Thinking out loud: September 2008

Monday, September 15, 2008

Things that matter.......

It's amazing sometimes how profound things can come to you in small ways. How big realizations sometimes are actually the smallest of things. My mind has been working in fits and starts lately - sometimes so overly active I can hardly stand it, and other times in a dreamy, sleepy haze. It's funny to me that I've had some startling revelations in those dreamy, hazy hours.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the things that really matter. In the end, does anything really matter at all? In this crazy world, in the frenzy of this life-long dance, are there things that matter the most? Should I be focusing on those things? Should I be setting aside my worries about all those other things that might not matter at all?

I'm realizing that the answers to those questions - for me - are "yes", "yes", "yes" and "yes"!! I catch myself some days, worrying about things that seem so big to me and so important - those are days when my mind is most likely working too hard and spinning like a top on a slick surface. When I slow down, breath deep, wipe away the tears of anxiety, and let go - let myself drift - I see how small they are sometimes, or I see that I am not connecting to what is most important.

So what is important? I've been learning, and will continue to learn I'm sure - that "things" are not very important at all. "Possessions" can be lost so quickly. My most powerful lesson in this regard came when I lost my house in Morganton. I actually didn't lose it. I had to sell it to keep from losing it. It was my first house. I worked my ass off to save the down payment, to pay the second mortgage off in two years, to paint and fix and claim that house as my own. In the end, I had to sell her and let her go. It hurt. And I grieved over that for a long time - but, in the end, I still have shelter. I still have a home. I am still the person that I've always been.

I've squandered a small fortune in the past ten years on "things". I wish I hadn't but I did. I am seeing that the THINGS that are important are minimal - it is the love of family that is important; the ties that bind, the links that stay no matter the time, the conflict - those that you love because they are your history, part of the blood that pulses through you and keeps you alive.

I see, too, that it is the strength and sheer power of faith and hope that can sustain us through trial after trial after trial. The love we have for God, the love we have for one another, the love God has for us. We hold it dear, carry it like a shield, and are brave enough to continue on.

The ability to share the sweetness of laughter and the salt-water relief of tears are incredibly vital - if you doubt that, sit down and talk for awhile with someone who has lost the ability to cry! it's a dreadful thing to lose.

The sound of music is important. Music matters - the notes that touch the very soul then resonate and vibrate inside long after the notes have faded and silence or chatter have taken their place. Where would I be without my music? Where would any of us be? Almost all of us have it - and if we don't, someone should help us find it, it is so important, music is. Rap, pop, opera, funk, punk, rock, bop, jazz, reggae, folk, fast, slow, full, sparse - it doesn't matter the type really - we are all called and touched by some form of it. We are all followed by an ongoing soundtrack. It rings in us. It defines us in ways that nothing else can.

Having someone in your life with whom you are truly and powerfully connected - ah!! that's something worth fighting for, something worth seeking. I've learned that it doesn't have to be a lover or a sweetheart (though the touch of a lover or the kiss of a sweetheart reaches a part of the heart that only the lover can). What is important is the connection - strong, true, right, powerful - a dear friend, a beloved child, a cherished sister or brother - those connections will hold you up when darkness comes. Those connections will sit at your side and never leave. Those connections carry a part of your very essence that will continue on long after you're gone.

By way of the things that matter, I am learning how beautiful the world can be. I remember the wonderful years when my children were small, when I saw the world through their eyes, when I saw the world again with the eyes of a child. And it was so beautiful, so amazing, so full of wonder. I am seeing the world in that way again in recent months. Seeing so many beautiful things. I have been spending a lot of time with a man who has a sweet, gentle, tender spirit. I watch him watching the world. I see the look of wonder on his face when he looks at the world as a child would. I follow his gaze and then follow his example, and the beauty is so clear and evident to me. It is such a joy to see and feel beauty like that again - hummingbirds and butterflies and my cat stalking a bug in the grass; the invisible movement of the Spirit through one person to another when the choir sings; the pink and purple glow that precedes the sunrise and follows the sunset.

I think being able to SEE like that - I think that matters, too. While the candidates roar and rage about one another, spouting out about how good, the one and bad, the other; when the economy continues to crash and burn; when murder and suicide attack right down the street and lay claim to someone I might have just seen yesterday; when drugs and alcohol eat away at the lives of people that I love and I am powerless to stop the decimation - oh, I believe, in my childlike heart, that being able to smile at the sweetness in the brown eyes of my dog Baby or marvel at the rush of joy I feel slipping my hand inside another's; I believe seeing and feeling the little pieces of beauty and grace all around - those things matter. Those things will save us somehow.

Peace.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Fall

Fall Fall

Fall

Fall is coming....... in the early morning breeze, I can feel autumn whispering into the back of my neck and across the skin of my shoulders. The time is already changing and darkness is coming on earlier. While the colors are not changing yet in the marsh, there are different flowers blooming in my garden now, and the summer flowers are fading. The kids returned to school today - a new year, a new start, time advancing ahead of us with our children in tow.

