14 April 2015

I have come to accept the feeling of not knowing where I am going. And I have trained myself to love it. Because it is only when we are suspended in mid-air with no landing in sight, that we force our wings to unravel and alas begin our flight. And as we fly, we still may not know where we are going to. But the miracle is in the unfolding of the wings. You may not know where you're going, but you know that so long as you spread your wings, the winds will carry you.   [C. JoyBell C.]

I think this is what’s been happening in me. Living each of my days to the fullest, even when the fullest is NOT fun.

I love my hospice people. They encourage me, explain things so I understand what’s going on in my body, and NEVER EVER NOT ONCE have they made me wish I’d just kept my yap shut.

This pain is painful but it’s also something else. It’s a deepening experience of humility. The realisation that this is as much part of Life as anything keeps me from too much moaning. Still, my secret spot has been found. I admit to feeling arrows are BEing thrown at my right shoulder. Even when I know better.

Thanks for listening.

I love you, Currie

13 April 2015

Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.   [C.S. Lewis]

Is it that simple?! I don’t know but it has taken me 4 hours to just get up and DO this. To BEgin it anyway. BEcause, you see, oftentimes it’s as simple as just starting. This is about the worst pain I’ve experienced, and it’s silly. But don’t tell Pain I said so, please.

Isn't it funny how the memories you cherish before a breakup can become your worst enemies afterwards? The thoughts you loved to think about, the memories you wanted to hold up to the light and view from every angle--it suddenly seems a lot safer to lock them in a box, far from the light of day and throw away the key. It's not an act of bitterness. It's an act if self-preservation. It's not always a bad idea to stay behind the window and look out at life instead, is it?   [Ally Condie, First Day]

Staying BEhind, or staying in both reveal their magic to me in myriad ways. Pain seems the WHY of it at Present. Pain that’s just “stupid.” Pain that doesn’t  seem to  let itself make sense.

I love you, Currie

12 April 2015

Dad, how do soldiers killing each other solve the world's problems?   [Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes: Sunday Pages 1985-1995]

MayBE that is a grim opening. For me, it’s clearing the Path. Things are in one of those BIG CHANGE moods, and I find myself having to work 3 times as hard to DO half what I want to DO.

But I wonder, often, how it is that with all the brilliant people who have lived and moved on this Planet of ours, we’ve just never seemed to SEE the most glaring and obvious points of contradiction.

Before you can live a part of you has to die. You have to let go of what could have been, how you should have acted and what you wish you would have said differently. You have to accept that you can’t change the past experiences, opinions of others at that moment in time or outcomes from their choices or yours. When you finally recognize that truth then you will understand the true meaning of forgiveness of yourself and others. From this point you will finally be free.   [Shannon L. Alder]

Somedays more than others, I struggle with what I can Let Go, or work out another way of DOing. It’s just that I don’t want to waste the minutes, NOT one.

I love you, Currie

11 April 2015

Here's why I will be a good person. Because I listen. I cannot speak so I listen very well. I never interrupt, I never deflect the course of the conversation with a comment of my own. People, if you pay attention to them, change the direction of one another's conversations constantly. it's like having a passenger in your car who suddenly grabs the steering wheel and turns you down a side street.   [Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain]

Dogs are generally wiser than we are. This is something that might BE impossible for some to wrap their heads around. That’s okay. Agreement’s highly overrated.

Chester's playing filled the station. Like ripples around a stone dropped into still water, the circles of silence spread out from the newsstand. And as people listened, a change came over their faces. Eyes that looked worried grew soft and peaceful; tongues left off chattering; and ears full of the city's rustling were rested by the cricket's melody.   [George Selden, The Cricket in Times Square]

I think many of us are scared of silence. Of the places where hush and pause are prevalent. I know it makes me talk too much, wearing my anxiety like a jaunty little cap.

Listening, loving silent spaces, and letting Life BE Life, make us ourselves.

