Inspire Me Mondays #20

A lovely last day of August.

Inspired by: the Sitting Tree, who sent an invitation on the wind to have me come sit in its loving embrace. I accepted the invitation and wandered over to the creek. I sat for 2 hours. Yes, 2 full hours. It was easy. Because peace is easy and so very needed these days.

The lull of the creek, the ever changing light, the hardly-to-be-believed soothing energy of the tree, it all kept me there in a state of utter contentment. Next time, I plan to stay longer. To me, Nature feels like nothing less than home. And home is where I need to be.

For more Inspire Me Mondays, click HERE.

A Letter To Esme

My Dearest Esme,

I have been waiting for you. Finally, in the season of sunflowers, you arrive as a herald, ushering in the light ahead of the dawn. Welcome to your beautiful life. Your Mother is one whom, many years ago, I had waited for as well. Like her, you will always live in my heart.

I have no daughter of my own, Esme, but if I did, I would tell her needful things. I will tell these things to you and offer them as a shield and a prayer.

You were born today to heal this world with your love. Your love, found in laughter and bursts of joy and steadfast compassion, is the key that will not only offer healing, but unlock all the treasures you deserve. You deserve every treasure, Esme. You deserve not only the moon and the stars, but good health and friendship and support in all you will do. You deserve the sweet and the savory and the courage to recover from the bitter when it comes. It will come, as it is meant to, to shape you into a more eloquent human being and help you to understand the beauty to be found in all circumstances.

Your heart, Esme, will be your truest companion. Practice paying it close attention. It will speak to you in a language meant only for you. Follow its every calling. Its compass, its barometer, its map will lead you to all roads and connections meant to enrich your soul's earthly adventure. It will always uphold your highest good.

Know you will never be alone. Just as a legion of angels ushered you into the light today, so will they remain with you, ever vigilant, guarding you and lifting you in each moment. Know you are protected and loved by more than human eyes can see, and so it shall be. (However, your legion would care to remind you that common sense and awareness of your surroundings makes angelic duties much easier.)

Most of all, Esme, know you are wanted. By so many people. You matter. You are needed. You will always be loved. I light a candle in your honor today, to welcome your little flame into the hearts of many. Across the miles, I bow to you and look forward to basking in the tenderness of your soul.

xxoo

{For Esme Alexandra, daughter of my cousin, born August 29, 2009, in the stillness before the dawn.}

Maps Of Change

I have spent considerable time noticing clouds this year. I have wondered why this year, this summer, they have captured my attention more than any time previous. And then the poet, May Swenson, whose collection of words found their way into my hands recently, answered my question when she wrote of clouds. She referred to them as maps of change. Yes. Most certainly, they signal change for me. In that change, I sense death. In that death, I scan the skies and wait silently for new life.

Is it because I am mid-way into my 40's that the sudden death of old ways of thinking lie scattered on the ground like rain-soaked bones, or is it my accumulated inner strength has reached the perfect water mark to drown my tenacious ways that no longer serve? Regardless of age or perfect timing or the tipping point of inner strength, I can no longer invest my thoughts and devotion and precious energy into things and projects, and even some people, that no longer serve me. If I am honest with myself, so many of the projects, and yes, some of the people, never served me to begin with. Equal reciprocity was never forthcoming and my addictive impulse to give more and more and more in the direction of semi-hopeless causes has come close to being the death of me.

But today, I choose a different kind of death. I willingly choose a death that promises rebirth. I choose to scatter my energies no more. I call back to myself loving devotion that has been misplaced. I spread my open hands over my own heart. I wait inside this pause as thoughts and energies redirect themselves in ways I cannot begin to imagine. I have no answers for myself. I have only the sudden urge to let go.

Clouds continue to billow and drift, mapping my change, redirecting my ways and keeping my head aloft.

Inspire Me Mondays #19

Oh, how I love animals!

Inspired by: Goats. Because they're cute and loaded with personality. But mostly because their milk turns into the most delicious cheese! Goat cheese mixed with caramelized onions on homemade pizza or my latest craving~ sea salt, oregano, and goat cheese on home grown tomatoes. I heart the gourmet goat!

For more Inspire Me Mondays, click HERE.

All Things Worthwhile

Everything worthwhile takes time. Lasting contentment, master's degrees, cooking like Julia Childs, they all require a process to achieve. Healing and soberness take time, as well. Effort is required, and consistent effort is the shortest route, but we are human and easily distracted. Even from goals we think we really want.

