Entering Change

How do we pack for the journey we're embarked on? I've begun today with a look over to the neighboring fields that once held cornstalks and are now lined with the nubs reminding me of yesterday. Looking towards winter in the Northeastern United States, there is talk of snow and cold, polar vortexes, and messy roads. The days at hand seem to be a wisp of what they were yesterday, cut short by the rotating of Earth's dance along its axis. These memories and images of the past linger in my body, almost in anticipating of the changes upon the communities nearby. Preparations seem to become ritual, as the leaves being raked become the song of the day.  

The journey seems never ending, and at once, always changing. Branches continue to grow on trees that have shed their leaves, and I am hearing talk of the coming holidays. Time seems to travel so fast, and with it, the movement of busyness of expectations and uncertainty. To slow down is to be unrealistic. What is enough for me? It seems as if longing for yesterday's return urges me to recreate the past for tomorrow. Yet today, today there is a song that I can sing. I learn it for tomorrow. Each verse of lines that rise and fall in harmony that the darker days mean an opportunity to carry more light for growing still.

Growing still, in movement rooted in what we live, is an opportunity to hear the days of our lives - moving and making peace as we live and strive for what's best. As I write from silence, it opens the window of the moment to a rush of what we have packed and what we receive. What we bring and give will enter fully into what we have to work with. 

   

Reaching For Freedom

In the depth of our hearts there lies a place where we can live and find the freedom in that fullest space. It is a space of liberating expressiveness that brings out the fears and questions that plague one's mind with doubt. As a way to take flight, there must be the willingness to abandon that which others expect us to be and do. To live from our lives, we stand up in our experience and step into that place of unrelenting opportunity.

These places allow an intimate connection with life in the most powerful of ways. We evoke the essence of our beings as we honor our own paths with honesty and are changed when we experience the intersection of these places of love, discovery, understanding, openness, and transformation. The challenge within comes from wrestling with the forces that try to make our dynamic lives for us. No one can tell us what to experience when we love. We can only change when we are ready.

So as we venture into life, we find these experiences that free our inhibitions and allow for something almost divine to emerge. What does it take to fully liberate a soul for a moment alone if not a life time as well? To be free from the chains of life? When these freedoms are kept in bondage by discrimination, oppression, trauma, misunderstanding, and fear, a full life cannot be lived. Perhaps a lifetime of moments of walking through the gentle moments of sunshine and bitter winds, amidst the shade of a tree that grew alongside the roads that brought us new and old memories together, and among the breaths that we felt our freedom as a means to overcome our collective fears and struggles.

To be free, we have to reach into ourselves and extend into the heights of our dreams and goals, affirm the shadows standing beside us and grow tall together. To be free, we still will live with consequences and the experience of pain, but it is different when the pain is understood as it is overcome with love and compassion, each day, each life at a time.

About Fear

Today is the first day of the first full week of the new year according to the Gregorian calendar that is commonly used personally and professionally in my life. As a new year in 2014 has taken hold, so to has old habits that return showing that a new year doesn't keep life continuous in the patterns that have begun in moments passed. The new year had me thinking about fear, the emotion that makes it hard to accept any part of reality. With so many perspectives and biases, wounds and scars, histories, and other experiences woven into our interactions and our experiences, fear is easy to feel. 

The questions I asked myself what it would take to live my life fully, especially if I wanted it to be unique. I kept coming back to fear. It has been a persistent feeling that I've noticed to be quite a contagion no matter the severity of the circumstance. Fear of failure, inadequacy, the end of the world, open spaces, death, rejection, being loved, elevators, heights, snakes, the dark. I could go on with my list and risk sounding like I want to start one of those psychiatrist booths that Lucy van Pelt is always using to get Charlie Brown out of a nickel, but that's not what this is about. There is something about fear that provokes people to do things they wouldn't otherwise dream of doing. I don't think there is a way to keep fear out of our lives, but I do believe there are ways to be aware of it so it doesn't influence us in ways that risk us from living life fully. 

While I cannot speak for anyone's experiences but my own on this blog, I will share that thinking about the future with some consternation and apprehension can make the present moment more tense and less freeing. I prefer to be a bit of a free spirit with some conscious thought included in what I do, think, and say in order to gain different perspectives on what parts of life I may be thinking about.  If I read something in the news that had a decidedly grim outlook and I thought there may be hope, I would probably choose the side of hope. Now hope may feel a bit naive, and maybe it is premature to think that way without knowing all sides to a certain situation, but if I were to to take the time to do that, I would find so many different thoughts and experiences that both validate and negate my own that it would be hard to really know what to think after that. 

