Love's Freeway

In Memorium

2011-12-06T21:32:00.037-05:00

(for the first-ever music on Love's Freeway...
right click to open in new tab or window)

Wilbur Rudolph Jackson

March 1943 - September 2011

He goes free of the earth.
The sun of his last day sets
clear in the sweetness of his liberty.

The earth recovers from his dying,
the hallow of his life remaining
in all his death leaves.

Radiances know him. Grown lighter
than breath, he is set free
in our remembering. Grown brighter

than vision, he goes dark
into the life of the hill
that holds his peace.

He's hidden among all that is,
and cannot be lost.

~Wendell Berry

September 11 felt thick with emotion this year--much more so than other years. I attributed that to it being the 10th anniversary of "9/11". Little did I know that three towns away, at around 9 that morning, a dear friend was taking his last breath.

I learned of Jackson's passing thanks to an email from our mutual friend Cindy Walker on November 29, and ever since, I have been on a soul search. How could I have let us lose touch? In a coffee shop later that day, feeling shame and regret, I sat in Jackson's (nonphysical) presence while doing energy work with a mentor. When he showed up, I immediately burst into a smile.

"Hey, darlin' " I heard him say, that voice and playful tone so familiar.

Tears streamed down my cheeks. It felt so good to be with him--it had been so long--and I lingered there awhile. The last time I'd seen Jackson was years ago at Landmark on one of our favorite assisting agreements--a sort of volunteer thing we'd each sign up for from time to time. I took the opportunity, if a bit shyly, to slip him a copy of the draft of my second book. I knew full well that he had been walking the line between the two worlds, battling cancer. And though the book wasn't finished, I had wanted him to see the dedication page which reads, simply:

For Jackson

For Jackson because I knew the book (and then some) would never have happened if it weren't for him.

Nine years ago, Jackson was assigned to be my coach in a three-month leadership program. He was tough, and I was accountable, and it worked for both of us. In no time at all, we'd developed quite an affection for one another that would light up like the planets whenever we crossed paths. At the end of the three months, when I sat with him for our final coaching session, he had this to say about the prospect of my signing up for the next level, a rigorous six-month training:

"Girl? If you bring to that course what you brought to this one, you'll be hell on wheels!"

I trusted him. I did it. And ... well, it was the best "bad decision" (with a wink to Jackson) I ever made.

I'm happy he got to see that dedication page. I could tell he was pleased about it. He let me know he wanted a copy. I assured him he'd get one, of course--when the book was done. How I looked forward to putting the finished work into his hands, with pride, pleasure and gratitude.

I have written in this column before about the arc of a life, and how the end defines the whole. Seeing my friend Jackson's arc complete, I see a great light, a bottomless love--magnificence--and I feel deep remorse. I see a lost possibility, a missed opportunity. I see a chance for showing love that I did not take.

I missed the chance to be a closer friend, a true friend. I missed the chance to give love to a great man whom I love when he no doubt needed it the most. And I am sad.

So many times I thought to call or to ask after him. And I did not. I would go to ask, and feel myself stop myself. I was afraid to ask. Afraid of what? Afraid to learn he wasn't doing well--or worse, that he had died?

I think I didn't know how to be his friend, "on the outside." We were coach and coachee, then we were colleagues, work mates. Yes, we were friends in those capacities, but not on the outside. I think I didn't know how to do that, how to make the leap. Was there a leap to make?

Well, now he has died, and I've missed it. I didn't finish the book in time. I wasn't there at the end of Jackson's life. And I feel terrible about that. I feel I let him down.

Yet sitting with him in that coffee shop, I felt not a speck of judgment or disappointment from him. He was affectionate and playful as ever and greeted me warmly. It felt there was nothing there to forgive. And I felt no break in our connection, despite the break in contact. I felt his love alive as ever, and my love alive as ever, and that seemed to be all that mattered.

"You gotta fall in love every day," he coached me once. I've lived by those words since. But there's another part he didn't tell me, except by showing me, showing all of us: you gotta give it away. So I'm thinking now that there's no better way to honor Jackson's life than to pass on that bottomless love.

Can I love now... and now... and now, whenever the opportunity arises (which is, of course, all the time)? Can I love with abandon, with a brimming, a spilling over generosity? Can I love even when it's inconvenient or painful or costly? Can I love with a radiance, joyful in the giving? Am I able to love, that is to say, the way Jackson loves? I sure hope so. Right about now, it feels my life depends upon it.

Thank you, Jackson. I love you, forever.

images courtesy of the Jackson Family.

Get Ready for 2012

2011-11-25T19:41:00.002-05:00

It's calendar time! And the 2012 Language of Love Calendar is bigger and better than ever. This year, I've scattered--count 'em, eight--bonus miniatures across the calendar for added enjoyment. As always, you can expect a high-quality, colorful, collectible calendar (with all new images, of course!).

What better way to start this highly significant year than with a grounding in the Sonoran Desert? Again, I'm producing a limited quantity; if you want one, act fast. If you wait, they'll be gone gone gone. To view thumbnails, and to order, click here.

Dust to Dust

2011-11-21T10:27:00.022-05:00

I've never really gotten the "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" thing. I couldn't see how I came from ash or dust, exactly. I knew that I was born of my mother and father, of flesh and blood, and I couldn't see the relationship between that and dust--at the point of origin, anyway. I could always see its relationship at the end point, of course.

But standing in the middle of the Arizona desert two weeks ago, it couldn't have been clearer: I am earth, born of earth.This is perfectly clear when I stand over a Reiki client as well. But now more than ever, after sitting, standing, and walking in the Arizona desert, I see: we are particles of earth, la terre. Terrestrial.

And with that understanding, so much organizes, so much makes sense. The balancing capacity and aligning effect of Nature; the inexplicable attraction I feel for lands, people, and cultures where life is lived close to the earth, in tune with the earth, in partnership with it rather than in Dominion over it; my draw closer and closer to her murmurings since the birth of Love's Freeway; the ailments and suffering of those not attuned to those murmurings.

In a conversation with my sister this past weekend, chicory came up--first as the primary ingredient in my mother's new favorite "coffee" drink, and then as the root that a friend harvests from various untamed tracts of land around the city.

"You know it, I think," I tell her. "Or maybe not, in suburban sprawl, I don't know. It's that "weed" with the tall spires and the powder blue daisy-like flowers scattered down them." She thinks maybe yes she does know it. But she is more fascinated by my friend's urban foraging.

"How does she do it!?"

" She digs up the roots, dries them, grinds them, and that's her coffee for the winter."

"No way!" she says. "How does she grind it?"

"I don't know - in a coffee grinder, I imagine. Or maybe a blender."

Maybe a VitaMix, my sister suggests. Maybe. Anyway, I tell her I've been thinking of trying it myself.

Our conversation stays with me later, for some reason. And then today, opening my community newspaper, I find a familiar face smiling out at me, alongside an accompanying headline that catches my eye:

"New cookbook greeted with rare herbs dinner" the page announces.

I own the cookbook, and I know its author, Chef Didi Emmons. I also knew the dinner, or thought so anyway, until I read the article. This was a post about an upcoming dinner, another promotional event following the palate-bedazzling book launch I recently attended:

"A bestselling local author's new cookbook about rare herbs will be welcomed with a special dinner featuring the unusual ingredients on Nov. 2..."

Rare? Unusual? I imagine Didi balking at this, moving to educate the journalist and any readers who might be intimidated or led astray by this perspective.

It sure does seem that in the modern world, a substantial portion of the population believes that food comes from the supermarket shelves. That those markets get that food from distributors. That the distributors get that food from... factories perhaps? My sister's coffee comes from Costco, along with lots else in her fridge and larder--including her Thanksgiving pies, she tells me.

My sister has never before thought of digging and grinding her own coffee beverage, and I do think she represents the rule and not the exception amongst metropolitan-area consumers. Some might shudder at the thought of ingesting something pulled from the ground of an abandoned city lot. For many, coffee at home comes from sanitary, vacuum packed Keurig K-Cups, and that's that.

There's no problem with this, per se. But there is the matter of all the fossil fuel it takes to produce, package and ship these individual servings of squeaky-clean coffee, and the matter of the refuse that results--as well as the matter of the planned obsolescence of the Keurig rigs themselves. And there's the matter of the nutrient loss in the packaging, handling, and shipping, the long delay from snip to salad. But even more concerning to me than all of that is the commercialization of natural resources. Maybe we're not all meant to be farmers, or urban foragers. And I'm sure there are plenty of good reasons to put our foodstuff in a central location where non-farmers can come to procure it by trade or by coin. But I daresay the balance has struck a point of imbalance when common--or even unusual-- weeds, plants and fruits the earth would offer aplenty if given half a chance are considered rare, scary or unsanitary.

When a gift turns commodity, things have gone haywire. To forget where our food comes from is to forget where we come from--to forget the true source of our life and nourishment. Gone in no time at all is the awareness that by preserving (or destroying) the integrity of the earth's land, air, and water, we are preserve (or destroy) our very selves. It is not that one is linked to the other; rather, they are one and the same: terre and terrestrial. Earth and flesh, dust and dust.

Vive la Différence

2011-11-09T21:56:00.019-05:00

Given the number of people I've known with extraordinary talents who are so-called "learning disabled" and struggled a lot with their schooling, I'm more inclined to think that it's the teaching that is disabled rather than the learning. Standardized teaching methods can't possibly work for all the students all the time. I know that there are private or charter or Montessori schools that no doubt allow for and encourage the various learning styles and needs of their various students. But it seems this hasn't been so much the case in public school systems--and even in colleges, apparently. In 20 years of teaching creative writing to adults, I've encountered too many a bruised and battered creative impulse.

To expect a human being to thrive where his or her individuality is supressed is like expecting the whole world to...well, just be at peace, already! A peaceful world it does not make when "Let's all get along!" means, "You do what I want." A peaceful world in those terms would have to require everybody wanting the same thing. That could never work. What would work?

"Abraham" has a suggestion:

The ultimate experience is everyone having their experience and launching their individual rockets of desire, and the Universe yielding to all of them simultaneously. And everybody not worrying about what anybody else created...then allowing what they are wanting. What a world that is, when there are endless desirers who are allowing the fulfillment of their own desires.

I am reminded of my time in a psychiatric halfway house--not in residence, but on staff. Eighty to 90 percent of our residents were gifted with one sort of artistic capacity or another. One was phenomenal on the piano, another was a fine painter and a poet, for example. One heard the voices of the trees: she was medicated for that. And here I stand a couple of decades hence, having heard the watercress express its joy at being present at a book signing event I recently attended.

We aren't cookie cutter creations to say the least. We each possess unique inclinations, perspectives, and visions. Would that we'd always nurture, applaud, cherish, welcome--and lead to, speak to, teach to--the uniqueness and individual gifts we're here to express.

Vive la différence!

No Blame

2011-10-30T19:18:00.012-05:00

It is important to realize that in the world of energy, likes, not opposites, attract. If my boundaries aren't clear for example, I vibrate the energy pattern "I have wiggly boundaries," and should not be surprised when people step over them. The energy is "dumb," and that's important to remember as well.

"This horrible thing happened to me: you should have compassion!" one might cry, as if such things happen at random. Such things happen because energy is reading energy all the time, matching with what it matches and bypassing what it doesn't match. The so-called "law of attraction" is not personal; it simply does what it does, without playing favorites and without exceptions. Still, some jump to blame at hearing this:

"You're saying I attracted that?!"

Did [yesterday's Reiki] client attract his broken arm? Did he want his mother to break his arm? No. He did not want his arm broken, and he did not attract the injury. But his arm did, his energy did, unbeknownst to him. Clearing that [longstanding energy pattern], he is free from drawing injury to it again.

Excerpted from BostonReikiHealing.com. Read the full article here.

Go, Green!

2011-10-21T09:07:00.007-05:00

I was thrilled to receive my first order of kidney support herbs and plant essences from my online pet store last week. But once I'd unpacked it, there was the matter of the dreaded peanuts. What to do? I knew they weren't recyclable. Right? I headed for the computer to double check and found this:

Traditional packing peanuts are made out of polystyrene and are now color coded to indicate the origin of the material they contain. Polystyrene takes hundreds of years to decompose in nature, so recycling it is key.

Mine were pure white, though. So I kept reading. Happily, I found a bright spot on the topic:

Some [peanuts] are now made from a vegetable derivative and closely resemble their plastic counterparts. If they disintegrate in water, they are made from vegetable matter.

So said eHow. Off to the kitchen I went to test mine. When I needed the weight of a spoon to keep one down, I wasn't hopeful. I picked up another peanut and tore it in two. It sure looked like plastic to me grimace, grimace. Visions of writing the online pet store swam in my head. I find it troubling when big merchants like Starbucks, for god's sake! don't recycle, when their practices seem environmentally unconscious.

I should have known better in this instance though, and wasn't I delighted to find that before long my sunken peanut had completely disintegrated--hooray! Suddenly I had a box of cornstarch on my hands, rather than nonbiodegradable, toxic landfill. (They'd said as much on their packing slip, incidentally, but I hadn't read it until after the fact. Note to self: assume the best, and read the fine print!)

Go Only Natural Pet! Go human ingenuity! I thank you, and the Earth thanks you.

Manifesting on Air

2011-10-05T12:06:00.007-05:00

I will be a featured guest of Victor Venckus once again this Saturday (October 8) on the Expanding Awareness show from 10 - 11:00 a.m. Boston time. Tune in to 90.3 FM or online to listen. My esteemed teacher, Walter Ness--master of the energetic realm, gifted clairvoyant, performer and poet--and I will be sharing from our experience of working with the energy, and offering methods for immediate manifestation.

I hope you will join us--and maybe even chime in when Victor opens the phone lines in the latter half of the program. After Saturday, the show will be available via the wzbc archive for the next two weeks (until October 22). Once you enter the archive, simply scroll down to Saturday October 8th 2011, 10:00 a.m. Expanding Awareness, and click "Listen."

reprinted from BostonReikiHealing.com

Love at First Sight

2011-09-27T09:58:00.009-05:00

The first glance.
The flirt.
The approach.
The first kiss (and then some...)
The snuggle.
The adoring looks:

it's all here. Enjoy!

Random Thought About a Bagel

2011-09-22T09:00:00.001-05:00

There are some on this planet for whom toast is a miracle.

This was my thought as I pulled breakfast from the warm toaster oven this morning. All at once I was present to the supreme wealth of my circumstances, taking nothing for granted. I will lose this perspective again and again, but this morning I am awake to it. This morning, I see.

Multiplying Light

2011-09-11T18:55:00.018-05:00

Ten years: it's hard to believe. As today's anniversary approached, I knew I wanted to post some-
thing here to mark it, but I wasn't sure what. Then I found this letter in my mailbox on Friday, subject "9/11 and Us":

Fellow Meetuppers,

I don't write to our whole community often, but this week is special because it's the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and many people don't know that Meetup is a 9/11 baby.

Let me tell you the Meetup story. I was living a couple miles from the Twin Towers, and I was the kind of person who thought local community doesn't matter much if we've got the internet and tv. The only time I thought about my neighbors was when I hoped they wouldn't bother me.

When the towers fell, I found myself talking to more neighbors in the days after 9/11 than ever before. People said hello to neighbors (next-door and across the city) who they'd normally ignore. People were looking after each other, helping each other, and meeting up with each other. You know, being neighborly.

A lot of people were thinking that maybe 9/11 could bring people together in a lasting way. So the idea for Meetup was born: Could we use the internet to get off the internet -- and grow local communities?

We didn't know if it would work. Most people thought it was a crazy idea -- especially because terrorism is designed to make people distrust one another. A small team came together, and we launched Meetup 9 months after 9/11.

Today, almost 10 years and 10 million Meetuppers later, it's working. Every day, thousands of Meetups happen. Moms Meetups, Small Business Meetups, Fitness Meetups... a wild variety of 100,000 Meetup Groups with not much in common -- except one thing.

Every Meetup starts with people simply saying hello to neighbors. And what often happens next is still amazing to me. They grow businesses and bands together, they teach and motivate each other, they babysit each other's kids and find other ways to work together. They have fun and find solace together....It's powerful stuff. It's a wonderful revolution in local community, and it's thanks to everyone who shows up...

9/11 didn't make us too scared to go outside or talk to strangers. 9/11 didn't rip us apart...The towers fell, but we rise up. And we're just getting started...

Scott Heiferman (on behalf of 80 people at Meetup HQ) Co-Founder & CEO, Meetup New York City September 2011

I'm one of the many who didn't know Meetup was a 9/11 baby. And before I'd even finished reading Heiferman's letter, I knew I had to write and thank him. I finished his letter then did just that:

Wow, I did not know the connection. THANK you for telling the story, Scott. And a thousand times thank you for giving birth to this extraordinary resource. It DOES work: Meetup DOES get people out from behind their computers to be with real people in real places, enjoying and sharing common interests. I've loved every meetup I've ever attended, and that's quite a few over the last 8 or so years [it's been six, in fact]. And Meetup was there for me to help create instant community when I moved from Boston to Dublin, IE for a year. I am still connected to Dublin peeps and goings on thanks to Meetup.

It was a brilliant idea with a brilliant result: providing oodles more ways to (in my language) "let Love have Its way"...

Bless you, and all who had a part in giving birth to Meetup,

xKathryn

That's a lot of light to emerge from such darkness. And to think we're just getting started.

In Praise of the Wild Things

2011-08-24T09:48:00.004-05:00

"In Wildness
is the
preservation
of the
World."

~H.D. Thoreau

More Earth Medicine

2011-08-16T11:10:00.008-05:00

I don't remember my last bee sting; that's how long ago it was. Childhood, I imagine. Be (haha) that as it may, I had my memory refreshed yesterday. When reaching quickly behind the beach (aka "outdoor office") chair where I was sitting, I felt a sharp prick on the back of my arm. I pulled away quickly and checked the chair to see what had stuck me. Nothing. There was nothing there but smooth canvas. That's when I realized it must've been a bee. I must have pinched it somehow between my arm and the chair--in which case, I certainly deserved to be stung!

On my arm, I found a tiny red dot: no biggie. I thought "stinger," and half remembered something I'd heard about them. I started squeezing on either side of the red dot: if there was a stinger, I should remove it, I was thinking. But that maneuver only served to bring on the heat! Burn, burn: did it ever burn! I ransacked my brain for some folk wisdom that might help. And by grace or luck, I found it: "clay draws," I heard. And lickety-split, off I went to make a little paste of it to smear onto my red-hot skin.

Wow: I'd forgotten how a bee sting...well, stings! But wonder of wonders, the clay relieved that--eliminated it, in fact, instantly and completely. It worked like magic.

I'm quite sure I didn't know clay existed when I was last stung (whenever that was). I think we used ice on them in those days--which isn't a bad anesthetic, but it doesn't take the pain away; it just masks it. I don't believe I've heard anything since about using clay for stings. I think the nugget of wisdom I unearthed was snakebite related. But my brain made the leap--et voila!

Yet again, I see how well the Earth knows her way with herself. Of course she does. And I am grateful to be privy to that wisdom.

Try This

2011-08-12T18:53:00.007-05:00

At the top or the bottom of a staircase, put on (or take off, as the case may be) one, thin flip flop. Then descend (if at top) or climb (if at bottom) the stairs. Continue to walk a few steps beyond them.

What do you notice? It should happen rather quickly, the off kilter feeling--it did for me, anyway. And that's no big surprise, right? But notice the extent of the "tilt" feeling for a clear and immediate window into the countless anatomical and physiological elements that so flawlessly, expertly, seamlessly, come together to accomplish our uprightness and mobility at any given standing or ambling moment. After the initial sense of tilt, you might notice something happening: it will be those hidden elements made visible by way of a sort of scrambling to put you in balance, to adjust. How marvelous is this Intelligent Design!?

I find it downright awe inspiring to think of all the unsung heroes of the human body, doing their jobs so perfectly day in and day out without so much as a speck of notice, thanks, or praise. Today I give notice. Today I thank. Today I wholeheartedly praise the unnamed marvels of the everyday.

Look Up, Look Down, Look All Around

2011-08-05T21:49:00.009-05:00

"As to me
I know of
nothing else
but miracles."

~Walt Whitman

Tanglewood 'Gets 'er oIrish Oon'

2011-08-04T13:23:00.011-05:00

Well fancy that! It's been at least four years since I've partaken in the annual musical feast that is Tanglewood on Parade out Berkshire way. And it seems that somewhere over that stretch of time the Alpine horn demonstration on the Main House Lawn has given way to a Classical Tangent Celtic style! How grand is that for a lass who left a good healthy piece of 'er heart on the Emerald Isle.

I'm no videographer (and forgive the wind), but perhaps you'll enjoy to have a look at what I filmed of it just the same. Don't miss the Irish step dance about two minutes in--and a hearty "T'anks!" to the fiddler's daughter for steppin' up f'r it.

Cheers from the Porch at Tanglewood!