We have learned there are no quick fixes that last, but we secretly wish there were. We've tried them, those quick-fix-elixirs, in our spiritual lives, in our business lives, in our most treasured relationships. We've taken the seminars and followed the guidelines and omitted the truth while looking off to the side. Yet, here we are, impatiently tapping our foot, smacking a backhand into our palm and imploring ourselves to "get there faster". Deep down we know we never will, unless we submit to the process our goals require~ patience, persistence and a heavy dose of accepting the foibles that join us along the way.

But if we look closely at our lives, we will see shining examples of where we have been patient and loving. We will see goals in process and we then have the opportunity to notice how good the process itself feels. We are not failures. We are, more accurately, huge successes in disguise to ourselves. We see we are already engaged in activities and relationships most worthwhile to our own deepest needs. We realize we have all it takes to begin and sustain the process for anything we deem worthwhile. And maybe, those seemingly important goals that keep our feet impatiently tapping are not so important after all. Relaxing our expectations and allowing natural rhythms to direct our efforts will reveal if, deep down, we feel the process itself is worthwhile. If the process is, so then is the goal.

A life well lived takes time. It also takes concentrated effort to sustain the values our hearts hold most high. We have all and we are all we will ever need to live the life we imagine. We set aside quick fixes and we settle into our own pace of traveling and stumbling and traveling again on the journey to all things worthwhile.

Happy Week, Day 6

Happy Week, Day 6

My goal in life is not to be famous or wealthy or even an entrepreneurial success. My goal is so much more simple and anonymous than all that. My goal is to be happy. Not giddy, laugh-out-loud happy, but a sweetly simmering river of inner contentment kind of happy. The kind that stays with me for long, long moments, that turn into hours, that turn into days on end. The kind of contentment that will string together my life as one I can look back on and say truthfully, "it was so very, very good and beautiful, even in its most difficult hours".

But it has been elusive, that contentment that lasts. Disappointments, agitations, frustrations and apathy, the daily bombardment of self-criticism that can disguise itself as criticism of others, the tiredness from giving it all away, leaves precious little room for peace within, to say nothing of unchecked joy. I want unchecked joy.

In order to reach my goal, I must lay down the outmoded and unnecessary thoughts and behaviors that shrivel the moist pleasures of happiness. I must choose to grow up. For in the arena of pure adulthood, where gossip is dead and victimhood is a lie and self-deprecation is a mortal sin, in that arena is the heart of the child who knows that play and appreciation and unfettered love are the only roads to happiness. Especially happiness that lasts.

In choosing to grow up, I choose happiness. In choosing to stop the judgements, I choose happiness. In choosing to love myself without condition (and please, God, I need help with this one), I. choose. happiness.

{To catch some happy vibes, click on the link at the top of the post.}

The hummingbird, pictured above at my friend's feeder, is metaphysically known as the "joy bird".

Happy Week, Day 5~ Hue Therapy

Happy Week, Day 5

COLOR makes me happy.

Cerulean blue, twilight blue, rose pink and deep pink~ these are the colors of my soul.

Happy Week, Day 4~ Cherry-O

Happy Week, Day 4.

Cherries. Say it again. C-h-e-r-r-i-e-s! Madly, deeply, happily in love with all things cherry.

My most favorite juice? Cherrypharm. Yup, made from 100% cherries. Nectar of my gods and super good for me.

If I ever tell you I love you more than cherry pie, Darlin', you've reached the pinnacle with me.

Happy Week, Day 3

Happy Week, Day 3

The swift path to pure happiness for me?

Intimacy with Nature.

The silk and the fluff and the rough. My soul vibrates at a higher speed when I wrap myself in Nature's embrace.

{Click on the Happy Week link above for more portals to happiness.}

Happy Week, Day 2~ Gentle Giants

Happy Week, Day 2~

I am fascinated by horses, yet they make me a little uneasy. I think it's the size and the possible skittishness that gives me pause around these beauties. I don't know enough about them to understand them and their tendencies. So, why then am I most fascinated by the Percherons, those 2,000 pound draft horses? Is it their gentle giant attitude? Is it their knowing they could squash humans like bugs, yet they understand they came here to work with humans and offer the example of how best to channel one's power for only good?