So I have taken some time to rest with uncertainty, to accept the paradoxes of life and death as part of this universe, this life, this world that I've been traveling along for 24 years. I can be afraid or I can let life be a wonder of delight and surprise that can both be superficial and of depth to making meaning, purpose, and goodness from the acts of kindness and laughter that appear in the midst of coping with the hardscrabble realities that pockmark our lives and help us direct our conscious efforts. To live without fear is to not be afraid, but to live without fear controlling our entire lives.  Happy New Year! 

Cosmic Sunshine

Sunshine opens my eyes as view a sunrise. The daytime leaves me with a strikingly different view of the galaxy than the night where the stars and moon color the distances beyond comprehension. Stopped in my tracks by the fast movement in life, I don't have to stop it to enjoy it. I can ride with it, surfing time, as visions of color permeate my consciousness. There it is, the larger picture that is so vast that I am humbled by the changing scenes that flash by with the flicker of a wing and a leap of a trio of deer.

Can I open my senses in the same way that I open my eyes? To open the reality that for a second is before my eyes I need not capture it, but be with it, as it is here. In memory of all the that is now the past that allowed this one to be born, I live.

Where You Are

I think many of us long to have those experiences where our breath is taken from us and we are caught in inexpressible beauty. Sometimes it is these places where we experience the space between where we've been and where we're going for the first time. It is the honesty of these situations that is so striking in their beauty and fleeting nature. These times bring the present as it pulls at all of where we've been to become who we are now in a moment of intense transformation and surprise. Whether we have stopped in our very paths by a rising sun or have said goodbye to an old friend who we have only known during brief visits and heartfelt conversation. "See you next time." Tomorrow is never certain, however real today and yesterday have been.

It is in this attention that is the fixture of our present that we begin to really notice life that we may not have noticed before. We may notice something that is closer to us than ever before. The change that is happening swirls about in a mixture of emotion. How does this happen when our worlds collide with the changing forces that we can never stop?

In tenderness, our reality has shifted and our present is raw. We may be drawn to the edges beyond our will and encounter ourselves as we never have before. At the intersection between beginning and ending, there is that liminal middle space I wrote of earlier. A smile emerges when an experience we need to recognize is acknowledge, however sad and difficult the place we have is. This isn't a smile of joy, it's a smile of our own understanding that our lives matter. It is the expression of gratitude that this experience exists at all.

       

Dogwood and Trillium

   

With crickets chirping to one another through the trees and cornfields nearby, life is happening and changing in every moment. Where is the flower that was here yesterday? What will I look like tomorrow? How can I overcome this habit I've had for years? Does this moment mean anything on this lazy summer day?

If I strive to be present and mindful of the very minute I am in a certain location, I'll recognize that the passing days continue to form weeks that gradually multiply into months and years. What was once a stem, is now a bud, and what is a bud today will be a flower tomorrow.  If by taking this moment, and realizing it's potential, I can change or grow where I've seen something promising sprout out of the darkest ground. Overcoming this darkness takes the courage to break free from a familiar place and further reach unfamiliar terrain that can nourish and challenge the growth occurring.

How can I be still enough to enjoy and experience what I need to in this moment to take that next step? As reminded by a teacher this morning, I cannot leap forward without taking time to be in the place I am presently. Being mindful of the crickets chirping, the honest place I am in, will pull me back to all the swirling activity that has and will happen if only I am ready to take this opportunity to live and create the moment I'm living in.

The Sum of Everything

Many parts of life can seem like the movement of water as it cycles through different elevations and forms.  Some occasions can cascade like a waterfall with a rush of emotion through our hearts with surprising motions that make us experience wonder and excitement either along flowing streams and collected pools or slow drops change surroundings  that comes with time.  With water rushing down our faces, covering us with grief supplanting the future for the present that we need to experience in order to find our way through a storm with acceptance of the changes of the day. With so much change, the present never stays for eternity. What's the point if whatever we do and live through doesn't last?

