To be tired, truly tired is an awful and overwhelming feeling. It swamps you leaving a feeling of disorientation and rudderlessness, at least for a time. While I believe one can recover from the state, the shock of its very occurrence has a lingering effect much like a bad odor impossible to completely eradicate. Ultimately, there becomes a gnawing feeling your life has made a turn, one impossible to deny, a sobering acknowledgement of no going backness.

I have had such a feeling of late, brought on by yet another health crisis. And while it is still possible the ship could yet be righted once again, it has begun to feel less likely. What’s worse, the effort of righting the ship feels hardly worth it. After all, how does one recover directional functionality when one has lost the very tool itself used to navigate.

ON THE WINGS

At one of my darkest moments, a woman recently told me her husband had been diagnosed with Stage Four stomach cancer months ago, leaving little to no hope for survival. In her voice was the unmistakable whisper of the very life he was threatened to be losing being carried aloft by a possibility fueled by the hope of living.

She told me this while I was in tears, tired beyond comprehension of taking one more step towards hope myself, zapped beyond anything I ever experienced before. My will seemed gone, eliminated. And yet she arrived in my hospital room exuding an authentic energy of, my God, could it be a ray of sunshine, of hope? A sliver? I was clearly skeptical. And yet…

OF A PRAYER

She spoke of a pray-to-God moment that was oddly palpable. How is it she came then, at the very time of my unmooring if not for that? She was not a seminar, not a mantra, not a meditation group, she had none of the trappings of an organized delivery system of fortitude. She was not programmed. And yet here I sit writing this itty bitty story of a moment, offering the exact breath I need to breathe differently going forward by a nurse’s aide from a foreign country.

So many things in my life—activities, events, practices—have spoken to my soul that have truly propelled my spirit. But this woman was a quieter and simpler delivery system, a compass load star spoken with an accent from another place. A universal place.  She related, no, transferred the baton she offered in her simple message of “pray to God.” That may not even have been her exact wording. But it was her specific intention and energy, delivered with authenticity from her experience and a learned awareness.

It was not to gain anything. Rather it was to trust that all would be righted somehow. To understand I was not to gut it out by doing it all myself but instead to believe in a faith all would be well, would carry me forward and be righted no matter the outcome. She spoke of hope not by using the word but by demonstration for she was the prayer.

THE ENERGY OF LOVE

There are times in life when a message comes unbidden, from God knows where by who knows what but it comes just the same. At times like these I think of Christopher Reeves after his accident, lying motionless, trapped in a nobody that won’t move without another’s assistance. I heard he cried everyday which was likely cathartic even if only temporarily so. I image his tears also might have made room for hope. Not of some miraculous physical healing but of a more transcendent psycho-emotional-spiritual one.

I think of all the thousands and millions of people who have died of Covid, and not just that but other diseases, alone and feeling unspeakable loss and hopelessness. My loss, my hopelessness is not that large but I can still identify with their presumed sense of tiredness, of giving up. Were there moments of inspiration, of comfort from some unknown force whether human conveyed or from an energy of Divine origin even if only for a split second?

There are times for suffering and unspeakable loss and there are times for recovery’s wings and a belief in something greater than one’s self. There are times for hopelessness and times for endurance that all will be well no matter the outcome. My recent gift of hope — and dare I say, faith — was delivered recently by an unsuspecting hospital aide. She shared a universal gift. She shared a gift of compassion, hope and love, and from the trenches of her own experience. A gift so subtle and seemingly ordinary I could have missed it had I insisted on only relying on analytical mind. Hers was a gift so pervasive it was not to be ignored, rather to be immersed in and lifted up. To hope in things unseen.


“This is the season for reconstituted living. look at the smallest kindness and you will see the ingredients Einstein spoke of as comprising life. Love constitutes all things, abides in all things, reveals all things. It is never the catastrophe that does us in. Rather, it is the blind spot through which we view it.” (from Vibrating At The Speed Of Love.)

—————

Behold the tree. I asked the tree, what is God? Tell me. It stood wordless, waving. 

I asked the sunflower, what is God? tell me. It’s stillness leaning in, silent.

I asked the puppy aquiver with energy, what is God? Tell me, its tail wildly screaming joy.

I asked the bluebells, cupped with aplomb, what is God? They simply bloomed.

I asked the worm, what is God? It ignored me, going about its earthmoving business.

