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!)