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Power Tool For Change #4 – “PRAYER”

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I have a friend who is in the hospital having surgery today.

I am praying for him, his physicians and his family.

When I chose this photograph to complement my writing today, I did it because of the sense of REACH in the sculpture.

Her neck is yearning toward distant pastures..

But is that really prayer?

Is it the action of going outside ourselves for something?

I’m just asking, here, because it’s interesting territory and I watch myself continually going elsewhere for the blessings of GRACE.

I do know from my own experience, that we, humans, are not the be-all-end-all.

We think we are and that is dangerous at best.

For my friend, I want legions of angels and archangels whispering in the ears of his weary doctors and all the detritus of the mundane world OUT of that room as he rests in a state of uncomplicated willingness to allow the invasion happening to him.

I pray for his ease of recovery and for the results he desires to be forthcoming.

Is this life-experience all our own illusion?

I don’t really know.

What I do know is that I need help along this path.

And when I am pure of heart (meaning asking from a non-ego position), assistance is there for me.

It often comes in a decidedly different costume than I had imagined.

But with time on it, I see that my own intelligence could carry me only so far and the gift of it was a few steps further.

Like the health challenges I swim in these days..

Who would’ve thought up this screwy plan to make me stop and undertake this graduate course in refining my life into a package authentically reflective of me?

And yet.. my prayers have always centered around the desire to BECOME REAL.

So, who’s to know?

Today, I pray for peace and healing for my friend.

Whatever that looks like.

Power Tool For Change #3 – “TRIBE”

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My friends are my gold.

The fact that these particular humans are in my sphere is my greatest achievement.

I invite people into my life for a variety of reasons but the foundation is respect.

Oh yeah.. and the fact I don’t have to (or want to) edit myself with them.

Over this past week as I moved, they have shown up for me in ways that have opened my heart multi-fold.

Cleaning, restaurant-going, listening, driving, dog walking, cleaning some more, packing, laughing, crying..the whole shebang.

I ask myself: “What did I do to deserve this wealth?”

The answer seems to be that I BECAME REAL.

Only then could they find me.

Only then could I recognize them.

When you choose change or it just happens willy-nilly without invitation, make darn sure you don’t do it alone.

My tribe is patient with me.

They know that asking for help is tough for me.

But they keep telling me that f I don’t get the hang of it soon, we ALL lose.

Funny, the adage that it is really the GIVER of service who receives the most in return seems to be spot on..

I don’t know.. the coffers of my heart are darn nigh spilling over..

Power Tool For Change #2- “THE VACUUM”

Within the intensity of this schoolroom of moving to a new home, I am tested and thrown to my knees (literally).

Last night, as I got up to let my dog out, I fell.

Nothing damaged and I am fine but I speak with more authority this morning as I talk about what needs to happen in my life to keep living, essentially.

Not just that, but to thrive while doing so.

Today, we’ll visit THE VACUUM.

Here’s a story:

A good friend is smack in the middle of a divorce following years of what seemed a solid and vital partnership.

She has good taste and found herself test driving a yellow mercedes convertible.

Every cell in her body was thanking her for the wind in her hair and the identity-enhancement of the whole thing..

It was blessed peace to be transported to something ELSE..

The point here, is that the filling up and shifting into anything OTHER THAN the subject at hand will turn around and bite you.

If my wise friend had allowed herself to write a check for that yellow panacea, she’d be LESS THAN, not MORE.

She would have filled her very emptiness with an attention-grabbing experience that would have left her soul dry and hungry at some point.

Closer to home, in my own personal experience, my nervous system is overloaded with the worry and concern regarding the progression of the weakness in my body.

An antidote to the overload is an emptying out of EVERYTHING THAT IS NOT SERVING ME IN SOME WAY.

Creating a vacuum where there once was STUFF and TIRED OUT PRACTICES and ANNOYING PILES OF UNDONE TASKS and MEDICATIONS TAKEN OUT OF FEAR AND NOT PROOF OF EFFICACY and CLOTHES WITH BUTTONS I CAN NO LONGER FASTEN and TOLERATIONS OF ALL COLORS AND SHAPES which I am no longer willing or able to address.

I MUST HAVE ROOM!

Funny, how downsizing allows a manageable peek into what is stealing energy.

You take what works and leave the rest.