Summertime

2011-07-24T11:38:00.058-05:00

In plein air Jeep
we three

set out on the A road
by the sea

to Rockport
land of the "Motif"

and flags and stairs
and shady trees (on this
muggy July eve at least).

Rockport famed for
lobster and for light
so golden so refined.

Again and again
it caught my eye:
pure tranquility
defined!

Then at eventide
we dined
enrobed by a sunset
most sublime: oh!

How I love thee,
Summertime.

New Camera!

2011-07-17T21:04:00.010-05:00

Get ready for bigger and bolder, cleaner and clearer--even more to amaze and astonish. After five incredibly wonderful years with the first, I have just purchased my next generation camera and...well, oh la la, is all I can say. With more than double the megapixels, greater than 3x my previous optical zooming capabilities, and too many cool features to count, I am surely in for some wondrous discoveries.

Stay tuned! It all begins anew, and I look forward to sharing with you.

The Generosity of Flowers

2011-07-11T19:58:00.026-05:00

There must have been a first seed, a first plant, but that would have been so long ago that I don't remember it. Still, I do believe it was I who brought cosmo and morning glory into my gardens. After all, they are here--in force!-- and they weren't anywhere to be seen when I arrived here.

I do nothing to bring them on each spring; still, year after year they not only return, they proliferate, with plenty for me and plenty to share. For the small favor of a periodic watering, I am rewarded daily with new bursts of color, which they will continue to offer until the cold nights of October and November signal them to stop. By then the finches will have come to feast on the thistle-like seed of the cosmos. They will flit and sway and nibble on and around the boughs to their hearts' content. And no matter their feasting and my deadheading, plenty of new seed will nestle into the earth to begin the cycle over again come spring.

Perpetual in a different fashion is the jasmine--thanks to Anne, there is jasmine. "And we'll grow jasmine," she had said, "...on the terrasse." She meant in Dublin or Paris and though we did not find it in Dublin and did not live in Paris, when I saw it in Boston, I thankfully brought it home. Its sweet constancy--glossy dark leaves indoors in winter, the surprise of the first buds oh, hello there! in spring, and the profusion of flowers in "my secret garden" all summer long--has entranced me ever since. And that perfume!--so deliriously heady on the humid days and nights: it reaches, wraps, caresses, seduces, rounds corners even, riding the currents of moisture and air. I do not so much have as I am had by jasmine: its command is clear and holds sway. It too asks so little for all it gives.

But such is the generosity of flowers. And such is the grace of abiding by them.

Liberation

2011-07-07T19:57:00.019-05:00

It comes to me like any other new thought, but with an urgency. Now! it says, and puts me in motion. In this case, "Bring this plant out now."

It has been perfectly fine to house and care for my Norfolk Island Pine indoors for nearly 30 years, but today, there is rain on the way, and for some reason now--right now--it must be rained upon. It is just as if the tree has spoken it: I must be rained upon. The urgency seems to come from the plant itself.

And so with a bit of struggle, with no one at hand to help, I muster my strength and manage, sideways because it has grown from about 10 inches to nearly six feet over time, gently so as to cause no damage to its needle-fronds and limbs, and in stages because of its mass and weight, to remove the tree from bay window, carry it from dining room to kitchen, through the portico, and down the back stairs to...liberation! That's exactly how it felt, how I feel it feels for the pine to be out here, ready to receive its first-ever (or in decades at least) raindrops. To be ionized, dusted by the elements, kissed by early sun and late sun and tousled by wind--to be, finally, free. "After 30 years in captivity," I hear myself say to a friend, "I liberated my Norfolk Island Pine today!"

It's not that it's never occurred to me to bring it out. In fact, each spring I put most of the house plants outdoors for summering. Come Autumn, they return to these rooms robust, thriving with a new vitality. Maybe because of its bulk, maybe because of its commanding presence in the household, the pine has remained inside. But no longer.

It's funny how a thing can work just fine for a time--decades even--and then all at once work no more. Within moments of registering the imperative now!, my hands were in motion, the transfer was underway.

I have heard the voice of the flowers, and now, the Pine. I did not know this sort of perception would come part and parcel with developing energy sensitivity. But it makes sense that it would. If I can read a human field, why not a plant's, an animal's, a stone's? Of course it would come to this--and continue beyond this. There are no secrets Life won't share with a sufficiently humbled heart, it seems.

Earth Medicine

2011-06-20T14:38:00.010-05:00

I want to know how on earth it is possible to live for this many decades without knowing that equal parts of apple cider vinegar and honey mixed is one of the best cough remedies going? Apples, flowers, bees: that's a pretty direct line of defense (or attack!) if you ask me.

Check out Youtube for a playful, instructional video about this remedy and a glimpse of what it could mean for the pharmaceuticals folks. I won't connect any dots here or assert something I can't corroborate. But we're a thinking people, yes? Let's think about this. How can such a thing escape notice for so long? (I can't be the only one...) Why isn't this taught in schools? Why do we spend a bundle on medicines we can make ourselves--more naturally and perhaps more effectively--for pennies? Why indeed.

Well all that aside, thank you Google, thank you to the wonders of technology for enlightening me--in about 60 seconds flat, no less--about this no-doubt ancient cure, made simply from simple ingredients commonly found in any ordinary kitchen. I like the low carbon footprint, too.

Earth 1; Pharmacy 0. Love it. I'd like to think this a sign of the times. I'd like to think we'll all be doing a lot more "back to the Earth"-ing in the days, weeks, years to come, with untold benefit to all concerned.

Horton Heard a Hoo

2011-06-16T22:38:00.011-05:00

Well, the Boston Bruins won the Stanley Cup last night, and with a flair and a flourish. It's taken this team 39 years to reach this ultimate moment, and they have plenty of cause to celebrate. I lingered after the game to share in their jubilation. That's how I learned about Horton's contribution to the effort. Nathan Horton had been sidelined early in the series by an injury. Still, he wanted to do his part, apparently.

"It wasn't my idea, but I did it," he said to the newsman with a glimmer of triumph in his voice.

At first I didn't know what he was talking about. But a pre-game clip showed Horton surreptitiously pouring some water onto the Vancouver ice. It seemed he had scraped some Boston Garden ice into his Gatorade bottle, flown it to British Columbia, and then emptied it out onto the rink just before this decisive Game 7 got underway.

But why? That's what the interviewers and viewers wanted to know, if they hadn't figured it out already.

"We wanted to put our ice on their ice and make it our ice,” Horton explained.

I heard him tell this a few times to different interviewers from difference stations. Each time he used the same words: "We wanted to put our ice on their ice and make it our ice.”

Cool. Very cool. I like the line of thinking. I liked the energy, the creativity of it. Did it make a difference? Did it in fact help win the game?

In the world of energy, there's no limit to what one particle, one drop, one thought can hold. When that water hit the rink, it carried Horton's intention with it. Did it transform the Vancouver ice--like fairy dust turns pumpkin to coach, tatters to ball gown, dross to gold--just like that?

Who can say for certain. All I know is Horton heard a 'hoo' and followed it. And come to think of it, the Bruins kind of looked like they were playing a home game. And...well anyway, the rest, as they say, is history.

Thoughts about a Spider

2011-06-03T11:42:00.015-05:00

The spider was happily crawling across a pansy leaf before it fully registered that I had carried it by its filament, yes? off of my leg and away. Surely by the filament. I would have remembered touching the spider body, yes? And anyway, I probably would've crushed it that way, so very small as it was. It all transpired in a split second.

What a marvel, this. I have swept the tiny creature off of me and safely onto a nearby plant before even registering consciously what I was doing. It's automatic in me then, I think: preservation of living things. And that thought sets my mind going. To the boys at the Little League field some years ago, stomping out much bigger bugs than this--and with parental encouragement no less. To the Jews, that much more shocking stomping out we call the Holocaust. And to the direct line between these--tiny creature to small creature to large creature. Something is killed because it is deemed...nothing, or offensive, too different, unwelcome or wrong--or on the "wrong" side of a door or screen or national border. [That] (fill in the that) is less than; I am better. I stay and it goes. Whether consciously or not, a judgment is made. On what basis? According to what rulers or values?

I made no judgment about the spider. I simply acted, by reflex, in favor of Life.

Jasmine

2011-05-21T23:13:00.013-05:00

Tonight I am sur-
rounded by jasmine, infused by jasmine and laughter and the steeping of sun I took at Kathleen's and then later stretched out along the sidewalk in conversation with my mother, sated by falafal from Mass Ave. in Cambridge, and pleased by the lovely chance to be three again at the gift shop next door, imagining for the selecting of what Rosie might enjoy at tomorrow's fete in her honor.

Three. Walter held out his palm to me this morning to show me himself at three. A dynamo, I "saw" there: so much light, radiant in every direction, and a vivacity sparking and sparkling.

Things come between. We forget our dynamo selves, enticed by this story or that along the way. One friend has a bad shoulder. Another, a failing hip; another is weak in the back. And now, JT with a cancer diagnosis: an offering, an invitation. "Life waved her magic wand for... this? I would have preferred faerie dust, a unicorn: anything but this!"

And meanwhile, the night is full of jasmine and mist, and somewhere out there, stars. And my cat forgives me for her lonesome day, thanks to shrimp and sun and air and rolling over warm pavement, then christening the underbrush while I picked my fist full of violets and trimmed the grass 'round the ones that will remain.

My friend is snoozing now. Later, she will wake into her bad dream... But this is no dream. This is Life, laden and dripping--every moment of it--with the nectar that bees would die for: jasmine, bearded iris, violet; Bordeaux, Stilton, shrimp. Eros and kindreds, healing and seeing, and everything around me breathing I am perfect Love.

And it's so sweet like this, and so hard to imagine poverty or illness, grief or regret--anything but jubilation, celebration for the generosity that is offered unceasingly and unconditionally: the goodness that is our wealth, always, forevermore in this Kingdom at hand.

Sipping From the River

2011-05-09T10:00:00.012-05:00

On bended knee, I sip
from the river of the lost
and the possible
then drink. I am not
soiled, not
poisoned--on the contrary
au contraire.

Mignon: a favorite
french word tout mignon
and it is that,
the cricket
by my sandal watching me.
Waiting? No
not waiting, but I know:
he wants something from me
a true voice, let's say,
that I open my mouth and make
something worth my breath.

And now the birds
chime in--a conspiracy
working in my favor and so
all at once
I am floating. Clouds
of angels egg me on
and with a single
full-fledged Yes
I honor them all.

May Day

2011-05-01T23:00:00.011-05:00

Many months ago, Shutterfly offered me a desk calendar as a thank you gift, and I accepted. As I created the calendar, realizing it probably wouldn't arrived before late February, I noticed I had the option of choosing any twelve-month period over the subsequent year. " By May," I sensed, "I'll be starting a new year." So I created A World of Love, May 2011 - April 2012, showcasing photographs from parts near and far.

Today I started my new calendar--my new year. It's impossible to know how much was intuition and how much creation out of declaration, but I

find myself greeting May Day with a clean-slate freshness. Much has expired, cleared out, made room for an influx of new energies. Intention, creation: it is all a marvel to me. In the beginning was the Word. I've begun the year with adventure: exploring new places, seeing new scenes, tasting new foods, creating new stories--all alongside the manifesting Spring, the earth's reawakening from a deep slumber. Resurrection is all around, in all its glory. Everything in my part of the World is fresh and new and beginning. "Let there be light!" and there was light. As it always was, really, and always will be.

The Intelligence of Reiki

2011-04-30T23:00:00.002-05:00

In the course of a Reiki treatment, I often pick up information about the client which I usually share afterwards. The specifics for each individual can be wildly different from week to week. (If ever we needed proof that we are not the same person moment to moment, here it is!) When something I pick up seems a little far out or illogical (i.e., no history of that with this client), I feel a bit timid about sharing the information. Such was the case with L. recently.

"Weak in the knees," I told her. "I kept hearing that phrase, "weak in the knees."

"Wow," she exclaimed. "My son's been having knee problems. He might need surgery, and it's been on my mind," she explained. "That blows my mind."

When she turned to leave, I realized that with all the attention on the knees, I had almost forgotten what had happened at her head. I called after her:

"Oh, and there was something going on in your sinuses."

She stopped and turned toward me. "You're kidding!" she said, wide-eyed.

I told her about the sinus clearing I felt happening as I worked on her head.

"Okay, now I have to tell you about this morning."

She proceeded to share the details of a distinct yet uncharacteristic sinus event that had taken place a few hours previous at a business meeting. L. found this correspondence of my sensations to her experiences quite remarkable. She walked away shaking her head in amazement.

On another day, it was E.'s brain that was especially prominent in the treatment. The left side felt shriveled and much smaller than the right. This didn't make sense to me, and nothing like it had ever turned up in any of her previous sessions. Still, what I'd sensed was very distinct, so I shared it. The look on her face confirmed it made sense to her. She proceeded to tell me of her son's brain deficits--on the left side--and the current legal struggle they were facing related to his disabilities and circumstances, which she was troubled about.

In each of these cases, was the situation receiving Reiki? the client? or the client's son? Was E. experiencing "sympathetic shrinkage"? Was L. developing weakness in her knees by focusing on her son's weakness? I don't know. Had these questions come up during the treatment, I might have looked or asked for the answers. But what matters in my view is that in all cases, what needed treating got treated.

I love this about Reiki energy: it knows where to go, and goes there. It knew J. had a heaviness in the heart and went there. It rooted out C.'s self loathing and went there. It showed me V.'s High Priest energy, and M.'s eight-year-old self--all in service to the client and what he or she needed at that moment in time.

Recently, not long after the earthquakes and tsunami in Japan, P. came for a treatment in Braintree. The music playing during her session, selected by a fellow practitioner, sounded Japanese to me. I thought maybe it had triggered the remarkable experience I had while treating P., so I didn't share it with her. But then she remarked about it as she got up from the table.

"Oh, that music," she said, and touched her heart.

I decided to tell her what had happened. As I treated P., I felt the unbroken link of being--all humanity, all life. It felt very clear and very logical to me, as it was happening, that I was conducting a healing treatment for Japan. I felt the Reiki--concretely and actually, not conceptually or metaphorically--reach the Japanese people and land.

P.'s eyes filled with tears, and she started nodding. "That was my intention when I got on the table," she told me. "I wanted some of this to go to them."

"Well, it did," I said.

And it had. In no uncertain terms, it had. This is the intelligence of Reiki. This is the power of intention, of thought. This is the function of a clear channel. What a beautiful and wonderful thing.

reprinted from bostonreikihealing.com

Sometimes it Snows on the Nest

2011-04-16T09:38:00.016-05:00

I gasped when I opened up to the Decorah eagle cam this morning. It snowed! The birds are looking ragged, wet and cold. The little ones still looking liked plucked chickens (albeit very cute plucked chickens) keep scrambling for cover and warmth under their mother. I had been wondering how it would be for them in a rainstorm up there. This was my answer: hard. It looked harsh and hard for them.

I'd seen "Ma" buffeted by heavy wind--late last night, for example. That looked challenging enough to bear. But 31 degrees F and wind and snow has her looking both exhausted (she must've been up all night) and, it seems to me, concerned.

This is Nature, this is natural, right? Sometimes it snows on the nest. I can't possibly have thought these birds wouldn't have to face harsh elements up there 80-odd feet in the air. Still, I feel that I am learning something this morning as I watch them.

Ignorance is bliss, they say. I can't really know what happens in an eagle's nest until I see it, now can I? I am seeing it now. I am watching mother eagle, day in and day out, caring, scouting, preening, protecting, feeding, hunting, sleeping, fluffing, patrolling: vigilant, careful every minute. Even while sleeping she is on alert, ready for anything. For many weeks now she has been engaged, with the help of her mate, in the annual ritual of hatching and raising her young. Each day for a couple of weeks I have watched her perform her duties without complaint. Compound the task by adding snow to the mix: a threat, it occurs to me now. A true threat. Can she feed them? Might they freeze? Mustn't she feed them? This is what I am thinking as I watch these raptors undergo their travail.

Up flies the father to deposit a fresh-caught fish. But my attention is on mom and the eaglets, still concerned for them. Out of the corner of my eye, I think I see the fish flap. Mother eagle confirms that I did. She takes its head in her beak a moment. Then she pokes at it a couple of times. I don't want to be watching what I'm watching.

Can I be watching what I'm watching?

Its gills, its mouth are gasping for water.

Yes, dear. This is what happens in an eagle's nest. Since forever.

Mom stands and begins feeding the fish to the eaglets. I am grateful the bulk of her body is blocking my view. I know what's going on, and I know it's natural, but I still feel for the fish. That fish is being eaten alive! By reflex, I have put up my hand to send it Reiki. I know exactly what the energy will provide for its passing over, and I want to provide it. All the while, I am aware that Nature does Its thing every day--just this sort of thing--and has done so for eons without my help. I realize what I'm not watching is natural. Natural, yes, but cruel--no? Nature is cruel. Yes, Nature is cruel. I have seen other evidence that it is so.

It is strange to discover as this all unfolds before me that I think I should be exempt from undergoing. I must think so, because I seem to think the eagles should be exempt. But sometimes it snows on the nest.

I stand reminded, and grateful for it. Nothing in Nature is exempt from undergoing. And sometimes it snows on the nest.

grateful thanks to the Raptor Resource Project

A Month of Verse

2011-04-12T11:02:00.002-05:00

April is Poetry Month! If you haven't already, you might want to sign on to Knopf's Poem-a-Day for the remaining weeks. You'll find delights like this one below in your email box--a nice way to start your day, or accompaniment for the lunch break, or a companion to your afternoon or evening tea... or "tea." Enjoy.

We asked Edward Hirsch, whose collection Special Orders is now out in paperback, to comment on the title of the poem below. He writes, "The French novelist Henry de Montherlant coined the maxim, 'Happiness writes white,' which suggests that happiness is a blank that can't be described. It simply doesn't show up on the page. My poem playfully but urgently responds to this idea, a common romantic prejudice, by showing that happiness, too, can be written ('I am a piece of chalk,' 'I am a banner of smoke'). Joy, too, is part of life and can be precisely described."

_________________________

Happiness Writes White

I am a piece of chalk
scrawling words on an empty blackboard.
I am a banner of smoke
that crosses the blue air and doesn't dissolve.
I don't believe that only sorrow
and misery can be written.
Happiness, too, can be precise:
Doctor, there's a keen throbbing
on the left side of my chest
where my ribs are wrenched by joy.
Wings flutter in my shoulders
and blood courses through my body
like waves cresting on a choppy sea.
Look: the eyes blur with tears
and the tears clear.
My head is like skylight.
My heart is like dawn.

~Edward Hirsch

Tonight I Sat in an Eagle's Nest

2011-04-02T23:48:00.005-05:00

In Decorah, there is a newborn still being as if tucked in its shell though its shell has hatched. There is a fresh hare on the nest: rabbit paw, cotton tail. There is wind, much wind, and vigilance: two more eggs and a newborn to keep warm. Then later, much much later, there is mother tucking her head down for sleep and the breathing of feathers: only the breathing of feathers.

It feels miraculous to watch, to be privy, to be intimate with the eagles in their nest. And tonight, with Japan in mind, what's going on over there, I feel keenly the purity of Nature. The perpetuity of Nature, unflappable and enduring. I feel deeply privileged and grateful for this window onto time and immortality. I feel entrusted. Responsible. Custodian. And I feel. Sure. There is nothing more important than this that I am watching: Life giving way to Life, immortal.

Fragment, or Mother Knows Best

2011-03-15T12:07:00.007-05:00

Earth will always prevail. She knows far better than we.

Arrogance, dominance: look where they've gotten us!

The earth is speaking. She will persist until we get the message. Louder and louder she'll speak until we listen, until we remember.

The Book of Secrets: Finale

2011-03-14T13:40:00.016-05:00

News Flash!

Tune in to WZBC's online archive before March 25 to listen to the third and final segment of Deepak Chopra's The Book of Secrets audiobook. (Click on the March 12, 10:00 show--see The Stream of Joy for more info.)

This concluding portion reveals the last four secrets:

Secret #12: There is No Time But Now
Secret #13: You Are Truly Free When You Are Not A Person
Secret #14: The Meaning of Life is Everything
Secret #15: Everything is Pure Essence

If you don't get to hear this within the next two weeks, you can always find the book and audiobook in your local library or favorite bookstore. It is a gem; check it out!

Unstoppable

2011-03-11T19:08:00.023-05:00

The great thaw is on here in New England. Bit by bit the lawns and gardens have been resurfacing this week after a long slumber under a cold, deep blanket of white. We'd almost forgotten them under there. There is very much the sense of this all returning from the dead, and I tell you: it is so good to see the earth again.

Once it starts, it can seem the great reveal happens all at once. It was only a week ago that the first bits of garden and grass were beginning to show. I know this because it was just last Friday, when I stepped out to feed my vacationing neighbor's cats, that I noticed green in my garden where there had been snow...surely just the day before. It was the beginnings of daffodils, growing in serpentine fashion, oddly, alongside the ragged edge of a shrinking snowbank. Daff's don't grow like this naturally. They were curvy because they'd had to grow around something. That something was a hard crust of ice and snow. I realized this at first glance, and it made me smile.