I love you, Currie

10 April 2015

My scars remind me that I did indeed survive my deepest wounds. That in itself is an accomplishment. And they bring to mind something else, too. They remind me that the damage life has inflicted on me has, in many places, left me stronger and more resilient. What hurt me in the past has actually made me better equipped to face the present.   [Steve Goodier]

We got down to some important business on the physical as well the “affairs in order” work yesterday. Had to make an urgent call to hospice. There is this matter of a cough that is making my body feel like it has been bunjee-jumped-on. I lose my breath. It is all rather unattractive, too. Makes me wonder, during this rare time of windows open at night, if I am disturbing my neighbours.

Getting those things moving, coming to a variety of places of Peace with how things seem to BE hurrying themselves up BEfore I was ready. [you know, it was one year ago today when I wrote my Gratitude and shared about the cancer… you’ve all been such remarkable encouragers and kind thoughty friends]

Life is too short to be anything but happy. Falling down is a part of life, getting back up is living.   [José N. Harris]

Life’s precious. Dive in!!!

I love you, Currie

9 April 2015

Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it's less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you've lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that's good.   [Elizabeth Edwards]

This is part of why Resilience found me and BEcame my word for 2015. I’ve done some mind meandering lately [a benefit to pain that keeps me on the bed a lot of the time] and discovered there is more there to understand than I assumed.

Reality, for me, is still shifting, holding me sway, giving me pause, and most of all clearly saying that Life is and CAN BE whatever I make it. Inside of me there is a troubling connection to those words “Life is what you make it.” And then I wrote that. I told YOU. I didn’t hide.

My Life is more and more what I am making it. It’s sometimes heady stuff when people sort of slip and slide in and then magically vanish. My love of Time Together getting a little nagging from the Body and its exquisite pain.

I keep finding room in me to BE more and to BE less. And in that room is most every ME I have ever been.

That’s good.

I love you, Currie

8 April 2015

So much of the past in encapsulated in the odds and ends. Most of us discard more information about ourselves than we ever care to preserve. Our recollection of the past is not simply distorted by our faulty perception of events remembered but skewed by those forgotten. The memory is like twin orbiting stars, one visible, one dark, the trajectory of what's evident forever affected by the gravity of what's concealed.   [Sue Grafton, O is for Outlaw]

Even if I try really hard, there’s a LOT of what I once knew that escapes me Now. That is inconvenient in myriad ways. At least until I realise that memory, information, and even simple statistics are no more Present Tense than what I see and feel and hear and touch and taste.

This stretch is harder than ever to navigate. I feel how distinctly my part is NOT to attempt control. How in this I must BE submissive in a way I never understood until Now. Sometimes I just canNOT help myself. I want to get in and fiddle with things, like if I just DO this or that one thing, everything will change.

I may have people lying to me, but since I don't really know the truth, I can't be sure.   [Sue Grafton, C is for Corpse]

Ahhhhhhh…

I love you, Currie

7 April 2015

But love wasn't about sacrifice, and it wasn't about falling short of someone's expectations. By definition, love made you better than good enough; it redefined perfection to include your traits, instead of excluding them. All any of us wanted, really, was to know that we counted. That someone else's life would not have been as rich without us here.   [Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care]

My mind’s been wandering lately. Sometimes I wish it wouldn’t go where it goes, but mostly I try to trust it goes where it needs to go.

I like learning about how we each and all affect NOT only ourselves but also those in our lives and Worlds. Seeing these things more clearly Now is part of the package I suppose.

If I have gained anything over these months, it is the knowledge there is no starting over- only living with the mistakes you've made.   [Jodi Picoult, Perfect Match]

No greater truth than that. We play at DO-overs and bravely live with what we’re given, yet we seem to take far too long to understand that our mistakes, all the times we said “OOPS!” and even the times we sort of went to sleep in the middle of a great lesson were EXACTLY as they should BE.

It’s BEcoming easier. More natural and okay.

