angelbirdflies

 A rainy day spent at the Colorado Renaissance Festival, where Bodhi purchased a wand, a bow and arrows and a flying broom.  Of course I told him that he would need a lot of imagination in order to make the broom fly and the wand work magic but he has been diligently trying to fly the wooden stick bound with straw since he got home and swishes his wand with abandon.  Ah, childhood.

I don't have words today...just pictures and a longing to drop the me-story long enough to feel truly connected in LOVE...in LIFE.

Four leaf clovers have always meant something special to me...ever since I found my first one growing proudly through a crack in a side walk, seemingly in response to a prayer voiced a moment before.  They have always said simply, "You don't have to worry.  There is more at work in your life than your reasoning mind can comprehend". As Bodhi and I played in the creek at Lair o' the Bear, I looked up from my position in the midst of cool waters and my attention was captured by a mud-moss bank covered in clover six feet away. A perfect four leaf clover stood out.  In fact, it was the only thing I saw when I looked up...like a friend reaching out a hand in welcome.  My heart sparkled in gratitude and I walked over to say hello.  It was exactly what I needed in that moment. Bodhi has long wanted to find one too.  So I told him, "When you are looking for something beautiful you use your eyes to see but look with your heart.  Open your heart and look".  

It's amazes me how easy it is to fall into forgetting and allow this body to fill with a tension born from a busy, frenetic mind and a swirl of unresolved emotions. I forget the one thing that always helps me... more than hours on my zafu cushion, more than pages of inspirational words, or two dozen cookies or positive pandering or senseless bemoaning.  I forget that perhaps the one thing I need most is an immersion in the natural world.  A sense of belonging to something infinitely greater than the imaginary me I entertain in my dreaming. And then I find her and she  cradles me in wide arms and sings me sweet lullabies through bird songs and breezes, with bubbling streams and swaying branches.  Until my whole soul breathes an audible sigh of release.  She is my lover.  When there are no other arms to sink into and no other hands to hold...she is enough.  And in her eyes I am reminded of a beauty so wide that I can not be excluded from its grandeur.  I stand in

If you wish to be loved, love! –  Seneca It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created for years or even generations. –  Khalil Gibran Have you noticed, with whatever quality of love you have experienced, that when true love arises, it opens up both your mind and emotions? It’s an openness to whatever is happening. -  Adyashanti You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by seeing an imperfect person perfectly. –  Sam Keen

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. –  Mae West Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky. –  Rainer Maria Rilke Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage. –  Lao Tzu

If you love someone, the greatest gift you can give them is your presence. –  Thich Nhat Hanh

Don't let the fear stop you. You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection. –  Buddha I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best. -  Marilyn Monroe

I just completed a "love's awakening" retreat with some of the most beautiful people I have ever had the blessing to meet and fall madly, head over heels in love with.  It was four days of heart breaking and blinding beauty so profound that my mind is staggering to catch up. Here is an Adyashanti quote that approximates the experience: A Deep Love The love that we fall in and out of is somewhat removed from the essence of love. That type of love is also part of life experience for most human beings, but the love associated with Truth is just recognized to 'be'. It is a great surprise the first time we recognize it when we find that this love, right here, coming directly from ourselves, is in love with whatever it meets. "How can this be so? I'm not supposed to love that person who has a different philosophy than mine." "What is that love doing here? We are at totally opposite ends of the political spectrum." "Why do I lo

In our house we have a general rule...if you learn to ride a bike you get to hit mom in the face with a  cream pie (click here) and today was the day!  Bodhi rode his bike all the way around crown hill lake, sooooo....  I got a pie in the face.  Of course I only stand still for the first pie  and after that its a free for all.  And by the looks of Bodhi I think I may have gotten the better of him.

I spent yesterday hiking with a wonderful friend in the mountains near Rollins Pass where we were rewarded with an overflow of beauty and a wellspring of green. When in nature I am amazed by the juxtaposition of wide vistas and intricate details.  Sometimes, when alone, I stand and stare with a dimwitted half smile, too overcome by the layers of beauty to speak or move or even breathe.  Fortunately, in the company of others I manage to converse and trek along, pausing occasionally to inhale the life all around me.  It astonishes me that there can be so much beauty in every layer of life. And when my heart expands, I realize that no matter how habitually I affirm my separateness from the life all around me, I am not.  Each of us shines with the same life and beauty present in flower and vista. And no matter how busy our thinking mind is with its continual intent to judge and improve, compare and seek, we already are the full measure of beauty we are seeking.  If onl