To ask what — or even if — God is, strikes me as comical at this stage of my life, seemingly an egoistic exercise, a gambit in intellectual self-gratification, a puffed up cleverness ploy.

What I have come to know is that the question itself is a distraction from celestial-driven observation. We humans insist on definition, the naming of things.

Go to the woods. Go to the ocean. Go to the symphony. These all reflect places, things, nouns. Even the word God implies a thing, something to be named. A noun.

I have come to know God is not a noun. It is a verb. It is Is-ness. It is creation, allness, expression spoken in forms—out of formlessness it arises. 

It (God) is not confined in a book, not even the Bible, the Koran, the Talmud. Rather, It is everywhere, silently expressing itself in a robin’s fleshed out, beating breast, in the golden poppy, in Love’s gaze from mother to child.

It matters not whether we humans believe in It. It has no need of adoration for all that exists is its expression, scaled down like a step down transformer. 

It only requires awareness, reverence for that aspect of itself which spins creation, in one form or another, named or not!

As its offspring, all of life serves as reflection, mirroring back, pulsating, blooming, replenishing ad infinitum. Verbs, all.

Therein lies the peace that passes understanding. It is not only enough, It is all. Whether It is passive or active, It just is.

Bio—

Rosalie Cushman is the author of three books, numerous essays, magazine articles, and a whole lot of web content for business and industry. She lives in Northern California.

Vibrating At The Speed Of Love

How hard it is to stay quiet. Sometimes, I’ve become aware of fearing the very thing I crave. This morning when I was doing my meditation ritual, a sliver of sunlight insisted on showing itself through the olive tree branches in front of my window. All was quiet. I was aware of it, it being a kind of willing participant in silence. Actually, the longer the light pierced the leaves, the more aware I became.

Power and Light

I became immersed in a natural, diffuse yet potent quality that was far more definition of me than all the other personality traits I insist on clinging to. My sense of self was part of the field, a member of the whole which revealed itself. I was essential. As my awareness expanded through the quiet, not only did it feel organic, I also began to associate a sense of home to it.

Home is a funny thing. As mammals, we have such a physical need for nesting, over-associating a sense of comfort and security with physical space in which we reside. But the sense of quietness as home, maybe even womb-like, is different.

The Pull

There is something unique, inexplicable and indistinct that draws me to quiet. The phrase “moth to a flame” comes to mind. Quiet is both a lure and a disorientation. It carries with it a subtle fear of extinction. Scientists believe moths are drawn to light when their navigational systems become disrupted, leaving them confused and disoriented. And yet, drawn in they must be, even at risk of death, of which they cannot really know. There is something inevitable suggested in eventual death and transformation. Yet who rushes to it.

For me, as time slowed and I entered the subtle perception of a difference of being, it struck me as I, too, had become disoriented, though for a time, I seemed powerless to resist. Continuing, I rode the wave to its peak.  Up to a point! For a time, it was certainly worth the risk. Of what? Of the fear of losing my previously assumed sense of self, of what I’ve defined myself to be in mortal earth terms? In a flash, I had awareness that quiet is sourced from a different dimension, the quality of the Divine. It is outside of time and even space once you really settle into it. And therein lies both the comfort and the fright.

To Be or Not To Be

Quiet suggests a fright that is both compelling and repelling. Sometimes I just cannot stand all the noise of the world and must escape. At times even, quiet contains a whisper of ultimate freedom yet one with an eventual loss of a sense of self as I have previously been defined. Quiet presents the ultimate conflict because I both want to lose that sense of self which is purely fiction and an architecture of my own ego’s creation, as well as maintain the very fiction I have made. What am I if not my sense of self definition? While I personally believe I reflect an expression of God, I have gone about my physical existence segregated from that belief all too often.

If God exists as the silence, as pure potentiality as some scientists and theologians believe, then there actually seems to be no definition whatsoever other than potential expression as defined by… What? Me? A conscious human being that has been blessed to be born a human like the Buddha suggests, being endowed with the raw ingredients from which to evolve into greater consciousness? If God has created all things as expressions of his potentiality, which is infinite, He is everywhere and nowhere. He is both alpha and omega, beginning and end, over and over again.

