“The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe to match your nature with Nature.”
-Joseph Campbell
Tag Archives: quote
You Are Every Age You’ve Ever Been (or Earth is Forgiveness School)
This! This wisdom from the writer Anne Lamott, written on the eve of her 61st year, speaks to me of the beauty and learning inherent in being on the planet for sixty years. Years are a gift to be savored for the wisdom they impart, for the glorious wonder and the searing pain witnessed, for the connections, the laughter, the ability to go deeper and deeper into this journey, into the very consciousness that is our essence. It may not be an ideal system this life, especially for those of us born sensitive, as Lamott states, but it’s all ours, to be absorbed and valued. To be savored. To be accepted. To learn from. It’s an inside job. And, yes, take your shoes off. Thanks Anne!
Anne Lamott, What she has learned from Life and Writing:
“My seven-year-old grandson sleeps just down the hall from me, and he wakes up a lot of mornings and he says, “You know, this could be the best day ever.” And other times, in the middle of the night, he calls out in a tremulous voice, “Nana, will you ever get sick and die?”
I think this pretty much says it for me and for most of the people I know, that we’re a mixed grill of happy anticipation and dread. So I sat down a few days before my 61st birthday,and I decided to compile a list of everything I know for sure. There’s so little truth in the popular culture, and it’s good to be sure of a few things.
For instance, I am no longer 47, although this is the age I feel, and the age I like to think of myself as being. My friend Paul used to say in his late 70s that he felt like a young man with something really wrong with him.
Our true person is outside of time and space, but looking at the paperwork, I can, in fact, see that I was born in 1954. My inside self is outside of time and space. It doesn’t have an age. I’m every age I’ve ever been, and so are you, although I can’t help mentioning as an aside that it might have been helpful if I hadn’t followed the skin care rules of the ’60s, which involved getting as much sun as possible while slathered in baby oil and basking in the glow of a tinfoil reflector shield.
It was so liberating, though, to face the truth that I was no longer in the last throes of middle age, that I decided to write down every single true thing I know. People feel really doomed and overwhelmed these days, and they keep asking me what’s true. So I hope that my list of things I’m almost positive about might offer some basic operating instructions to anyone who is feeling really overwhelmed or beleaguered.
Number one: the first and truest thing is that all truth is a paradox. Life is both a precious, unfathomably beautiful gift, and it’s impossible here, on the incarnational side of things. It’s been a very bad match for those of us who were born extremely sensitive.It’s so hard and weird that we sometimes wonder if we’re being punked. It’s filled simultaneously with heartbreaking sweetness and beauty, desperate poverty, floods and babies and acne and Mozart, all swirled together. I don’t think it’s an ideal system.
Number two: almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes — including you.
Three: there is almost nothing outside of you that will help in any kind of lasting way,unless you’re waiting for an organ. You can’t buy, achieve or date serenity and peace of mind. This is the most horrible truth, and I so resent it. But it’s an inside job, and we can’t arrange peace or lasting improvement for the people we love most in the world.They have to find their own ways, their own answers. You can’t run alongside your grown children with sunscreen and ChapStick on their hero’s journey. You have to release them.It’s disrespectful not to. And if it’s someone else’s problem, you probably don’t have the answer, anyway.
Our help is usually not very helpful. Our help is often toxic. And help is the sunny side of control. Stop helping so much. Don’t get your help and goodness all over everybody.
This brings us to number four: everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy and scared, even the people who seem to have it most together. They are much more like you than you would believe, so try not to compare your insides to other people’s outsides. It will only make you worse than you already are.
Also, you can’t save, fix or rescue any of them or get anyone sober. What helped me get clean and sober 30 years ago was the catastrophe of my behavior and thinking. So I asked some sober friends for help, and I turned to a higher power. One acronym for God is the “gift of desperation,” G-O-D, or as a sober friend put it, by the end I was deteriorating faster than I could lower my standards.
So God might mean, in this case, “me running out of any more good ideas.”
While fixing and saving and trying to rescue is futile, radical self-care is quantum, and it radiates out from you into the atmosphere like a little fresh air. It’s a huge gift to the world. When people respond by saying, “Well, isn’t she full of herself,” just smile obliquely like Mona Lisa and make both of you a nice cup of tea. Being full of affection for one’s goofy, self-centered, cranky, annoying self is home. It’s where world peace begins.
Number five: chocolate with 75 percent cacao is not actually a food.
Its best use is as a bait in snake traps or to balance the legs of wobbly chairs. It was never meant to be considered an edible.
