ARTFUL GATHERINGS

Happiness

November 28, 2007 As you grow, you develop the ideal of where your true belonging could be - the place, the home, the partner, and the work.  You seldom achieve all the elements of the ideal, but it travels with you as the criterion and standard of what true belonging could be. John O' Donohue 

Yesterday as I was heading to the kitchen, I glanced in the living room and look at what I found..

These two creatures were already exhausted and dinner had not even been served. I guess they thought a nap was needed before the ritual of scrounging for food would begin. Zoey was thinking, " It is a great deal of work to hide under the table and only be seen,felt and fed by the children". Maggie was thinking, "adults can get rather indignant and will make us leave the room if we get caught".

Okay what do  adults do after a wonderful meal, dishes are done, and the guest have gone home? Learn how to take self portraits with a camera of course....

I hope you all had a wonderful thanksgiving. I wish you buckets of happiness.

Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony. 
Thomas Merton 

Birthday

November 26, 2007   I would like to learn, or remember, how to live.  I come to Hollins Pond not so much to learn how to live as, frankly, to forget about it.  That is, I don't think I can learn from a wild animal how to live in particular...but I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical senses and the dignity of living without bias or motive.  The weasel lives in necessity and we live in choice, hating necessity and dying at the last ignobly in its talons.  I would like to live as I should...And I suspect that for me the way is like the weasel's: open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, remembering nothing, choosing the given with a fierce and pointed will. Annie Dillard

November 27, 2007  Use your time wisely. Every moment produce beautiful thoughts, loving, kindness, forgiveness. Say beautiful things, inspire, forgive, act physically to protect and help. Thich Nhat Hanh 

                                    

Yesterday was my son PJ's 18'th birthday.

How do they get so big so quick? It was a fun day. With a fire in the fireplace we played games while we waited for the favorite birthday dinner of  Apple Scatch to be ready. It was  a wonderful and I do believe everone enjoyed each others company. 

Now the turkey has been stuffed and is roasting in the oven....hopefully dinner will be at 4 p.m.

Journey

November 25, 2007   You have got to own your days and name them each one of them every one of them or else the years go right by and none of them belong to you. Herb Gardener

I started a new journal today and was surprised how my first page coincided with the quote I found for last year.

ruminate

November 23 - November 24, 2007   standing alone today demands even more courage and strength than it did in former cultures. From infancy, children have been programmed to perform. Rather than living from their own needs and feelings, they learn to assess situations in order to please others. Without an inner core of certainty grounded in their own musculature, they lack the inner resources to stand alone. Pummeled by mass media and peer group pressures, their identity may be utterly absorbed by collective stereotypes. In the absence of adequate rites of passage, ad-men become the high priests of an initiation into the addictions of consumerism.
Marion Woodman

I am always amused when I find random pictures of my children on my camera. I guess they were playing model and photographer. I often wonder as I look at my younger children if I am teaching them to live from their own inner needs and feelings. I want them to grow up strong and be able to face the world on their own two feet but I am also a wimp at times and say yes when I should be saying no.

But I am not in the mood at the moment to ruminate on my parenting skills. Instead I am going to hug and kiss my children and thank God for blessing with with such an amazing family.

dharma

November 22, 2007 DHARMA

Using our unique talent to serve humanity is the third aspect of the law of dharma. When we use our creative expression to meet the needs of other people, we experience true joy and ecstasy. We detach from the fear and struggle of the ego and surrender to the wisdom of our higher self. Living in dharma allows us to enjoy the boundless love of our spiritual essence. Deepak Chopra

What is your unique talent and are you using this talent to  serve humanity? This may be to deep of a question for me to answer today or tomorrow. I know I love to use my creative talents (or what I perceive to be my creative talents) but am I using them to help others or am I looking for an excuse to keep playing with paint and art supplies. 

I guess I have not completely detached from fear and struggle associated with my ego. But once you detach do you stay detached or does ones ego slowly creep back? 

