Spiritually literate resolutions for the New Year

I saw this on Jan's Blog...Yearning for God, and just had to share it. She found it on another site, Spirituality & Practice. What an amazing way to approach the New Year! I am inspired and more that a little intimdated --- these are lofty goals! But I will do my best!


1. I will live in the present moment. I will not obsess about the past or worry about the future.

2. I will cultivate the art of making connections. I will pay attention to how my life is intimately related to all life on the planet.

3. I will be thankful for all the blessings in my life. I will spell out my days with a grammar of gratitude.

4. I will practice hospitality in a world where too often strangers are feared, enemies are hated, and the "other" is shunned. I will welcome guests and alien ideas with graciousness.

5. I will seek liberty and justice for all. I will work for a free and a fair world.

6. I will add to the planet's fund of good will by practicing little acts of kindness, brief words of encouragement, and manifold expressions of courtesy.

7. I will cultivate the skill of deep listening. I will remember that all things in the world want to be heard, as do the many voices inside me.

8. I will practice reverence for life by seeing the sacred in, with, and under all things of the world.

9. I will give up trying to hide, deny, or escape from my imperfections. I will listen to what my shadow side has to say to me.

10. I will be willing to learn from the spiritual teachers all around me, however unlikely or unlike me they may be.

The art of vacationing

For the first time in almost three years, I have taken a vacation.

I had planned to go to Colorado, to see a friend, do some skiing, and revisit places I haven't seen since we moved from the Rockies over a decade ago. But things did not work out, so I have been vacationing here in Florida. After all...people pay good money to come here, so why not enjoy what I have?

But I discovered a few things as I've attempted to rest...

First,I am really bad at at. The first day off, I went from bored to nervous to panicked to guilty. What was I doing at home on a work day??? It was hard to stick to my plan and stay away from the office!!! But I did it! I went to the beach, read a book, cooked a nice dinner and visited with a friend.

Day two. More relaxed. Sunrise at the beach, then breakfast there.
Walked a bit. Wrote some letters while I sat near the water. Lunch with another friend. Home to shower. Dinner and a movie with Teresa, who was recovering from medical treatments. Yoga class, met some new people, and had a LONG, wonderful evening of talking with a friend I am really just getting to know.

Day three. Beach most of the day. I am getting this vacation thing down! Did some watercolour painting, wrote some New Year's cards, read, fell asleep to music.

Day four. I planned to sleep in, but an early call from Teresa woke me. Went to Panera with her, sat and talked and had tea and bagels. Wandered around window shopping for awhile. Went home and painted and watched TV and painted some more. Worked on my laptop to fix a Java Script problem. It worked!

Now if I had gone to Colorado, I would still be away. But I am here, so I am going into work for a few hours in the a.m. Then I will be off to dinner with Gina, and New Year's eve at the beach. Tuesday, I plan to swim, go to the gym, and watch some movies. Maybe paint a bit more. Or I might go hiking with a rock climbing group I joined recently.

I could use another week...or two. Three years is a long time. And I've discovered that it takes a day or two to wind down and stop running and start resting.

Next time will be better...and MUCH sooner. The art of vacation is something I plan to master!!

Learning to touch, learning to see

Last night, a friend invited me to a Tantric Yoga class. I have done Yoga off and on for years, so I expected more of the same poses and chants.

I could not have been MORE wrong!

This class was not about holding the warrior pose, and we never went anywhere near child pose or down facing dog.

This class was about coming in contact with other people...their hands, their gaze, their energy, their joy and their sadness.

And that is hard for me.

I have, over the past few years, learned to give and receive hugs. I have learned how to accept and give the two cheek kisses that are a part of the Middle Eastern culture. And I like them both...something that I never thought I would.

But this was far deeper. We had to walk, stand, sit, dance and move while looking into our partner's eyes. We had to maintain that gaze and intensity through laughter and tears, movement and stillness.

It was scary and hard....and incredible. When my partner cried, I felt her sadness...and my helplessness. When we danced, I had to focus on someone else and trust my body to move as I wanted it to without checking my reflection in the mirror. I had to dance alone in front of everyone, accept and return intense, direct gazes and namaste from complete strangers, and allow my eyes to speak for my soul as I opened up my own fears and weaknesses to people I met only minutes before.

It was exilerating, calming, challenging, frequently way outside my comfort zone, amazingly inspiring, and ocassionally rather uncomfortable.

I can't wait for the next meeting!

Yeehaw! Proud to be a cowgirl!

Have you caught the new song by George Strait...How Bout Them Cowgirls? It's amazing how the words of a song can describe me so well! And as an alumni of CCHS, home of the Cowboys (and Cowgirls), a very good rider, and a former resident of the Rockies, I can legitimately use the title!

....

Boy, she don't need you and she don't need me
She can do just fine on her own two feet
But she wants a man who wants her to be herself
And she'll never change, don't know how to hide
Her stubborn will or her fightin' side
But you treat her right and she'll love you like no one else

Soooooo true!!!! Check out the whole song....



Now where can I find my cowboy?

