Unknown

I am not blind,
For I know what I see.
I cannot always interpret what I see.
But let me learn as I do.

HA HA HA bless your soul...

People make such interesting assumptions at times...and say things...

2 men walk into Village Market, both in their late 30's early 40's (I saw their ID's because they bought beer). One of them is decked out in his pseudo motorcycle outfit, with jeans and a black t-shirt that has a guy on it with jeans and a black t-shirt. In his ears he wore maybe 12-gauge silver hoop earrings. The other had a larger chest and was trimmed to perfection and wore a moss-green T that had the tattoo swirly design on it. This one with the green shirt asks 'who is singing?'...I have Ella Fitzgerald playing. 'AH!' says the one in the black shirt, 'I know him!......Her!' he grimaces at me in apology, 'I caught myself' he tells me. The one in the green shirt chimes in, still wanting to finish the story he'd apparently begun, 'They play this shit at my work, 24-7. You know, I listen to some pretty alternative stuff, and the MINUTE I turn off my car I hear this BLARING...it's all they play at my work...soft jazz that is like elevator music...puts me to sleep!' 'Ah, so you must be pretty tired of it, then' I reply in pure conversation. 'OH NO!' he says to me, 'They just play it all the time. I sell, you know, BMW's and stuff.' Am I supposed to know what significance that holds for me? Am I supposed to be impressed? And as he walks out the door, 'I get so sick of that stuff...but THIS is great'. His buddy looks at me and rolls his eyes, and I hear the other guy getting defensive as they walk out the door, '....What? I mean it!' and their voices trail off as the store door closes behind them.

Most of the time i just have to stand there and watch people talk.

"does that make me CRAZY!?...probably...." ~Gnarles Barkley

Creek's Side

It is raining...I hear the drips through the thin-plate glass panels of my windows. The rain is a mist at this point, and the birds have come out and are chatting to each other. The air conditioner kicks on...it is right under my window, so I hear its rumble. There are actually 2 units - one downstairs and one upstairs, and they flow at different paces. Whenever I hear the rain I am taken back to a time when we lived in Lewisburg, TN. We used to have a creek, and it stretched all the way from our pond at one end of the property, to the street at the other end. The pond poured into it from a small hole in the side of its bank, and thus began the water's journey - first past the dog fence, and then the chicken fence, which were both connected to the white outbuilding (the white outbuilding having 3 separate sections in a row), then past the poor little Boxelder tree that never seemed to grow any taller, then past the Red Barn (which wasn't really a barn, but we called it that). There was a stretch of pure wooded area just beyond the red barn and it was thick and dense with trees and underbrush, and a little rock table that had a hole in one side that worked beautifully as a cup-holder. But Christa and I stomped and broke out a path just to the right of the creek, and this path stretched all the way down to the fat black locust tree where we burried Milo and Eco. Before this point, the creek was running as quickly as it could towards the far side of the property over to Mr. Rutledge's property. But at this stubby locust tree, it suddenly pooled and became deep and swirly, and then took a rushing leap to the left, as slick as you like, and headed straight for the road! There was something so alluring about The Road, not only to this silly spluttering creek, but also to our animals. Maybe it was a gravitational pull? They all seemed to think that was the 'Way to Freedom'. I don't know why they did not run the opposit direction and into the woods? But, again, there was something alluring that I think we humans did not understand...even the creek rushed towards it.
As it rushed, the creek passed a line of hedgeapple trees (p.s. those things are a pain when you are mowing...riding along and every few feet you have to: disengadge the mower so it wouldn't stall out, dismount because there were hidden hedgeapples in the tall grass, gather all the apples you found in that area, mount up, engadge, and put the dern mower back into 1st gear, then work your way back up to 3rd). This is the yard we called TENNESSEE because it was shaped like the state...only backwards. Christa noticed it one day, and it just kind of stuck. Mixed into the hedgeapple trees were honeysuckle vines and lots of other vines that liked to reach out and grab your clothes and arms and legs with their spikes. Just outside of the tree line was a small Sycamore tree. This one we were never able to climb, but it was a cute little tree. It grew straight and tall, sticking its top branches as high into the air as it could - and it always looked like it was trying hard to be as tall as its brother Sycamore down the way a bit. The taller one was the one we always climbed, and it was a fantastic climbing tree! I tried to climb the smaller one, but it was just too small. Anyway, the big Sycamore was at the end of the property line, and thus the last we ever saw of the creek. It hopped the fence at the edge of the property and joined the other creek that flowed parallel to the road - like ol' Bess who joined the Brumbies.

