Monday, June 28, 2010
Road Work
One of the main streets leading into my neighborhood is undergoing repair.
For the last two or three years, potholes have multiplied in this roadway, opening up after every heavy rain. Every now and then, the road crews would come through and fill the potholes with new asphalt, but with the very next rain those same potholes would open back up and new ones would appear.
Finally, they are doing the job right. They have stripped the entire road down to its base, removing all the old asphalt right down to the roadbed. It’s inconvenient, it’s messy, it’s a big job. But when they have finished laying the new surface, it will be solid, cohesive and smooth. Those old potholes will no longer reappear with every rain.
While I must temporarily adjust my driving habits to avoid this construction area, I am looking forward to the smooth ride to come.
The roadway of my life used to be filled with potholes, even sinkholes, that I was constantly bumping through and falling into: drama addiction, victimhood, fear, worry, not-enoughness. I used to try to fill the potholes any way I could: by overeating, by drinking, by venting and moaning, by telling and retelling my poor-me stories to anyone who would listen. Trouble is, no matter how hard I tried to fill those potholes, they just kept popping back up.
A crisis came along. My son died of an overdose. It was a wake-up call. It was the mother of all potholes and there was no way I could just fill it up and move on. The experience of loss forced me to strip back down to the roadbed, to the very core of me and concentrate on rebuilding the road of my life in a way that would be solid, cohesive and smooth.
I had great tools to work with – tools that helped me to strip away the unstable, unhappy aspects of my life and prepare a solid base on which to build a new, fulfilled, authentic life.
It’s big job and it’s messy. It’s a work in progress. But it is so very worth it.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
The Huge Bounty of a Small, Daily Harvest
It's amazing what 30 minutes in my garden at the end of a hectic day can do for my mood. Being surrounded by green growing plants filled with blooms and fruit fills me with a calm serene energy. Even when it's hot outside, as it is these days, it feels cooler in the garden.
These few minutes spent together as my husband waters and I harvest create a connection we just wouldn't get sitting in front of the TV. There is a rhythm to each of our routines and together our individual rhythms become a kind of dance. We don't speak much, except to comment occasionally about how big the cantaloupes are getting or how much better the tomato plants look now that we've shaded them. The worries of the day may be discussed later, but not now, not here in the garden.
Within the rhythm of our gardening, we connect to the rhythm of the plants and the seasons. We connect to the food we will put on our plates. We engage more deeply in the broader rhythms and cycles of life.
There are many benefits to gardening, but what strikes me this evening is the huge bounty a small, daily harvest represents.
I have just enough lettuce, herbs, carrots, radishes and cherry tomatoes for tonight's salad for two. The larger tomatoes I'll save to make salsa later this week. I'll roast half the bell peppers and eggplants, along with some of the fresh garlic we harvested last week, to accompany our pork tenderloin. The strawberries will be nice with breakfast tomorrow.
The remaining squash, eggplant and peppers will store in the fridge for a week or longer. They will not go to waste, as it will be several days before more of these will be ready to pick again. And when certain plants are producing more than we can use within a few days, I can freeze some away for the future or lavish my excess bounty on family, neighbors and friends.
And so, tonight and every night for months now, I have enjoyed the just enoughness of my small, daily harvest. The pleasure of eating what my husband and I have grown with our own hands. The sure knowledge that there will continue to be just enough - that as soon as I've used up the eggplants and squash picked today, more will be ready to harvest. That a wonderful apple harvest will follow a month or so after the peaches and the oranges will arrive at Christmastime. And all of it will be just enough to fill our needs and allow us to be generous with any surplus.
What if, at the end of each day, I took stock of my whole life this way? Would I learn to appreciate the perfect just enoughness of everything? Would I begin to trust that as one life-crop (a job, relationship or stage of life) slows down, quits producing or dies off completely, the next is ready to bloom and bear fruit? Instead of worrying so much about where my bounty will come from and scurrying to store it away for the future just in case there won't be enough later, perhaps I could simply surrender to the natural rhythm of just enough and the huge bounty of a small, daily harvest.
These few minutes spent together as my husband waters and I harvest create a connection we just wouldn't get sitting in front of the TV. There is a rhythm to each of our routines and together our individual rhythms become a kind of dance. We don't speak much, except to comment occasionally about how big the cantaloupes are getting or how much better the tomato plants look now that we've shaded them. The worries of the day may be discussed later, but not now, not here in the garden.
