Pruning + Thorns = Beauty

In my yard I have several bougainvillea plants, a couple are giants. I love the flaming beauty of the bougainvillea when its blooming. Our semi-tropical climate is perfect for them and they grow into monsters. I have one that I lashed to the house years ago to direct its growth upward instead of outward, which would obstruct a lovely little winding path down the side of my house.

During the last couple of weeks we have experienced quite heavy rains. Key word here "heavy" rains. These rains caused my above mentioned bougainvillea to hang away from the house with a predictable result - the nylon cord broke and the Sasquatch plant sprawled awkwardly across my once pretty winding path. I had no choice but to cut it back - to the nub. But don't feel bad for the demise of this beautiful specimen. A bougainvillea has more lives than a cat and it will return very soon, stronger and healthier than ever. Especially since it fed happily and deliciously on my blood as I laboriously cut it back, one 3 ft section at a time.

For those of you who have never wrestled with a giant bougainvillea, I'm here to tell you that no one escapes unscathed from the experience. The thorns on that sucker are ENORMOUS and seek soft flesh like a moth seeks light, "the better to taste your blood, my little pretty." But just like roses (which I also foolishly grow) without some pruning, the beauty of the plant is withheld.
And pruning requires an encounter with thorns.

Pruning is always painful, but without such, the much desired growth and the accompanying beauty cannot take place. Just like our lives.

With Beauty Before Me

There are two ways to live,

one is as though nothing

is a miracle. The other is

as if everything is.

Albert Einstein

My Clothesline Experience

When I decided I wanted to start a blog, one of the most challenging parts, believe it or not, was coming up with a name for it. I looked at many other blogs and reviewed the names for them. Most were very catchy and cool though usually not pertinent to the subject material of the blog itself. So I made a list of what I thought were also catchy and cool names and took votes from family and friends but nothing really resonated in my heart.

So, as one of my most recent blog entries explained, I put it out to my subconscious, my higher self. I had just dozed off when it came to me from the deep recesses of my beanie little brain: ‘CLOTHESLINE EXPERIENCE’. I wrote it down on my pad of paper and went back to sleep. When I awoke in the morning I was amazed at what was on the paper. I called my bestest friend in Tennessee and related what had happened. “Of course!” she said. Then she added, “I had forgotten all about that.” Me too, or so I thought. So here’s the story of my clothesline experience:

About 28 yrs ago I was married, had a 10 yr old son and a 4 yr old son and a newborn baby girl. I also had a 5 yr old 120 pound Great Dane named Crystal, whom I loved. I had taken the baby and gone to the movies with my friend. While I was gone all hell broke loose. Apparently, Crystal had gotten away from whoever was handling her and attacked a neighbor’s dog. My then-husband, for whatever reason, got his rifle and killed my dog. By the time I returned home he had already “bagged” her and disposed of her somewhere. I still don’t know why. In any event, I was beside myself with confusion and rage. I was a wreck.

A couple of days later I was hanging out diapers on the clothesline. I was in such a dark place, so desperate and confused. I remember crying, sobbing really, as I reached down into the clothes basket, grabbed a sweet smelling clean diaper, shook it out and clipped it to the clothesline. I called out to God through my weeping to please! please! please! help me. I remember saying “I can’t fix this one, I’m so very lost and confused, please help me.” I let go of everything, acknowledging my helplessness.

And then it happened, right there at the clothesline. I was engulfed in love, in grace. As I walked back to the house, I physically felt an arm around my shoulders. My inner being and my outer environment were filled with love. There is no other word for it than love, light, grace.

God met me at the clothesline.

Love After Love

I love this poem so much...just wanted to share...

Love After Love


The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own front door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.


-Derek Walcott

Without Warning

I see it in the distance
A grey curtain
Nearer, nearer
Till suddenly and almost,
But not quite, without
Warning I am covered,
Surrounded,
Drowning
In the shocking wetness
Of it.
Like a shower on a
Summer day
It arises from nowhere, from everywhere
Sucking the air from
My lungs
Stopping my heart from
beating.
Altogether cold.


Linda L Logan

With All Your Heart

With all your heart

Say out loud...

I want to live a happy life.

Listen to what you just said...

Take notice of things.

Surround yourself with people

you love.

Listen to the wind.

Imagine.

Let everything change all the

time.

Let go of the why.

Welcome miracles.

Thank God constantly

Breathe.

Tell the truth about how you feel.

Make choices.

Want what you want.

by Rev Lisa S

Acres of Diamonds

Sometimes when I get in a stuck place i.e. I don't know what to do about a particular situation or I don't know which path I should take. Whatever the unknown may be, I ask my higher self at night before I go to sleep for direction, for an answer, for the next step. I've learned to keep a pad of paper and a pen nearby because sometime between falling asleep and awakening the next morning an answer to my dilemma may come forth and if I don't write it down it will vanish like a mist and be gone forever. Sometimes whole poems will emerge that are scribbled over pages and pages that have to be decoded and transcribed into something readable in the morning. In any event, I think it is very cool and always welcome this somewhat bizarre but effective process.

