contentment

a passage from a book i'm reading by robert a. johnson:

Now. Here. This is it. Contentment gives you a different experience of time; your mind stops wandering into the past or the future. As modern people, we waste so much time wishing we're in a different circumstance, which of course is quite impossible. You could call contentment being in love with the moment, not just dutifully accepting it like an arranged marriage but passionately, rapturously embracing the eternal now as your soul mate. Contentment grows out of a willingness to surrender preconceived ideas and affirm reality as it is. Honoring 'what is' is just the opposite of living out of a 'just as soon as' mentality. Reality doesn't always go the way you would like. When this happens, you can either become frustrated and redouble your efforts to push reality around, or you can learn to accept, affirm, and even dance with what is given.

i've been reading robert a. johnson for a while now, read most of his books. i find them all to be vastly stimulating and challenging. this passage above is exactly where i'm at. trying to determine how to accept things as they are, and live abundantly.

it is not an elusive ideal Christ talks about, but it happens to elude me on most occassions. this is a problem with me, not Christ's ideal. i understand that. so what has to change for me to embrace joy? a great many things. my expectations for one. i have always wanted more, to acheive. to become. there is nothing wrong with being forward focused, but at times, it is to the peril or exclusion of the moment.

when johnson refers to the "eternal now," this is a concept i heard back in texas. one which i could never really wrangle in to my experience. but has been hovering in my grey matter for some time.

the way it was phrased there was:

live eternity now

that, friends, is what i mean to do. to tend the mundane, necessary daily bits of life but to find God in them. not to belabor the dragging out of the trash because no one else will. not to begrudge the fallout of a healthy family. but to rejoice that we are together, healthy, alive.

to love now. with its shortcomings and difficulties, with its griefs and pains. to cherish life. i do this on occassion, but it is by no means the standard by which i live.

the idea of "passionately, rapturously embracing the eternal now as your soul mate" is exactly how i needed it phrased. all things pertaining to sensuality come easily to me. i can understand this concept now in a way i could not before. it was an intellectual ideal then. now it is a tryst. a love affair. a rendevous. something i understand, if even only poetically.

in this book johnson has some powerful exercises for discovering one's projections. the question then becomes,

okay, how do i deal with them?

(how many times have i asked myself this question and wanted an answer, any answer). he says,

they are lobbed from the unconscious (my paraphrase). we cannot really know about them as they are being projected so much as discover them.

this gives me some comfort.

i want to stop projecting, stop living my life outwardly, but seems the best i can do is be aware of what is happening. i have asked too much of myself to stop this activity altogether.

that is all. contentment is my aim. i believe it an attainable, worthwhile standard. i am trying to disengage from the materialism so prevalent around me and become somewhat of a minimalist. i still have trouble passing good books and not redeeming them. will have to work on that, though i passed up four books i coveted on thursday.

peace.

touch me babe

the doors' song runs through my head.
i am often surprised at how much touch means, and how little of it i get.

i grew up in a touchy feely family. we always hugged and kissed, EVERYONE when we arrived and when we left. this was because my Grams was going to get hugs and kisses from everyone. so she raised her children this way. it got to be quite an ordeal when there are thirty people at a christmas eve gathering and such. start saying goodbye about fifteen minutes before you need to leave. and yes, we had to kiss our cousins. and we didn't mind so much when we got older. everybody hugged and kissed everybody.

when i married my husband, i became isolated in the worst way. untouched. (not by him mind you. though i'm certain you have gathered that by now from my poems). but it is an entirely different kind of touch that comes from a spouse. that is a deep touch, a therapeutic touch. something mending to the soul.

but in all these many years of marriage i have found one of the things i miss most is having the cousins and aunts and uncles to hug and kiss me.

a friend always commented that i said thank you when she hugged me, but that was some three years into marriage and i was horribly untouched by that point. a week now and again of family isn't enough to fill the tanks of a touchy feely type like me.

