This is a good time to simply start over. Thank you,
Deepak Chopra, for your remembrance words yesterday
to honor the passing of Dr. David Simon, close friend
and colleague. He quoted the spiritual master poet, Hafiz,
with these beautiful words:

THE SUN NEVER SAYS
Even
after
all this time
the sun never says to the earth,
“You owe me.”
Look
what happens
with a love like that –
It lights the whole world.”

This homage was to an extraordinary physician and author
who had helped so many people go beyond their limited
perspective of themselves and reconnect to the love, joy
and peace of their true selves.
…………………………………………

As I returned to the computer to share this with you,
I saw a sending from Joe Riley (Panhala) that included
a poem from a contemporary poet that carries a same
sense of joyful presence:

” — we studied algebra
late in our room fixed up in the barn,
and I would feel the carved relation,
the rafters upside down, and the cows in their life
holding the earth round and ready
to meet itself again when morning came.”

……William Stafford

Those last two lines: ‘holding the earth round and ready
to meet itself again when morning came’ has that quality
of lighting up the world to greet the day.

A good way to start today.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

Holding ourselves round and ready to meet the morning

Here, we had a very early sudden snow at the end of
October, with occasional ‘weather’ since. Right now, we’re
in a lull of bare trees, chill winds, dark afternoons. Not so
the rest of New England! Many inches of snow, even the
bears in the backyards, looking for forage.

Now, this morning, I have chosen a poem perhaps born of
this time of year, and it’s set me thinking:

“L A N D S C A P E

Isn’t it plain the sheets of moss, except that
they have no tongues, could lecture
all day if they wanted about

spiritual patience? Isn’t it clear
the black oaks along the path are standing
as though they were the most fragile of flowers?

Every morning I walk like this around
the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart
ever close, I am as good as dead.

Every morning, so far, I’m alive. And now
the crows break off from the rest of the darkness
and burst up into the sky — as though

all night they had thought of what they would like
their lives to be, and imagined
their strong, thick wings.”

………………MARY OLIVER,
from her book, Dream Work, 1986

Aha! It could be like that, couldn’t it? I could imagine
what I would like my life to be, so strongly that it
turns out to be just like that.

It’s even quite probable that that’s exactly what’s
happening.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

However, since December, ’11, I had an episode of
almost a month of a weakening virus that laid me low!
On January 3rd I was helped through this time by the
offer of a daily meditation from What I Know To Be True (WIKTBT).

It was free! Not a lot to do except sign up and it was
delivered each day to my inbox. WIKTBT is a book which will be out within a month
or two, and the authors, Lisa Jacoby & Caroline Temple,
had offered this meditation of 21 days as an introduction
to that book.

I did the whole 21 days, it fit in easily, whether early in
the morning or later after all the day’s activity. I had a
sense of the presence of others, as I listened, alone here.
Being ill, that was very reassuring. I was not lonely.

The 21 days were completed yesterday. During that time
I painted 5 Inner Portraits, was active in the community of
this place where I live, shopped, had dates, spent much
time on the computer, and read tons of books. However,
hovering in the background as I got well, was a feeling of
not being safe. Mid-way in this time, I asked my family to
conference with me on this feeling.

Also, there were days when I had to suddenly stop, cancel
all plans and just go inside. And, each day I tuned in to the
free meditation of WIKTBT. It had become an easy anchor
for me, 15 to 20 minutes each day. I gradually became aware
that a process was going on that I could no longer ignore.

The trumpets should ring out about here! Caroline’s soft
voice and measured, quiet sharing, the music almost im-
perceptible, had led me to a place inside where I knew it was
time to stop driving my car, to allow others to accompany
me out in the world, and to honor my soul’s need to relax,
let go into a new part of my life.

So, that’s it, dears. My granddaughter who had given me the
car a few years back, now has it again. I will never have to
shovel the snow off and move the car so the town can plow
the parking lot! I am quite free. WOW.