A few weeks ago I was feeling like, "OK, what's next, where do I go from here?" So I put my question out before I went to bed but I forgot to equip myself with a pad of paper and pen. The Universe being generous, friendly and understanding chose another method to get the message across to me. So I'm sleeping happily snuggled under he covers when suddenly I'm awaken by a very loud voice, saying, very loudly, "Acres of Diamonds!!!". It was said just once but with enough force to make me jump out of bed as if a stick of dynamite and just exploded...you know where!

I ran to the computer and looked up "Acres of Diamonds." I knew it was a talk/sermon that had been given thousands of times by Russell Cromwell back in the late 1920's and I knew the gist of the talk but I wanted to read the entire text to see how it applied to me.

You can find it, should you be interested, the same way I did but here's the cliff note version:

A farmer wants to get rich by going out into the world to search for diamonds so he might become wealthy beyond imagination. He sells his farm, all his belongings, etc etc and leaves his home in search of diamonds. The fellow that buys his farm one day goes to a brook and finds a stone which he later discovers is a gigantic diamond that has been there all along.

Obvious moral: No need to take off in search of __(fill in the blank)______, because everything you need you are sitting on right now. Just gotta dig it up. Basically another take on "the grass always looks greener on the other side".

A friend of mine is a world traveler, she's got a knack for traipsing off across the globe to look for herself or for love or to escape a relationship or to find a new experience. I always admired her ability to cut loose and take off. But one day, during a particularly close and intimate sharing conversation she told me that no matter where she ran off to...she (and all her issues) went right along with her. She couldn't escape herself no matter how she tried.

Dissatisfaction can live anywhere.

What diamond mine are each and every one of us sitting on of which we are not even aware? What riches did we come into the world already equipped to share? What are our talents? What prevents us from accessing the wealth, happiness, joy, peace and love for which we all long?

I don't know the answers for you...I'm just learning some of these answers for me.

I think the answer lies right under my nose.

Dragonfly Encounter

I went tubing last week with my grown children and their friends. For those who are uninitiated in tubing...let me explain. People pay money to sit in or lay on top of a large plastic or rubber tube and allow the current of icy cold water carry them down a river with unseen and unknown critters lying at the bottom waiting to bite their now-numb butts. The length of this supposedly relaxing ride varies from place to place. Our tube ride was supposed to last 2 hours but we were enjoying ourselves so much we made it last for 4 hours. That allowed the sun to completely blister us rather than just a partial burning.

Florida is very hot! hot! hot! in August so the 72 degree water temp, though initially a shock, was a welcome relief. The water on Rainbow River is crystal clear in many of the spots we floated over but there were some very grassy locations that gave me the hebee jebees because I didn't know what might be lying in wait under my tube. Since there were many, many other tubers, kayakers and even some motorized boats, much of the wildlife was absent. A turtle here or there basking on a log or a heron perched high in a cypress tree far from the maddening crowd below was about all of which I caught sight,

I did enjoy the company of a large (really large) brown dragonfly that landed on my knee. We enjoyed each other's presence for nearly an hour, floating together down the Rainbow River. I stared at his huge compound eyes, watching him watching me. I watched him breathe through spiracles located near his butt and tried to match my breathing to his but his respirations, or whatever they might be called in dragonfly language, was too rapid for me and soon I found myself hyperventilating...so I stopped.

I've always considered dragonflies a good omen for me personally. They seem to show up right when major changes are occurring in my life. A few years ago I was experiencing a similar event that I am currently working through and as I sat at the lake near my home, journaling and praying, a whole herd of dragonflies, like 20 or 30 of them, hovered an armslenth away from me, like little helicopters. They stayed their position quite a long time before they took off, returning again and again, seemingly to check on me.

Very cool.

Bring on the dragonflies...

Priorities and Options

The job I currently hold is one in which I help people with their personal documents. One morning last week a woman came to my desk that needed to make a name change due to a recent marriage. She was an attractive woman, probably in her early 60’s, hair and make-up perfect and she was impeccably dressed. The one conflicting aspect to this picture-perfect lady was that she was hooked up to an oxygen tank. As we got to talking she shared with me that she only had about six months to live which completely blew me out of the water because she looked SO healthy, SO well. She had been battling cancer for 9 yrs but the cancer cells had now reached a level of tolerance to chemo and the chemo just wasn’t working anymore.

She also shared with me that the reason she married at the midnight hour was because her now-husband had stuck by her side for the past nine years as she endured multiple surgeries and courses of radiation and chemotherapy. She said he deserved to receive anything that she possessed at her death since he had been so caring, nurturing and compassionate toward her during the past nine yrs. He had been so PRESENT.

