Another bad thing in a world of bad things. I have not become numb, that is not what has happened. I crumble with each new attack, with each new assault – foreign or domestic. And then I disconnect, and block out the media, and become absorbed in my kids’ interests and the activities we can do together to fill our world with joy. I didn’t take … Continue reading We could Hug More!
“At this point in his life, he hadn’t started inhabiting his work, like he did later.” Continue reading Inhabit
It’s Tao Tuesday – a fun little reminder to think these thoughts, to examine these principles, to engage the spirit and delve into this understanding, or non-understanding as the case may be. One day of the week, as originally instigated by Amy Putkonen over at Tao te Ching Daily. She has a whole list of every chapter and articles or responses to every one. I … Continue reading Thoughts on Thinking, the Empty Mind and Not-Doing
This is not a reference I throw around lightly. This is something I have studied. I worked at the Anti-Defamation League in San Francisco when I was younger, helping maintain their library of groups they watched for hate crimes or atrocities in the making. Every day, researchers would hand me stacks of articles from periodicals around the world to chronicle and file. They kept records … Continue reading Horrifying Comparison of Adolescence
Being on the right side of the brain is a little like being on the Left Bank in Paris: relaxing while watching the passing show, listening to the music on the corner. It’s a place to sit around and tell stories and wonder about it all – and most important, to slow down. Call it crazy or lazy, this wisdom may be found only … Continue reading Right Brain, Left Bank and Parenting through Teenage Angst
Tao Tuesday – in participation with the Tao Te Ching Daily site by Amy Putkonen. Chapter 79 Failure is an opportunity. If you blame someone else, there is no end to the blame. Therefore the Master fulfills her own obligations and corrects her own mistakes. She does what she needs to do and demands nothing of others. First, I read Amy’s essay … Continue reading A Matter of Perspective
Tao Tuesdays: Thanks to Amy Putkonen of Tao Ta Ching Daily. Chapter 78 Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water. Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it. The soft overcomes the hard; the gentle overcomes the rigid. Everyone knows this is true, but few can put it into practice. Therefore the Master remains serene in the … Continue reading Calm as Water
Let me preface by saying that after writing today’s reflection, I feel raw because of how much I have to learn. This motherhood thing is ever changing, constant learning, every day more to understand about ourselves and therefore how we parent. I choose to keep thinking that every day I am trying to be better, but a lot of times, I feel the weight of how … Continue reading Lessons in Learning
Tao Te Ching – Chapter 74 – with Reflection If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to. If you aren’t afraid of dying, there is nothing you can’t achieve. Trying to control the future is like trying to take the master carpenter’s place. When you handle the master carpenter’s tools, chances are that you’ll cut … Continue reading Balance – That Damned Word
There may actually be too many things percolating in my head this morning, for any of them to come together into a cohesive thought, but I’m going to try. I am happy to announce that I do not think it is possible for words or books to disappoint me. Wednesday evening I finished book two in the All Soul’s Trilogy, by Deborah Harkness, and I’d told … Continue reading Ancient Alchemy in Matters of the Heart
Recently, I’ve gotten back to a daily writing of poetry in the early morning. I have also been going through another one of Julia Cameron’s writing challenge books, “Walking in this World,” and was instructed to write about my intention for writing. Continue reading “The Tapestry of Intention”
For the last week, I’ve been mulling over the reckless idea of a Singleness of Purpose. It floors me, the thought. I’ve been wondering about it almost nonstop – as if the quest for a Singleness of Purpose has been my purpose lately. Who are the people who seem to have one? People who dedicate large swaths of time to writing a book, who research … Continue reading Where to from here?