These “dailies” will now be a bit more daily. This coming
Saturday I will be at a Day Retreat with the author’s of WIKTBT.
I am so grateful for the part coming back to daily meditating
has had in my life.
Do check out WIKTBT, and see what that’s
all about.

Poetry again soon.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

" I come to a stop of doing, of planning, and suddenly all is still."

“it was a clean escape
into oceans of silver beads

it was a muddled day
like pictures
green through morning clouds,
and with steeples
and cypress trees
wrapped around your wrist

you walked with me

you walked with me”

………………KYLIE JOHNSON,
from her book, Count Me the Stars

The ‘yearning’ could be for that which is
just beyond reach, taking us (me) briefly
into a world without walls, a present of
timeless blips of perception.

I particularly love the steeples and cypress
trees. These, like slender arms reaching
up… and up….

then letting out the breath and feeling glad.
………………………………………………………….

I have recently completed the free 21-Day
Retreat of meditations by email, given by
Caroline Temple and Lisa Jacoby from their
upcoming book, “What I Know To Be True”.

I found that each day’s beginning was made
more available if I started my day with the
meditation of that day in the order in which
they were given.

Blips of experience, the set of meditations
is available on Facebook.

Be well.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

As I take the time to find my way out of a recent
winter ailment, I have reached for softer ways to be
aware of what my body and soul are trying to share
with me. Two poets have suggested a way:

“Listening creates holy silence.
Listening is like the rain.”

….. Rachel Naomi Remen

and:

“Listen.
The new grass stands
upon a podium of dirt,
promising Earth her spring.
Listen, and you will hear
everything promising something:
The planets their fidelity
to Sun, Moon her loyal tending
to the tides.
Listen, and on a still night
you will hear your own breath
make a shy but certain promise to Life,
listen well, and Life will
promise herself to you
like an eager bride.”

…… Noel Beitler

It is easy to stop and listen at about two-thirty
a.m. in the morning, hearing the creak of the
chair as I turn to the dark window to catch a
glimpse of wind in the branches of the trees in
the lighted parking lot. I am grateful for this
healing poetry.

I pass it on to you, just in case.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

“Though a thousand snares catch our feet,
when You are with us there is no difficulty.
Every night you free our spirits from the body’s snare,
and clear the tablets of the mind.
Every night spirits are set free from this cage.
no longer ruled by rules or long stories.

At night prisoners have no sense of imprisonment,
at night governors are unconscious of their power.
There is no sorrow, no thought of gain or loss,
no tales of this person or another.
Even without sleep this how the gnostic is.
As God said, ‘you would think they were awake,
while they slept’.

Have no doubt : there are those who are asleep,
day and night, to the affairs of this world,
yet moving like a pen in the hand of God.”

…….. as translated by Kabir and Camille Helminski

There seems to be another sense of interdimensional
experience in dreaming. I am freed from the limitation
of age and roam the halls without effort. Yet there is
present much confrontation, and mountains to scale,
as well.

I am grateful for the cleared tablets of the mind. What a
delightful concept: moving like a pen in the hand of God.
To be so moved is to know there is only the dance and
the freedom to feel, and so feeling, to be the dancing.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

Photo by Dylan Strazar

T H E J O U R N E Y

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice —-
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do —
determined to save
the only life you could save.”

………..MARY OLIVER, New & Selected Poems,
1992.

I have heard that many others have had some
form of breathing illness during the weeks ending
2011 and the start of 2012. To you who have had
this experience, hasn’t it seemed like a journey
from which you have not so much arrived as a
renewal of the experience of what it feels like to
be alive?

It is good to be alive again. There is still so much
of January ahead, and I’m grateful that the weather
has held off ‘winter’ during this awakening time.

