Honoring M.L.King ... Seeking a vision that serves all beings.

I am blessed to have a friend who I think is one of the wisest women I know.  Each of us is a writer. We touch base via email each Monday morning as a way to say, "Good morning, is your butt in your chair?" or "This is what I am watching out my window right now" or "Here is something I love."  It's an easy and straightforward way we use to inspire, nudge or hug one another into a new week of writing.


Several Monday mornings ago, she sent me a poem from a poetry site she enjoys.  The site is called A Year of Being Here - daily mindfulness poetry by wordsmiths of the here and now.  It's a poem-a-day site  that believes that reading selected poetry promotes mindfulness.  The site suggests that one can't really read a poem without getting into the here and now.  

  "That's what mindfulness poetry does: it calls us home to where we are, and helps us abide there. It helps us pay attention.  It helps us inhabit our lives instead of just going through the motions."


 I decided to subscribe. 

The poem that arrived today .... on this Martin Luther King holiday morning.... certainly called me home to my here and now.  


John Daniel in his verse titled A Poem Among Friends  has left me wondering if I am, in my Here and Now, spending generously the time I have been given... enacting my responsibilities as thoroughly as I am enjoying my pleasures....seeking a vision that serves all beings....honoring the mystery I cannot see. 


I believe Dr. Martin Luther King did that in his Here and Now.  Now it's our turn.

  

A Poem Among Friends

by John Daniel

Among other wonders of our lives, we are alive

with one another, we walk here

in the light of this unlikely world

that isn't ours for long.

May we spend generously

the time we are given.

May we enact our responsibilities

as thoroughly as we enjoy

our pleasures. May we see with clarity,

may we seek a vision

that serves all beings, may we honor

the mystery surpassing our sight,

and may we hold in our hands

the gift of good work

and bear it forth whole, as we

were borne forth by a power we praise

to this one Earth, this homeland of all we love.

In observance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Day: "A Prayer Among Friends" by John Daniel, from Of Earth: Poems (Lost Horse Press, 2012). Text as presented on The Writer's Almanac (10/19/2012).

When the Tingle goes away with the Tinsel ....

It's the first REAL week of January....when everything goes back to normal.  The meetings, routines, dr appts, schedules and lessons begin again.  All the things we kinda ignored in that delicious month of December.

I look around my decorated house and don't want to start taking things down.  Even the sound of that is depressing ...."taking things down."  

When I plugged the lights of the tree in this morning I crouched low and touched the pine branch shadow designs it made on the hardwood floor .... as if I could soak it into my skin.

Why does the Tingle have to go away with the Tinsel? How do I hang onto it?

The gatherings, the cards, the gifts, the cookies .... all that could go. It's that "other stuff"  I will miss.  The dash of Jolly in the air .... that dose of joyful expectation that sits in my belly and greets me each morning. That tingle of wonder and wonderfulness that I love....all so intangible amidst this tangible stuff.

Perhaps I cross out the other items on my Resolutions list ....
 - do more yoga
 - eat less sugar
 - write every day                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

and replace it with ...... KEEP THE TINGLE!!

I wonder what that would look like?

"MIRACLE" ... Wonder, Marvel, Sensation ....

As a grandmother, I am guilty of slipping into that role at times when I think it is one of my "Noni" jobs to "teach" or "guide" or "share nuggets of age-filled wisdom" with my grandchildren ....so I especially love it when they reverse those roles.   It happened ... again .... this past Monday.

Our four year old grandson, George,  wanted to set up the kids' Christmas tree in the library. We are a family that tromps through muddy farm fields, cuts the "perfect" tree,  then strings the lights and adds the ornaments while enjoying that exhilarating scent of pine.  It is often an all day process.

But this extra little tree is an exception.  It is plastic and lives in a box in the basement.   He knew there was a possibility that for the first time this year, we would set up his Bapa's childhood electric train to travel around this small tree so was impatient to get going.

As we trudged the box up from below,  he lamented that it always takes SOOOOOOO (insert whine) long to put the lights on. In full-on Noni, I started to offer "good things take time" ..... but then reminded myself to stow it and instead reminded him that this was an artificial tree that you just plug in .... a fact he appreciated moments later when he got to push the dangling cord into the socket.  He uttered a low "wow",  stared for a bit, then got busy hanging the age-old ornaments.

A full two hours later, long after the tree was complete,  we were playing boats in front of it... waiting.. and waiting... and waiting for Bapa to get the electric train set ready to put around the tree (good things DO take time, I guess.)  George kept stopping his play to look at the tree lights.  Finally....

"Noni, it's amazing about those lights."   I waited.  He looked at the tree again.  Then with a small grin, like he was using a word he'd learned but hadn't tried on yet .... "It's a miracle."

As a typical Grandma, I was proud (as I think he was) of his expanding vocabulary. But what has stayed with me all week was his reminder to me to notice, to look for miracles, to find the sacred while I wait in this Advent Season for Christmas to come.

Without his age-filled wisdom, I might have missed a lot of Wonder.

Thank you, Georgie. 

STUCK !!

I'm stuck ..... in a place of malaise.  And I don't like it .... one bit.

I sit at my writing desk in the mornings and struggle to be creative or think of  new ideas or get my ideas to go anywhere.  I want to write a fabulous children's book and November is PiBoIdMo (Picture Book Idea Month).    This is the children's writers' equivalent of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month).  While those novel writers are tossing down 1500+ words per day this month, we children's book writers are to generate oodles of picture book ideas each day of November.

 Sound easy?

