Weekly Ponderings (26 September – 2 October)

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Big Medicine
Sometimes we need to reset by looking in a different direction.
This week I have left my fiber art (and my to-do list) in Colorado.
My bedroom faces south rather than west.
And my landscape is the Gulf rather than the Rockies.
My son-in-law looking out on all this water calls it, Big Medicine.
What is your Big Medicine?

Pos+ability
What do you want?
(Not what do you ‘not want’?)
What do you seek?
(Not what are you trying to avoid?)
What do you believe in?
(Not what are you rejecting?)
We each need to be able to say what matters
because until we are willing to put some
positive energy into our common life
(some intense thought, some clarity,
some patient determination,
some generous time,
some powerful commitment)
we cannot expect our leaders to ‘make it better.’

Pigeonholes
Today is my 65th birthday.
I am aware that I am still changing, still in process.
And if I want to stay alive,
I need to pay attention to the fact that
my psyche (our psyches) have all sorts of tools
to lock what we think or believe
about ourselves and our world
into neatly accessible categories and pigeon-holes…
The only way into change is to lean forward,
to use gravity to topple ourselves
off our perch in the pigeon-hole
or out of our comfortable box.
[Note to Self: This is not going to be easy.
You are allowed to whimper on alternate Fridays
from 7:00 to 7:10.]

(Extra)-Ordinary
A day is never ‘just a day’…
it is laden with the entire freight of human experience.
I may go to bed having had a totally ordinary day
while somewhere else
a family staggers into a refugee camp in shock,
you are hired for your dream job,
a friend loses the love of his life,
a neighbor faces a frightening diagnosis,
a stranger gives birth to her first child.
Why are we so unprepared for change
when the entire world changes
(steadily, inexorably, permanently)
between every single inhale and exhale?

Time-Less
Sometimes life is like an obscure pun
and sometimes it is more like a pie in the face.
Somehow, somewhere this week,
I lost my watch.
I had it when we arrived at the rental apartment.
I took it off the first night.
It vanished.
And from that moment,
time became ‘now.’
Boarding a plane and returning to Denver
will require reintegrating with our common notion of time,
but these days have been a reminder that time
is a human construct
and de-constructing is an option.

Transitions
Yesterday, my family of origin packed up
and moved out of our glorious apartment
on the Gulf Coast.
Some of us are still traveling,
but my beloved husband and I arrived home
early last evening.
We unpacked suitcases and reintegrated the
vacation clothing and accouterments
into their normal places in our home.
And I was stunned – yet again – by how much we have
(an embarrassing abundance)
and how much I actually need for happiness,
for creativity, for clothing, for health care,
for entertainment, for growth, for reading, for…
(less than 1% of that abundance).
[I was living out of a mid-sized suitcase, after all.] We have ‘tidied away’ an enormous amount…
yet the only descriptor for what remains is ‘excess’.
Acquiring was part of the transition from adolescence
to the responsibilities of the householder stage of life.
The universe is clearly announcing that releasing
is an essential part of the transition
into the freedom of age.

Wit-ful
In its most recent issue,
the only weekly magazine I read just printed
the words of William Buckley, Jr.
Buckley is not someone with whom I agree very often,
but he knew how to think deeply and how to write with panache.
If I didn’t know he was dead,
I would believe he was commenting on
the electoral nonsense that has been tweeted recently
by someone Buckley called ‘a self-enchanted demagogue’.
“I won’t insult your intelligence
by suggesting you really believe
what you just said.”