Number six —
writing. Every writer you know writes really terrible first drafts, but they keep their butt in the chair. That’s the secret of life. That’s probably the main difference between you and them. They just do it. They do it by prearrangement with themselves. They do it as a debt of honor. They tell stories that come through them one day at a time, little by little.When my older brother was in fourth grade, he had a term paper on birds due the next day, and he hadn’t started. So my dad sat down with him with an Audubon book, paper, pencils and brads — for those of you who have gotten a little less young and remember brads — and he said to my brother, “Just take it bird by bird, buddy. Just read about pelicans and then write about pelicans in your own voice. And then find out about chickadees, and tell us about them in your own voice. And then geese.”
So the two most important things about writing are: bird by bird and really god-awful first drafts. If you don’t know where to start, remember that every single thing that happened to you is yours, and you get to tell it. If people wanted you to write more warmly about them, they should’ve behaved better.
You’re going to feel like hell if you wake up someday and you never wrote the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart: your stories, memories, visions and songs — your truth, your version of things — in your own voice. That’s really all you have to offer us,and that’s also why you were born.
Seven: publication and temporary creative successes are something you have to recover from. They kill as many people as not. They will hurt, damage and change you in ways you cannot imagine. The most degraded and evil people I’ve ever known are male writers who’ve had huge best sellers. And yet, returning to number one, that all truth is paradox, it’s also a miracle to get your work published, to get your stories read and heard. Just try to bust yourself gently of the fantasy that publication will heal you, that it will fill the Swiss-cheesy holes inside of you. It can’t. It won’t. But writing can. So can singing in a choir or a bluegrass band. So can painting community murals or birding or fostering old dogs that no one else will.
Number eight: families. Families are hard, hard, hard, no matter how cherished and astonishing they may also be. Again, see number one.
At family gatherings where you suddenly feel homicidal or suicidal –remember that in all cases, it’s a miracle that any of us, specifically, were conceived and born. Earth is forgiveness school. It begins with forgiving yourself, and then you might as well start at the dinner table. That way, you can do this work in comfortable pants.
When William Blake said that we are here to learn to endure the beams of love, he knew that your family would be an intimate part of this, even as you want to run screaming for your cute little life. But I promise you are up to it. You can do it, Cinderella, you can do it,and you will be amazed.
Nine: food. Try to do a little better. I think you know what I mean.
Number 10 –grace. Grace is spiritual WD-40, or water wings. The mystery of grace is that God loves Henry Kissinger and Vladimir Putin and me exactly as much as He or She loves your new grandchild. Go figure.
The movement of grace is what changes us, heals us and heals our world. To summon grace, say, “Help,” and then buckle up. Grace finds you exactly where you are, but it doesn’t leave you where it found you. And grace won’t look like Casper the Friendly Ghost, regrettably. But the phone will ring or the mail will come and then against all odds, you’ll get your sense of humor about yourself back. Laughter really is carbonated holiness. It helps us breathe again and again and gives us back to ourselves, and this gives us faith in life and each other. And remember — grace always bats last.
Eleven: God just means goodness. It’s really not all that scary. It means the divine or a loving, animating intelligence, or, as we learned from the great “Deteriorata,” “the cosmic muffin.” A good name for God is: “Not me.” Emerson said that the happiest person on Earth is the one who learns from nature the lessons of worship. So go outside a lot and look up. My pastor said you can trap bees on the bottom of mason jars without lids because they don’t look up, so they just walk around bitterly bumping into the glass walls. Go outside. Look up. Secret of life.
And finally: death. Number 12. Wow and yikes. It’s so hard to bear when the few people you cannot live without die. You’ll never get over these losses, and no matter what the culture says, you’re not supposed to. We Christians like to think of death as a major change of address, but in any case, the person will live again fully in your heart if you don’t seal it off. Like Leonard Cohen said, “There are cracks in everything, and that’s how the light gets in.” And that’s how we feel our people again fully alive.
Also, the people will make you laugh out loud at the most inconvenient times, and that’s the great good news. But their absence will also be a lifelong nightmare of homesickness for you. Grief and friends, time and tears will heal you to some extent. Tears will bathe and baptize and hydrate and moisturize you and the ground on which you walk.
Do you know the first thing that God says to Moses? He says, “Take off your shoes.”Because this is holy ground, all evidence to the contrary. It’s hard to believe, but it’s the truest thing I know. When you’re a little bit older, like my tiny personal self, you realize that death is as sacred as birth. And don’t worry — get on with your life. Almost every single death is easy and gentle with the very best people surrounding you for as long as you need. You won’t be alone. They’ll help you cross over to whatever awaits us. As Ram Dass said, “When all is said and done, we’re really just all walking each other home.”
