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This time around feels like my last chance to grab at the golden ring of happiness but I'll continue to act as if nothing matters to me. I'm afraid of disappointment but I don't want to be closed to a new experience. The weight of fear and caution weigh heavy on me as I navigate a new and narrow way. Wearing an arrogant mask I walk with a slow steady step. I am extra careful with words. The truth is that I am tenuous and ill at ease. I realize I cannot wrest satisfaction out of a situation no matter how well I manage. I struggle to let go of the outcome and to have faith that all is as it should be.
At the end of a long knotted string of disappointments it remains a struggle to keep an open mind. Instinct tells me to make light of my present situation, to shrug it off. My ears fill with whispers of self-destructive nothings. Peel away the well worn cloak of fear and self doubt and I feel I am ready for a new experience. Eager to develop a sense of ease with which I can receive freely and give even more than I receive.
Can gnarled old ideas, uncomfortable but familiar, finally fall away and release me from their grip? Will I, at last, have the willingness to be vulnerable, to be imperfect or even messy?
To all who have gone before me, who walk with me still and live on in my heart:
Thank you for your continued care and protection.
Allow me to channel your kindness and love.
Madelyn (Toot) and Stanley Dunham during WWII.
I've been so caught up in the drama of the presidential election that I just don't feel like there's much else to talk about. It's like a nationwide car wreck and no one can look away. So for lack of having anything else to write about I haven't been blogging much.
Add to the electoral falderall the increasing chill factor and I just wanna pull the covers up over my head. It was forty degrees this morning. I don't like that winter is coming so quickly. I got up this morning, made coffee, put on a couple of layers and took Zeke out into the park. Zeke loves the cold weather, running and bounding about the park with new found energy, more playful and more curious than he's been in months.
The combination of the weather and the election have me at a standstill. Deer in headlights / me in the apartment. I've been here all day, vacillating between the Huffington Post, fivethirtyeight and the Jed report. Occasionally I'll hit scrabble on facebook and a few unmentionable websites to try and get my mind off what I can't seem to stop reading about.
I can't wait till November fifth. I'm dreading the next two weeks and I absolutely refuse to go out on Halloween for fear of all the spooky Sarah Palins and Joe the Plumbers I might encounter.
I'm thinking about Obama's grandmother Toot. I hope she's okay. I hope she's well enough to celebrate the inauguration of her grandson as the President of The United States of America. Imagine what that would feel like. I'm glad he's taking a couple of days to go spend some time with her. Pay attention all you Florida seniors: Barack is a good boy!
I wish my grandmother was still here. Now would've been an ideal time for me to spend a couple of days with her. She would've been able to make some sense out of all this. She was a dyed-in-the-wool democrat and she might have been as agitated as anyone over this mess of an election or, more likely, she may have dismissed it all as "Hooey". Whatever her response would have been to the present political brouhaha, I know that she certainly would've been able to calm me down.
So here's to Nanny and here's to Toot.
The world keeps spinning. It's rotations appear to be getting faster and faster but they're not. I'm distracted by the financial crisis, the election, the debates and as serious as the outcomes of these events are they serve as diversions from my personal and spiritual struggles.
I didn't start blogging as an outlet for my political opinions yet somehow I've been guilty of doing just that. I want to share my internal perspective and my spiritual journey. I have an appetite for personal expression and I've been diverted by current events.
How deep into personal thoughts, how honest can I be before I pass the boundaries of bravery and enter into the realm of foolishness? My opinions on or feelings about Sarah Palin, Barack Obama or government bailouts isn't personal or even original. My opinions are shared by millions and many write about these things with much more aptitude and craft than I'm able to. When I share, however, about my longing to feel the presence of God or about my loneliness or about my inability to curtail my obsessive self-sabotaging behavior, am I going too far? Have I entered an area that embarrasses the reader as well as myself? I don't know.
Lately, as I make my way in this teeming metropolis, I might see the curve of an ankle or a lip, a hand, the crease of a turning neck or the musculature of a shoulder and I get overcome with an aching emptiness. A smile or gesture can throw me off balance for several minutes. Is it odd? Is it God? An unseen spirit reaches into my chest and firmly presses it's narrow accusing finger on an acutely sensitive spot: "There", it says "Right there is where the work needs to be done, where you are lacking." It is an actual physical pain and as well as being painful it brings with it a heavy sadness.
I don't know that I have developed the tools to ease this pain. The old tricks have stopped working. I keep trying them but they don't work. I'm not sure what else to do. I try to follow what interests me and hope that I attract what I need. I ask those who've gone before me to walk with me, guide me, hold me, comfort me. I talk to lost loved ones who I feel are somehow still near. "I'm uncomfortable. I'm lonely. I miss you. Stay with me." Something has protected me. I ask daily to feel that protective and loving Presence with me as I go through the day. I attempt to be as humble as I can be. I say please and I say thank you and day after day I continue to be protected.
I pray for the knowledge of God's will for me and the power to carry that out. I think I'm doing that to the best of my ability. When I was first introduced to this concept it sounded great. How could God's will feel anything but good? I imagined an elated kind of blissed out higher consciousness. "I'm so spiritual, look at me - I'm carrying out God's will" - wearing beads and eating vegetarian curry. But the truth turns out to be much more pragmatic and human. Apparently God's will involves struggle and work. Sometimes God's will even involves feeling lonely and lousy yet having the fortitude to get up the next day and do it again.
I can't be reminded enough that I have continued to walk in unmerited favor. I thank God in advance for whatever is brought to me as it is only having come through extreme struggle that I've come to realize that God is good ALL the time.
