Impromptu Gaiety

 

Summer-solstice-sangria

 

Impromptu Summer Solstice  
                 Party!

After a day of keeping up with toddler grandson, Jude, and feeling happy, tired and full, but not quite ready to settle in for the night,  I decided to throw an impromptu summer solstice party.  Despite the late hour, I invited family and dug out an appropriate Solstice drink recipe.

Eliza and I made a quick run to the state store.  Catching energy from each other, we laughed mischievously as our delighted fingers turned wine bottles around so we could read label descriptions.  We choose a Pinot Grigio by sheer intrigue of story and bottle design.   She fawned over artful presentation and imagined taste of floral notes with pear; I imagined the wine’s compliment to my chosen fruit and the magic of a bottle added to my garden bottle tree.

Kim checking out the moon - Stephanie Landis photography

Family gathered together at 9:30, spotting the gorgeous full moon with scope, lighting patio candles....











Stephanie Landis photography

....Jason strumming guitar as we laughed and toasted the summer. 



Later,  I nestled in bed deeply satisfied, feeling rich beyond measure.

Super Moon   ~    Stephanie Landis photography

Sleeping peacefully, I dreamed a man told me I was round, full, and radiant.  His eyes gazed at my body, but I felt no offense, only deep connection.  Our souls saw each other.  The dream man simply reflected my truth,  my wholeness. I woke up mellow, loved and loving, feeling as if my true self was illuminated by God in my dream and revealed to me.  I remembered the moon last night, how I love her round fullness, how I so often sense a sweet oneness with her.    

 Mark Nepo writes: consider how the sun lights our daily world.... and the light is unseen until it hits a simple blade of grass or makes the web of a spider a golden patch of lace. In the same way ,the presence of God powerfully moves between us unseen, only visible in the brief moments we are lighted, in those enlivened moments we know as love. 

Just as we can look at a spider web and never see its beauty until the light reveals it, we can look upon the nearest face, again and again, never seeing beauty until one or both of us is suddenly revealed.  Our gentleness of heart allows us to see and be seen.



I 'see' you my family, glowing with beauty, and I miss the ones who are absent.
 

When I was young, I thought things needed to be a certain way before I could relax and enjoy life.  Since cancer, since growing in wisdom, since paying attention, I realize it’s the other way around.  When I enjoy life, embrace it as it comes by honestly lamenting when needed or inviting impromptu gaiety, then my body relaxes and my heart opens as full and round as the moon. 

Cheers!  Slainte!  To life!

Sharon

Massey - reflecting on all the love :)

Good Night Moon     ~  Stephanie Landis photography

 Slainte- Gaelic translated loosely = cheers, translated literally = health http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sl%C3%A1inte

recipe for summer solstice sangria:  ttp://lovebakedinn.tumblr.com/post/25526444109/summer-solstice-sangria

 

Family, Yoga and Giggling Legs



Extended family yoga captured by Francette Bueno

This past weekend I attended an extended family reunion.  I’m still fondly remembering the fun and love we shared, especially one experience.  On Saturday morning we did yoga together, led by my sister, Elle Bieling.  While discussing where there would be enough space for all of us to do yoga together,  my niece’s daughter, a delightful six year old that is full of chat and energy, expressed her intentions to join us.  We all smiled, figuring she’d last about five minutes before losing interest. Elle encouraged her but also cautioned that this yoga was geared for adults and she would have to be respectful, stay on her mat, not giggle out loud, talk, or play, especially not during the meditative parts.   Abby nodded, grinning.  

Ten minutes before the start of yoga, a group of us walked down the hill toward the soccer field where we agreed to meet.  Elle and Abby led us, Abby chattering and laughing the whole way.  Once again, she was gently reminded of the need for silence and meditation while holding poses.

As we positioned our mats and towels on the grass, I chose a spot directly behind Abby.  When I wasn’t attending to my own body and interior, I watched the little girl. From my observations, she entered this experience with her whole heart, mind and body.  Abby posed and meditated, tucked lovingly in the middle of our big family.   I was proud of her for stating her intention, and then following through with disciplining her talkative self into meditative silence when necessary.  I now have a perfect example to give anyone who questions me - is silence and meditation only for introverts or people with a reflective personality?  

