Currie's Gratitude 30 April 2014

A person can learn a lot from a dog, even a loopy one like ours. Marley taught me about living each day with unbridled exuberance and joy, about seizing the moment and following your heart. He taught me to appreciate the simple things-a walk in the woods, a fresh snowfall, a nap in a shaft of winter sunlight. And as he grew old and achy, he taught me about optimism in the face of adversity. Mostly, he taught me about friendship and selflessness and, above all else, unwavering loyalty. [John Grogan, Marley and Me: Life and Love With the World's Worst Dog]

There is so much about these words that resonates in me. I am so blessed to have Gracie in my Life. She is the greatest teacher of Living Life. Hands-down best ever.

I could DO with some more of her exuberance.

Any fool can know. The point is to understand. [Albert Einstein]

I love this. I mean, it is exactly the point. So much we “know” but so very little of it DO we really understand.

For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.  [Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics]

This is exactly what is happening with me Now. I am NOT supposed to already know everything about it!!!

I love you, Currie 

Currie's Gratitude 29 April 2014

And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.    [Roald Dahl]

It’s true. You must BElieve in magic and you must know deep inside you that it is always hiding in plain sight. Labelling things anything but magical misses the point altogether.

The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.  [ J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan]

How powerful BElief can BE. And how it can cut us off and ruin everything when we doubt our own BElieving. It is NOT always [or even often] easy to stand, like the cheese, alone, but oh, how empowering and delicious when we stand firm and refuse to BE shaken by hesitation and silly little qualms.

Magic exists. Who can doubt it, when there are rainbows and wildflowers, the music of the wind and the silence of the stars? Anyone who has loved has been touched by magic. It is such a simple and such an extraordinary part of the lives we live.  [Nora Roberts]

So often we try to explain away the magical parts of Life. Fit them into explanation containers.

I don’t know why.

DO you?!

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 28 April 2014

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.  [Franz Kafka]

These past weeks have opened my eyes to an entirely different way to view Life. I have taken in a LOT of information, similar to cramming or preparing for some sort of BIG-DEAL test; digesting a whole lot in hopes I’ll have what I need to draw on when the time comes.

But I realise I am Enough. I have Enough. And I certainly have all I need.

Roll on, deep and dark blue ocean, roll. Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain. Man marks the earth with ruin, but his control stops with the shore.  [Lord Byron]

There was a lesson I learned living by the ocean that I am only just drawing on Now: Life goes on.

Things change. And the tide goes out and comes in. But Life goes on.

The way to catch a knuckleball is to wait until it stops rolling and then pick it up.   [Bob Uecker]

Other things are just like a knuckleball. You’ve just got to let them roll.

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 27 April 2014

“Do you think people can change?" I ask Rick. 

"Yes." he answers plainly. "There are those who can." 
That grabs my attention. "So you believe it's possible?" 

"Miss Stella," He gives me his teacher-to-pupil stare. "It boils down to choice.”  [Katie McGarry, Red at Night]

I’ve wondered this same question a LOT lately. And I have come to the same conclusion as Rick…

No matter how hard we try, we can never understand everything that another person has gone through or why they might believe a certain way. It is possible for something to be right for you and something completely opposite be right for someone else.  [Daniel Willey]

What I really wish is that I could keep it that simple. Somehow, despite my very best intentions, I still find myself trying to explain myself to people who will NEVER choose to simply accept what they canNOT, personally, inside their very own toes, understand.

The universe is made up of courses of action we have no say in, but we have a say in who we are, and in those choices we make inside, even if outside, those choices seem impossible.   [Dianna Hardy, The Last Dragon]

I love that I have to make my own choices, that I canNOT blame or credit anyone else for them.

That’s empowering.

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 26 April 2014

Create inclusion - with simple mindfulness that others might have a different reality from your own.   [Patti Digh, Life Is a Verb: 37 Days to Wake Up, Be Mindful, and Live Intentionally]

Apparently some of us have a really too difficult time making room and welcoming in divergent perspectives. We are obsessed with samenesses and understandings and BEing Right. MORE Right even. It is a little crazy. This is what I am thinkingandfeeling this morning. A little crazy is too much crazy for me…

There is no hospitality like understanding.  [Vanna Bonta, Flight: A Quantum Fiction Novel]

I am amazed these days how much simple understanding can tip the balance of the “sanity” I enJOY. To have someone “get me” and NOT BE hell-bent on “changing” how I thinkandfeel is BEyond words wondrous. To BE able to simply BE in the World where things like having lung cancer are NOT written cross my face, it is amazing how kind and understanding the people of this World can BE.

