angelbirdflies

Happiness is your nature. It is not wrong to desire it. What is wrong is seeking it outside  when it is inside. - Ramana Maharshi

When they say Don’t I know you? say no. When they invite you to the party remember what parties are like before answering. Someone telling you in a loud voice they once wrote a poem. Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate. Then reply. If they say we should get together. say why? It’s not that you don’t love them any more. You’re trying to remember something too important to forget. Trees. The monastery bell at twilight. Tell them you have a new project. It will never be finished. When someone recognizes you in a grocery store nod briefly and become a cabbage. When someone you haven’t seen in ten years appears at the door, don’t start singing him all your new songs. You will never catch up. Walk around feeling like a leaf. Know you could tumble any second. Then decide what to do with your time.

 How do I love thee?  Let me count the ways.

Fear is a dreadful bedfellow.  It steals all the covers till we lay shivering in the night.  It sits heavy on our chest laboring our in breath and out breath.  It cramps the heart and shoves the mind into unbridled overdrive.  It terrorizes the body, dominating energy, attention and view. Yet...I wonder... when we find ourself lying next to its icy form, shaking in the dark, perhaps we could try a new tactic.  What if, rather than ignoring or throttling it with a noose of words, thoughts and plans, we reached over and curled against it, breathing in the sharp odor of pain and sorrow.  Breathing in... an open space to be. Perhaps. Perhaps.

 I love this mountain...I call it mine... a dear friend... a paramour of earthy splendor (I've recently taken a shine to the "...").  Upon her shoulder (of course she is a she) I lay my head and cry, I tell her my woes, my heartache, my pain and she holds me, carries me.  She caresses me with her breeze and fills me with wonder, exchanging my sadness for her simple wisdom: birdsong, flower, deer grazing, billowed cloud, smiling with a face so immense all I see are her laugh lines.  I breathe, carried on her back and she fills me with fortifying courage to return to the world below. She is there too, a tower of rolling earth, rising above the landscape of imagined littleness... a reminder of something deeply more immense.

Every summer I get giddy thinking about the sweet, sweaty hours to come immersed in mindless books.  Oh I know, mindless is a bit strong, but summer reading has a flavor that sets it apart from other more intellectual seasons. As school ends and the temperature rises, I escape into new worlds, meeting interesting characters who keep me company through the long lazy days of sunshine.  Thus far I have plowed through three books,  The Gift  by Lois Lowry, T he Girl Who Chased the Moon  by Sarah Addison Allen, and most recently  The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society , by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (positively lovely).  I recommend all three with enthusiasm and although I have no intention of penning a literary description of any kind I will say, that each book left me feeling a bit lighter, not smarter but certainly lighter.  I'll keep you posted as my hefty stack of unread books continues to shrink.  Just imagine what enthusi...

"As a bee seeks nectar  from all kinds of flowers,  seek teachings everywhere.  Like a deer that finds a quiet place to graze,  seek seclusion to digest all you have gathered.  Like a Lion, live completely free of all fear.  And finally, like a madman, beyond limits,  go wherever you please."  ~A Tantra of Dzogchen 

Art glorious art!  Oh how I love my job!  Children, Art, Children, Art...throw in a little nature and I am in heaven.  I recently curated our annual art show for the students and after weeks of labor and months of planning it went off without a hitch.  Here are a few photos to celebrate its success: The picture above is an example of some of the children's seasonal explorations And here is a sampling of a classroom space study, complete with a collaborative robot and solar system...  In this picture you can see both our study of watercolor media and the powerful immergent project of worry dolls that evolved over several months in the studio.  Each doll is accompanied by an original story from the artist.  These are a few of the self portraits and interviews we did using water soluble oil pastels.  Every child in the school made one and I compiled yearbooks using their photos, portraits and interviews to sell at the show.  Here is another an...

For Mother's Day my two boys woke up at six in the morning and trekked up Green Mountain with me.  I loaded their pockets with almonds and raisins and carried my weight in water on my back.  The two mile hike took nearly two hours but it was worth every moment to be out in nature with my boys, celebrating life. Bodhi gave me a bouquet in miniature, as we walked along the trail. And Owen regaled me with tales of mythical creatures, theories on the nearby geology and possible inventions for a utopic society that he has been considering.  While mama nature gave us the gift of herself in glory and rapture. A perfect day!

