are actually here to resolve. All things in this life, when viewed as a blessing, are capable of transforming our world. Let us not move too quickly on finding the cure for a biological link whose magnitude we do not yet understand.

And this is my prayer for all the families living with, coping with, aching with, the challenge of parenting children with Autism.

May the long time sun
Shine upon you
All love surround you
And the pure light
within you
Guide your way on.

Respectfully,
Connie
P.S. the arrow next the title above will take you to the Autism Speaks website.

Re: The Fat Rant

Above is a link to a video of a Fat Rant (click the green arrow next to the title). I urge you to watch it, regardless of your size. And if you're a guy, then take another five mintues to watch Shadow Box and his response to the Fat Rant. Very illuminating!

Glinda

I like a woman who arrives in a pink bubble. Everything I need to know about being female I learned from Glinda.

For Karen

Auntie Em/Connie:" Why don't you find a place where there isn't any trouble. "

Dorothy/Karen: "A place where there isn't any trouble. Do you suppose there is such a place Toto? There must be. It's not a place you can get to by a boat or a train. It's far, far away. Behind the moon, beyond the rain. "

All is well my dear,
You are loved,
Connie

Dream Journal

Last week I dreamt of sitting next to the Dalai Lama on a bench. As my guru, he asked me a question to which I replied with the correct answer : "the ego". He had a look of consternation on his face, mirroring my frustration with the paradox of ego...that enlightenment requires the loss of ego at the same moment that ego must be acknowledged as an essential facet of the human experience. No matter. He chose me to wear the white tunic.

For this I am deeply grateful.

Connie

Soul Travel

The Clown I Grew Up With

Brooke: Where the hell are you. Will I be marrying you anytime soon? No pressure, really. Unless you need me to tell Jeff to get off his butt and make an honest woman of you. Or maybe it's you who needs to make an honest man of him. Or maybe you never plan to marry again. Who cares? Not my business, is it? My tongue is in my cheek for all previous sentences addressed to you.

Debbie: Everything will turn out ok in the end. And if it doesn't? It's not the end. (my friend Margaret is the first that said that to me). You are fine. You are beautiful. You are loved. What more do you want?

J'ordain: Happy, healthy, happy, healthy, happy, healthy, dead.

Kim: I think I just had red wine and Lake Champlain Organic Dark Chocolate for dinner. With a nibble on a brownie for an appetizer. And you?

Hi Doug and Sandye, I don't think I'm an Episcopalian anymore! What's a girl to do when chanting brings her closest to God?

OOOOMMMMMMM MANI PADRE OOOOMMMMMM
Love to you ALL!

Connie


And one last thing: What if the Hokey Pokey IS what it's all about?

Mother

Mother's Day 2007. I am not a big fan of Hallmark Holidays, but Jesse gave me a fabulous painting in the impressionist style, not unlike Monet's Water Lillies. It is absolutely wonderful but he says it's horrible. Me thinks he protest too much. My hope is that he is proud of his work because I certainly am! He has a hard time doing things the art teacher's way and I think that sometimes distractes him from the nature of his intrinsic talent.

I've thought alot about the nature of mothering this week and of course, my own mother. Our most recent blood-letting took the form of a Christmas visit...her to me...California to Virginia. I think I managed about four hours of hospitality before the fight or flight response that being in my mother's presence stimulates in my nervous system kicked in. The dynamic got progressively worse for the following four days until I just had to leave her to fend for herself her last 24 hours here, which was a day longer than we had agreed upon in the first place. I can feel my chest starting to tighten just writing about her and remembering the stress and discomfort of that visit; a visit that can best be characterized as the last one I mean to have with my mother.

I want to divorce my mother. I want nothing to do with her. I cannot begin to imagine what I could possibly learn from remaining in relationship with Dawn. The very best I can attempt on my own, three thousand miles away is tolerance of her particular life journey on Earth and compassion for how very ill-equipped she is for it. So, tolerance and compassion are what I can continue to learn, but I do not need to be in contact with her to practice them. I am tolerant and compassionate towards my mother, I just want nothing more to do with her.

My priest, when I told him I wanted to divorce my mother said, "Well, you can't, the BIble says to honor thy mother and father". Well, there is no better way to motivate me to do something than to tell me I can't do it.

