STOP, LISTEN

Alpine, Al

Nature slips in to whisper... I hope for the silence to hear her.  The busyness of life's insistent demands will gleefully, when allowed free rein, drown out the things I really need to hear... this the whisper reminds me!

LET THIS BE THE YEAR...

                                Birmingham, AL

Let this be the year of a new slant on life and all that tags along with that.  Let this be when I see you and your glowing face and celebrate how lucky I am to know you.  Let this be the year of shouting out loud…of saying I love you and hearing that echo back to me.  Let this be the year to celebrate all I have learned and all that is still waiting for me.  Let this be the year of hope, gratitude, learning, amazement and all that tags along happily behind.  Let this be the year of much or little and all nested in between.  Mostly let this be the year to accept with grace whichever of those is given to me.  Let this be the year of all the things yet to be.  Let this be the year of flowers, laughter, songs, tears, hugs and memories. Let this be the year of hope, helping, caring and great mounds of happiness.  Let this be the year to have a world full of people that fill my heart.  Let this be the year of new connections and new ways of meeting the world with acceptance and openness.  Let this be the year when I look in a mirror and nod…liking the woman I see.  I will grin to see her trying, rejoicing, dancing, playing and all the other things that fill her full to bursting.  Let this be the year when I say with full heart…I love you world.  Let this be that year!!!

INSIGHTS FROM MY COCOON

December 17, 2015

Birmingham, AL

Cocooned by quilts, tucked into the strong arms of shelter... rain taps insistently overhead adding yet more insulation while I'm burrowed into my snuggle-safe world. Oh how lucky I am!  I have in no way earned to be blessed while others struggle.  For me today, this isn't a call to rush headlong toward a great cause but to pause with indrawn breath and expand my awareness...to feel in my everyday world where I can add a little joy or lessen a burden or confront a need I would rather turn my head and ignore. Some people are built to lead great causes but what magic can individuals create by just their daily choices?  Cradled so tenderly I am graced to feel challenged to find out.

THE MORNING SCENE

Alpine,AL

THE MORNING SCENE

While admiring the lacy look of the trees in this morning's scene,  I am contemplating an artist exercise...to see not the shape itself but the spaces in-between.  Suddenly, Nature takes this opportunity to  reintroduce me to the void.  It is no more welcome a meeting today then when I first made its acquaintance as a young child.  The surprising thing is how I dodged this acknowledgement for so many years.  Sitting quietly, memories tumble over each other, elbowing to be first in line.  They parade before me all of the inventions I have created...all  to  keep from  acknowledging a fear that has walked apace with me my whole life.  Perhaps the primal fear...at least for me...to find myself alone, with no defenses, support, tools with which to change what is or distractions to help me ignore this state.  What I fear in that void I could give many names...death, senility, sickness, loneliness or any other specter that looms large, always waiting just 'round the corner.  Now, I finally see whatever happens just IS and is dealt with...the void is not to blame.   It is the hulking presence of the fear of it that causes all of the twisted, cramped, distorted reactions that go on for years... until the fear is seen and accepted as just a creation of my own thoughts.  Seen as my own creation, I can now decide how much power I wish to give my fear.   Nature reminds me as I turn to go that life's picture is never complete without the trees AND the void in-between...and bids me to choose wisely.

A LESSON FROM THE LEAVES

Alpine, Al

My morning window reveals some of the last leaves of summer on branches bare of most of their companions.  Their hold, no longer firm with resolve...looks tenuous...do they fear the floating, free fall to earth?  I think not...frail, yes, tattered, certainly but suspended 'tween heaven and earth they approach this day as they have all the rest.  How is that...has their notion of "future" shortened with the daylight...are they merely waiting for the nudge that sends them floating?  Again, I think not...I imagine that they spend their currency for this day as they have all the days before...they choose to meet what nature has in store with the best they have to give.  I hear them whisper,  "I have a choice and so, for yet another day... I offer up my heart."

NIGHT WATCH

Alpine, Al

Awake in the pause point of the night... my eyes are wide and straining for a cue to what is next...a hollow shell rocking side to side in an unwelcoming bed.   Weary I  rise to  bear witness, in a show is solidarity, with all the others that this night, dull eyed stare into the void... to out wait our abandonment.  Yesterday has faded and today is still abed.  We have outpaced our cues to what comes next.  

Across a great chasm a candle and it's fawning  shadows dance, the only movement.  Self important it's flame bobs and weaves... semaphoring nothing.  How strange to sit and observe in this darkened theater as the mind struggles to attach meaning to a void while emotions wait anxiously just off stage.  

A glimmer of understanding  begins to grow.  This is what life without the well rehearsed "me" is like.  This is the pause place where choice resides.  A new day can begin where yesterday left off, full of the same tired lines or I can choose to see that what seems a void is really potential waiting in the wings to be crafted into a unique, new day.  Potential doesn't allow the cue cards I was struggling to read.  Once it does it becomes just a remake of the day before.

Now I see life never paused... I had.  I nod my thanks to the candle I saw as a useless companion.  How wrong I was...it danced away it's hours...while I just sat.   Back in bed with the candle's lesson tucked safely in my understanding, I plan to awaken later to a new day, a new play and a new way.

FALL PODS

Alpine, Al.

Dried seedpods on stalks

Rattle with promise or death

Same tune for both.