Within the rhythm of our gardening, we connect to the rhythm of the plants and the seasons. We connect to the food we will put on our plates. We engage more deeply in the broader rhythms and cycles of life.
There are many benefits to gardening, but what strikes me this evening is the huge bounty a small, daily harvest represents.
I have just enough lettuce, herbs, carrots, radishes and cherry tomatoes for tonight's salad for two. The larger tomatoes I'll save to make salsa later this week. I'll roast half the bell peppers and eggplants, along with some of the fresh garlic we harvested last week, to accompany our pork tenderloin. The strawberries will be nice with breakfast tomorrow.
The remaining squash, eggplant and peppers will store in the fridge for a week or longer. They will not go to waste, as it will be several days before more of these will be ready to pick again. And when certain plants are producing more than we can use within a few days, I can freeze some away for the future or lavish my excess bounty on family, neighbors and friends.
And so, tonight and every night for months now, I have enjoyed the just enoughness of my small, daily harvest. The pleasure of eating what my husband and I have grown with our own hands. The sure knowledge that there will continue to be just enough - that as soon as I've used up the eggplants and squash picked today, more will be ready to harvest. That a wonderful apple harvest will follow a month or so after the peaches and the oranges will arrive at Christmastime. And all of it will be just enough to fill our needs and allow us to be generous with any surplus.
What if, at the end of each day, I took stock of my whole life this way? Would I learn to appreciate the perfect just enoughness of everything? Would I begin to trust that as one life-crop (a job, relationship or stage of life) slows down, quits producing or dies off completely, the next is ready to bloom and bear fruit? Instead of worrying so much about where my bounty will come from and scurrying to store it away for the future just in case there won't be enough later, perhaps I could simply surrender to the natural rhythm of just enough and the huge bounty of a small, daily harvest.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
I Weep for the Turtles
The oil spill will undoubtedly affect many creatures of the sea and coastal wetlands. My heart breaks. Been having disturbing turtle dreams - the sea turtle has been a totem energy for me and I weep for the affect this is having on these beautiful creatures. Examiner slide show of turtles affected by spill.
I'm sorry. Please forgive me. I love you. Thank you. (Ho'oponopono prayer)
Donate Life!
Donate Life!
I'm so proud of my son for making the selfless decision to be a live organ donor. Please send prayers for a safe procedure and a swift recovery for both he and his recipient. Surgery is scheduled for June 16.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Sekhmet
Lest you judge me as a heathen or an empty-headed New Age bimbo, or evil, or whatever, let me say that I believe the human mind is too small to conceive of the all-encompassing greatness of the Single Power that rules all. And so we create manifestations and approximations of various aspects of the One that we perceive only in glimmers.
I have a strong connection to that aspect perceived as Sekhmet, and this is a tribute to her.
She is misunderstood as the goddess of destruction, war and pestilence. I have come to know her more clearly as the goddess of the Dark Night, the birther of the new that follows the death of the old, the Light that shines through hearts cracked open by trauma and grief.
I feel the world, humanity, is entering a collective Dark Night of the Soul. But this sacred energy of death and rebirth, by whatever name (the Celtic Babd, India's Kali, Egypt's Sekhmet) must be remembered as having BOTH aspects: death and rebirth.
We fear the death of the old, but it always brings the birth of the new. Today, as so many old systems fail - health care, finance, education, ecology, politics - let us remember that this is a potent time for recreating our world in a stronger, better form.
I call upon Sekhmet to help us rebirth this planet.
A few of the hundred names of Sekhmet:
Lady of the Place of the Beginning of Time
Flaming One
Pure One
Awakener
Opener of Ways
Lady of Transformation
Enlightener
Empowerer
Destroyer by Fire
Wanderer in the Wastes
Great One of Healing
Winged One
Powerful of Heart
The Aware
The One Who Holds Back the Darkness
The Beautiful Light
Beloved Teacher
Mother of the Gods
Friday, April 2, 2010
There's a Reason it's Called "Good" Friday
(This was first published on Good Friday last year at Open to Hope)
I’ve been thinking about the Easter story as a metaphor for my own journey through grief. I’ve been thinking about Good Friday and the days leading up to it, because in reality that’s where the Easter story begins. It begins with the dark night of the soul. It begins with a death.
In my life, the darkness wound through years of watching helplessly as my son Cameron struggled with addiction and, at times, homelessness. The darkness only deepened with his death by overdose in the county jail on May 3, 2004.
