Currie's Gratitude 31 August 2013

Never believe that a few caring people can’t change the world. For, indeed, that’s all who ever have.

[Margaret Mead]

BElieve is such a remarkable word. It suggests Trust and simultaneously ushers in Wonder. It is a promise and a clarifying breath of fresh air. And as Margaret Mead said, it is so utterly simple and true.

What we BElieve and what we only think are, or can BE, as different as night and day. Sometimes.

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. [May Angelou]

This BElieve has given me my greatest challenges. I DO hope for the best, holding out hope, giving chances and more chances. I think I can point to this trouble Time and Again. NOT BElieving someone is what they are…

I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit. [John Steinbeck]

I canNOT possibly add anything to those words. I can only sit with them awhile…

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality… [Martin Luther King, Jr.]

MayBE, like me, you’ll sit awhile and BElieve…

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 30 August 2013

Twirl around Piglet,

Step lightly Pooh,

This silly ol’ dance is perfect for two.

[A.A. Milne]

Twirl of course has many meanings. And the reasons I like it are nearly as many. It is one of those words that sounds like what it is. That feels good whether I am saying, writing, hearing, or just reading it.

Sometimes I twirl when I am bothered and sometimes I twirl when I am just waking up and sometimes I can BE sound asleep and wake up in a gigunda twirl.

And sometimes… well sometimes I can stand in the sand and look up into the sky or out across the ocean and mentally twirl, in a good way, of course.

I’d like to be a kid again but only because naps were insisted, twirling in circles was acceptable, and the only password I had to remember was open sesame.  [Adar Burks]

Clearly that resonates for me. MayBE even for YOU, too. Perhaps we were wrong to want to grow up so fast?!

… As the mighty acrobat confidently performs his trick of twirling in circles, walking on tiptoe, jumping, climbing, staring, naming. He is joyous, filled with his grandeur and wondrous omnipotence.

[Louise J. Kaplan]

So here’s a thought: Go out and twirl. Stand on tiptoes. Let Go and BE!!!

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 29 August 2013

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost. [Martha Graham]

It’s a little odd that Dance is one of my favourite words. But there you go, I am a bit of an odd duck…

I’ve never been any sort of dancer, though I took dance, went to dancing school, tried to learn to two-step in another Life, and once or twice could have been spotted dancing wildly on a table… But enough about me.

Dance is such a remarkable thing. It is in many ways like a song sung through the body. It is unique. Which I think is why Martha Graham’s words resonate so for me.

I don’t want people who want to dance, I want people who have to dance. [George Balanchine]

This is what I’m talking about. This is how other things - writing, imagining, creating… BEing – are for me. I MUST DO them; I’m only playing at BEing alive if I don’t.

Dance when you’re broken open… Dance when you’re perfectly free. [Rumi]

Dance. Move. Express your SELF.

I hope YOU dance… 

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 28 August 2013

Then the singing enveloped me. It was furry and resonant, coming from everyone’s heart… [Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith]

I really think we’re all singing from our hearts. Always. And even then we are listening, too, for the songs in others’ hearts. But I might have Life mixed up with a Coca-Cola commercial. It happens. I am a product of my Journey.

Words make you think. Music makes you feel. A song makes you feel a thought. [Yip Harburg]

I canNOT think of a Time in my Life when music, words, and songs DO NOT stand head and shoulders above all the rest. There is a soundtrack for every piece of the Adventure I call My Life. And the words to the songs I remember are significant in wondrously impossible-to-explain ways.

One of my most favourite things about The Past is the singing. Whether it was my unabashed belting out songs while driving or the quieter memory of a song’s capacity to define the edges of my heart.

… There was no sense of performance or judgment, only that the music was breath and food… [A.L.]

It is easy to accept the sense of purpose songs have brought me.

If I cannot fly, let me sing. [Stephen Sondheim]

What he said. Exactly. Let me sing… 

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 27 August 2013

About all you can do in life is be who you are… [Rita Mae Brown]

So I am thinking, too. I mean, how CAN you BE someone else?! I have been running a quiet experiment for awhile, I imagine the stories of people I see, in a day, out and about, even the people I “meet” right here, online. I give them backstories and circumstances and it all happens without much effort BEyond imagining.

… Some people will love you for you. Most will love you for what you can do for them, and some won’t like you at all. [R.M.B.]

If you’ve been reading me awhile, you know about my love affair with this word, BE. Sometimes I am asked about it, why I capitalise in inside of words like BEing and BElieve. I don’t have a pat answer. It’s really just something that happened in the course of BEing me.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. [Ralph Waldo Emerson]

Sometimes I think it’s my way of embracing my first name, Barbara, while at the same time affirming I want to BE Currie. [although that may BE TMI, don’t you agree?!]

Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness. [Allen Ginsberg]

I’m just saying… 

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 26 August 2013

The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart. [Maya Angelou]

Rarely DO I resonate so much with something and NOT even realise it until, well until it hasn’t seemed to register. Idea, to me, means something wholly different than what Angelou is speaking about, and then I have to wonder… REALLY?!

The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved with one another. [Thomas Merton]

This is more how I think, first, about idea. The whole Idea of a thing, like compassion, here. A concept which is simply true and utterly clear without question.

Idea, of course, is a word of many uses, many aspects, and many interpretations. It’s made for such internal confoundedness. That’s how it is with some words, some of the especially juicy words like these one-words I am writing on Right Now.

Whatever you want in life, other people are going to want it too. Believe in yourself enough to accept the idea that you have an equal right to it. [Diane Sawyer]

Many uses, all of which make good sense.

To me… How about you?! Let me know. 

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 25 August 2013

If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough. [Meister Eckhart]

It’s curious. Odd. My word for 2013 is Enough yet when I looked for quotes about Enough most of what I found was Gratitude-related. I’m going to go with that, though… After all, it is Gratitude which brought me to the very edge of Enough, and Gratitude which held my hand as I leaped in.

It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it… [Eleanor Roosevelt]

I suppose the same can BE said about Gratitude. It’s NOT enough simply to think about it, it’s something that must BE held and touched and turned over in one’s whole heart and BEing until it BEcomes the words to the melody that dances, without invitation, through one’s head.

And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it. [E.R.]

Working at Peace, at Gratitude, or at anything so worthy is a neverending endeavour. It requires complete devotion and nothing less will BE enough. This is one of the things I have discovered in this year, 2013, the Year of the Giraffe & Enough.

Gratitude… turns what we have into enough, and more… [Melody Beattie]

Enough is a BEautimous thing. NOT elusive, nor BEyond my grasp. 

I love you, Currie