"Honor your parents" is not a universal truth that my spiritual development hangs on. "Honor your parent" is religious dogma that keeps parents and children in unhappy and painful relationships. I am not capable of honoring my mother because she is not an honorable person. I am not capable of respecting a parent for whom I have no respect. Dawn was a vessel my soul used to incarnate into this life. Who knows why I chose a hostile and inhospitable womb to incubate in, but I did and everything turned out ok.

Yes, I believe that the soul chooses it's parents but that we FIND our family out in the world, especially once our biological parents have no more to teach us. The truth now though, is that the womb I chose to birth from doesn't even exist! It was surgically removed and destroyed years ago...there is no shred of a physcial connection left to the woman I grew up the daughter of. I moved 3000 miles away from her 23 years ago for the sake of self-preservation and I have no regrets regarding that choice.

The word's of wisdom Dawn repeated over and over were, "to thine own self be true". This to me means a life seeking the true self, that spark of God light that we all carry, that is rooted in our authentic self. My mother's version of "to thine own self be true" was a more superficial interpretation that looks like stingy selfishness. Am I terrified of becoming my mother? Yes, you betcha, but I feel certain there is no danger of that. You'd have to know my mother and you'd have to know me to understand why I feel so strongly about that.

I have a friend, someone I work with, who recently told me of her mother beating her until she lied...of her drunken mother beating her black and blue. This woman doesn't speak to her mother and hasn't for years. And why the hell should she? At what point do we get to let go of Judeo-Christian guilt about honoring parents who deserve no honor and haven't earned the respect that honoring someone would require? For me, for my friend, for every woman out there who has disowned her mother, that point is now.

Mourning the Fallen

9 dead, 20 wounded



Fifteen members of the 82nd Airborne Unit from Fort Bragg NC have been killed in Iraq this month. Nine of these soldiers died yesterday. Shall we all don camoflauge and honor the fallen in a National Day of Mourning as many, dressed in the orange and maroon, did last Friday for the 32 civilians killed at Va. Tech?

This madness has got to stop! I felt completely non-plussed by last weeks headlines. This isn't to say that I don't feel compassion for the families of the dead. But since the inception of the Iraq war, there are a total of three months that less than 32 American soldiers died. When do they get their National Day of Mourning?

Content vs. Happy

Link

So, spring is finally here and I am gently poking my head out of the burrow I create for wintering. I DO come out because I HAVE to during the cold months, but it is not my true nature. I was an Indian Summer baby...spring, summer, fall? All pretty darn great for me psychologically, but winter and shadows and darkness are not aspects of nature that I am naturally attuned to. I’m not happy in the winter and I’m here to report that I’m beginning to unplug from the whole fantasy of “happiness” being some ideal that our culture has bought into when in reality, most folks don’t even take the time to question just what happiness would look like if they met it in a dark alley in February or the Fields of Folly amidst swaying sunflowers in August! Me? I’ll settle for contentment. I’ll settle for not depressed, not manic, but simply, content.

Pray for Elizabeth click here

Please become part of a miracle in the making!
Visit the link and say a prayer for healing.
Namaste`,
Connie

The language of God

Perhaps it is the language of organized religion that creates division. Perhaps getting too specific about
who said what when throws up perceptual roadblocks, conceived by individual experience. Perhaps it is
fear of the unknown and indolence on my part that keeps me in the dark with Muhammed rather than illuminate
for myself the wisdom he was sent to share. Perhaps the humble Gandhi is my guide precisely because it is the lesson of humility I have been sent here to learn. Gandhi was a Christ. Christ was a Gandhi.

We've been sent so many messengers in 2000 years, all with voices that speak of ascending to a
higher level of peace within the heart of our physical bodies. All the prophets have radiated wisdom
from their heart. All of them said "be here now", put the past behind you, be present for the now because THAT is
where God IS.

Pray for Elizabeth

In my humble opinion, we've been gifted with an opportunity for unity as a nation, to create a miracle. Being the idealist and optimist that I am, isn't it possible that the purpose to Elizabeth Edwards' cancer recurrance is to galvanize us
as "one nation under God" to prayer for her healing? Please go to
this address and pray for Elizabeth. Thank you.

http://prayforelizabeth.org/

Sobriety

I haven't had a drink in over six weeks. My GOD, life is boring without booze.

But alas, I recognized that 35 years of drinking had culminated in a daily drinking pattern that once I'd started,
I didn't want to stop, and ultimately I'd end my day drunk, tired, irritable and downright unpleasant by 9pm.
And I was looking forward to 5pm a little too much, aching to get home to mix a martini.