Whatever it is, whatever the captivating energy I sense that permeates these giants, I tell you I feel so darn happy whenever I see them.

{Click on the Happy Week link above for more shared bliss!}

Inspire Me Mondays # 18

Oh, to be 40-something and live the day as a 14 year old with your best friend.

Inspired by: Happy Week!! This whole, glorious week is devoted to what makes me happy. And let me tell you, the very best way to start off this week is to spend it with my dearest, Lisa, at the Erie County Fair.

Scorching temperatures, sunblock, spray bottle for misting the backs of knees and one over-sized rainbow umbrella.

Grey- dappled Percherons, moo-ternity ward babies, goats with airplane-wing ears and sheered champion rams.

Merry-go-rounds and swinging chairs, air-conditioned buildings with cabbage and corn, blue ribboned pickles and peas.

Ice cream for lunch, pure maple cotton candy in a bag,Tootsies fried dough nuggets dusted with yum.

Sweat trickling down from temples to toes. A fully clothed jump in the pool. Relief. Wild hair and sogging undies.

Dinner. A book store. A photo booth session too ghastly to reveal. Yawns. Hugs. Good byes.

Best ever 14 year old's happy summer day.

For more Inspire Me Mondays from happy people, click HERE.

To access the blogroll for Happy Week adventures, click HERE and prepare to smile.

The Power Of Love

There is so much power in love. Love is the hiding-in-plain-sight secret to living a powerful life. Not the kind of power that comes from climbing over the backs of hard working people or from manipulating the masses through media-driven scare tactics (hello swine flu), but power that rises from authenticity, and quietly taking charge of one's self. The smallest incidences and choices can be all the lift we truly need to fly forward into a self-powered life if the choices are based in love. Especially love for self.

How do we express more love for self and thereby invoke the lift? We choose to treat ourselves as if we were the longed-for beloved suddenly standing at our door. We revere ourselves and consider our own feelings and needs as if we were serving deities. We think kindly of ourselves, we feed ourselves well, we stop working so damn hard and make more time for fun. We stop wasting endless, mind-numbing hours in front of computer and TV and we invest that time in the making of our own dreams. We listen to the voices within begging for more joy and we go after it with every dancing, exuberant fiber in our being. We stop living the lives that other people tell us to live. We decide we are worth it.

We love ourselves madly and deeply, we use the money available to us to support our truest needs and stop ourselves from frittering our money away, we offer appreciation to everyone who treats us with respect, and we leave the ones who don't behind. We invest ourselves in ourselves. We love ourselves madly and deeply some more. And through this mad love, we lift ourselves to the levels of goodness we deserve. We live each moment as God made us to be and we do not apologize for it. To anyone.

We are as powerful as we decide ourselves to be. We are powerful in direct proportion to the level of consistent love we shine on ourselves. We can make any choice in the world from each moment to the next. Let's get powerful together. Let's fly forward. Let's respect ourselves with the power of love.

Possibility

I have so little control.

How irksome.

Yet, how true.

Everything eventually changes, but it's usually when I'm least prepared for it.

There is nothing to do to prepare except be willing to stand clear and trust a greater plan than my own is manifesting for my good.

As I stand on the stump of what has been, I open my arms wide to possibility.

Inspire Me Mondays #17

YES(!) to food for the soul.

Inspired by: women who serve up happiness. I cordially accept your invitations to get my head out of my arse and see the world from a new perspective. I accept your invitations to get freakin' happy again.

Lisa at Curious Girl has put the word out that August 17th through the 22nd is HAPPY WEEK!! Not a moment too soon, thank you very much. If you'd like to join me in the revelry, sign up on this Curious Girl link and let's get happy together.

Madelyn at Persisting Stars is offering a dreamy and poetic online course called, "The Bones of a Poet~photography and the wonder of seeing". This is a photography course that will put expression before technique. This is about seeing the world in a whole new way. A happy way. If Madelyn, herald of the sensual and positive in this world, is offering a course in anything, you bet your last, sweet dollar I'll be in the virtual front row. Why don't you join me on this 5 week poetic journey? Sign up at this Persisting Stars link and let's build our poetic foundations together.

There now. Much better. Yay for happy!

For more Inspire Me Mondays from lovely souls, click HERE.

UPDATE: Please visit my dear friend, Debbie, for her very first IMM post! Her inaugural inspiration is about owls. How very right up my alley.