 Context is Everything

He/She/It spins out a potential within a context, be it inanimate or animate, be it a life form, a liquid or a solid. What a sense of creative joyful play He must have! He gives each thing parameters, a context in which to further develop and continue his initial creation, active participants, a sort of “God thinned down” within, to carry on what He begat! Each thing carries the torch of ongoingness. One of the problems with us humans—and of me— is that we think we have done it all. That pesky ego we have been endowed with, an outgrowth of animal evolution, presumes to think we are the creators of ALL of our own lives instead of realizing we are merely stewards of His raw ingredients. We are so very arrogant!

But back to quiet. Quiet is both a whisper and a thunder, a lure and a resistance. At times I crave it whether I’ve cultivated it or stumbled into it by Grace. Regardless, I cannot ultimately stay away. The noise of the world becomes a pressure cooker after a time, one that requires a release of steam. Plus, I know in the quiet resides a real “me” to be rediscovered!

So of course I continue on, alternating between quiet’s pull to its very fright. At the end of the day, it makes no matter whether I understand or try to define it. Ultimately, I acknowledge the reality of creation and the rules that guide it are not up to me. Rather, I am aware of being a kind of project manager, a steward of gifts given me by a Source greater than I can truly comprehend. At the end of the day, I must surrender to a power greater than myself to follow the light of Home, that flame that calls us all, whether inside or out of time. It is the ultimate peace.

 

The emotional types respond with facility to world glamour and to their own individual inherited and self-induced glamour. The bulk of the people are purely emotional with occasional flashes of real mental understanding – very occasional, my brother, and usually entirely absent. Glamour has been likened to a mist or fog in which the aspirant wanders and which distorts all that he sees and contacts, preventing him from ever seeing life truly or clearly or the conditions surrounding him as they essentially are.  (Glamour: A World Problem by Alice A. Bailey and Djwal Khul)

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What is it about music that moves your insides, at least it does mine. From JT to Aretha, from Bonnie Raitt to Handel, from Pachelbel to the Bee Gees, or the Beatles—there are too many masters to name. Then, then, I came across this guy, Tommy Emmanuel, and was, well, WOW’d. No wait, I was mesmerized. No, that’s not right either. I can’t think of a word. Moved? It still doesn’t quite cover it, cover him. A classical, blues and jazz guitarist extraordinaire, when catching a clip posted on Facebook this morning tears welled fast, uncontrollably. Not because anything was sad or sorrowful, not even The Trails piece I’ve listed as the middle link. Rather, tears came spontaneous and unbidden because of the powerful talent that pours, no, erupts, no, blasts out of this man’s genius play. That’s what it looks like, Play! He PLAYS!! This is what inspired musical play looks like, sounds like; feels like. Read more

It is beyond mortifying, witnessing what is happening socially and politically in our country these days. In Part 1 of this little series, I wrote about the decline of democracy in America, erudite and intellectually bent, to be sure. This follow-up is far more about emotion, psychology, and grief! While many pundits, academics, and editorialists are pretty much describing the train wreck of our culture in graphic terms, with the GOP coming apart at the seams, the inevitable disintegration in front of us as a whole, is palpable and real. It’s like the 60’s and 70’s in reverse.
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I’ve been reading “Gift From The Sea” by Anne Morrow Lindbergh recently, feeling even more affected by it than the first reading years ago. The beauty of it, her poignant insight, strikes a profound cord someplace deep. Take, for example, the following passage:  Read more

The BenchSo I’m getting ready to move in less than a month, having found a lovely little adobe home-share situation. Because the place is already well-established with current tenants, much of my furnishings will either go to my son for safe-keeping or be given away.  Read more

I watched a documentary recently, “Alive Inside”, about people suffering from Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia or impairment, including just getting old, and was profoundly moved. In an odd way I recognized myself which was nothing short of sobering, to say the least! While my mother endured Alzheimer’s some years ago, quite frankly it was not that identification that was so jarring to me. Rather, it was the sniffing out of my own slow leak from a sense of my former self. This was not because I have any more “age associated memory loss” common to being in the early 60’s than the next person. Instead it seems I may be both blessed and cursed with taking my substantive ‘temperature’ of who and what I am and want at a plethora of  life stages. It’s almost as if I’m being dogged by some form of conscious interior evolution. Drat!