I love you, Currie

6 April 2015

This is the most profound spiritual truth I know: that even when we're most sure that love can't conquer all, it seems to anyway. It goes down into the rat hole with us, in the guise of our friends, and there it swells and comforts. It gives us second winds, third winds, hundredth winds.   [ Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith]

I don’t want to BE a whiner. I think it was remarkably good planning to leave me on my own to travel this path of living with cancer, and, more exactly, to make my own peace with it and all it touches.

So how, then, can I really learn to “hold” the “bad days” and NOT get pissy when I feel crankish and sore?! I don’t know.

But this I DO know: friends, their kindnesses, their willingness to DO something helpful, and their simply showing up in the myriad ways friends can works like a dream.

When I have a string of days where I feel like a noodle-body, touchy and tender, and quite “unfit to print,” I’m less likely to isolate than to quickly reach out for something BEyond my grasp. It’s NOT easy to DO this, but easy isn’t even the point.

I know only a little. That’s comforting. I know what matters.

I love you, Currie

5 April 2015

Ester asked why people are sad.
"That’s simple," says the old man. "They are the prisoners of their personal history. Everyone believes that the main aim in life is to follow a plan. They never ask if that plan is theirs or if it was created by another person. They accumulate experiences, memories, things, other people's ideas, and it is more than they can possibly cope with. And that is why they forget their dreams.”   [Paulo Coelho, The Zahir]

This gives me pause. BEing a prisoner of one’s history… Don’t we all sometimes wake up in the middle of living our Life?! Wondering how we got HERE wherever HERE might BE at that particular moment?!

When you're young, you think everything you do is disposable. You move from now to now, crumpling time up in your hands, tossing it away. You're your own speeding car. You think you can get rid of things, and people too—leave them behind. You don't yet know about the habit they have, of coming back.
Time in dreams is frozen. You can never get away from where you've been.   [Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin]

As I’ve sifted and sorted, readying my art to go into the World, I realise how much Time I’ve taken for granted, and little thought I’ve given it.

I love you, Currie

4 April 2015

The things that brought me the most comfort now were too small to list. Raspberries in cream. Sparrows with cocked heads. Shadows of bare limbs making for sidewalk filigrees. Roses past their prime with their petals loose about them. The shouts of children at play in the neighborhood, Ginger Rogers on the black-and-white screen.   [Elizabeth Berg, The Year of Pleasures]

I used to BElieve that comfort was BEyond my reach. I figured out, early on in Life, that neither this World, nor the “people in charge” really gave a fig about my comfort. And I have to say, this often made me act less than caring, and even unkind.

Now it’s all different. Of course. How could it BE otherwise?!

It seems like all the time people are making themselves themselves, but they don't really know it. You can only have true visions when you look behind. A person can slide so fast into being something they never really intended. I wonder if you can truly resurrect your own self.   [Elizabeth Berg]

It seems to me that I am making “more” of everything. NOT mountains out of mole hills “more,” rather the sensible “more.” I know that Life unfolds at its own pace, and I understand some of the yet-to-unfold pieces over which I have no sway.

None.

I love you, Currie

3 April 2015

The lotus is the most beautiful flower, whose petals open one by one. But it will only grow in the mud. In order to grow and gain wisdom, first you must have the mud --- the obstacles of life and its suffering. ... The mud speaks of the common ground that humans share, no matter what our stations in life. ... Whether we have it all or we have nothing, we are all faced with the same obstacles: sadness, loss, illness, dying and death. If we are to strive as human beings to gain more wisdom, more kindness and more compassion, we must have the intention to grow as a lotus and open each petal one by one.    [Goldie Hawn]

Intention is essential. Sometimes I forget that altogether. I forget that I am still BEing and yes, even striving.

MR. BROWNE'S SEPTEMBER PRECEPT: WHEN GIVEN THE CHOICE BETWEEN BEING RIGHT OR BEING KIND, CHOOSE KIND.   [R.J. Palacio, Wonder]

There are many sayings and notions along these lines. I like that it’s always, truly, my choice. And though I used to think BEing Right was the only option in many cases, I’ve come to love BEing NOT Right, BEing openminded, and BEing able to step out of the LIGHT shining on someone else.