I also recognized that my drinking was an obstacle to my relationship with God. I recognized
that my chances of achieving the union with God that I so desire were much improved if I wasn't
putting alcohol between me and the fierce reality of the big huge tough work that a relationship
with God, IN God requires.

So, life is a little boring...so much of my social life centered around alcohol and the truth
for me is that I'm not ready to be around drinkers, I feel so disconnected from the "pulse"
that alcohol creates. I've been concerned about how my relationship with Chris would be
affected, and ultimately, I think my not drinking has been a positive change for us. The term
"enabling" certainly applied to our drinking behavior and I found that it excluded Jesse
as well, since Chris and I would get into this groove of conversation that would often end up
heavy and over Jesse's head and he'd just go off and do his own thing.

I truly miss it though, just like I've missed smoking cigarettes with cocktails all these
years. But I do feel healthier, and happier and don't wake up with a headache every morning
and I feel more peaceful, knowing that today, there is one less obstacle that I'm creating
between myself and the Creator.

Namaste`,
Connie

Yoga Vision

While in final relaxation in yoga today, I got a vision of Nick Wheeler in church, holding a beautiful apricot cockatiel. I bent close to hear what the bird had to tell me, with complete faith that I would be able to understand whatever it had to say. I also thought it might poke around in my mouth with it's beak if I opened my mouth. It was a lovely little vision...I wonder what the message was!

Wise Words

I found this at dawnamarkova.com. I hope she won't mind my broadcasting her brilliance and linking you to her site.


I will not die an unlived life
I will not live in fear
Of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
To allow my living to open me
To make me less afraid,
More accessible
To loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance;
To live
So that which came to me as seed
Goes to the next as blossom
And that which came to me as blossom,
Goes on as fruit.

Dawna Markova

Chapel of Love

Wow, what a ride this past year has been...I cast about in all directions, seeking some deeper meaning and guidance for what I was meant to do next. I've slowly been accepting the idea that I am coming to the end of my shelf life as a jewelry artist. I always said that when my eyes went, I'd know it was time to stop. My eyes are doing ok but my hands are surely feeling the strain of the fine work I've been doing for 16 years. I am choosing to listen to my body and move into the new arena that I'm so very excited and passionate about; wedding officiating.

I love my little studio so much and I couldn't bear to give it up. I want to transform it into a wedding chapel! I read an article over the weekend in the New York times that stated the average American wedding carries a price tag of $27,856!! This is insanity! My vision is to create meaningful, marriage-focused wedding for a fraction of that price. It's my intention to return to a solid spiritual and meaningful ritual to the sacrament of marriage and I believe that I've been called to a ministry that does just that!

I attended a bridal show with my jewelry in January and more than anyhing else, what I saw was a huge number of brides and vendors, both with dollar signs in their eyes. The sound-track for the show should have been a loop of cash registers ringing! It's not my intention to get in on the action of a $30,000 wedding. The dress and the flowers and the caterer are all lovely, it's nice to throw a party, but it's ludicrous to throw money away or charge 3 times as much just because there's a five figure wedding budget! For 10% of that amount, I'm going to offer simplicity and dignity, ceremony, ritual and personalized vows that mean something profound to the bride and groom.

What makes sense is to finish the business of the Connie Hann Jewels this year in 2007, then take the winter to transform the little house into a chapel and open those doors on the first day of spring 2008. This is so cool, so doable, so NEEDED and I hope that it all falls into place beautifully.

Last night I dreamt that I found a dress of my grandmothers that she wore as a matron of honor. It had her name on it, and it fit me. How perfect is that for guidance that I'm moving in the right direction?

Wish me well!

Do Nothing, Just Love

My last post was less than a week ago and I felt that I was in spiritual crisis...not knowing what to do, feeling like if I wasn't careful I was going to miss out on some big huge turn I was supposed to make in my life.

I quit drinking alcohol a week ago, on Jesse's 13th birthday. Cocktails with Chris in the evening had become a daily ritual that I found myself looking just a little too forward to. My problem with alcohol has always been the desire to just keep drinking once I got started. If I made a drink before dinner, well, it would turn in to two or three and by 9pm I was tired, angry and just pretty much wanted to be left alone. I'm a happy drunk, at least until I'm not...

