“Your strength will come

from standing in the center

of a place no one can see,

knowing what no one can verify,

and dancing to a tune

no one else can hear.”
………………………………….. from
Emmanuel’s Book III, “What Is an Angel Doing Here?”.
compiled by Pat Rodegast and Judith Stanton.

Reading that quote took me back to the past weekend
when some friends and I were in the city at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art. The rooms, each leading into another in
a marvelous maze, were filled with milling people.

Ostensibly, I was there to view the art.

My memory, tho’, is of the people. I can feel even now the
dance of coming near, separating, viewing, glancing touches
and sudden spaces. The art was alive through the eyes of
each one of us.

Place that memory alongside the quote above, and the
result is one of sharing rather than separation. Each one of
us left the museum, richer than when we’d arrived.

Can I not say, “There is a place where we meet and
encounter each other, with no idea that’s what’s going on.”
Powerful music.

with love …

Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

We cannot summon soul to break through, can we !
It’s only recognizable after its words get carried by some
hugh emotion that was definitely not wanted in the first
place!

There was a night last week when I struggled with my
body’s insistence on waking me up to change. It always
comes in the form of muscle pain, untouchable by pill
or panacea. Toward dawn, exhausted, I gave up.

I fell asleep, into a deep relaxation that ended my
insistence on resistance, and awoke hours later with
some freedom.

Without the story, I passed on my thoughts about
facing one’s ancient pain in an email that simply
burst out without plan. It might be worth repeating
to you now:

“We’re all in the same boat, this planet.
We’re paddling on all sides, sometimes can’t see
what the other is doing, the splash is so huge.

It’s OK. The ocean is deep beneath us.

the important thing is the air, the scudding clouds,
the rays of light that pierce through.
All ours.”
……………………………………………..

That was my apology for being out of touch.
That was what happened when I released my
need to control.
I guess. Control is not the right word, maybe
attachment is closer.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

There are times when that which is utterly familiar,
happens every day, can take place without
fanfare, emotion, remembrance or any mortal note.

The poem following is evidence of that:

“THE BUILDING OF LIGHT

Mauve mist shadow cloaks the sky’s
River-blurred, inchoate border.
Dawn’s old story, and light tries —
Not the last time — to devise
Lasting order.

Look. The moon’s pale-copper sphere
Rings — a gong too faint to hear –
Through the city.

Let them linger, unawake.
Down the mountain’s wrinkled brilliance
Darkness empties like a lake
Minted gold, house windows make
Coins worth millions.

Both in disbelief and pride
All the buildings in the distance
On the river’s farther side
Take up, as the shadows slide,
New existence.

Shadow slides along the roof,
Past the guttering and gable,
Shrinks, and leaves the house aloof
Where the light reads out its proof
Like a fable.”

…………STEPHEN EDGAR, Sidney, Australia

Dawn happens like that, it takes only moments.
I’m usually just waking up half-way around the world
from the poet. Yet, I have a faint sense of memory
of something seen so often, or only briefly, that
holds the essence of a place, not in time,
Very much like this poem.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

I have noticed that the golden yellows of the leaves are startling
against the tapestry of muted autumn colors. How have I not
noticed this in other years?

There is a Zen koan that addresses this:

“Q: When the tree withers and the leaves fall,
what is happening?

A: The Golden Wind is revealing itself.”
…………………………………………………………………
as quoted by JOHN TARRANT in the current
issue of Shambala Sun.

This frames a different November experience for me.
I am grateful when change brings space-fulness. I can see
through the bare landscape in a way that shifts losing the
leaves to a gift of clarity and aroused curiosity.

What is there here that I had not seen before?

Perhaps it is because I have slowed my walk and in so
doing have lifted my eyes and taken in for the first time
the familiar places I have hastened through before.

A golden wind, indeed.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

This is what I read a moment ago:

“For me, there is not just this world,
there’s also a layering of others.
Time is not divided by minutes and hours,
and everything has presence and meaning
within the landscape of timelessness.”

……JOY HARJO

I am so aware of time and the time it takes
to do tasks, to prepare for the day, to wait
for others to show up, to get ready to go
outside and walk.

