"Gift from the Sea" Notes from a year and a half ago, found now

I am looking back at the beginning of my journal as I am about to use up the last pages and start a new one. In the first few pages of this old one, I notice my notes from reading the wonderful book "Gift from the Sea" by Anne Morrow dated March 2010. Those notes were written when I started this journal over a year and a half ago. Then, I was still living in Austin and reading that book at my grandmothers in Wimberley; it is one of her favorites. I lost the journal a few pages in and I started a new one. I found this lost journal and started writing in it again a few months ago, and now I've almost used it up because I go through journals quickly. Its interesting to have a journal with some entries from over a year and a half ago alongside entries written within the last few months - and to have the older notes line up so much more perfectly with where I am at now then where I was at then:

"What makes us hesitate and stumble? It is fear, I think that makes one cling nostalgically to the last moment or to clutch greedily at the next...But how to exorcize it? It can only be exorcized by its opposite, love. When the heart is flooded by love there is no room for fear, for doubt, for hesitation" (106)

"A larger rhythm, a natural swinging of the pendulum between sharing and solitude; between the intimate and the abstract; between the particular and the universal, the near and the far" (106)

"When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility, yet this is exactly what so many of us demand." (108)

"We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity, when the only continuity possible in life, as in love, in in growth, in fluidity - in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.

The only real security is not owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping even.

Live in the present relationship and accept it as it is now.

For it is only framed in space that beauty blooms. Only in space are events and objects and people - unique and significant - and therefore beautiful" (115)

"Patience - faith - openness, is what the sea has to teach. Simplicity - solitude - intermittency" (127)

Playing with Fire and Water

Ocean eyes I can dive deeply into
Finding myself reflected back
Inside an obsidian center,
My gaze intersected by meridian blue
And the sound of the sea within
The nautilus maze of my ear.

I am writing by a stream,
Now, Dear, do you know?
Water rushes clear under ragged snow,
And over glistening mica sand.
I recall your heart flushing,
Equally alive, rising, falling,
Beneath my fully opened hand,
As I breathed the words in jest,
"Don't even play with fire."
Maybe what I meant in earnest was,
Let the flames burn faster, higher,
Lighter, brighter, not consuming us,
but renewing, lasting through us.

Thoughts and Feelings

Yesterday was one of those floating dream days where every moment seemed inspired and as new as the light green shoots of grass passing up through the old ones. The hours were all that much more magical because I woke up not knowing or having planned a thing that would happen in them. The day could therefore become itself, created spontaneously. Malleably. Unfolding. I awoke in downtown Santa Fe seeing the sun strike through the line of wine glasses on the window ledge. By late morning, we are sitting in conversation and sunlight at a French cafe taking bites of delicious pear and mixed-berry claffouties - the namesake of the cafe. Later, still in sunlight, we are talking on the apartment patio, traffic and pedestrians pass by out of focus to me as I am wrapt up in communication - verbal and unspoken. An hour later, inside to use the restroom, he says: "Control is not real." I feel thats it exactly that I've been struggling how to bring to the surface. Yes, control is an illusion.

The conversation has built an energy, tangible almost.

Later, the sun is going down. Energy has been spent. I want to go for a walk before the beautiful day turns to night. How about going somewhere for a glass of wine? Soon we are walking to Maria's New Mexican Restaurant, a good walk that uses up the last of the daylight. I realize we have not eaten anything, but air and words, since the pastries this morning. During some point in the walk, he states: "There is no meaning." I am startled for a second, though I don't know if I show it. Then I realize what he means and that I have come to the same conclusion at one time or another. There is no meaning, but the meaning you create. I decided a long time ago that I love meaning and I love creating meaning out of everything that happens in my life. Everyone creates their own meaning. Or they don't. You will only have as  much meaning in your life as you create out of it. This day has been so special partly because I have found so much meaning in the simplicity of it. We settle into a new conversation over pina coladas, enchiladas, tamales, chile rellenos.

After concluding the night with a witty, funny comedy, newly released and titled, "Arthur", I feel a tinge of sadness that the day is over, accompanied by a rush of gratitude. Bittersweet.

I remember another comment he made during the day, when we were outside still talking on the patio. He said, "Thoughts and feelings are the same thing." Do we think they are separate because we have been brought up thinking this way? A thought comes to me now, later, not in his company anymore, maybe thoughts and feelings are the same energies just at different stages of development...

I take a while to process and reflect. If I speak too soon about something, the thoughts will come out only partly formed. Writing always helps me with the development of feelings to thoughts and vice versa. Maybe that is one of the reasons why I write.

The challenge becomes to be moved

Nature always moves me.