I think that’s it, but if I think of anything else, I’ll let you know.
Thank you.”
-Anne Lamott
Beautiful Wanderer
I have friends who struggle with their worthy essence, and knowing that their partner is out there, really knowing that to be true. And there are those with loving partners that still question. I see your radiance, your beauty, your loving and lovely soul.
This from Andy Charringtonea is for you searchers and questioners and wanderers… we are all on that journey together beautiful wanderer.
I love these words and especially the last line:
“You may find that the adventure of searching reveals as much wonder as the dream you are chasing.”
“Dear Beautiful Wanderer~
You are an important part of this world. And someone thinks you’re worth whatever it takes.
There is someone wonderful who wants to look you in the eyes when you are talking and listen to what you are saying. They want to make love to your mind. They care about your happiness and want to walk your journey with you, moving branches out of your way and leaping over muddy streams with you.
Someone out there thinks that you are so special, they would do anything for you.
You are a great human. And someone admires your greatness. They see the way you think and respect what you have achieved. They want to jump right in with you and show you just how amazing they think you are. They want to climb your walls and explore your depths. Someone out there wants to tell you how great you are with every sunrise and every sunset.
You are sexy. And someone wants to show you that. They want to seduce you and romance you and show you parts of themselves reserved only for you. They want to learn your secrets and be that for you. They want you to know that to them, you are the most beautiful lover and you won’t ever compare to anyone else. Someone out there doesn’t care if they weren’t your first, as long as they’re your last.
You are funny. And someone else thinks so too. They laugh at the world in the same way you do. They want to giggle with you and spend endless hours with just a fire, the stars and your mind. They smile at the same unsaid jokes of the world and finish the sentences you thought were too inappropriate to finish. Someone out there wants to be your sidekick.
You are sensitive. And someone not only sees the perfection of your whole self but is succinctly intuitive and empathetic to your wonderful sensitivity. They admire your way of feeling and they meet you there even when they don’t feel it the same way. They won’t resist any sacrifice they choose to make to relieve your journey and heal your wounds. They want to ride this train with you, in your way and at your speed. Someone out there wants to be your safe place and soft landing.
You are perfect. And someone not only doesn’t care about your flaws, they recognize that they make you who you are and that’s exactly what they want. They want to cuddle you in the hard times and dance in the rain with you for every tiny success. They love everything about you and don’t ignore the ugly parts or wish them gone. Someone out there wants all of you, just as you are, warts and all.
You are beautiful. And someone wants to tell you that. Every day and in a thousand ways. They are attracted to you like a butterfly to a flower. They are proud to walk with you holding your hand and giggle and blush with their friends when they talk about you. Someone out there has falling autumn leaves in their belly every time they look at you.
You are worth it. And someone will do whatever it takes in the name of your beautiful love and future together. They hear your needs and quietly strive to meet them. They understand your weaknesses and help, not through charity, but by seeing that you have been strong on your own for too long. They see your wounds and kiss them not because they have to, but because they want to. Someone out there thinks you’re worth everything you need.
You are kind. And someone sees how you try to be. They notice your efforts and understand your gestures just as you intend them. They find deep comfort knowing how you see yourself, own your past and learn from your mistakes. They know your kindness just as you do. Someone out there wants to be cared for in just the way you want to care.
You are brave. And someone sees what you’ve done and what you’ve done it against and loves you all the more for it. They want to meet you on your adventure and explore every dark corner and every awe filled sky of life with you. They want to hold your hand and jump together. Someone out there thinks you are their fellow explorer.
You are lovable. And someone loves you with every fiber of their body. Not because you are perfect, but because they inexplicably, whole-bodily, head-swimmingly, galaxy-explodingly love you. They see all of you and love each tiny bit as much as the next. They don’t need you to prove your worthiness or chase their affection. Someone out there loves you in just the way you imagined they would.
So be strong my dear, and patient. Everything you dreamed of is out there somewhere. Put on your boots and start exploring. You may find that the adventure of searching reveals as much wonder as the dream you are chasing.
Faithfully yours,
Your fellow explorer”
~ Written by Andy Charringtonea
A Gift of Winter
The soft caress, the kiss, of walking in new snow is a wonder, a meditation in serenity, a precious gift of winter.
“Walk as if you are kissing the earth with your feet.”
-Thich Nhat Hanh
“As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.”