'The one thing necessary is a true interior and spiritual life, true growth, on my own, in depth in a new direction.' Thomas Merton

Marianne Williamson

Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate,
but that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant,
Gorgeous, handsome, talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightening about shrinking
so that other people won't feel insecure around you.

We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us.
It is not just in some; it is in everyone.

And, as we let our own light shine, we consciously give
other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.



~"A Return To Love: Reflections On The Principles Of A Course In Miracles". Harper Collins, 1992. Ch. 7, Sec. 3, pg. 109-191

G. McDonald, On Mountains

I read this excerpt from a book called "The Pricess and Curdie" by George McDonald and I found it SO beautiful and amazing that I had to read it two times over! And then, I had to read it to a few of my friends! So here I will copy it so that I can always look back and read it. It describes the mountains in such a way that

'A mountain is a strange and awful thing. In old times, without knowing so much of their strangeness and awfulness as we do, people were yet more afraid of mountains. But then somehow they had not come to see how beautiful they are as well as awful, and they hated them - and what people hate they must fear. Now that we have learned to look at them with admiration, perhaps we do not always feel quite awe enough of them. To me they are beautiful terrors.

'I will try to tell you what they are. They are portions of the heart of the earth that have escaped from the dungeon down below, and rushed up and out. For the heart of the earth is a great wallowing mass, not of blood, as in the hearts of men and animals, but of glowing hot melted metals and stones. And as our hearts keep us alive, so that great lump of heat keeps the earth alive: it is a huge power of buried sunlight - that is what it is. Now think: out of that cauldron, where all the bubbles would be as big as the Alps if it could get room for its boiling, certain bubbles have bubbled out and escaped - up and away, and there they stand in the cool, cold sky - mountains. Think of the change, and you will no more wonder that there should be something awful about the very look of a mountain: from the darkness - for where the light has nothing to shine upon, it is much the same as darkness - from the heat, from the endless tumult of boiling unrest - up, with a sudden heavenward shoot, into the wind, and the cold, and the starshine, and a cloak of snow that lies like ermine above the blue-green mail of the glaciers; and the great sun, their grandfather, up there in the sky; and their little cold aunt, the moon, that comes wandering about the house at night; and everlasting stillness, except for the wind that turns the rocks and caverns into a roaring organ for the young archangels that are studying how to let out pent-up praises of their hearts, and the molten glaciers fresh-born.

considder the lillies of the field...

This is my house in the snow ::smiles::
Meet "Grubbin Hood" - a little grub who has graced our messageboard for the past 3 months.

The other day I had hot chocolate with Amanda Pace at Provence. The hot chocolate was named, (appropirately enough) Chocolate Chaud (chocolate hot).
The marshmallow on top is homemade right there in the store! I got the peppermint one and Amanda got the Coconut (which I later regretted not getting the coconut). But it was so so tasty!
....and THIS is where I go hiking between classes on Thursday or if I need a break from studying on Wed. and Friday. It is a trail that heads back to a Civil War fort at Pinkerton Park. I like the walk and it gets me out of doors and clears my mind. I remember taking the Ives kids there once and we climbed small boulders and hiked the entire trail. Then Rachael peed her pants (poor thing). The poor little thing was just having so much fun that she didn't tell me that she needed to go potty. So she came back up to me crying...little snotty nose and rubbing her little eyes with her fist as she tried to tell me what happened between sobs. Nathan and I finally figured out what she was talking about and I took her aside and wrapped my bandanna around her hips like a skirt (it fit pretty well) and we walked back to the car. We wrapped her in a plastic bag, stopped by Sonic and bought slushies for everyone, then took her home and she took a bath as I read a story to her. Good times ::smiles::

Well, there is a little squirrel outside my window and my study-break is ended. So, "Let's go, Amigos!".

I thought about sending this as an email, but I decided that this would be a better way and everyone can access it easily if they choose (or not, if they don't choose). Besides, no one but family reads it, and I am fine with being open now. I am still getting used to it, but that is all part of growing ::smiles:: So...

How does one live in "expectancy" and not "expectation"? I am reading a book and two ideas that were stated jumped out of the page and literally clopped on my heart like a tar on a railroad tie and have been there ever since. I must admit that it made me think...to moil and examine myself so much. These things I had never really thought of before.

