Monday musings

I almost called this "Monday meditation" but that sounded a little too serious.  "Musings" seem to be more my style.  And it has been a day of musings - and a few meditations, but I've been moving too much to do much real meditating, except for the moments in yoga class.  Started my day with a wonderful class with Bekah.  I had not been to one of her classes in months and I forgot how much I like her as a teacher.  She's authentic, enthusiastic, encouraging, and nurturing...all at once, which is pretty cool.  The 75 minutes flew by in her wonderfully rich flow that she had planned for us, complete with her (self-described) sappy playlist.
It was funny because on my way to the studio I was reflecting on how much more frequently I'd been to yoga in 2012 - which had, I think, been one of my resolutions for this past year.  For at least 6 months, I've been pretty committed to getting to class twice a week.  In 2013, I'm challenging myself with three classes a week (plus some practice at home).  I'll save the rest of those 2013 intentions for tomorrow.
At any rate, Bekah started the class by encouraging us to look back on this last day of 2012.  What had we accomplished?  What had we lost?  What had we learned?  How had we loved?  How had we grown?  What had we shared with others?  etc... 
So often on New Year's Eve we're all about looking forward that we forget to look back and reverently acknowledge what and who we're leaving behind and from where we've come.  It's a bittersweet reflection for me as I look back to 2012.  It was a year that was full of love and growth and excitement.  And loss and confusion and hurt.  But that is life, right?  Was it a bad year?  No.  Was it a tough year?  Yes.  Was it one that I'd want to trade in and that I'm in a hurry to leave behind?  Yes and no.  Was it a year that I want to savor and tuck away in some special place in my soul never to forget?  Mostly yes. 
It was filled with some painful moments.  Naturally those were also the moments where I came to know myself and the love and life and strength that is around and within me in ways that I'm not sure I would have otherwise.  And the bright moments - well, there were so many that were bright and revealing beyond measure!  And light-hearted and playful and life-giving and full of health, joy, and promise.  Precious time spent with people who are dear to me.  And not enough time spent with others.  Time in nature rejuvenating my soul.  
With each passing year, I see the fabric of our lives woven together with more and more richness.  Some effervescent threads and some darker threads - all reflective of the lives that we've lived.  And I'm amazed at how in any given snapshot of the days or the threads, the luminous ones continue to push past the dim ones - as if the good and the hopefulness is relentlessly forcing itself in front of the bad and the gloom.
At least that's my take on things...my Monday musing as it were.  Incomplete without my latest musical obsession from yoga class - a wonderful version of the classic "Somewhere Over the Rainbow".  Seems like the words could be just right for a trip over the rainbow - a reminder of hope and promise and protection - into 2013.  See you there...

Sunday something

I love it when my worlds collide.  Well, sometimes it's unsettling and a bit mysterious, but I love it.  I feel like it's God and the universe conspiring to help me make sense of things and reassure me that there is a greater plan at work.  Naturally, there were some gifts from Dean's yoga class today.  And one of the big themes was accepting where we are, not in a sense of complacency but in an act of peace - recognizing that there is a time for everything.  Or, as the Byrds remind us, "to everything turn, turn, turn"...

And then I read a lovely prayer sent to me by my aunt...and it all just seemed to come together.  Some of my favorite lines:
O God of all seasons and senses, grant us the sense of your timing to submit gracefully and rejoice quietly in the turn of the seasons.  In this season of short days and long nights, of grey and white and cold, teach us the lessons of endings; children growing, friends leaving, loved ones dying, grieving over, grudges over, blaming over, excuses over...teach us the lessons of beginnings; that such waitings and endings may be the starting place, a planting of seeds which bring to birth what is ready to be born - something right and just and different, a new song, a deeper relationship, a fuller love - in the fullness of your time.  O God, grant us the sense of your timing (~Ted Loder)
What a lovely prayer and meditation as we head into the new year...leaving 2012 behind us - joys, sorrows, challenges, opportunities, successes, failures, and all...and looking forward to 2013. Accepting everything in its time.  

friday quotation

 


When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy. 
~ Rumi

a Christmas Day prayer for peace

I loved this post from Kristin Noelle.

