Collage from my art journal

At a party friends held on Saturday night for our upcoming nuptials, someone asked me if I was ‘ready.’

I laughed.

My challenge, I told them, was that I was trying to think of the things I’d missed that I hadn’t thought of doing yet but, because I hadn’t thought of doing them, how could I think of them?

I can’t do what I don’t know needs doing.

We go through life desperately wanting to be prepared for everything. We make our lists, organize and sort and prepare for what we think we need to do or have or be in order to not be surprised by what happens next.

And then life happens in all its unexpected, glorious unpredictability. Life happens.

Yet, again and again, we keep looking to be prepared for everything, even the things we don’t know might happen or could happen simply because we are not in control of LIFE.

Everything I have read about wedding planning states, “Always have a Plan B”. In particular, if it is an outdoor wedding, have a Plan B in case it’s raining.

Our Plan B is to hold it under the tent and then quickly, after the ceremony, set the tent up for the reception.

Good Plan.

But…

Here’s the one I forgot to think about, and one none of the articles I’ve read on being prepared for everything and anything have mentioned either.

That’s great for the ceremony, but what about the photos?

I don’t have a Plan B for the photos if it’s raining.

And I wouldn’t have thought of needing one if I hadn’t been asked the question Saturday night, “Are you ready?”

Yesterday, I spent the day working on making sure I’d thought of everything — even the things I haven’t figured out I need to think about yet. I have my binder all set-up. I have samples of all the various pieces we’ll have at the wedding, from the signage to the thank-you gift tags to the wishing tree tags all within one folder in my binder.

I’ve got a list of all the things we need to take with us, from the decorations to the centrepieces to the string and fishing wire and duct tape we’ll need to hang and decorate the tent.  I’ve started to load things into big plastic tubs and pile together what I still need to use but will be taking with us.

Yesterday, C.C. and I met with our dear friend AJ who will be performing the ceremony. We went through the script and now I’ve got it all typed up and ready to go off to the Marriage Commissioner who is required by BC law to be in attendance. We wouldn’t want to get married and not have it official!

And then, as I was lying in bed this morning thinking about what I might not yet have thought about, I realized, I’d forgotten to ask AJ to ensure he mentions who the Marriage Commissioner is. While she won’t be saying anything, she does need to be acknowledged.

Back to the script to make another edit.

And so it goes.

There are a thousand and one moving parts to any event and while I may have thought of most things, there will inevitably be those I just haven’t considered if only because I don’t know to consider them!

Like life.

I don’t always know what’s going to happen next, but, what happens next doesn’t need to take me down if I am grounded in my one true self, standing true to my commitment to take every step, no matter the weather, in love.

Ultimately, that is what our wedding is all about. Love. It is a public testament of who we are as individuals, a couple and a family with our children standing beside us.

I may not think of everything before the big day. It doesn’t matter. Every step of this journey has been taken with the one ingredient that will ensure the day is sparkling and exciting and a beautiful reflection of what we share deep within our hearts. While we may need Plan Bs and maybe even Cs if the unexpected happens or the weather does what the weather might do, what we want most to share with our families and friends, to embrace them and envelop them as we come together is to say, no matter what life brings us, we can get through anything when we stand in LOVE.

When we stand together, love is all we need to weather any storm.

When we hold only love between us, nothing in the world can come between us or pull us apart.

When we give only love, only love is what we receive, no matter the weather or how many things are left undone.

When we create all our plans in Love, Love is all we need. Love is always the answer.

***************************************

And a huge, huge call out to Jane and Jackie and Tamara for organizing Saturday night’s wonderful party — in the excitement I forgot all about taking photos!  (hopefully someone will send me some and I can post them tomorrow to share all the festivities with you!) Also, thank you to my dear friend Wendy who pitched in to help set up and who was/is so incredibly generous in everything she does and gives. And to all who came to wish us well. You have added more joy to my already over-brimming with joy heart!  Thank you.

I awoke early this morning and after meditation, watched an interview with Mindfulness expert, Jon Kabat-Zinn, “Life is right now.”

