Contemplation

In a book I am reading, the author points out that we are perhaps to come to faith as a child, because children live in God's presense - the current moment - all the time, and have security in it, gratitude for it.

The author points out that to a very small child, everything is a surprise, a treat, a wonder.

I find that the more tuned in to the present moment I am, the more treats I find. Even with all the junk on the internet, I find something like this:

Nothing I've never seen before, but look at it! God created that, and the stars, and our fingernails, and trees and water and air and all the chemicals, and feelings.

There's so much *muchness* everywhere when we look for it. There are so many surprises inside of our mundane lives, if we would just crack them open and live them in the moment.

Thank you for the present moment, God. Thanks for letting me live it in a creation with so many, and so much. This is a wonderful life.

Birthday weekend in pictures

 

 

Thought Provoking Question: 1 of 25

This is a fun question to be answering as I sit here and write on my 28th birthday (a few days from when I'm scheduling this post). How old would I be if I didn't know how old I was. I think 35.

I feel like I have lived through some stuff. I'm mature-ish. I'm doing laundry, listening to gospel, and last night I added my windshield wiper fluid to my car. These are all things relatively mature people do, I am guessing.

I've completed enough schooling, I've advanced fairly sufficiently in a career, and I know what I am looking for in my relationships. I know what my hobbies are, I know what my strengths are, and increasingly, my weaknesses too.

I love to laugh, and I am learning to find more shades and undulations of funny out there every day.

I am ready for the next thing, but know each day will only unveil itself moment y moment.

So I feel 35. I feel ready to run a marathon, sail a Cape Cod Mercury, to date, to learn new stuff, and to take care of myself this year. I feel ready to give more generously, because I know more of what I have to offer.

I feel ready to throw back my head, look at the sky, and laugh for the perfection of it all (attribution to the Buddha and crazy people everywhere).

Maybe in a few years, I'll look back at this post and laugh. Maybe I'll have aged or Benjamin Button'ed by then. But I will be grateful for here, now, at 35 and 28 all at once.

Beauty

This is so beautiful. It is so real. And I really struggle to think about how I feel about it.

In the 7th grade I was bullied by a girl who was my friend. Well, she's still my friend...on Facebook.

But she, and I believe unwittingly, took the one thing I was hanging onto and rubbed it in my face. She took the chip on my shoulder, my badge of pride, and reduced it to a taunt. She didn't know that it was all that I felt I had.

I hesitate to talk about bullying sometimes, because I didn't have it as bad as others. But when it happened, it felt like the end of the world, and because I was one of those cool kids, pretty kids, smart kids who were supposed to be immune to it, I had no recourse. I wonder how many other little girls and boys felt like they couldn't allow themselves to feel the embarrassment of bullying because they had to pretend they weren't hurt by it, that they were stronger than it, that they were above it.

I would like to say I was above it, and yet I remember so clearly, how I was dealing with situations far beyond my maturity, but not yet old enough to know how to hold my ground, to be myself, to admit that I wasn't perfect.

So this film is what it is - a work of art, and a message to many more of us than we would care to believe. We have one another and we have love. Our stories are about balancing beauty.

This is not the funniest thing in the world

But it's Sunday. Take a chill pill, look out the window, smile and enjoy the silliness.

Today, I celebrate

I am 28 years old today. That is old. To me. Older than I've ever been, younger than I'll ever be again.

It is a brand new day.

I will be going here:

Then here:

 

 

I hope you have a wonderful Saturday!

Blog Challenge: 500 Words on 25 Questions

A question that makes you think is worth asking…

 

So that I might  routinize myself a bit more, I will be attempting (I know Yoda, do or do not do) to answer a question a week from the following list, starting next week:

 

http://www.marcandangel.com/2010/03/29/25-beautifully-illustrated-thought-provoking-questions/

 

 I hope you come along for the journey with me!

 

And happy weekend!!!

Change

"You can’t change your genetics, but you can change your attitude, your persistence, your environment, the people you listen to and hang around with, and the things you do. You can change, so if you want to, just get started." 

- Craig Ballantyne

First Night, second take

Finally getting around to reading A Winter's Tale after seeing it performed during Boston's First Night.

 

I haven't seriously read Shakespeare since high school, but I'm already in love (my love interest rekindled just hearing it read New Year's Eve, though my being gross with the flu kept me from appreciating it as much as I might have otherwise.).

These are probably really odd comparisons, but in Shakepeare I hear the same beauty that I do in Dickens, but also in a lot of Stephen King's work - the saying of something so simple, but so profoundly true, and in words that no one else would have dared to pick to describe what's being said, so that the simple statement is now a work of art.

Since their more mature dignities and royal necessities made separation of their society, their encounters, though not personal, hath been royally attorney'd with interchange of gifts, letters, loving embassies; they they have seem'd to be together, though absent; shook hands, as over a vast; and embraced, as it were, from the ends of opposite winds. The heavens continue their loves!

