mindful_contemplations

Into a New Day

He came to see me 
after the death 
and the days then months 
attempting to rebuild what was
to be both she and he
for the little one who longed for just one 
as the blocks placed one atop another 
crash down to the floor
then stacked and restacked 
a life that could no longer be 
until he forgot himself 
could not sit nor play 
with the boy he loved 
and lost the sleep longed for 
to ease the pain felt in a heart 
that ached to open to peace 
and being in change 
that can’t be contained or
reversed only built upon 
as he lives into 
being carried and opened 
then transformed 
as he and his son 
walk hand in hand
into a new day.

“The song is ended but the melody lingers on.”
Irving Berlin

“No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear.”
C. S. Lewis

“You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present.”
Jan Gildwell

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A Lifetime in a Breath

It is said, “It will last a lifetime!”
“How long is that?” I ask.
Is it the 97 years my mother-in-law 
expressed her gratitude’s?
Is it the 7 days my daughter graced
us with her existence?
Maybe the 2 weeks a mosquito 
became a pest?
Or the 24-hour life of a mayfly?
Existence—not infinity but arbitrary.
A question of quantity or quality?
Between the intake of breath
to our last expiration, we count days, months,
then years; yet truly, they are breaths.
In each moment, we live a lifetime,
not knowing if we gain one more inhalation,
one more moment to love what we see, 
who we are, whom we touch, the
sun kissing our skin, or the colors of a fall tree. 
We take it all in; we breathe it out.
 
One breath, one breath, one holy precious breath. 


In memory of my bonus sister Cynthia and my Aunt Pat, who within these last three weeks, each breathed a final breath, leaving a world and loved ones held close to their hearts.

“the tired sunsets and the tired
people –
it takes a lifetime to die and
no time at
all.”
Charles Bukowski

“It’s not that we have little time, but more that we waste a good deal of it.”
Seneca

…Enjoy this precious single breath,
for the harvest
of our whole lives
is that same one breath.”
Omar Khayyám, Quatrains-Ballades

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Who Am I Now?

Who am I now?
he inquires of the image—
the me that is not me,
without you,
reflecting
lines of loss as identifiable
as a fingerprint.
In unfamiliar land
he explores, tastes, 
tries on identities,
see what fits—
foreign to himself,
a shadow of what was. 
Visions arise of what could be.
Body, mind, and heart
tired and worn,
he sees the we 
now past.
The future is I.
Who am I now?

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart.
…live in the question.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“If I cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost. That is how I look at it – keep going, keep going come what may.”
Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.
Delicious Ambiguity.”
Gilda Radner

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The Euolgy

Stories fill me
Memories shared
Emotions felt
Witnessed
Words assembled
Convey a life
61 years in 15 minutes
A splash of color here
A gray area there
A focal point 
Bring it all together
As complex as 
A 1,000-piece puzzle
As simple as sitting
In the heart of love.

“Life is a song—sing it. Life is a game—play it. Life is a challenge—meet it. Life is a dream—realize it. Life is a sacrifice—offer it. Life is love—enjoy it.”
Sai Baba

“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments but what is woven into the lives of others.”
Thucydides

“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not a mark of weakness but power. They speak more eloquently than 10,000 tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief and unspeakable love.
Washington Irving

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What’s After?

She advances ever close to her last breath,
and asks, “What is after?”
“After this belly rises as I breathe,
the touch of grandbabies soft skin,
the kiss placed on these lips by my love,
after the thoughts that drift through this mind,
the fear in not knowing,
the joy in seeing my beloved’s face.”
Then, she hears from within,
Look to what was before.
“Before this body descended
from my mother’s warmth,
wailed as I took my first breath,
before this body formed
from a seed fertilized to grow,
before I was a thought or a desire,
before the stars formed?”
You were a part of everything, and nothing.
A drop in the ocean of love,
the scent of a flower wafting on a breeze,
all that is after that which was before.
“Now I see,” she whispers. 
“I will return from what I have learned,
from this body, from form, from life, in love.
I return to the ocean of love.”

(image from Hubble Telescope)

“In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory.”
J.R.R. Tolklen

“That’s what heaven is. You get to make sense of your yesterdays.”
Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet In Heaven

“Seeing death as the end of life is like seeing the horizon as the end of the ocean.”
David Searls

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The Sentinel

 
We sit at the water’s edge as
he arrives to march back and forth,
like a sentinel sent to guard his domain,
gray and white feathers proud 
he pauses to rest on one leg, 
tucks the other beneath, 
affects indifference as he
keeps a close eye on all around—
waiting. 
In a flash he is between our feet
to grab a crumb that falls. 