In this inspiring talk, Kabat-Zinn says that mindfulness is living your life as if it really mattered and being in the present moment with open hearted presence and kindness with yourself.

It was the statement, “living your life as if it really mattered” that got me.

Am I living my life as if it really matters? Am I treating each moment as if it is the only moment where I can be present and kind and compassionate with myself, because that’s what matters most? That’s what is my greatest expression of love?

He goes on to say, “Mindfulness is a gift. A mystery. We are geniuses, miraculous beings and we ignore most of our beauty and drive ourselves crazy over all these things that are really not all that important. We’re driven by the urgent, miss the important and wind up a lot of the time being unhappy and then look elsewhere for the solution.”

Mindfulness practice is an important part of living as if my life really matters. For each of us, it means getting present and whole with ourselves and loving all of us without judging parts of ourselves as wanting, or less than or other than perfect reflections of who we are within and in the world.

Mindfulness is the art of being present with all of me as I am right now.

In this 7 minute interview Kabat-Zinn makes the case why each of us need to get more lovingly mindful right now.

I happened upon this interview with Buddhist Nun Fang Nhiem when I clicked  a link from Zen Flash.

I’m so grateful I clicked!

May your Friday be filled with loving kindness in all you are right now.  Happy Now!

 

Art Journal Entry
March 27, 2015

Every moment holds possibility
Every thought a dream
Breathe into the possibility
of every moment
and live your dreams.

©

The mind is like a crazy monkey, which leaps about and never stays in one place.
It is completely restless and constantly paranoid about its surroundings.
From “Trapping the Monkey” in The Teacup and the Skullcup:
Chogyam Trungpa on Zen and Tantra.

I come home from a busy day at work. The house is quiet. C.C. has not yet come home and I want to savour the moment do nothing more than relax for a bit and release the tensions of my day.

I lie on the bed watching the birds twitter about the backyard. I feel thankful. Grateful. At peace.

Ahhh, blessed repose. Blessed silence.

And then, that ‘ole critter, my monkey mind, leaps into the calm.

“Don’t be so lazy. Get busy.” Its voice whispers with a sibilant hiss oozing like steam seeping from a lumbering volcano scorching everything in its path. “You’ve got a lot to do before April 25th both for the wedding and work. Get busy.”

The more rational part of me leaps in to defend my indolence. “Back off Jack. She needs some downtime. She just got home.”

But still the monkey mind persists. “There’s too much to do. Quit lying there like a great big lump. Who cares if you’re tired. You don’t matter. Anyway, nobody likes a lazy person.” Don’t you just hate how the critter can take either side of the argument? When I’m busy getting things done, he likes to convince me to stop. And now, when I’m stopped for rest, he wants to convince me to get going.

Silly critter and its power to disturb peace of mind and tranquility.

Buddha said,“Patience is the greatest prayer.”

Yesterday morning, as I was getting ready for my day which included giving a noon-hour workshop on “Teamwork”, working on the Foundation’s Annual Report, a meeting with a reporter and work on the business plan, C.C. excitedly called me into the kitchen to look out the window. “Look! I count at least six robins at the feeder.

What? Come see the robins? I’ve got things to do. I have to get ready.

I took a breath.

What a lovely opportunity to get out of my own way. To spend a few quiet moments in community with my beloved and nature. To be present in the moment and whisper a prayer of gratitude for all that is present in my life.

I stood beside him and watched the robins and silently gave a prayer of thanks.

“Thank you my beloved for reminding me to take this moment to treasure us and this day. Thank you robins for your presence. Your lithesome spirit. Your twittering verse. Thank you for heralding Spring into the garden.”

Gratitude.

If I had but one prayer, let it be, “Thank you.”

To fall into prayer I must surrender my ego’s need to justify my existence — my state of doing nothing, as well as my state of doing ‘busy’. To surrender, I must release my need to feel that everything I do matters. My eldest daughter once wrote, “I am nothing. And everything… I do not matter. And yet, I am matter, so I must.”

I must surrender my need to matter enough that my matter becomes all that matters to me. When I matter enough to cherish the goodness in my being me in this present moment with all that it brings, all that it has to offer, then I will have fallen into that place where all that matters is — this moment in which I breathe in gratitude and exhale thankfulness.

