Currie's Gratitude 7 March 2013

What does Go First mean to YOU?!

To ME it means BEing someone who steps up in a roomful of unsure. 

To make BEautimous mistakes that lighten things up.

It means that when there is something sticky, Just Let Go. Drop it. 

At least my end of it. 

Making room for the elephant without drawing attention to it.

It means saying YES [or NO] easily. Nothing more required. 

[the “or NO” part BEing the sort of NO that makes space for someone else even when I am DOing or BEing whatever it is; you know, give someone else a chance to shine even brighter.]

It means reaching out, sometimes over and over and over again. 

NOT keeping track [or score] of who did what last. 

It means picking up that telephone even if I get the voicemail and no returned call for 2 months running…

It means opening a door for someone BEhind me or coming out, or simply for someone who needs or wants a turn.

It means giving without claw marks or my knuckles turning white. 

It means if I have and YOU need I give…

It means listening for someone who is afraid, hesitant to speak.

And it means trying something, BE it new or scary or even a little odd. 

Like loving the hard-to-love.

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 6 March 2013

I don’t know how this works for anyone else, but I am Now more certain than ever that when I am feeling smooshed, squashed, swept in the corner, and a little like eating glass, it’s a good time for reaching out, BEyond my little Gone With the Wind movie set, and seeing what I might DO or simply BE for someone else.

While it doesn’t render whatever all is making me feel less and discarded brand sparkling new again, it CAN help me to see that I am NOT the only Poor Pitiful Pearl on the Planet.

This is perhaps what I love about making my art, too. Or, at least this digital fiddling part. It catches me and all of my loose and fraying ends. It gives me focus and lets me BE imaginative and a possibilitarian.

So often that is all it takes to slide from negative to positive.

I know!!! Who’d’ve thunk?!

The other side of reaching out, the kind I have to DO, this is a comfort, too, in its way… I mean, if I can find someone that I won’t drag down. BUT… mayBE that isn’t what I think it is.

MayBE, just possibly, reaching out to someone AT ALL is Enough…

Though I’ve more questions than answers, Reaching Out is good stuff.

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 5 March 2013

I have never been a great napper. I suppose BEcause I would have such a hard time AFTER a nap, but it’s been a long time, so I’m throwing that story out and writing a new one.

Gracie has taught me about the art of the nap.

She provides lessons.

Daily.

Multiple demonstrations.

Each with its own particular emphasis.

She has napping down.

In particular, when it is cold as it has been for several days Now, she loves to take a good snooze on her outside couchie in the warm sunshine. She just goes to sleep. I am in awe of such finesse.

BEcause I get up so early and go to sleep so early, I have thought naps were BEside the point for me. Until recently. Now I am reconsidering and it’s, well, it’s quite a little adventure.

For me a nap is NOT so much about sleeping as it is about pausing. Taking a beat. Remembering myself.

There are no Big Deals in my days really. No job, no expectations of dinner on the table or chores to complete. It’s a quiet and rather an ordinary Life, so I am reintroducing napping into the mix.

Somedays that might look like lying down and closing my eyes, while others just sitting and looking out the window…

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 4 March 2013

Well, I suppose this is as true as it is universal. Leaping isn’t for everyone or every situation, yet if I am going to LEAP I think I prefer DOing it boldly.

BEing bold isn’t necessarily BEing fearless. In fact, I think fear is one of those mysterious ingredients that give boldness its something special.

BEing bold is, however, at least in my opinion based upon my own experiences, a matter of Trust.

You see, if every leap or even each tiny shift in course weren’t a little bit unpredictable, even “dangerous,” leaps wouldn’t BE leaps. They would just BE baby steps or changes of direction.

A leap is a leap is a leap. Whenever I have taken a leap I have NOT returned to the place where I started. I have had things taken from me which I canNOT get back. And, I have had to lean into something far greater than a taut line.

This is where God comes in. Every. Single. Time. Thus the Trust and what is even more, the Faith that what is happening is in hands far “more” in every way than I can BEgin to imagine. I am grateful to hold this conviction, to lean into it with all of me.

BEcause Life, at least mine, asks for much leaping boldly.

I love you, Currie 

Currie's Gratitude 3 March 2013

Life is best when it is JOYous, yet that little word, JOY, requires consistent and deliberate practise.

How to BE JOYfull or even a little JOYous when sometimes Life is utterly awful and a little bit horrifying?!

That IS indeed the question…

I am taking a page from the writings of others this early Sunday morning. I am choosing to look at an experience with my heart open and my spirit trusting that awful and really quite horrifying as was the episode of yesterday morning’s walk with Gracie, there is a pony somewhere in this large pile of poop.

For you who KNOW Gracie, you know how exuberant and welcoming and adoring she is. EVEN IF she does NOT know you. 

It’s a remarkable thing, yet for her, clearly built-in.

And it never ceases to amaze me…

She fell hard for a guy in a van yesterday. She was off her leash, merrily running with that big old smile on her sweet face, all set to greet him. He did NOT get out, she did NOT come when I called. I went to her, he got out, yelled at me, then grabbed her and smacked her in the face and told me to get the f-bomb out of his driveway and keep her the f-bomb off his car…

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 2 March 2013

I don’t really think of myself as someone who is NOT compassionate, and yet it seems that I am often concerned with BEing compassionate enough.

Does this make sense?! Am I spinning out here alone with this puzzlement?!

Mostly I have noticed my lack of sufficient compassion when I am “in the World” and out among the “people” in Real Life. I hear this constant newsreel in my brain, my story-making on overdrive, and I pretty much decide then and there I am remarkably clairvoyant and all-knowing.

What a load of…

The thing is, BE Compassionate, as a Simple Instruction, is easier if I think of it more as BEing Compassionate.

If I point myself toward kindness, toward having genuine care and concern for the others roaming this Planet in my little orbit, I DO much better.

The BE Compassionate is simply TOO BIG and does NOT fit me AT ALL.

I think people experience me as kind. I think, too, that people who have known me a long while might have a harder time with that notion. Which is actually why I have included this in my Simple Instructions.

Actually, I think of me as kind. As a caring and considerate bean of the human variety.

I AM compassionate with myself.

I make/take the time to BE…

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 1 March 2013

This month I am writing from my list of Simple Instructions. And I see that today’s, Forgive Myself, is Right On Time.

The hardest part of forgiving MYself is my certainty that A] I don’t deserve it, and, 2] that if I DO forgive myself, others, in particular anyone involved in whatever my transgression is/was, will BE sure to “put me in my place” for DOing so.

Kind of a too-fine line to walk, eh?!

Yet I am NOT unique in this. I am even fairly certain that anyone reading this might have a similar dance they DO around forgiving themselves.

Which is a comfort AND an encouragement… [I’m just saying.]

Forgiving myself has BEcome such a sticking point for me BEcause I have trained and pushed and got myself into a strong habit of Never Letting Myself Off The Hook. I know when I started DOing this, many years and decades ago, it was actually a great coping mechanism for me. One that served me well during some especially unforgiveable years.

But that is NOT Now, and I am NOT that young person. She may well BE a part of me, and a vital one at that, but I have long since outgrown her methods of self-protection.

Holding back Now is merely a habit I am changing.

I love you, Currie