I am also aware that time shifts, sometimes
for only ten minutes. That’s the day-dreaming time,
and it comes upon me no matter where I am.

I’m standing, looking at the cereals in a grocery store,
and suddenly, alerted by a quiet “excuse me” as
someone passes, I realize I’ve gone again. So, when
I read those few line above, that’s how I read it, as if
the writer spoke from a very intimate association
with time and beyond that, a mini-vacation from time,
from which I could come back, quite refreshed.

The actuality is that here’s how the first line REALLY
read:
“For US , there is not just this world,” etc.

That change of only one word shifts it into a cosmic
approach, it becomes a prelude to something more,
I guess as it was intended. Very deep.

How curious that I should have read it incorrectly!
Just commenting.
Have you times like that? As if you’ve grasped the whole
thought before you’ve even begun the initial sentence
…and in so doing, discovered a part of yourself?

Hmmmmm, weird.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

First of all, if I’d seen a title like this one, I would have dropped
anything to explore what came next!

In this world of daily extraordinary events, people & possibility,
it is rare to encounter the simple idea of goodness. Stripped
naked, standing on my own feet just as I am, all that’s left is
what is in me of goodness. You, too.
Here’s where I found that phrase, ” unexpected goodness”:

“The healing of our present woundedness may lie in

recognizing and reclaiming the capacity we all have to

heal each other, the enormous power in the simplest of

human relationships, the strength of touch, the blessing

of forgiveness, the grace of someone else taking you

as you are,

and finding in you an unexpected goodness.”

……………Dr. RACHEL REMEN
(from John Fox’s book, ‘Poetic Medicine’)
……………………………………………………………………………….

I suspect that goodness is something we find mirrored
in each other, and that recognizing it in others, we find,
in our own claim to that simplicity, a reason to trust.

with love …

Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

Those three words, ‘the great unseen’, have become important to me.

I was driving home from a doctor’s visit, it was a beautiful day, the trees
aflame with deep oranges, crimson and purples. Out of nowhere,
not any reflection of the purpose of the visit (bronchitis), I found myself
seeing an image of something I had experienced earlier in this week.
It was the reflection of my almost naked body in the dressing room
of a store, while clothes shopping.

It’s one thing to look down on what I can see of me and think, I should
lose some weight.” It’s one thing to have no full length mirror at home,
to see only parts of myself in the mirrors over the various sinks, to thus
have only bits and pieces of what I actually look like.

In the middle of the early morning after that shopping trip, I awoke with
a tight chest, coughing, and runny eyes and nose. I was in for it! Cripes.

During this week of limited physical activity, I have fallen into moments
of contemplation, of revery. Out of the blue, I felt in my deepest tissues
of my body, how much I actually hated what my body ‘has become’,
what I have allowed my body to become. That was so shocking to me,
that realization of what’s so, that, in between coughs and sniffling, I
awoke to another strange place within me, one of absolute peace.

Can you imagine that? It knocked me over. I had been housing that
hatred, all unseen, for years. To finally come to grips with such an
awareness had plunged me into a new awareness for which I had
absolute, unbelievable compassion and love.

No struggle, no judgement, just the ability to
notice what’s so. I am in amazement.
Sometimes thats what bottoming out feels like.

Well, that’s where I am now. No story of pounds lost, no history of
accomplishment, instead a quiet place inside that includes all of me,
mind, body and spirit. What I can report is that I am no longer feeling
food hungers; rather I find myself choosing foods from quite another
place. It’s a start.
……………………………………

Maybe a prayer I have said for many years finally took root and is
growing as a mantra, as a reminder:
“I ask the great unseen healing force to remove all obstructions
from my mind and body, to restore me to perfect health.
And I will do my part.
I ask the great unseen healing force to help both present and
absent ones who are in need of help , to restore them to perfect
health. I put my trust in the love and power of God.”
( a prayer I found in an Interfaith book)

Any part of that, take what you like and leave the rest.
with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

I decided to revisit Billy Collins this morning. His new poetry is
both edgy and soft, but then, when has it not? Sounds like the
winds of change have barreled through his life.