A beautiful Christmas prayer for peace - above, around, within, and between...

Merry Christmas to all!  XOXO

sunday something

Random acts of kindness..yes, they do exist.  I've always believed this, but I've never had a story of my own to share.  One of those true "a perfect stranger did this" story.  Until today.  It was simple.  It was thoughtful.  It was a total surprise.  And it is one of those things that I've tucked away in my "this restores my faith in humanity" file - which is wonderfully full these days.   

After a lovely morning of an airport run, a yoga class, some grocery shopping, and on my way to the car wash, more errands, cooking, and a little work on my plants (namely some long-awaited re-potting), I was returning a movie and turning back toward my car when a woman walked up to me with these flowers.  She said, "Excuse me.  I know this is really random but someone just gave me these flowers and I'm leaving town and really can't take them.  Would you like them?"  I tried to look more grateful than stunned.  What a lovely gesture.  Small to be sure, but lovely all the same.  May the holidays bring generous surprises to one and all.    

friday quotation

"There is one love...let's manifest it." 

I am borrowing this one from Dean and it just seems incredibly timely for this season.  It's a high calling but certainly one worth striving for.  

friday quotation

I actually had another post planned for today. 
But after the tragedy in Newtown, CT today, these words from Anne Lamott's new book Help, Thanks, Wow - The Three Essential Prayers seem more appropriate.

Prayers for comfort and healing going out to all affected by this terrible, devastating, inexplicable act.  

friday quotation

"Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." 
~ William Morris
(seems very appropriate as I welcome parts of Gran's house into my house...wall of love and things I love coming together!)

sunday something(s)

Really so many gems from the day already...a bright, sunny, hard-to-believe-it's-November day here in Austin...breathing more fully from a wonderfully full yoga class...and settling in to do some work (house work and school work).  Filled up from a Thanksgiving in CA with family - teeming with love, laughter, walks, delicious food, and  general goodness.  Filling up (literally) with good greens and wholesome food.  And remembering to breathe as I look ahead to the week.  Reflecting on Dean's words from yoga this morning about there being one love in this one life that we have to live...and remembering my post from last Sunday that included the video about this one day that we have.  To follow this all up (LOVE it when this happens), I stumbled upon this "essay" by Anne Lamott (whom I love, love, love as a writer and thinker and believer).
I am beginning to think that this body of mine is the one I will have the entire time I am on this side of eternity.  

I didn't agree to this.  I have tried for approximately fifty years to get it to be an ever so slightly different body: maybe the tiniest more like Cindy Crawford's, and - if this is not too much to ask - Michelle Obama's arms.  I mean, is this so much to ask?  But I had to ask myself, while eating my second piece of key lime pie in Miami last Sunday, and then again, while sampling my second piece of creme brulee in Akron, if this is going to happen. 

For the record, I do not usually eat like I do in hotels while I am on book tour.  But I have a terrible sweet tooth and I am an just not going to be spending much more of this one precious life at the gym, than I already do, which is at best, three times a week, in a terrible shirking bad attitude bitter frame of mind.  I go for three one-hour hikes a week.  I'm not a lunges kind of girl.  And even I were, I'm shrinking.  I'm not quite Dr. Ruth yet, but I used to be 5'7", and now am - well, not.  

But the psalmist says that I am wonderfully and fearfully made.  Now, upon hearing that, two days about Thanksgiving, don't you automatically think that 'fearfully' refers to your thighs, your upper arms, the little tummy roll that has helpfully crept over the bottom of the iPad, so that it might help you type?

(The other night, when I passed the one available spot in the parking lot, after looking around for ten minutes, I thought, "I would kick myself, if my feet didn't hurt so much.") 

