Caring for an Angel II

I read Eve Ensler to you as you drift in and out of conscious awareness, your burgeoning mind eager to sleep.  You nodded yes.  Your awareness drifts from present and then moves swiftly to a place of peace, of newness, of rebirth.

I adjust pillows; I rub your hands and feet, still perfectly manicured bright red.  Your skin is clear and bright, almost glowing, lips still pink and full.  You open your eyes as I sing Amazing Grace along to the CD playing in the corner.

I wish you could go outside to your garden.  I know that is where I would want to be.  In the garden that I created from nothing.  As you have.  This creation that will go on and on.  Life is funny like that in the garden.  Plants fruit, set seed, die and surprise us next spring as they grace us with their beauty once again.

My grandmother’s garden flourished years after she had stopped planting and moved on from her frail body.  I saw tomatoes bursting forth through years of weeds, along with petunias and her favorite snapdragons of my childhood, reseeding each year as if she secretly came in the night while I was sleeping and snuck her favorite flowers into the empty spaces of her once prized garden.

Grandma, I see you stooped over in your housedress, your largess that I always loved to snuggle up to in the summer cottage’s feather beds of my youth.  They now make cardboard cutouts of that same pose and sell them in garden centers.  Your wide, bent over fanny displaying the garden’s name, Carol’s Garden or the Garden of Eden.

Memories are held tightly in the garden, of grandma teaching me how to plant and water, and the picture of my small son squatting between tomato plants, almost hidden, snacking on a ripe fruit he snatched off the plant, juice dripping down his chin.

I know you have these memories, too, my friend and I wish you could spend your last hours in the sun drenched fall garden.  To breathe in the scent of autumn, the leaves browning, the last tomato being harvested off of yellowing plants.  This is my own selfish wish for you.

I hope you feel my presence as you drift.  I rub your feet, place socks on them as they are now chilled.  It’s all I can do and I hope it is enough.  The gift of presence of spirit communing with another spirit.

I am grateful for these last hours.  The details of the hours jump out, normally hidden from our unnoticing healthy world, which we overlook.  The quiet knowing of the dogs, usually hyped up, barking, jumping on everyone, now laying nearby, protecting you as you make your way through this passageway only you can maneuver.  But they guard that invisible pathway.  They know.

A blue, clay cross lays beneath your right hand.  And you dream, asleep like a newborn.  Growth is happening during this slumber and I must believe that your sleep is the food needed as you travel to your next destination, manifesting out of this world into the next.  This requires great energy and so you need rest, my dear angel.  Even angels need rest.  You have much to do very soon.  Everything not possible in this life is all the more possible in the next.  And so I watch you, taking in the unknown energies and wisdom of these hours, which will guide my next moves.  And I am grateful, feeling a sweet peace washing over me, full of love and full of hope.

My Wish for 2012

First and foremost,  my wish is peace for all - peace of mind, peace of spirit, peace in love and hate, peace in beginnings and endings.  It is a time of endings - a year;  a life on this earth for some, a spiritual life for others.

I saw an end to my store, friendships that had run their course, run out of road.  I saw an end to old thought patterns that do not serve me any longer.  Some revisited me, if only in dreams and some revisited in body or spirit.  Maybe to remind me of the importance they played in my life at one time.  Did I look at them from angles never seen before?  Yes.  Was their pain revisited?  Heck yes.  but there was also the love and gratitude that was once there and still is in some way.

Then I placed them lovingly in my deepest memory.  Some may never again come to call but they color my life and are a part of who I was and who I am becoming.  Some will call again and may be unrecognizable from my new perspective and may share my space once again.  So I say to them all;  I love you and thank you and send you on your own way.

This is also a time of beginnings.  While some were on their way out, others were entering.  I give thanks to all who blessed me with their presence this year.  To you, join me on my next journey!

If there is an unease as you move forward into the new year, embrace the transitional jitters as difficult as it might be.  It is here whether you like it or not.  Give it the space and love it desires and deserves and let it expand and grow into you..  I am right there, too, on that precipice, looking out onto so many possibilities, seen and unseen, eyes and heart wide open.  What an exciting moment to be present within!

If I can just love myself as much as I love those around me, it will spread its branches and support all. I come in contact with.  And if that love can assist those who are in greater turmoil, support them on their journey, then my wish is complete.