The waves splash against my face, carrying a message: Welcome, you belong here. [Doug Cooper, Outside In]

With the obvious problem of there BEing no ocean here in the desert, I am waiting for those waves to splash and kiss my face with their gentle welcoming.

MayBE one day?! Soon?!

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 25 April 2014

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”   [J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring]

Gandalf’s perspective is rather exquisite. Something that I wish could BE in all our  hearts and minds, NOT necessarily loved and cherished, but definitely understood and accepted.

It seems quite natural, and even expected, to come from a place of WANTING MORE. To sense that Whatever Is is NOT Enough.

Don't waste your time with explanations: people only hear what they want to hear.   [Paulo Coelho]

There is so much Time I have “wasted” trying to satisfy people with answers and explanations, and for all that Time I have only got more demands for more answers and more explanations.

It's being here now that's important. There's no past and there's no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can't relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don't know if there is one.  [George Harrison]

It really is just that simple…

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 24 April 2014

They couldn’t have known that even this was a lie—that we never really choose, not entirely. We are always being pushed and squeezed down one road or another. We have no choice but to step forward, and then step forward again, and then step forward again; suddenly we find ourselves on a road we haven’t chosen at all.

But maybe happiness isn’t in the choosing. Maybe it’s in the fiction, in the pretending: that wherever we have ended up is where we intended to be all along.  [Lauren Oliver, Requiem]

I have been in my head a LOT lately. And Now I have been “sent there” again to make choices. To choose. But the menu does NOT have all the choices there truly are. In fact, it is pretty much all packaged up, like “fast food” I haven’t eaten in years.

Look to your heart and soul first, rather than looking to your head first, when choosing. Rather than what you think, consider instead how you feel. Look to the nature of things. Feel your choices and decisions. It just might change everything.  [Jeffrey R. Anderson, The Nature of Things - Navigating Everyday Life with Grace]

It’s clear to me how I feel. 

when confused , choose love above everything   [anonymous]

Well that’s VERY helpful with this…

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 23 April 2014

We’ve been focusing so much on getting there that we haven’t been enjoying the ride.  [Elizabeth Eulberg, Take a Bow]

A LOT of Life is missed out on in just this way. Focusing elsewhere. NOT BEing Present in each moment, imperfect and oftentimes downright boring as the moment might BE. I noticed this yesterday, painting, pretty much all day long. I wasn’t anywhere but Right There. It was delicious.

Life’s journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting Holy shit…what a ride!   [Hunter S. Thompson]

You know, I have always grinned at the various takes on this quote. I BElieve it though. I think Life, lived safely and neatly, in ways where I DO my darndest to conform and BE “right,” is plain and simple the Life that I am NOT riding. It is the Life that I am thinking and constructing, building out of those Legos that are “in the box” instead of those I’m “discovering” along my way.

“Who says there has to be a point?" He asked. "Or a reason. Maybe it's just something you have to do.”  [Sarah Dessen, Along for the Ride]

Here’s what I’m thinking: MayBE all my “making sense of things” is a wasteful exercise?!

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 22 April 2014

Do stuff. be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It's all about paying attention. attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. stay eager.  [Susan Sontag]

It is less eagerness than it is simply DOing the next thing as I follow this bouncing ball. I forget sometimes that nobody else has to agree or even understand WHY I DO what I DO and don’t DO what I don’t DO.

And I am as curious about living with cancer as I am curious each morning to BEgin my day and see what happens.

It's the action, not the fruit of the action, that's important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there'll be any fruit. But that doesn't mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.   [Mahatma Gandhi]

There is nothing less simple than “if you DO nothing, there will BE no result.” It can seem like DOing nothing results in nothing BEing done, but sometimes DOing nothing is exactly enough.

Imagination means nothing without doing.  [Charles Chaplin]

Still, imagination is good stuff.

