Currie's Gratitude 30 August 2014

If you don't have any loyalty to what you are doing, you ought not be doing it.  [Tom Harding]

A simple statement, you’d think, but for me it has been something I have thought and thought and thought about. Sometimes without even knowing I was DOing so.

I am questioning how important ARE the things I DO each day. Or intend to DO?! I suppose having pretty much 10 days without walks with one short one where I fell, it would make sense I’d reconsider the reasons I walk where I DO when I DO.

I’ve thought much on this daily, or nearly so practise. I think that the connection it lets me feel would BE no less real if I were just too tired to come and write here.

Lots of little changes are what Life is. BEing consistent sometimes misses the point altogether. Life CAN and WILL, sometimes, sweep us up and away. MayBE for a little time, or a longer one. Perhaps even forever.

I canNOT look at the times I have NOT had this practise without BEing a little bit scared of what NOT having it BE part of my days might look like. Feel like. BE.

So I am going to experiment and see how I feel as I try things.

Hang on!!

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 29 August 2014

You cannot grow in the integrative dance of action and contemplation without a strong tolerance for ambiguity, an ability to allow, forgive, and contain a certain degree of anxiety, and a willingness to not know—and not even need to know. This ever widens and deepens your perspective. This is how you allow and encounter Mystery and move into the contemplative zone.  [Richard Rohr, Dancing Standing Still: Healing the World from a Place of Prayer]

I’m trying something new with my Chromebook today. I have lost the T key on my regular lappie and thought this might BE a good time to learn how to use Google docs. So far I am noticing some intuitive things from Word are making me feel awkward at best.

So far I have been at this for around an hour. I get learning curves, but I am NOT at all sure how to navigate things that I have done for so long without thinking about them.

I’m trying to keep some perspective. I’ve had a couple of really hard days, and yesterday I had a transfusion. I’m at least feeling somewhat more myself, but somehow or other that “thrill” is gone. People reassure me this is to BE expected. I am going to trust them on that!!

Life is quite a wild thing…

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 27 August 2014

Taking it one step at a time means living in the present moment, letting life gradually reveal itself to us. Some people get nervous and want to know the final outcome. But how can we know an outcome that hasn't yet occurred? Trust in the process, and the perfect result will occur.   [from Today’s Gift from Hazelden]

Sometimes are really weird, eh?! So sure you are DOing the “right thing” only to find out NOPE!!! Then the whole scene goes dark. In those times I find out I CAN make it through discomfort, silence, and no response. I am only BElieving I that I am “meant to” change what is. To rearrange the deck chairs on my wee Titanic.

I no longer want to know the end of the story. I don’t want to have something so much that it would BE too much and deny or prevent someone else’s need from BEing met.

So often I have thought I am less BEcause I am only me. And all, or almost all the while knowing whatever I have or am or DO is precisely right. It sounds or reads better than I am at DOing it.

I think the key is to eliminate judgments. Using categories. Or pretty much anything that divides and segregates us from each other.

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 26 August 2014

C. S. Lewis believed it was undemocratic to give too much power to the present generation or one’s own times. He called this “chronological snobbery,” as if your own age was the superior age and the final result of evolution. I would say the same about one’s present level of consciousness. Our narcissism always tends to think our own present stage of consciousness is the ultimate stage! People normally cannot understand anybody at higher stages (they look heretical or dangerous) and they look upon all in the earlier stages as superstitious, stupid, or naïve. We each think we are the proper reference point for all reality. G. K. Chesterton stated: “Tradition is democracy extended through time.” And I would say that enlightenment is the ability to include, honor, and make use of every level of consciousness—both in yourself and in others. To be honest, such humility and patience is rather rare, yet it is at the heart of the mystery of forgiveness, inclusivity, and compassion.   [Adapted from The Dean's Address, Living School Symposium, August 2013]

Some things I come across as I roam are so clearly just for me.

I’ve been grappling with some stuff that is far BEyond my present capacity to understand.

And I accept that I will get to understanding it very much better.

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 25 August 2014

In the world of the dreamer there was solitude: all the exaltations and joys came in the moment of preparation for living. They took place in solitude. But with action came anxiety, and the sense of insuperable effort made to match the dream, and with it came weariness, discouragement, and the flight into solitude again. And then in solitude, in the opium den of remembrance, the possibility of pleasure again.  [Anaïs Nin]

I suppose this is a little too deep for a Monday morning. I love Solitude yet I am having so much of it lately without really appreciating it. Both companionship and shared time BEcome unnerving. I canNOT explain myself better.

I feel awkward and tentative. Out of sorts. Like I have left something undone and canNOT figure out what that is.

Sometimes getting active is all that is necessary. Others, the ability to sit still and NOT draw conclusions or BElieve all that my brain is telling me.

Whatever happened to just following the bouncing ball?! Playing for the sheer JOY of the play itself?!

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.  [Mark Twain]

This is it!!! I am trying to use an out of focus imagination to overcome something I canNOT really SEE. It’s time to just let go.

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 24 August 2014

If you make art, people will talk about it. Some of the things they say will be nice, some won’t. You’ll already have made that art, and when they’re talking about the last thing you did, you should already be making the next thing.
If bad reviews (of whatever kind) upset you, just don’t read them. It’s not like you’ve signed an agreement with the person buying the book to exchange your book for their opinion.
Do whatever you have to do to keep making art. I know people who love bad reviews, because it means they’ve made something happen and made people talk; I know people who have never read any of their reviews. It’s their call. You get on with making art.   [Neil Gaiman]

I wonder somedays what I DO what I DO for. I think I understand myself, but oftener than NOT I am clueless without benefit of perspective.

Falling Friday, on top of already feeling like feeling crappy will never stop, it’s NOT done wonders for my capacity to find the JOY in all this.

Nothing feels like it fits me. Nothing.

I feel like I have been transformed into someone I don’t know or mayBE just someone who is strange to me.

Might BE it will all pass in a blink.

I hope.

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 23 August 2014

To reach out to another, if we have known frequent rejection, is to act courageously in spite of an uncertain outcome. To stand firm in a decision, if we have always given in and given up, is to back our faith in a most daring and courageous way.    [Days of Healing, Days of Joy by Earnie Larsen and Carol Larsen Hegarty]

Funny, I realised just Now that I would let you know how our walk went yesterday. It was such a “big deal” for me. I hadn’t remembered writing that yesterday.

It was lovely. Cool. Even a touch of morning briskness. I was HAPPY as I’m missing walking so very much.

And then I was hitting pavement. Don’t know that I tripped, I was just falling hard and fast. I’ve never had such a sore hand. And shoulder. Back. Knee.

I didn’t know what to DO but I knew that I did know, if that makes sense. I called the Nurse Line at my insurance and found a sensible nurse to run the plays for me. Went to urgent care, x-ray, bandaged finger, and home again.

A long and confusing day and night and day again. I used to fall. Used to need a wheelchair. Walker. Cane.

Now I feel unsure of myself. And I don’t like that.

I love you, Currie