There are shifts and changes every day that are almost inevitable take the future by the hand if to say welcome, you were coming, you are now here,  and now it is time to find what you mean to us. I write as if this is directed to myself and an other, person or group. When I write words about a collective, "we" and "our" or "us," I mean that I've experienced them and I think that you in reading this may know and recognize these feelings as well. I want to speak of us as experiencing them all together either through storytelling or actual experiences that can be remembered and recalled,  even if I have never met you or experienced your story in your way. Even in reading and writing, one word is read before the next one is found in completing a sentence or paragraph or essay. Life is always moving, even when we seem to be standing still.

The Earth revolves on it's axis bringing light into it's atmosphere from the sun and the moon that are our guides in this place in the solar system we live in. We live our lives amongst all the other peoples that are currently in this place in time with us. Our friends, family, neighbors, gather and live as we together find what we're doing for tomorrow with what we have had yesterday and today. There are interactions in this light, in this day or night that we have had that have brought us here. Moments that we cherish and hold dear to our hearts through photographs, songs, and remembrances become something more, they become our life.

We grow into our lives one day at a time. We make it matter through what we do with one another and on our own. As nothing stays the same, nothing changes if we don't act as we are able. Two sisters preparing a meal from eggs laid by the chickens I tended with them, friends dancing to music that sings in their soul and flies through the years to connect generations, neighbors gather to remember and honor one of their own at a funeral that bridges the past to the future with the present. How we share what has been brought to us, like a tree growing from each day through each hardship and golden peak of sunlight, is how we live. It is finally, not what seems to end so soon that matters, but the sum of everything that we make together and on our own in a discovery of who we are.

Unspoken Realities

What is unspoken is not necessarily something unheard. What we feel and discover during an interaction or moment with ourselves or with others can still reach through to the heart as it beats out a cadence of what we experience. It then later remains imbedded in memory and feeling when we live and remember. These unspoken realities bring us to deeper places of our selves, of our relationships, connections, and places. What we live and feel in a moment can stay with us a lifetime.

This isn't something that is always good or bad. It is what we make of it now and forever. As meaning and feeling emerge or intersect in time these experiences shape us. These times that are unspoken because they are too deep for words are spoken through expressions and the feelings that fill our eyes. This is how we are changed by our feelings as they fill in the blanks where there is an absence of words.

 First impressions, fleeting glimpses of nature's beauty, nostalgia, evocative creativity, all create these times where we feel with our senses before we feel our souls turning to receive them. What I feel when I smell a fresh pine tree as I walk beneath the boughs covered in sunlight. How the cool air of a summer breeze ventilating a car on a drive along city streets.  Hearing the  echoes across a great hall now empty where memory fills in the people that once danced there.

There are conversations we wish we could return to, people and events that have made us so alive in who we are that we couldn't enjoy life any more fully, and places that trouble us and discourage spirits, anger us at what has been or what could have been. Transformation occurs in these times. Change does happen whether or not we accept it or even notice it.

It has been said that nothing lasts. Nothing lasts except the memories and life that has already been. What is before us now in fondness when we catch a friend's gaze, smile at someone tapping a moment's potential, or briskly walking through daylight that illuminates our way forward. These are the realities where the senses we feel now will guide us back to these moments when we stop to feel them.

Hope When It Is Dark

"Why does it take catastrophe to start a revolution?"  - Jonathan Larson

As I write this post winds and rain chase the landscape into a tumultuous flurry of hurricane and storm along the eastern coast of the United States. The potential and expected damage created is a source of uneasiness and uncertainty that strike at different moments in our lives. There can be wonder and curiosity in the midst of great suffering and loss. Devastating emotions or events can remind us about what we hold dear to our hearts, or challenge us to think about what is most important. They can shred our stability and hope into worry and fear, panic and anxiety that make us wonder how we'll ever get through.

How can this suffering be beautiful? Tears fall across our faces and our hearts continue beating with emotion that is fully raw and fully alive. How can this be beautiful if we are left alone? Where is the goodness in life when we are shackled with grief and the seeming never ending presence of calamity? Even as the storm comes and with it, expectation of and then the physical reality of damage we can find hope from the disaster. Some storms come with less warning and then change the course of the lives affected. Still how can any of this create hope, instill love, become strength, or be something positive?

We often light candles after the power goes out and it gets dark. The shining beams come through places of destruction and despair to offer hope and a way through the darkness. The candlelight we illuminate inside provides more than a symbol of promise; it creates a way to see what storms have done, and what can be done together when we share our own lights, our own stories of reality. The light we have may sometimes flicker, but if we trust it with those close to us we will not be alone. We will begin to trust again and stand together as we prepare what has been lost to grow new beginnings and new memories as we all are strengthened by togetherness.

