Divine Present - Taste of the Past

MMMMummmmmmwanmmmmummynummy. I truly suck at living in the moment. Voice over of the self-help guru that lives in the cave that is my head . . . "so recall a time when you were good at it, what worked for you". Okay, so I suck at being a self-help guru too, cuz isn't that a question that begs you to be in the PAST? Whatever. This started out to be a simple bowing down at the altar of my mother's cookie bars, back to it.

It didn't occur to me until about a year ago to figure out how to recreate the cookie bars of my childhood. The ones we just CRAVED and you couldn't walk by the pan without slicing just a sliver. They are just the recipe for the tollhouse cookies off the chocolate chip bag, but instead of cookies, you put the dough in the pan, sprinkle the chips on TOP and coat the whole mess with some kind of brown sugar meringue concoction that gets brown and melts in your mouth in a sugary haze mixed with the salty, underbaked squish of the cookie part with the chips just being so darn chippy! Good lord. (Excuse me while I take another bite).

The intro course for my on-hiatus Masters was on time.  I loved exploring the idea of time as just that - a conceptual framework that we constructed on top of the natural world and the limited ways in which we experience her wonders. I can just barely grasp this. Barely being generous. Closest I come is when that bite of cookie bar connects me entirely to the present moment of sensual experience and to that same moment of my child self all at once. Mmmmm. Just one more little sliver.

Confessions of A Virgo Control Freak

I have 13,852 photographs in iPhoto at the moment. Some I've uploaded to Flickr. A bunch I have sitting in various files on my desktop 'in transit' between iPhoto's own private Idaho file format, Photoshop, and the rest of the world. And then there is my thumb drive. 16 gig of what amounts to a big box of pictures in the hall that you throw stuff in every time you walk by. Faced with little mountains of laundry, piles of tax information, two clients awaiting some sort of coherent response from me and even an expectant and hopeful assortment of art supplies, chubby toddler arms raised in the air, "up? up?", what do I do? What any self-respecting Virgo Control Freak would do. Spend seven hours organizing my pictures.

Is it just a little sick how good that makes me feel? Haven't put a DENT in it mind you, but I key worded a year's worth, categorized and de-duplicated the mess on my thumbdrive and backed up my iPhoto library to my external hard drive. And unearthed a few of my favorites in the process.
"Dear Mr./Ms. IRS agent. I couldn't file my taxes this year due to procrastination. But here is a lovely shot of some beans I took at a farmer's market in Washington last summer. Feel free to count them."

Journaling The InBetween Step 2

I was awakened this morning by a rumbling anxiety in 'my tumbly', as Pooh would say. One I know all too well. Thankfully, a quiet voice in my head said, "you know what to do, you can write your way through this". . . to someplace inbetween.

I pay attention to what the fear is about. Making money. The process and pressure of finding 'real' work. Searches, applications, marketing, interviews, proposals, rejection, NETWORKING, bleah. It definitely feels like the masculine voice nagging at me. I start on that side of my journal. Let it unfurl and flap around a bit...

 

"There has to be something other than the 'old way' doesn't there? Of course there is, but I don't know if I am capable of following the 'new way' to any kind of success..." I circle around to shedding the fear relationship with money. No good is coming of that in the world! Next question. "So what might it look like to 'grab the tiger by the tail' and pull toward me the work that will give me all that I need?" I write in an inward spiral and arrive at my feminine voice. It's relationships stupid, and what is right in front of you. Okay, so I talked nicer to myself, but that is the gist of it. My feminine voice is tired of my bouts with self doubt. "So what is right in front of me?"

I switch to the feminine side of my journal. Turns out I have about 18 amazing opportunities and relationships right in front of me. Where they will lead, I am excited to see. I just hope I don't have to fill out an application.

Moments of Madness: She & Him

First in the Moments of Madness series. Remember Zooey Deschanel singing in the shower on Elf? What an amazing voice! She is now part of a duo She & Him. Here her retro resonant tone rubs up against decidedly dark visuals in this video of "Why Do You Let Me Stay Here".

Tell me what you think!

And the winner is...

Marilyn! She officially wins the StoryKeeper and signed copy of Christina Baldwin's "StoryCatcher". Congratulations Marilyn, and thank you for sharing your story.

I feel like the true winner. Everyone who showed up so beautifully put honey in my heart. The contest is over, but the storyspace is still open. See the post below and peruse the heart-full comments, then tell us your story. Who put honey in your heart?

Two Love Doves Stuck in a Tree

In my last post I invited you to tell a story about who put honey in your heart. I'm ready to tell a bit of mine.

The purest, sweetest honey in my heart comes from what I heard called by a woman eulogizing her mother today, the "silent grace passed from mother to daughter". I know now that I am grown up that not every girl is able to get this from her own mother. And now that I'm grown up I understand that this honeypot of the 'sacred feminine' is not only bottomless, but is also without sides. It doesn't have to come from your own mother. This honey just seeps out to fill any available container. Any available container.

I am blessed with a mother so abundantly full of rich, sticky, honey that those who need some seem to find her. They are my 'adopted' sisters and brothers all over the world. Michelle, and Marianne and Hafsat to name just a few. And most remarkably, I can see the honey flowing into and through my own daughter as it shows up in such interesting and awe inspiring ways. I am most struck today by the ways in which she gives back to me the best in myself.

This photograph is of one of the valentines she gave to my husband and me. With her permission I am sharing it with you. I didn't ask her what it meant to her, the poem she wrote. Yet.

Two love doves stuck in a tree,

if one were to fall out all would be lost.

What it brings up in me has a few layers, I think. The first responds to whatever fear she may be expressing. Mama bears protect their cubs, right? "Oh sweetie, nothing to worry about. Daddy and I will always be together." A promise I strive for, and believe to be true (but avoid overtly making nonetheless). And then I am thunderstruck by the powerful beauty and truth-for-me inviting exploration expressed so simply by a child of eleven. My child. My child, the artist. 

Part of  my truth. If one falls out of the tree, out of love, out of life perhaps, all that you know is lost. Everything is changed by it. 

Stuck in a tree. I was reading in the Oct 2008 issue of The Sun, an article by David Grossman about the stuckness of the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians. He is able to truly empathize with the humanity and love-centeredness of the people, the families, on each side. What I found to be tragic is the difficulty he witnesses in changing the minds of the people, who are used to the stuckness. People who know how to function in war, and know who they are as misunderstood, oppressed, occupied and people who are used to living with the kind of fear every day I will probably never need to face, even for a minute. Two love doves. Two groups of people who know great love. Stuck in a tree.

If one falls out, of being stuck in the tree. Instead of lost, what else might there be?