I really, really hope Shakespeare actually existed and wrote. Either way, I'll be absorbed.

I'm running for clean water

Because the lack of something I take for granted should never be a barrier to another human being's health or educational opportunity.

Namaste

I just took part in a wonderful restorative yoga class.

While at Healing Tree, I am not sure I ever ventured into a restorative class, thinking it would be to slow, or that since I didn't have any physical injuries at the time, it might not be that helpful.

But I can truly say now that there is a sense of bodily and emotional peace, lightness and strength that has come from my restorative practice.

Trust me, it's also difficult to slow the body and mind in these ways for me. For an hour-plus class of slow movements and rythyms, I tend to talk to myself, plan the rest of my day, and watch the weather outside. I know this is not true meditation in the sense that my mind is still, but as my thoughts run through it, at least my mind is calm. At least I find spontaneous smiles on my face and abrupt awareness of how appreciative I am for a simple stretch or change that comes over my muscles, joints and skin.

It can be a challenge to practice yoga, or to slow down at all, when my life feels the most busy, perhaps even the most out of control. But it is so centering, so encouraging, and so good for my blossoming sense of discipline to committ to a practice that only does me good.

How Many Times?

Some days I'm just really inspired. Thank you, S. You rock.

Letter from a Birmingham Jail

One of most absolutely beautiful truths of a well-lived life in this letter for me:

 

...if I had been writing from a comfortable desk...

 

I thank God for my discomforts, knowing that they have given me an insight, a compassion, a true empathy that would have been otherwise impossible to gain in the life I now lead; one not without discomfort, but with so much risk of what King writes earlier - of complacency, of insensivity, of paternalism.

 

I humbly ask my Creator to place me in places of discomfort should I ever forget that I've been called to serve, to seek, to dream, and to invest. Thank you for the situations that inspire us to look to You.

Time to stay powerful

Happy Valentine's Day

Today is Valentine's Day, a day to celebrate love, as if other days were different.

I learned from Grams on Dawson's Creek that Saint Valentine was a martyr who was killed for his refusal to cease marrying Christian couples. In those days, in that place, Christians were not to be married, because they were cultural outsiders without that "civil right."

I pray that today, we look upon the human right to marry the person we love with an even closer lens, and that we stand with those currently considered outsiders in demanding equal rights for all, in every place.

This will be my first Valentine's Day in a long time as a single person. I haven't talked much here about being single, because I am still figuring it out. I also don't know that I have anything too profound to say. I still work too much, I still love the things I used to love to do and do them. I'm still me, maybe even more so.

I'm excited for Valentine's Day, precisely because it's a holiday about expressing love, a force I think runs deeper than any emotion, deeper than one relationship or another, and deep into what makes us human, happy and free.

So I am looking forward to today, and any mushiness I might be a witness to, even as my own kind of outsider. Other people's love is a beautiful thing, and my love for the world, my life and the people in it never ceases to be an amazing gift from God.

This week's dose of gratitude

Trust is the bridge from yesterday to tomorrow, built with planks of thanks.

- Ann Voskamp

Best of the blizzard

Looking at what's there

I have not ever been able to quiet my mind with seated meditation. Well, I've tried it, I've done it I guess, but the end result is me being exceedingly bored - a feeling I hate - and not really having said meditation achieve it's goals.

So I have been exploring other options. Vinyasa yoga is a really nice balance of focusing on the breath connected to simple movement and mindfulness. My mind is intense, really intense, and that's at the root of not being able to just shut it down - it needs a focus.

Another thing that's been working is an enhanced detail orientation. I'm starting to look at my world in layers, to pick it apart, but to start with something simple, so that meditation does not turn into a problem to solve or a mystery to unravel.

So this weekend I focused on this tree for a bit.

The way the light interacted with it. The way the wind blew its needles. The knots on it's trunk. It's distance from my location.

I think we all need different ways of centering, and in this slowed focus on what's already here, simple, and beautiful, I find a greater appreciation for the present moment.

How did it take me 27.9 years...

...to find this?

Happy Sunday, lovely people.

 

May your coffee and your faith be strong.

Oh, really?

I have been focusing on focusing on focusing on me.

Yes, that is what I meant.

In that spirit, I ask myself, who am I really? What I am all about?

I know I'm a work in progress.

But this, my friends, is what I have come up with for now.

I am about:

God

love, acceptance, growth, community, joy, feeling alive, breathing, idealism, knowing and living in truth, saying things beautifully, summing things up, standing with the oppressed, loving one another, gratitude, simplicity, wonder, never giving up

 Movement

yoga, running, snowboarding, dancing badly

The Water

sailing, watching the sun, wind, sand, marine life, kayaking, splashing, boat masts

 Art

music, writing, singing, photography, painting

 Productivity

thinking, research, data, doing it already

...and Being Underhandedly Funny.

One liners, SNL, giving people “looks”

It is Saturday morning. And I am all about today.