Walking.
Behind my house.
Up sand and scrub.
Through arroyos and gravel roads.
The sky at my back, stares dark grey,
weighted and waiting to spill.
But only a few sprinkles press my cheeks.
And I walk further still, alone,
than I ever have before.
Past even the lone gates
with security enforced signs.
The heavy slate sky arrests my breath,
I stop to take it in,
before I turn.

Transition to Winter

Above: Snow Clouds in New Mexico

Transition. Life is a transition. Sometimes, I feel more like I'm in a transitory state, but even when I don't feel like I am, I still am. We are always transitioning from one stage to another. Right now, I seem to be pausing in my life and I am trying to wait patiently for knowledge of which way I am meant to turn next. Waiting can be uncomfortable because of the insecurity that uncertainty invites in all too easily.

I don't want to be waiting around wasting energy and creative opportunities. Life is too short. Once again, the best thing to do is take a deep breath and remain aware of the connection to Grace that is always there and to stay in that alignment as much as possible.

It is easy to get discouraged and to question oneself. To question one's abilities and talents of actually finding a sustainable career that one loves and that one can make a living from and still give back. I guess there comes a point to settle down and do that. Is that where I'm moving toward? I trust that I will find work which will allow and challenge me to use my gifts to create beauty in this world...

We can only be at where we are at.

Transition to Winter

Transition. Life is a transition. Sometimes, I feel more like I'm in a transitory state, but even when I don't feel like I am, I still am. We are always transitioning from one stage to another. Right now, I seem to be pausing in my life and I am trying to wait patiently for knowledge of which way I am meant to turn next. Waiting can be uncomfortable because of the insecurity that uncertainty invites in all too easily.

I don't want to be waiting around wasting energy and creative opportunities. Life is too short. Once again, the best thing to do is take a deep breath and remain aware of the connection to Grace that is always there and to stay in that alignment as much as possible.

It is easy to get discouraged and to question oneself. To question one's abilities and talents of actually finding a sustainable career that one loves and that can make a living from and still give back. I guess there comes a point to settle down and do that. Is that where I'm moving toward? I trust that I will find work which will allow and challenge me to use my gifts to create beauty in this world...

We can only be at where we are at.

Notes from the week

I went for a hike with James, Adam and Christina last weekend to the top of Pedernal, that flat-backed mountain portrayed in Georgia O'Keefe paintings. So, so beautiful! We camped out along the chama river the night before. In the morning, James and I woke up earlier than everyone else and visited Christ in the Desert Monastery, driving down the dirt road beside the river and the turning cottonwood trees under blue blue sky. We arrived in time to sit in on 20 minutes of the service, followed by silent meditation. I felt like it was exactly what I needed. We noticed a tarantula migrating on the road on the way back.

Poem from earlier in the week:

I'm back to staring at the yellow walls
that bite me if I touch them.
Release me from the halls
running from one end to the other.
Send me peace of mind
and surprises to discover.
I realize I am restless,
Consuming chips and chocolate.
Close those eyes and go to sleep,
Falling deep below the blips of thought,
The requests to know not what,
Into gratitude for the resting and the letting.

From 10/26:
I dreamt last night. I was fashioning little log float rafts for 20 people. We were going to head out across the ocean for the next 6 weeks. I hid my camera and belongings up in a palm tree. The place of departure was the same place in a dream a few months ago in which a tsunami slammed ashore and I held onto to a tree, underwater, submerged, until it passed.

I just finished the profoundly thought-provoking book, "Love is Stronger than Death" by Cynthia Bourgeault. Its an incredible account of conscious love and the bond that continues to develop beyond the grave. Here are just a few of the many memorable quotes:

"Hence, the core of all spiritual practice lies in teaching us not to identify with our psychological reactions to everything" (107)

"Dying to self...awakening to self: the two paths exist in creative tension within us" (134)

"Soul work with an authentic soul partner can be messy, untidy, frequently turbulent. The beloved holds a key possessed by no on else, which allows him or her to plunge deeper into the other's psychic realms than any other human being, to unlock dungeons that even the beloved cannot open alone" (138)

"True love demands sacrifice because true love is a transforming force and is really the birth pangs of union at a higher level" (147)

"The very intensity of the desire they have to give all to the other will become the bridge on which they cross from passion to compassion" (150)

"I want it because I think it helps him; he wants it because he thinks it helps me. After a while, who gives what or why doesn't matter anymore, only the giving itself matters" (172)

"Love remains and deepens, but its form changes...it renews itself in a different way. What you really do today is to put your lives in the service of love itself: to let the material of your own selves - your hopes and fears, imitations and shadows, your intimate jostling up against each other - become the friction that polishes you both to pure diamonds" (188 - marriage sermon)

"If the way is opening, keep on walking" (209)