What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the winter time; it is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. ~ Crowfoot, chief of the Siksika First Nation (1830-1890)
I read this and I hear the words, “and then it is gone.”.
I feel the beauty inherent in each of these ephemeral experiences. I catch a glimpse of the times in my life when I haven’t tried to hang on and I notice the freedom I felt when that happened.
I love to take photographs and what captures my eye, more often than not, are these fleeting images of life as it splays itself out – the rose in sumptuous blossom, the full moon at its peak, a whole-body smile flashing through my grandson.
And then I notice how many times in my life, which would be most of them, that I try to hang on to this beauty.
Life is fleeting, ephemeral. I know this. And, dang it if I don’t try to hang on to the ephemeral…seeing that written in words makes it so clearly painful to do so.
flash…
breath…
fleeting…
all words that show us clearly that life isn’t anything solid or real.
and, yet…
Hanging on to the fleeting is impossible…it falls through our grasp.
And this is where suffering happens…
Life doesn’t need to be fixed or saved.
Life is sacred. Perhaps it only needs to be seen, witnessed, loved.
Perhaps instead of taking, holding on, grasping, I can learn to give back, to appreciate, to honor, to acknowledge, to witness…
What might it take for us to remember the sacredness of this life, to witness it as such, to bow down to its fleeting nature?
Sometimes, I stumble across the most divine succulence in everyday moments. I can’t help but swoon at how life displays itself in infinite ways.
succulence
I’ve become captivated with Instagram on my iPhone. A closet photographer, I love to snap pictures of the everydayness of life, and this app invites me out to play on a daily basis.
I took the above photo on Wednesday, in a parking lot in San Francisco. This beauty was soaking up the rays and I couldn’t help but notice her succulence.
graceful afternoon
This is another of my favorite Instagram shots from the many long walks I have taken in Tilden Park.
eBook Gifts for You
I’d love to let you know of a couple of ebooks I am thrilled to have contributed to. They are free and filled with some pretty great wisdom and love.
When I asked 23 glorious humans if they’d like to write a love note of encouragement to your glorious self, they said: Yes please!
So here it is, my lovely. Just for you. A gathering of wise, gentle nudges to remind you of your magnificence, your sense of possibility, your beauty and your truth.
Your notes of encouragement, smartness and truth come from:
Alexandra Franzen. Amanda Oaks. Chris Guillebeau. Chris Zydel. Danielle LaPorte. Darrah Parker. Dyana Valentine. Goddess Leonie. Fabeku Fatunmise. Heidi Fischbach. Hiro Boga. Jamie Ridler. Jen Louden. Julie Daley. Karen Maezen Miller. Kylie Springman. Leo Babauta. Marianne Elliott. Mark Silver. Susannah Conway. Tammy Strobel. Tara Gentile. Tara Sophia Mohr.
The She-ro’s Journey
The second ebook was put together by Jennifer Louden, a woman I feel blessed to call friend. She is woman on a mission to ignite us all to savor and serve. Her ebook, The She-ro’s Journey, is a collection of offerings of which I am thrilled to be a part of. Here’s what Jen had to say:
Are you with us?
You will need food for the journey and companions. I asked 47 women to respond to the question:
How are you stepping into your she-ro’s journey these days?
Here is what they said – compiled in a gorgeous and inspiring and freeee love-fest e-book! Essays, photographs, videos, poems, art – amazing voices to inspire your journey.
Speaking of journeys, I am moving, tomorrow, to the City. It’s a big change for me. I may be away from the blog for a few days, but trust, when I return, I’ll fill you in with all that’s happening my in life.
May you see the beauty inherent in each moment as it unfolds before you.
Beauty appears when something is completely and absolutely and openly itself. ~Deena Metzger
Reverb10 Day 08 – Beautifully Different.
Think about what makes you different and what you do that lights people up. Reflect on all the things that make you different – you’ll find they’re what make you beautiful.
::
I tend to not like to compare myself to others. I used to do it often. I found it never brought me much peace of mind – in fact, it brought me the opposite.
So, today’s prompt stirred something up inside me about being different and how that ties into being beautiful. I prefer to look at being beautiful from the quote I shared by Deena Metzger – that beauty appears when we are being completely and absolutely self.
We are all different from each other, yet I can’t tell you how I’m different from you. I can be different in the things I do, the places I’ve gone, the life I’ve lived. These are measurable things we can see from the outside. They tell me nothing about who and how and what you really are, nor do they tell you about me.
I only know how I am. Any comparison would simply be either comparing myself to what I think the ‘norm’ is, or what I think makes you You. And, again, I don’t think conjecture helps me to know what makes me beautiful.
Yesterday, I had a beautiful twitter love fest with some of my favorite tweeps. What they shared with me shed some light on how they see me and what it is I do that lights them up. So, I do know others see me in a certain way.
I also know it doesn’t serve anyone to hide our light, our brilliance, our heart. When we don’t try to hide ourselves, when we are simply what we are, our beauty appears.
::
What I love.
When I am really being me, I can range from being totally silly to totally serious. I do like to wax on about serious things.
I love the esoteric. I love math. I love touch.
I love devotion, and being devotional to the Source of Life. When I am, I’m filled with a love so radiant, I feel totally and completely full. Nothing is needed or wanted.
I love to dance. Hard and long. I dance the 5Rhythms. Two hours with 150 people dancing at our max…in silence. Heaven.
I love beauty, and creating beauty.
I love working out really hard, where my body gets completely heated up. I can feel the toxins releasing, the muscles relaxing, the sweat cleaning me out from within.
I love to love people, you know, the kind of love where you find you appreciate everything about them because it is who and what they are.