I say goodbye and hello in love as we step into the newness that lies ahead, known and unknown.  this is my wish to myself and to all.  Peace, prosperity, health, joy, fulfillment, laughter and love in 2012.  Thank you to all who have watched over me in body and in spirit.

This is the end of our worlds as we know them.  I'm excited.  I hope you are too!

All is Done....And All is New

Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity. -- T.S. Eliot

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.  -- T.S. Eliot

My personal meditation on the decision to transform Baubo’s Garden
It is done. It is complete. You are safe, sound, whole, alive. A weight has been lifted. You are warm and whole again.

So, begin again. Goddesses rejoice. Hear their laughter as they surround you. Lead the way to your destiny, your fate. Abundance, laughter, joy, rapture. Feel it. Be it. Be one. Let life flow beside you. Drift in peace knowing you are okay.

Using metaphors for life, change was the long difficult pregnancy. I labored and labored and birthed the new model of me. I persevered till the end, and the beginning. I have been set free to fly to new places, forage like a honey bee searching for the pollen of life to take back to the hive (within) and create the sweet honey nectar of my life; and then to share that sweetness. Forgive my mixed metaphor, but I come from a background of horticulture, where life cycles are key and gardening relates so much to our lives.

What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.-- T. S. Eliot

You know when you need to move. Your body tells you. Your soul tells you. Some years back, I stopped hearing the music, refused to listen to it for over a year. I am a musician and I was burned out. To me, music is the juice that flows through me, charges me, makes me vibrant. I lost that music of my soul for a time, while life spiraled around me.
It is as T.S. Elliot explains, “It is music heard so deeply that it is not heard at all, but you are the music while the music lasts.”

That is being in the moment, when all is right with your world; everything is aligned; you are at peace; you are creating. This is what I want next – to create that peace; that in just being, it transcends beyond you, to all you come in contact with; to help provide a space, an idea, a peaceful, safe place where others can find their own music or nectar within themselves. That is the task at hand.

The Gnostic way of knowing is feminine wisdom. It is insight, intuition, the process of knowing oneself. To know oneself at the deepest level is to also know God, or your higher power, or whatever, however you understand if for yourself.

I did some free writing last December and wrote that we must align our core essence and then work outwards from it. Clear the core of who you are, shine it up and it will glow outwards. Hearts Within – Love Without.

Let us join on this journey of discovery, hope, love and charity, hand in hand, upward and onward…

Oh, the Quiet of Mother Nature

Okay, who loves it when the snow first falls and all the noise of the world is buffered under a cover of fluffy snow?  Me! 

Even driving home in first night of the Blizzard of 2011 in Chicago, at midnight, after attending a spectacular, intimate Shelby Lynne concert, when there was few souls brave enough to tackle the roads; even after the stress of finding out that my son had arrived at the venue with no gas in the car, the quiet was deafening.  In a wonderful way.

In the white quiet, with the roads to ourself, blanketed in a snowfall, my stress lessened, my ears perked up to listen to the wind, the snow falling.  We left the radio off, we said nothing on our drive home.  Peace.

And the next morning, I woke to that peacefulness.  Unfortunately, it was quickly dashed as the roars of the snow blowers began.  And the scraping of the shovels on the pavement.  Mother Nature had decided it was time for everyone to stop and be still.  The schools were closed, businesses were closed, people were given a day off from the chaos of our too hectic worlds. 

And that appeared to be too much to take for some people.  The quiet for too long.  The need to be in contact all the time, engaged in human interaction. The frantic rush to clear the sidewalks, driveways and roads.  For what?  No one was going anywhere that day.  But the words I saw on Facebook and twitter were words of people who didn't know what to do with a time out from life.  Did they not realize that Mother Nature had given us this gift?

Or maybe it was a warning.  Slow down, enjoy life.  I saw it as both.  A gift of a couple of hours in the morning to listen to the quiet, to contemplate life and all it really has to offer without asking much in return.  I also saw it as a warning.  That we are messing with dear old Mom Nature and she is protecting her dear earth by blanketing it's wounds in a soft covering of snow.  Next time she might not be so "giving".  Unheeded warnings lead to larger and larger warnings.  Taps on the shoulder become bops to the head.  Life will make itself known to us regardless of whether we are listening or not.  We WILL listen at some point.

So, thank you, Ms. Nature.  For a short moment to pause, reflect and revel in the beauty you have created for us.

(My boys and I got outside to clear the snow as others were heading off to bed.  We played all day! )