The truth of who you are

Luke resting his face on my arm as we went for a drive yesterday

Sometimes, when I sit down to write a post I think, “Did I say the same thing last week?” I try to stop this second-guessing of myself by saying, “It doesn’t matter if you’ve said it 100 times. It’s the thing that seems to be pressing to be expressed again, so just write it.” And then for good-measure I will add, “And lighten up and get over yourself Mary.”…that does seem to help….sometimes it actually makes me smile. It reminds me that the part of me that I’m trying to “get over” is the self-concerned, petty, small-minded, fearful person who looks for what is (or might be) wrong instead of right, sees the bad and overlooks the good. This is not the real me, but it can sure do a pretty good job of convincing me that it is, and when I listen, I stay small.

This quality of lightening up, being easy on ourselves, looking for reasons to appreciate who and what we are, and letting go of the concerns about how we will be perceived by others, is so freeing to experience (and to be around). I love the quote below. The simple, yet profound words, “Simply try to tell the truth…”  and the truth is that you are a unique being who (at your core) is pure Divinity expressing through the shape of you. And there is nothing small about that.

“Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it“. C. S. Lewis

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Kindred spirits: A sea of Love

We’re leaving for Mexico in the morning. I’ve had dreams of swimming in warm turquoise-blue water for years, and tomorrow night I will be. I feel a deep desire to float…just to float without a plan: to suspend thought, and let the beautiful ocean hold me up for a while. Although I won’t be posting during my time away, it is my intention to hold all of you in my heart. I feel that we are kindred spirits here…friends of the deepest kind, even if we have not met face to face. Your presence is such a profound gift to me.

So what about a 10 day “assignment”!? Mine is going to be to repeat,(often over the next 10 days), “I am never alone. I am surrounded, suspended and connected to all of Life, by a sea of Love.”

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.” C. S. Lewis

*******************Bodhi and Noah sitting together on our front walkway Thursday afternoon******************************

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Time to hatch

Eleanor in one of her oddly uncomfortable sleeping poses

I really appreciate the funny and different positions that our cats assume. They get inside, on top of, or underneath almost everything in the house, and then contort themselves to fit and fall asleep like that. Almost on a daily basis, either Jack or I will call to each other, “You have to see this!” which means that someone is looking soooo cute! Babies and little kids tend to get in odd positions too.

It seems as we get older, we start talking, walking, sitting and even lying down in the same predictable patterns. I very rarely walk into a room and find Jack curled up under a chair, and I am OK with that, but I have noticed lately that we sit in the same chairs or on the same part of the couch, every evening when we “settle in”. There is a slow-creeping inertia that I can feel lurking around the corner, and it bothers me. It isn’t unusual to see a group of young kids on the playground skipping together, but I have never seen a couple of middle-aged women (or men) skipping up the street. We become almost afraid of moving in different patterns.

The element of surprise and change keeps life fresh, and calls new and fresh opportunity to us. It might be fun to change one thing today; sit in a different chair, wear 2 different socks, look in the mirror and tell yourself that you are wonderful, skip up the street,….

“It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad”. C.S. Lewis

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Calm expectation

every morning, Noah jumps onto my lap as I start to write

I was listening to a radio broadcast of, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, the other day. At the conclusion of the program, they said that when C. S. Lewis was a teenager, he suddenly had a vision of a faun walking in the woods carrying a package. Many years later, he wanted  to write a book with this character in it, but had nothing except the picture in his mind of the faun walking in the woods. In a flash, a lion came bounding onto the scene, and the Chronicles of Narnia were born.

I loved this story for many reasons. It says to me that the life I desire is a work in progress, and even though I can’t see the entire picture from where I stand at this moment, it is coming together in a perfect way.  It’s comforting to me to remember that divine ideas have their own timing. When I can wait, in calm expectation; ready to act, but not forcing it, an idea, a suggestion from a friend, an opportunity, a new way of thinking about a perplexing problem, will come bounding into my life and bring with it the answers that I have been seeking.

“He who forces time is pushed back by time; who yields to time finds time on his side“. The Talmud

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Watch your step

I hardly ever watch or listen to the news. I’m happy about this. A few days ago, my son Matt finished up filming for a T.V. show that he works on called, The Deadliest Catch. It’s filmed in Alaska, and I guess they just had a storm that was the biggest one in 40 years. I’m really happy I didn’t know this at the time. I’ve never seen the show that Matt works on, and probably never will. I can keep a detached enthusiasm for his life when I don’t see the scary details…which I can do nothing about anyway.

I try not to watch, read or listen to things that scare me. If something is designed to get my attention by inducing fear (worry and concern are just nice names for fear), then I know it is out of alignment with my higher self, and if I “entertain it”, I will feel like I’m out on the ragged edge all alone, worrying about the next step (or even more futile; worrying about someone else’s next step!) and not paying attention to where I am going.

Worry is not a good energy to attach to anything or anyone. Life has a way of working out perfectly if I focus on what I want, instead of what I fear, on what is going right, instead of what could potentially go wrong.

“The next moment is as much beyond our grasp, and as much in God’s care, as that a hundred years away. Care for the next minute is as foolish as care for a day in the next thousand years. In neither can we do anything, in both, God is doing everything.” C. S. Lewis

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