It's marvelous to me to think of those bulbs under inches of earth (and snow!) getting the signal--sensing the subtlest shift in light, sun growing slightly nearer every day--of those leaves beginning their climb through the soil and then above it, then stopping for nothing once they've started. What power, I thought. What insistence. It lifted my heart to see them. Here was spring in no uncertain terms barreling toward us.

I knew I had to try to capture this sweetness. And I knew that even in the time it would take to get my camera, the scene would change. The light would have shifted from what felt like spotlight position, the leaves would have begun, continued their stretching toward the sky, straightening their bent little backs in the process. Still, I figured if I had any chance, it had to be now, not after the cat sit. So I went for it.

I love that photography calls--well...that Nature calls me. I don't think I will ever tire of the imperative inherent in this endeavor. And for what am I answering, hopefully capturing? For sharing the wise voice of the earth, that her whispers may reach far beyond the singular curl of my ear.

Clarity = Freedom

2011-03-09T11:12:00.019-05:00

I discovered a letter in my archives today that I'd forgotten about. It was written in 2002, a very powerful time when I chose to "sink or swim" vis-a-vis the Claritywork I had been doing "on the side," the Claritywork that I had been saying would come into its own in its own time. In February of that year, knowing full well that each time I conducted a Claritywork session, I felt I was doing work I was put here to do, I decided I would go for it. I bought a domain name - my first! I created a brochure. I designed a business card. I found an icon in my MS Publisher program called "Web Site," and clicked on it. I started fooling around in there and before I knew it, I had a website too--also my first. Then I started sharing the news with everyone I knew:

"Four years ago," I wrote, "I was asked by a writing student-friend to apply my coaching and listening expertise to a matter concerning not his writing but his life. So emerged the Claritywork that I have been facilitating with clients (writers and non-writers alike) ever since. Over that time, this work has been happy to occur in the wings, while my teaching, coaching, and writing practice maintained center stage. A recent step back from it all has proved the perfect opportunity for me to bring this powerful, important work out of the shadows.

"Since mid-September, it feels as though the whole world is breathing from different lungs. Our lives are transforming, and at a greater clip than ever before. Do you feel it? This is not imagination; this is real. One result of such a shift is that so many of us are finding the old ways just don’t work any longer. Great loss creates emptiness. And emptiness begs to be filled.

"Confusion, indecision, half-heartedness: these can derail us for a day, a decade or a lifetime. In Claritywork, one not so much acquires meaning, direction, etc., as remembers them. A single clarity session--intensive, rich, illuminating--can bring peace, focus, and action to areas of your life that confound you. No one, myself included, is immune to such derailments. The good news is: they needn’t last long.

"My passion for spreading the news of this work derives from my desire that it be available to anyone who wants to create and live a more engaged, authentic, fulfilling life. I want people to know that Claritywork is a distinct option.

"I am an artist. Days, hours escape without notice when I am engrossed in, impassioned by a work in progress that feels not so much a product of my hands as of Life itself. I am transported. Such total engagement yields a pure result. The genuine, in whatever medium, is attractive. It pulls on us--we crave it. We trust it. To attain this authenticity in writing (or sculpting or music or painting…) is grand. To attain it in life is extraordinary.

"There is no greater oeuvre than a life lived wholeheartedly, powerfully, genuinely and purposefully. Therein lies the meaning we are each unceasingly invited to realize. Therein lies a love and joy that our trusting, abiding planet so needs, now more than ever.

"I invite you to give, to yourself or to a loved one, the gift of Clarity."

I might have said "...the gift of Freedom."

Last week I happened upon a note that I received from a client I worked with long distance between Ireland and Israel. I share it, with her permission, because it embodies so beautifully that freedom that comes with clarity:

Thanks so much for providing the facility of listening to the recording. The repetition of the multi-conversation (You and I and the guidances you make connection with and listen to), moments of looking for the language to convey accurately, moments of silence and listening, how you build it, how you thoroughly gather the information you need, as if to help you climb the ladder of ascension. Revelations one wants to hear again and again… Afterwards, I was dancing through the rooms of the house with freedom and relief.

Well it's a fascinating journey to free oneself…Thank you!

It is a fascinating--and extraordinary--journey indeed. And my great privilege to facilitate it.

What places Love has led me. What blessings have come of it.

Better Later Than Never

2011-02-21T13:55:00.025-05:00

It was a friend's comment on Face-

book that had me open to the photograph to begin with.

"Wow! GREAT shot!" she had written under the very spectacular scene, and I completely agreed. But I didn't know why she was complimenting me, and I felt a bit envious of the fortunate person who did get to take the shot. Given the image was so magical, bordering on the improbable, I half wondered if it had been Photoshopped, collaged from several images. Alongside of all that, I was puzzling over how her comment had reached me. I just couldn't figure it out...and then I saw it.

"So amazing," I wrote back to her. "I didn't recognize it at first ... I saw a "fairy land," as if I were looking into another dimension. It was an odd feeling of disconnect ("She's commenting on a picture of mine, but it's not mine, whose is it...?" etc. etc. ). But then I remembered the place and the moment and it cleared... [T]hanks to you I saw something I've never seen in this photo--something truly extraordinary..."

The photo was indeed mine. It was I who'd stood on this very spot near Connor Pass on the Dingle Peninsula of Ireland two springs ago and took this shot while bracing against a bitter wind. Back in Dublin, on May 6, I posted it as part of a sampling of the hundreds of photos I'd brought back from the trip. On February 6, almost 2 years later, a Facebook comment led me back to it--and gifted me in the process.

Not recognizing the shot as my own--convinced in fact that it wasn't my own--I could see it newly. Then with recognition came realization that it was I who was the fortunate one in that magnificent place. I had been given the gift of a second chance to enter fully all the magic and potential of that original moment. And I took it.

No Ordinary Moments

2011-02-14T12:32:00.016-05:00

When I updated the slideshow on this site recently, I found myself taken in by the images. I paused to watch the show for awhile. Before long, something remarkable happened, something that surprised me.

I know all these images intimately. Some have been with me for years now. And, generally speaking, it's usually the newest image or images that are my "darlings." Many of the darlings during their reign as darlings spent some time as my computer desktop background until another darling came along and bumped it. I don't exactly "love 'em and leave 'em." But I do enjoy the refreshment of a new image when it takes that place--proof positive that I've been right all along to avoid a tattoo. There's just no single image that I've wanted to look at for the rest of my life.

Still, as the slideshow images appeared and dissolved before me, I found myself entranced. Life itself opened up before me, a frame at a time. Each pulsed, burst with the light of its subject, and recalled to me what fell beyond it, before and after it. However nondescript one originating moment or another might have been at the time,

they gleamed now. In the light of all that gleaming, I recognized something I had not quite recognized before: photography exalts. By eliminating the Everything, it features--lifts up, showcases--the Something--the subject in the photographer's frame.

Everything was illuminated, not unlike the sacred texts of old. The images had become larger than life, and so did the moments that had borne them. I saw--felt--delicacy, intricacy, majesty. Each came alive for me, and I sat awash with Love. I saw my lived life become precious (again) before me. I "saw the Light," I suppose, and I saw it like never before.

I have a sort-of friend who has made it clear over time that she doesn't consider what I do here "art." There are many who would agree with her, I'm sure. I wonder about it--especially when I am called to exhibit or to speak about what I have created or exhibited. After all, photographic art comes from expensive SLRs that are works of art in their own right, from long hours spent in darkrooms that from time to time birth the unmistakable and irreproducible masterpiece.

Who's to say, really--I cannot. Even "beauty" is in the eye of the beholder. But I believe that seeing is an art--and a gift when shared with the one or the many. It is by seeing and then capturing what is seen that the photographer exalts. Exalted, the image offers seeing to others--invites it. What is visual art if not an invitation to see?

What I saw in this series of images is pure Light. Gifts of the Light, venerable stations of Light worthy of all my Love. And I stand reminded that there really are no ordinary moments.

The Stream of Joy

2011-02-08T20:35:00.018-05:00

Last Saturday, Victor Venckus returned during his "Expanding Aware-

ness" hour on WZBC radio to Deepak Chopra's The Book of Secrets, which I wrote about here on January 30. Tune in to this "Part 2" archived recording if you would like to enjoy an articulate, loving reminder of how moment by moment, choice by choice we are the creators of our lives--that's good news, remember?--and to hear practical tips for freeing the chooser (us!) to create freely from a context of unlimited possibility.

"Free your mind," says Chopra, "and you will be greeted by a stream of joy...[that] is elemental and unshakable."

If that sounds appealing, have a listen. But as with Part 1 (which will come down on February 12), don't dally getting to it! This recording will disappear from the archive on February 19.*

Once you've entered the archive, scroll down to February 5, 10:00 a.m., then click on LISTEN. Note: the show begins at about minute 3, after a prelude of instrumental music. Note also that this show continues into a portion of the 11:00 hour as well.

Chopra offers wonderful tools to help listeners "align with the forces and principles of the Universe"--or, in other words, to let Love have Its way.

*beyond that time, look for the book or audiobook in your local library or favorite bookstore.

*******************UPDATE 3/14/11**********************

Tune in (as per the above) between now and March 25 (click on March 12, 10:00 show) for the third and final segment of this audiobook, covering:

Secret #12: There is No Time But Now
Secret #13: You Are Truly Free When You Are Not A Person
Secret #14: The Meaning of Life is Everything
Secret #15: Everything is Pure Essence

Bonnes Nouvelles!

2011-02-01T13:16:00.010-05:00

I have some lovely news! For this month and next, as part of "The LOVE Exhibit" (of all things, wink), Letter from Paris will hang in a group exhibition for all the world to see. I hope some of you local friends of the Freeway will come celebrate and share the Love with us at the February 17 Reception, or visit the exhibition at another time that's convenient for you. And I hope the rest of you will share the Love in spirit, wherever you are.

The Press Release, with all the deets, follows.

For Immediate Release

January 30, 2011

Contact: Janice Williams - Roslindale Arts Alliance - 617-710-3811

3rd Annual LOVE Exhibit

Boston, MA......The Roslindale Arts Alliance announces the 3rd Annual LOVE Exhibit. The LOVE Exhibit will display during the months of February and March, 2011 at Bangkok Cafe, 25 Poplar Street, Roslindale. This exhibit was created to celebrate Bangkok Chef/Owner Raungdet Titisuttikul's ("Danny") birthday on Valentines Day February 14. Bangkok Cafe has been a strong supporter of local art for many years.

Boston area (Roslindale, Hyde Park, Jamaica Plain and West Roxbury) artists selected used various mediums to express the theme of love. Participating artists are: Kasey Davis Appleman: Mixed Media; Gert Condon: Photography: Kathryn Deputat: Photography; Amy Joyce: Silkscreen Print; Bill Mahan: Acrylic; Jeff Margulies: Stained Glass; Chris Roberts: Pastel; Alicia Shems: Fiber and Beads; Glenn Williams: Acrylic and Janice Williams: Digital Design.

There will be a reception with the artists on Thursday February 17 from 6-8 p.m. Free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served courtesy of Bangkok Cafe. For more information visit http://www.roslindalearts.org

Get it While It's Hot, and Before It's...Not

2011-01-30T18:07:00.014-05:00

I am here to point you to an archived "Expanding Awareness" show on WZBC radio wherein Victor Venckus presents (in part) Deepak Chopra's audiobook, The Book of Secrets. I hear grace and generosity in every word of this recording: a compassionate heart and an awake, aware consciousness artfully articulated.

"As proud children of science and reason, we have made ourselves the orphans of Wisdom," says Chopra. He invites listeners to step out of the illusion of separation into the "truth" of wholeness--into Flow.

The show will only be archived at this link for two weeks (it will disappear on February 12)*, so don't delay. Once you've entered the archive, scroll down to January 29, 10:00 a.m., then click on LISTEN. Note: the show begins at about minute 4, after a prelude of instrumental music. Click here to "[unlock] the hidden dimensions of life," for expert guidance in giving Love Its way.

*beyond that time, look for the audiobook in your local library or favorite bookstore.

Stretching

2011-01-27T16:15:00.040-05:00

In recent weeks, I've been learning extraordinary things about energy, with grateful thanks to a gifted clairvoyant and man of many talents named Walter Ness, and to Linda Clave, also clairvoyant and a woman of many talents--and with thanks as well to a few other of their "students." That said, I can hear Walter say we're "students of the energy" versus students of theirs, that it's the energy that teaches us. We just have to engage it.

We have been meeting in various configurations--one on one and in groups--to engage the energy, with powerful results. Big things are happening--many big things. And many "little" things that are actually big as well in their consequences and implications. Like, for example, what happened at the pool yesterday. Something Jon shared the other night when he and Walter and I met evidently prompted me to try an experiment. I was so pleased with the result, that I wrote to share about it with them:

I was stretching after swimming laps today and it occurred to me (thank you, Jon) to stretch from the peaceful place (being there, vs. wherever else my consciousness/attn/
energy is when I’m stretching), so I did and the stretch felt like it just kept going! I felt like I had the flexibility of a child (read LOTS), and tensions, tightness instantly disappeared: suddenly I had none. It occurred to me this is because my current tension, aches, tightness do not exist in the peaceful place. It felt like I’d entered a space that was “story” free, i.e., without any life baggage. I don’t know if you know what I mean, if I’m describing this well, but suffice it to say, it was wonderful, fantastic, and eye opening. Thank you!

It's one thing to talk about Love's way, and it's another thing to experience it--and in a new way. To see conditions disappear in a split second like that, simply from moving the location (yes, location) of my consciousness from one place to another, rather amazed and excited me.

"You mean I don't have to meditate on a mountaintop for 100 days (or years) to attain samadhi?"

That's right.

A few months ago, I learned from Walter--in about 3 minutes, from a radio show about Neuroplasticity--how to access this "peaceful place" as he calls it, located in the center of the brain. Language is tricky. I say it's a place and it is a place, but it is also a being-state. With energy and awareness located in this peaceful place, I am ever present, still, unflappable. I am not concerned, not sad, not enthralled. Neither am I impressed or unimpressed--with myself or with anyone or anything else. That "I" is tricky too. Because "I" am not "I" there, exactly. And stretching from the peaceful place, I was not "me stretching," so much as I was the act of stretching: I was what "stretching" gets to do in a human body when there is no story, no baggage, no weight.

Jon responded to my note about my discovery by sharing a similar story:

I understand what you mean by "story free." One winter's day I had returned home after being in Vermont for the weekend. It had been snowing all weekend so there was a lot of shoveling for me to do before even being able to pull the car into the driveway or enter the house. My body was sore from the car ride and I felt even worse in my lower back when I started to shovel. For some reason (and I don't know how or why - this was before I knew about interacting with the energy or meeting Walter) I saw the events leading up to the pain in my body as a story I was telling myself like the story was a cage that was keeping in the pain. I stopped judging and qualifying this pain and became very in tune with the present moment and my present body sensations The cage opened up and the pain freely escaped as a caged wild animal would do if you gave it its freedom. I felt healthy and able and shoveled snow for about 2 hours. I didn't get hurt or feel sore later or the next day. My body responded to my mind in a miraculous way!

I can attest: these "story-free" moments do feel miraculous when they happen. But actually, they are the natural consequence of engaging simple techniques. Activating the peaceful place and acting or responding from this dynamic still point is one such technique.

This place-state is present in and accessible to each and every one of us. And by following a few simple instructions, anyone can reach it, almost instantly. Don't overlook the powerful implications of this! Learning to direct one's energy-awareness to one location opens up the possibility of directing it to any location. I have learned, for example, to listen from my ear lobe, from my elbow, from my heel to preserve energy at times when it previously would have been drained. I have learned to locate energy-awareness in my cat or my client or my friend for diagnosis, understanding, direction and vision. I have located it in other dimensions, with enormous benefit to the here-and-now. And I have only just begun.

This energy is ever ready, able, and willing to serve. To engage it is to engage limitless possibilities: its domain is infinite.

Sounds like Love to me.

The Lost Episode

2011-01-16T23:00:00.020-05:00

Way back in March--wow, almost a year ago!--I shared here about my television appearance with Michael Koran on AHAH! What I didn't say then was that the show in the time slot that follows AHAH! was not filming that night because the host was sick, and that this gave Michael and I the option (with encouragement from said absentee host) to continue for another half hour. And we did! So "Love's Freeway meets AHAH! Part Two" was created. When CCTV put the shows up on the web, Part Two wasn't functioning properly, so I refrained from announcing it. Michael said he'd see about getting it fixed. I made a mental note to check on it later, then moved on to other things

Well, "later" has turned out to be now, in the middle of January of 2011. I just watched the show for the first time...and I like it! I am pleased to share it with you now--in perfect timing, of course :).

In this 26-minute show, we discuss:

~What Love is and isn’t
~Getting unstuck
~Tips and techniques for finding your own answers
~How Claritywork works
~How Life speaks to us

and more! I hope you'll tune in, and if you do, I hope you find it time well spent.

Bonanza

2011-01-13T15:57:00.024-05:00

When Cleo died last June, a neighbor friend brought a condolence gift of sweets and snacks to me. With an artist's flourish, he decorated the white box with a small bouquet of flowers he'd picked from his garden. I placed them in a small crystal vase, then set it beside Cleo's photo--a Love's Freeway card I had taken out for display when I was preparing to leave for Vermont a few weeks prior. It was one of those half-conscious things we do, in this case as if to say to her many caregivers that weekend, "This is the dignified creature you're looking after," as if I wanted them to remember her--to see her--as able and strong.

I kept that little vase going for months--removing dead flowers and replenishing it with fresh

ones from my garden. I never really decided to do this--again, it was one of those half-conscious things. Still, I've continued to keep it going. I keep thinking I'll stop it, that it will come to a natural conclusion. But it doesn't, it hasn't. Not yet.

It was easy in the summer and through the fall to come up with replacements. I thought winter would be the end of it, but then the Christmas cacti started blooming, in succession. One by one they've had their turn in the place of the vase. But the last cactus's show is pretty much over.

Yesterday I looked over at that spot and thought "white carnations." I could see them there--the miniature ones: clean and perky and spicy. And that decided it. I would go buy flowers. Besides, I needed cat food.

Off I went to the Stop & Shop, with the its previous store's abundant floral case in mind. Their new and improved, "Super" store, unveiled about a year ago, has had very little comparatively in the way of flowers, but still I was hopeful. Alas, there were no white mini carnations to be had, but I chose a pathetic little bouquet of four or so assorted stems that was the next "best" thing, along with said cat food, and got in queue to pay.

"Don't buy this bouquet," I thought--or heard. It absolutely wasn't worth even the $4.99 price tag. I hated paying for flowers that weren't fresh. I really thought I should put them back. But then what? "You came for flowers" my mind reasoned. So I bought them, such as they were.

How silly I felt when I spotted basket upon basket of fresh, vibrant flowers overflowing from the cemetery dumpster on the way back. I'm sure I was bug-eyed. I've never seen such a riot of flowers left for dead. Having overfilled the dumpster, they had left several baskets beside it even, on the pavement. There they sat: practically flawless and stunning and ready to love. I was parked beside them and filling the car before I could say "Oh my goodness."

Odd to say, but it felt like rescue. I had to work fast. Some were wilting. There were roses involved. And snow was coming--a blizzard, no less. By morning, they would all be smothered to death. Crazy but true: it was a triage moment. I could feel myself assessing their conditions at a glance, choosing those most likely to survive, turning away from others that could make it... but there just isn't room for them all.

Night wasn't far off: they wouldn't have a chance after that. I can't keep all these I thought as I put two heavy baskets in the trunk. I felt torn: take them, or leave them? Would others come for them in time? Who could I call? I felt guilty, greedy, then reassured myself: I could share them with friends.

Wow. I hadn't handled this many flowers since my funeral home days. And just like in the old days, I dragged out all my vases and went to work. I plucked, snipped, sorted, arranged. And I kept plucking, snipping, sorting, and arranging. I would think I was parking flowers temporarily to give away, but before I knew it, I had created another arrangement. I kept thinking I should call someone, send them down there to save the rest, post a notice on my neighborhood e-list. But I had a room full of flowers to attend to, so I kept at it. My kitchen had turned flower shop and had become quite the disaster area: crumblings of wet florist sponge, snippings of greens and stems and leaves, crushed petals, the casualties--all in a strew, everywhere. Creation is a messy process.

I made a mixed, semi-tropical bouquet for my friend who misses her beloved Puerto Rico, and brought it to her door. I delivered two bouquets of roses to other friends. "It's as though you knew without knowing," said one as he took his to his kitchen in search of a vase of water. In my frenzy, I had forgotten: he had surgery scheduled the next day and was nervous about it.

The roses were perfect, he told me. They would calm and comfort him.