Useless

November 21, 2008 

The Seven Whispers are:

• Maintain peace of mind
• Move at the pace of guidance
• Practice certainty of purpose
• Surrender to surprise
• Ask for what you need and offer what you can
• Love the folks in front of you
• Return to the world [of Nature]  Christina Baldwin     

I know I have posted these Seven whispers before but this was what was in my 2007 journal. I still believe this is a wonderful flight pattern for everyday life. Today I participated in the swim

 

class I am enrolled in at the YMCA. Tonight I took an inversion yoga workshop.... basically an hour of standing on our heads. Needless to say theses two classes have rendered me useless.

simplicity

November 18, 2007 

Simplicity is something that our
Fundamental nature inherently 
Possesses. If we prepare in 
Advance and nurture it within
Ourselves, then wherever we happen to 
Be, whether in wealth and high rank, 
Or poverty and low status, 
In foreign lands, or in difficult
Circumstances, we deal with 
Whatever situation we are in 
By retaining our simplicity there. 
It is not increased when we do great 
Deeds or reduced when we are 
Dwelling in obscurity. 
Wherever we go, we are at peace, 
Because we have found simplicity. - Nie Bao (1487-1563)

November 19, 2007

There is no place for exertion or effort in Buddhism; it is just a matter of being normal and nonobsessed, taking care of bodily functions, dressing and eating, lying down when tired. Fools laugh at me; it is the wise ones who understand this. An ancient said, “Those who work on externals are all ignoramuses.” - Lin Chi (d 867?)

I agree with a life of simplicity but this weekend I was able to experience ( in person ) something amazing (complex)....

                

Prayer

November 15 - 17 2007 

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles,
no matter how long,
but only by a spiritual journey,
a journey of one inch,
very arduous and humbling and joyful,
by which we arrive at the ground at our feet,
and learn to be at home. Wendell Berry

It has been a weekend of  extreme emotions. Pat(he is the baby in this photo)  and I have spent the last few days in Florida with Pat's family to celebrate the life of Pat's sister's husband. It was wonderful to see and  be with family members we had not seen for several years....... but also so very sad. Thank God for the children.

Here I am with a few members of the  younger/next

generation.

For all my Blog readers please send a prayer to Peggy (Pat's sister), a prayer of  strength and love to help her through the next days/months/years. She is a wonderful sister- in- law /friend and I am so blessed to have her and her family in my life.

Embrace

November 12- November 14, 2007 "For this reason, the purest acts of faith always feel like risks. Instead of leading to absolute quietude and serenity, true spiritual growth is characterized by increasingly deep risk taking. Growth in faith means willingness to trust God more and more, not only in those areas of our lives where we are most successful, but also, and most significantly, at those levels where we are most vulnerable, wounded, and weak. It is where our personal power seems most defeated that we are given the most profound opportunities to act in true faith. The purest faith is enacted when all we can choose is to relax our hands or clench them, to turn wordlessly toward or away from God. This tiny option, the faith Jesus measured as the size of a mustard seed, is where grace and the human spirit embrace in absolute perfection and explode in world-changing power." Gerald May

Today is hard because there is so much sadness in the air around me. I am sending peace and love to all those I know. I am praying for God to give them a small glimmer of hope. The pain of losing loved ones is horrible but this close to the holiday season the pain feels unimaginable. As I wrote yesterday I am trying to embrace this  moment and appreciate everyone and everything around me. 

So at this moment I digging deep for some feeling of gratitude that I have a yard over run with leaves which I need to vacuum, rake and bag. Dodo (real name Lucky)  here thinks he is going to help. Embrace the leaves.

Live

November 10, 2007 - November 11, 2007  Looking deeply at life

as it is
in the very here and now

Thich Nhat Hanh

I changed my quote from last year because I am living these words from Thich Nhat Hanh. In the past few days I have been taught an invaluable lesson about living in the here and now. Since Saturday three men I have known have passed away. One was 25, one was 39, and one was 62. All wonderful beautiful, kind , giving, and loving men. Two men left behind a wife and children and one left behind family and friends. Two of these men I had been associated with because of mutual friends. The third man was my brother- in- law. Pat's (my husbands) sister's husband. All three deaths were sudden. One man last control of his car at 7p.m on Sunday evening. The second man was hit by a truck while jogging. The third man died from complications with/from Leukemia. As I sit here I have lit three candles and I am sending prayers to the loved ones each of these men have left behind. 

For me ever clique I have heard about life now resonates with me.... live in the moment, live for today, carpe diem, and Go for it now.  The future is promised to no one.  ~Wayne Dyer