(now that's not to say i even feel comfortable with every stranger i meet touching me. no, that's not it at all. it has to be the right context. and now, it has to be women. men hugging me, aside from priests, freaks me out. i don't need it. i don't like it, and except for those men who are also friends with my husband, i don't encourage it.)

so long it has been since i've had anyone just touch me (and know i mean WOMEN, when i say that, okay?), that i forget how meaningful it is.

at the poetry intensive, the matriarch made me cry. i cry easily. it's not something i hide or try to get around. if the tears want to come, i let them. she hugged me constantly after that. every time she saw me. she's italian. i was so grateful for the hugs, i had to thank her when i got home. i hadn't realized how much it meant.

i came across a passage in my readings that says, touching people wakens their spirit. it quickens their soul (my paraphrase). and i thought, yes. that is it exactly.

what my Grams may have purposed to quicken her own soul, quickened mine as well.

i languished in the years i have been apart from my extended family for want of their touch.

i was sitting in a bible study tuesday (see, i'm not a heathen! thank you very much). and peter, my sister's and my favorite priest at this chapel i go to, sat beside me, very close. he tucked his chair right next to the big recliner i absconded (i love a comfy chair) in the library where we met.

we were reading 1 timothy 3, the passage where it says,

silly women at home are led astray by divers lusts.

i kept giggling when we'd read this passage. and peter elbowed me.

i giggled some more because it was like something my family would do. and, well, i in the broadest sense of the word, peter is my family.

but that he was unafraid to elbow me for giggling, i enjoyed immensely. i'm sure it is tough on priests having to deal with silly women. giggling women. with all our divers lusts. i am a handful. but it felt like God was sitting beside me in him, and just enjoying being there. present. within touching distance. very nice.

the new priest at our chapel (we're small but have a bevy of priests from varying traditions, which as you know is my kind of thing), is a woman. i'll save her name for a later date. but she walks up, hugs me and kisses me with a warmth and gentleness that makes me think about changing teams (ha! just checking to see if you are really paying attention. i would never change teams. i'm a devoted manfan).

anyway, i love being touched by WOMEN. and those who don't weird me out.

some touches are freaky and creepy, those i avoid. even a handshake can be creepy given the right circumstance.

but i miss my family. i miss touching them and them touching me. this isolated existance we westerners live is too much for me. i need to be with people when i'm in their midst. maybe that is why i have so much trouble entering in. no one kissed and hugged me when i arrived. (though my priests do, and helen, the lovely 84 year old).

praise be to God.

all one

i'm prompted to write by a kind word i received. one i never imagined to be in shadow says it is so. this confession, this revelation, this encouragement blesses me. as i find myself often feeling alone in this journey.

marion woodman says,

you'll find yourself alone but it is better to be alone then with the crowd. and when you've been alone long enough, you'll find others who are also alone. and they are the only ones worth spending time with anyway.

how i understand this. i've wondered why this aloneness? this pervasive solitude that sometimes it feels i am driven to. the crowds i just don't get. i have tried, believe me, i have tried.

i came across this sentiment in one book i read recently, forgive me for not remembering where, but i read at least a book a week and move so quickly sometimes i can't remember up from down via references. so this was probably robert johnson, as it sounds very much like him:

alone = all one

he went on to say,

when one is unafraid of being alone. one cannot be parted from self. one is all one in the sense that they are so fully themselves that they are whole. complete. entire.

i do not profess wholeness, but i do understand the desire to collect my parts which have been lain down for the sake of others. those pieces, as you can imagine are few, but pivotal.

i'm trying to understand a great many things about my wiring and one of the books i'm finishing up today speaks of aphrodite and how she is enchanted by her own enchantments.

that phrasing is exactly the kind of thing i'm looking to discover in myself. where am i beguiled by my own beguiling. enchanted by my own enchantments.

i'm ever on the proverbial witch hunt within myself, and try to ease up. but scrutiny comes natural to me. i pick through my sordid ideas and try to find the weaklings. my tendencies are a difficult matter though, because they are part habit, part comfort. i do not willingly or easily part with comfort.

it is scant these days, my vestiges of comfort. my bastions of ease have failed me. they have dried up and blown away for the most part. which leaves me staring at a whole slew of habits. which i consider and try to determine what good they are and if they deserve to remain.

it is well. i trust there is a reason for the hope that is within me. and someday i shall know it. see it. even as i rest upon it now, in faith and trust. my dis-ease ever forcing me to reckon with God and cry out for His blessing.

God is indeed faithful. the All One, is watching over me. gathering my scattered members, and re-membering me who i am. who i was created to be. though at times it feels like only darkness. He is here. in this shadow. in this mire. in this pain. He is here.