I had my first drunk (and consequent hang-over) in 7th grade, on Gallo Burgundy. I had my first cigarette that year as well and smoked for another 23 years before giving it up for good. I was Jesse's age, which in comparison is just unfathomable to me. I cannot imagine Jesse trying alcohol or tobacco or pot right now. Once I started high school, drinking was what we did on the weekends...we drank, we partied, we drove, some of us died. I think God or the angels must pay special attention to the driving teenagers; there are so many occasions I could have killed someone if not myself and it's only by God's grace that such was not the case.

So, I've decided that I do not want to be drunk for Jesse's adolescence. In this past week of sobriety, it has become so clear to me what alcohol has prevented me from experiencing: a deep and profound connection to the love of God. Because, now, in sobriety? The level of love that I'm feeling, and giving and receiving is just huge and beyond description. When I've woken at 3am this past week and no longer lay there and fret, I just lay there and experience love. I experience my situation, my blessings and my grace by the sight of the eye of my heart that is truly, going through remarkable healing.

My yogini, Gwen, shared a dream she had last week in which she held her hand inches away from my back heart chakra and said, "Wow, this woman's love is BIG! It's HUGE!"

And ya know what? That's all I need to know. Spiritual/mid-life/ crisis complete. I have BIG LOVE. That's all I need to know to continue down my chosen path and create healing wherever I go with this big huge love I've been blessed with. Love isn't ego, love isn't pride, love is simply the magic wand that each and everyone of us was gifted with when we incarnated. I think I dropped mine years ago, but miraculously, here it is again, in my hand, in my heart, serving God, serving Love.

Rejoice today, in the knowledge that you are loved.

Namaste`,
Connie

I don't know what to do

I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do!

Tell the truth.

I'm bored with my life and I don't know what to do about it. I keep thinking I must
DO something with my life when what I should be doing is experiencing my life
as it is in this moment, filled with grace and warmth and comforting things and
people who love me and pets who love me even more and ask nothing of me
other than to feed them and take them for a walk and somehow it just doesn't
feel like ENOUGH!

On Sunday I had a spiritual epiphany. I was moved to tears by the anthem sung
by the choir at church. "Here I am Lord". I moved from tears to weeping and from
weeping to sobbing and then the sun was shining on my face through a pane of glass
at least hundreds of years old and I was surrounded by a community of people all
gathered together in one place, each experiencing their personal relationship with God.
I felt myself surrender a little more to this entity know as Christ. Not the historical Christ,
not the literal Christ Jesus who walked the earth for 33 years 2007 years ago. Not the MAN
but the consciousness. Not the MAN, but the energy of Divine that is capable of manifesting
itself in every human being.

Ricki Lee Jones has recorded a new album, an interpretation of the actual words that
Jesus spoke. After ten years as an Episcopalian, this is what I've heard from the mouth
of Christ:

"Go in peace to love and serve your God."
"Love your God above all others."
"Love your neighbor, as yourself."
"Love one another. Forgive one another".

That's about it. That's the crux of what the sky God felt the folks of the middle eastern
region of the planet Earth needed to hear 2000 years ago. So he sent a teacher, a rabbi. And
word got around that you didn't need an interventionist to talk to Abba...a term of
endearment for Father. Jesus said, just tallk to Him.

Just as Taoist and Buddhists teach that simplicity is the way to enlightenment, I think
that was Jesus' message too. And I guess it boils down to the fact that being in
relationship with a God or with self; whether your purpose is to lose your ego and
make your mind like the empty sky or attempting to go in peace to serve something
Divine in each of us and in this beautiful world, the truth is that it can feel like big huge
tough work to simply get out of bed and love yourself in a day.

New Mantra

I've got a new mantra to replace one I've been reciting for 13 years. This is the old one:

I, Connie, have complete and total fatih in the universe
to provide me with all that I need for a full and happy
life. Thank you God for my life.

My new one;

I, Connie, have complete and total faith that the
universe is conspiring to shower me with blessings.
For this I am truly grateful.

Namaste`

Letting my mother go

Christmas was a hellacious journey of intolerance with my 68 year old mother, whom I'd invited to spend Christmas with us in Virginia. Spending time with my mother is about as much fun as five days with a petulant 14 year old. My mother is not a mature person. My mother is not an intelligent person. My mother is not a nurturing person, a generous person, a spiritual person or capable of love in any form that I can recognize. We bring out the worst in one another and bicker back and forth. But because I know I am smarter than she is, I have the upper hand. So, when she returned home after the visit, the emails started and she told me exactly what she thinks is wrong with me and why we don't get along and you know what??? I DON"T CARE! I don't respect my mother or the choices she's made with her life. I hate that she is 68 and still chasing after men. It embarrasses me and I just want to tell her to grow up and get a life and stop reliving her abandonment issues over and over and over again! So I've decided to stop banging my head against this particular wall and just let go of the fact that I have a mother who is still living.

