My Key

It's three-thirty in the morning and I can't seem to sleep. My brain keeps turning over thoughts of you. I find I can no longer wait out the silence and the words come...

I can feel the strength of your hands softly touching my skin.
I can see your eyes twinkle in the darkness with laughter.
I can hear your voice singing that erotic tune in my soul.
I can taste your lips wispering my name.

In your silences there are demons that haunt you, I know they are there. So, I have come sleepless in the night to remind you...

I have chosen you.

I chose you with desire.
I chose you with admiration.
I chose you with respect.
I chose you with sincerity.

Of all these many people, I am greatful for the time we share. I am thankful for the organic, dynamic moments in which you bless my life.

I chose you.

I miss my Bubba...

I am so excited!

I am traveling to Hartford to see my brother and his wife in July. I will get to stay a week in their new home. It's been four years since I saw him last and even though we IM and talk on the phone, it's just not the same as being in his presence.

I miss his goofy laugh.
I miss how his ears turn red when he thinks he's been funny.
I miss how he calls me "sister"
I miss bear hugs and wrestling and the way he picks me up and swings me around.
I miss his country dancing and how handsome he looks in his hat.
I miss looking at him and feeling that we are connected.
I miss our secret inside jokes when we were partners in crime.
I miss they way he lets me boss him around just because I'm the oldest.

I can't wait, I'm counting the days!
I've never been east of the Mississippi before, this should be an adventure. I hope it won't be to much of a culture shock. What if they don't have any mexican food?! :(

The Power of Play

When I was about nine years old my life changed dramaticaly. I was in about third grade and the world changed. I no longer had an ability or a desire to play.

Imagine.

A part of me died that year, sort of like losing a leg. Trying to deal with the fact that you may never be able to run, or dance or spin or do cartwheels again. Somewhere in your life you grieve for that leg and that life, that two-legged life you'll never live.

I have grieved in many ways over the course of my life, now I find there are only moments of grief that touch me. Butterflies that land long enough to be seen but not truely felt for what they are. Now, I find, I am busy with living. I have bought myself a prostetic leg and I am teaching myself once again how to run and dance and spin and yes, even do cartwheels.

I had the opportunity this week to be an assistant activities director at our local church camp. For five days I was playmate to forty-two teenagers. I ate with them, played with them, colored with them, acted in skits with them and caught them when they fell into my arms.
Several times last week I found myself crying for the childhood that I lost, but only for a moment or two. Then I would bound off to play tether ball or hide and seek or find some girls to giggle with. This in itself is profound.
I wish that each of you who know me or read this tiny glimpse into my life could have a true grasp of how much I have healed. I wish I could lift my shirt and show you my scars and how well they look. How once they were jagged, swollen, red and oozing pieces of flesh. Eaten away by infection and disease. I wish I could show you now how faint they are in my skin. Small white lines where no hair will grow and no pigment will tan. Now, they really only hurt when I look at them for a long time. When I touch them with my probing fingers. Even then it's not so much that they hurt, as I am remembering the hurt that was once there.

I had fun this week. I am a thirty-seven year old survior. I am scarred. I am in someways disabled. I have also found, in very real terms, happiness and peace and joy in my life, in just living life.

I had fun this week.

I had fun.

Quote of the Day

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't
matter and those who matter don't mind.





~Dr. Seuss

An Invitation

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool, for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon...
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us to
be careful
be realistic
remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.




"The Invitation" Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Music is the Love Language of My Soul

"...Then he'd take out his fiddle and play untill dawn, and evry time he did, he learned something new.
He first spent his attention on matters of tuning and fingering and phrasing. Then he began listening to the words of the songs the blacks would sing, admiring how they chanted out every desire and fear in their lives as clear and proud as could be, and he soon had a growing feeling that he was learning things about himself that had never sifted into his thinking before. One thing he dicovered with a great deal of astonishment was that music held more for him than just pleasure. There was meat to it. The grouping of sounds, their forms in the air as they rang out and faded, said something comforting to him about the rule of creation. What the music said was that there is a right way for things to be ordered so that life might not always be just a tangle and drift but have a shape, an aim. It was a powerful argument against the notion that things just happen...
When he set the bow to the new fiddle, the tone was startling in it's clarity, sharp and pure, and the redundancy in the tuning led to curious and dissonant harmonic effects. The tune was slow and modal, but demanding in it's rhythm and of considerable range. More than that, its melody constantly pressed upon you the somber notion that it was a passing thing, here and gone, unfixable. Yearning was it's main theme. It was music the like of which she had never heard. His playing was easy as a man drawing breath, yet with utter conviction in it's centrality to a life worth claiming."





Charles Frazier "Cold Mountain"

Talk about your Cosmic Karma

I came across this just AFTER posting "The Runt of the Litter".
You've gotta love God's sense of humor.








Scorpio

October 23 - November 21



Today marks the beginning of a new period in which things might get a little challenging for you in the department of love and romance, dear Scorpio. You might find that your need for a greater amount of attention from others is suddenly getting in the way of your relationships. It may seem as if all people really care about is themselves. Try to keep your head above the clouds.





Provided by Astrocenter.com

The Runt of the Litter

Watching Nature at work can sometimes break my heart. I was thinking a lot the past few days about being the low man on the totem pole. It's an unusual place for me, almost always I have instinctively clamored my way to the top, or nearly so. There have been times when being at the top was not neccessary and so it was easy to hang back and submitt, to stay backstage and be an understudy...