I’ve recently run across a quote that really rocked my world and the conversation I had with my customer confirmed the truth of it.

“NEVER MAKE SOMEONE A PRIORITY WHEN THEY ONLY MAKE YOU AN OPTION”

WOW! That’s some powerful mojo. This dying woman experienced, over a period of many years, that she was a priority to the gentleman that she eventually married. But more importantly, as she pointed out to me…making me a priority and not an option is the first step toward drawing toward me people who will treat me likewise. If I waver, if I put my own self at the bottom of the totem pole, then I’ve already accepted that position and naturally others will follow my own example.

Again and again, I come face to face, eyeball to eyeball with my reflection in the mirror, finding myself cajoling, begging, demanding of myself more self-respect, more self-nurturing, more self care, more self-love. The thought is that the more I value my intelligence, creativity, beauty, the more I will be valued for such. Great in theory! My experience mostly has been that I allow others to determine my worth, my value, my beauty, my intelligence, and my creativity.

The woman I met who was standing there dying right before my eyes reeked of self respect and self- love. She was truly an angelic messenger that day bringing a bright sparkle of truth into my troubled and aching soul.

Dreams Adrift

(continued from July 29th)

But within a month of starting classes and loving every minute of it my lack of income continued so it became painfully clear that I was going to have to delay my new interest and get a REAL job. So I dropped out of school and began the job search in one of the worst economic environments in decades. I found a job relatively quickly and left it quickly in favor of job two. This second job required an hour commute to and from work each day so again I had the opportunity to listen to books on tape.

One of my very favorites is The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Many of us were required to read it in high school but it is definitely worth a re-visit, especially during these difficult economic times. Sometimes we can benefit from a reality check. I would highly recommend listening to the version that is read by Dylan Baker.

I’ve always been extraordinarily interested in “The Great Depression.” The strength and tenacity of the human spirit intrigues me and I love stories of people who don’t just survive but triumph in difficult circumstances and surely those years were some of the very hardest our country endured.

My mother was raised during the depression and told me many stories of how her mother, a grandmother I never had the privilege to meet, ran a boarding house in their home in Philly for men who came to that city to work. During the week they lived in the boardinghouse and then returned to their families in outlying rural communities during the weekends. My grandfather was a conductor on one of the many railroads during that time, carrying coal, iron and workers in and out of Philadelphia. I guess some of the stories she told me made quite an impression on my young brain; perhaps that’s the reason for my interest.

So after listening again to The Grapes of Wrath, I then became interested in living a more simple live; thus began two years of ‘paring down’, attempting to live more frugally, more healthily, closer to the land…one that would allow my family and I a head start should another economic collapse occur. Little did I know we were well on our way in that direction.

I gathered books on my new favorite topic and devoured every one. Books like: The Good Life by Helen and Scott Nearing, the founders of the simplicity movement; Voluntary Simplicity; The Simple Life; Extreme Simplicity; Plain Living; Simple Living and The Complete Tightwad Gazette. This is just a very partial list of the many books that were delivered nearly every day from Amazon. Of course, my new frugality suffered as I expanded my library but never mind about that…

I erected a clothesline (more on my clothesline experience at another posting) so as to save energy used by the dryer but the damn thing frustrated me to no end as I couldn’t keep it from bending under the weight of my wet laundry and even copious amounts of cement would not anchor it firmly in Florida’s sandy soil.

I also planted a large vegetable garden intent on growing our own food, however, the frigging insects were equally intent on me growing THEIR food. I ordered ladybugs so they could devour the aphids but when, with great excitement and an expectant drum roll, I opened the lid, they all took a look around and flew away.

I tried to make insect repellant with soap and other organic and natural ingredients but I’m pretty sure I saw those nasty bugs laugh merrily as I drenched them in soapy liquid and then they happily went back to munching on my squash and bell peppers.

I mercilessly went through my house with a fine-tooth comb and sold and gave away tons of frivolous items. Then I packed up most everything that remained and put it all in storage to ready my home for sale. I wanted to move to north Georgia or Tennessee or North Caroline and begin living off the land in simplicity and frugality in earnest. I made a couple trips to these chosen locations, decided on North Carolina and began to imagine myself as an alpaca farmer, working and living off the land with my income coming solely from alpaca fur or hair or whatever it’s called.

However, my 16 yr old son wasn’t really having dreams of pastoral life and, indeed, wanted nothing to do with a move halfway across the country leaving his school and friends. So I hauled all my stuff back from storage, ‘plowed’ under my garden and threw down sod and finally kicked over my failed but beloved clothesline.

My dream to live more simplistically with less stuff in an environment more attuned to my inner longings still sings strongly and loudly in my heart.

I wait.