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 21 April 2014

Change is like that: you are no longer where you were; you are not yet where you will get; you are nowhere exactly.  [Lionel Shriver, Checker and the Derailleurs]

It is a precarious ledge I find myself on these past weeks. Getting narrower and then suddenly widening, and I feel like I am Right Here and it is good, “well with my soul” as Jay so often writes…

I notice that it isn’t easy for some people to see me Here, or mayBE to accept it. I can fall into old habits in a blink, but fighting someone has NEVER worked for me…

When I fully enter time’s swift current, enter into the current moment with the weight of all my attention, I slow the torrent with the weight of me all here.  [Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are]

I’ve been feeling like this. Things feel slowed down a LOT and like frame-by-frame instead of flowing one into the other, a “moving” picture. I lost my patience yesterday. I discovered an end in myself and it came up so suddenly, without giving me any time at all to make it BEhave.

Here is an unfenced existance   [Philip Larkin]

What an apt description. Here is a field, wide open and free.

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 20 April 2014

Laughter is carbonated holiness.  [Anne Lamott]

Somedays the best I can DO is find my laughter. Much like Peter Pan’s shadow, I often consider it an accessory. Better to remember it’s always there, I just need to turn to it, use it, let it rip.

I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.  [Herman Melville, Moby Dick]

This is an excellent philosophy for Life. We, none of us, know what is coming, though we all seem to assume we DO, to some extent. There is only one thing to know for sure and that is my response to Life. And I hope to keep it Laughter First in all matters.

If there is no laughter, Jesus has gone somewhere else. If there is no joy and freedom, it is not a church: it is simply a crowd of melancholy people basking in a religious neurosis. If there is no celebration, there is no real worship.  [Steve Brown, Approaching God: Accepting the Invitation to Stand in the Presence of God]

On Easter Morning it seems apropos to share this perspective and to let it stand without any embellishment.

The earth laughs in flowers.   [Ralph Waldo Emerson]

Indeed it does and aren’t those ripples of laughter just utterly gorgeous?!

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 19 April 2014

People don’t like to think, if one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.  [Helen Keller]

Sometimes something so simple clears up so much it’s like a summer rain that rinses the dirt gently away.

Sometimes we have thoughts that even we don’t understand. Thoughts that aren’t even true—that aren’t really how we feel—but they’re running through our heads anyway because they’re interesting to think about.

If you could hear other people’s thoughts, you’d overhear things that are true as well as things that are completely random. And you wouldn’t know one from the other. It’d drive you insane. What’s true? What’s not? A million ideas, but what do they mean?   [Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why]

Thinking, wise a thing as it is to DO, is terrifically discombobulating at moments. Lately my own thinking has been scaling some craggy peaks. It is hard to get a toe-hold, and looking up or down, oh my, don’t even go there!!!

The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.  [Terry Pratchett, Diggers]

I'm trying my best to stay open-minded and willing, yet things seem to BE falling into patterns that are so much NOT what I want for my Life.

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 18 April 2014

You couldn't just pick and choose at will when someone depended on you, or loved you. It wasn't like a light switch, easy to turn on or off. If you were in, you were in. Out, you were out.   [Sarah Dessen, Along for the Ride]

This is something I know yet deny. It is NOT a happy or lovely thing to realise one is on the outside of what they’d prefer BEing inside or BEside.

The thing is, though, if I know I canNOT choose it uncomplicates everything. BEautimously.  Simply.

So as a seventh grader, no, you weren't friends with people you didn't like. But sometimes you also weren't friends with people you did like, which was complicated, and which didn't make any sense if you tried to explain it. Sometimes things just changed. That's where the sadness came in.  [Lauren Myracle, Thirteen]

Life, at 60, can sometimes resemble Life at 13. Complicated by whom and how and what. Somehow, for me, this is lessening Now. It’s amazing what knowing Time is short can square away in a person’s heart and mind.

Anyone can plot a course with a map or compass; but without a sense of who you are, you will never know if you're already home.  [Shannon L. Alder]

Knowing “home” is VERY uncomplicated. Who knew?!

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 17 April 2014

You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world...but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices.  [John Green, The Fault in Our Stars]

It can BE a real challenge for me to NOT DO something. To NOT ask a question. To NOT focus on the one bit of hurtful something instead of the larger chunk of amazing something. Most of all it I find it difficult to BE Still and DO Nothing.

Yet I’m fond of the expression: Don’t Just DO Something, Sit There!! It lets me laugh at my silly self.

It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.  [J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone]

For some years I have worked hard at learning to live Right Now. In this moment. With whatever is and whatever is NOT. Neither wishing nor hoping, regretting nor projecting. I am an amateur. Often I feel I am an imposter. But I keep at it. Like building muscle strength.

And sometimes Life lets me see that this was intended, that I have been focused on the Right Thing[s] DOing this.

Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. [H. Jackson Brown Jr., P.S. I Love You]

Don’t wait…

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 16 April 2014

Marty, my mother used to say, “Never get greedy with God.” I think what she meant was "Don't dare ask for more if you already have what you need."   [ James Patterson, The Christmas Wedding]

The past week I’ve thought a lot about the okayness of asking for what I want. I realise I am something of a walking contradiction, wanting to go to appointments and for tests on my own but wanting the people I love accessible.

It smacks of greediness. And unworthiness. I am sorting it out, I think, BEcause that’s what I DO…

“I don't get it,” Caroline said, bemused. “She's the only one with wings. Why is that?“

There were so many questions in life. You couldn't ever have all the answers. But I knew this one.
“It's so she can fly,” I said. Then I started to run.   [Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever]

There are, indeed, so many questions and I know I should BE asking some that I am NOT. Yet, anyway. I am following the bouncing ball. Taking the steps that are in front of me. It doesn’t DO me much good to think ahead and force answers to questions I canNOT yet grasp.

Ask for advice, and then use your brain.    [Vikrant Parsai]

This is good wisdom for always.

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 15 April 2014

Everyone knew that if you divided reality by expectation, you got a happiness quotient. But when you invert the equation - expectation divided by reality - you didn't get the opposite of happiness. What you got, Lewis realized, was hope. [Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes]

Earlier I was writing about the ideas that dance in my head and dress themselves up like SHOULDS. It is really a rotten way to treat myself, having Expectations. But the thing is it is just so easy. Effortless.

The real effort comes when I call Expectation by its own name.

Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect.  [Margaret Mitchell]

Knowing a thing is great but living as though you DO is another altogether. So many thoughtsandfeelings are clomp-stomping through me that have no legs whatsoever. It’s no wonder I feel perpetually out of breath and dizzy.

We go from disappointment to disappointment, from hope to denial, from expectation to surrender, as we grow older, thinking or coming to think that what was wrong was the wanting, so intense it hurt us, and believing or coming to believe that hope was our mistake and expectation our error, and that everything the more we want it the more difficult the having it seems to be.   [Alfred Hayes, In Love]

Ohhhhhhh… I see.

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 14 April 2014

We are all going, I thought, and it applies to turtles and turtlenecks, Alaska the girl and Alaska the place, because nothing can last, not even the earth itself. The Buddha said that suffering was caused by desire, we'd learned, and that the cessation of desire meant the cessation of suffering. When you stopped wishing things wouldn't fall apart, you'd stop suffering when they did.   [John Green, Looking for Alaska]

There is much to BE said, in my experience, for NOT wanting Life to BE anything other than what it is. And what it is NOT. Acceptance, so I have learned, is indeed the answer to all problems.

NOT that it is easy. Nor simple. But it is indeed Living Simply to live in Acceptance.

I am my own biggest critic. Before anyone else has criticized me, I have already criticized myself. But for the rest of my life, I am going to be with me and I don't want to spend my life with someone who is always critical. So I am going to stop being my own critic. It's high time that I accept all the great things about me.  [C. JoyBell C.]

Amen.

No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.  [Alice Walker]

Something easy to forget BElieving…

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 13 April 2014

You can dance in the storm. Don't wait for the rain to be over before because it might take too long. You can can do it now. Wherever you are, right now, you can start, right now; this very moment.  [Israelmore Ayivor]

Life is a curiosity, eh?! I have worked hard at learning to BE Right Here and Right Now and NOT BE seduced by some what might BE… I have learned to STOP staring, even looking, in that rear view mirror. I have done all I can to stop WAITING and simply BE.

And Now Life is all about the Waiting and Seeing. So I laugh…

If you feel lost, disappointed, hesitant, or weak, return to yourself, to who you are, here and now and when you get there, you will discover yourself, like a lotus flower in full bloom, even in a muddy pond, beautiful and strong.   [Masaru Emoto, Secret Life of Water]

I love this idea of returning to oneself. It never seemed like the safest place for me until really the past year or so. I am glad to have learned to lean into myself. To find safety and peace within my own BEing.

Sometimes now was enough. Sometimes it was everything.  [Mary Balogh, Simply Perfect]

Actually, Now is Enough and it is Everything.

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 12 April 2014

When you get to the end of all the light you know and it's time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen: either you will be given something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly.  [Edward Teller]

Tennyson said that “the shell must break BEfore the bird can fly” and this completes that idea. For me. It is true that I only know so much. I’ve lately BEgun to explore that. How I go from NOT knowing, the “dark,” to knowing, the “light.”