VERMONT, EARLY NOVEMBER

It was in between seasons,
after the twitter of late autumn
but before the icy authority of winter

and I took in the scene from a porch,
a tableau of silo and weathervane
and a crowd of ferns on the edge of the woods —

nothing worth writing about really,
but it is too late to stop now
that the ferns and the silo have been mentioned.

I drank my warm coffee
and took note of the disused tractor
and the lopsided sign to the cheese factory.

Not one of those mornings
that makes you want to seize the day,
not even enough glory in it to make you want

to grasp every other day,
yet after staring for a while
at the plowed-under fields and the sky

I turned back to the order of the kitchen
determined to seize firmly
the second Wednesday of every month that lay ahead.”

……BILLY COLLINS, from his book of poems, “Ballistics”.

What happens on any second Wednesday?
I love my appointment book because it contains two views
of the months, each month: one spread of all the weeks plus
pages of daily hours in which to schedule my precious life.

It doubles as a diary. I mark the entries in different colors
in order to find patterns quickly when I look to see what
is running my life. Well, I do that often.

And this poem reminded me of the lavender days I
used to schedule ahead for the month, random mornings
or afternoons where I stripped in ahead little lavender
post-its, spaces for rest or adventure to show up.

When did I stop doing that? Seems to me it might be a
good idea to start that again and add some unexpected
opportunity to shake up any old habit from creeping in.

So glad Billy Collins looks for glory. ( don’t know him well
enough to call him ‘Billy’, yet love him enough for ‘Collins’
not to be good either)
GLORY !
That would make any Wednesday something to be seized,
grasped, held onto, and be surprised by.

I think I have some old lavender post-its hanging around
somewhere to make room for that.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

I shared a poem at a celebration last night of the end of summer and the start
of Autumn, when daylight and nighttime are equal, the Equinox. I quoted only
a portion of the poem, for the sake of brevity, so here it is now in its entirely:

MOCKINGNBIRDS

“This morning
two mockingbirds
in the green field
were spinning and tossing

the white ribbons
of their songs
into the air.
I had nothing

better to do
than listen.
I mean this
seriously.

In Greece,
a long time ago,
an old couple
opened their door

to two strangers
who were,
it soon appeared,
not men at all,

but gods.
It is my favorite story —
how the old couple
had almost nothing to give

but their willingness
to be attentive —
but for this alone
the gods loved them,

and blessed them —
when they rose
out of their mortal bodies,
like a million particles of water

from a fountain,
the light
swept into all the corners
of the cottage,

and the old couple,
shaken with understanding,
bowed down —
but still they asked for nothing

but the difficult life
which they had already,
And the gods smiled, as they vanished,
clapping their great wings.
Wherever it was
I was supposed to be
this morning —
whatever it was I said

I would be doing —
I was standing
at the edge of a field —
I was hurrying

through my own soul,
opening its dark doors —
I was listening. “
……………………..MARY OLIVER
………………………………………….

’seriously’, ‘hurrying’, ‘I was listening’, all these important
words. In my recovery, these four months since surgery,
I have made huge strides back to health.

However, ( serious pause here) I have always to re-learn
to allow space for listening to my body and taking note of
what it needs next to give us both the means of carrying on.

I do not always have the patience for that.
Well, that’s one script I may just have to drop away,
because here I am, listening.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

This is just to say a few words that let you know I’m still around.

Actually, as I wrote that my mind did that playful thing of a rhyming
word, popping up and taking over like, around, and the word that
came on its heels was ABOUND, shortened immediately to >>> BOUND!

AND (in my mind) I’M OFF, OUT OF MY CHAIR, very much like A.A. Milne’s
lines in his children’s book, When We Were Six. Such desire to move with
ease and speed, to soar across the lawn, or jump into the water as the tide
comes in.

The facts are that I’m working ferociously at strengthening my body
and learning to walk with balance again. Do you know that the exercises
I do for that leave me dripping with sweat in just a half-hour?

So, just a line from an interview with the poet, Donald Hall:

“Curiously, or frustratingly, the greatest happiness is not to know
you are happy, is not to know what time it is, is to be lost in the hour.”

I’ll be back more regularly, very shortly.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette