May the Sun, Moon, Rain, Breeze...

“May the sun bring you new energy by day,

May the moon softly restore you by night,

May the rain wash away your worries,

May the breeze blow new strength into your being,

May you walk gently through the world and know its beauty all the days of your life.” -- Apache blessing

The above blessing was shared with me as a gift. It is printed on a magnet that my wife gave me as a present for Christmas. This small token of love is special to me in that it importantly speaks to levels of my relationship with life, spirit, and personal connectiveness. Specifically, connectiveness is that sense of belonging, a component of relatedness, a new and powerful word in a modern life.

And these are not easy bonds to hold on to.

Struggling to make sense of things seems to turn my thoughts inward and that can be a shadowy place at times. So to be reminded that the sun is there and to try to obtain new energy from it is a great stimulant to shed those shadows. To know that there is still light, even in the darkest night or mood, if only from the faint glow of a lunar globe, there also, seems hope. Rain can cleanse the earth and can wash what is covered with dust, grime and other hiders of what lies beneath them. A breeze can massage the skin with the fact that an invisible force still has physical sensations attached to it.

And the best part of the saying is the last wish for the reader, what my wife saw in the words that she felt strongly that I would wish to read. How it would be to walk gently through the world, among the many changing seasons and life stages, knowing the joy surrounding you.

Help me to recognize and celebrate them, away from the constant shadows.

Not Such A Bad...Year In Review

"To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize."--Voltaire

I was thinking about all those Christmas brag letters tucked inside Christmas cards that begin to flood the mailbox this festive season. I never had the desire to do one and mail out to people, but on the other hand, I never really minded reading about the happenings of those I care about. Bits and pieces of their lives that can surprise and enlighten are to be found in the words they contain. Tucked into them are messages they are trying to express: such as happiness, loss, joy, pride.

So following (if interested) is my 2013:

January 1^st, employed with 401K, health insurance and good job. January 2^nd, unemployed minus all that other stuff previously mentioned (see quote above by Voltaire). No murder committed despite this occurrence. Begin the stages of grief over this loss, also begin job hunt. Job hunt reveals experience seems to mean little compared to not finishing that Bachelors Degree in the 80’s. “Too old to Rock and roll, too young to die” to quote a Jethro Tull song from my youth. Look into degree completion opportunities at local universities. Damn…found out that college classes expire after three decades and don’t easily transfer. Still working through those stages of grief. Actually stuck on #1: anger. Sign up for group to help me deal with these issues. Especially issue #1. Start sociology class in college. Remain grateful to my friends and family who are standing by me and offer support. Seriously good medicine is true friendship. Interview for jobs…keep coming in second. Try a $10 per hour job to kill time and realize I have no tolerance for "fill in the blank here." Especially when they are your boss. Especially at $10 an hour. Didn't I learn this already? Gain new appreciation of those workers making minimum wage. Learn how underrated sleep is and how badly I want to sleep well again. Don't sleep at all some nights. Generic sleeping pills are a blessed thing. Love my college class and begin to feel hopeful. Grateful that my wife is awesome and understands. Continue to get up and get dressed every morning even when I don’t have a reason. Group therapy is going well. Learn from a psychologist about people with personality disorders. Realization: That it is what was wrong with them  and it wasn’t me after all. Wife reminds me that she has been telling me that all along. Wise wife! Must learn to stop blaming myself. Sign up for more college classes, including psychology, as I need more information. Get an opportunity to do some freelance work and I love it. Get to see western Iowa, Illinois, and eastern Pennsylvania. Meet outstanding people that I can count as friends. Learn a new computer program and keep exercising my old brain. Starting to relax about nine months into this.  Discover there is nothing affordable about the Affordable Care Act. What can you do? 10 ½ months in, I get a call for a job if I want it. Hell yes. Can still do the freelance work and still attend my college and work for people that are AWESOME and NOT CRAZY!

Madi and Me

And I didn’t forget the best news, I just saved it for last.

Madilynn Paige. Granddaughter. Born November 30^th.

What a great year of discovery it has been.

To Get My Feet Wet, or Not?

"To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float." -- Alan Watts

The symbolism of the water's edge helps me navigate my way through life. It gives me clear boundaries to my physical existence that mark where I can proceed and where I need to stop or get wet or get out of the boat and step on shore. These boundaries--these shores, beaches, riverbanks--exist both when I am on dry land or floating upon the water. We can transition between the medium easily enough, but not without some skills or mechanisms to allow us to survive for long. Especially if moving from dry to wet. We need protection from hypothermia, drowning and now bull sharks swimming up our freshwater rivers. Bull sharks, I kid you not. A thousand miles up the Mississippi River caught in Illinois. Saw it on "River Monsters" on the television so it must be true. Probably trying to make it to Chicago's Shedd Aquarium.

I am often envious of animals such as the waterfowl and shore birds. They can transition an additional medium when they take flight and wing through the sky. To be able to fly without a ton of steel and plastic and jet fuel would be outstanding. 

I use the transition symbolism in tackling other aspects of my life, which lately consists in what I am going to spend the remainder of my working career doing. Right now, not unlike many other people in the past, present and probably the future, I am standing on the shore and trying to decide what stroke to swim, or what boat to paddle or even if this canal needs to be crossed. At least I need to decide when to cross it and what I hope to find when I reach the other shore. 

I believe it must depend on the means I use to cross it, and like Alan Watts said, "relax and float" may beach me where I was meant to be.

Stories

“The universe is made up of stories, not atoms.” – Muriel Rukeyser

Who doesn’t love a good story? I know I do. I also love to record them--on paper, on film, in my head—so that I can preserve and share them with others.

Try this if you have a moment during your busy life. Think about something that you have a memory about and take a darn close look at that thought. Hold it where you can really feel it your mind. Picture it with your eyes closed (unless you are driving). Now grab a hold of that thought and what it really is made out of. It is a recorded, remembered story from your life. Memories truly equal the stories that we hold on to.  They are like different color paint that takes thoughts into the drama, the clarity, the lesson and the joy of our mind. They decorate the wall of our soul.

My Dad wrote me several e-mails with some childhood stories that are some of my most treasured words. Stories about childhood dogs, his first shotgun and his first car. They describe the events with details that would not have been remembered with just verbal words. Thanks Dad.

So tell your stories. Write them down. Paint them on a canvas or record them with camera and video. Build them in the sand on a beach.  Don’t let them fade into the vast universe of unremembered things.

Build them for collectors like me.

What Will the Silt Reveal?

"The point of your activities throughout the day is not to make a living, but to make a life; not to 'work' but to create joy. If you are doing what you are doing merely to 'pay the bills,' you will have missed the major reason for All Of Life. The purpose of life is to know and express Who You  Are. If you do other than that during the days and times of your life, you will have not used those days and times in a way that profits your soul. It is soul profit we are after here, not body profit." 
– Neale Donald Walsch 

Like many other people during these troubling economic times, now I get to really step back and listen at what Walsch is telling me. I realize you have to pay the bills. ‘Nuff said. But what happens when the heart questions the reasons that it shares the oxygen supply from the lungs to the tips of the fingers? It feels broken. The soul feels deprived of life.

So I am forced to reassess some of the purpose in life. Sure the job held part of the purpose and could at times be a big time suck but that fact can be something that prevents the soul from blossoming. But now that obstacle has tumbled out of the way. So for me, I am going to have to really think about how I want to live the rest of my life. I know deep down that the answers lie there waiting to be stirred out of the silt of the years. Not a real easy thing to do because a lot of stuff that settled there I have tried to forget and is densely mixed with what I need to remember. As well as the stuff that hasn’t settled into the silt yet still floating around with it.

What will that silt mixture reveal to me? I bet I will be pleasantly surprised.

The Weight of Indifference is Crushing

"And if you cannot remain indifferent, you must resolve to throw your weight into that balance in which the fate and condition of man is weighed." -- Lajos Kossuth
 

Strong words old Lajos said. They seem to have a particularly strong significance during election time. And WOW, the whopping lies that are being told to us. I don’t have enough time in the day to try to truth-check what is coming out of the mouths of people. I think that this is how anarchy starts to take root and grow.

Indifference is something that I am never accused of, but I have never really sat and contemplated what to do about it. I have actually wished to have that type of attitude—one of not being indifferent--lifted from me, because it appears to be joyful at times to be free of having to care about some things and some people. Serial killers, fracking, telemarketers and such. Forgive me if you fit any of those categories and please don’t call me to help contribute to your defense, election or other fund. Especially over the phone at my dinner meal time.

There are times that I definitely feel that “my give-a-damn” is broken but it is only spotty and random times. I have had to grow more quiet and contemplative recently, practicing placing the tongue on the roof of my mouth as to prevent me from speaking my mind which lately leads to much grief (try it and you will find it a fascinating technique to achieve and maintain a state of silence but do it with your mouth closed or you look pretty stupid).

All this need to be, do and say is leading me to a life of constant, silent acquiescence, where I don’t talk much anymore because I feel I have said all that I have had to say. Or all anyone wants to hear from me at least. I feel myself brooding and even tell the wife when she asks me that “I am brooding.” And no one seems to be really listening anymore and that is a shame. Part of the reason I suspect people have quit listening is that they are always being shouted at rather than being spoken to politely.

So I need to find a way to find that “resolve to throw your weight into that balance in which the fate and condition of man is weighed” part of the equation. My big problem with it is it tends to be a way of forcing my opinion of right and wrong on others. I believe everyone is entitled to their own unique stupid opinion.

So which direction to throw my resources at? I need to just find the right lie.

 

Lajos Kossuth de Udvard et Kossuthfalva (aka Lajos Kossuth; September 19, 1802 – March 20, 1894) was a Hungarian lawyer, journalist, politician and Regent-President of Hungary in 1849. He was widely honored during his lifetime as a freedom fighter and bellwether of democracy in Europe.

Eclipse

“All is well, provided the light returns and the eclipse does not become endless night. Dawn and resurrection are synonymous. The reappearance of the light is the same as the survival of the soul.”-- Victor Hugo

Note: The recent blue moon, death of astronaut Neil Armstrong and the recent full moon of August led me to finish a journal entry from a few years back

 

August 28, 2007 

The alarm went off at 5:00 AM and I went out on the front porch to see if the scheduled lunar eclipse had started. The moon was about 30 degrees above the western horizon and the shadow of the Earth had begun it’s creep down along the top of it. A few clouds paraded by, briefly blocking the view, but in all actuality enhancing the scene, animating it with a misty overtone. More beautiful it seemed than if the sky had been empty of clouds.

The night was breaking away and the blue moonlight and the approaching dawn were competing at illuminating the silhouettes of trees and lawn and house. It was strangely incandescent as well. The glow from the objects that surrounded me seemed to be emanating the light, not reflecting it.

A cacophony of animal and insect sound--tree frogs, locust and other creatures rustling in the dark—mixed with the rustle of leaves moved by the gentle breeze. More of a quiver of movement to the musical creature noises orchestrating the scene. The air that touched me, that slight breeze, held an Autumn feel to it on this August evening. Refreshing compared to the often still, hot summer evenings of late.

How strange the world seemed to me, almost as if I was looking out on another planet. I felt a bit like an intruder to the pre-dawn twilight that was so foreign to my awake patterns. I was a specter to the sunrise.

Above me to the east, the stars were bright and clear yet billions of miles away yet seeming to be close to the Earth, dancing in and out of the clouds, forming and reforming their patterns in the void.

The wife joined me at my side as we sat on the porch steps to watch the moon slowly lose itself in the Earth’s passing shadow, darkening to a shadow of its former self. I wondered to myself what primitives must have thought when they stood in witness to this draping of the moon above them. It would be as nothing they were ever familiar with. Would it fill them with dread? With Awe? With joy perhaps? Would they see it as a sign or omen?

Then the eclipse was total, then it was moving away to normal again. Reversing. I became aware of the night changing over to day at the same time. The geese in the pond across the field began to cackle and rise into the night early dawn sky. The neighbors truck started and went down the road to his early morning commute to Ann Arbor to hang steel at the University of Michigan Stadium renovation. The early dawn gave back the moon after a few moments and it started its race to the western horizon, to appear again tomorrow full in the night.

This morning is permanent ink on my soul. A tattoo of what I have seen. I wish I did not know what had caused the theft of the moon this night. I wish I was a primitive and thought the spirits were stealing my moon. I would like to think that a spirit or a god or my dead ancestors had made it happen. I want that mystery.