And I don’t mind BEing wrong.

I love you, Currie

2 April 2015

Love your neighbor, even the ones who do not show you the same courtesy. You can’t expect to receive love if you’re selective and not really willing to give it. What you put into the world, you will indeed get back, even if it’s not from the person you’re expecting it to be.   [Alexandra Elle, Words from a Wanderer]

Cancer is teaching me daily how little I know. How much I skate. How hard it is for me to DO the sorts of things that I BElieve matter “most” or at least more than pretty much anything else. I guess that’s all okay though. I DO love learning and I shall only EVER know such a small bit of all there is…

Readying my art, much of it several years old Now, has been such a BEautimous adventure. So, okay, TOO many times I thought it enough just to make it. I came to wonder if I shouldn’t just leave it as is, until the day I realised what giving my art, all of it, to Hospice of the Valley actually means to me.

So much of my wrongheadedness and cornfuzzlement rise out of my thinking I know what I am DOing.

Truth?! I don’t. I just follow that red bouncing ball is all.

And I’m loving it.

I love you, Currie

1 April 2015

And that is just the point... how the world, moist and beautiful, calls to each of us to make a new and serious response. That's the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning. "Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?” [Mary Oliver]

The writings of Mary Oliver have the capacity to unDO and deLIGHT me. I hear my own voice, the one that chatters on when I am by myself, each time I read her work.

So here I am, alive and ready to BE April’s #1 Fool. Writing, here, or communicating some one of the other amazing ways we humans in 2015 get to, there’s where you’ll find my comment.

Today it is this: Life is Good. It’s also messy and puzzling and often annoying, but YES YES YES, Life Is Good!!

A dog comes to you and lives with you in your own house, but you do not therefore own her, as you do not own the rain, or the trees, or the laws which pertain to them...
A dog can never tell you what she knows from the smells of the world, but you know, watching her, that you know almost nothing...   [Mary Oliver]

10 years of living with Gracie have given me such glorious ignorance.

I love you, Currie

31 March 2015

When did we see each other face-to-face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. Before that, we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade but never seeing inside. But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out.   [John Green, Paper Towns]

These past 8 years of writing Gratitude have taught me so much more than I can even fathom. I’ve learned there is Hope out there, wherever this little writing goes. I’ve “met” and “got to know well” many people whose voices I’ve never heard, NOT to mention I’d likely NOT know them if we bumped into each other. Literally.

I used to wonder, in the early years of this Practise, why the “backstory” or “details” of the people sharing was such a curiosity to me. I made stories up and assigned details as though I were the great and powerful Oz.

Eventually, I started to “know” people and stories and was present-tense as details continued unfolding in their lives as well my own. It’s been a remarkable thing, perhaps the most remarkable thing in my Life and World, this little Practise and all of YOU and THEM who touch my Life in myriad ways. Daily.

Light In. Light out.

I love you, Currie

30 March 2015

Jealousy always has been my cross, the weakness and woundedness in me that has most often caused me to feel ugly and unlovable, like the Bad Seed. I’ve had many years of recovery and therapy, years filled with intimate and devoted friendships, yet I still struggle. I know that when someone gets a big slice of pie, it doesn’t mean there’s less for me. In fact, I know that there isn’t even a pie, that there’s plenty to go around, enough food and love and air.
But I don’t believe it for a second.
I secretly believe there’s a pie. I will go to my grave brandishing my fork.    [Anne Lamott, Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith]

I’ve thought a LOT like this, and yet I am no longer brandishing anything. I’m relaxing my grip. I am realising that when I have had something so wrong as a BElief, perhaps the only thing needed is to Let It Go.

And don’t pick it up again!!!

These are the words I want on my gravestone: that I was a helper, and that I danced.   [Anne Lamott, Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith]

That sounds spectaculicious to me, too. I’d prefer BEing an Encourager, and that I danced. And laughed. And lived right up til the very last bit of The End.

