Always with gratitude, but Kiss the Morning into Being
Sometimes. . . . it is all that can be done. . . . . veronica
Always with gratitude, but Kiss the Morning into Being
Sometimes. . . . it is all that can be done. . . . . veronica
This I journaled in my Jan 14, 2022 entry. . . Much had been going on for most of the month of December and now into January with two hospital visits with atrial fibrillation and adverse reactions to new meds, I started a letter to friend John thinking to post it but I would have caused depression in many a sensitive reader. And entering the third year of the Covid pandemic, my blog readers did not need another verification that we might go down the tube again.
And now with Putin invading Ukraine and with the Russian peoples taking to the streets in protest, we may see the answer to problems we face that wars will never solve again. I admit that when Putin took Crimea in 2014 I was busy with personal problems having no room for international conflicts.
Our heads can only handle what we can handle and sorry not to be hail fellow well met. But sweet Jesus, how much more of everything can be met without going to the waters on our knees?
The following was written after much argument and negotiations with my cosmic teachers. Because you see my rants are still the same.
I need also do an essay on Ambient Adherence. I think much is lost when not taken into consideration is the ambience adhered of attitudes from the place where one is. I did not realize what I was picking up simply by breathing the air and injustices on us who integrate the time and place and also the mechanics of the devices we carry with us.
We inhale the vibes of our days. If we are thoughtful, we see our issues and try to heal ourselves. We also look for ways to avoid the pain of looking within and the work involved. We also see the games played and the lies told. We are not fooled.
Like for instance, how Televisions capture the pictures of people in the midst of going about business and relating to the times. And who profits the most by playing the games used by choosing which families to incarnate.
The handheld phones and the swift answers to likes and dislikes remind us always that we have a voice. And who profits from addictions and mental problems of children who are harmed the most.
Enough reminders make us either immobile and sick or sick and mentally unable. People will leave these times with mental conditions needing many generations to overcome, leaving disabled souls on the curb. These are called gifts?
I realize that not everyone has the courage to confront their issues but for the privileged few who are given further education, the hope is that somehow there will be a spine also given to clean up their acts. What we see is that the privileged find ways and means of avoiding self confrontations.
With education comes the knowledge that the world offers many ways to doing some good for reputations to be honored without any work being done on the self.
And the self being one that has contributed in many ways through the centuries to the morass of ancient angst but then who casts the first stone?
artwork by Lucinda Cathcart (my niece)
TinyStudioCrafts.com
What is visible is visible and what is also visible can be chosen not to be seen. The depth of perception only depends on the inmost courage of the individual in his capacity to deal with impending events.
Courage is not garnered overnight nor is it stored for all time. It is fought for every morning in the bathrooms all over the world. And it is worn with conviction man hopes into the kitchen for breakfast with the family.
It has been that life of quiet desperation Thoreau wrote about. To live one’s life directed to the greater life is only done with knowledge that the greater life exists. For this to become common knowledge means the footwork has been done.
But only as we observe with knowledge that life is neverending, is everlasting and the challenge is in the journey, in the hope that humankind will tolerate the fact that destiny is in his hands.
And what happens in the world inhabited is but a reflection of the greater worlds and what will transpire in greater degree elsewhere.
And the planet Earth will prevail, and humankind will survive, and the Universes will reflect the good we hope to inflect in the heart of man.
A program televised told of near death experiences of several people. One of the persons reflected on her experience as vast, simply the other side was vast. And vast it is. With boundaries set to see what limited senses reveal, that there are those who see what others do not.
Unless words find a bedding, like the words everlasting life, the cycle repeats but with a difference to come. Circumstances will not be as favorable and forever actually come alive, a death path is walked and cannot give houseroom to what actions by omission and commission wrought, nor the planet hospitable.
When icons are smashed symbolizing centuries of man’s desire to translate the divine into the material, he smashes also the humans who built them.
Found Courage . . . .
I ask,
Where did you find your courage?
On what tree was it hanging
that you could reach up
and pluck it from its hiding place
to wear as epaulettes
on your shoulders?
The children whisper during the night,
saying their Ave’s to each other,
hoping they will grow into courage
with a red badge to wear.
You say,
They are blinded.
They cannot see their milky courage
like cream rising to the top;
one day to merge
through alerted senses
that call for unthinkable strength.
They have been practicing every day
since they were born.