As we sit, intent on 
absorbing the peace and beauty 
of the setting sun, the pungent smell
of water at the shore where drift
brings in sticks and vegetation,
and rest at the end of our day,
seagull offers us a visual—
life lived in reaction, 
to guard, to wait, to snatch, 
when the moment is ripe for the taking.

“Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.”
Charles R. Swindoll

“How people treat you is their karma, how you react is yours.”
Dr. Wayne Dyer

“You can’t change how people act, but what you can change is how you react.”
Bonnie Hammer

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The Unseen Force

I thought of the ways we rejoice in life,
offer gratitude to the unseen force,
weary then from trial and toil,
seek solace to soothe our soul.

One thought riding the other,
one emotion responding to need,
making our way to a final day
when breath retires
and we release to what comes beyond—
something or nothing.
We call it faith or delusion,
each in their own way.

Then, I watched the sun set,
sparkling on the waters deep,
hearing a child’s laughter 
as she ran through the evening waves.
Whatever you are, I mused, 
this is what you are.
This is how you speak.

“Thus, to know humanity, understand the earth. To know the earth, understand heaven. To know heaven, understand the Way. To know the Way, understand the great within yourself.”
25th Verse of the Tao Te Ching

“My work is like a dialogue between me and unseen powers, like alchemy.”
Cai Guo-Qiang

“To work magic is to weave the unseen forces into form; to soar beyond sight; to explore the uncharted dream realm of the hidden reality; to infuse life with color, motion and strange scents that intoxicate; to leap beyond imagination into that space between the worlds where fantasy becomes real; to be at once animal and god. Magic is…the ultimate adventure.”
Starhawk

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To Possess or Let Flow

The line on a Facebook post went something like this:

“If we would all possess the same truth, we could get along.”

I thought, possess and truth do not belong in the same sentence.

This must be an error!

Does this person want to build a dam for a flowing river?

Stop the wind from blowing?

I rewrote the sentence:

If we go deep within, we find a truth that flows throughout all life.

“May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.”
Rainer Maria Rilke

“The river is everywhere.”
Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

“Humans, chuckled the vampire, so possessive.”
Gail Carriger, Soulless

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The Final Breath: a short, short story

“William thought of that Sacrament now and felt bad for all the children who were forced to divide their ordinary lives into sins and not-sins so they would have something to say to a cassocked stranger.”
Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

That is where it all started, she thought, as she lay her head back on the pillow reviewing the course of her life as she struggled to breathe.

She saw herself clearly, first as a young girl, fearful, as she crept closer to a curtain which she would step behind to talk to a man about bad things she did or thought.

She started memorizing in her head, I yelled at Mary, I wanted the doll my sister got for Christmas, and on and on through a litany of events and thoughts from her week wondering if these were good enough sins to tell the priest.

Now, in old age, she realized that this is where she started to divide the world into good and bad, sin and not-sin, black and white, where no middle ground held any merit—a line drawn as if chopped by a cleaver.

As she wept, holding this young girl in her heart, she began to forgive herself for all the ways she judged herself, all the times she shut herself off from her own desires, cut herself off from others out of fear, expressed anger at those who saw events and people from a different perspective. All the ways she stopped herself from fully living her life.

She opened her eyes, felt all the love in her heart, gasped for a final breath, and cried out to anyone who would listen, “I am alive.”

“Hate the sin, love the sinner.”
Mahatma Gandhi

“He tried to name which of the deadly seven might apply, and when he failed, he decided to append an eighth, regret.”
Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain

“Every breath we take, every step we make, can be filled with peace, joy, and serenity.”
Thich Nhat Hanh

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Soar Like an Eagle

Today, as I reflect on my week to see what inspires me, I look to my grandson who received the highest Boy Scout award, Eagle Scout. Sev joined Cub Scouts at age 5 and today at age 18 he looks back at hundreds of hours dedicated to learning, serving others, donating time, helping his community, and leading others to develop skills in planning, preparing, and living with vision.

I bow to Sev and other young men and women like him who look to what can appear as a ‘sorry excuse for a world’ and rather than give up in despair, move forward with integrity, kindness, thoughtfulness, and creativity while living from their heart to heal and make whole.

Also at age 5, Sev received his first drum kit. Music fills his world, and he has dedicated many hours of learning and practice in becoming a talented drummer, adding keyboard, guitar, and vocals. He is off to college now and we send him off with love and joy and a greater hope for our world’s future.

“Rise up and adopt an eagle mentality. Challenge yourself to leave environments where people have accepted mediocrity. Surround yourself with people who are going places.”
Germany Kent

“You can run with turkeys, but it takes greater strength to fly with eagles.”
Matshona Dhliwayo

“Be an eagle instead of flocking like pigeons. Self-discovery will always be the highest type of knowledge in one’s life.”
Mwanandeke Kindembo

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