Sweet dreams.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

All the words of any tale told to me across my life, of the magic stories of Santa Claus, of Peter Pan and Wendy and the boys, of all the poetry I’ve cherished of Dickens and Tiny Tim and  Bob Cratchett’s family, and the Spirits of Christmas Past …. all these came tumbling out in long lines, waving across the room, from wall to wall, undulating with so many words, so small as if I were in Santa’s sleigh, following as the tales were told.

You were there, too, and I was determined to get every single word, exactly as it was being told and seen at the same time.  We would finally have it!

And then, the clatter showed up and I knew the typing was not really happening, that there was no record at all of  the magic I’d been following with all my heart.

I suddenly realized that the words I was following had been already  typed over by the wall by my computer monitor, and all the rest that wanted to be said and remembered,  all of that was gone.

………………… yet not gone, because here I am having to tell  you all about it.

You may be wondering how Peter Pan got caught up in all that remembered time.  This is how that happened: every year in early December, my mother would take my sister and me into the City to see the annual show for children in some theatre on Broadway.

Those undulating lines we traveled together just now were like the flight of Peter Pan as he circled the ceiling, and flew out of the window into the night.

I am defying gravity by telling you this tale of magic and delight that was so much more than my simple words can evoke.  The best part is that you couldn’t wait for me to get all the lines out, all the words of all the stories that we tell ourselves to keep us young at heart.  We did take that flight in long lines,  back and forth across my darkened room.

This fresh memory is the only proof I have that it really happened.

Who knows, it may return next year, and that is when I will truly catch it all. with love …

Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

Illustration by Robert Ingpen. “Come with me to Never Land,” Peter Pan said. “How do we get there?” asked Michael.”We fly, of course,” Peter said, zipping around the room.”Then we cannot go,” said Wendy sadly. “We do not know how to fly.”“Flying is easy,” Peter Pan said. “JUST THINK HAPPY THOUGHTS. ~ J.M. Barrie

Refreshed by 4 hours of sleep, I got up just now
to reach again for a poem. thoughts of other years’
solstice observations, rituals, some as old as the
years I’ve lived, push forward.

“Home for the holidays”, always a theme.
Whom, then, to reach for? … David Whyte:

“Y O U D A R K N E S S

You darkness from which I come,
I love you more than all the fires
that fence out the world,
for the fire makes a circle
for everyone
so that no one sees you anymore.

But darkness holds it all:
the shape and the flame,
the animal and myself,
how it holds them,
all powers, all sight-

and it is possible: its great strength
is breaking into my body.

I have faith in the night.”

……RAINER MARIA RILKE, trans. D.W.

That line, ‘its great strength is breaking into my body’,
supports and carries me.
I felt left naked by darkness, for so many nights,
grateful for the dream-time that is healing me.

You will choose other lines to respond to, for sure.
I was so delighted to happen on two poets who have
cast light on all my comings and goings!

Welcome, this dawning festival of Light.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

I was brought up very short last night. Around
11 p.m. I suddenly found myself in the throes of
severe abdominal pain, some vague tightening in
my chest, and chills. It took me an hour to work
with my body, take in what pain actually feels like
when it’s present and persistent.

Initially, I felt trapped in that body. I did all I could
do to distract myself, after taking a homeopathic
remedy. Crossword puzzles, in the vicinity of the
bathroom helped. My body soon took over all options
and there was a break-thru that allowed me to return
to bed, and sleep.

When I awoke, around 3:30 a.m., I felt a marvelous peace,
and I thought about the food I’d kept in the ‘fridge. Quite
possibly, I’d lost track of time and decided, as I lay there,
that there is that law of diminishing energy at work here.

WOW!
I’ve been busy for weeks, balancing balls of tasks,and in
the process, defied the law of diminishing energy.

These are small reminders of the amazing connection of
all parts of my living experience. I find these patterns to
be excellent guidelines that in their every-day way help to
establish an easy understanding that leaves blame behind,
that allows change without resistance, and restores my wild
plans for the rest of my life.

Now I just have to apply that to good intentions.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

Energy Returning