When I was about fourteen I lived in a very rural area of southwest Missouri. My mother and her husband at the time had rented a little tin trailer for us to live in. There was no rent to be paid only ranch chores to exchange in the deal. Being compulsively poor, it was really our last hope.
The ranch was large for the area and owned by a widow with two children. Helping out around the barn area I got to know animals in an up close and personal way. I still remember the first time I saw the top bull, a huge Black Angus, mating with one of the cows. Interesting is the only thing I can say... Anyway the ranch had several working dogs, they were not treated as pets but rather hired hands.
I had a hard time with the attitude toward some of the animals. So matter of fact, just do your job, no pat on the head, no play time. To me, it was cruel. So, this particular year we had a late spring, it actually snowed eight inches on Easter that year. One of the dogs had given birth to ten pups right by our little trailer. I wanted to bring them in, but I was not allowed to do so. I knew they would probably all die in the cold but I was told firmly not to touch them. So, I simply watched. Everyday I would bundle up, sit outside hoping that somehow I could will them the strength to surrvive.
I did what I was told and never interfered. I regret that now.
The pups seemed at the time healthy enough, had it been spring to surrvive. Except for one. She was born last, she was the smallest of all. I'm sure you know the story, feeding time would come around and of course there was no plce for her. She would fight and fight with all her little strength and get nowhere. She was stepped on and pushed aside, the survival instincts of her siblings pushed her aside time after time. She never gained weight, she never thrived.
I came home from school one afternoon to find her lying dead, cold and stiff and alone. I cried for her, I cried for the unjustice, the unfairness of it all. I raged against the adult veiw point of nature and the cycle of life. So, in my rage I took a shovel and in that frozen ground, after what seemed hours of trying to dig a hole, I burried her. Sobbing all the while, I covered her with the frozen earth and cried out against the merciless nature of things.


...I've been thinking this week about placing myself last in line. There is something in me that fights it. A part of me that loathes it and fights and pushes to achieve. Can I accept being last in line if the desire for the end result is stronger than my desire to be standing on a higher rung of the ladder.

I don't know.

There is a fight taking place within my spirit, my sub-conscious. I can feel it.
I know I should be more open, I know that you think because you use intelectual words like "primary" and "secondary" that it shouldn't feel so emotional.

I have a strong spirit, I have a strong sense of self. I have always had a struggle with submission.

Is it possible to train myself to always be last?
Should I even be okay with always being last?

I'm glad I have next week to think about it in the quiet of the trees. To be by myself and unravel the knotted questions lurking in the back of my mind.

If I am the runt of the litter will something in my spirit die?

Your account just might be overdrawn

Lately Morgan and I have been disscussing this pervading idea in our culture of treating love as if it were currency.
That you only get so much love in your lifetime and need to be careful how you use it.
That If you are good, you are given a lot of love.
That if you are bad, you are not not.
That if you chose to love one you cannot love another, because your love for another would somehow negate your love for the one.

Love is not to be used as or compared to money. There is not a vault in Fort Knox with all of the country's love tucked away nicely and neatly.
This concept can be especially frustrating among religious folks as I cannot reconcile this cultural belief with the God of my understanding.

Love is patient.
Love is kind.
Love does not envy.
Love does not boast.
Love is not proud.
Love is not rude.
Love is not selfish.
Love is not easily angered.
Love keeps no record of wrongs.
Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love then, to my mind is a verb. An action. A lifestyle.
Love then, is a way of treating the people around you. Not simply the feelings produced by Eros or Phileo. A committed way of looking at and acting among all of creation.

Love then, is Agape.

I am loving you today. I am hoping that you will let me love you today.

Sweet!!!

Yes.
I have successfully eaten all the cake in my drawers. I have done it all by myself, and I didn't even share.


Ha!

Just in case you were wondering...

Um, yeah.

I have cake in my drawers.




Don't ask, just go with it...

Maybe today, but not tommorrow...

"Oh these little rejections how they add up quickly
One small sideways look and I feel so ungood and
Somewhere along the way I think I gave you the power to make
Me feel the way I thought only my father could

Oh these little rejections how they seem so real to me
One forgotten birthday I'm all but cooked and
How these little abandonments seem to sting so easily
I'm 13 again am I 13 for good?

I can feel so unsexy for someone so beautiful
So unloved and for someone so fine
I can feel so boring for someone so interesting
So ignorant for someone of sound mind

Oh these little protections how they fail to serve me
One forgotten phone call and I'm deflated and
Oh these little defenses how they fail to comfort me
Your hand pulling away and I'm devastated

I can feel so unsexy for someone so beautiful
So unloved and for someone so fine
I can feel so boring for someone so interesting
So ignorant for someone of sound mind

When will you stop leaving baby?
When will I stop deserting you baby?
When will I start staying with myself?

Oh these little projections how they keep springing from me
I jump my ship as I take it personally and
How these little rejections how they disappear quickly
The moment I decide not to abandon me

I can feel so unsexy for someone so beautiful
So unloved and for someone so fine
I can feel so boring for someone so interesting
So ignorant for someone of sound mind
So unsexy"



Alanis Morissette