This past year I have come to observe a kind of tiring, a rejection of that turbo charged daily living that prevailed in my younger years. Having ‘put it all out there’ from ego-driven ambition, the idealism and naiveté of youth, and the drive to prove myself as a consequence of insecurity, I have felt spent—and for more than a year, actually: probably about six or seven!

There’s a down side to outgrowing the above stage(s) of course. While it provides a measure of much needed respite, a kind of inertia creeps in when chucking so much stimulation: inertia or a filling time with illusory often trivial tasks that hide the loss of authentic robust and energized living can result. It seems this downsizing of an over-stimulated lifestyle has come at a price, and not just for me but for others I’ve observed as well.

Now, I have made LOTS of change in my life, some of it wise and some of it foolish although I didn’t know so much about the foolishness at the time. This reflection is probably no different from most people’s on the planet. Still, it is sobering to consider one’s life in retrospect. The rearview mirror-gazing looms large in the accountability department, revealing subterranean conflict that requires a piercing examination, some of it horrifying, some of it funny. Yes, funny. One better be able to laugh at one’s self if for no other reason than to reduce the freight that bad choices contain, especially choices one still feels stuck in. Sometimes, I swear that state feels so dense, so swallowing, I can almost hear a sucking sound. Awful.

Enter a conversation recently at breakfast with friends, one of whom said he was mad at his dad for shrinking (my word not his) from his former robust self. I remember, too, being really angry at a friend who I felt had done the same thing: a brilliant woman with a PhD who got stuck after the death of her husband. From where I sat it seems she was mired down in an over-attachment to the only thing/person that defined her and identified her greatest reason for being. It had always been obvious to me she had her own reason for being.

What I have come to know now is that my friend’s inability to move forward in recapturing the best parts of herself, separate from any identification from spouse, previous profession, or lifestyle (including the energy of youth) happens far earlier than any single event. Rather, a single catastrophe may mask a cumulative pattern of avoidance brought on by the event itself thereby serving as a tipping point that exposes some character defect yet to be resolved, worked through, transcended.

I see this dynamic at play from my own previous inability to resolve or change certain behaviors or problems in my life. It is glacially slow and subtle, this interior evolution thing, right up until it smacks you around and you either shrivel up and die (not always a literal death) or mutate and overcome the problem. This occurred earlier in life when my miserable marriage reached intolerable proportions, as well as when I was forced (thank God) to confront my inability to stop drinking on my own and had to seek help to stop. This kind of confrontation occurred again when faced with a tumor-sized polyp triggered in part by DNA, but also certainly by a lifetime of doing work I grew to hate. I remember my surgeon describing the tumor as “angry.” And, yes, I had been angry; for years and years and years, suppressing it without ever truly addressing it.

But back to the documentary. “Alive Inside” shows old people, dementia-riddled people awakened to some sense of their former selves by listening to music that once moved them. It is a powerful and beautiful thing to see as they leapfrog over a lifetime of who-knows-what-kind-of-unresolved-avoidance-riddled crap, arriving at something elemental and basic in their souls. They are enlivened by the beat and rhythm of life traveling to their head and heart by an iPod filled with music meaningful to them. For those of us boomers who still struggle with unresolved crap, this film offers hope not just for aging parents and loved ones but for ourselves as well. After all, sometimes a person may reach the end of all they can do in a lifetime whether the body continues on or not. And with modern medicine keeping us alive longer and longer, it’s hard to get off the planet these days. This does not mean, however, one has to shut down all faculties, including joy and connection with others which provides the most meaning to all of us.

Oddly, I’ve long had a fascination with old people, a fascination, curiosity, and identification as if recognized from a former state and time. Yet, as I witness my current reluctance, even resistance in avoiding entrenched crap in several areas, I have a new appreciation, even compassion towards those individuals unable to change one more thing, to transcend one more problem. It is hard, this aging process, of which the body’s role is the least of it!! Body breakdowns are a nuisance, yes, but it’s the deeply emotional, psychological, and spiritual wear and tear that really takes its toll. And like so many things, it is easier to notice this dynamic in someone else before we see the slow leak within ourselves.

So as 2015 approaches, I hope to take stock of that which I am able and willing to change in my own life and accept and surrender that which I am not. Part of this (we can call it a New Year’s Resolution) involves summoning yet more strength and courage to look at the really hard, shitty stuff honestly, which is no small feat.