Turns out, I actually need very little.

PEACE OF MIND is my goal as the efforts toward healing cannot happen in any other garden, no matter how sexy or fast or yellow.

How much can you take away before you lose the essence of a thing?

The power is in the laying down of what used to be called ‘The American Dream’ and the active waiting for what wants to be taken up.

This is hard-going, this segueing into the truth of authentic need and desire.

It looks funny and awkward to others and may be unpopular at best.

But people will watch you out of the corner of their eye and see the shift you are making toward a very palpable peace.

Shake It Up

_________________________

Forever enchanted with new horizons, I tend toward what might look like a life steeped in insecurity.

I often hanker after a hundred year-old porch swing on a veranda attached to a family-held estate with kids playing bad clarinet and an old yellow lab keeping my feet warm.

But that’s another life….

Certainly not this one.

Recently, I completed a seminar in public speaking for professionals.

One of my homework assignments included creating a 7 minute talk which would be videotaped.

The topic I chose was CHANGE.

Not just change, but how to thrive (or just be ok) within it.

This past month has brought the sale of my home, two weeks to find a new place to live, packing and the physical and emotional tumult that goes along with all that multiplied by 10 as my nervous system tried to keep it’s fragile boundaries intact.

I was so out of it that I totally forgot my own advice I had presented in the seminar.

For the next few days here, on my blog, I’d like to take some time to remind myself and share with you some of the key points I came up with regarding THRIVING IN THE FACE OF CHANGE.

The first of these I call POINT OF VIEW.

Here’s an example:

Cathy moves into a little doll’s house of an apartment.

She chooses it because it is filled with light and it feels like a safe retreat for her to do some needed healing.

In her health challenge, the value system she holds keeps changing.

Right now, her need for light and security and an energetic sense of support prompt the choice of this postage stamp sized home.

Here, she sits amidst boxes and gritty floors from the movers and no dog door for the chihuahua, Olivia, and passageways only just accommodating her walker.

This is a great place but she is mired in self-doubt in her exhaustion.

Possibility is a far-away country at this point.

She is challenged and starts to spiral down.. and down..

But WAIT!

Hold on a second, here.

Wasn’t there hope and inspiration and clarity and an eagerness to meet the unfamiliarity of the place just a day or two ago?

And isn’t she a resilient and creative human being intent on adventure and opening to new territory?

And isn’t there light pouring through the bay window and a dog curled at her back; peaceful in the midst of all this chaos?

I’m not professing any pithy new age aphorisms that leave one cold and empty of a good reality check.

Shifting ones’ point of view is extremely good medicine if you happen to find living well an attractive concept.

Can’t walk today? Lost your job? Burned the dinner?

Cry a bit if you must then remember all we can count on is change and enjoy the time in
between.

It is at times like these that I hobble to the mirror and put on my favorite pink lipstick, blot my lips and begin again..

Usually works every time.

I’m pretty sure tomorrow is in the not too distant future.

It’s all in your point of view..

Power vs. Force

________________________

I am a very poor dog trainer.

Olivia is confused.

She loves me and wants to protect me from all harm.

Her giant spirit in a little, little package pulls out all the warrior paraphernalia when men approach my door.

If the man wears a cap.. forget it.

Yesterday, David came by.

I met him on my first trip to New Mexico in 1989.

He loves rocks and fossils and is the perfect roadside geology man.

If dinosaur bones get you all atwitter.. he’s your guy.

We began our 20 year friendship watching the world with witness-glasses and enjoying an easy commentary together.

We still do that witnessing thing and still enjoy one another in a ‘chosen family’ sort of way.

He is a painter. Has always gone out into the wilds and moved the pleasure of his intimate connection with nature from his heart to the canvas.

Yesterday he brought me a few paintings to see.

They were spare and and ‘haiku-esque.’

So accomplished in the removal of EVERYTHING non-essential.

The two of us had not seen one another in quite awhile.

So the movement within us both was apparent.

He is far less than I remember.

I am emptying out as well.

What I SAW yesterday, was a man approaching my door.

My friend.

He looked quite the same.

But he was less.

Olivia sensed him and knew he was good.

I had prepared him to be patient as I had my dog at the door, on the lead and ready to make the corrections I am learning to train her away from barking and nipping at strangers.