Then came the clean up. And after that, all that was left was to enjoy them, the fruits of all that labor--four hours, all tolled--this gift of the Earth, this nod from the grave. I suppose these are "funeral flowers" around me. Second hand, and god knows why--fresher than the flowers I'd bought--set out as trash. All I know is they are beautiful--extraordinarily varied and beautiful: a feast, a festival in my midst--and I love them. I am delighted, as the snow continues to fly and pile higher and higher outside, to have saved them from an unnecessarily early demise. They had so much more Light to shine, so much more Love to give, so much delight to inspire. They are beaming--from table, from mantel, from organ, from bookcase, from staircase, from dresser, from sill, from floor. I am surrounded here, in the dead of winter, by the Love of the living Earth, greeted by It at every turn.

I could say this is thanks to Cleo--that is its own marvel. To think that honoring the dead could set so much life, so much Love in motion. It is marvelous, no?

Then again, don't we know: you just can't give It away.

The Heart of the Earth

2011-01-09T21:26:00.037-05:00

I felt it in Ireland, and again last month in Costa Rica. What? I'm not sure, exactly. But I can say this: there is a pleasant hum in a place where life is lived closer to the earth, to the heart of the earth. We have paid a high price for our progress, for estranging ourselves from our earth-mother.

This hit me with a new force and clarity on a simple Post Office run just a day or two after my return to Boston. I had set out on my errand by foot because I had wanted the air and the exercise. When I saw what a mess it was out there, I was extra glad I'd left the car at home. There were vehicles everywhere sliding all over the place on freshly snowy roads. "Weather be damned!" their drivers seemed to be saying.

I felt a distinct overarching careening as I crossed the busy thoroughfare--a careening long ago set in motion, and going full throttle. And I felt, just as distinctly, that it was going to have to get worse before it would get better.

Industrialization, the technologies of our age have for the most part made things faster, easier, more efficient and convenient for us. And that's a fine thing. But something has slipped in alongside of the various advancements. Entitlement, domination, power over, "Get outa my way; I'm coming through!" has slipped in alongside them. The tail has unmistakably begun to wag the dog can you feel it?
Those drivers slipping and sliding about on that road: they were hell-bent, in the middle of their day, on getting somewhere--some, perhaps, on getting home. But for the most part--how do I know? I could feel it--this was a momentum, an automatic pilot sort of "getting somewhere" in motion before my eyes. There was a dream-like quality to it. Just as if a collective anaesthesia had been administered, and that collective was driving about seemingly awake, with eyelids raised, but actually, was in no uncertain terms asleep, blindly moving across an arc that, short of the one or many waking up in the interim, had to end in a crash.

I walked with this as I walked on. It was sort of an eerie feeling, glimpsing the inevitable bad end of something set in motion that could not be stopped--as with a long fuse on a brick of dynamite: light it, and there's no question what will happen when that fuse has burned away: ba-boom.

As if on cue, on my return from the Post Office, I came upon a bad accident, on that same thoroughfare. There was a fairly new Explorer or the like turned on its side in the middle of the road, and another car nearby with its front end smashed in. Presumably, the people in these cars had already been taken off in ambulances. There was a huge iron claw clamped around the driver's door, through its open window, by which a tow truck was dragging the vehicle toward the flatbed it would ride away on. I kept waiting to see the car turned upright. But I got cold, and it was snowing--and it was disturbing to watch, actually--so I continued on. Later it struck me: they probably never set that car upright. It was my sense of order that craved to see the injured vehicle up on its wheels again.

I think it must be the contrast I experienced in Costa Rica, reawakening the sharp contrast I experienced in Ireland, that has me seeing the "state of the state" here so vividly. I've just returned from living for about a week in the lap of the earth, in intimate proximity to her rhythms and expressions, where human interconnection is basis, is fundamental. In the air, on my skin, riding on the

fragrance of tropical flowers, in the squawks of exotic birds, I felt intrinsic to Nature--the way thread is not part of the cloth but is the cloth. I imagine it was like this for the settlers of my home region, long before automation, industrialization, depersonalization eclipsed the old ways. One worked and lived in collaboration with the earth, not in sovereignty over it.

It's not that we have no connection with one another up here. Yet some of the most social people I know are also some of the loneliest. In metro-Boston, at least (and in other metropoli?), it can seem that the fundamental human connection is obsolete, and that an integral relationship with the broader life matrix (barring household plants, pets, and gardens) has been largely abandoned, usurped by "divide and conquer" of some sort or another.

This is no rant; it is pure observation of what I watched playing out before me like a film on a mid-December day in Boston. An observation which apparently rose out of the clarity that sharp contrast affords. The contrast? How to put words to the prevailing cultural wind I perceived in Costa Rica. Perhaps like this:

We know where we come from, and we know where we're going. We come from the Earth, and will return to the Earth. We are of Earth, and sustained by Earth. We cooperate with Earth, Earth cooperates with us. Together with Earth we comprise Earth.

I saw again--saw and felt this time--what I had seen about ten years ago on my first trip to this tiny, peaceable country. There is a fundamental tranquility that underlies life, underlies living there. If qualities were tones, I would say Costa Rica's tone is equanimity--an equanimity definitely lacking in the running, driving, striving inherent in our "getting somewhere, and fast" up here. This is our overriding tone of life in these parts (and in other metropoli, I venture to say). Getting hired, getting educated, getting hitched, getting one up on the neighbors, getting the newest and the latest: always...getting...somewhere. Just where exactly do we hope to get? Domination over versus collaboration with our living earth: where has that gotten us?

Perhaps the background tone of equanimity I felt across Costa Rica is the natural con-
sequence of living alongside the constant breathing and steaming, stretching and spewing of active volcanoes 65 million years old. Perhaps it's a grace born of living free of the harshness of winter. Perhaps it's an effect of living amidst the sensual and exotic flora and fauna--myraid butterflies, hummingbirds, and palms; the sweetness of pineapple, banana, and star fruit; the plenitude of stars revealed by nights still allowed their darkness.

It was on my last bus to the airport for my departing flight that I realized I hadn't seen a single Tico cry. I had heard no hollering, seen no scuffles. It was only I who had cried publicly there. It was only we who'd hollered and scuffled. But we'd brought that with us, my travel companion and me. There, I'd seen kindness everywhere I went. From packages handed to the bus route driver-turned-courier, or down from a passenger window for the family members or friends or colleagues expecting them--sometimes in exchange for colones, but oftentimes for only a smile--to strangers anticipating a need or a question and, helpfully not intrusively, answering it. I saw kindness in people's mouths and eyes, in their motions and gestures--and even in the air itself, it seemed. The taxi driver who (seemingly) reprimanded us one day gladly offered his cell phone the next day to help us out of a fix. And in typical homes, very little divides indoors and out. That seems to extend to the lives lived in and around them.

There is more to ponder here, more to unpack. But I do know this: I lived happily, simply, and well down there at the heart the earth--grateful for the privilege of being in its midst, humbled by its quiet, commanding power, arrested by its breathtaking beauty, while sweetly savoring its delectable fruit. And I want this for all of us, no matter where we are.

A New Vibration

2011-01-01T23:52:00.020-05:00

Hello 2011! According to a reliable source:

2010 was a "holding" or sometimes stagnant energy (the three vibration); the 2011 energy is a "push" vibration of movement, change and abundance (the four vibration).

Sounds good to me! And in keeping with the energy of the new vibration, I proudly present 136 new addi-
tions to the Love's Freeway Gallery for your viewing pleasure. There is a story to every image, of course. Sometimes I get to tell them, sometimes not. If you are curious to hear one, let me know. It just may spark a new entry here.

As always, all of Love's Freeway's exclusive images are available for purchase as finer gift cards (blank inside, suitable for framing), and upon request as enlarged and matted or framed prints, according to your preference. Should you wish to acquire an image for some personal or professional use of your own, please let me know. I welcome all inquires, as well as suggestions as to where I might show or offer these radiant particles of Love.

In the meantime, here's to a year of dynamic movement, change and abundance for us all. Happy New Year!

"A Christmas Miracle"

2010-12-27T22:14:00.034-05:00

It all started with a crumb-laden muffin paper I had thrown out onto the driveway for the birds. It made me smile to see them later, flying off with torn bits of it in their beaks like prizes. There was a larger piece, too heavy for flight. It was this--and probably the bird activity too--that attracted the "street cat." Glancing out to watch the birds, I found this cat intently licking the paper. Then I took notice of the cat: drawn and distressed. I realized its intent was born of desperation, the desperation of starvation.

I usually don't feed strays--or if I do, I try to sneak the food to them in such a way that they can't be sure of where it came from. With my soft heart and its weakness for kitties, I'd have a Hemingway houseful in no time, if I let myself. Feed them and they're yours, I've always assumed. But this was an exception. Here before me was a homeless, starving cat living out in freezing temps--just shy of Christmas, no less: the situation tugged my heart strings for sure. I would break my unwritten rule, that's all. I took an empty cat food can from the recycling, filled it with kibble, and put it out by the tree next door, just beyond my driveway.

The cat was nowhere to be found when I laid out the food, having fled at the sound of the opening door. Back inside, I watched for her. Before too long, she did return.

Each day she came a little more quickly, and looked a hair less desperate. By about day four, I think, she even started leaving food, versus licking the bowl clean of any scraps--and the driveway too--which she'd been doing at first. I had my challenges, with the neighbors' pets finding the bowl, with trying to provide water for her that wasn't frozen or too cold to drink. I managed to get a good meal and drink in her each day, and I was pleased about that.

When I started to observe her path, I saw her slip into a neighbor's garage through the gap between the door and the floor. It was a relief to know she had shelter at night. One very sunny day, I saw her lying in meatloaf position against the south side of a neighbor's house, soaking in the warmth--the most peaceful I'd seen her.

This was all well and good, but it couldn't go on forever, I knew that. Christmas Eve, I talked about the cat with friends, asking advice, telling what a simple grace it felt to feed her. Christmas day, I talked to another friend about the garage-turned-shelter. There had been talk of a blizzard coming. Would she get blocked in or blocked out by the snow?

"The cat will be fine," he told me. "She'll work it out."

Yeah, I told myself. The cat will work it out. But I was not convinced.

By midday the next day, the snow had started to fall: right on schedule. I had a few bad pictures of the cat that I'd taken through the window around day two, I think. As the snow flew, I decided to use them. I posted one on my Facebook profile, along with a query: was anyone looking for a new feline companion? I inquired. I had also sent a couple, with a note, to a cat-loving neighbor-friend who has a reputation for feeding stray and feral cats.

"Seems I'm the primary food source since 3-4 days ago of this starving kitty," I wrote. "Do you know this cat? My first experience with 'remote' care of a stray... [A]ny tips for how to do this are welcome," I wrote her. She had a tip, alright, and she phoned me to share it.

"Have you seen the postings around the neighborhood?"

"Yes," I told her, but I wasn't sure what she was getting at.

"There are two different cats missing. One is gray, but the other is a dark tabby. It could be this one. There's a color photo on the flyer..."

As she spoke, I started to feel very stupid. A synapse fired that had not fired the entire week previous. I'd seen a Lost Cat poster at the end of my street--weeks ago, in fact. I'd even read it, took a look at the photo. Then I did what I routinely do when I see such a poster. I thought, "coyote," and never gave it another thought.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Here I was, coming down with a cold and very happy to be indoors in that weather, with no place to go, but as soon as my friend mentioned the flyer, I knew what I had to do. I threw on a down coat and hood, snapped it up to my nose, zipped on my boots, and set out. I needed only circle the block before seeing the poster. It was a color photo, as my friend had said. It was the poster I'd read weeks before. There was a resemblance, for sure.

"Does not have a collar or tags," I read. "Six digits on both front paws." That clinched it. I'd noticed those thumbs on day three. I ripped the page down, careful not tear the phone number and email address on it, then got home as fast as I could, berating myself the whole way. "You are such an idiot," I kept saying. I was horrified at my own stupidity, realizing that this cat could've been spared many days of hunger and fright and maybe danger had I only put it all together sooner.

I called the number, got a recording, and left a message. I emailed too, attaching my bad pictures. And then I waited. What if they were away for Christmas? Would the cat freeze to death in that garage overnight? This was a nor'easter coming, with high winds already blowing. I was worried. But I didn't have to be.

The call came within the hour. The woman thought that this might be her cat. She would send her son Michael right down. They lived a street away.

I walked out to the road, and I saw Michael coming. I waved; he waved. It felt like a scene you'd see in a movie. The storm was bearing down. We trudged over to the garage. I hadn't succeeded in reaching my neighbor to get permission or access, so Michael called the kitty from under the door, trying to coax her out. Then it occurred to me for some reason that the door mightn't be locked. I checked the padlock and sure enough, it was turned to the closed position but not locked. I lifted it off, and pulled the door wide. Michael called into the dim. Only when he got no response did I realize that I couldn't even be certain she was in there. I started to wonder what to do if she wasn't.

It was night. We had only a bit of streetlight to see by. He looked up--we both did, at the same time, or so it seemed: a bulb with a short string. We needed light, we both realized. I turned to my right and saw a switch. I tripped it on and light flooded the space. That's when he spotted her. She had started forward in response to his familiar calls, but then retreated--on account of me, I gathered, so I stepped back and out of sight. Still, eager and curious, I peered around the corner to see what would happen.

"That's her," he said at last, and my heart leapt. This was really happening. This kitty was going home. Her weeks-long trauma would end. She would be warm and safe inside for the storm.

When she came close enough, Michael picked her up. "Oh, I'm so happy," I said, on the verge of tears, on the verge of enormous relief. I asked him if he'd let me know how she was doing after a few days, then I watched him walk off with her into the driving snow, into the night.

My phone rang a few minutes later. It was Michael's mother again.

"Kathryn, I cannot thank you enough... We'd just about given up," she told me. "I hoped I would open my door on Christmas morning and find her there..."

"It's a Christmas miracle," she said finally. Because for her, it was--and is. I understood. Or I could begin to understand. I've had lost kitties come home, though not after six weeks' time. Not after living on the street in the dead of winter. This was an indoor cat. She'd gotten out. Then she'd gotten lost. Even one street away, she didn't know her way home.

I still can't quite believe it. One, that my mind never made the connection between that poster and this cat. And two that this cat could have been "lost" so close to home. It all seems so improbable, but it's true. And I won't soon forget it.

Gift of a Generous Heart

2010-12-24T12:22:00.024-05:00

Many thanks to Rob Breszny for sharing the extraordinary accom-
plishment and generosity that is his friend, the publisher and author Richard Grossinger's compilation entitled "My Teachers." All of us can certainly name a goodly number of very significant teachers and guides along our way, but more than 70? Indeed, Richard acknowledges, count 'em, 71 teachers great and small by the writing's end. The number alone is "wow" to me, let alone the reading of this remarkable document. Not only did he name them, but he named as well his relationship to the them, when, where and how they met, and what it was that he learned from them. I find it a great work of a beautiful heart, penned by a lover of words, and it inspires me immensely. I shall soon put my heart and mind and pen to the precious task of creating such a work of my own. In fact, according to Breszny, there is no better time than 2011 for we Librans to do so.

So watch this column for a future entry of this nature. And in the meantime, feast your eyes on Richard's. May its radiant love and magnanimous generosity warm and inspire your heart as it did mine.

My Teachers
by Richard Grossinger

Over a lifetime one has many teachers but only a small number who teach them something essential that transforms. Some of the lessons are big, some tiny, and some are absolutely huge, huger than the life itself. All these lessons, big and small, play a role.

You know who your teachers are. These are mine, along with when (and/or how) I met them and the simple version of what they taught me:

Martha Rothkrug (Towers), my mother. I met her at my conception in February, 1944, if not earlier. What she taught me was: pure terror—and, by terror: magic, ancient clan magic in its primal form, plus the profound sorrow and exile of earthly existence. By showing me the abyss, cruelly before I was ready, she gave me the tools and intimation of revelation. She conferred on me an alienation so engulfing that I could never escape it in a lifetime. She was my dark shaman.

Robert Towers (nee Turetsky), my stepfather, the adman, some time in 1946 when he moved in with my mother. He taught me raw elegant language, baseball rudiments and moves, his own rabbinical apostasy, and the entire social world around me. He was a gentleman and a nice guy who acted like a tyrant because he thought that was his role. Dandy and poseur that he was, he was still my first intellectual companion.

Jonathan Towers, my half-brother, April, 1948. He taught me the battle, the war, defiance, the ferocity of our family legacy, and, ultimately from that heritage, compassion, because I had to learn how to feel it for him. He taught me that we were twin initiates in a dark lodge, children of a witch. He took his own life in May, 2005.

Philip Wohlstetter, my first friend, at P.S. 6 and Bill-Dave Group, the Borough of Manhattan, 1951. He taught me sacred mischief and secular mystery; he invented the intellect for both of us. He initiated me in the Hardy Boys, Ken Holt, Rick Blaine. We rediscovered our dialogue half a century later, and then he taught me the esoteric logos of international politics and rogue governments.

Abraham Fabian, Greenwich Village, my first psychiatrist, November, 1952. He woke me up and taught me that I existed. He held up the first mirror...

To read the remaining 66 entries, click here.

First First Thursday

2010-12-05T20:53:00.017-05:00

Thanks to all who came out (some with barely a day's notice) for First Thursday at Loring-Greenough House last week. It was a festive--and scrumptious-- evening, from the homemade stuffed mushrooms (thank you Karla!) and punch, to the whipped cream and candy canes. Wonderful conversations were had, warm hugs exchanged, and new friends of the Freeway made, which all warmed the cockles of my heart on a cold and oh-so dark winter's night. The array of art and artists scattered about the House was impressive to say the least--anyone who attended can attest to that. It was a labor of Love for all involved. A special hats off goes to Randace Rauscher Moore of JP Centre/South Main Streets for her fine orchestration of this special event. I'm already looking forward to next year's.

And speaking of next year...

I have just a few more Language of Love 2011 calendars that did not get snatched up last Thursday. Do let me know if one of them is yours!

photo by Kristin Robison

On the Road Again

2010-11-28T20:38:00.001-05:00

I've been invited to open the Freeway Gift Shop at Jamaica Plain's last "First Thursday" event of the year. First Thursdays are great! I have enjoyed them a lot this year. And though I will miss strolling around this one, I couldn't be happier for the opportunity to share Love's Freeway there. Look for me (and about 15 other artists) at the Loring-Greenough House at 12 South Street:

December 2, 2010

6:00 - 9:00 p.m.

Hope you can come on down for this festive--and final--JP Artists and Artisans event of the year. You can pick up your new calendar while you're there!

The Knowable Unknown

2010-11-26T11:37:00.032-05:00

For months now, I've been moving a bag of tulip and daffodil bulbs around: step to porch to shed to porch to kitchen and back to porch again. I had dug them up this past spring because they had long ago stopped flowering, a sure sign that they needed to be moved. I was supposed to replant them, but I kept procrastinating. I watched myself do this--all the way into October, and then November, which has brought with it the killing frosts. This cleared the land of any interference for sure: there was no excuse now. And if these bulbs were to live and produce again, I had to get them in the ground before it froze solid for the winter. Still, I kept procrastinating. And I knew why.

I have one very sunny border here. Most flowering plants need such full sun to thrive. So this part of my garden has grown quite dense with all my heart's desires over the course of my 16 years here. Iris, peony, rose; bleeding heart, primrose, poppy, dahlia, monkshood and mint. Not to mention the flowering bulbs. It's all packed in there together. These are all the fittest, who've survived tight quarters.

When I've wanted to add or move something in the garden that involved deep digging, I would pretty much grab the shovel, cross fingers, and go. Much as I tried to avoid it, this method had me invariably slicing into something already established, inflicting mortal wounds.

I hate this. I love Life, and I am no killer. Still, I'd routinely murder innocent, defenseless other planted things when I'd sink my spade into that earth. I couldn't stand to do it again, and this is what had me procrastinating.

Then it occurred to me: I'm a dowser. I could dowse the earth for open spaces. If a pendulum could find underground water, certainly it could find underground earth! Still, as I set out to swing it over my garden, I was skeptical: I'd never used dowsing for this. But I figured it would at least reduce my odds of doing harm, so I started swinging.

The pendulum showed me very definite yeses and nos--"Yes, dig here. No, do not dig there"--but still, when I dug at a "yes" place, I dug gingerly. I had decided in advance I would use a trowel rather than a spade. This was a good choice. It allowed me to dig precisely each time, in the very spot of the "yes."

Any actuality can be dowsed. Anything composed of energy, that is. And what isn't? Even thoughts are energy. I can't explain how dowsing works; I only know that it does. Still, I felt a little strange out there, swinging and digging, swinging and digging. But you know? The results kept me doing it.

The proof, as they say, is in the pudding, and this pudding was flawless. Each time, every time I dowsed a Yes, then dug in that spot, I brought up nothing but rich soil--and the occasional rock. Each time, I grew more and more amazed. I know what's in that garden. There are snowdrops here and there (though, short of dowsing for them, I'm not certain exactly where). There are chives. There are grape hyacinths along the entire border. There are lots more daffodils and tulips--oh, and I forgot about the crocuses--all multiplying by the year.

