You never know...

You never know when what you are doing might make a huge difference to someone

I was reflecting on this as i was driving the other day

feeling very harried and sad and overwhelmed (thankyou for reading through some of that in the last couple of weeks)

i was at the traffic lights and a woman drove past

she was laughing her head off

mouth wide open

eyes crinkled

laughing with her whole self

and it lifted me

her joy shot through her window and into mine and shifted the heavy stuff out of the way

she made a difference and she will never know

and as i was driving past a big poplar, the last of it's leaves yellowing, and shimmering in the cool breeze, blue sky backdrop, sun shining hard... the miracle of autumn and the cycle of life singing full voice for all who care to hear

i thought that tree was like her...

magnificent, sharing beauty and connecting with the divine

and totally unaware

uncalculated

unworried by the opinion of others

living our truth allows us to make those gifts, completely unaware

and completely powerful

OVERWHELM

I feel like a ball

in a pin ball machine....

i feel like the rubber band being forced one time too many

around the parcel....

i feel like the dental floss stuck between teeth

being tugged just that little bit harder...

i feel like the flower in the flower press

each day getting a little drier a little more brittle....

i feel like the surface tension on a full cup just as the onedroptoomany enters...

i feel like someone is sucking the air out of me on an infomercial, chatting perkily to camera,

folding me sharply

and putting me in a plastic storage container for winter


but rain and wind,
a walk with the cat and the dog,
glimpses of green
and a chat with a proud Rimu,
draws me back into my body,
remagnetises the shards of me that were in orbit

brings me back here

RELIEF

Dad is still unwell but he is recovering

(due in no small part i beleive to the loving thoughts of people all around the planet - thank you)

and the sense of relief is immense

that i don't have to think of life without him

that i don't have to contemplate visiting my mother without the buffer of him

that my girls get a chance to see more of him, to have him and his caring for them embedded more deeply into their beings - sustaining them as they grow

but that relief somehow gets twisted with guilt... does he really want to be around to deal with all the pain he has on a daily basis?

does it mean that death chose someone else instead?

does it mean that i have to pay with something else in my life?

and why do i sully this great thing, this lightness and soaring, with this undertow?

is unworthiness so ingrained in my soul that i can't take a pure sense of releif and let it be just that

pure light and gladness that my dad is still alive

i am calling fear's name

i am calling fears name

and he has turned around and said

"you wanna peice of me?"

now i have to fight

i am armed with enough

(but it is dribbling through my fingers)

i am armed with my tender soul
(but yesterday it was blown around in the library by the man who bent too close, by the woman who sighed too loudly by the smell of someone's too old perfume)

i am armed with love

(but is that enough?)

fear has bought death into his corner and it doesn't feel like a fair fight

fear is a robber

fear is a robber

it sneaks up in the dark
grabs you roughly,
always knowing where it hurts the most,
fear takes you off your path

takes you somewhere dark
somewhere unfriendly
somewhere you can't be heard

then fear takes your glasses
and you can't see

then fear ties your hands up
so you can't act

then fear takes it's prize
your power

Unless in that dark place when you hear the footsteps,
tap
tap
tap behind you

you can say

shout

scream

fear's name

and when it hears it's name

fear retreats

so learn fear's name
and shout it out if you have to

you may have bruise marks on your arm
but your heart is intact

feeling little

i am sitting here

feeling little

because the person who is precious to me, in the feeling like real family kind of a way is going into surgery on Friday.

and he is scared

and so am i.

i feel little because he was the one who;

always helped me when i was little.

to reassure me to take a chance said things like

"Would i ever hurt you?"

and the answer was an emphatic-deep-in-my-chest no.

and i have to contend with catastrophising and martyrdom and complication

when all i want to do is acknowledge this feeling little and wanting to curl up in his lap and make it all better

for us both

for- give -ness

i have a big tender heart

i am easily wounded

i guess all of us are

and some of us are better at hiding it

or have learned to subvert it into something else real quick

anger

self harm

disdain

panic

withdrawal

i have all those in my responsetowounded arsenal

and more

and forgiveness has been a big big thread in my life

i grew up around my paternal granparents who were love in action

they taught me all about love, unconditonal love, kindness, gentleness

and part of that is of course forgiveness

being able to look at what hurts and forgive the hurter

being able to reject the possibility of extending the wounding into the future by carrying a grudge

or ignoring the wound and allowing it to fester

or (and this is where the link to worthiness pops up it's beautiful head)

allowing someone else's damage to impact on our lives causing shame - removing our sense of worthiness

forgiveness to me is about taking the choice to let go of those thread of pain and move on

it is not about forgetting

no evolutionary sense in allowing ourselves to be wounded over and over again because we remove all memory of a dangerous act

no

it is about saying yes to the fact that wounding occurred

saying yes to moving ahead without taking that pain with us in an ongoing flagellation

about saying yes to the possiblity that life is good and will be better

and whispering (yes i have only got to whispering - you might shout and sing and dance about it) "you are worthy of better than this"

it may help to acknowledge that only wounded people wound

but ultimately forgiveness is, for me about you

it is about not allowing that injury to reoccurr

and opening up to the possibility of the new....

I am reading a book called The Treasure of Montsegur by Sophy Burnham

It is a fictionalised account of the life of a Cathar woman who survived the atrocity at Montsegur (it was another gift from the library angels at Whangarei library - bless them)

I feel so connected to the Cathar for some reason but that is a whole other story

the part i want to write about is the forgiveness

there is a Cathar bishop who is encouraging Jeanne (the main character) to forgive

he asks her to pray, visualising the person she needs to forgive

and then in the visualisation give them everything she wishes for herself

then everything she knows they wish for



"It has nothing to do with how you feel about her.....That is what forgiveness means - to 'give for'. It is the only way to set yourself free".


"God doesn't ask it all to be done at once, but only that we be willing. ..It is enough to try. If the intention is there, then all the forces of a spiritual univers will help you reach your goal."

The deep beauty of this overwhelmed me - to cure jealousy hatred meanness bitterness wounding - all the things that require forgiveness with love...

well that is just so beautiful another layer of protection around my heart just peeled away....