THE RIDDLING QUESTION

"Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?"

~ Rumi ~

We may not be who we think we are.

Our thoughts can be deceiving.

So who are we then?

Why the riddling feeling question?

It's not graspable by the quantitative mind.

Become still, 

Get quiet,

Drop all the stories and the worries and the stressful fretting.

Drop your attachments.

Drop your history.

Drop your future hopes and dreams. 

What remains?

What is it that cannot be dropped?

It is us. We are it. We are... that. 

MEMORIAL DAY

"We come to praise our soldiers."

~ Francis a Walker ~

Honoring courage today.

Honoring valor.

Honoring the bravery it takes to take a stand.

Honoring honor,

And

Because it's the root and the spirit of all of these things,

Though paradoxically,

Nonetheless empirically,

Honoring 

Love. 

Thanks to the ones who stand up. 

PLANT LIFE

"I have found, after a good deal of consideration, that the best place to seek God is in a garden."

~ Bernard Shaw~ 

Sugar Magnolia, Sweet Woodruff, Sweet William, Sweet Annie-

Honeysuckle, Rose.

Tiger Lily, Dogwood, Cattail, 

Butterfly Weed. 

Trailing, hanging, standing, 

Tender, Hardy,

Blazing,

Bulb. 

Being "garden variety" means we are absolutely unique!

THE MIX MASH

"Sorrow like rain makes roses and mud."

~ Austin O'Malley ~

I am grateful that my mother is ok,

And exhausted for all the emotional trauma that being in the hospital has stirred up in me.

And inspired by her positive attitude,

And sad for her departed lung. 

I feel it all.

THE STRENGTH OF THIS WOMAN

"Fall seven times. Stand up eight."

~ Japanese Proverb ~

My Mom is having the lower left lobe of her lung removed 

Along with some lymph nodes

Because of cancer cells present.

A week later, after testing the extracted lymph nodes,

We will know what "stage" her cancer falls into.

In the meantime, she is focused on the possibility

Of breaking the record for most post operative laps

Walked around the recovery unit.

The number to beat is 237.

My Mother is one-of-a-kind.

ENERGY BURNING

"More wood was put on, and the flame danced in a hundred fantastic shapes."

~ Charles Dudley ~

We are like fire.

Some of us are bright and blazing,

Some of us smoky,

Some of us hot embers yet to ignite,

And some of us can't be seen at all,

But underneath, with a bit of digging,

There is heat and smoke and all of it,

And with just a little paper and kindling and a puff of air,

Flames alight.

We are pure potential.

AS IT SHOULD BE

"I do not know what is untried and afterward, but I know it will, in its turn, prove sufficient, and cannot fail."

~ Walt Whitmam ~

So many, if not all, of our limiting beliefs are rooted in 

The idea that

Something is wrong.

Something is wrong with us, with other people, with our circumstances,

The weather,

The potential future,

The world. 

And this means we have something to fix.

And we better get to it.

But perhaps, all is actually as it should be, and on time,

And in its place for the lessons we have to learn,

And our transcendence,

And the play. 

I open to the possibility that nothing is wrong.