No.  'Fearfully' means that we are so exquisitely fragile and delicate and vulnerable that if you really thought about it, you'd quake with existential anxiety.  It can all be taken from us - our babies, our dogs, or books and imaginations, our ability to see whatever shards of Light we might notice amidst the noise and haste...

And WONDERFULLY made, perfect, all evidence and bad self-esteem to the contrary, gorgeous as children and poems in the eyes of God.  Not made to starve ourselves.  Made for radical self-care, so that we can fill up and give from a place of crazy generosity because we have been so freely given delicious food and outrageous friendships.  

So yeah, I just started out to share this one possible insight - that this body will be my body the whole time I am here!  This one!  Yikes, how awful.  No, wait wait, this exact one, that is STILL HERE, against all odds.  Thank you, thank you, thank you, God.  We have lost so many precious friends who would have done anything to have some more time in this joint, with our Mother outdoors, with those they love most.  Anything!

So that is how I am going to spend today, pretty much - sort of more-or-less - believing that this is it.  This body, this biography, this exact family, this everything.  And it is wonderfully made, of love and energy, for giving, forgiving, for - as William Blake said - learning to endure the beams of love.  And joy will always be the best make-up. 

  


Thank you, Anne Lamott, for those thoughts...on to the self-love as a means of filling up to be able to give to others.  

friday quotation

True peace comes when you are able to connect to the divine that is inside all of us, because when you do that, all that's left is love. 

sunday something

Dean shared this with us in yoga class this morning.  It's simple and amazing and, yes, in some ways nothing that I/we haven't heard before.  But today, the words and thoughts struck me in a new way.  And certainly set a wonderful tone for my yoga practice.  There are so many take-aways, but the one that has clung to me since I left Yoga Vida is this notion that today is a gift, the only gift that we have right now.  And how should we respond?  With gratefulness.  Here's to cultivating a spirit of gratitude as the video suggests...here's to today.

friday quotation

A challenging thought, at least for me...but surely worth striving for. 

There will be a gift in the pain eventually.  Whether it comes in the form of you comforting another.  Whether it comes in some art you make from it, because your pain is so deep, and that, is what happens to pain transformed.  It becomes art if you let it. 
~ Jennifer Pastiloff

friday quotation

"Life is short, very short, and what are we doing here if not trying to become more generous and loving?" ~ George Saunders

friday quotation

Being tender and open is beautiful. As a woman, I feel continually shhh'ed. Too sensitive. Too mushy. Too wishy washy. Blah blah. Don't let someone steal your tenderness. Don't allow the coldness and fear of others to tarnish your perfectly vulnerable beating heart. Nothing is more powerful to allow yourself to be affected by things. Whether it's a song, a stranger, a mountain, a rain drop, a tea kettle, an article, a sentence, a footstep. Feel it all, look around you. All of this is for you. Take it and have gratitude. Give it and feel love.
~Zooey Deschanel
(P.S. This picture of me with my two girl cousins before Gran's funeral seemed like an appropriate one to attach here as Gran was such a strong, beautiful woman.  We hope to continue to make you proud, Gran!)

friday quotation

 


"Each time of life has its own kind of love."
~ Leo Tolstoy

friday quotation

"Memories are simply moments that refuse to be ordinary."
~Diane Keaton

sunday reflections

It's been a wild month to say the least.  Not October (although that has not started quietly) but September.  I've missed friday quotations, days of work, rituals, routine.  And I've substituted them with travel, time with family to celebrate the life of Gran, dipping my toes back in the tri scene with a relay showing in Kerrville, conferences, and much, much more.  September was so full that there hasn't been much time to process all of it.  So I look to October with both hopefulness and a bit of trepidation.  What will happen when I have space for the light to come in?  What will I see?  What will I feel?   
Yoga saved me from all of those questions...and the emotions that they stir up by reminding me, once again, to be in the present.  Dean reminded us that we can choose each day to stay in the present or to get caught up in things from the past or worries about the future. With some lyrics from "Rent" I found myself both emotional and peaceful...grounded in today...focusing on what is here and now and currently at hand...and not feeling like I have to make amends with all that has happened or plans for all that is to come.  As Dean said, I could choose to struggle or I could choose to let go.  For today, I choose to let go. 

friday quotation

"Collect friends...in your life, you will need them."  ~Gran

Like a beautiful collection of wildflowers, Gran certainly gathered a variety of friends over the course of her life.  