My little notebook has only five or six page-fulls ... and it's a damn small notebook!

It's NOT easy ... at least when you are stuck!

Stuck looks and feels yucky!   I am doubting my ability to be goofy or to think like a child or to ever ever come up with the edgy, off the wall, never-thought-of-before stuff that the publishers seem to want.

And then this comes crashing in .... do I need to give this dream up?

Dammit it --- NO!   ( I hope not, anyway).

But I do need to find a way to get un-stuck.  To lift the fog and feel light again.

I am not asking those who love and care about me to rush in with encouragement or platitudes, chicken soup or flowers,  or to humor me with the weird facial hair they have going for Movember.

All I know right now is this..... when I heard myself say I had nothing to blog about this week, this thought appeared ....

My blogspot's title is COURAGEOUS Wonderings.
And I think it takes some courage to say, "I'm in a funk."

The WONDER of knowing you are loved ....

I visited my Mom in Arizona last week.  She will be 100 in March!!!   We are planning a big party.... the family will gather.  More than once during our visit she remarked,  "I hope I live long enough so I can come to the party."

I hope she does too.

It was a good visit and though she talked of dying frequently, it often was with a bit of humor or a peacefulness.

Whenever we say good-bye in person or on the phone, we each say "I love you."  She said it first this time and after I replied with "I love you too, Mom" she said, "I know you do!"

 That is when my throat closed up (and does again as I type this).  For isn't that, after all, the most wonderful thing of all .... knowing we are loved.

This week I am wondering if those I love know it ....

BEING SILLY :))))))

It's that time of year when for one day deep in October, dressing up and acting silly is OK!

I wonder why it seems OK to be silly when we are dressed in a costume or hiding behind a mask ---- is it not OK to be silly when we are dressed in our own clothes and don't have a mask on?

I LOVE being silly.  I love to sing silly songs with made-up crazy words.  I love to dance silly dances or walk like a giant or a bird or Cruella de Vil.  I love to talk like Donald Duck.  I love to contort my face into silly expressions.
No wonder there are times when I wish I could return to my childhood ....  when silly somehow seemed more acceptable.

 Merriam/Webster's take on SILLY makes me sad:
having or showing a lack of thought, understanding or good judgement; not practical or sensible, meaningful or important; ridiculous, irrational, frivolous

Well,  Noah Webster and George and Charles Merriam ... I say POOLEYBAH on that !  And yup, that word isn't in your dictionary.

What is more fun than a silly joke?  When my granddaughter spends the night, we often hide rubber chickens in an unsuspecting someone's bed.  When she stayed over for two school nights recently I packed a silly something alongside her apples slices and sandwich in her lunch sack each day.  Her second grade friends and even the principal couldn't wait to see what would show up at lunch.  Granted, she acted like it was all a great big fat embarrassment, but deep down inside, I wanna think she got a little giggle from it and maybe even enjoyed the attention a bit.  And most importantly, I think she knew that I was imagining her sweet smile when I packed that silliness alongside my love into her lunch sack.

 Mr. Webster and both Mr. Merriams, you are probably right ... a baby rubber chicken or plastic glasses with a warty nose attached is not practical or sensible in a school lunch...it is ridiculous and irrational and frivolous, but you will never convince me that when SILLY says I Love You or Please Smile or Goofy Is Good Sometimes, it is not meaningful and important.

We adults often seem hesitant to let our silly sides show.  I wonder why.
 Are we worried that others will think we are having or showing a lack of thought, understanding or good judgement?

Maybe we should rethink that.  After all, don't we want our children to worry less about what others think?

I hope that whenever we get the chance, we allow (and even encourage) our kids and grandkids to find time to be silly!  It's important.

TAKING A BREAK .....

... from my blog, from my writing, from community service and lists and cleaning house, from life as I know it on a regular basis.....

That's what I have been up to the past month.  Taking a break....in France... sinking into Paris first, then Provence .... the croissants, the streets, the small quaint towns, the markets, the history, the grapes, the people, the olives, the beauty.

I had a long list of must-sees and wanna-dos when I left.  My Rick Steves' and Lonely Planet books were labeled, highlighted and packed.
Many of the Do's and See's got done, but there were delightful afternoons and slow mornings where we didn't hurry to the next thing on the list, not because we were tired or the place was closed or under repair but because sitting and talking, looking at the French countryside, lingering over our plat du jour at lunch, or reading the great books we had brought along trumped our tourist list.

On this vacation to a new place... I took a break. The fill-me-up, breath-in-and-out, look-and-smell-and-wonder kind of break.  The kind of break where we saw and did but also where we allowed ourselves time to wonder about the country we were experiencing, its people and culture and government, how our history has overlapped with theirs, what the future might hold, what we could take home from their ways and perspectives to make our lives richer.

The last leg of our journey took us to the Mediterranean Sea in the south of France.  After a swim in that warm water, I spotted this boy reading on the sea wall below me.

This scene on the last full day of our trip reminded me of my blog and my writing and my passions for kids and reading waiting back home.  I snapped his picture to use for a future blog post with a message perhaps about reading and kid lit the world over.

But once back home when the pace immediately quickened and the loaded calendar of events beckoned,  and I saw my wonderful grandchildren again, this picture held a different message. I started wondering about break-taking.  The need to be intentional about creating and taking breaks .... little simple ones .... here at home.

Are we allowing ourselves enough time for breaks?  And are we encouraging our children to take them too .... the fill-me-up, breath-in-and-out, look-and-smell-and wonder kind?  I hope so.