Let me move through my day in gratitude, the gateway to patience with all that I am, and all that I need, to be present.

If I had but one prayer, let it be, Thank you.

*********************

This post was inspired by Val Boyko who posted a beautiful quote from Adyashanti yesterday on her blog, Find Your Middle Ground.

Art Journal – March 21, 2015
Collage

She races towards the C-train, one hand reaching out to stop the doors from closing, the other cradling her cell phone just below her chin. Just in time, she slips between the closing doors… and keeps talking. Out loud. On speaker. On her phone.

I mean really? It’s bad enough she has to talk on the phone in a just past rush hour, not as crowded but still full train-car. But to keep doing it on speaker phone?

I listen in. I know. I know. But, what else was I supposed to do? She’s standing just a few feet from where I’m sitting and is making no attempt to lower her voice.

She talks about interest rates and annuities, payouts and coupons. The woman on the other end talks about prime and term and all sorts of things finance related. At first, I think possibly she’s organizing a life insurance policy. Which, given she’s talking out loud, on speakerphone, in public on an almost full train-car, doesn’t seem like a bad idea. I hope she gets it in place before the train ride ends. Who knows if she’ll survive the trip?

I look around the car. By the looks on people’s faces, no one else seems to think it’s a good idea. Why does she?

Finally, she hangs up. And checks her phone. There was another call while she was on the last one.

She starts to dial.

And that’s when the train pulls into my stop.

I  must write about this incident tomorrow morning, I tell myself and think about all the witty, sarcastic things I can write. I’ll include other things people do in public that drive me crazy and call it, ‘The 5 things to do in public to make sure everyone knows you exist’. And then, I move into my day and forget about speaker phone lady. Until this morning in meditation when unbidden she enters my thoughts, cell phone in hand, talking loudly, oblivious to how she’s crowding my mind just when I’m trying to empty it.

I laugh at myself. Now that’s enlightenment! Here I am seeking the stillness when speaker phone lady enters with her relentless reminder that there’s no avoiding my judgements.

‘Cause there’s the rub.

I want to hold this woman in disdain. I want to chastise her for being so thoughtless, inconsiderate and downright rude. And in my judgements, I am no different. Except, maybe, I do know better. I’m just avoiding what I know to be true. We are all connected. There is no us and them.

She was just doing what she knew. Maybe it was thoughtless, inconsiderate. But what am I doing to create better in the world?

It is the dichotomy of modern day living. To create the world I want to live in, I must let go of criticising, condemning and complaining about others and step lovingly into that space where no matter how someone else is in the world, I seek first to understand. Understanding is the path to finding common ground.

I cannot change the world holding myself as ‘other’. We are not ‘other’. We are all one. How you are is how I am. We are all connected.

Criticizing, condemning, complaining does nothing other than to create a space between us in which I hold our differences as a barrier to our common ground.

I breathe and give thanks. I am grateful for this speaker phone lady who reminds me that in my crowded mind, judgement reigns. To allow for stillness, I must fill the spaces between us not with disdain, but with love for our shared humanity.

If I want our connection to be heard above the din of a speaker phone on a crowded train, I must clear my thinking of my judgements and move with grace into that space where I heed the call of acceptance. There was no ‘us and them’ on that train. No rude speaker phone lady and all the rest of us sitting in judgement. There was only us. Each and all of us, making our way to where ever we’re going, the best way we know how.

It’s up to me to ensure the path I take to get to where I want to be creates more of what I  want to have in the world; harmony, peace, kindness, joy, love.

Namaste.

.

It comes every year. Predictable. Foreseen. Dependable.

But even in its arrival, there is so much that cannot be taken for granted.

It can come clothed in a white, wooly blanket of snow covering the earth, or as the case here in Calgary this year, it can arrive without fanfare, exposing brown earth and naked trees with the warmth of its arrival.

Today is the first day of spring and no matter what kind of weather blows it in, spring is always welcome.