There is so much more to say about Gran, about my relationship with her, about our final days with her...and I will do that in future posts.

But today, I'm struck by her wisdom about friends.  And I'm so very blessed to have a fine collection myself...amazingly generous, loving, supportive, compassionately fine...  Thank you for sticking with me these past few weeks especially. 

friday quotation

friday quotation

 

"The more room you give yourself to express your true thoughts and feelings, the more room there is for your wisdom to emerge."
~Marianne Williamson

(seems right in line with my theory of my need for some open space this summer...)

friday quotation

 

Anything one does every day is important and imposing and anywhere one lives is interesting and beautiful. 
~Gertrude Stein

friday quotation

 


"Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on." 
~Eckhart Tolle

Happy birthday, Gran!

Today is Gran's 95th birthday.  95?!  I really cannot even wrap my head around that.  But I'm awfully thankful that we get to celebrate another birthday with her.  Her resilience amazes me.  Her desire to go to the beauty parlor so that she can look good for her 95th birthday (even though a week before she was headed to the hospital) humors me.  And the love that she extends to all of us overwhelms me.  Love you, Gran...hope it's the beginning of some wonderful days - full of comfort and peace and love, love, love...never-ending love. 

friday quotation

 


With the passing away of Norah Ephron (last week), it seemed appropriate to quote her: "I'm very much a believer in knowing what it is that you love doing so that you can do a great deal of it."

Wise, wise words...thank you, Norah.  

friday quotation

Life is a field of infinite possibilities and an opportunity to evolve in the direction of truthfulness, beauty, and harmony. 
~ Deepak Chopra

friday quotation

 



You can't know who you are until you know where you are.
~ Wendell Berry

friday quotation

 

Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.
~ Anne Lamott

(this will definitely be added to my "whisper" jars next year...)

friday quotation

What you do today is important because you are exchanging a day of your life for it.  

~ author unknown

friday quotation

Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.

~George Santayana

friday quotation

So you act, so you feel, so you are. 
~India Arie

friday quotation

My motto this past week:

Seems to have worked...thankfully. 

friday quotation

True happiness is an acceptance of life as it is given to us, with its diminishment, mystery, uncontrollability, and all. 

~Michael Gellert  

friday quotation

If ever there was a week for me to light upon this Rumi poem, this past one was it.

The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.   

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from above.  

 

friday quotation

Commitment
Until one is committed
there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back,
always ineffectiveness.

Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation)
there is one elementary truth,
the ignorance of which kills countless ideas
and splendid plans:
that the moment one definitely commits oneself,
then providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur to help one
that would otherwise never have occurred.
A whole stream of events issues from the decision,
raising in one's favor all manner
of unforeseen incidents and meetings
and material assistance,
which no man could have dreamt
would have come his way.

I have learned a deep respect
for one of Goethe's couplets:
Whatever you can do, or dream you can...begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
~W.N. Murray (The Scottish Himalayan Expedition)


From a very non-committal place, this seems oddly appropriate as my quotation for the week...if for inspiration to commit if nothing else!

bittersweetness is...