She wagged and squeaked and wriggled as I opened the door.

No barking…

She had no need or desire to protect me from this person.

I just stood there as he came in and watched the two of them enjoy the recognition of a mutual ’something-or-otherness.’

My sense is that she noticed his pure heart, emptiness and lack of type A ‘I want a particular outcome and I’ll do anything to get it’ kind of human tactic (read: Cathy in the dog training process).

He has POWER in this instance.  A quiet and undefended approach.

I think I see that where she is concerned, I am mistakenly going after FORCE.

Little jerk here, a push-away there..

YUK..

Something about this equation is wrong.

Today, I am going to try to translate what I learned from their interaction into my dealings with my health and well-being.

Instead of attempting to force feed my body with health enhancing activities by rote, I will court spaciousness.

I will let that innate thing come forward without the costuming of effort.

Those clothes are worn and tattered anyway.

Familiar at best, but threadbare and spent.

I am tired and bored today with the ever-so-purposeful-and-incessant-hand-on-the-tiller navigation of life.

The intelligence of emptiness .

This is intriguing territory to me.

Finding Home

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COMING HOME

by Mary Oliver

When we’re driving, in the dark,
on the long road
to Provincetown, which lies empty
for miles, when we’re weary,
when the buildings
and the scrub pines lose
their familiar look,
I imagine us rising
from the speeding car,
I imagine us seeing
everything from another place — the top
of one of the pale dunes
or the deep and nameless
fields of the sea —
and what we see is the world
that cannot cherish us
but which we cherish,
and what we see is our life
moving like that,
along the dark edges
of everything — the headlights
like lanterns
sweeping the blackness —
believing in a thousand
fragile and unprovable things,
looking out for sorrow,
slowing down for happiness,
making all the right turns
right down to the thumping
barriers to the sea,
the swirling waves,
the narrow streets, the houses,
the past, the future,
the doorway that belongs
to you and me.

*****

I found my new home yesterday..

It is small.

And so bright with SUN!!

And quiet.

My small loveseat covered in white linen will sit in the bay window.

There is a big brick porch.

With chairs and an umbrella.

The walls are smooth plaster.

And the floor is sealed earth.

My dog has grasses and stones and trees to explore.

Without me. On her own.

The kitchen holds only one.

Or two, if you really like each other.

I feel safe there.

It has a presence I recognize and trust.

I can heal there.

I will heal there.

Pressure

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Lately, my sleep pattern is broken into 3-4 segments during the night.

I seem to wake alert, and unable to soften into sleep again, I read.

In the deep of last night I stumbled upon a story about a process in which after cremation, a person’s ashes could be made into a diamond.

One could certainly see this as a tawdry gimmick unworthy of attention.

But it got mine..

The metaphor was breathtakingly overt.

If enough pressure is exerted on a bunch of carbon-based material, alchemy shows up at the door and VOILA! We have a glittering, reflective gem you can take anywhere.

I don’t mean to make light of this technology.

There is a part of me that is completely blown away by this and I see that I make it a bit trivial because it moved me so much.

On the one hand, this idea of purposely exerting pressure upon the fly away ashes of a person and coming up with a diamond seems so right..

It is a demonstration in form of what I feel happening inside myself dealing with this health challenge.

I continue to rise each morning and have an intimate conversation with a body that is stiff and weak and getting more so.

I tell her, moment by moment, that we have it in us to make the next move, with grace even, if we’re lucky.

And when we don’t, we don’t.

We stop and recalibrate.

Eat or rest or stretch or take a pill.

And then do it all over again the next hour or day.

A constant pressure toward what?

Moving forward toward life, whatever that looks like, is what I do.

I am grateful I already know my ‘diamondness’ and don’t need the ring.

Of course, I WOULD BE THE RING so the point is moot..

Inherit the Wind

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I watched an old Spencer Tracy film last night called “INHERIT THE WIND.”

From the Bible: Proverbs
11:29 “He that troubleth his own house shall INHERIT THE WIND: and the fool shall be servant to the wise of heart.”

The theme was Evolutionism and Creationism.

I find it interesting to watch old films take on big ideas..

There is a void of the smokescreen of sophistication and we are able to see clearly and laugh at the innocence of it all.

Because NOW WE KNOW BETTER what our forefathers grappled and groped to discover.

