Her Home Is Within

I love watching those television shows where people are making over their homes or where they are hunting for homes or where they're de-cluttering and revealing something new and streamlined, or where they've won the lottery and are able to get their dream home. It's been a long time since I've owned a house or lived in a house, but there's something about those shows that is really fun to watch. They are always about more than they seem to be.

As I think about this, I'm trying to connect with what I resonate with these days. In the late 90s-early 2000s, I loved to see the transformations that are possible for people. So I enjoyed watching the shows where they were de-cluttering and revamping a few rooms or a whole house. These days I like watching the shows where people are brought to choice, refining what they actually want in a home and getting that. They are two very different themes.

Noticing what draws us is a great mirror.

Actually, I'm delighted with what I'm noticing. It's a great relief to understand that I'm in a refinement place in my life rather than feeling like I need more big transformations. 
Understanding that about myself helps me see something about the trajectory of my life for the next few years.  

Do I refine what I have and stay where I am, or do I choose something different and move? There is actually a great deal of freedom in being in this place.

I remember when I first got divorced, my brother told me that I would feel liberated.  For so many years, I struggled even to understand how that could be possible, what that might look like. I felt anything but liberated. I felt like a slave to my heart and a slave to my habits. 

The truth is that we have to live into our changes.

It's important to understand that all this is not simply about where we live. It's also about where we live. It's not just about the location of our home, but about the home on every level that we create in our lives -- where do we come home to? Where do we "come home" to? 

Awhile ago I saw something that drove it home for me. A photo of a woman sitting on a kayak on a lake, holding a cup of tea and looking off into the wide-open sky. Her home is within. 

That's the liberation that I'm feeling these days.

Days of Accidental Beauty: 40 Days of Noticing is a daily writing practice that invites discovery.  

Rondo

The road was lined with Black-Eyed Susans and Queen Anne's Lace. The early evening sky stretched into forever. It was blisteringly hot, but I opened my window to feel the air and smell the mown grass and the scents of flowers on the breeze.

Thirty-five minutes of pure perfection.

Days of Accidental Beauty: 40 Days of Noticing is a daily writing practice that invites discovery.

Challenge Accepted

I posted the picture of my coronavirus hair, not of my freshly coiffed, freshly cut, freshly attended hair. The bangs, I'd trimmed myself over the four and half months in quarantine, and not very well. It had been nearly six months since my last appointment, so all my layers had grown out. I am wearing no makeup and my hair is air dried, no product, no style. It is just me, in all my natural beauty. 

I'd waited til after my salon appointment today, figuring I would be freshly groomed, chic, polished. A professional would have styled me. But. No.

There was something about the smile that drew me. The wild look of my hair. The fresh face. Even at 58, I am still fresh-faced. I like it when a photograph captures my wildness.

I'd seen the "challengeaccepted" and "womensupportingwomen" hashtags all over social media. Most of my friends have given up tagging others and post simply #challegeaccepted or "consider yourself challenged." I had not planned to participate. And then this morning I read an article about the origins of this wave moving across the social media waters. It began in Turkey, to bring attention to the femicide that is rampant in that culture. The death of one woman, murdered by her boyfriend, was the match that lit the tinder. What strikes me about this is that male violence against women is still so rampant, across culture, deeply embedded in the fabric of culture.  Here and abroad.

Consider the recent spectacle on Capitol Hill. A Florida congressman verbally assaulted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY. His non-apology and her brilliant speech on the House floor educated not just the Congress, but the nation, about the misogyny that is deeply embedded in American life. And how destructive this kind of irresponsible and dehumanizing speech is. Something she said stays with me, that her parents did not raise her to take abuse from a man. 

The thing is, though, so many women are raised to do exactly that -- to take abuse from men, to remain silent around rape and domestic violence, harassment in the workplace, harassment on the street, the macro- and micro-aggressions that are a part of our daily experience. In and out of the home.

I find myself wishing for the lighter interpretation around this challenge, the beauty of women lifting other women. I'm weary of the heaviness of our times. But, I think what ultimately tipped the balances in my posting for this is to add my image to the sea of images of other women, supporting and remembering each other, whatever our experience. We accept the challenge of showing up and choosing to be present, making our voices heard, telling our stories, advocating for each other, humanizing each other, and raising our sons and daughters to shape a different kind of experience for all people. 

Days of Accidental Beauty: 40 Days of Noticing is a daily writing practice that invites discovery.     

Happy Happy Joy Joy

The day is beautifully sunny. The sky is blue and looks like it's been painted with watercolors. Big, puffy white clouds move across the expanse beyond a deep green canopy of trees. It's my favorite writing canvas. I look into it and can see forever.

Breezes move through leaves and branches, lifting them. It's quiet, except for music playing softly in my living room. 

There's a glass of water on the table next to me. I can smell the cucumber that's been sitting in the pitcher all day, scenting the water. The blades of the ceiling fan cut the air and redistribute it, cooling the late afternoon. 