We have been Home Schooling for a bit now, and there have been good days and struggling days. My Ben is so much like me that we can butt heads. We are learning how to work together for mutual benefit. In the process of beginning Home Schooling, I let the Homestead fall to the wayside. I started buying packaged foods because I didn’t have time … Continue reading Wild Beyond Wild, Calm Within Calm
“The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far from the Tree,” doesn’t nearly say it all, in our case. At this stage, the apple is still growing, still attached to the limb, still gaining sustenance, growth directives and habits from me. Me and my husband, of course, it’s just that my husband has so much cool to convey and pass down. I am the uptight one, the … Continue reading On Apples Staying True to Form
Filed under: Lessons learned from a Rap Artist, and Color Me Surprised. It’s not that I dislike rap music. I get the inherent poetry of the genre. It just hasn’t been a form of music I consciously seek out for pleasure. I’m close to fifty-years old, and I think I just missed this art form. Today I heard an artist speaking on the radio … Continue reading Remember to Remember
Here’s how the conversation went with my husband earlier today… “I’m afraid I complicate things,” I said. “No, Really?” he laughed. “But first you simplify your complicated, then that seems too easy, so you complicate it again, and add layers and extra buttons, and some fancy widgets, then you scrap the whole thing and go for simple again, but only if it can be in … Continue reading Complicating Simple
Yesterday I read a great article about setting aside fifteen minutes a day to Power Brainstorm, to Idea Generate and let the mind wander from one new idea to another. The author said that of course pumping out lots of ideas in an almost forced way will mean that a lot of the ideas aren’t going to work, but focusing your brain to think … Continue reading Soap and Joy and Dance and Daydreaming
The answer, of course, is “So we can learn to get back up again.” This is a line from Batman Begins that I heard my boys saying to one another after they’d seen the movie, reminding each other of the importance of learning through failure. In the last few months I have been nursing a wound to my writer’s life image of myself, to my … Continue reading And, Why Do We Fall Down?
Yesterday, Scott and our little 5-year old, red-headed Bean and I were at Costco doing an In-House Event for our Tree Service, right after Bean and I went on a field trip to the Pumpkin Patch with his Kindergarten class. We got to set up a table, show off some pictures of our work and pass out business cards to passersby. Bean at the Pumpkin … Continue reading Blessed by Eye-Contact
The way I am learning to meditate, is to be still and quiet, and allow my mind to settle onto something, whatever it wants to settle onto, and keep breathing. It is a very low-key, no stress kind of meditation. I don’t beat myself up for doing it wrong, because there is no wrong way to do it. I read somewhere that given the opportunity … Continue reading Gratitude, Grace and Green Beans
“One of the great adventures of sowing seeds and propagating mystery is that no matter how mindful and careful you are, inevitably some of your dreams will end in the failure so essential to a gardener’s soul. Failure punctuates pomposity and inflated dreams, and makes you lean. Every paradise garden of Eden needs a little failure to culture its true character. Not until you know … Continue reading Failure Punctuates Pomposity
We say Organic-ish, because we do use Wasp Spray. Other than that, we don’t spray anything on our garden, no chemicals, no weed-killers, and it turns out, that’s a really good thing. Our animals love all those weeds. At first we were pulling weeds, now I’m out every morning Clipping Weeds. That’s right, I clip them because I need them to grow back. Our turkeys, … Continue reading Unexpected Up-Side of our Organic-ish Farming Venture
As I was meditating this morning, I caught myself telling myself how I was supposed to be doing it, rather than relaxing and just enjoying it. “Suppose” became my mantra. But, “Let’s suppose” is a guess, and “Supposed to” is a should, or something I feel I have to do, but don’t really want to do. And I pass those should’s and ought’s on to … Continue reading Suppose all our Supposed To’s are Erroneous Suppositions
Dustin Hoffman is in a video that will most likely go viral. It is about the moment he realized how many amazing women he had missed out on meeting or interacting with in his life because they didn’t fit the image he had in his head of how women should look. He breaks down crying in the video as he’s talking about his part in … Continue reading Dustin Hoffman on Appreciating Women
Weeds in the garden. You don’t water them, you don’t tend them or nurture them, you certainly don’t plant them. You basically work hard to starve them of any nutrients so they will go away, and they are just as hardy as the day is long, and pop up continually. Some of the weeds in my garden are lovely, actually. They have delicate purple flowers … Continue reading Those Star Thistles are Vicious, aren’t They?