It is quite BEautimous exploring the Light. Mostly I just bask in it.

PHOSPHORESCENCE. Now there's a word to lift your hat to... to find that phosphorescence, that light within, that's the genius behind poetry.   [Emily Dickinson]

Poeming. There is a practise I Let Go. It was fun, like making art is. A sweet little daily practise. These are the things that bring Light to my days. One at a time. No fuss. No muss. Just Playing in the Light.

We've all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are.  [J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix]

So much is about choosing.

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 11 April 2014

I wish I could've lived my life without making any wrong turns. But that's impossible. A path like that doesn't exist. We fail. We trip. We get lost. We make mistakes. And little by little, one step at a time we push forward. It's all we can do. On our own two feet. Even if we get a little banged up. Someday, we'll reach something. We'll reach someone. We pray.

Come on. It's time to start walking.  [Natsuki Takaya, Fruits Basket, Volume 21]

Quite the luxury, thinking I wish I could’ve… I suppose it is to BE expected, just a little, Now. And yet here’s the nifty part: it’s NEVER too late to DO what we wish we could’ve.

NEVER.

Going back to something is harder than you think. I don't suppose I could have broken my mother's heart any more if I tried.  [Mitch Albom, For One More Day]

People say we “go back to” all sorts of things, places, times… Normal. Business as usual. How it was. But I BElieve that is just a piece of fluff we all cling to. Life goes on.

There is always and only Now. Nowhere to go back to. Nowhere to arrive at, in the end.

My heart knows right where to go.  [Cynthia Hand, Radiant]

And it always will.

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 10 April 2014

Though I play at the edges of knowing, truly I know our part is not knowing, but looking, and touching, and loving.  [Mary Oliver]

There is a moment when an edge is crossed. When what you didn’t know is what you Now know. And it can BE missed if you are in too much of a hurry to judge. To label. To contain.

So many believe that it is love that grows, but it is the knowing that grows and love simply expands to contain it.  [Wm. Paul Young, The Shack: Where Tragedy Confronts Eternity]

I don’t always know what it is that I am BElieving, but sometimes I catch a glimpse, and other times I get to see it whole, like the picture on a jigsaw puzzle box. Then, if I blink, I canNOT see it anymore. This is what keeps Life so interesting and imperative. This glimpsing and blinking.

Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worse kind of suffering. [Paulo Coelho]

I suppose there is more to this than immediately meets the brain. Knowing isn’t always a brain thing, y’know?! Sometimes knowing is just breathing in and out and NOT experiencing pain at all.

remember… nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. [Oscar Wilde]

Love remembering that.

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 9 April 2014

Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven't the answer to a question you've been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause of a room full of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you're alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful if you listen carefully.  [Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth]

This is a curious time for me, similar in ways to some other times yet wholly itself. I love the quiet that’s teaching me so gently.

My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people. [Patricia Highsmith]

There is just so much that is BEautimous about this… and so fitting for me. Especially Now.

…and you try to quiet your mind so you can hear what that landscape or character has to say above the other voices in your mind. [Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life]

Sometimes a quiet mind is a little slice of Heaven.

And sometimes, the voices are a lovely choir singing the sweetest songs…

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 8 April 2014

People always talk about how hard it can be to remember things - where they left their keys, or the name of an acquaintance - but no one ever talks about how much effort we put into forgetting. I am exhausted from the effort to forget... There are things that have to be forgotten if you want to go on living.  [Stephen Carpenter, Killer]

Lately I’m BEing asked to remember a LOT of stuff, stuff that is better NOT brought back to mind. And then there are things that pop up that I didn’t remember at all.

“There's a word for it," she told me, "in French, for when you have a lingering impression of something having passed by. Sillage. I always think of it when a firework explodes and lights up the smoke from the ones before it."
"That's a terrible word," I teased. "It's like an excuse for holding onto the past."
"Well, I think it's beautiful. A word for remembering small moments destined to be lost.”   [Robyn Schneider, The Beginning of Everything]

Somedays I canNOT add a thing except WOW!!!

One couldn’t be selective when remembering the past. Ignore the turmoil, chaos and pain – and the truly great memories would not shine with such luster.  [Karen Fowler, Memories For Sale]

Such simplicity in this truth.

I love you, Currie