They will learn that courage
comes with each breath taken
and like the freedom they take for granted
must be won every day.
One day they will find it wears like a second coat of paint.
Long before the world ever was. . . .
As co-creator and creature both of the universe, it is man’s prerogative and innate yearning to stand erect. To bow down all the time leaves one eventually on one’s stomach. Man rose from the crawling position. There are too many yet who find the child’s position too comfortable.
To stand erect means that certain responsibilities must be accepted. And that includes responsibility for one’s person and attitudes. There are worlds yet where man will find the child’s position more comfortable and comforting.
To be adult means that one has to survive the inner turmoil and the outward condemnation which the world applies.
You do not defame the heavens. The heavens are not all that peaceful and without its own turmoil. There are many cliques yet which aim to destroy what man in his finest moments tried to accomplish.
We continue to say at every life’s departure that we go to a better place. Unless our life’s pattern has been to work toward that better place, we may find ourselves again learning the lessons we failed to learn but in lesser circumstances.
Like primer on bare wood, being and doing good must be innate. The Source of our impulses must be the Greater Heart.
The Roses Are For You. . .
I tell you true. You were known
before you came here to this vast land.
A waste for some, a paradise for others. . .
for one a dim place, for another the sun shines.
You took upon your spirit a work, a job,
looking to make a difference.
You said to send you where your heart
could change the world. . .
You were given your wish, hard as it seems.
You have not failed. Your ripples are felt
on unnamed shores and even the unborn
know your thoughts well. . . .
Come, be kind to one the heavens
sing praises for. Your work is virtuous
and your talents creative. We make bet on
the one winning the trifecta.
The roses are yours. For keeps.
(it was scribed and it was a Given. I share the message. We are known.)
What I have learned in these past times is that there are some things that cannot be improved upon. Whether a recipe that has been perfected or something written that has stood the test of my time, meaning my physical life. This is one of them. And my measure has been my life of almost 91 years. As I often ask my beleaguered son, how close to a hundred do I have to get? And he answers you are not there yet. So, I reprint this with gratitude to my teachers, the muses and whoever holds the sparklers. With love and a deep AAhh MMenn.
Jon Meacham, historian, told the story of when President Reagan was in the hospital after being shot, he was wiping up some water in the bathroom when a surprised visiting President Bush asked him what he was doing. I spilled water and I didn’t want the nurse to get blamed for it he said.
These are the small things about us that we leave as our legacy. Not the big things that we sometimes are noted for. Not always the Salk vaccine that Jonas Salk saved the world from polio but the Conscious Evolution he taught I came across in the interview when he wanted to save humanity from themselves.
We are beyond the times of physical survival as such evidenced by growing numbers. Now we must emphasize the human values we do not have time for that are taken by devices with addicting instant gratification. Or even casual relations we indulge in that make us not proud.
Where conscious action determines the potential in human behavior across the planet because we cared enough to do something right and good that enhanced life for just one person. Because of its inherent goodness, it became a lifesaving principle for all humanity.
And the small, light touch I wrote about that I appreciate as you put your hand on the small of my back to help me up the curb. It is a small curb to viewers but to me a mountain to climb. You know the why of the kiss on your forehead as you depart telling me that you are not feverish.
As I see you both hug your loves with a quick crush to let them know the strength of your arms in that loving moment. The small things that will be your legacy also.
That will be the difference we make, we all make in lives we touch even perfunctorily. Seemingly innocuous, seemingly without feeling. But it makes in enormity, the teaching lesson confirming to us that we are of worth, that we are good. (it is my song, vrh)
In Looking Back
Sometimes in looking back
to grasp meaning. . . .
the uneventful brims with it.
The small deeds by the young
take on logistics of magnitude.
The small bouquet often picked
from the neighbor’s garden
is innocently given with largess of heart.
It is no small thing
when the child says I will do it. . . .
and unburdens the caregiver.
It is in the uneventful
that the heart grows in understanding,
when the lesson becomes the food on the plate.
Not good to look back?
How else to learn what life has taught
and perhaps we learn what not to repeat?
It bodes well to forgive when harshness
makes brittle the connections,
but in the smallest detail,
in the dailyness of the commonplace, we grow.
And the soul leaps forward and universal life is greatly enhanced.
photo by the late Diane Rybacki
but forever a sister. . . .
When David Died . . . .
I say that David took the hands off my clocks.
It was the greatest gift he could give me.