Which shampoo is best for chocolate cake??

It took almost 10 minutes to get the chocolate cake and frosting out of my hair...

But it was worth every second.

Today was my daughter's 10th birthday...yes, a Christmas baby! My two daughters and I celebrated with gifts and a round of "Happy Birthday"...and a cake.

A homemade gooey chocolate cake with lots of chocolate frosting and pink writing and roses (none too perfect, but it was adorned with love.)


After she blew out the candles, we all agreed that we wanted to wait for later to eat the cake...we'd had a big dinner, and none of the three of us were hungry. The birthday girl went to put the cake into the fridge, and wham!

She slipped, the cake went flying and landed face down on the floor. She was sitting amid the mess, cake splattered on her clothes.

My older daughter and I ran to see if she was okay...no injuries, but the cake was a goner. I looked at her tearful face...looked at the smashed cake at her feet, and grabbed a big piece.

"There's only one thing to do," I said. She tells me now she expected me to say "Let's clean it up." or "Make another."

But I am NOT an ordinary mom. Nope. I took that double handful of warm cake and sticky frosting -- and smeared it on her face! And on her hair. It only took a second for her to recover...

The tears stopped. And I was rewarded with a big scoop of chocolate cake on my face! Then we got her sister!

Cake went everywhere...on faces, in hair, on arms and necks! I had frosting up my nose!

And we laughed! We laughed harder than I could ever remember, squealing as handfuls of cake and icing came at us, grabbing handfuls to "retaliate."

Once the cake had been reduced to nothing but goo, I sent the girls to shower..with plastic grocery bags on their feet to get them from kitchen to bathrooms without getting anything on the white carpet. I stayed behind and mopped up the mess, wiped down the cabinets and cleaned off the wall.

Then I spent 10 minutes in the shower washing cake out of my hair...still laughing!

My daughter never got to eat her birthday cake...but before she went to bed, she told me it was the best birthday ever!

Cake 0, Memories, priceless.

Jesus and the GPS

It's one of the wealthiest areas in the country, but that didn't stop someone from swiping the statute of Jesus from a creche in Bal Harbour, Florida. But the owner of the nativity scene is fighting back.

She has installed GPS units in the replacement Jesus. Mary and Joseph have also been equipped with global positioning units, just in case someone decides to relocate the rest of the holy family.

The entire display has been fitted with a Plexiglas front, too. One presumes that anyone violating the barrier and walking off with any of the figures will be prosecuted. Maybe jailed. Fined, too.

I could see a GPS on a sports car or a work of art. But a Jesus figurine? Hardly seems the right response for a statue of a guy who preached turning the other cheek and loving your enemies, does it?

I would propose a different approach. Instead of neighbors and businesses chipping in for the GPS unit, as they did, why not use that money to buy a whole bunch of baby Jesus figurines, and let anyone who wants them take one home?

I'm not a Christian, but from what I've read of the guy, he would have liked that response a whole lot better.

Recycling old posts...because some things haven't changed

Last spring, I wrote a post about being lonely. Re-reading it tonight, I am sad to say little is different. The candles are spice instead of vanilla. The book is by Orson Scott Card instead of Elizabeth George. And my new apartment which backs up to a nature preserve means I hear crickets and frogs instead of cars. But the rest remains. Almost a year later, at 10:32 pm on a tropical Friday, the story remains the same ...

Dinner was over, the kitchen was clean, the laundry was done. Both of my girls were sound asleep, and the television was silent. The sound of the dishwasher scrubbing away the remains of the day was the only sound in the apartment. From the open patio door came the whosh of an occasional car passing by.

I turned on the stereo, choosing a station that plays quiet love songs, and sat down to read my new Elizabeth George mystery. At last, after a long day at work, some down time.

But my relaxation was short lived. The songs that played reminded me of lost love and certain-to-come-true dreams that had somehow vanished. I put down the book and let the memories wash over me. People I never see or even talk to anymore filled my thoughts. I pictured some in far-away homes, in far-away cities, some near-by but still out of reach. And suddenly the apartment went from a sancuary of quiet and peace to a prison. I paced from room to room, wandering in and out of the kitchen, living room, dining room, my bedroom and then back again. I picked up my phone and scrolled through the list of contacts, but it was too late to call any of them. I paced some more, wishing there was someone to stay with the girls while I went for a drive. Wishing there was someone to sit with in that quiet, clean apartment with the vanilla candles burning, and the soft music and the tropical evening breeze.

I do okay during the day. Work keeps me busy, and I am surrounded by people and lights and computers and calls from clients. In the evening, I focus on my girls, and making dinner and homework and household chores. On those rare nights when there is something I enjoy on television, I often fall asleep before the timer shuts off the tv.

But on so many nights like last night, when the silence descends, and the music tells stories of love lost and love never found, it's so hard to be alone and inside.

I've been told over and over that I'm supposed to be modern and self-sufficient and not need a man to be happy. But on nights like last night, I can't help but wonder....did the person who made up those rules ever spend her nights alone in a silent, candle-lit apartment?