I neither saw nor touched one of them. It was just as if I were digging in a brand new garden. Not a speck of harm was caused to anything, as one by one the uprooted bulbs (20 or 30 in all--it never occurred to me to count them) took their new places in the garden.

"The unknown is knowable," I thought as I worked. I thought of all the things we say we don't know and can't know. When in fact the energy is there to be read. Ask, and it will answer--not by 'hocus pocus.' Dowsing is not magic, any more than a thermometer or a clock are magic. Thermometers indicate temperature. Clocks indicate time. Dowsing tools indicate energy. What energy? Whatever energy they are instructed to indicate: water, bulbs, earth--and just about anything else.

I thought I couldn't know what was in the ground, that I would have to dig blindly. I was wrong. I just needed to ask.

There is so much more than meets the eye.

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

2010-11-17T22:35:00.192-05:00

Photography reminds me whenever I engage it of the constancy of change. It reminds me that all is in motion before my eyes. I've written of this before, I know, but it bears repeating: there is no "later." There is only now--especially when it comes to displays of Nature. I keep thinking I am aware of how ephemeral it all is, but no. Apparently I need the occasional reminder.

We've had a string of cloudy or rainy days. I've been particularly alert to this, being in the middle of a painting project that required less than 60% humidity and temps 60F or above to complete. Finally, the warmer, drier days came. Oh how I wanted to go off with my camera into the Autumn glow! But this is November, and the painting project by necessity would have to steal the best days for this. I needed to finish, and who knew how many days like this remained. So finish I did, and by that time, we were back to overcast.

Meanwhile, passing the Arboretum in my travels had me rubber-necking for the Japanese Maples scattered along the Arborway side of the grounds: they shimmered in there like bright red or gold brooches against an otherwise grayish cloth. They called me in. But I kept not answering. I kept not being able to stop. "I've gotta get over there..." I would tell myself. But time and weather kept not coinciding. I knew the longer I delayed, the greater was the risk that it would all pass. Yesterday I had the time, so I went.

If three steady years of photography have taught me anything, they've taught me this: it's all about the light. Yet there's more to light than the perfect slant of sun (though oh: what that won't do for an Autumn glow!) For sure, the Autumn glow--especially lit by early or late sunlight--begs for the eye, the lens to capture it. But grey holds vivid colors in relief, creating another sort of beauty. And then, occasionally the sun slices through that gray, and oh la la. That's a spectacle, for sure. Since Dublin, I damn near court and completely relish such "rainbow weather." It does crazy, magnificent things with light. But that wasn't happening this day, so I did what I could with what I had.

I was already too late for some: a few of the trees were almost bare. But others (to my delight) appeared to be at their peak of color, and so in less-than-ideal conditions, with a slightly brightening overcast, I made my attempts to capture them.

Then came the wind. An entire night of fierce wind, followed by...ta dah: sun. Spotty sun, but still, sun. This was the day I had been waiting for to photograph the maples. I knew the wind would have changed the fragile landscape, but still I had to go. I had to try to capture that shimmering glow.

"Wow," was all I could say as I walked my bike into the grove. Here it was fewer than 24 hours later hard to believe and most of what had captivated me the day before was gone. There were new pictures to take, but not yesterday's pictures. It was kind of a shock to think how close I had come to missing all that outrageous, fiery beauty, waiting for the perfect light.

Before I knew it, while I stood with the newly-bare maples, yesterday's glow a carpet at my feet, a bank of threatening clouds slid in. They brought with them a drama of dark and silver and light: rainbow weather at its best. I'd shoot, and then I'd wait. I did a lot of waiting. Sun was only peeking through in slices here and there. When it burned through, I watched a radiance spread over the landscape and be gone again as quickly as it came. I snapped as it moved. I got what I got. I waited. I waited some more. There were a couple of shots I wanted that a spot of sun would downright glorify. I watched the sky: it didn't look promising. Nothing but more dark clouds were moving our way. I'd gotten a lot, though. I would just have to let these others go. And meanwhile, I'd been there quite a while, and I needed to use the facilities.

I hopped on the bike and headed for the main gate. After a stop at the washroom, I came out to brightening skies. Yikes! One last chance! I made a mad dash to the bike to unlock it, then pedaled madly, like Dorothy and Toto trying to escape the bad witch, toward the Japanese Maples with one eye on the moving clouds. There was just one break in the clouds coming. I could see, if I even made it in time, that I'd have half a minute at the most to take the shot I wanted.

I knew just where to stand; I had moved the leaves aside in that spot to mark it. I dropped the bike--there was no time to park it; the sun was already dawning across the scene. It caught fire before my eyes with a color, a radiance, a sheer beauty too striking to be short lived.

But it was. It is. I forget that. The camera helps me remember. It affords me the chance to fix these scenes in space and time--or their likenesses, anyway--at the same time that it puts me face to face with their impermanence. I witness these ravishing beauties and endeavor to capture them as I watch them disappear.

Here Comes 2011!

2010-11-03T20:43:00.007-05:00

It's calendar time! And the 2011 Language of Love Calendar is bigger and better than ever. Not only have I removed the photo captions to make more room for the images, but in honor of Love's Freeway's fifth birthday (wow!) next year, I've scattered five bonus miniatures across the calendar for our added enjoyment. Otherwise, this is the same high-quality, colorful, collectible calendar (with all new images, of course!) that we've come to know and love.

And if you haven't known or loved one yet, why not start now? A petite caveat emptor, however: use of this product may become habit forming!

Be sure to order yours soon if you want one. Why? Because it's a limited edition, a feast for the eyes, and... if you wait, they'll be gone gone gone. To view thumbnails, and to order, click here.

Tracking the Wild Beast

2010-10-24T18:46:00.067-05:00

What is it about a bowl of eggs or a field of flowers that appeals? I don't know. But it is enough for me to know that they do. They are Life speaking, or so I understand. They are the crumbs in Life's forest, markers of the way that is my Way.

"Life is always speaking: are you listening?

I've posed this question to many a workshop participant over time. Some call this sort of listening tracking. When I think "tracking," I think of trackers, hunters hunched and stalking their prey, in search of paw prints or scat or such.

"The Universe is here to help me get clear," says Ravi Walsh, spiritual life coach and a longtime tracker. And Ravi suggests that the more we ask for Its help, the more help will be offered. Rilke has written so beautifully on "living the question." And with tracking, one looks and listens for answers while walking around with one's question in mind or in pocket. A partnership with Life in all Its forms is cultivated, with a posture of humility, reverence and gratitude, and the dialogue can only grow richer over time.

"Show me...," I ask, with a certain life dream or quandary or question in mind, and show me It will. It will even show me when I don't ask. It will show me by my exhaustion and by my enthusiasm; It will show me by my envy or resentment, my delight and my passion; It will show me through aches and pains, illness and wellness. There is never any mystery about where I am on my Way. I am on track, or off. I am in sync or out of sync with Life, always in the midst of countless clues to indicate where I am exactly in that alignment.

The helpers in the nonphysical collectively called Abraham and brought to us by Esther Hicks uses other words for this being in sync or out of sync:

Even though this Vortex that we speak of cannot be found on physical maps and is not indicated by physical signposts, it is a reality that exists just the same. It is your Vibrational Reality, and you can tell when you enter your Vortex by the way you feel. You can tell by the way you feel when you exit your Vortex. In fact, your personal, precise Emotional Guidance System is the only effective road map or signpost to your Vortex.
All cooperative components to the furthermost expanded version of you have been gathered by the Law of Attraction and are held in timeless, spaceless ever readiness, for your access and utilization in your Vortex of Creation. But, if you are to become a cooperative component to your own Vortex and to all of the wonderful things that have been gathered there, you must be a Vibrational Match to your Vortex. In other words, you too must have a high frequency, and you too must be without resistance.

I know a woman with a gift for singing, a passion for kirtan. I hear as she speaks how this call-and-response chanting lights her up just as candles lit one by one will illuminate a dark room. When she talks of her her well-paying job, how she doesn't love her job even though it affords her a lot of pleasures, the light dims. She'd like to turn in "the golden handcuffs" she tells me, but she doesn't know how. I understand, and I empathize. She can't see a way to support herself singing kirtan.

"All I know," I tell her, "is there must be a way to use your voice in service to others, and a demand for that. And you just never know...: one thing leads to another."

Life takes care of her own, is all I know. And listening and following, tracking, entering our vortex--whatever we might call it--is fine evidence of that.

A friend and a client each independently tell me of a knockout business idea. Yet each hesitates. Will it succeed? Will I be able to make a living at this? Fear creeps in. And oftentimes it is enough to interrupt the following part of the equation. "Yeah, I suppose that's a clue, but I don't want to risk going after it."

What's more risky than turning our backs on the crumbs in the Forest to go off in search of money (via work) to support us?

There was a time--not so long ago, consider-
ing the span of human existence--when we did not need money. There was give and take, there was interrelation-
ship--true exchange-- between human and human, between human and earth. Somewhere along the way we must have decided as a species that money was a good idea. And maybe money was a good idea. But even good ideas can go bad.

How is it that conscious, soulful, gifted people today are making decisions based primarily or solely upon the bottom line: how much money will I make? High school and college students are basing their courses of study--and the course of their lives--on this question. Since when?

I am speaking of an alienation of self from Source. How ironic it is that to live for the bottom line and the presumed stability it provides actually introduces instability. Only alignment with Life can offer true stability. It behooves us to entrain ourselves to the support of Life Itself. To listen, to follow.

I have gifts, passions, natural interests, I am here to express them. I am certain nothing works as well as this. I suppose I am tracking a wild beast of sorts. To align with Life (Love) is to track my inner beast, the wildness in me, the primitive that instinctively wants to be according to its nature.

"It's easy to be," says the rock, the tree, the deep blue sea.

Autumn Show/Sale

2010-10-22T10:44:00.008-05:00

Attention Boston-
area readers:

DON'T MISS THE PENULTIMATE MARKET DAY!

It was just confirmed yesterday (forgive the short notice!) that Love’s Freeway will appear in living, breathing color (cards, books, matted prints, ++... along with yours truly) at the Roslindale Farmers' Market tomorrow from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Spontaneous Reiki treatments might be happening as well, $1 a minute.

Look for the "LOVE'S FREEWAY" table.
More info below.

Roslindale Farmers' Market:

When: Saturday, October 23 (this market's season ends 10/30)
Hours: 9 am- 1:30 pm (rain or shine!)
Where: Adams Park, intersection of Washington St. & Cummins Highway, Roslindale Village
What: Six farms, more than 20 vendors, live music, kids' activities, in a great community atmosphere.
Who: Produced and organized by Roslindale Village Main Street
Why: Support a local economy and enjoy shopping original arts and crafts, craft cheeses, local produce.

I hope to see you there!

The Poet, On Naming

2010-10-13T22:09:00.008-05:00

"Everyone deserves a name of their own but no one has one. No one has had one and no one will have one. Reality beyond names is uninhab-
itable. And the reality within names is an everlasting breakdown. Meaning is not to be found within words but beyond them. These words I'm writing are searching for a meaning and that search is their authentic meaning. Meaning is not to be found within words but beyond them."

~Octavio Paz, from El Mono Gramatico

And Now, a Word from the Grape Tomato

2010-10-01T09:57:00.013-05:00

Wheeeeeeeee!

Beyond Reason

2010-09-28T10:33:00.032-05:00

I've just begun the best day of my life.

"What happened? How so?"

These are the things people say when one says such a thing. They want to know: love? lottery? miracle recovery? Something makes it so, is what is assumed. And if something makes this so for me today, it's that I said so. I said that I am about to be smack in the middle of the best day of my life.

I could come up with other reasons to be having the best day, sure. The elegance of rain decorating the glass of the window panes, forming and reforming patterns, direction, motions: that might be a reason. Or the fresh-baked artisan bread of the morning: raisin, pecan, wheat, served with lemon curd and my favorite tea. That there is a passion outside, echo of the passion in me (extraordinary, but truly quite ordinary, that they are one and the same--of a piece). The artwork I purchased and brought home on Sunday: sacred, steady feet to abide with, for the Reiki room, platform for the clients and for me. I could point to the plethora of cosmos, or just the bi-color, yin-yang, mutant one that speaks "Anything is possible" to me. But not bad sleep, or blood stains, or unsavory dreams: no, it cannot be because of these.

At least that's how we think, yes? Nightmares, missed commit-
ments, migraines, broken teeth: these are reasons for a bad day, not a good one, oui? In the world of reasons, one could certainly argue for that. But this or any day is not good or bad for a reason, or any number of reasons. Even "It's good because I said so" is a reason, of course.

It is pouring now, buckets. This followed the 'gorgeosity' of fast-moving clouds in so many shades of gray: a Dublin sky it was, for a bit. Except that the air is balmy. Twenty-one centigrade. An even 70 degrees F. Which makes it like a summer's rain, not the cold, clammy, curl-up-by-the-fire-to-warm-your-bones spring or autumn rain of these parts. I could say this lovely tepid and thorough rain is the reason for my best day. But it is not.

Today is the best day because it is the best day--for no reason. It is no more or less so than any other day, although sometimes I amble about blind to this. I forget. That it's all such a marvel: the soft clothing to fold into dresser drawers, the hands which grasp and fumble, caress and 'heal,' the lids and lashes, safe keepers of the eyes, the bulbs in the earth asleep, awaiting spring sun and skies. Stairs for climbing and descending. Floors or mountains or plains to hold us up; torrents and floods and heartbreaks to knock us down. The wing of the bird fashioned for the lift, for the soar. The willow, the tulip, the burdock, the mullein, the rose; the prayer, the dance, the grieving, the lust and the poem: show me one fraction of this life that does not facet this luminescence I call Love.

And to touch It, this pure passion, is to remember myself (my Self, I suppose) who needs no reason to be joyful, to feel exalted: feast and feasting, abundant and abundance itself, uncontainable Greatness. Tat tvam asi.

"My love" is nowhere in sight, off happily loving another. So what? It happens every day. I shared life, loved honestly and truly (I thought), and yet I stand "alone." How does this happen? These days, I am "earning" scant income, though possessed of valuable and "marketable" gifts, talents and skills. How can this be? I am living in a place where I am out of place. Who cares? It is all to say that some might say I have good reason to be having a bad day--or two or more, or to be worried at least. But I am not. It doesn't matter. These "concerns" are no concern; they mean nothing, and there is nothing wrong. It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game.

I see what matters, and that's very little (but substantial) indeed. It's the breakthrough of breakthroughs, I think: seeing through, burning surely and cleanly through the facades, the illusory though for so long seemingly substantive layers of mattering, the "story" of mattering, is to find the unboiled, unadulterated essence. The essential. It is here that I am having the best day, the best days: right here, yet ever on the verge of a new wonder, a new inspiration, a new "miracle."

There is a change happening, a transition, a turning, like the turning of the Queen Mary, which makes no forward or backward motion. Just the motion of turning, turning, to face a new direction and then proceed. It is not a place of limbo, though it can feel so. It is active, dynamic, full of intention. Sometimes to proceed in the right direction, one must tolerate the seeming stasis, the seemingly fruitless, seeming directionless action of turning.

Almost daily I receive email offering some cure or solution or method to alleviate the various troubles or struggles that may or may not affect my life. One of today's offered a proven method to feel energy, curiosity and creativity again. This practitioner knows the proven method, which she has named after herself, and she is going to share it with me on a call, if I register.

"There is a teacher who knows how to do this..." reads the email, and this woman is that teacher, I am told. I see the method is endorsed by physicians, scientists, and leaders in transformation, and that it can help me to enjoy improved memory, be lighter on my feet, perform better at sports, etc. The upshot of this marketing e-blast? This woman has something I want or need. I should go to her to get it.

There's a new method a minute, it seems, to resolve our various emotional, mental, spiritual or physical challenges. Then there are the astrologers, the psychic readers and channels. We are fortunate; there are so many who have genuine gifts and talents to share. But the client-practitioner dynamic can become problematic, depending on the approach of either or both parties. With an "I have your answer" approach by the practitioner, or a "You have my answer" approach by the client, it can be easy to lose sight of where one's best answers actually reside.

In my Claritywork practice, I am graced with the privilege of seeing, of being reminded again and again, how each of us knows for ourselves. We are geniuses for ourselves. Granted it can take some practice to become adept at unearthing one's own answers; that's where a trusted teacher or guide can come in handy. But nevertheless, they're there.

How beautiful this is: to know that I already have all the answers I need, and that every moment is the best moment of my life, whether aware of it or not. When I do realize this, I am boundless, powerful beyond measure, radiant Light/Love, and I want to live forever--or rather, I feel possessed of a passion I am sure could live forever. I think what really happens in such moments is that I touch forever, the forever that defies the apparent rise and fall at so-called birth and at death. I do not become one with but rather rejoin--or am, end stop--that infinite boundlessness that I call Love.

And so are you. So what could I possibly have to sell to you? Sure, I can show you, "re-member" you to your Self, body, mind, and/or spirit. But should this be bought and sold? That's how we've set things up, yes. "Time is money," and all that. "I paid for my training, you pay for my time," and such. I have a skill or a gift, and that is a commodity: I should put a price tag on it. Even my Reiki teacher encouraged us to charge the going rate for our services. "You took your time, and paid your money to learn this..." she reasoned. It makes sense. And this is how we've operated in the "civilized" world for...how long now? But I have grown dubious about this arrangement.

How does one quantify Love?

I spent the better part of the weekend looking at art, speaking with the artists who created it, mostly in the very studios where it was created. I read artist's statements, title tags, prices. And I ask: what makes one piece worth $3500 and the next, perhaps even substantially larger and more intricate and time consuming, worth $350? All reasons aside, and notwithstanding the cost of materials, or even time, what makes it so?

Perhaps what I am saying here is that I have become sorely suspicious of commerce. What is being bought, and why? What is being sold, and why? I don't have ready answers for all this; I am living these questions. And I am not saying artists--or astrologers or psychics or even Clarityworkers--should not sell their work or wares. It's how you play the game. But I can say this: I choose not to charge for Reiki sessions. I donate them at Open Doors in Braintree, MA on Thursdays, and otherwise, I practice on a "Love offering" basis. Love circulates through me to the client, and then circulates through the client to me, in whatever form that takes. So far, the form has been money, in whatever quantity the clients has been moved to offer. And I can tell you there is a world of difference between receiving payment of a set fee, as I have done for decades now in all my other work, and receiving a monetary gift in exchange for what I have offered--in the field of energy work, at least. There is a feeling of "correctness" to this...arrangement, for lack of a better word. If asked why I do not charge a fee for services, I say something like "This feels right to me." But that is a reason, of course; what I'm speaking about here goes beyond reason.

And it occurs to me now that that's where I'd like to live, all the time: beyond reason. To live an altogether unreasonable life. Perhaps, once my ship has fully turned, that's where I'm bound.

Seasons of Glory

2010-09-22T15:01:00.018-05:00

This one's for the morning glory, for her daily greeting. For greeting. Sure, all the other flowers of the garden have received me too as I have stepped into each new day of this spring, summer, and now fall. But somehow, it's the morning glory that distinctly greets.

Perhaps it's because it is so fleeting, gone when the cool and sideways light of the morning gives way to the full-fledged day. Perhaps because of its capacity to surprise: with no flower making it beyond a single day, each day's blossoms burst forth in new configurations, from new and unexpected places on the vines. They're "belle de jour" in French: beautiful--beauties for but a day. They come, they go--they don't last: this is the message of both the French and English names. But however ephemeral, and however known for that, it's their abiding, their steady constancy that spoke to me this morning when at the kitchen window--Oh, hello--I caught sight of one out there bobbing gently on the morning breeze.

These belles have kept coming all through our extraordinarily long, sunny, hot, and very dry summer, and they continue to do so even as their vines and leaves have begun to yellow and drop. Daily, they have steadily, unfailingly delivered a fresh and glorious constellation of delight. I am grateful for their company, their constancy, for their crowning each of my days--so many days--with royal color and radiant light.

And for their promise: already they are preparing for the next round. They have madly strewn their seeds upon the ground, to be sure to live on and on. Isn't that Love's way, it strikes me now. However it appears to rise and fall, It's really just stayed steady all along.

My New Love

2010-09-03T21:03:00.011-05:00

Zinnia she calls herself.
A beauty by any name.
Daredevil wonder, a force.
So many gardens in
one single bloom.

Hello September

2010-09-01T09:20:00.023-05:00

Thanks to listening to and following a pull to go yesterday, I am renewed and refreshed today by the inescapable, palpable magic of Walden Pond. Walden is a very special place with a distinct, special energy--and wood faeries galore no doubt--that infuses the moments spent there.

I went there to swim. My first and longest swim led me surprise to vacant stone steps in the sun on the far shore. Anyone who knows Walden knows how rare it is to find one of these prime spots unoccupied on a hot summer day. What a gift! And it happened to be the very spot where I'd spent good time with a good friend not so very long ago. Here I was again creating another memorable moment on that spot.