God be praised.

write me a door

i said i'd write my way though, and i haven't written a word. so i've been bumbling through the mire and need to get out. here i am, fashioning a door of words. a window of hope.

in my prayers the other day i came across the ever powerful scripture,

i shall not die, but live.

how many times that word alone has saved me alive i do not know. i hear my spirit uttering,

choose life. choose life.

i could languish on the vine, but i choose not to. i choose life. so even though i don't feel an ounce "better" as they say, i am choosing life.

my best friend from seattle called yesterday. i had called her late friday night. i was in dire need of help that night. i asked her,

did i sound happy? i was trying to sound happy.

because i was trying to leave a message but not a scary message.

she said,

i know you. i know your voice. i can hear it in your voice when you are sad.

she went on to say,

i think anyone in true relationship who really knows a person can tell when that person is sad.

i hope that is true. i hope that there are many other people out there who have those rallying around them as i, who hear beneath the words. who see though their eyes have not laid hold of me in the flesh in many years, sometimes at all. i hope and pray that there are more friends like that out there to be-friended. if that is even a word. i don't think it is.

today's prayers have this line from luke 1:68:

to give light to them that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death.

that i am a christian and need this light as much as the unsaved, is what it is. i'm not sure that i will ever not be in need of that particularl light.

i sat at the audobon society of new jersey on monday, outside the cage of a wounded captive hawk named killi. she was wounded in texas as a juvenile and while she has wings and can fly, she cannot live in the wild. she cannot fend for herself.

killi makes only juvenile hawk sounds. a kind of gutteral cry i've never heard before. none of the screeching calls so familiar to those who know hawks.

when i first saw her, the striking similarities beckoned me as we regarded one another and i said,

i'm sorry killi. i won't identify with you. i'm blooming.

(a blue jay calls outside my window just now.)

you see, i was once wounded. i once knew only juvenile sounds, but no more. i am restored. i am whole. sure, i fall into shadown now and again, but as my best friend says,

you use your creativity a lot. it is to be expected that your shadow would exact a toll.

she is a pianist, songwriter, you see. and understands these things.

so i sat with killi monday. and we had a good chat. a silent communing of spirits. her piercing brown eyes fixed upon me at times and i smiled and said,

hello lovely.

wounded or not, she is majestic. grounded and caged or not, she demands respect.

many tiger swallowtails frequent the grounds, black swallowtails and an unidentified rather large checkerspot with irridescent spots below the wings reminiscent of a gulf frittilary. but the wings are not the elongated wings of the fritillary, rather akin to a monarch.

i basked in the sun like a butterfly beating her wings upon the bright red campchair flower on which i like a stamen posed. bees investigated me. wasps too (a giant red one unnerved me). the warmth of sunshine, the visual freedom of that place (more on that another day), was healing to me.

beauty is healing. so while i've not penned me a door, i've found me a door of hope and beauty. friendship and love. and i am grateful.

black hole sun

i will try again to write. i've been unable to get the words on the page. which is indicative more of my state of mind than anything. we artistic types, when we are stricken are down for more than just the count. we're (or i shall speak for myself alone), i'm overwhelmed by blackness. such was the case this week. it was a rough, rough week.

i had a friend encouraging me,

write about it suz. you've got to get that stuff out.

when it came out, it weren't pretty. it wasn't anything to be proud of. but it is a beginning.

i often feel bad for those who have to read me (or choose to), because the stuff i'm dealing with is so painful. i just wish i could spare the world. but some part of me thinks, this is what i'm supposed to do.

my friend asked me today,

how will you get through it?

i'll write my way through.

that is what i've done my entire life. i've written doorways and windows out of the pain by just saying,

this is what it is. it's not pretty. nothing to be proud of. it is pain. i understand pain. do you understand it?

and many people step up and say,

yes, i do.

friday night was the worst. i had fallen into shadow. plunged headlong. and could not find my way out. my way up. my poet friend met me, pain for pain, poem for poem.

that this is how i operate and there are other souls out there who can abide with me is such a blessing i can hardly utter it. that there are some who remain unafraid gives me strength. and hope.

i don't have any answers. i don't have any certainties. i don't have any happy words for you. while i'm down, i will not try to feign a smile. but i will be honest. that is what i do. that and write poetry.

here are the words i put down saturday morning. i'll let them trail off where they left me before. i've poems about these, but you must be a poet to read them. or call me and i'll read them to you. i'm in a place not fit for the marketplace. but perhaps my editor will find some way to get me out there. i certainly have no clue.

some thoughts from a book i'm reading come to me now (by Christine Downing),

Time spent in hades that is not spent trying desperately to get out also leads to the discovery of power and beauty of the dark moments in our life, the real confusions and desolations. Fear is so different when one does not have to fear fear but can simply fear; incompleteness and hurt are also different when one sees them not as something to get beyond but as something to live.