And the other part? I’m pledging to listen to more music, main-lining it if necessary, as well as do more things that invigorate me, animate me, and massage my heart. I’ve even started a list of songs to share with my son just in case I get Alzheimer’s. He’ll know what to do with it. And if I never lose the mind, I will have at the ready a plethora of spiritual ‘nutrients’ that will enliven me for the rest of my days.

For anyone interested in the documentary “Alive Inside”, it is available on Netflix, a portion of which can be viewed on www.musicandmemory.org: Henry. I highly recommend watching the entire film. It’s an eye-opener.

 

I was at the church the other day and ran into the choir director, Rebecca, a supremely gifted soprano who possesses a stunning songbird voice. After introducing myself, I told her how much I love to hear her sing anything, that I’d love to hire her to sing Ave Maria for me personally if only I could afford it. Alas, my financial situation does not allow such an indulgence. But no pity, please, for God’s Grace was about to unfold.

“Why don’t you come to the funeral on Monday; I’ll be singing Ave Maria,” she told me with aplomb. “What a great idea,” although I confessed I did not know the deceased person.

“That doesn’t matter,” was her practical solution-oriented response.

So I decided then and there to go and am excited at the prospect of hearing Ave Maria again, regardless of the circumstance. What’s more, it occurred to me that I would be killing two birds with one stone since weeping uncontrollably is permitted at such an event. Why would there be tears? Breathtakingly beautiful music can illicit such emotion in the most glorious way when I hear it. I’ve been known to weep listening to The Messiah, Pachelbel, and other great compositions that move me to that state of Grace and beauty.

But I have another reason for tears at this particular juncture, having a backlog of them. The emotional congestion is so great I’m in danger of rupturing something internally if there is no release, and soon. Why? I have been accumulating an off-the-charts stress load due to a ‘temp job’ I’ve undertaken, one I rarely do anymore.

What three week temp job can generate such stress?  The fever pitch mother lode of about-to-leak-out emotionality has arisen because I’ve been “keeping an eye” on an elderly woman, Nana, and her (daughter’s) little dog, Toto, for the last couple weeks. The dog is a dream; the elderly lady, not so much. A more generous but accurate description is that said walker-dependent woman may be as emotionally and psychologically crippled as her legs, at least that’s how she appears to me. She is just that starved for an audience. And even if her need to constantly connect through non-stop negative nattering about minutia is a bit overstated, her self-inflicted deprivation is in dramatic contrast to my need for ‘alone time’ and quietude. All of this is an emotional toxic stew not lending itself to an easy accommodation. It’s not about blame. Quite simply, our pathologies and habits simply do not mesh.

While I have great compassion for Nana, am aware she has a good heart, am even aware she means well and is doing the best she can, she is hard to be with for any length of time. As a friend of mine describes her situation with elderly family members, it is ‘not so easy.’ Indeed! At times Nana feels hellish, at minimum, purgatorial, although she likely is not experiencing as much pain in the situation that I feel. After all, I’m enduring her talk, talk, talk which I don’t typically experience living alone, while she is getting greater relief from a new and captive audience.

The conflict for me is that I want and need to ‘be kind’ to myself as well as her. This requires her being ‘left’ alone far more often than she’d prefer even though, to some degree, that’s what her live-in daughter and partner quite often do. This leaving involves me going into another room, walking the dog more often than is required, running imaginary errands to get a break etc., just so I can exercise responsible self-care to escape the relentless onslaught of her talking.

Hence my need for a good cry. The build-up has reached a fever pitch. I can’t wait to go to the funeral in part to not only get away and hear stunning music but to grieve the temporary loss of a personal sanctuary. I have never been this excited for a funeral. While that sounds weird even to me, it can’t come soon enough! I’ll be able to escape into Ave Maria as rendered by Rebecca, with the added bonus of releasing my mother lode of tension accumulated from the lack of peace and quiet. How odd that this has been miraculously arranged through a grief-friendly, socially acceptable funeral ritual invitation where weeping is allowed, if not encouraged.

After the funeral has come and gone I still have one more week of “keeping an eye” on Nana and taking care of the daughter’s little dog, Toto. I may need to Google upcoming funerals at other area churches just to keep my sanity in check. And while it has occurred to me that I might inflict my own nattering on others in the future, until then, I’m grabbing what sanity I have left and heading to the closet to select my funeral attire for the festivities tomorrow. Let the Grace continue!