In its arrival, the promise of April showers and tulips peaking up out of the earth shimmer on the near horizon. In its promise, new life lurks, waiting to push up from beneath fallow fields and the return of robins and geese on the wing.

Today also brings with it a total solar eclipse. A time, according to Pam Younghans at North Point Astrology, for “choosing new options and releasing the old. It is a time for breakthroughs and insights, when we can ride the energies of change into a new future.”

There is something powerful and unnerving about spring. Every year it arrives and every year I feel antsy, unsettled, unfocused.

In years past, I would want to quit my job, sell off all my belongings to take off and travel the world. I would feel a yearning to let go of all that was known and stable in my life to make room for unsettled and unknown possibilities.

I’ve come to recognize that just because spring is pushing at me with its relentless cries to jettison my life and find another, that isn’t what my heart calls me to do.

My heart calls me to settle into myself, to ground myself in the roots of possibility growing up out of the fertile dreams of winter’s slumber.

My heart calls me to breathe deeply into all that I know and am giving birth to through my words, art, doing and being in the world to create all that I want to be and know in the world.

Liz at Be. Love. Live. reminded me today that this is also the day to ‘set my intentions’. In her reminder, I lovingly move into gratitude for all that is apparent in my life today and all that is possible because of my life today.

This is a time to allow dreams to push up from deep within my soul and to clearly state my intent of allowing for magic, mystery and mystical happenings to unfold within and around me.

Catching my breath, pausing for a moment to give thanks and to listen to my heart, I set my intention. I will create a world where peace, love, joy and harmony abound. I will be my loving best and inspire loving kindness all around.

And while the path may not be clear, my intent is true to my heart. And from that heartspace I know, all is possible when I let go of wintery doubts and spring forth into loving creation of the more I want to be and have in the world.

Namaste.

Eight years ago when I started writing over at my first blog, Recover your Joy, I had no idea how powerful a force morning blogging would become in my life.

Since writing my first post, Scooping Up The Shadows on March 10, 2007, much has changed, much has evolved, shifted, opened up, expanded within me and all around me.

It was Mark Kolke at Musings,  who encouraged me to write a post a day. Mark has written a daily blog for even more years than me and suggested I might enjoy the process of sitting down at the page every morning and writing it out. I thought I’d last a few months. I was wrong — which is another thing I’ve learned, don’t believe everything you think. Just because I tell myself I can’t, doesn’t mean it’s true.

In the intervening years since hitting PUBLISH on that first post, I’ve learned a great deal and grown in ways I never could have imagined.

1. I have learned that I am my thoughts. If I want my writing to focus on what inspires, touches, moves me, I must align my thinking with what inspires, touches, moves me.
2. I have learned to always write from my deepest beliefs.  I believe, We are all miracles of life. Life is miraculous. We are all on this earth to live as our highest expression of love. We are here to be the sacred nature of our soul’s desire to express itself through our beauty, truth, holiness and divinity. We are the divine expression of amazing grace.
3. I have learned that my thinking can keep me playing small, or open me up to magnificence. No one can change my thinking except me and the fastest way to get clear on what I’m thinking and where my thinking might be limiting me, is to write it out.
4. I have learned to trust in the Universe. Life is filled with limitless possibilities and I am powerful beyond my wildest imaginings when I trust in the Universe. The Universe is not against me. The Universe just is. Always there, encouraging me to trust in the evolutionary impulse  to evolve and grow and expand and become. To be all that I am when I let go of fearing the Universe is not with me. The Universe is with me. For me. Of me. It is in the best interests of humanity that I shine, that you shine, that we all be our greatest expression of Love in the world.
5. I have learned to always choose Love over fear. Love is the answer. Love always wins. Love is the way. The path. The all of my being present in this moment right now joyfully embracing the rapture of now.
6. I have learned that  being courageous, curious and compassionate is the antidote to living in fear.  Fear will always want to steal my peace of mind. I have the choice to not let it.
7. I have learned that people are amazing. People make the world a better place.
8. I have learned to celebrate the moment. Celebrate the small things and the big things. To live in gratitude and to celebrate the light and the darkness, the silence and the roar, the soft and the hard, the stillness and the craziness swirling all around.
9. And, I have learned I am not alone. That no matter what I am feeling or experiencing, when I express myself from my heart, others reach back and touch me, inside and out, with their willingness to connect, to share, to be part of my journey and make me part of theirs.