I sat and basked awhile, soaking up the sun (I had set up in a shady spot on the opposite shore). After awhile, I felt moved to do some Reiki, so I did. How luxurious it was to send and receive this energy while seated on this solid, sun-drenched stone, half in and half out of the velvety water, against the gentle sounds of the strokes of distant swimmers and of dragonfly wings about me.

I felt royal. The whole swim and pause had an aura about it. Almost a destined feeling, as though it had all been designed for me. That royal feeling continued riding home.

When I passed the "Pick Your Own Flower Garden" on the way over, I made a mental note to stop on the ride back. It's been there forever, but for some reason I haven't stopped in years. I was looking forward to it: a fresh bouquet, plucked by my own hands! Then I had second thoughts: wouldn't they wilt on the ride home? I remembered my travel cup in the car. I never finished the water in it. That last inch would be the difference between a perky bouquet and a limp one. Great! I could make a second stop I wanted to make with a free mind Dairy Joy, here I come! The Javaberry soft serve, accompanied by fresh flowers, was just plain yumm.

I set out here to write about the flow of all this, of one afternoon, how sweet and smooth was the wandering from one delight to the next to the next: each its own sort of call Come here, come here, each for its own sake. But that flow moves still, today. I pick up the camera, take it to my bouquet and start snapping. One thing leads to the next. I discover a flower I did not even know I had picked; it rode in on the stem of another. I feel the Life Force so powerfully and intimately in these flowers. I feel a very small part of something very very large and extraordinary, and I feel privileged to behold them for a time.

And in walks September, and I realize: how perfect that they accompany me on this anniversary day, as I say:

Happy Birthday, Love's Freeway!

I had totally forgotten! But it seems Love did not. She nudged me along at every turn, putting gift after gift--this bright, bold, beautiful carnival--into my hands. And happily onward I go into another year singing Her praise, gratefully, thankfully singing my heart's true song.

In Praise of Corn Silks

2010-08-22T09:14:00.011-05:00

It's corn season in New England. The grocers and Farmers' Markets are brimming with burlap sacks full of sweet ripe ear upon ear of this summer cookout, clambake, and picnic favorite. Happily, I've been bringing some home, and in the shucking process, renewing my wonder at the all-essential silk.

Ever since Wellesley College Horticulture class where I learned about the function and purpose of this delicate floss, I've never looked at a corn cob the same. Prior to that enlighten-
ment, these hairy filaments were the messy, nuisance part about getting to the corn. They stuck to the counter, they stuck to the cob--and invariably you end up with at least one stuck in your teeth. I guess I just never stopped to think about it, but even if I had, I doubt I would've guessed that strand by strand, the silks produced the kernels, that each attached to, was responsible for one of its very own. If this occurred with one strand (stamen) and one ovary--or two or three, or even six or eight, that would be cool enough, but we're talking 300 or so kernels per ear here. That is downright amazing, if you ask me. That they plump and sweeten in (usually) perfectly ordered rows, and have been doing so time and again over the ages: well that's a miracle to me.

So here's to the intelligence, the elegance that corn silks are to corn. I am renewed in my amazement of them each time I open a new ear. "They've done it again," I think when I find yet more perfection, order, sweet abundance inside. I feel privy to the act, the force of Creation Itself, right here in my own two hands.

Random Notes on Causation

2010-08-18T14:55:00.016-05:00

Each and every aspect of my life's experience is drawn to me by the thoughts I think, by the story I tell about my life--and my feelings about these. Assets or debt, wellness or illness, clarity or confusion, good treatment or bad, safety or danger, happiness or misery are because of the stories that I tell, whether silently or aloud.

"I try to use the Law of Attraction..." said a client to me the other day. "We can't NOT use it," I responded. For good or ill, we are always attracting something and repelling something else by virtue of what we are thinking and not thinking.

Something showing up that you like? Ask, "What was I thinking?!"
Something showing up that you don't like? Ask, "What was I thinking!?"

Abundance charms, manifesting mantras and the like are unnecessary when there is no belief, no thought of "not x" (fill in the x). It's only someone sorely aware of lack who walks around reciting, "I am prospered now," or equivalent. People who are wealthy or beautiful or talented or well loved, say, don't run around telling themselves they are (as if they might forget it): they just be it, and don't give it a moment's thought--except, perhaps, to be grateful.

Like what you see in your midst? Keep thinking and not thinking what you're thinking and not thinking. Don't like what you see in your midst? Stop thinking and not thinking what you're thinking and not thinking. Think something else.

Always has been; ever shall be.

What story are you telling? Love it--or leave it!

A Prayer for the New World

2010-08-10T20:05:00.013-05:00

For all the indicators that our world might be "going to hell in a hand basket," there is ample evidence to the contrary--though it may not make front-page news. Right here, right now, it is our privilege to be part of the dawning of an extraordinary New World, for example--to be Ambassadors for that World even, whether by private or public actions.

The Shift of the Ages project is one such public action gathering notice and support. This inspiring confluence of indigenous peoples from numerous countries, joining to raise and transform the individual and collective consciousness for the benefit of our munificent, magnificent Earth and of us all, is a call to Love--straight from heart of Earth Herself, it would seem. I invite you to view Maya Grand Elder Alejandro Cirilo Perez Oxlaj's beautiful Ambassador Address--prepare to be moved! And I extend my deep gratitude for all (including you) who are co-creating, bringing heart and soul to this dawning moment by moment, thought by thought: motion by motion, clearing the way for Love.

The Flower in the Heart

2010-08-04T09:30:00.016-05:00

Because when writing Kismet and posting my former roommate's photograph of Cleo I had the thought, "I should send this to Julie," a little gem-of-an artwork arrived in my mailbox last week. How is that? Because after a brief web hunt, I found Julie alive and well in Ohio, and I wrote to her. I shared about Cleo, the entry, the photograph, and I reminisced a bit. There was a special sort of sweetness to sharing this with someone who was there at the beginning, who knew Cleo from that day she entered my life. And because Julie is Julie, she received my note well--was delighted by it in fact. We wrote back and forth a few times, did some more reminiscing and a little updating about our respective lives. And the next thing I knew--because Julie is Julie--I was holding this gift in my hand along with the notecard that accompanied it:

Hi, Kathryn-

When I was on your Claritywork website, I found my way to one of your radio interviews. I listened--very interesting. While you and the interviewer talked, I just got inspired to doodle. So I grabbed whatever supplies were around me at home and drew away. Doing this is a great way to relax and really listen, at least for me. I thought, "Hmm, I should send this off to Kathryn..." And so here you are...

Cheers, Julie

Oh, how this warmed my heart! And I marvel at how inspiration moves and moves us to act and we act, create something, and by sharing it, touch another. In heartwarming circles, round and round this goes with no end, if we let it. Sometimes we don't let it. I might not have followed through. Julie might not have sent the package. We might have let our passing thoughts pass and that would of course have been that. But then this colorful, delightful, artful flower of the heart would have missed its chance to bloom.

Recipe for Delight

2010-07-30T10:28:00.008-05:00

It seems I've flipped for flax seed. I'm sprinkling it on just about everything these days. Very tasty--and rich in Omega-3's too. Here's a variation on a theme (see "Yumm!") that features them nicely--good for the eye and the palate.

3-4 different fresh, ripe fruits of preference
yogurt
granola of choice
golden flax seed
pepitas (shelled unsalted pumpkin seeds)

Cut up fruit if necessary. Layer ingredients in order listed, quantity to taste. For enhanced flavor and nutritional value, finish with a sprinkle of blue solar water, then Reiki (or gaze upon adoringly) for a minute. Serve.

Serving suggestion:

Enjoy on sun-drenched terrasse in the company of jasmine and belle de jour. A seaside bike ride is the perfect chaser for this refreshing summer breakfast.

Correspondence

2010-07-28T23:09:00.014-05:00

I'm beginning to understand that I need--not just desire, but need--growing things around me. That it's more than a matter of preference, more than simply conse-
quence of a "green thumb" inherited from my forebears.

At 9 or 10, I asked my mother--maybe my father, actually, since he was the gardener of our house--for dibs on a patch of earth beside our front stairs. I was thrilled when I got it. I made furrows just as the marigold packet indicated, and dropped the tiny spear-like seeds into them, hopeful. Could something really grow from these dry things? I covered them, anxious about using the right amount of soil, then gingerly watered them in, careful not to flood them out. Soon, seedlings popped up, and then before I knew it, full grown flowers appeared on tall stems. It was a miracle to me. And I had opened a door.

When I arrived in Dublin two Julys ago, our fifth floor apartment greenery consisted of one seriously twiggy ficus, a single pale bamboo stalk, and some patio plants long overdue for a deadheading. All of them seemed rather desperate for love, and I was glad to provide it. And now, two years later, I can still feel how my eyes practically craved them, how reflexively my hands would reach to pinch or trim or turn them. But it's only now, surrounded by my surfeit of growing things, taking all the delight I take in them, that I realize just how much my Dublin "charges" were a lifeline for me.

There is a dialogue, a correspondence between us, me and the growing things. I am earth too, of course, and we go together like fish and water. It was in Dublin, separate from "mine," that I learned what a grace is a piece of the earth to tend. Everyone, I thought, should have the privilege of a piece of earth to tend. And for all the love apparent in them, I could see--feel--in front garden after front garden plot, how demonstrably grateful were the Dubliners for theirs.

For so long I did not know: I have been in conversation with the earth all this time--since five at least, when the sunshiny glow of dandelions had me presenting fistsful of them to my mother. Listening, responding, asking, obliging. These green beings I've been fortunate to encounter or tend along the way are not just ornament, accoutrements. These are relationships I have cultivated, generous in the give and take, with all love given handsomely rewarded.

Kismet

2010-07-11T14:57:00.058-05:00

It was the middle of the coldest January ever, and my girlfriend Stacey and I were headed over to Circle Furniture in Cambridge to buy the rocker she had wanted for her birthday. As we approached Concord Ave. at Walden, Stacey caught sight of a cat following someone along the sidewalk.

"Aww, look" she said in her "Isn't that cute?" tone. And it seemed cute. It looked as though the cat was out for a stroll with its People. But those people took no notice of the animal, so it turned and followed the next person who passed. Was it lost then? Looking for help? Cat lovers that we were and are, we had to check it out.

The fluffy gray cat approached us immediately. By reflex, I reached to pat it, and what I felt sent tears to my eyes: under all that fur, she (?) was all bones. This cat was freezing and starving to death, and desperate for help indeed.

"What should we do?" Stacey asked.

"Put her in the car!" I said, and we did just that.

Back at Stacey's apartment, we closed her two cats in the bedroom, preparing to give the stray kitty some food and water and to figure out what we were going to do. With two cats apiece, it wasn't particularly convenient for either one of us to take her in, even temporarily.

Meanwhile, the cat made a bee-line for the bathroom, where she clearly knew she'd find water. The poor thing drank and drank wanting no part of any food at all. To me this demonstrated the severity of her crisis, the extent of her dehydration--and the wisdom of her instincts: she knew how to take care of herself. When she stopped drinking, she'd come to me, to my chair.

"She wants you," Stacey surmised, and I had a sense that she was right. I took the cat home, but with a plan to commence an all-out search for her owners pronto.

Postings around town, at the various shelters, animal rescue, and area vets and clinics turned up no one in search of this animal. In the meantime, for everyone's safety, I had the cat checked out at Brighton Animal Hospital. They pronounced her female, healthy (though underweight), about a year or a year and a half old, and previously owned, as evidenced by her spaying scar. I had figured she'd had a home, given her familiarity with household plumbing. And I kept searching for it. But by the end of a week of trying to find that home and return her to it, I started hoping I wouldn't, that no one would call to claim her. I had fallen for this beauty, and I wanted her to stay. I got what I wanted.

She was "Kismet" for a few days, but the name didn't stick. It seemed too cutesy for this regal looking cat. Stacey voted for "Picasso," for her cubist-esque markings. I could see it. But she reminded me of Cleopatra for some reason. So I settled on "Cleo" because of that.

I had forgotten the Kismet part. It was opening her records to recheck the date of that first veterinary exam that reminded me. I had been thinking I miscalculated her birthdate, that I'd gotten her age wrong--or the vet did: that she wasn't 17'ish at all. Plus, I have pictures of that "one-year-old" cat--one taken soon after she joined us on Noble Street by my then roommate, a professional photojournalist. Last week I met a two-year-old cat at the vet who looked younger than Cleo did when she came to me. The fact was, and is: they estimated Cleo's age. I carved it in stone, proceeding immediately to calculate an estimated birth date for her, the date we've marked every year for the past 16, in the same month that we mark Sylvie's (my other cat of the "same age"). The fact is, any reference to age or birth date on her papers since then--International travel documents, veterinary receipts, health record--all derive from that original "guestimate."

I look at this candid portrait of Julie's on my kitchen wall, and I think, "This is no one-year-old cat." So I'm thinking now that "my old girl" was older still than I've thought all along. That she died not at 17 but at 18 or 19--or who knows? Maybe even 20. That would mean she flew to Dublin and back, with seven (out of my 10 or so) months of Irish Life in between, not at 15 but at 16 or 17 or 18, which leaves me even more impressed with how well she fared. I knew it would be tough on the cats--on all of us--bringing them. But I chose to do it just the same--Cleo, I distinctly remember, because I had thought there was a good chance it would be her last year and I didn't want to miss it.

It's good to revisit these details now. To recall the times she didn't come home for a night or two or three, and how it worried me. So many times, it could've ended there. Flyers and emails to to neighbors, my relief when she turned up at the door or in June's garage, and Cleo's relief at my finding her there, dusty and hungry and aching for the love and comfort of home.

Even recently she was mostly deaf: what was I thinking? when she stayed out for hours instead of her usual minutes, I anxiously searched and called for her (by the whistle she could hear), until I remembered to dowse: no, she was not dead; yes, she would return in her own time. And that she did. More relief, more kissing of her head, more speaking what I must've spoken hundreds of times in 16 years: "I'm so glad you're here," because I was, from the bottom of my heart, I always was.

All those rescues and returns. Cleo Of Many Lives (apparently) always returned. I can say this unequivocally now. Even with our urban coyotes in the "'hood," one (at least) seen running off with a cat in its teeth, even with my letting the cats out after dark despite my mother's repeatedly pleading that I keep them in ("I'd rather they have a short, happy life than a long, miserable one," I'd protest), she always returned.

It's a special relationship that develops with a rescued animal, especially one who had been mistreated--and it was evident early on that Cleo was such a one. She would cower if I moved a hand or an arm too quickly. It took her awhile--years, I think--for that reflex to abate, even though she knew I would not abuse her. I saved her, and she knew it. I could feel her gratitude for that. Still, it took her many years to learn to ask for love, even if she was always very happy to receive it.

And there is a unique quality to a relationship with a creature who has been that close to death--even a brief one, let alone 16 years of nights and days. All the days are a bonus with such a creature. Every day is a day that might not have been. At the many turns when I thought I had lost her (9 lives, nuthin': that cat had at least a dozen), when I thought the coyotes got her, that she would not return, there was always "the gravy factor," the fact of the 5 or 7 or 9 or 11 years that I had already had with her. It was all gravy, you see--all 16+ years with her, or so it felt, by the quality of the time, how it shimmered always with gratitude and fortune.

I watched sunrise from Lissenhall Veterinary Hospital, Co. Dublin, Swords a year ago last November because I couldn't bear the cats spending a single minute longer than they had to in their Sky Kennels. Though I'd arrived with a different understanding, Lissenhall (I would learn after the cabbie reluctantly drove off leaving me and my luggage waiting in the dark at their door) opened at 8:30 a.m. Dublin time. I was banking on someone arriving even earlier than that, so I could come in out of the morning chill. I was glad to be let inside around 8, but not half as glad as when later I heard commotion out back--the cats, arriving!--and then some meowing. Cleo's voice she lived! which I rarely heard because she hardly ever said a peep.

They both lived. I don't think I've ever felt such joyful relief as I did when I paid my 400-odd euros and the cats were released to me at Lissenhall. I had been totally stressed out about their flying to Ireland and about how they'd adjust on the other end. But they'd made it, through about 14 hours in their kennels, through a stint at Cargo, through the rumble in the hold. But Cleo had had enough and wanted out, and she got that as soon as we set off in another cab for our new home in Dublin town. Only to crawl straight into my arms and stay there till we reached the apartment. I guess she was as relieved to see me as I was to see them.

It's the end of a story that completes its arc and reveals it. Without the end, there is only a beginning and a middle; the story's shape eludes us. The container is incomplete. It is like a vessel without a rim, a side, or a bottom. With all its parts in place, it rests, it contains.

It is only now that I see: Cleo did learn how to ask for love. I spent a lot of time on the couch this winter beside her "throne" as I'd come to call it, even moving my work there, thanks to the laptop, because she needed me to--she let me know that. Sometimes I would try to take breakfast by the lightbox at the dining room table, to get my wake-up dose of light, but being in her view, giving her my eyes, beaming her love from across the room wasn't enough. She would sit there, after her breakfast and a bit of washing (I think her arthritis precluded the all-out grooming sessions of less recent days) and cry for me. I learned by obliging that she wanted my hand, its gentle stroking, which would quite obviously soothe her and ease her eventually into a relaxed sleep. I provided this as often as I could. When I couldn't or wouldn't, feeling put upon or torn, with other demands pressing in it wasn't without guilt or regret. Her world had become so small; this was the least I could do, was it not?

Then one day she dispensed with the couch, and took up a place on the floor. I tried to reproduce the throne down there. I bought her a "stamp pad" cat cushion, added a blanket, and other propping pillows. She loved it--right to the end--but it was harder for me to sit with her down there, to give her the attention, comfort and love that she needed and deserved. I'd already developed a tailbone problem (couches are not ergonomically designed for desk work, to say the least!). Working from the floor was not quite feasible, though I tried it. I made up the time with her however I could--even lying some nights on couch cushions beside her and falling to sleep while petting or treating her, for example. But it wasn't enough.

Surely with precise foreknowledge of a final day, I would have come differently to her over those last months especially. But then, I'd been thinking for some time that Cleo was leaving, so I certainly wasn't oblivious to the possibility. I saw it coming; I just didn't know when. So why hadn't I been more patient with her, more giving, more...ready?

Perhaps this is a human phenomenon, not to see the true essence of a loved one's life story until the arc is complete, to remain blind or partially blind to it along the way. Or perhaps it's not a human phenomenon at all. Perhaps I simply wasn't as present with my loved one's as I had thought.

Thankfully, I was at least present enough not to miss the graces that attend the end of a life. I've twice now attended this transition from body to Spirit: the months then days then hours, minutes, seconds, the moment of passing, and then the seconds, minutes, hours, days, months that follow it. The moment my father's arc was complete, I saw his life before me "of a piece," and I saw only good--what a good man he was, which I found myself uttering aloud through my tears. I had not thought so all my life, but I saw I'd been sorely mistaken. My clear view was obscured as if by clouds that gather at a low altitude.

Similarly, it was only in Cleo's last hours that I saw how aptly she had been named. She was a Queen indeed. An enormous spirit "in a cat suit," as Stacey might say. An angel among us. And though I recognized her comely, dignified stature from the start, I knew her all her life as a cat--albeit a cat with a power to entrain, to open my heart just by my being near hers. I've never experienced such an instant, physical connection heart to heart. I would bring her close to my breast and click there it was. Every time. My heart would warm and bloom like a time-lapse flower opening to the light. For this I called her "my heart kitty."

Still, I treated her like a cat because she was a cat. But she was so much more than that. It must be that all clouds of unknowing clear for the spirit's return to Spirit. Because again, for the second time, I saw when her arc was complete that I had been mistaken.

My Angel Queen Cleo, sage teacher-healer, who traversed it all without a blemish, was an expert at Love. By the end of her time here, she had even mastered the art of asking for it. Still, all the while that I was focused on answering her, she was healing me, showing me to Love. And to think she chose me for this. We chose each other. How well Love knew Her way with us.

Photo credit: B&W image is cropped reproduction of original J. Elman print

A Terrible Beauty

2010-07-06T09:30:00.033-05:00

Certainly part of the "comma" of Ireland is how she lives on in my every day like a lover abruptly cleaved from my breast, or a dear departed whose spirit's stayed on. I continue to be surprised by the frequency of these...what I call flashes. I can be in the middle of a Reiki treatment, completely focused on the client before me when flash I am walking the Grand Canal in the company of coots and swans, or crossing the street at Merrion Square with the Bank of Ireland just beyond, or raising a glass (or chopstick) at Yamamori, or turning the nondescript corner onto Pearse from Barrow. It's odd to me that this one corner, with its abandoned mill complete with broken windows, always with a bit of trash floating in the water by the Docklands, returns to me most. It's just as if I've left myself there. A self that is walking about, still making these turns and gestures, not having missed a beat.

It's more than a year since I left Dublin. I cannot explain this phenomenon. I thought it would cease after a time, but it has not. Lately, it is stronger than ever.