I breathe in peace and breathe out joy. I breathe in beauty and breathe out happiness.

The day has been spacious. I move through it like a panther, slowly, deliberately, noticing everything.

There's a tiny headache behind and just above my right eye. I probably would not have noticed it if it was a normal day when I am busy at work. Managing this, arranging that, preparing for this, addressing that, planning this, executing that. I sit back and close my eyes. A few deep breaths and a few tugs on my hair close to the scalp release the headache. I notice tightness in my shoulders and stretch, sink into yoga asana there in my chair. Bend. Fold. Twist. How long has it been since I practiced in the studio? Will there be a studio when all this is over? I allow these thoughts to be what they are and then let them go. Turn them into birds, as if I was Bob Ross at the easel.

I hear my fingers tapping the keyboard, chronicling their experience. Looking around my kitchen, I notice familiar things I love and some messy touches. The small basket in my pantry overflows with dishtowels. The recycling containers are full. A few little piles of paper wink at me. It's all very homey, nothing like the kitchens in magazines. Do people still read magazines? They must, since I can still buy them, but I wonder how long they will last in this strange, new world that unfolds around me. 

Thoughts become birds again. I open my eyes and see them fly across the sky.

Days of Accidental Beauty: 40 Days of Noticing is a daily writing practice that invites discovery.  

Night Writing

It always seems to get around to this.

I like to start my day with writing, write fresh in the morning when my energy and creativity are high, and then move into the rest of the day with the daily writing accomplished. And, yet, until I can establish the pattern, I find myself staring at my kitchen table and the laptop nearby and wondering how it got to be dark so quickly and where the last five or six hours slipped away to.

For writing in the morning to work for me, I need to get up early. Like, mist on the river early. It's been a long time since I've seen that part of the day. I think it's been the pandemic and quarantine effects -- the worry that accompanies it and the difficulty settling down at night to sleep. I haven't felt that non-specific nighttime anxiety that reared itself suddenly a few weeks ago and disappeared after a session of meridian opening that I was gifted the same day I began to acknowledge it was a problem. Still, nighttime television beckons and it's a great distraction.

I may need to discipline my schedule the same way I discipline my writing. 

But discipline and I are uneasy companions. My preference is to move through my day intuitively. I'm laughing even as I'm writing this. I've been able to indulge this preference over the last four months while working from home. It's going to be a difficult habit to break once the normal rhythms are reintroduced. If they are reintroduced. I don't want to go down that rabbit hole tonight. You know the one; the one where we're all wondering if life will ever be the same again.

That may be for tomorrow's night writing. Unless, of course, you see me in the morning, when happier topics abound.

Days of Accidental Beauty: 40 Days of Noticing is a daily writing practice that invites discovery.

So Often, I Unearth Treasure

Last year I wrote about being ghosted by Google. My name, my photograph, all of my "about" information and my followers, and a whole bunch of other things disappeared from my blog. I signed in to write one day and it was just gone. I'm not sure that I even know who's writing it these days. Just kidding. It's me. 

But it's got me thinking that I should probably reconstruct all those things. And, no doubt, I'll get around to it one of these days. When I figure out who I am right now. Creating the bio the last time took awhile. I'd just been through a bunch of major life changes and hadn't figured out who'd come out the other side. So I just wrote a few things about the person I thought I was becoming. I'm not sure I remember what it said. Probably something about poetry and the collection I was in the process of publishing, empowerment facilitation and spiritual direction. Yoga. Reiki. Sound Healing. A few other things. 

I wrote through most of the summer last year as the masked blogger, so to speak. I imagine that unless you knew me, you had no idea who I was. And that was okay. I am not sure I write to be known, I write to write. It's a discipline, the daily writing. It's also a treasure hunt. So often, I unearth treasure. There's no map. No X marks the spot. It's accidental. A surprise. Unexpected. 

And I go through a lot of soil to get there.

There's a parable in the book of Matthew in the Bible that talks about the kingdom of heaven being like a treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid. In her joy, she goes and sells all that she has and buys that field. There's something here I can see just the edges of.

Parables are like that.

Days of Accidental Beauty: 40 Days of Noticing is a daily writing practice that invites discovery.

Burning the Midnight Oil

Well, the 10 o'clock oil, anyway.

Actually, it's more like 9:15, but I've been at it for so many hours it feels like midnight.

Trying to get away for a little time off requires enough work to qualify for an extra week at work just to be able to take another week off work. Does that make sense?

I don't have one of those professions you can just leave and leave it to someone else. Some things can be done on the spot, but not most things. So you do double work to take some time off, and sometimes I wonder if it would just be better to trim a few hours or a day here and there and just call it a day. Might that be more restful?

No. Definitely not.

I need time to decompress. Usually it takes me about two weeks to really let down, so when I can it's wonderful to take three weeks off. That third week is really lovely. But I'm not going to be able to figure out how to make that happen, so I'll just take a few weeks here and a few weeks there and hope that it will be enough. This time bargaining is all part of a high stress profession in which you're never really off when you're on. It's a 24/7 life. 