All the children doing yoga with the adults in our family gave me such joy!   I don’t know if the other kids stayed through the whole hour, as Abby did; they were not in my line of vision.  I do know that Abby’s focus and presence touched me.  

I doubt she was plagued with adult things like understanding the instructions, comparing herself to the other bodies in the field, wondering if she was doing the pose correctly, or if the teacher noticed her. She just showed up, present and grateful.  For a whole hour in the morning heat and sun, Abby followed the movements, stayed on her mat, remained quiet and respectful.  She trusted. She moved.  She belonged to the bigger whole.  Near the end, during the shoulder stand pose, her little legs waved gaily in the air above her head.  She giggled silently with her legs.  

And when it was over, as we all lay in Shavasana - corpse pose -relaxing, integrating, letting go, Abby relaxed on her small towel and let go so completely she fell asleep.     

I couldn’t help musing how children so often remind us adults how to live, and how yoga and meditation is really not just for adults. I hope there are more children like Abby catching an idea that something beautiful happens in our bodies and souls during contemplative movement and prayer.

 

Joyfully,

Sharon

Elle Bieling’s website  www.thebodywindow.com

Matthew 18:3  ~ Unless you become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

 

Of Middle Creek, Mary Oliver, and Wild Turkeys

 

http://www.picturesdepot.com/wallpapers/206463/wild+turkey.html

"You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves."            ~ Mary Oliver

 

I’m still savoring yesterday.  Jay and I hiked at Middle Creek Wildlife Preserve, me clutching a pillow against my bruised side, and he holding the binoculars.  I am trying to be good, do what the doctor ordered.  I love that line from Mary Oliver’s poem –the knowing I’m worthy of love even if I’m not always good, or behave as I should or run, fall and hurt myself.  Isn’t much of life about just doing what we love, taking risks and learning to calculate them?  Which takes me back to yesterday.....

We crept as silently as possible, blending into the woods, hoping to see wildlife.  The heady sweetness of honeysuckle drenched the air, a marked contrast to the scent of mud and rotting leaves covering damp earth. The danger of slipping on wet rocks or slick mossy logs, and reinjuring myself (third time is not the charm!), heightened my awareness of everything, the incredible beauty of Pennsylvania woodlands and the truth of snakes and ticks and falling. 

The soft animal of my body loves the outdoors. It is the one place where goodness, truth, and beauty all come together for me. I experience God most clearly through nature. Wonder and Mystery come in lush grasses, diving eagles, blue skies and bird songs, delicate flowers, the flash of red feathers of cardinal and towhee.  Decay and death, predator and prey help me know the truth and wisdom of living fully while simultaneously embracing the process of dying.  

Writing is my way of savoring or processing what I experience.  Savoring is a lingering experience or expression of gratitude.  My field notes from yesterday contain a list of things we saw, but now, as I rewrite each item, I savor their memory.  Each is entry is seasoned with scents, sounds, wonder and joy.  

3 deer -one tiptoeing, two bounding 

6 turkeys - two males strutting with full fans, sunlight glinting off gnarly blue heads, two hens with two bobbing chicks

2 herons, in various stages of stalking

1 lovely pair of Rufus Towhees scratch/hopping in pile of leaves

1 glorious eagle soaring

Turtles Sunning on a Log by drash | Weather Undergroundaption

1 pair of red-tailed hawks, silhouetted, high above on a bare tree limb

8 turtles sunning on a log, oh, those are heads not bumps on a log!

Many song birds –wrens, catbirds, gold finches, orioles, redwings,  sparrows, and a delightful, trilling song bird that eluded our eyes

2 ticks   shiver, shudder, eww!

 

 

 

May you savor what you love too!  May you rise up from the desert, release yourself from repenting over and over, and just allow the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Please share your loves with me…I’d love to hear from you.

Joyfully,
Sharon


Middle Creek Wildlife Preserve- 
http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt?open=514&objID=613318&mode=2

Mary Oliver poem - 

"Wild Geese"

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Solidarity

        Solidarity

 

My head is stuffed with metal and

fuzz and gnarls of curled edges,

like the steel wool I stuff in mouse holes,

trying to prevent entry into my dwelling places.