-Rumi
Calm for the Dawning Day
“I am grateful for the silence of winter mornings for the beauty and wonder of the glint of sunlight in frost melting to dew, for the early riser’s peaceful solitude that sets a mood of thankfulness, hope, and calm for the dawning day.”
-Terri Guillermets
Christmas at Midlife
Christmas at Midlife by Mary Anne Perrone
“I am no longer waiting for a special occasion; I burn the best candles on ordinary days.
I am no longer waiting for the house to be clean; I fill it with people who understand that even dust is Sacred.
I am no longer waiting for everyone to understand me; It’s just not their task.
I am no longer waiting for the perfect children; my children have their own names that burn as brightly as any star.
I am no longer waiting for the other shoe to drop; It already did, and I survived.
I am no longer waiting for the time to be right; the time is always now.
I am no longer waiting for the mate who will complete me; I am grateful to be so warmly, tenderly held.
I am no longer waiting for a quiet moment; my heart can be stilled whenever it is called.
I am no longer waiting for the world to be at peace; I unclench my grasp and breathe peace in and out.
I am no longer waiting to do something great; being awake to carry my grain of sand is enough.
I am no longer waiting to be recognized; I know that I dance in a holy circle.
I am no longer waiting for Forgiveness. I believe, I Believe.”
I have held this sacred time in myriad moments of gratitude and wonder, mountains and big sky Wonder. Sweet and quiet, gifts of time and attention, and presents that took love and intention to choose. Softly falling snow, the tall pines, fir and larch dressed in white lace, sparkling fires in the hearth, stockings hung, glowing trees in the forest with colorful lights for only us to see. A dog to love us, brothers and sisters to call in, a matriarch to care for. These small treasures have proved nourishing and heart warming.
In gratitude and wonder, and with love, Merry Christmas 2019!
Sweet Solstice
“The winter solstice time is no longer celebrated as it once was, with the understanding that this is a period of descent and rest, of going within our homes, within ourselves and taking in all that we have been through, all that has passed in this full year which is coming to a close… like nature and the animal kingdom around us, this time of hibernation is so necessary for our tired limbs, our burdened minds.
Our modern culture teaches avoidance at a max at this time; alcohol, lights, shopping, overworking, over spending, comfort food and consumerism.
…and yet the natural tug to go inwards as nearly all creatures are doing is strong and the weather so bitter that people are left feeling that winter is hard, because for those of us without burning fires and big festive families, it can be lonely and isolating. Whereas in actual fact winter is kind, she points us in her quiet soft way towards our inner self, towards this annual time of peace and reflection, embracing the darkness and forgiving, accepting and loving, embracing goodbye the past year.
Winter takes away the distractions, the buzz, and presents us with the perfect time to rest and withdraw into a womb like love, bringing fire & light to our hearth.
.. and then, just around the corner the new year will begin again, and like a seed planted deep in the earth, we will all rise with renewed energy once again to dance in the sunlight.”
–Brigit Anna McNeill
Autumn Evening
“On a bare branch a crow is perched
Autumn evening.”
-Basho
in the case of this picture, a huge raven is perched on the bare branch. Still I paired these two, the quote and the photo, for the song in Basho’s words and the blue black beauty of this raven.
Autumn evening.
What Is Right and Beautiful
“I believe that if people from all of the different wisdom traditions gathered together and were asked to agree on one focus for a special day of reflection, “giving thanks” would be somewhere at the top of the list.Gratitude changes us. Instead of looking at what’s wrong, we turn our hearts for a moment to what’s right. And there are so many things that are right.For example, the appreciation of one complete breath (as corny as it sounds, whenever I turn my mind to gratitude, this is the first place I start)—feeling the fluttery exhilaration of the inhale, the excitement at the top of the inhale, the relaxation of a full and deep exhale, and then the interesting open space that awaits when our exhale is complete (you can tell I feel grateful for breathing).And then there is the feeling of air on our skin, and the faces of the people we love, and the beauty of trees and the natural world . . . and we can each go on and on and on and on.And let’s do that! Let’s go on and on and on and on about all of the ways that we appreciate what is right and beautiful in this moment (and if you’re at all like me, with a tendency to focus on problem-solving, this might not be your usual perspective).And if you do go on and on and on and appreciate the beauty that is right here, you probably won’t need science to tell you that you have shifted the neural pathways in your brain (although scientific studies will certainly confirm that)—you can feel the immediate shift.”-Tami Simon
“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.”-Meister Eckhard
Telling Secrets…
”Listen to the trees as they sway in the wind.
Their leaves are telling secrets.”-Vera Nazarian