All of this and more I have learned from writing a blog every morning (almost) for the past 8 years. Now that’s something to celebrate!

Art Journal Entry
March 8, 2015

Like the sun and rain water the flowers
nurturing them to grow into a beautiful garden
We need joy and pain to find our wings
and blossom into the beauty of our hearts.

Laugh
Cry
Dance
Be Bold

Be joyful in all kinds of weather
and let nature nourish your heart
into a beautiful garden full of love.

As I turned onto Crowchild Trail going south, an ambulance, lights flashing, siren blaring, passed me on the other side of the freeway going north.

I wondered if it was C.C. Were they taking him to the Foothills Hospital on the north side of the river? Should I get off at the next exit and go north? Why wouldn’t they go to the Rockyview, a less than 10 minute drive from our house? At rushhour, traffic is always a slow crawl going over the river to the north side of the city. At least the ambulance could drive in the bus lane.

He hadn’t called me yet to tell me where they were taking him. All I knew was that 10 minutes before he’d called, short of breath and told me he was thinking of calling an ambulance.

“Do it!” I’d exclaimed, hanging up the phone and tossing everything into my bag as I made a hurried exit from the office.

I decided not to follow the ambulance and stick to my plan. Home first. If he hadn’t called, maybe they were still there.

Five minutes later, I drove down our street  and saw the ambulance still in front of our house.

I found C.C. with two EMS techs inside it.

“We’re just trying to get him set-up so we can take him to the Rockyview,”  one of the techs told me as his partner regulated the drip from the IV they’d inserted into his arm.

“What is it?” I asked, trying to keep calm. I didn’t want to cause C.C. any more distress than I knew he was already in. If I was wild and anxious, he’d feel like he needed to comfort me. That wasn’t part of my plan.

“We did an EKG. Heart’s good,” he said. “Sounds like pneumonia.”

And it is.

And now he’s home on bed rest, taking steroids and inhalers and focussing on getting better.

Originally, they were going to keep him in hospital for a couple of days but, because he responded well to the steroid, they’d let him come home. “You’ll get better faster,” one of the nurses said.

That’s my plan. Keep him resting. Keep him quiet. Keep him focussed only on his well-being.

I am grateful.

There are so many people who spend their time criticizing our health care system. Wait-times too long. Staff shortages. General incompetency.

Not my experience.

While we were at the Emergency, C.C. was surrounded by caring, competent and knowledgeable staff. The only time he had to wait was when they wheeled his bed over to the X-ray department and the porter didn’t turn up to bring him back to his cubicle in the Emerg.

C.C., tired of lying all alone in a corridor, got out of bed and started pushing the bed himself. Two techs found him, wobbly and short of breath, and brought him back to his cubicle. “We decided we’d bring him back ourselves,” they told me as they locked the bed into place before wishing him well and leaving.

They didn’t criticize the porters. They didn’t comment on poor care. They simply stepped in and got the job done as they were going off on a break. That late at night, there aren’t as many porters on duty. Perhaps they were all busy in other areas. Porters are not critical care. It didn’t compromise his health — though getting up and pushing it himself might have!

It was a long night and now he is on the mend.

I am grateful.

I’m also grateful for my sister Jackie. She’s the neighbour everyone wants. As soon as she heard C.C. was laid up, she was at our front door, delivering chicken noodle soup, buns and books to read. C.C. and her husband JT share a love of spy/murder mystery novels. C.C.’s all set. 3 new books, yummy food and the flowers I’d bought for the bedroom to cheer him up.

That’s teamwork!

Our health care system may have political and structural issues, but on the ground, at the front lines where people are in distress and needing help. They are on duty, giving their best to save lives and doing whatever it takes to make people better. And that’s what makes a difference.

Namaste.

Thank you Dr. Rogers and all the team at the Emergency at Rockyview and the EMS team. You shine!