Today’s Living – Page 6

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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The Dive

In my kayak 
I float on water 
under the sun 
tickled by a breeze.
Clouds drift, 
rain drops splash, 
while loon teaches 
her young 
to dive to life 
under the surface. 
Like loon, I descend 
to what lies beneath 
sensory perception, 
in search of sustenance 
for my journey.

Be the silent watcher of your thoughts and behavior. You are beneath the thinker. You are the stillness beneath the mental noise. You are the love and joy beneath the pain.
Eckhart Tolle

“Hold this rope while I dive into my soul; don’t even bother pulling it if I didn’t come up on my own.”
Ahmed Mostafa

“I will dive into my chaos, and my Abyss will turn it into an art scene.”
― Talismanist Giebra, Talismanist: Fragments of the Ancient Fire. Philosophy of Fragmentism Series.

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In This House

That house I used to live in,
the one that eluded me
as things do when you try to forget,
or simply don’t remember,
felt lacking, uncertain,
incomplete, like—
What’s in that closet?

Such a jumble,
I could not tell you.
I did not seem to be
a part of it, nor it to me,
yet it’s where life happened:
birth and death, joy, and sadness,
memories made for a lifetime,
the joy of children and delight.

Today, in this house, I breathe, 
feel comfort and recognize each corner—
each room in accord.
This house I now live in feels whole,
part of a creation, mine, and 
not mine. Like the earth places 
where I feel I belong, as I 
merely travel through.

“On this sacred path of Radical Acceptance, rather than striving for perfection, we discover how to love ourselves into wholeness.”
Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance

“We all have a sacred calling that has very little to do with what we accomplish in this world. It is the calling of the sacred — the quiet pull of an implicit wholeness within each of us that awaits our conscious recognition.”
John J. Prendergast, The Deep Heart, Our Portal to Presence

“By psychological work we are changed. In spiritual work we are revealed: we manifest our inner wholeness in conscious daily life.^”
David Richo, How to be an Adult: A Handbook on Psychological and Spiritual Integration

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WHEN DYING IS ANNOUNCED

Dark clouds hover,
breezes shift,
sun’s rays ease 
while rabbit skitters
to protection.

In the unexpected,
tensions rise,
plans change,
we scurry when 
we thought we 
could rest, thinking
this day 
would last 
forever.

The announcement comes,
our brains slow, 
numb in thought:
to do, to think,
to plan, to support,
to be present, as
a loved one navigates,
through rocky terrain.

A child’s laughter
wakes us into now,
not when or if, but
the present, filled
with love and compassion,
and we realize
the sun never went anywhere,
was merely hidden 
behind a dark cloud that, true
to its nature, drifts.

Losses felt,
not in a moment but
in the movement of time,
and change, and then
through the laughter of children, 
we move, we live, we love.

“What we see, and like to see, is cure and change. But what we do not see and do not want to see is care, the participation in the pain, the solidarity in the suffering, the sharing in the experience of brokenness.”
HENRI NOWEN

“It is a serious thing to be alive on this fresh morning in the broken world.”
Mary Oliver

“Always hold fast to the present. Every situation, indeed every moment, is of infinite value, for it is the representative of a whole eternity.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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Ongoing Resource List: Reading for Heart and Mind