But then how could I know what it would do anyway? I've never experienced this before. I climb again the rise to the bridge to Ringsend. I see the steely gray sky with the steeple of St. Patrick's in relief against it. I notice the fresh blue paint on Mrs. Quin's Charity Shop. Tesco, the library: again and again, I find myself flashing on these places. Howth, the Animal Clinic, the Pharmacy, the Liffey, the Winding Stair. It's truly as if I'm still living there, still carrying on my life as before. Still pulsing with the everpresent sweetness that infused those days.

To be clear: I don't go there in thought. I don't start reminiscing the way one does when looking at photos of a place once visited, perhaps loved. These aren't memories coming over me. They are the happening moments themselves, living again--or still: alive. When my mind is completely elsewhere.

They showed up often when I would give Reiki to Cleo, and I started to think that aspects of those returning moments were somehow being completed or healed through her, with her. But the same thing is happening, if less frequently, with clients--even those I am treating for the first time. They certainly weren't there with us. How could they be connected to my Dublin life?

Then I think maybe it's a consequence of opening the heart. To channel Reiki is to channel pure Love. This engages at the very least my heart (ideally all my heart) and hands. When I open my heart, I find Ireland there: I'm thinking that could explain the flashes. But it doesn't, because there's plenty else in my heart that doesn't spontaneously spring forth like this. It's a puzzlement--a comma, to say the least. Which should forewarn you that this little entry has no ta-dah! conclusion in the end.

It's no secret that I have missed Ireland, my Irish life. It must have been talk of that that had my neighbor-friend mention Ireland: A Terrible Beauty to me. He had fond memories of its striking, atmospheric images from having seen the book a couple of decades ago. Intrigued, I requested it from the library.

What has struck me most about the book are these words--sentiments, really--of its creators, Jill and Leon Uris:

You might call [this book] a love song. For those among them who have it to give, and they are the vast majority, nowhere are friendship and kindness lavished more freely on the stranger. The thought of these people will warm us for all our years. Even the memory of "that soft Irish weather."

In the words of Smokey Robinson, I second that emotion. I recognize the love that permeates these lines; I feel it as well. In no uncertain terms, that land and its people have gotten deeply under my skin. So have the abandoned mill building at Pearse and Barrow, the water scum at the Docklands, the ordinary walk into Ringsend, evidently. And yes: even the "soft Irish weather."

Maybe these flashes are phrases, measures of my love song,

In Memoriam

2010-06-26T22:53:00.005-05:00

My sweet Cleo returned to Spirit this morning, leaving a profound silence and absence in our midst.

Thank you, Cleo, for the precious gifts of your grace, beauty, and boundless unconditional love, for the privilege of your company these last 16 1/2 years, and for showing me the way to Love. You live in my heart, forever.

A Turn of the Wheel

2010-06-20T19:27:00.041-05:00

It would have been so much easier to cancel my Vermont trip. It had begun to look as though I would have to. With my aged cat all of a sudden routinely missing the litter box, I was starting every day of late with a distressing and unpleasant clean up task. The situation wasn't so pleasant for the cats either, of course, which augmented my distress. No way could I leave for 3 1/2 days under these conditions: I couldn't expect someone else to take on this chore. I felt frustrated and desperate--even entertaining thoughts of having to put her down before the convention weekend. My cat was failing, no? Was I just postponing the inevitable? I found all of this hugely stressful, especially alongside a ticking clock: the Conference, my first convention with the American Society of Dowsers, was fast approaching. Everything was paid in full, and no refunds would be forthcoming at this late date. More importantly, I felt destined to be there, but it looked unlikely I would be.

Then it dawned on me: Cleo wasn't peeing all over the place. Just by the litter box. I started brainstorming solutions. What relief I felt when the first one I tried worked. A litter tray designed for dog training turned out to solve--and pinpoint--the problem: trouble getting her hind legs up and over. With this new tray (three higher sides, and a nice low, open, front rim), she could walk right in, do her business, turn around, and walk on out. Hooray! I was thrilled, for both of us. So on to the next hurdle: twice a day meds, and food and water for the old girl every 2-3 hours, for three days running. Hiring their cat sitter, if she could even do it, for all that would blow the budget. I put out a call to my animal-loving friends.

What a production! It took a few days, a lot of organizing, and a village of helpers, but I did it. Thanks to the love and kindness of Phoebe, Brian, Robert, Craig and Orissa, scheduled around the backbone care of Sue, the pet sitter, both cats would get their pills, and even more crucially, Cleo would be kept hydrated--essential to keeping her alive and walking these days--for the duration. I would do what I could from a distance, sending Reiki for good measure. In sum, all would be well. I could go, and with an eased mind to boot.

Thanks to my reaching out to friends, I learned how to make and administer kitty fish broth, which has turned out to be a lifesaver, no exaggeration. Also, hearing of this, Orissa has offered me halibut steaks from a block of fresh fish her son has sent her from Alaska, to poach for Cleo's broth. And beyond the cat world, I stepped body mind and spirit into a significant turn of the wheel in my life's unfolding.

I set the stage for this a couple of months ago, I suppose. In the midst of what felt like an uncharac-
teristic (for me) limbo, an inert and fallow time, I set an intention, despite having no idea how I would fulfill it: "I'll know my plan for the next 10 years by June 15," I declared. My weekend up North under the generative light of a New Moon was a parade of graces, supplying me with all the foundation stones on which to build that plan. Magnificently so. It's a marvel to me to see how various threads combine and gracefully weave a single turn of Fate.

In her Dancing in the Shadows of the Moon, Machaelle Small Wright ends some sections with a comma where you would expect a period (end of sentence, end of section). A comma because later, sometimes many years later, she would discover that what looked like the end of a moment or story was not the end at all.

I've been feeling lots of commas in my life of late. Ireland was a comma, for example. I don't know what the "more" is with Ireland, only that there is more. The Vermont trip generated a host of commas, and it's exciting to be living into them. It turns out, my chicory encounter was a comma: I learned this weekend how to harvest, roast, and grind its roots for winter coffee brewing!

There will be more to share, no doubt, as the bigger commas unfold. For now, I simply want to marvel at the workings and wisdom of Life. To thank Maryfaith for mentioning this convention to me to begin with, and for saving me a place in her room. And to extend my gratitude to all who made it possible--including Cleo and Sylvie who gave their unspoken blessing on the trip by thriving in my absence.

It's crazy to me now to think I spent my first moments at the Conference having second thoughts about being there. Pulling onto a campus crawling with a motley bunch of mostly elder (it seemed), drawling, stereotypical Americans sporting oversized name badges hung from cords round their necks had me certain I'd come to the wrong place. What was I thinking!? I found myself thinking. Fortunately, I snapped out of it pretty quickly. As I put a foot to the ground the next morning, I declared: "I will be in the perfect place meeting the perfect people at the perfect time for the rest of the time, starting now."

I was, and I did--in spades. It was clear in no time at all that I was among friends--very special friends: 500 or so of them, no less! For any time I've ever asked, "Where are my people?" I now have a very good answer!

After dinner on Saturday, I got the urge to leave campus. Sunset was approaching, and I had wanted to see it, maybe photograph it. So why was I leaving the hill and descending into the valley at the sunset hour? My answer presented itself posthaste at the bottom of the road, when I spied a classic covered bridge which called me over it. When I crossed it, parked, then walked back to it, I was immediately wrapped in a rushing sworl of sound--a sound bath you might say, washing my energies clean. This from the falling water on one side, so arranged with leaf and sun and stone that it called for pause, and I happily, gratefully obliged. "This is why I left campus," I thought standing with the rushing and beauty, the stillness and sound before, around, and through me. I don't think I stayed even ten minutes; still, I was clear and refreshed utterly for the evening session ahead.

Gifts, gifts, everywhere gifts. To think I might have missed them all-- too many to count, too many to list here. And they just keep coming. I attended a numinous Solstice sunrise in Larz Anderson Park this morning thanks to the a fellow conventioner's inviting me last Sunday. I have lived in Boston for 16 years, and though I've heard of and been invited to many other events at Larz Anderson over that time, this was my first encounter with it. What a treasure this man left to the people of Brookline and beyond. And what a commanding, bucolic perch from which to greet the dawn of a day--especially this, the longest day. I'm so happy to have learned of it, and so glad I could rouse myself before the birds! to partake of it all, to join in welcoming, celebrating, and appreciating Sol in all its radiant glory. There is magic afoot at that hour--even moreso at Solstice, it seems--and I felt privileged to be a part of it. It has cast a golden, lingering glow over what is unfolding: yet another blessing, it seems, on this new beginning,

The Earth Speaks

2010-06-16T10:26:00.017-05:00

We were winding up our conference, we dowsers drawn from far and wide across this Continent. There was packing up and then closing ceremonies and a long drive ahead of me this evening. But first, I would take time to visit the irises I only now had time to give notice. I told my friends as much, and so while they made way for the dining hall, I headed toward the pond-side bed, camera in hand.

The iris had finished blooming at home: ditto the peonies, the lilac, the poppies. But we'd come far enough north--45 minutes or so from the Canadian Border, in fact--to see them all over again. I'd thought I'd have to wait another year for that: what a treat! Add lupine, in their prime, all over these parts, and you have the picture of my little piece of heaven, Vermont style.

I shot the iris, with and without bees, then tried a few lupine, companioned by Queen Anne's Lace. It was hot this day, and the full sun here was quite cooking me. But some tiny balloon flowers detained me a bit longer. I'd seen these along the roadside at home: a weed back there, but featured here, alongside the more familiar, cultivated perennials. They're tiny, prolific little blossoms that I was curious to see larger, so I snapped them, from just about every angle. Then I plucked a portion of one cluster, to run it by my friend who knows her wild flowers: I was banking on her knowing its name.

"Bladder campion," she informed me, and so now I could name my newest love, this milky flower within a flower. They're easy to adore, with their wild whimsy. Yet they are easy to miss; like the ferns in a rose bouquet, they're backdrop to the featured flowers. But what distinctive features, what personality a closer look revealed!

At home, I shared my views with a friend. I got more and more excited tabbing through them:

"I look at these and wonder how I could ever be depressed even for a moment. There are marvels like these all around us, all the time!"

She laughed a bit, but she got it: she could see it too. Intricate, exotic, flamboyant: all this in a common, unassuming weed!

Routinely, we destroy plants like these, all in the name of develop-
ment, all for the sake of our strip malls, our industries, our lawns. It is to be expected, right? These privileges come with our "First World" ranking, no?

Certainly we have come to think so. But more and more I hear the humblest of life forms around me telling another story. They remind me that we are guests on this planet. The earth preceded us, and we are its custodians. Dominion is not ours, though we have assumed it. We have exerted our influence to the extreme, and we are right now paying extremely for that.

The Native American people lived and worked in harmony, in communion with the land and its inhabitants, showing due respect. When did this change? Was it with the Industrial Age? The Information Age? I suppose it changed whenever, wherever entitlement and greed stepped in.

In two- and four-legged creature alike, the skin makes tracks to vent an infection festering beneath it. The open cysts that result are not so much an ailment as a symptom of the body's attempts to heal itself. The system is wise this way.

Our native people know: the earth has always spoken to us; it speaks to us still. It seems to me our earth is shouting to us these days. She is issuing warning after warning as she efforts to rebalance herself. These are not commentaries on our destruction, where we have accomplished that. They are acts of earth Wisdom Itself.

Our earth does not hang in the balance during these extraordinary times. It is we, her guests, who do. This because we have, when we have, misbehaved. We have, when we have, abused her magnanimity, her hospitality. I think it is time for us to remember our place, to return to gratitude, respect, and balance. If not, our benevolent host will have to shake us off like fleas, and go on alone.

There's a Power in that Flower

2010-06-06T13:00:00.018-05:00

I called the file "Cornflower" when I downloaded the pictures from my camera. That's how cursory was my knowledge of the chicory plant when I photographed it. I've been seeing its indeed cornflower blue all over town--most notably in my neighbor's field. I had tried macro photos of this wildflower in the past, but the light was not quite right and the results were unimpressive. Yesterday, for some reason, it was time to try again. Drawn to its color, I had picked a stem of this "cornflower" to add to a vase inside. But first I would lay it on my porch window sill, in a pool of afternoon sun, and try a few shots.

As happens from time to time--and I've written about it more than once: what I saw on the "big screen" later took my breath away. My friend Tracey calls them "gasps," those photos that catch the breath like this, as in "Any gasps in those pics I sent to you?" There were several "gasps" in the so-called Cornflower photos. As if the sugary stamens and the candy-striped pistils weren't enough to steal the show, these close ups revealed what I am now calling energy vortexes at their center. I've seen this before in the morning glory: a definite, distinct condensation of energy at the core. Or maybe I feel it more than see it, I don't know. Take a look for yourself; be your own judge. (Technological note: you can easily enlarge the images and text on this page by holding down Ctrl and hitting the + key multiple times, fyi.) But know that what you see at the core of these three flowers pictured is not a function of focus or the lack thereof. Something else is going on.

The flowers of the morning glory and chicory have something besides their (blue-purple) color in common: each lasts but a day - or less than a day. I'm inclined to think that has something (or rather, a lot) to do with the intensity of their vortex. Imagine a whole lifetime compressed into a single day! This is a very powerful energy indeed, but a power for what, of what?

I'll keep listening and let you know. In the meantime, I'll happily let it speak for itself.

Prospered in Love

2010-05-25T21:49:00.028-05:00

I am grateful to all who came out for Open Studio at Chestnut Hill Mall last weekend. It was wonderful to see and talk and share with each of you. Quelle richesse! The show was rich in so many ways--and from the get-go, in fact. Saturday morning found me setting up beside a propping wall for displaying framed prints (I had a table and no wall, and wasn't sure how I was going to display these) which bordered an American Bullfrog habitat of all things!

I confess I spend very little time in malls. But this show placed me indoors for two days straight in the halls of commerce, with lots of metal and marble and glass around: not my usual habitat to say the least! And this on a glorious sunny spring weekend, no less. But the eleven or so American Bullfrogs saved me, along with their pond and fountain and lush birches and moss and such: they brought the outdoors in. What a treat. They croaked when I made my first sale!

I'm realizing more and more that such grace, in a word, is what happens when one's "business" is Love. Love attracts Love. Love breeds more Love. You just can't give it away. We see what we're looking through. We draw to us what we are, etcetera etcetera. So "happening upon" the bullfrog habitat should not have surprised me, and neither should what transpired at the end of the two-day show have surprised me. But it did.

I could say the little miracle started Sunday morning when, dressing, I realized I didn't own a single piece of jewelry to complement the tunic and neckline I was wearing. It occurred to me that one of the artists in my "pod" at the Mall--a metalsmith/jewelry maker--might permit me to wear something of hers for the day, and promote her work in the process. I had done this at a show a couple of years ago. I modeled my friend Helen's strand of freshwater pearls, silver beads, and kyanite for a day. By the end of that day, I was sad to have to surrender it. Word got back to my sister who had visited the show, and she arranged to buy it for me for my birthday, which fell a couple of days later.

I had no such plan for this necklace I might borrow. I would model it, enjoy wearing it--featuring it--and return it to its maker at the end of the day.

I approached Kate Jones that morning, and sure enough, she was game. She invited me to select a piece from her array. I chose an oxidized (silver) pendant that was the perfect match to my black pearl earrings and the metal buttons of my blouse. I put it on, and prepared to enjoy gathering attention for her beautiful work.

At closing time, I started breaking down my exhibit before I remembered the necklace. I paused, and made way for Kate's table.

"Kate, before I forget..." I said reaching up to unclasp the necklace.

She turned to me. "I think you should keep it," she said. "It looks really nice on you."

"Noooo," I protested. Her gifting it was unthinkable; surely she was suggesting I purchase it.

"Yes. I do that sometimes. Keep it."

Incredulous, I hesitated still, but she insisted. "Just tell people where you got it," she smiled.

"Of course!" I said with a firm nod, and I humbly thanked her, blessed her, hugged her, all the while wondering how I could accept this extraordinary gift "for no reason."

I realized how as I drifted back to my table, touching the pendant at my neck: just accept it, that's how. I know that when Life (Love) gives gifts like this, ours is to receive them. As I began to absorb what had just happened, my mind flashed on a woman who had visited my table earlier that day. I had watched her sort through the bookmarks I had for sale, to choose the image of her liking. Then I watched her walk away, look again at the one she'd selected, and then tuck it in her purse. I felt myself reach after her for a moment. Then in heart and mind, I smiled and I let it go. The whole process took maybe 15 seconds. At the start of that time, I actually wondered if I should go after her, tell her--imagine! It's embarrassing to say I went through any process at all, but I did. And be that as it may, I did let it go. Not dismissively, not resigned, but with pure release: I gifted her the bookmark, happy she was interested in having it, happy for that opportunity to share the Love with her. It was a very small gift, granted, but a gift just the same.

Kate's was no small gift, and I knew when she offered it to me that I was not capable of a comparable gesture. I also knew that I wanted to be. And so I walked away from her table with more than a necklace. I walked away with an opening as well. A possibility. Her gesture showed me who and what I am, and who and what I am becoming.

I was struck by these words when I visited her website later:

My work is inspired from my love of the natural world. Seeds, flowers, bones, branches, and anything else that grows, provide me with endless inspiration.

So this was an exchange between kindreds. How not at all unlikely it was then for Kate Jones' jewelry to find its way to me, then show me how to live closer to Love? And ditto my winding up beside the bullfrog habitat!

Oh, Love: what a many-splendored thing you are indeed. What riches and grace, what beauty and order in Love's way, and what a joy to let It have it.

Being Peaceful

2010-05-21T13:28:00.017-05:00

A divine display, a marriage of water and world greeted me when I stepped outside yesterday morning. I had turned to enter my "secret garden," and it stopped me in my tracks sending me back indoors to grab the camera.

"I have to try..." I told myself, not at all confident that this play of light on suede-soft leaf, these gleaming rain beads would translate to film. Well, as is so often true of macro shots, I later found that more than met the eye had been captured. Honestly, it's as if my eye says "Oh, something lovely..." while unbeknownst to me I have been seduced, sufficiently hypnotized by the presenting "Lovely" into getting my camera out so that She might succeed at having me see even beyond what I see. Yet again, another Lovely has dazzled me, and moved me to tell about it.

I love how photography offers the gift of keeping: keeping something which is transient, everchanging, according to the movements of wind, of earth, of time. I met this sparkling Lovely yesterday when I knew I would soon leave for the day. I knew that by the time I returned in the afternoon, every droplet of rainwater bejewelling my garden would be long gone. If I wanted it preserved, it had to be now.

I'm glad that I managed to "keep" the hosta. As for the peach-colored iris: I regret there wasn't time for her. By the time she caught my eye, on the way to the car, it was too late. Her glitter of raindrops, her glow and glisten in just-right light, would be lost. I noticed two tight buds on her stalk as I started the car, and hoped for another chance at another time. But if I've learned one thing in these last few years of taking pictures--of pictures "taking me"-- it's this: there are no second chances. If I don't have camera in hand when I happen upon a beauty, a marvel, a magnificence begging to be held in regard again and again over time, I can kiss it goodbye. There is the illusion of returning, of sameness. I see it in the behavior of the perennials in my garden, for example. Yes, they return each year. But their array, their display from one year to the next is never the same.

I pass through the Open Doors book and gift store to get to the Reiki room where I treat clients on Thursdays. Yesterday, a Buddha figurine caught my eye on the way through. I swore it had to be new to the store; either that, or it had escaped my notice every week since January. In either case, this day, not unlike the rain-quenched hosta, it beckoned me, and I bought it. I've long thought I might like to own one; I've admired such icons in other settings and appreciated their pacifying effect. But none before this one compelled me enough to buy it.

My little Buddha sits now in the most trafficked room in the house, and in a single day has bestilled me numerous times. A mere glimpse of him accomplishes this, returns me to the ground of clarity beneath my "ordinary," everyday awareness: I am struck peaceful. Just as the glimpse of a few square pristine inches of yesterday morning's Love in motion struck me peaceful, and so I've placed its image on my computer desktop where I am sure to see it often.

I behold this scattering and ordering of plump and perfect drops reflecting or glinting with sunlight, these precious gleaming pearls and wonder: why do I ever struggle with Life? Why would I ever pass even a moment in consternation or concern? I wonder why I ever do other than give Love Its way. It is so clear how struggle is all of my making and rises from my foolish interference with the fine order of things. That is to say that looking at this demonstration by Life (by Love) of its "All is well"-ness in an instant awakens, rouses me from my deluded slumber, opens me into the fullness of the freedom that is, always, underneath/within/as It All.

I saw this--was this--while giving Reiki yesterday. It came to me all at once--overtook me, really. "Be peaceful, dear," I heard, "it's all taken care of." That just-being was allowed to be because I drew no cloak or veil over it. And so I stood for a time as embodiment, possessed, of the words that arose to represent it. I stood being peaceful, knowing all is taken care of. Being, that is to say, no different from the leaf, the rain, the iris, the drifting cloud: One Life in many particles passing flawlessly, equanimously, from one moment to the next to the next. Just so.