Sekhmet~ Be Strong

"You are stronger than you think you are, and your strength assures a happy outcome."

Message from Sekhmet: "See yourself as strong and victorious. Don't complain about anything. Don't blame anyone or any condition. You're the embodiment of strength, not victimhood. As you rise above the old tendencies and see yourself in the new light of feminine strength, your life will automatically shift in miraculous ways. You'll attract new opportunities, forms of abundance, and relationships to help you manifest your highest potential. Being strong means seeing yourself in the most favorable light you can imagine. Be real, allow yourself to feel genuine emotions, but most of all, be strong."~ written by, Doreen Virtue for her Goddess Guidance Oracle Cards.

Join me in embracing this Egyptian Sun Goddess. Join me in creating a movement of inner strength. Because I have yet to see myself in a favorable light. Truly. I am still mired in old tendencies to find fault with myself, to deprive myself of goodness, to tell myself, subtly and overtly in the secret chambers of my mind, I do not deserve. I continue to victimize myself with my own thoughts. I continue to take things personally. My shadow side is fighting to preserve its existence, sensing a shift that bodes not in its favor. I am weary to the bone.

So, I call upon Sekhmet, lion-headed woman of strength, to lighten my view of myself. I call upon her to ground me through food and tasks and thoughts that press me back to earth. I call upon her to help me know the power of my feminine gifts. I call upon her tame the enemy within, scared child that it is.

I ask for consistent strength to see my own value and love all parts of myself. To quell my complaining and see with clear eyes the beauty within and without. Not sporadically, not only when in a good mood or under the influence of perfectly aligned stars, but consistently, whether I am dancing in the shadow or the light. Let me understand, dear Sekhmet, dear God, dear weary Self, how to support myself in all ways and reap the rewards of living my highest potential. Will you join me?

{ Original photos of Sekhmet taken in Berlin, Germany, 2006.}

Funeral For A Friend

Silly me. I thought all I would find upon my return to the scene of the crime was a stump I could stand on and look at the stars. Instead, a ginormous mess of limbs and leaves litter the yard. Apparently, it will remain like this until Monday. How considerate.

I did not cry when I first saw this mess. The sentient self of my friend the walnut was gone. No angst, no lingering. A clean relocation to better digs. A neighbor came by to stare at the mess with me. Looking at the tall trunk still standing he said, "Well now, isn't that worth a pretty penny".

And there you have it.

The Tree Whisperer

I am a tree hugger. I am also a tree whisperer. I feel them, I hear them, I speak to their sentient souls. The old ones, the wise ones have so much to say and offer. Shelter and guardianship and healing and advice, they offer it freely to anyone. My life is enriched for bothering to take it, for knowing that salve will be poured into my heart and soul each time I lean my pains and my troubles against the bark of a well established tree. I consider them no less than friends and honor them accordingly.

In my backyard is a sprawling walnut much older than me. I sit under its shelter in the mornings with my rose petal tea, I lean against it in the dark to banish my sorrows. Black and grey squirrels, woodpeckers and wrens, cardinals and catbirds have all graced the limbs and grooved highways of this guardian tree. I love this tree.

So last night at 8:15pm, when the call came from the woman who owns this house where I live to tell me she was having the walnut tree cut down today, and I'd best move my flowers out of harms way, I entered a state of shock. No, she said, her mind was made up. The tree was (suddenly?) a liability to her investment and had to go. She had to protect her property, you see. I'd best move my flowers.

I walked out into the dusk, sat down at the base of the walnut tree and cried. Without shame, I tell you I cried like a child. Loud and messy, on behalf of my dear friend who would spread his limbs wide to the moon for only one more night. I hugged my friend and thanked him for all the joy and support he had given me. I hugged him for a very long time. I circled him clockwise, my hand trailing the grooves of his trunk, and asked all the Angels and Faeries I know to lift his sweet sentient soul up to heaven's garden before the first blade cut his limbs. I asked that he feel no pain. I gathered all the lime green nuts I could reach and promised to plant them somewhere safe. I cried some more. I slept terribly.

I took last pictures of my friend the walnut in the morning light and hugged him long again. He told me it was going to be okay and he thanked me for honoring him with my tears and my requests. I left, grateful to be away for the whole of the day, dreading the view upon my return. As I drove away, my dear friend the walnut said to me, tonight stand in my place and spread your arms wide. I will see you. And you, tree whisperer, will finally see the stars.