I tire of running my life with a large hand and a small hand.
No time for this, hurry for that. Do this now, do that before.
I hate it. With a passion.
I want to immerse myself in time and swim in it.
Feel it around me yielding and yet holding me up.
I want to feel the eternity of it and
I want to see my house and yard
at different times under the sun.
To be able to say that in the morning
this is precisely how they look.
I want the information stored in my Memory Bank
for those times when I feel bereft.
I want to see the moon rise and give way to the sun.
I want to see the rainbow
around the moon and say again,
we are in for a big snow.
I need to revel in the mundane task
of shaking out the kitchen rugs
on the back porch and feel the cold boards
beneath my slippers and the cold air
stealing beneath my clothes.
I want to keep looking at the moon with a glance,
because no farmer stares at the moon too long
and say hello David.
And when I feel very homesick, I will again
as I have in the past, take my coffee
out on the porch and sit beneath the midnight sky
with the stars daring me to look up
and identify them and again
revel in this multifaceted existence called Life.
How fortunate I have been in this magnificent time in being a parent, a mother. David was one of three brothers, my best teachers. To have had them sitting at our table for those years we could claim them made us rich. We were blessed to have David in our lives for 31 years. It would have been a tragedy to us not to have had him. And for those who knew him . . . there is not a day that he is not thought of.
He is blessed assurance that life is everlasting. That . . . we know.
You Stayed The Course
Only you saw what you saw.
Yet you stayed the course
and plowed the field
and now the plow is lifted.
We will work.
The children will have their toys and
the world will have the words and
in due time you come home
and we frolic.
‘Til the morning lingers onto day
and the night never ends;
’til the stars forget to shine
and the moon hides its light
from the ne’er do wells who take
so much for granted.
We, love, will drink that libation
that holds the variegated colors
and will chortle from this world
onto the next.
There will be love and laughter;
there will be joy and there will be rest
this world has not been able to grant.
We will have brought peace
to the memories and
no longer will they haunt you.
The ancestors will rest
and man will look forward
to what he can accomplish.
The world will blossom;
all worlds and all times.
The path in the jungle has been cut.
Jan 14,’89 journal
August 29,’14
art by Claudia Hallissey
I remember walking from the garage to the house and wondering if my mate would see the work I did in the yard that had taken me till dark to do. And I was thinking of the Christmas tree I had once put up, sawing off the trunk to fit the holder, stringing blue lights and also the decorating everything had required. All this and even the latter was thought walking the path to the house. The blue lights of the tree in the new room window were vivid in the dark.
And the thought occurred walking that it was in error that I thought I did these things. And the error was in thinking that they were done to gain the praise and gratitude of the one I had in mind. It was not the Other whose praise I wished. It was none other than my Self I did my best and worked to please.
The scenes I wanted to duplicate were the ones I had in memory. From where or what world I did not know. But from a somewhere and sometime that burned into my brain their beauty and with the love for me that somehow came as an apriori, a before that kept me warm.
When I saw this photo from Emma E’s grandfather, who said that the great granddaughter decides whole scenes with great grandma’s tapestries, adding a house, birdhouse, raffia and sea shells with very real symbols, I know what is withdrawn from that memory bank.
Important to me is the care given to creating what is done from mind’s bedding. Lately I am keenly aware of the casual dismissal of what is made and what little thought is given. And it seems any effort is called creative no matter how thrown together something is.
It offends me greatly because if it is worth doing, there should be pride in workmanship when done. Time and physical effort called sweat should accompany what one presents as one’s work with name attached. Some things are done as exercise of an idea and should be our fun. Creative presentments should have standards that are measurable.
Our schoolrooms once taught these standards. Realizing that many felt outside what was accepted and were singed by the standards should open one for further study and practice to make better.
And learn that we are not the only way station but our further journey will yet show us sparklers.
I had intended to send an email to a friend and instead with this quirk of a mind which is mine, it took to be an essay. When finished I thought better than to send it. The reason being another trip to the hospital last weekend in dire straits.
An early cardiologist appointment on Friday morning the 7 th, had him saying you need hospital care and the feeling was imminent. So a weekend in the care of my Mentor’s Caregivers had them releasing me to my family on Sunday, January 9 th.
And time to give some thought to what I need to write. The finding (stumbled) and reading of an early journal entry, (almost to the day plus 50 years) had this to say about the road being traveled. I edit only for space.