After the Rain

2010-05-08T17:01:00.010-05:00

At the end of every leaf, the large leaves and the tiny leaves, there was a drop of water sparkling in the sun like an extraordinary jewel. And there was a slight breeze, but that breeze didn't in any way disturb or destroy that drop on those leaves that were washed clean by the late rain. It was a very quiet morning, full of delight, peaceful, and with a sense of benediction in the air.

~J. Krishnamurti

Sharing the Love

2010-05-05T21:14:00.011-05:00

I invite all Boston-area friends of the Freeway to come on down to Chestnut Hill Mall between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. on May 22 & 23, and see what's hot to trot on Love's Freeway. I will be flanked by other of my fellow Jamaica Plain artists (about 30 of us in all) so there will be plenty of art to view--and to buy, if something strikes your fancy. I'll be displaying over 100 original images in varying formats (cards, books, bookmarks, framed and unframed prints) ranging in price from $1 to $100.

Is someone in your life graduating this month? Have an important birthday or anniversary coming up? Here's a great opportunity to find a unique gift for that special someone. And if you don't have an occasion coming up, come by anyway to browse. A few deep breaths, a little inspiration: who knows what you might take away.

Hope to see you there!

Writers Write, Right?

2010-05-04T21:31:00.014-05:00

I'm pleased to share another former writer-client/student's publishing success--and in doing so, my own as well! This post will be of special interest to the writers out there who are wearing down pencils (or keys), filling up wastebaskets (virtual or otherwise), or pulling their hair trying to get something inside out. There is hope! Help has arrived! You just have get on down to your local bookseller and pick up Sherry Ellis' new NOW WRITE! Nonfiction. This treasure trove of motivating, inspiring, and illuminating writing exercises published by Tarcher/Penguin late last year is widely available and sitting out there ready and waiting to inspire YOU! From voice to craft to revision--and lots in between--this book's got something for every writer, for sure.

Yes, it's a fabulous resource, and for me a fabulous privilege to be one of its contributing writers, sharing such esteemed company as (my teachers) Carole Maso and Kathleen Spivack, as well as Eric Maisel and Gay Talese. Many thanks to Sherry for her time, effort and commitment to bringing forth this exceptional writing resource.

Just buy it. Use it! And if ever fails you, I know a writer- coach (wink) who might be able to help.

Denouement

2010-05-02T13:48:00.007-05:00

Dying....never looked....so good.

Funny Love

2010-04-30T08:59:00.006-05:00

This one's for the mockingbird who has started my morning with laughter for two days running. They're funny, no? How they can carry on for hours with their pitch-perfect impersonations of all the other birds of the Kingdom who cross their path.

Oh, Love: what a sense of humor on You!

No Small Parts

2010-04-23T10:03:00.012-05:00

In a previous column, I shared the story of a writer-client's accomplish-
ment and my part in it. When he read the published column, he was prompted to e-mail me about it:

"I love it except for one small detail," he wrote. "You fail to give yourself the credit you deserve. Your words carried great weight. Because of you, this is a book full of stories, not academic ramblings and generalizations. Second, you said to me at one point “This feels like a small book.” That simple sentence lifted a weight and allowed me to trust that I could finish this..."

It's funny, because my column started out being about how any one accomplishment is everyone's accomplishment. How our achievements don't occur in a vacuum. How countless others create them with us in ways seen and unseen. But along the way, the piece changed direction. I felt concerned about being misunderstood. Would readers--John included--think I was trying to take credit for his work? I didn't want to chance that, so I wrote something else.

I did feel a part of his result. But I didn't actually know the extent of my role until receiving John's note. I'm grateful to know it, and for the validation his words lent to my initial impulse.

That impulse was born of my recalling, as I slipped his new book from the mailer and started paging through, a particular achievement of my own about eight years back. That achievement culminated in my standing before my community of fellow leaders and assuring them that all my results of the previous six months were equally their results. I insisted that none of my achievements would have occurred without them. I'm not sure they believed me, or completely understood, but I knew it was true through and through.

So thanks to John for opening this subject again, prompting my return to it, to tell this part. It feels important if not imperative--now more than ever--to realize, acknowledge, appreciate the extent to which we are all in this together, joined in mutual creation--or destruction, depending. By and for all of us, despite any appearances to the contrary--moment by moment, choice by choice, act by act--we bring our collective creations into form, with no one part in this co-creation any larger or smaller than any other. Shame on me for forgetting that!

Like so our World is created--for better and for worse, like it or not.

The Dumpster Bouquet

2010-04-20T22:26:00.034-05:00

Flowers are coming to me these days. Maybe it has something to do with my having intended that--even putting it in writing a few weeks back. But when I wrote "The gift of a bouquet of flowers" on my list of intentions, I didn't imagine they would come to me the way they have. I'd even forgotten I'd asked for them until after bouquet number one--of two, so far :) --materialized.

The first was all tulips plucked fresh out of my friend's kitchen table vase and wrapped in foil to send home with me. She had harvested them from the overgrowth around an abandoned home near hers. Tulips! Tulips are untouchables to me. A sort of sacred flower--like the endangered woodland flowers--you admire and enjoy in the garden but that only on very rare occasions take a place at the table. She'd handed me a treasure, and I could not contain my delight.

The second bouquet wasn't a bouquet at all at first. It started as refuse, in fact. I'd set out for an athletic, long walk, only to have it interrupted by the cemetery dumpster about a half mile from my house--mounded, I could see as I approached, with discarded funeral baskets and sprays.

I am no stranger to these to say the least. At 18, I married into the funeral business. I don't know about today, but in those days, anyone married to a funeral director had occasion to enjoy a sweet reward, sprinkled in now and then among the inevitable and often extreme demands and inconveniences of that line of work. Sometimes, after the wake, there was an excess of flowers: too many for the family, too many for the grave site, too many for the nursing homes, even. For me, flower lover that I am now and have been for as long as I can remember, that translated to an imperative: "Bring some home!"

That is how I came to be delighted from time to time by the surprise of an arrangement or two tucked into our back porch. I would break down the baskets: pull the stems that seemed worth saving out of their florist's sponge, lay them on the kitchen counter, and then...begin anew! Florist for a day, I'd take out my vases and pruners, and start snipping and arranging. Before long, I had bouquets for nearly every room.

I can honestly say I don't know anyone who enjoys flowers as much as I. It's fair to say I have a passion for them. You could even say I have carried on a lifelong love affair with them (no surprise to friends of Love's Freeway, I'm sure). What else would have me bringing them with me when I move from place to place in the house--downstairs, during the day, and upstairs to rise with come morning. And to wit: for the past several days, I have made at least a daily visit to the pink rose-tulip (a tulip that looks more like a rose than a tulip) in my garden. There's just one, and I forget and remember it every year. Remembering is like this: "Oh, you! Ahhh...." at its first appearance each spring, followed by sinking my nose into its tall narrow cup to breathe it in. The fragrance is uncommon among tulips, I think. It is fruity, bordering on citrus. Sweet grapefruit, to be exact.

In my church-going days, we practiced something called "veneration." We would venerate the cross on a particular Holy Day--around Easter, I think. And we would make devotions at the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday, following Jesus' Via Dolorosa. I saw these as acts of reverence and adoration, and my way with flowers is much like that. I confess that I adore them. The red of the three Darwins in the back garden here, beneath the canopy of lilac about to burst and commence our intoxication. The bold cheer of the pansies to my left, and beneath their planters, a migrant vine or three of pachysandra, unusually abundant with purple star-blooms.

Well anyway, all things considered, it won't surprise you I'm sure that I started plucking a flower here and a flower there from that dumpster heap. Rescue! Resurrection! I could see there was a chance for some of them. Before I knew it, I held a thick bouquet almost too fat for my grip. Funeral flowers, of all things. Trash in the eyes of the caretakers of the cemetery--and probably everyone else as well--but not to me. Daisies, spider mums, stock, carnations, asters: I even tried three roses, the most fragile genus of the lot. They'd been in still-damp sponges, and if I wasn't mistaken, would perk up after a fresh cut.

It's funny that I rushed back with them, given all they'd been through, all they'd survived already. But the quicker they hit water, I knew, the better their chances. And water was the first thing I gave them of course, after the vital first aid of a trim to their stems. Time would tell which would make it and which would not. I set out on my walk again, and when I returned an hour later, I could hardly believe my eyes. Like magic, all but one (a lavender rose) had sprung to life. I feasted my eyes on them, pert and vibrant: an abundance of life and beauty so many lovelies to behold!

Oh yes, I do love flowers. And clearly they find some creative ways to love, to seduce me. But there was another factor at play in this particular seduction: I am hard pressed to turn a blind eye on any chance for resurrection. Flowers, plants, creatures, loves: if there's still a chance for life in it, I want it saved.

You might remember my story of the lover who frowned on my saving butter wrappers and leftovers. I suspect my 'Former' would have frowned on this particular act of repurposing too, would have argued that these flowers had well served their purpose. I would not disagree. They expressed the love and condolences of the deceased's family and friends. They offered comfort to the bereaved. They decorated the fresh grave. And some were beyond hope for sure; but others were only thirsty for water.

Anyway, here they are, alert and alive! Two weeks from now, the carnations (and others perhaps) will still be alive. Beyond the enjoyment they will provide me over this time, it will please me to see these beauties, these particles of Love, complete their life cycle, expire in their own time. And all it took was a bit of attention, a little devotion. All it took was a little love.

Right Place, Right Time

2010-04-01T15:24:00.041-05:00

Five years ago last January, a student arrived late to the first session of a writing class I was teaching. This landed him in the only available seat, which was beside me. That meant that when it came time to read in pairs, he and I were sharing part-
ners. As a consequence of that happenstance, we made an immediate connection, and his voice on paper made a distinct impression on me.

When this student never returned to subsequent classes, I wondered what had happened. Was he not pleased with his experience of the class? I decided to write him, to ask. In closing my note, I told him: "You have a milk and honey way of writing..." and encouraged him to keep going. As an afterthought, I let him know that I coached writers individually as well, should he ever be interested in something like that. Here is his reply:

February 18, 2005

Kathryn,

Thank you. You are exceedingly gentle, real and honest - these are rare qualities. You are a careful teacher.

I would like to explore some one-on-one work. Last year I took a sabbatical to write about some interviews that I collected from young black men who have been victims of violence. I have a very "shitty first draft" of what I hope will some day be a book. But I am determined to write it my way, not in the way some of the momentarily interested agents wanted me to. I would love to talk more...

Thanks,

John

Two months later, I met with John Rich for our first of a handful of sessions spanning about a year and a half. We got him and the project on track for sure, and then John took the ball and ran with it. The rest, as they say, is history. My part in John's achievement was small, but an absolute grace and a privilege. I was touched by the stories of Wrong Place, Wrong Time long before they got anywhere near a printing press.

"I don't look at a young black men the same..." I told him in one of our sessions. I could see this touched John in return. Of course, because it was just the sort of (r)evolution he hoped to cause by writing all this down, by getting it out in the world.

John graciously deemed my part worthy of a generous acknow-
ledgment within the book's pages, and mailed a fresh, hardcover copy to me last Christmas season, accompanied by a warm and equally gener-
ous note and inscription. I might as well have been greeting a new grandchild when I opened the package, for all the joy and pride and admiration I felt!

This book is a blessing, a change maker, an instrument for peace. That is why I am mentioning it here, why I am praising and acknowledging the work, its subjects, and all who had a part in its coming to be. Give yourself the gift of reading it.

_______________________________

Postscript: When I wrote to John for permission to publish this, he responded immediately with a wholehearted yes, adding an additional memory of his own:

When I came to the first class, I was nervous. I felt like I had entered a room full of writers as an imposter. I remember that you instructed us first on the “how” and then asked us to write from the prompt “I remember.” I wrote something about my grandmother’s kitchen, unsure where to start and how to finish. When you invited me to read, I said “It’s kind of a mess.” You offered me the option to pass, but I went ahead and read. The group jumped in with recall which plucked out pieces of my short passage. I will never forget this: you turned to me and said “Still think it’s a mess?” That was a turning point.

We're Rolling!

2010-03-27T23:19:00.023-05:00

Well, Love's Freeway hit a new milestone this month, taking to the TV waves. I was invited by AHAh! host Michael Koran--thank you, Michael!--to come share about Love's Freeway at CCTV Studios, and it was great fun indeed. We covered a lot of ground in 27 minutes, from love, abuse, cancer and Reiki, to trash, earthquakes, x-rated photographs, and ducks! We very bravely (smile) even opened up the phone lines on the show, which enriched the program tremendously: thank you, Lloyd! Have a look, if you like. And it's not too late to participate: you can certainly write in with your comments or questions, if you have any.

Enjoy the show!

What Ever Happened to Cindi Lauper?

2010-03-17T20:52:00.022-05:00

I'd kind of forgotten about Cindi Lauper. There was "All Through the Night" and "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" and "Time After Time," and other hits, but these were all I ever knew of her, and she'd pretty much fallen off my radar until the other night. Thanks to a rather disturbing film I might've been better served to turn off rather than watch through to the end credits, I found Lauper's "Hymn to Love"--a haunting ballad that I wanted to hear again.

Google led me to YouTube where I could do just that, straight through, first note to last. I listened, and then I listened again--and again. I'll leave out the sobbing part: that's a personal matter. Suffice it to say, I was hooked by it, and curiosity led me to I follow a couple of other links on the page. An Ellen something performed it to a piano accompaniment, and there was Edith Piaf, of course, singing her famed "Hymne a l'Amour" with a passion, in both French and English. But none of these moved me like Lauper's rendering, which I listened to probably 20 times in the subsequent 20 hours.

What it is about hers that reached in and touched me so deeply I don't know for certain. But I'll say it is a gift--that Lauper is gifted, the way Eva Cassidy was gifted: any song in that woman's mouth was recreated, reborn in her singing of it. It's one thing to sing a song--even to interpret a song or a piece of music; it is another to embody, to inhabit it.

One thing led to another, as the convenience of the world wide web would have it, and before long I was viewing video of Cindi live, performing--I should say belting out-- "All Through the Night." Even in that little four- by three-inch window on my computer screen, and with my nothing-special, treble-heavy resident speakers, her power was well evident: she was Wow. What a presence, what a conviction, what a range, what a mastery! I saw slight remnants of the Lauper of the punk days, but I might as well have been encountering her for the first time. The little I knew of her then was her hits, her radical and colorful hair and 'get ups', and yes, her distinctive voice. I liked her songs, and I always enjoy listening to them on the radio, but they never stopped me in my tracks like this one has, turning my vague and momentary wondering, "What ever happened to Cindi Lauper?" to a burning question. That led me to Wikipedia to "read all about it."

Assuming that all I read on Wiki was true, hers is quite a story. Not a wildly extraordinary story; kind of an average life story, actually. But that's just why I say "quite." Anyway, there is no ordinary life story, right? In any case, hers turned out, if not a superstar, certainly an icon. You can read it for yourself, but here are some of the headlines:

--NY (Queens) born
--high school dropout
--early leanings toward music
--bands
--four-octave range (!)
--vocal chord injury
--'You'll never sing again'
--voice coach
--success
--"Gold" 45's
--Grammys and Emmys
--new album, spring 2010!

However iconic, Lauper's not the household name that Madonna has become. Why that is, I don't know. But I do know this: watching and listening to her music--as with Jane Siberry's and Eva Cassidy's-- moves me down deep in a way that Madonna's, say--much as I enjoy it--does not. Who can explain this? Madonna certainly has talents of her own. But whatever this "it" is that Lauper, for example, has (in my estimation), it seems to me a gift, this capacity to embody music, to reinvent it , as Cassidy did, and it occurs for me as extraordinary, inspiring, and a privilege to encounter. To experience this live is, for me, to be lifted up--raised up. I feel I am in the presence of Being, on purpose--that is, witness to one who is being exactly on purpose, or in other words, one who has found her place and is completely, wholeheartedly inhabiting it. I find this profound. It leaves me in quiet awe when I encounter it. And I am deeply grateful to each and every one who achieves this and, by demonstration, inspires countless other to do the same.

Thankfully, such embodiment cannot be faked: true, rooted, flesh-and-bone, body-mind/spirit authenticity rings...well, true. It is one of Life's unspoiled and reliable gifts, always ready for the taking.

Love's Flutes

2010-03-12T20:31:00.028-05:00

One of the first sounds I heard when I moved to the house where I am now living was wind--or so I'd thought. The breathy whhhhhhhhh I'd heard wasn't wind, exactly. It was the sound of wind rushing through the needles of a stately white pine that marks the north corner of the house. I was probably out hanging the wash to dry on the back lines when the thought first struck me that wind is silent. Wind needs something to rub against to make a sound.

I've grown intimate with the sound of wind through pine needles and the scent of pine pitch over sixteen years of living here. I loved these from the start and am no less enchanted by them now, or by this tree's periodic gifts of cones and boughs. Yet today, I heard something more in its whispering. Love is like that, I thought: invisible but for what it traverses.

It's no wonder we get confused sometimes and mistake the what for the Love. Wind needs objects to make sound. Love needs the same. It needs vessels, situations, manifestations-- something to "rub against." It rubs against you, my beloved, and I say "I love you." Love rubs against me and you say you love me. But that is forgetting that Love has no scent or taste or sound. Love rises as us. Love rises in us. But not for something or someone. The flute shapes the wind and makes music. But where is the flute without wind?

Hafiz and Rumi--you two refined and precious flutes for Love's wind: I understand you now more than ever. I see wind thanks to the pines--and all else that it rubs against. I see Love thanks to the beloved, and all else It rubs against. My beloved is a gift of Love just as the whhhhhhh and the fragrance and cones of the pine are gifts of wind. I open for my beloved and my beloved opens for me Love's gilded, gem-studded castle doors. Thanks to this gift that we are, one to the other, we are allowed to dwell there, to admire Its landscapes, to breathe Its incense, to hear and accompany Its song. Together, we live Love, praise and reveal Love. That is reason enough for devotion.

And "I love you" grows, expands to "I know Love by the grace of you." And there is nothing confused about that.

The Leap in the Heart

2010-03-06T21:17:00.026-05:00

No one can tell me today was a winter day. Phooey on the calendar, marking the vernal equinox at two weeks away. I think the Europeans have got it right, marking their changes of season such that the equinox falls at the midpoint between, in this case, winter and summer. It made immediate sense to me when I learned of this, and today is the embodiment of why.

Today, the bees are busy in the snowdrops. Snowdrops are small. You wouldn't think there was much to drink in there. But they keep at it--for a good hour now, or more: round and round again, many bees hopping from one flower to the next. The same flower is visited repeatedly by various bees - by the same bee too, for all I know. Can there be more in there? Are they forgetful, going in and coming up dry? No matter, their ritual is a wonder to witness from my spot in the sun beside them.

Oh yes, this is a spring day,for sure, and surely this ecstasy of bees dizzied by their passionate reunion with flower is proof of it. As are the flowers themselves, fresh from the earth, and the earth itself, giving way, consenting to the coming forth. It is a collaboration in beginning, renewal, birth. It is sun and cold, water and ice, dark and moonlight all conspiring in this revolution, this overturning of stillness with color, with fragrance, with spark. It is the perpetuation of life: conception, propagation, multiplication. Winter is the ultimate cutting back of all that is living, including me. And this day calls me forth, just like the bees, to hasten to the gardens, to delight in the earliest displays of the procession of splendor. The pale straw of the creeping phlox giving way to sprigs of green. Flutes of tulip leaves shaped to catch the rain when it comes. Beyond the white of the pendant snowdrops expected, the surprise of purple: crocus I had forgotten. Three the first day, then five then eight, and then two tiny clusters of yellow ones join them, with who-knows-what others or how many to follow. And that is the thing about winter here. It is just cold enough and (on a good year) snowy enough and long enough to accomplish a forgetting.

My skin greets this sun and warmth, this riotous return of bees and their drinking, with a wonder that is born of forgetting. As if by March I have grown accustomed to, made peace, reckoned with winter and all its accoutrements: cold fingers and high necks; wools and scarves and hats and the fireside thawing of the bones; deep long nights and short, harsh days with winds or temps or ice to brace against. Which is to say it lasts long enough to forget--to forget, I mean, in the skin and bones and tension of muscle--that it ever ceases, that a day like this one comes when all at once there is remembering, there is incredulous, giddy, pince moi je reve! remembering of bare bronzing feet, face, hands, of blues and reds, pinks and white, yellow and greens bursting from the dark, dead, flavorless, all-but colorless earth. And there is a leap in the heart of just the sort the return of a love you took for lost would spark. She is not dead, not gone, but here, stepping fragrant, soft, warm, alight with the promise of what's to come into your open arms. It is just like that, the moment when spring presents herself.

And it is then, in my unremarkable and sacred corner of the earth, that spring enters, commences in me a corporeal--fleshly, alongside her earthly--recreation. And once commenced, there is no stopping either one. The sleeper is awake, the yawning and stretching are underway, and the best day of all days is begun.

Hello, my love. It is so good to see you again.

dedicated to the memory of Margery Tawn