Newness is messy.

And inconvenient.

Because we are a species which LOVES TO KNOW WHAT WE KNOW…

And PLEASE don’t have the audacity to tell us different!

Have we actually come that far from the 1960’s film spouting fundamental bible-thumping vs. heretical free thinking?

I have a lot of people in my life who care deeply for me and are rooting for my healing.

I honestly can not imagine this gritty road without the solace of their support.

My particular healing choices seem to push people’s buttons.

I sense there is the occasional backstory of: “Why can’t she just stick with western medicine?”

Or this: “Does she have to keep skipping around from one healing mode to another? Why not just pick one and stick with it?”

Or: “Her walking seems to be getting worse. She has THAT kind of MS where there is no cure. Oh dear..”

Don’t get me wrong.. I am not in judgement here.

Just noticing that there are comfort zones we prefer to stay within.

Confines that help us relax into complacency, myself included.

The fact is that we DON’T know too much.

We like to think we do because it feels good.

Religions are formed around contemporary cultural valium pills; spirituality, health and politics to name a few.

Really, do things have any chance for change if we are not DIRECTLY AFFECTED by them?

If your leg stops doing what you want it to do, previously held beliefs may be dropped in favor of possibility.

If water stops coming out of the faucet, you can bet you’d leave your complacency about the earth’s precious resources at the corner.

The thing I have come to know is the power of the very state of duality we all share on this planet.

When I am FORCED outside my comfort zone, I see that I love life so much that I kick and scratch my way toward any threads that light up for me indicating the possibility of someTHING outside my sphere of knowledge that will give me more of that thing called LIFE.

THIS IS UNTIDY TERRITORY.

And because I am putting myself first for once in my life, I have absolutely NO APOLOGIES for any mess which ensues.

The Ride

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Havin’ the ride of my life over here..

I sold my home and need to find a place to live before the end of the month, pack and move and stay OK in the midst of it all..

Funny, how part of me thrives on this terrain; unpredictable and full of all possibility.

I see that life opens up so purposefully when I get out of the way.

My attachments are few as I traverse this MS landscape.

Things once cherished drop away making way for the new, unknown, untried.

My ’stuff’ holds no elan.

I decided to have a big ‘Cathy’s Giveaway’ sale instead of expending the energy to have people tromping through my home in a moving sale.

I’ve had ssssssssoooooooo much support over the last few years that it will feel great to just say: “I want you to have this.”

The energetic difference between a desperate and tightly held fist and a soft and openly generous one is a garden I want to tend.

It interests me the things I am choosing to keep around me; favorite mugs I love the feel of in my morning rituals, my art, shells and rocks, a branch covered in white holiday lights I use all year, my grandmother’s photo at age 20.

Simple things. Beautiful things. Heart things.

‘Stuff’, BE GONE!!!!

I want clean lines.

Nothing to obstruct my gaze.

Space, light and a bit of substance.

This will be my new estate.

My new place TO BE.

To BECOME… and keep becoming the woman just now drying her wings.

She needs sun and air and horizons to seek.

To expose her underbelly to the gleam off the lake…

Learning To Speak

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I just finished up my 2-day intensive on PUBLIC SPEAKING FOR PROFESSIONALS.

I jumped at the chance to do this as I actually get a great deal of pleasure speaking to groups of people.

But I want to know how to do this WELL so I don’t waste peoples’ time.

It was an impressively conducted, jam-packed event peopled with interesting and inspiring folks.

I’ll write more on this but today, as I recover a bit, I am struck by how HEALTHY I feel!

Tired but alive, engaged and curious as to the pleasure I took in using ‘life’ muscles I had all but forgotten.

It’s been a couple years of reclusion, seclusion and ‘wrap-yourself-up-in-a-blanket’ to conserve energy for the trip to the kitchen or desk..

Fully out in the world for the past two days, I remember myself as someone who has energy enough to care for herself AND some left over!!!!!!!!!

I am reclaiming health.

The crucial medication being CONNECTION.

I’ve taken time to reconnect with myself and because of those choices I now have it in me to reintroduce myself to the world.

Often, these choices have proved unpopular.

But wait! I am voting for myself, now.

SPEAK FIRST FOR THYSELF.

Only then, turn to your neighbor.

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