In a book I am reading, God is talking to a man named Mac, and God says,

“And as my very essence is a verb…I am more attuned to verbs than nouns. Verbs,
such as confessing, repenting, living, loving, responding, growing, reaping, changing,
sowing, running, dancing, singing, and on and on. Humans, on the other hand, have a
knack for taking a verb that is alive and full of grace and turning it into a dead noun or
principle that reeks of rules: something growing and alive dies. Nouns exist because
there is a created universe and physical reality, but if the universe is only a mass of
nouns, it is dead. Unless ‘I am,’ there are no verbs, and verbs are what makes the
universe alive.”(p.204).
I admit that I understand all the words that are spoken, but...as far as how much that means I am still moiling over that. I remembered the song, "Luv is a Verb" by D.C. Talk from my childhood. All of the lyrics came pouring back to me as I contemplated this something that had apparently been planted in me at a very young age but had been laying dormant inside me waiting to germinate. So now it is now in the germination season as I am learning what that means and put it to action...the VERB-ness of it all!

A little later in the same book I read,

“Let’s use the example of friendship and how removing the element of life from a noun
can drastically alter a relationship…if you and I are friends, there is an expectancy that
exists within our relationship. When we see each other or are apart, there is expectancy
of being together, of laughing and talking. That expectancy has no concrete definition; it
is alive and dynamic and everything that emerges from our being together is a unique
gift shared by no one else. But what happens when I change that ‘expectancy’ to
‘expectation’ – spoken or unspoken? Suddenly, law has entered into our relationship.
You are now expected to perform in a way that meets my expectations. Our living
friendship rapidly deteriorates into a dead thing with rules and requirements. It is no
longer about you and me, but about what friends are supposed to do, or the
responsibilities of a good friend.”(p.205).
“Responsibilities and expectations are the basis of guilt and shame and judgment, and
they provide the essential framework that promotes performance as the basis for
identity and value. You know well what it is like to not live up to someone’s
expectations.”(205).
WOW! This stunned me and stumped me! As i think about my relationships with people, I realized that I do this quite often...that I "expect" them to be a certain way instead of living in that state of "expectancy" and how damaging that can be on my end. By living that way, I have not allowed people to grow and to change as they were created to, and I also stump my own growth by stubbornly resisting to allow them freedom to move. The result was (and is) that when I live in this state of "expectation" I do feel judged even if I am not, and I am ultimately not living in the love that God has for me to live in...the love I was meant to live. I am not saying that I never lived in love! No! I have loved as deeply as I thought my heart could love! And, at that time it was true. You can only love as much as you know because you do not know anything else! But once you become aware of a new level of understanding, it is up to you to approach it and either drink it or ignore it as you choose. That is the beauty of it all, and also the beast of it all: The "Beautiful Choice". But what I am saying is that I have wanted to grow and have "expected" people to simply accept the fact that I was growing but did not completely reciprocate that in others' lives. Everyone also knows that I have always had a very hard time accepting love that others would give to me...and give me freely. I kind of always felt that I was almost not worthy of it or I would live in that state of "expecting" the "other shoe to drop". So I figured it was simply better for me to not accept it. But I have since begun accepting this love that people show me (though at times it is difficult, and at other times because I am so used to NOT accepting it that I fall back into what I've always done, even and especially when I should not).
So, with all that said, I sigh and breathe deeply and pause. ......There.......I have laid my cards out on the table. I have opened my chest and you can see my inside. In love I lay this before you all. To let you know that I love you and that I appreciate all that you have done and are doing for and with me, and for all of the support and faith that you all are putting in me especially as I go through nursing school. I ask that you be patient as I learn to accept love as you give it. One of my dear friends reminded me the other day that, "it is not the path that we take, but it is how we take the path that we are on". So I also ask that you are patient with me as I learn to allow you to grow and walk the path that you are on just as I grow and walk on my path. And as I learn to love you with "expectancy" instead of "expectation" ::smiles::

i've been listening to a new artist that I heard on NPR the other day as I drove home from work in the traffic and the cold. Sometimes I do not even try to use my heater because it just blows cold air at me and makes me shiver ::chuckles:: And then, I am finally "warm" by the time I've reached my house, so I wonder sometimes what the point is? She is an old car, though, and she really truly does her very best. Some day i may have a heater. For now, though, I am fine without one (for the most part). She still defrosts the windows when they have iced over or frosted, and she bears the burden of everything and everyone that I need her to - in the words of Velvet Brown, "She burst herself for me!". And then, reeling myself back in from the rabbit trail that I just made...the artist that I have been listening to calls herself "Lhasa de Sela" and she is called the Edith Piaf of the Latinos! Obviously, when i heard this phrase, my ears perked up and I listened more carefully. She is a contemporary artist who apparently died on Jan. 1, 2010. Her songs are sad songs...dirges, if you will - and they are all in Spanish. I can understand bits and pieces (enough to stay alive if that were on the line) but not enough to understand the entirety of it.