I feel a pull toward the mountains as the fall comes on. I don't believe I will ever grow away from that pull, no matter how far I go or how long I stay away. The change in the air calls me back to the mountains. Fall days were always my happiest - the days I thought the most beautiful.

The geese are coming over the marsh every day. Most days, I hear them both morning and evening. I am amazed and thrilled that I am again in their flight path. They flew over my house every evening in Morganton, fall and spring, on their way. And now they are here, flying over every day. I don't know as they are on their way anywhere. Maybe they live here year-round? Like the folks from New Jersey, they've decided to stay? I guess I'll have to wait for winter to see if they are stay-heres.

On the Eastern Shore, there are two kinds of folks - "been heres" and "come heres". I suppose the geese would officially be "come heres", which makes me feel much better about being a "come here" myself. (And nobody has to worry about me messing up a golf course!!) For all their trouble, the geese do sing a beautiful song - one that I never have tired of.

I am very happy these days. Not happy-la-la-happy. Not goofy-giggly-happy (though I can get to gigglin' pretty good here lately!). Mostly at-peace-in-the-bone-content-in-my-own-skin-happy. Peace in the bone. Sounds like a song coming on.

Peace in the bone to ya.

Monday, September 1, 2008

If You Stay........

I posted the lyrics to this song in the lyrics of the day section. It took me days to find out who wrote it. The link below is a video of Heidi Talbot singing it.

I hope it'll work. If it doesn't and you have the time and the inclination, you can paste this link into your browser and try to get the video that way or just google Heidi Talbot and it'll come up.

I think this is a beautiful song. I stumbled upon it accidentally. And have listened to it a hundred times since.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=haFgm3IhNm0

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

Song Lyrics of the Week (or maybe the day)

I've been walking down a solitary road.

Looking for some open door, some comfort from this cold.

And I have been afraid I'd lose my hope

But now I know hope will survive.

I've been searching for a heart that is like mine.

A little taste of peacefulness is all I'd hope to find.

So I looked into the eyes of my child

And when he smiled, I could see it shine.

I do believe the dawn will follow the night fall

And I will not have to walk this road alone.

In the voices of my friends, I hear a light call

And the sweetness of that sound will lead me home.

Love is waiting there for me, it's in the pictures on my wall.

I hear it in my grandpa's clock ticking down my hall.

It's underneath the quilt my grammy sewed

And the sweet songs that I've know since I was a child.

I do believe that joy will come to find me.

And I'll know again how that pleasure feels.

And the scars that I bear are here to remind me

That I may love and lose but I will heal.

-----yours truly, Hope Will Survive

Gratitude Journal (a New Year's Resolution)

I am grateful for the many times that I have survived depression.
I am grateful for the memories I have of Morganton and our house there - the house where Jacob and Daniel and I grew up, and the many great times I had in that lovely space.
I am grateful for the red maple leaves blazing in my front yard and the few short weeks I have left to say, "Oh! look at that!" when I step out the front door.
I am grateful that I have learned to be alone and at peace with my own company.
I am grateful for the book of Job. One cannot feel sorry for one's self for very long whilst reading Job. And for that I am quite grateful, as I'm feeling sorry for myself today.
I am grateful for the opportunity I had to play music with Scott and Ken and Mary. Our group was a wonderful thing.
I am grateful for patience.
I am grateful for my nephew Matt and for the man he became in his recovery. I am grateful for the relationship that we've developed and the love that we share.
I am grateful for the sound of my father's voice - the way it echoes still.
I am grateful for dreams of the mountains.
I am grateful that I knew a part of Scott that was good and true before all the other stuff happened. It gives me the place to start forgiving and letting go.
I am grateful for my friends Jon, Lorna, and Bruce.
I am grateful for the week I had to sit by the ocean and listen to that ancient, pounding sound.
I am grateful for friendships that span miles and years.
I am grateful for giggling! You should hear my sisters and my little brother and my sons and me - we all giggle the same!
I am grateful for love that came later in life, even though it would not stay here with me and even though it broke my heart. I am still grateful that I knew it and it knew me.
I am grateful for my music and the way it saves me.
I am grateful for tears.
I am grateful for the voices of my sisters. They sound so much like my own, it surprises me everytime!
I am grateful for the way my kids hug me - with love and intention, warmth and honesty.
I am grateful for the beautiful, warm day yesterday (2/8/09) and the opportunity to sit out in the sun with my dad.
I am constantly touched and amazed and humbled by the courage of others. Thank you for that. Thank you to the young man who waited on our table down in Chapel Hill. Your courage inspires my own!

Good Music

If you haven't heard these albums, have a listen. You'll be glad you did:

Jon Zachary, Turn on a Point ("The Ballad of the Piper Cub" is indeed a very very fine song and an artist rendering on forgiveness. Worth listening to about a thousand times or more.)

Mary Gordon Hall, Wine Glasses and Wooden Spoons (with Christmas coming, listen to "Babe Alone", incredibly beautiful song)

Danny Ellis, 800 Voices (listen to "800 Voices" or "Tommy Bonner" first and read the liner notes, this is powerful music and will heal you way down inside if you open yourself up and let it)

Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, The Harrow & The Harvest ("Hard Times" is my current favorite song!)

