Letter to the Beloved

Dear One,

To feel so flooded with vios, that principle from which life manifests into expressions of vitality...

The birds feasting on worms with dew in the air and on the grass
The sun teasing us with its soft golden pink light cutting through the veil of fair indigo clouds

It happens in a flash that is timeless.

God is all around
Breathe in the essence
Swim in the manna
Drink till we are in ecstasy

The parting words always

All is Well
Life is Good
We are Truly Blessed

Dormant vitality in me awakens
Heartspace stretches into new territories
Sleeping pain and love expresses itself
Tears of joy and aching are one and the same

Recognition of the Sacred is a Precious Experience.

Love,
Your Beautiful Muse

Stories: Which Shape My Life?

"It is all a question of story.

We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story.

We are in between stories. The old story, the account of how the world came to be

and how we fit into it, is no longer effective. Yet we have not yet learned the new story.

Our traditional story of the Universe sustained us for a long period of time.

It shaped our emotional attitudes, provided us with life purpose and energized action.

It consecrated suffering and integrated knowledge.

We awoke in the morning and knew where we were.

We could answer the questions of our children.

We could identify crime, punish transgressors. Everything was taken care of because the story was there. It did not necessarily make people good, nor did it take away the pains and stupidities of life or make for unfailing warmth in human associations.

It did provide a context in which life could function in a meaningful manner."

-Thomas Berry

Explore the practice of becoming ever more mindful of the stories that shape your life and when they come clearly into view, begin to investigate and question those stories have come from, how they live in you, and how they either serve of diminish the quality of life. Discovering, questioning, and revisioning the stories by which we live is a liberative artform worthy of your exploration. Can you imagine how different our lives and world would be if more and more people were to come to live by stories that are more closely aligned and congruent with the true nature of reality - and of themselves?

Thank you Joel and Michelle Levy for your wonderful Thought for the Day. To find out more about their work visit: http://www.wisdomatwork.com/WisdomAtWork/Home.html

It requires self-esteem to receive--not self-love but just a pleasant acquaintance and liking for oneself.

Thank you to http://www.delanceyplace.com for the daily missiles of fiction that prompt one to seek out and read the WHOLE book.

I was a highschool student when I read Cannery Row, The Log of the Sea of Cortez and Pastures of Heaven (my personal favorite of Steinbeck's to this day.) In late January of this year, while on a visit home to the Monterey Peninsula, my mother, daughter and I visited the Monterey Aquarium and I was drawn back down the "rabbit hole" as I fingered each wonderful Steinbeck offering in the main gift shop, with artful modern covers. And yet I could see my Penguin Classic Editions with tattered corners as clear as I could see my hand before me reaching for crisp copy of The Pearl and other stories. Those were the days, when so many of my dearest friends were as my mother calls them "bookfriends."

In this excerpt, John Steinbeck eulogizes his recently deceased friend, Ed Ricketts:

I have tried to isolate and inspect the great talent that was in Ed Ricketts, that made him so loved and needed and makes him so missed now that he is dead. Certainly he was an interesting and charming man, but there was some other quality that far exceeded these. I have thought that it might be his ability to receive, to receive anything from anyone, to receive gracefully and thankfully, and to make the gift seem very fine. Because of this everyone felt good in giving to Ed--a present, a thought, anything.

Perhaps the most overrated virtue in our list of shoddy virtues is that of giving. Giving builds up the ego of the giver, makes him superior and higher and larger than the receiver...It is so easy to give, so exquisitely rewarding. Receiving, on the other hand, if it is well-done, requires a fine balance of self-knowledge and kindness. It requires humility and tact and great understanding of relationships. In receiving, you cannot appear, even to yourself, better or stronger or wiser than the giver, although you must be wiser to do it well.

It requires self-esteem to receive--not self-love but just a pleasant acquaintance and liking for oneself.

John Steinbeck, The Log from the Sea of Cortez, Appendix, ""About Ed Ricketts"", Penguin Books, 1951, pp. 272-3

At fourteen, I would say I was not quite in possession of self-esteem, but rather that I was still on a quest to find it and claim it like a treasure. It took a lot longer than I could ever imagine. I was already an expert at giving and giving certainly has its place. Hindsight being what it is, I see now I was resistant to receiving, except in the most dire of times. And even then my capacity to receive what I most needed was colored with angst.

That all began to change the day I became a mother. And I am not the first to say that the birth of a child marked the beginning of a new era of self-actualization.

The reality and experience of pure love given and received in a mutual moment of exchange came about 8:30am on January 31, 2000 when my newly delivered daughter was placed across my chest, met my eyes, and clasped my little finger with her own fresh perfect hand. And her crying evaporated as did my nausea from the epidural and time stood still a moment. And there began my sense of self, relative to her, and my new role and responsibility. She would know love and self-love and be given every opportunity to accept herself from the beginning. And that has made all the difference in the last decade for me. I remain an expert at giving and am no longer a novice at receiving. And that new "talent" makes life sweeter.

"It requires self-esteem to receive--not self-love but just a pleasant acquaintance and liking for oneself."

May you enjoy the journey of making your own acquaintance.