(i mentioned this passage to my friend today. she said,

baloney.

but these words still resonate with me. maybe words will come so i can explain why. maybe not.)

persephone's abduction was essential to her becoming. just as ariadne's desertion was essential. all ends well. we become who we are created to become.

the demon lover theme revisited in my readings of late, which mandated the fatal turn of events for Gretchen.

waking the dead

wednesday evening it was my turn to take the girls to vbs (found another one!). we arrived slightly early and they are 9, so they wanted out of the truck to get into mischief.

i tried to distract them as long as possible and finally they decide they want to go to the cemetary.

i told them

you are so loud, you could wake the dead. and probably better be quiet.

they laughed, and my girl's new bff said,

all they can do is pass through us. they can't hurt us (meaning the dead of course).

which i thought very profound for a child. fearless. a real well adjusted kid, which is why i don't mind my child hanging out with her.

on the way to the church, which is surrounded by cemetaries, one large one across the road, but this is an old wooden one room chapel type church with a small detached building used for children's ministries. these two buildings are separated by gravestones, and a cemetary.

the girls wandered through this section of the cemetary as i sat in the truck reading, watching them go from headstone to headstone via my rearview mirror.

passing a cemetary on the way that night, my girl tells me,

that night we went camping with that other troop

yeah,

i said

they told scary stories. and i listened.

i was out by the fire, so i had no idea what they were doing in there. but i saw a ghost stories book the next morning and wondered.

of course, i'm none too pleased about this, but my sister and i read ghost stories when we were girls. one night up late, it was dark (that is the time for these things, is it not?), we were reading about the undead, and we lived in a townhome. my mom and dad had gotten divorced and we were relatively comfortable in these temporary digs. we moved a lot then.

all of the sudden, we heard something run up the stairs and slam a door.

my sister launched the book and we never read ghost stories again. it was probably just the neighbor getting home and being incredibly rude. but my sis and i had over active imaginations having watched every wretched show we wanted or were shown by adults who lacked sense to know better than to show such things to kids.

so i got out of my truck at the end of vbs and stood at the leaning wrought iron fence and read. looking out over the headstones. some tall as spires. others tiny tictac shaped slabs of marble. others cobblestone blocks. there were arlington national cemetery type boogie board shaped marble, these leaned rather severely. all of them, the dearly departed. all of them, reminders of the passing of time. all of them telling their own stories of triumph and loss through one little dash embraced by a couple dates.

quite a sobering sight. i wondered when the church became such a set apart thing. no more surrounded by the ancients. no more reminder of the past and inevitable future of us all. we saunter in and out of church, or at least i do, never thinking about how short our lives really are.

we shuttle off to some distant cemetary, plop the casket in the grave, and shuttle back. it is all very disconnected. living, dying. but in these old churches, the dead become reminders of this fleeting life.

and sometimes, children walk among the headstones killing time.

devouring elephants

i've been thinking a lot about what my next step is. i'm not sure. things happened so quickly when i arrived here in ny, that now it seems i've hit a lull. i need a diversion. to get myself moving forward again.

so i'm registering for the dodge poetry festival, which is only the woodstock of poetry. i hope robert bly shows up. i'd beg steal and borrow to go hear him.

i'm also trying to line up my duckies so i can get to denver this september. the ad lib christian arts retreat was so immensely valuable to my life as an artist, i can't recommend it enough. not only did i have my life infiltrated by God. my borders overrun and a whole slew of stuff happen, i met at least one life long friend. who has been more of a blessing to me than perhaps many people i've met in a long while.

the deal with ad lib is, the artists were so immensely and vastly gifted that it was said when we were introducing ourselves,

okay, just pick your top three areas of artistic gifting.

i met a worship dancer this way and we were able to dance at the end of the weekend.

i have been asked to dance if i go there again. the tricky part of it is, i don't dance for performance. so last year, it was sunday morning and while other performers were applauded when they were done. the group was instructed to hold their applause and walk to the chapel in silence.

it was awesome. perfect. beautiful. i couldn't have asked for more. i don't want applause. i don't want people to watch me. i want to fade gently away and meet at the chapel where we can join hearts and hands in communion.

yes, that is it.

i'm a bit off today. but finding my footing.

a dear friend told me he took my unpublished manuscript to a prison with him and someone got saved. so God is getting the glory after all. my friend said,

if it doesn't get published down here, it's all ready published in heaven.

yes.