Patty Griffin, Children Passing Through ("Up to the Mountain" is a song that I play and belt out when I think that I can't go on anymore.)

I could go on for days!!

My thoughts on finding pathways to peace

I have found that lavender candles or vanilla candles help. I light them when the sun goes down and I blow them out when I go to bed. Especially in the dark of the winter, that soft light soothes me and helps me feel centered. The vanilla reminds me of my grandmother's house when I was a little girl and the cookies, cakes, or pies she would bake when we came to visit. Lavender reminds me of the fields of summer and sitting on the edge of Linville Gorge watching the sun set. I never smelled lavender there but every time I smell it, I think of summer and the Gorge and the many days in my nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first years that I spent there.

It is often easy to set aside a hurt or an offense or a wrong doing that someone throws my way, intentionally or not. Most of us, I think, can set things aside, take a deep breath, control our tempers. The harder part is to leave it aside! To not allow ourselves to take it back up again and carry it around like some sort of blazing badge upon our chests. Letting go means leaving it behind. That's a hard task sometimes. I have found that taking things back up again or carrying them on and on and on significantly diminishes my peace potential. So how do I keep from picking things back up again? Injecting either humor or music into situations of conflict helps me a lot. i try to talk things out with someone I trust and I try to make it funny if I can. I love to tell a story and the funnier the better. I try to make big hurts into little hurts by breaking them up with humor. I also will send a little sound clip in most all the time. I have a constant, unending, soundtrack playing in my head. I have the remote to that soundtrack and I can switch stations whenever I want. There are particular songs that I play in my head that help me feel peaceful or calm or loving or generous or sensitive or, on the flip side, angry, combative, vengeful. You know what I mean? You have these too? Most of us do, I think. I use that music in my head. When I am tempted to fight, I flip a switch and turn on some internal music that either expresses that anger for me (here's an example - "No Bad News" by Patty Griffin. Awesome song. I turn that song up loud in my car on really really bad days when I feel like I might explode - and I explode into that song and wail it out!! and am much the better for it - without doing anybody harm!! 'cept maybe my poor ear drums!) or soothes that anger down (here's another example - "One Love" by Bob Marley, or from Playing for Change. "Let's get together and feel alright" or "Imagine" by John Lennon. "Imagine all the people living life in peace"). It might sound crazy. It might sound meaningless to you. But it works for me. Try it. Turn those songs on in your head and see what happens. If you don't have the right one, go looking for it. It's a powerful tool.

Gratitude has saved my life.

Service has saved my life. I wish that the Feds would give everybody a tax break for doing service work. Like you do some service work, you get a receipt from wherever or whomever, and you attach it to your income tax return and you get a 2% tax deduction or something like that. Plant trees around a local park, build trails on the Appalachian Trail, serve mashed potatoes at a local soup kitchen or bag groceries at a local food bank, write letters to an orphan in Somalia, volunteer to read to a kindergarten class, mow your elderly neighbors' lawn, clean cages for the Humane Society. There's a lot out there to be done. Big and small. Might be life changing. May just be something to do on a rainy Saturday afternoon. But helping others helps me. Helping others takes me out of my little solitary world and opens me up to the blessings that I have and puts my world into perspective.

Prayer is powerful. And it works. When I moved to the Eastern Shore in 2006, I rented this great big old farmhouse. It was beautiful and I loved it there. But the nights could be painfully long. The house made so many sounds and popped and creaked and groaned in the wind. I was sometimes quite spooked. And my peace seemed to run away and hide under the bed. Sleep was elusive. I found there were nights that I could not remember the 23rd Psalm, though I had learned it by heart when I was just a little thing. Sometimes I would simply say, "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want." Period. That was it. That's all my mind would let me remember. And so that became a mantra and a prayer and I would repeat it over and over. And peace would come stealin' over me, slowly, gently. And I would feel my heart slow down. And the popping and creaking and groaning of the house would fade into an ambient sound that did not startle me. And I would float on that prayer into a peaceful state where thoughts came clearly and my voice, the voice of my heart, would talk directly to my God. And my God would listen. I have to work at finding that place. It does not come easily to me. But I work at it and when I find that place of stillness, I find that talking to my God is as easy as talking to my own mother or my closest friend. And my prayers are a conversation that is left unended, to be continued. The peace that I find when I pray is a peace that stays with me as long as I am willing to acknowledge its presence. Because it is always there. I just only need to remember.

A dog, a cat, a horse, a cow, a bird. Study after study has shown what great benefit there is in having a pet: lower blood pressure, less pain, less chronic disease, higher self-esteem, lower rates of depression. I am a believer. I know it to be true in my own life and in my own house. Sitting quietly, listening to a book on tape, knitting or not knitting, with my dog curled up next to me, leaning against my legs. My vital signs stabilize and then mellow, my muscles relax, my heartaches ease, and everything feels alright. Just touching her soft furry head and listening to her sigh. Wow. What a simple thing.