...Yoga Vida 707 closing...getting to practice one last time in that beautiful room (the pictures in this post are taken from that room) with Deralyn, Katie, Vic, Bekah, and Dean (some of my favorite teachers)...all of the wonderful memories I have in there with Amy, Lisa, Malia, and Joan (who was also there tonight). It was an emotional night. Gratitude and love all around. Downward dogs and pigeons and warriors and wheels and trees and eagles and inversions and boats, too.
Dean started us off with Donna Summer's "Last Dance" which just about undid me. I don't know why. I think there's just a lot of change going on within and around me right now and Yoga Vida 707 closing its doors is just one more example of it. It felt in some way like a chapter of my life was closing. The chapter of early morning yoga classes where sometimes it was just Amy and me with Deralyn to guide us. The chapter of 5:30 p.m. yoga classes on Sunday afternoons with Lisa. The chapter where I got brave enough to do a headstand (against the wall!) and to flow up into wheel. Where pigeon became something that I embraced rather than fought. Where I was reminded of why, even after years of not practicing consistently, I return to yoga. Time and time again.
And it was a place where the circle did not get even begin to close with a lot things. Emotions. Aspirations. Challenges. And mantras. 707 is a place where crow still eludes me...most of the time. Where I dream of doing a headstand without the wall. Where I dream of flipping my dog into wheel. Where I dream of floor bow being a flow and not a fight. Where I dream of being more graceful and balanced and grounded.
I'll carry those dreams to Yoga Vida Westlake with me. It's just a few miles away and, for me, well worth the trip.
Because I think that is the other thing that tonight...and a viewing of YogaWoman last week...showed me - that I am committed to this practice. Not because it replaces anything else that I do but because it adds to everything else that I do. I have an ambition to eventually practice yoga daily - even if it's just a few poses in my home by myself upon rising or before going to bed. For now, it's enough to continue to learn and grow, to surrender and stop struggling, to take risks and become stronger...from within and without...on my mat.
Thank you, Yoga Vida 707, for being the space in which that journey really began...

sweetness is...

...a former student getting married...me being invited to the wedding...seeing a handful of other former students (four of whom were my advisees)...all grown up...all still just as funny, kind, and wonderful as ever. My heart was full to bursting. My eyes were brimming with tears. We laughed about old times; I caught up on their whereabouts and goings on right now. I'd seen most of them since their graduation in 2004, but I was still caught off guard seeing them "all grown up" some eight years later. So very proud to know them. Definitely one of those (many) moments when I'm reminded of why I love my job. Because of my students/advisees.

friday quotation

Tell me, what is it that you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
~ Mary Oliver

What a good question!

Been asking it of myself a lot lately.

a new perspective

I've been trying my hand at photography lately. Thanks to Amy who had a Groupon that she couldn't use and that I bought from her, I took my first photography class in February (on SuperBowl Sunday). I have a Canon PowerShot that I have, quite frankly, been lucky enough to take some good pictures with - completely by accident. I have a decent eye for things (or so I've been told!), but I had no idea that this little point-and-shoot could do so many things. I learned A TON that Sunday afternoon...cold and rainy as it might have been. We sat for about an hour and listened to some instruction and then were set forth to take pictures. Our instructor would give us an "assignment", we'd wander around the food trailer court near Progress Coffee and then regroup. We continued in this way for about an hour and took lots of photos. Some worth keeping...others quickly being deleted. (Got to love that about digital cameras).

Some of my favorites from the day:

I had a blast in those two hours of photography class. And so I took our instructor's words to heart and I have been practicing. A lot. Taking photos each day. Since February. It's quite a feat for me to have stuck with something like this!
To hold myself accountable, I set up an account with Blipfoto. The idea is to post one photo each day. I quickly learned that the more pictures I took (even of the same subject), the more likely I was to have at least one that I was willing to post. Some days I've gotten lucky and had many that I would like to post. Since that initial class, some of my favorites include:











I'm about to embark on an online photography course, which will be interesting. And I'm hoping to keep expanding what I'm doing and how well I work with my camera. The most important thing to me is that I'm having a ton of fun with it. I'm not claiming to be extremely talented by any means, but it has given me a new perspective on how I see things throughout the day.