As in the Bible’s story of Jesus’ death, there seemed to be a great deal of betrayal involved. I felt that I had betrayed my son by not doing enough to save him from his addiction. I felt that he had betrayed himself, betrayed his potential, by using drugs. I felt the system had betrayed us all by choosing to punish substance abusers rather than rehabilitating them and, especially, by allowing addicts to keep using drugs while in custody.
I had often wondered how Mary must have felt, losing her son Jesus in that horrific way. When my son died, I felt like I had died, too. I felt a huge unmovable weight, like the boulder that sealed Jesus’ tomb, lying heavy in my heart. My world was shattered and I had no idea how to put it back together again. I couldn’t see, in those first months of despair, the amazing promise of the Easter to come.
Unlike the boulder that sealed Jesus’ tomb, the boulder in my heart was not moved so quickly and easily. I had to chip away at it slowly and painfully, sometimes with my bare hands. Yet as with Jesus’ boulder, I had help from grace and angels in moving mine.
Almost from the moment of Cameron’s death, synchronicities started guiding me toward healing and awakening. Over a two-year period, I was guided to one person after another who could help me to let go of the past and reclaim a joyful future. Over that same two-year period, I gathered the scattered pieces of my heart and myself and put them back together again, throwing out much of what was no longer useful.
In the story of my own resurrection, there is no one magical moment when the sun rose, the Earth rumbled, and the guards stared dumbfounded at an empty tomb. No, my own personal Easter was more like the slowly spreading glow of sunrise after months of Antarctic winter night. The sun’s light and warmth were at first dim memory, then the faintest glow of fragile hope, and finally the full-blown light and warmth of rediscovering love and joy and peace in my once-shattered heart.
Near the beginning of A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle writes about how often great loss precedes an awakening. And I’ve heard it said that without Judas there could have been no resurrection.
In the online Wikipedia, one definition of the dark night is “the letting go of one’s ego as it holds back the psyche, thus making room for some form of transformation.” In other words, it’s a chance for the small self to get out of the way of the Higher Self. It is the betrayals (real or imagined) and the losses in our lives that challenge us to grow into someone better than we are now — into who we were born to be.
There’s a reason it’s called “Good” Friday. Within our greatest losses, our greatest gifts await discovery. Even in the darkest night of the soul, the sun waits to rise again.
Copyright 2009, Claire M. Perkins. All Rights Reserved.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Wanna Get Lucky?
Tonight I hosted my monthly Wonderful Wednesday group and the theme for the night was Luck. Everybody got to do a collage but me :-( so I decided to do a quick one here!
The left-brain material for the workshop came from a book called The Luck Factor by Dr. Richard Wiseman (miramax books, 2003). He did some research on what makes the difference between being "lucky" and "unlucky" and he came up with 4 main principles: maximizing chance opportunities (or Networking, as I've called it here), listening to your lucky hunches (Intuition), expecting good fortune (Optimism), and turning bad luck into good (Alchemy).
So after all the left brain information, I had to get everybody into right brain mode with an art activity. We created 4 leaf clover collages with images to represent each of the 4 luck principles. It was awesome to see everyone in the group pick such different kinds of images. Each person's 4 leaf clover became a powerful message to them about how to create more luck in their lives.
How can you use these 4 principles to create luck?
Networking: The more people you meet and the more open you are to new information, the more likely you are to catch a lucky break. If you meet 20 new people a week, at least one of them is bound to be able to do something positive for you. So get out and mingle! Talk to strangers in waiting rooms, go to parties, attend networking events. And be open to the connections that come your way.
Intuition: Your intuition often knows more than the "facts of the matter" show. Don't ignore the rational evidence, but give it a boost by tuning into your gut. You can increase your intuitive abilities by practicing meditation or other activities that quiet the mind.
Optimism: When you expect good things to happen, they do! If you are a student of the Law of Attraction, you already know this. Focusing on the future with positive expectations draws positive results to you. It also makes your "now" happier when you can replace fear and worry with positive, happy thoughts.
Alchemy: When something unfortunate does happen, you'll feel a lot luckier if you look for the bright side of the situation. No matter what has happened, it probably could have been worse. Think of the impact of the unfortunate event in the bigger scheme of things. Will it matter as much 1 year from now? 5 years from now? At the very least, you can learn from what happened. Turning the lead into gold as often as possible will ensure fewer misfortunes and increased good luck.
I highly recommend Dr. Wiseman's book, The Luck Factor. It's a fascinating read full of great advice for anyone looking to get lucky. Master these 4 skills and your luck is bound to improve!
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