I love you, Currie

29 March 2015

For all it's problems and difficulties, life is mostly a wonderful experience, and it is up to each person to make the most of each day. I hope you are successful in your life, but look to the heavens and the earth and especially to other people to find your real wealth. Wherever I am, wherever you go, know that my love goes with you.   [Elizabeth Berg, Dream When You're Feeling Blue]

I agree. Now. Can’t say I did until really recently. I’d often fall back on the idea of This Now BEing a sort of rehearsal for The Real Now.

I’ve been “nesting” or some would say “sorting” mayBE even “clearing” my Life of the unnecessary. I have been preparing my art to give to hospice. For whatever they can and want to DO with it. It feels extraordinary, although it is much more of an energy “draining” thing than I’d imagined.

Wherever I am, wherever you go, know that my love goes with you…

Yes, this is what I want to say. Or what I hope “YOU” hear. This Now is all there ever is. It might NOT seem to make sense to you Now, you might feel quite the opposite or something even I canNOT imagine.

No matter what, know: my love goes with you…

I love you, Currie

27 March 2015

As Sidda joined Vivi in staring out into the darkness of the fields, where hundreds of sunflowers grew, she thought: I will never fully know my mother, any more than I will ever know my father or Connor, or myself. I have been missing the point. The point is not knowing another person, or learning to love another person. The point is simply this: how tender can we bear to be? What good manners can we show as we welcome ourselves and others into our hearts?   [Rebecca Wells, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood]

Tenderness is such a quiet thing. It often catches me by surprise. The feeling comes like waking from a deep deep sleep. It washes away the mud and the muck through which I so long saw Life and the people in it.

The matter of good manners has never quite rung true for me. I don’t know if that would make sense to anyone else, but at least I understand.

Yesterday I had yet another amazing visit with the chaplain from hospice. With him I am fearless. I will go where I’ve dared NOT go, all the while knowing I am safe. And never, really EVER, have I been alone.

I’ve missed the point, too. BEing tender is NOT silly. It’s actually BEing real.

I love you, Currie

26 March 2015

Some things I cannot change, but 'til I try I'll never know.   [Stephen Schwartz, Wicked: The Complete Book and Lyrics of the Broadway Musical]

I’m comfortable with knowing the difference BEtween those things I CAN and those I canNOT change. Despite that, I find myself open to trying things, things that may by themselves seem inconsequential, yet gathered together and considered again, can make all the difference I never imagined could BE different.

I've heard it said that people come into our lives for a reason bringing something we must learn. 
And we are led to those who help us most to grow if we let them, and we help them in return. 
Well, I don't know if I believe that's true, but I know I'm who I am today because I knew you...   [Stephen Schwartz, Wicked: The Complete Book and Lyrics of the Broadway Musical]

There are so many people, over my Life’s Time, who come to mind [and heart] when I hear these words. It isn’t always a happy thought, but there’s always JOY in the remembering.

People, it seems, really DO need people, for so many reasons we’ll never BE able to put our fingers on… We aren’t here, together, BEcause someone got it all wrong; we’re here and together BEcause we need each other.

I love you, Currie

25 March 2015

I trust so much in the power of the heart and the soul; I know that the answer to what we need to do next is in our own hearts. All we have to do is listen, then take that one step further and trust what we hear. We will be taught what we need to learn.   [Melody Beattie]

I’ve battled against this realisation. I still find myself insistent that I don’t know or canNOT DO whatever it is I think or even just imagine I must DO. It seems a pretty risky way to BE, Now that I see it there.

Recently I’ve been feeling the need to organise, let go of, and put things in the sort of order others can understand. I’ve simplified myself and my stuff little by slowly these last several years, yet it seems essential to remember this is NOT a one-size-fits-all.

A man went to Istanbul, his first visit there. On his way to a business meeting, this man lost his way. He began raging at himself for getting lost, until a realization allowed him to transcend his ire. "How can I be lost? I've never been here before? “  [Melody Beattie, The Lessons of Love: Rediscovering Our Passion for Live When It All Seems Too Hard to Take]

I know…

I love you, Currie