My heart is a cage with the door open, the bird

singing songs of freedom.  The bird sings in

solidarity

with suffering, the struggle, the oppressive crud

of life.  Everyone hears and knows the song.

 The songs are beauty. The songs open doors.

The song pumps up throat and chest, as melodies

rise and roll, harmonizing with color,

and wind, and all the mice sniffing

 cheese on both sides of metal.  With folks

 gathered round tables, feasting, with

 children flying kites or picking through dumps,

eating with chopsticks, and starving.

The songs are truth, and goodness.  The bird sings

 until feathers and throat and metal blend

with waving rye grasses in fields, cumulus piles

of sky, hot, molten rock, knees scraping-

praying, scrubbing, kissing earth. Bird and

 cage disappear, and the Song sings on.    

No Hornets Please

                  

 
While hiking in the woods ....

 

  

            I see two perfect mounds of moss. 

                                    Perfectly, gloriously

                                             round and green

                                                         amid lots of brown.

 

Such beauty catches my attention. I pause and express delight to my hiking companions.    

 

I also marvel over Marianne Williamson's Facebook status of today.  So much so, that I want to share her beautiful wisdom:   "Many years ago someone said to me, 'Marianne, you're so hard on yourself. And the reason you're so hard on yourself is because you're so easy on yourself.'  It was one of the wisest things anyone has ever told me, and it has guided me every since.  Sometimes we're too easy on ourselves, lacking self-discipline and giving ourselves slack and in places where we simply shouldn't. Then we're loaded with guilt and suffering! The only way to end the torture of self-condemnation is to try to live a life that earns your self-respect.

It's a challenge to quiet the perfectionist in me, and motivate the slacker.  

 

I'm inspired by Marianne's simple instruction:  "try to live a life that earns your self-respect." This task is so simple and hopeful. Her words remind me of my own writing for a chapter in the Mellowness of Heart book I'm co-authoring with my brother, Don - about legalism and mellowness of heart: 

 

As a child, I listened to a phrase of The Hornet Song with fear and fascination- God does not compel us to go ‘gainst our will, but He just makes us willing to go.   In my childish misconceptions, God was an authoritarian trickster.  Sooner or later God would force me with the likes of hornets and earthquakes to do what God wanted; my desires were inconsequential.    What a blessing to be invited to know a God who truly wants me to be and do what God put in me at birth to be and do!  God is my partner; we work together in uncovering what is in my heart and what is my purpose. The stick that drives me is often some type of cultural conditioning, previous misconception, or a ghost from authoritarian, black and white religious teachings of my childhood. 

 

I'm a messy perfectionist.  I love to make messes but sometimes run out of energy for clean up. Loved teaching my kids to cook or raise goats and didn't mind a messy kitchen or barn. But when organizing a notebook, or developing a project or performing for others I agonize over every detail often driving myself to perfection.  I can't tolerate inner chaos but am often oblivious to clutter.  Marianne's words comfort me. I don't have to try so hard or compare myself to others.  I can learn when to push and when to ease up. I can reach for living a life that earns my self respect.  Mine. Not yours or theirs or some misconception of God.

 

 

 

there are no hornets in this photo

 
 
I practice this every time I illustrate this blog with my amateur photography.  I dislike learning camera details, yet I love sharing my loves and wonders with others. I find balance by making myself learn more about my camera here and there, while respecting myself enough to only post the best of my ordinary photos. 

Speaking of wonders.....  I am thrilled by this little bird on a nest.  I wonder what kind of bird it is. I snapped this photo (my best one :) from the cabin deck before going on that moss-finding hike.  If you know what kind of bird this is, please let me know!

 

 

More than anything, I want to just enjoy life.  I am grateful to the Creative Force that began it all. The process of life is ingenious, so perfectly messy!  And I do love hearing God laugh when I  pray 'no hornets please'....



son and 3yr old grand daughter - Lititz Springs Park

Joyfully,
Sharon