My list sits on the table next to me. The same list that sat here last night with no X's through the task numbers and no lines through the tasks. Now, nine of the 12 items are crossed off the list and the extra item I'd forgotten, but added and completed, this afternoon is crossed off. Really, there's only one thing of substance left to do, an hour-long live video broadcast for Sunday worship tomorrow morning.  

And then there are just the two final items:

(11)  Set away message.
(12)  Be done. Say, "I am done."

Those two may sound like freebies, but they're the hardest two on the list.

Days of Accidental Beauty: 40 Days of Noticing is a daily writing practice that invites discovery.

The Soul Knows What It Needs to Heal

I'm taking off the next two weeks to write.

I have a few projects I'd like to dive into and see what's alive for me right now. I have this forty day writing project. I've also been working non-stop and overworking since the pandemic quarantine began, so it probably is a good idea to rest my brain and restore myself a bit. Or a lot.

I find that changing my focus just a bit can be deeply restorative, so while I won't be on a literal vacation, I expect to restore vitality. I'm noticing that I'm using the word restore a lot. 

The soul knows what it needs to heal.

Usually when I'm getting ready to take some time off, I tend to work twice as much to be able to take that time. This time is no different. Truth be told, I've had to work more than I usually do before taking a couple of weeks off. I was talking with a friend yesterday and we were laughing about it. Not laughing because it's funny. Laughing in a tragic flaw kind of way.

Tragic flaw is something that has stayed with me from my secondary education. A tragic flaw in literature is a quality within a person's character that brings about an inevitable downfall of a protagonist in a tragedy. It's something that he, or she, will not escape. It's a little bit like a wound that cannot be healed.

Mine is love. I love too hard. My friend disarmed me with a question while we were talking about all this. She reminded me about my propensity to love. And then asked,

What is love when it is unboundaried?

She did not expect me to answer the question, said it is rhetorical. I disagree. It seems to me that the question begs reflection. Or my patterns do.

So today I took a break for some space. Spaciousness. The list of tasks I need to complete before I take off sits next to me on the table. It will all get done. 

Days of Accidental Beauty: 40 Days of Noticing is a daily writing practice that invites discovery.

Days of Accidental Beauty

Wow. It's been a long time since I posted or even really have been here. I realize that I've been dancing between the hamster wheel and the pit of despair. About a week ago, I started having this weird, non-specific anxiety as I got ready to get into bed and have not rested well. I can see it in my face. I'm dragging myself everywhere I go, whether it's to the grocery store or to another Zoom meeting. I show up with my happy mask for work and create uplifting, inspiring content for my congregation and then sink into exhaustion when I'm not "on" (writing, posting, filming, doing live video, taking meetings, calls, and the like). My usual rhythm of writing in the summer has vanished into thin air, or is hiding in plain sight behind some kind of veil.

I spent a day and evening on Saturday, sitting in meditation with Jon Kabat-Zinn (an on-line retreat with time on and off line throughout) and lived an achingly beautiful day, completely in synch with my desire. There have been other days of accidental beauty. At least one I can think of. I am painfully awake around where I am, but when I try to lift my body out of the mud it feels more like I am in hardening concrete.

Perhaps awareness is enough for now. But even as I say this, my addiction to happy endings rears itself. Beautifully aware is not enough.

So I ask myself, what is enough just for today, maybe just for this moment? Can writing this and reaching out be enough for now? And does it give me energy to get dressed and go to the farmer's market? And might that give me energy for the next life-giving thing today?

This tiny essay ignited my writing practice again. I shared it with a writing group and received so much love back from people. I did not even realize I'd written an essay until someone reflected it back to me. People shared that they were here as well, dwelling in this odd place after months of isolation and quarantine during a global pandemic and societal unrest. I saw us as this beautiful array of dusty, disheveled women who suddenly realize that they are not alone. And that they are alive.

There's a sense during this time that we've been waiting for the next shoe to fall, the next disaster to be announced. Jokes are going around on social media about it, about aliens and Godzilla and other nightmarish things showing up out of nowhere to add to our collective suffering and fear.

But in the middle of all this, now four and a half months, sheltering at home and interruption of our patterns, I am finding days, sometimes moments, of respite. Like the mindfulness meditation retreat I gave myself a few weeks ago. Like looking out my kitchen windows while writing, and gazing at the blues of the skies, the greens of the tree canopy, the white, textured clouds moving on winds out of reach. And even as I note this, the winds closer to home rise and catch the leaves on the trees and pull them into the dance. 

So this new daily writing practice begins, and my heart feels light. It's taken me ten days to get here after deciding to come. Today is the final deadline to begin so that I can finish on the last day of August. My task -- forty days of noticing. Why noticing? Because four and a half months have slipped by nearly unnoticed. 2020 feels like the lost year and I am hoping to find myself again in the detritus. 

Days of Accidental Beauty: 40 Days of Noticing is a daily writing practice. These are always about discovery.