The Thought

The thought manifests as the word;
The word manifests as the deed;
The deed develops into habit;
And habit hardens into character.

So watch the thought and its ways with care,
And let it spring from love
Born out of concern for all beings.
---- The Buddha

Xena on Board

"Warriorship is a continual journey. To be a warrior is to learn to be genuine in every moment of your life."
Shambala the Sacred Path of the Warrior by Chogyam Trungpa


I was in Xena mode yesterday. Ever since I had the dream where she got out of my car, put her hands on her hips and telepathically asked me what needed to be done, I've been doing the work of owning the warrior energy that I have actually spent a good portion of my life avoiding, ignoring or simply disempowering through the skewed thinking of the tribal culture that says women are weaker than men.

My experience of the past year has taught me that very few men even exist out there. Most males I encounter are just little boys playing at trying to figure out what the hell it means to be a man. I have spent so much of my life within the illusion that men were the prize, when in truth, self-respect is the only true prize and when that gets bartered away in the battle of the sexes, it sometimes feels as though there isn't much lower to go.

I never watched Xena, Warrior Princess on television. What little knowledge I have of her came from cruising the internet for about 1/2 an hour on Saturday before my dinner party to honor her. But when a warrior princess comes to you in a dream and let's you know that she is fully on board, it's certainly time to do a little research, don't you think?

What I learned about her is that she is a fictional creation of someone's mind. She herself does not appear in the actual mythological stories her character interacts with, but her archetype is that of the Amazon warrior woman.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazons

Amazon warriors were known for cutting off one of their breasts to improve their bow and arrow skills. How pragmatic can you get? And hasn't breast cancer become the new age intitiation into the tribe of current day Amazonians who battled the cancer beast and won? This isn't to say that all breast cancer survivors have transmuted their cancer into warrior energy, but I suspect that if we polled a great many of them, we would find an incredible cadre` of women with tremendous personal power, resources and strength.


What saddens me is the pain created through that initiation, but then, in my experience, pain is a great teacher and for some people, pain is the only lesson left before a higher consciousness can be achieved. So what do you do? You go through it! You stare it down, you look it in the eye and you tell it the get the hell out of the way and when it doesn't you step on it or over it or pass through it. Cancer as the great gatekeeper to the next level of acsension? Sure, why not? What is clear is that cancer is a modern day epidemic and thanks to men and women of science, whose life mission includes the challenge to create treatment and cure, the epidemic is being beat on a regular basis.

But back to Xena, and yesterday. You know, I am such a two sided coin of loving-kindness on one side and take no prisoners or bullshit on the other. My loving kindness self is forever collecting the broken and the scarred, the down and out and the lost in the woods people who cross my path. The pattern that I have continued to enter into is this need to fix and heal which lands me in the unpleasant position of being needed too much, or hounded too much for that which I so generously gave initially.

Like LaMont, the guy on Colley Ave who I employed to wash my car back in November. Now he behaves like he's on my payroll. I don't mind paying people for their work but I do mind when that also becomes a strain on my time and energy resources. On Christmas eve I gave him $20 and he promised to come back the following Sat. at 2pm and wash my car. Saturday came and no LaMont, and my thought is, great, now I'm rid of him. But he came back yesterday, at his convenience and I didn't answer the door, just stayed here doing what I was doing which is this: writing. I refused to get pulled into his drama and I refused to be interrupted from work that I truly wanted to be doing so that he could give me excuses for why he didn't show up. It's bullshit, and WHO NEEDS IT?

One of my resolutions this year is to not involve myself in the life and affairs of toxic people. That includes my mother, my friend and people like LaMont. I have become very selfish with my precious energy because I finally get just how powerful it is when it isn't a source for the likes of unconscious people who play at life. Don't get me wrong, I can pray for those people and prayer, in a pure form, is an awesome power to behold. But I can't continue to be drained by those without their own power source. If we can exchange energy, great, but anything else just isn't gonna serve my higher purpose for this year which is to inspire others to do what they love.

Xena lives.

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.