Painful realities are hard to bear especially as suffering seems to grow and affect multitudes where communities fall apart and homes are ravaged. We often question whether or not we should stand strong and work to overcome when afflictions may appear to come more and more often. The candle we lit may go out, we may lose our voice, our heart may become overwhelmed and life may change with tragedy and wrongdoing.

Disaster may strike, but if we light the hope and the way or find someone that has already done so, we can stand together in friendship as our candles can warm the lives of those around us, as our candles light our hearts so we may feel ourselves giving and receiving in the unity that comes out of brokenness. It is then we can remember the continued strength that is found when we trust ourselves enough to rebuild and grow stronger from the scars and the pain that we faced in understanding that pain will always affect humanity. This is how the night ends while hope and love become the new light of dawn. With a song that comes from one heart that reaches our souls and becomes a chorus of light and hope from the soul as we empower one another in times of human need.

A New Day, A New Tomorrow

This morning while working my shift as a caregiver at hospice, I stood near the bedside of one of our residents while she passed away. To me, death is a very mysterious thing that connects us to all that is living on this planet while bringing us in more of an awareness of our humanity. The peacefulness of this passing combined with the hopeful and mournful expressions of grief and transition in the life of our resident's family gave me a deeper look at the experiences we feel from the overwhelming emotions of life's permanent changes.  Rains can fall for a long time, but when they clear leaving a misty cloud or rainbow so that the sun can open the heavens to the clear skies above, they show the hope that life can continue to grow and emerge after the water has nourished and strengthened our souls.

Our lives are never just one experience after another. One forms while another one is still continuing to shape our life. It's almost as if the ambiguity that allows us to feel hope at the same time we feel fear is the antidote to creativity that may be stunted by boredom. It creates a greater sense of humanity as the complex assortment of our sensory experiences is our entryway to being our truest self.  It changes everything as the light of day becomes the sunset that bridges the gap between day and night in our temporary moments.

As time comes and goes, moments are found to be measured in what we feel, what we live through, and what we remember.  It's as though the present becomes our forge for memories and our perspective, what we choose to do with what we have and how we learn from our past. As Calvin once told Hobbes as written out by Bill Watterson, "the problem with the future is that it keeps turning into the present." Perhaps, though, this conundrum is not a problem, but a chance to take hold and live for the present where everything becomes clear for what has been and what will be in how we experience our lives in our interconnected world.

The rain clears slowly while the sun becomes a source of hope as the love we can feel brightens our fear.

Growing Up Together

As a kid, it felt like growing up would always take forever, and then once I became a grown up, life never seemed to stop moving faster. When I look at kids playing, laughing, stumbling, and being themselves, I see how precious they are. They have eyes that are full of wonder and awe, and it is the curiosity birthed with questions and open discovery that gives them their unique perspective on life. It seems that this perspective comes from an opportunity founded upon what we give them.

We can give the young people in our life hope by teaching them their importance by listening them We can teach them how to be alive by paying attention to them and then by living fully with them as they grow with us in life. Thus, kids have the unique opportunity to show us the gift of time. Time can be transcendent or it can be stagnant depending on what we do with it. Sometimes the only thing we can do with the time we are given is to understand that it is temporary, but a gift just the same.

Life's beautiful moments can happen as we live with those around us, especially those who will be on this planet after us. We can help them see what makes life worth living if we let ourselves see that it is worth it for ourselves, too. Are adults much different other than what we have already learned about what happens from day to day? Aren't we still the unique persons we were when we first saw the bright lights and stepped into life? Maybe then we can see life with others as all of life.

In hearing children singing together, I hear how young we all once were, and I hear the connection we have to one another. I hear the individual hearts that can work together to accomplish something great, and the hearts that can shape the world with their unique passions and dreams. Dreams, like children must be nurtured and cultivated with the realization that they can be squandered by fear, despair, and loss, although with assistance, we can see how these bring us closer to understanding what we want to accomplish in dreams -- while in children, they are signs that we can help them live and grow greater than the plights that can seem to threaten their futures. We can all learn from children as they grow and change faster than moments seem to contain. Memories are made, dreams are nurtured, and children are grown, and if we reach out to the child who needs us, we can touch their world, and ultimately our own and live beyond the confines of our own reality.

Three things I think everyone, especially children, need to thrive. Love, colorful surroundings, and nature.