January 17, 1973
Wednesday
Been busy at work all day. Read for a while last night and was interested in the excerpt of Paul Tillich when he talked of the Cosmic Consciousness experience as a State of Grace. It is interesting how much I understand what was not clear a decade earlier. Does time do it or growth?
Tillich states that Grace cannot be wished for (how can you wish for something outside your experience?) Yet when it comes you know that something outside your experience has happened; not by various names but a something, happened.
Mine came with the knowledge that I was one with the universe and the words, ‘He Lives!’
Whether that meant Christ because of my upbringing, or because a friend died and was alive without a doubt. His wife was impressed to call me on the day he made his transition and the only thing I could say to her was that he lives, over and over.
This was the 3 day period when I felt as if the top of my head had been taken off and I indeed felt one with the universe. This must be what it is like when you die to this world. The physical boundaries are no longer and you become part of the surrounding.
I seemed to flow into the Ethers. I felt part and parcel of it, a oneness unbelievable. It was exhilarating while it lasted. I did not know of new intellectual stirrings, except no doubt about the foreverness of life on a gut level. And the words over and over ‘He Lives!’
Tillich said that all that is necessary in this experience is that you know you are accepted. It also comes out of grief and despair. To this day I don’t know why I was so devasted by this friend’s illness and death. Except I remember our first meeting of recognition from a someplace and sometime.
How deep can grief go? It flows through the very core of you and out to join the suffering of ‘All That Is’ . . .
And the core of you is ‘All That Is’ . . . .
(I have been encouraged to enter the early journals into my blog. One already through conversation, that few know even scattered religious history. I have mentioned my crashing world with the doctor asking me to speak to some student wannabe psychiatrists. I agreed and found a roomful waiting. And only one had an idea, an idea of maybe this is what I was talking about, the Rosicrucian.
There may be no description given that matches the experience, but as Paul Tillich said, one knows a something happened, a big something. It was an authentic experience and in discussion with a Protestant minister, he called it a mountain top experience and wished it had been his.)
This wall quilt surprised me and I am fond of this artistic side of me. Knowing how difficult it is to stay with a body intent on laying down, the jenny genes triumphed. Probably never again. I negotiate with my teachers for a bit more time to try another evergreen.
In reading Bedlamfarm.com about simple changes in their three dogs leading to a concern, it brought to mind this whole pandemic we have been tangling with. Not only our concern with humanity but with the creatures we live with.
I am certain we have had more differences of opinions these past two years than we contend with and no resolution. The fact that there is question among us concerning what we should do definitely with humans leads to questions about our four legged companions.
We wonder if we have a cold or Covid or possibly underlying complications from conditions compromising us. Is our Newfie upset because we’re housing the sister dogs or is it something in the water? Why all the accidents with bathroom habits when I am home all day?
And why all the landscaping upsets and gross eating outdoors? When our Newfie blew out his hind legs demanding surgery on both, son John toted pool water breakfast and dinner times for a month while Leroy was in the hospital. Because Leroy wouldn’t drink city water, nor eat the kennel hospital food. Otherwise of course he is no trouble and he was a free dog. There is no such thing we learned.
The opinions diverse. When something becomes a pandemic, common sense tells us that our companion animals are affected too. We are not protected from wild creatures hugging the earth that roam the landscaping and climb the walls to get inside the yards where the good stuffs are. I watch lizards scoot up the cinder block fences and squirrels still playing havoc with dogs still trying to jump 8 foot walls.
And the 200 times better noses on the dogs sense the gross droppings from night creatures eating better than they are they think. I still think it is partly the pool waters.
Many of the homes nearby have backyard pools. And it means that whole communities are treated for what ails us. I luckily talked to the pool man and asked if changes had been made and his immediate question was what are you noticing and troubled with?
I said loose bowels habits and upsets in our creatures. He said we have increased muriatic acid because of the pandemic as well as other measures. I told him I had been running the hose into the small spa section of the pool where the big guy drinks. He agreed it wise to do so when he treats the pool.
I understand water is the most affected during any crisis that affects the community. And animal hospitals are first aware of this. It is written about in most veterinary literature. I am observant.
I have no written credentials but my eyes still work. I am wont to make connections and since I spot first what needs cleaning up. Sorry, it is what I do. I care for what is alive and even sometimes not.
photo by Jessie Hallissey