The three of us...my brother's and I.  For years we were symbiotic, integral to one another's existence.  Even now, at 37, I occasionally marvel at the fact that they are drawing oxygen and exploring life independently, on a trajectory uniquely their own.  With the stubbornness of youth,  I took their presence for granted, a given within the uncertain flow of life and now rather than walking and battling beside them,  I carry them with me along the way...a part of who I have become.

Spiritual experience is a modest woman who looks lovingly at only one man. It's a great river where ducks live happily, and crows drown. The visible bowl of form contains food that is both nourishing and a source of heartburn. There is an unseen presence we honor that gives the gifts. You're water. We're the millstone. You're wind. We're dust blown into shapes. You're spirit. We're the opening and closing of our hands. You're the clarity. We're this language that tries to say it. You're joy. We're all the different kinds of laughing. Any movement or sound is a profession of faith, as the millstone grinding is explaining how it believes in the river! No metaphor can say this, but I can't stop pointing to the beauty. Every moment and place says, "Put this design in your carpet!" Like the shepherd in Book II, who wanted to pick the lice off God's robe, and stitch up God's shoes, I want to be in such a ...

I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive. -- Joseph Campbell

 Shane turns 42 and Owen turns 11 Happy Birthday Boys!

A thousand voices a thousand more, calling out a thousand doors. This one certain, that one fearing this one martyrs, that one shames. Voices in Gethsemane, calling, garden agony, on knees falling. Listen for a single test... Silence sounding, a song of rest. Parched lips thirsty, water taken. deeply asking "Hast thou forsaken?" Three days float in darkened tomb, Christ arises from earthen womb. Lift and raise the truth within me. remove the stones and set it free. Single song within resounding. "I Am I" Christ's own song sounding.

It is Pesach (passover) and as the goya amidst a partially Jewish family, I have been thinking deeply about Mitzrayim (the Hebrew word for Egypt) and Exodus.  I struggle with biblical readings. I, like Jacob wrestling with the angel, want the deeper meaning, my real name, catharsis.  Without this deeper resonance, dogma is dust in my mouth, offering little nourishment amidst the matzoh and wine.  So I study.  I read.  I reflect.  It is the path of a mama who adores all traditions, not for the tradition itself but for the deeper calling echoed within it.  The call of consciousness longing for itself. Mitzrayim actually translates into "a place of constriction".  AHA! Now that is something I can relate to.  Constriction.  The bud wrapped, before the bloom.  The caterpillar tight in chrysalis...bound. What is it in us that rebels against constriction on one hand and is lulled by its known security on the other.  Nature doesn't r...

I saw this painting at the art museum in Chicago, amidst hundreds of other marvels.  I am always impressed by the impressionists and pre-post-and pseudo impressionists.  I am in love with light and the portrayal of illumination.  It draws me into its depicted warmth and suddenly even the subject is secondary to the experience of luminosity.  I appreciate this same quality in photography, enthralled by radiance and captured brilliance.  At times like these, I remember my years at the University of San Francisco through the remembered fog of youth.  I do recall, however dimly, a biological psychology lecture in which the professor talked about the visual/auditory-wave theory, which suggests the world "out there" doesn't exist in the way we imagine.  In fact, it postulates that the world is an array of "waves"(think auditory waves and light waves) which are interpreted by the brain into "meaningful data".  If that is true than we are constructin...

One of the things that continues to inspire and confound me in life is perspective.  We take so many things for granted, assuming that our given vantage is correct, real and true and yet from a slightly different angle something seen one way..  can be something all together different. A corn feild  becomes a mass of texture...  And a may apple,  becomes a giant A cloudy sky looking up,  becomes a viewer when the perspective shifts. Yet, in our presumption we believe in the singularity of our vantage point without pausing to explore the infinite angles and possibilities inherent in every moment.  Wouldn't it be interesting to adopt a "what if" approach to life, softening our gaze and relaxing the narrowness of concept and belief to allow for a glimmer of the mystery of it all.