What’s new?

Dear Readers,

I want to invite you to my new blog. I’m still trying to figure out exactly what to do with it, visually speaking, but the subject matter will be a bit different.

In my work and my scholastic pursuits I became interested in symbols, divination, and our unconscious, both collective as Jung would say and our own singular unconscious in our dreaming and waking hours.

So please if you are interested, or know someone who is share this link.

Thanks so much!

Side by side

Deadheading

Taking my dogs out for their morning break from sleeping  on the couch inside to napping in the sun outside, I brought my garden shears with to deadhead some of the flowering plants. In the newness of summer, the gardens around our home are vibrant and young even amidst hard, rocky and clay-filled ground. Not the best place to flourish, but with consistent tending and lots of water the gardens are blossoming and they bring delight, not just to me, but to others who roll down windows or walk past and acknowledge the abundance and beauty in nature.

For the uninitiated, deadheading is cutting away the blooms of a plant that have flowered  thereby encouraging new blooms.When you deadhead a plant you cut away old and dying growth, just above the next set of leaves in order to encourage new growth. While stopping over each plant, clipping the flowered parts it dawned on me, the first half of this year for me has been much like the deadheading I was doing.

This year, by fate or by chance, much of my life has been about clearing away that which no longer blooms. The dead and the decayed, the wasted time and the wilted flowers, once in full bloom are no longer living.

Being abandoned by those whom we expect to love us leaves us more vulnerable to losses farther on. Losing the geographical closeness of those I love, although painful can be overcome. Even when expected, losing one who loved without condition doesn’t imply that there will be less heartbreak or grief attached to the loss. Like cut flowers in a vase, I try to arrange and re-arrange the losses in my mind. There is no suitable arrangement. Gathering them together only brings sadness.

Determining what no longer works and what no longer fits has left me brokenhearted and weary. I mistakenly placed trust in systems and institutions, only to be betrayed by the energy they expend keeping the status quo.  Those who were charged to help mediate when empowerment became power over, became silent and few. It is easier to stop a few lone voices than it is to listen actively seeking change, compromise and growth. It is difficult to discard integrity when the thundering herd trample it. In order to belong we will do most anything.  When ethics get in the way, they are labeled inconvenient, irrelevant, unnecessary.

Watching the flowers fall, I’m realizing that equipoise between belonging and integrity no longer exists in my current spaces. Revisiting the lessons I thought I learned a decade or so ago leaves me feeling humbled, hurt and chagrined. How wise I thought I was. How much I have yet to learn.

Sad and somber but nonetheless spirited I’ll retreat, remove myself from much of my current life and find new, perhaps more forgiving and fertile places on which to plant and garden. Life blesses me everyday and I find that now I need to  figure out how to grieve and yet find time and energy to welcome what comes next. I’m not yet ready to embrace anything wholeheartedly. Perhaps what I need to do is embrace moments, rejoicing in the idea that there is no need to do anything but allow time and love to heal.

Tending the garden offers time to reflect on remembrances, sunlit and shadow-filled. Whether hot or cooler, cloudy or sunny, the plants demand my time and attention. They bask in the light of day, no matter what the forecast brings. If I am attentive to their needs they mostly turn their face to the sky, facing whatever comes. Even fallen they impart a sense of muted beauty. May I do the same.imageimageimage

 

Revolution

Hello Bloggers and friends,

Life has spun out of control for me this year. Things happen and life feels unkind. In talking to folks I know it seems that many others have had similar experiences this year.  For me it has felt like there has been so much psychological or cosmic rain that all my umbrellas have drifted away and there is no cover to be had. I find myself in an unending storm that keeps knocking me off my feet. Things I believed in, work I loved, colleagues I trusted, those things are gone. I want to believe that what has left is clearing the way for new and wonderful changes, but I’m struggling in what feels like a nether world.  Pretty much these past months I’ve been feeling like one of my metaphorical umbrellas drifting, battered, torn and without purpose. Haven’t wanted to write, haven’t had the words, haven’t wanted to risk.

I’m learning over and over again to take joy in small things. To find shelter in the protective arms of family. Currently, there are few others to trust, but today the sun is shining and in spite of everything the birds keep singing and so I wait. Sticking my toes in the waters of hopeful expectation, tentatively.

One of the small things that has brought so much joy is the discovery that the artist Emitt Rhodes has made a record after 4 decades of silence.  In younger years I’d worn out the two albums, (yes, I’m old) I’d had. Looking for him over the years I tried to find more music, but it seemed like he had disappeared. It seems to me that in reading about him, he has been adrift, lost and sad, for a very long time. It seems like he has not been able to find happiness, until maybe now.  Really hope this is a turning point for him. Anyway, if you’ve heard him long ago, perhaps you were unaware of his new music. I’ve shared my current favorite below. If you haven’t heard him, I hope you’ll listen. Enjoy!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emitt_Rhodes

 

 

 

 

Today, the WordPress prompt wonders about the eighth sin.  It suggests that writers expound on what that sin might be for them and why.

The eighth sin is pessimism used intentionally or sometimes unintentionally to squash someone’s hopes or dreams. All of us have aspirations, hopes and dreams. All of us have dreams that we cannot, or choose not to act on.  Sometimes in trying to create or realize a dream the realization falls short of what we were attempting. I choose to believe that most of us are acutely aware when our dreams turn out differently than we plan. This is not necessarily a bad thing and might, in fact be a happy surprise.

Sometimes people say negative things to us due to their own need to protect themselves. Sometimes they say things to try to protect us from “failure.” This is a dangerous reaction even when it is sincerely well-meaning. If we do not try we cannot learn.  If we try and fail to execute our intentions in some way we learn how we might approach whatever it is we are trying to do in the future.  We can try again.

Naysayers, pessimists and sometimes mean people take too much delight in telling us why we cannot realize a dream. This is soul crushing, even if it may be true.  It also takes the joy and meaning out of life because sometimes the action of creating a dream is actually what we most want to engage in.

The adage, “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything” is applicable here. Knowing I have been guilty of this sin, going forward I hope to choose kindness, ask better questions that might be helpful, and keep my fears or negative experience to myself, unless I am asked. Even then, I hope to choose encouragement as my offering.  please do not confuse such responses with the kind of thinking that only offers positive reinforcement. I’m not suggesting that the world and all people in it need always be positive. I am suggesting that we take care in addressing others and not assume the worst.

Kindness usually wins, because like joy it is more lasting. Meanness may make someone feel better about themselves, but usually at the expense of someone they care about.

If any of my readers want to weigh in on this topic, or address their own eighth sin, here is the WordPress link.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/the-eighth-sin/