::
Somewhat of a rebel.
My life has been pretty unusual, far from the ‘norm’ of this culture.
I attended Stanford as a non-traditional transfer student. I was 42 when I entered as a Junior. I stayed three years, so I could go to Florence to study. While I was in school, my first grandchild was born. I was the first grandmother to graduate with an undergraduate degree from my department.
While I was there, I was involved with other transfer students. We put on orientations for others in the same situation. One day I was speaking to a young woman, another student. She was all of 23. She was asking me all about my life, and I was sharing. I mentioned something about my life being really different. I think she could sense my reticence about that, and she said something to me that I’ve never forgotten.
She said, “There’s more than one way to do life.”
What a brilliant statement. Somehow, the words she shared allowed me to settle into the differences between my life and those of the majority of the undergrads there. Her words invited me to drop the feeling of being so different simply because my life had taken a different trajectory than most.
Her statement also points to doing vs. being. We can see things about people from what they do and how they live their lives. Sometimes, though, it’s hard to really know someone, especially if they’re reluctant to be real, to be truly themselves. Most of us try to be something other than what we are, because we learned at a young age what we were wasn’t enough.
When one is willing to allow their radiance to shine, to be wholly themselves, we begin to catch a glimpse of the brilliance, the luminosity that lies behind their eyes.
::
It’s Serious Love.
I have a story to share with you about coming to know my beautiful self.
A few weeks ago, I had a photo shoot with one hot photographer, Siddiqi Ray. I mean, look at her art. Really.
Siddiqi loves your pictures right out of you. It’s serious love.
According to her site, I’m one of her perfect clients because I hate(d) having my picture taken. I can now add the ‘d’ because with Siddiqi, I loved having my picture taken. For anyone who really knows me, they know what a transformation that is.
Siddiqi came up to San Francisco for an afternoon for client shoots. She brought the most amazing make-up and hair artist with her. This woman made me up and did my hair in a way that I felt adorned and adored, rather than being made up to hide my flaws. Big difference.
Then, after I had been adorned and adored, Siddiqi began to take pictures. After a few shots, she sat down across from me and proceeded to do a soul reading. This was not your average reading, because where she took me, as she spoke softly and clearly about what she saw, was straight to that which is clearly and deeply me.
by Siddiqi Ray
Straight to my soul.
Bammo.
I dropped right down into this place of complete knowingness and serenity.
She spoke of what I am her to do, and it was directly in line with what I know.
THEN, she took my picture. And she captured me, from deep within my eyes.
Bam.
Boom.
Dropped down in.
The eyes don’t lie. To me, this is beauty. Not in how we’ve been taught to see it, but rather because it captures me, so completely, so totally. I don’t have to tell you things about me, you can see into me, into a place where we know each other completely and utterly.
For being someone who hate(d) having her picture taken, I didn’t even have to really stretch to take this in, because they did it with such integrity and truth.
One thing I know about me is that I have a vision. When she took this picture, Siddiqi was sharing how she saw me and I was clearly standing in the vision I’ve been shown.
We can try to tell each other about who we are, but words can never really capture the depth of what can be seen behind the eyes.
“All beauty contains darkness.†~ Daniel Odier
Learning to see, and then act, outside of the current patriarchal structure has been a journey of ever widening circles, much like a spiral. It is the journey of living the feminine, a way of life that is very different than that which I was taught to know. It means trusting what is revealed in each moment of present awareness, and feeling for what is ripe with the promise of birth. I go in and out of living this way, but as the circles of understanding grow, I find myself opening to the darkness of the feminine to receive Her guidance.
When this guidance is revealed, the only thing that lies ahead is darkness, the darkness of the unknown. The only thing known is that one choice, the one thing that is the most obvious choice. My mind struggles with the darkness, wanting desperately to know what lies ahead, and yet I also know in my heart that this darkness, this unknown, is the mystery of life waiting to be revealed. The divine mystery is the new, is this darkness from which all emerges.
What I am learning to trust in is the strong pull of this knowing. You might call this intuition, but for me, as I live deeper into the cells of my own body, it is knowing.
I found, what I guess you could call the ‘best’ book of 2009, this way. I saw it on a friend’s desk and knew I must read it. The pull was unavoidable. A friend had given him the book, for reasons he couldn’t understand. He had no intention of reading it, but for some reason had not yet given it away.
I would call this book a gift. A gift given and gratefully, and voraciously, received. Not all of the book kept my rapt attention, but the parts that did carried me deeper into the darkness, deeper into the parts of myself that were thirsting for light. I was yearning for gnosis. Through a marriage of the wisdom of this book and my own willingness to allow a new kind of knowing to emerge from within, I began to deepen my trust in this darkness.
The book that has so many dog ears, cracks in the spine, lines underlined, recommendations to others, is Dancing in the Flames: The Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness. The authors are Marion Woodman and Elinor Dickson. In my knowing, this book can be a guide book for the journey into darkness that we all, and most especially women, must take. As Woodman states, “The evolutionary imperative within the collective unconscious is pushing us toward a new level of consciousness.” We must learn to stand alone, in our own wholeness, if we are going to survive. And, learning to stand alone means diving into the darkness, to come to know ourselves again in a whole new way.
As Odier shares, there is beauty in darkness. It is the rich soil from where all of life emerges.
Last Saturday night, my dear friend Megan hosted her second annual Fig Gig. In Megan’s backyard is the most beautiful, gnarly, fecund fig tree. The figs are a deep purple color, and when you pick them right off the tree, biting into one is like biting into the most divine jam. They are visually glorious, all fleshy, soft, moist and red inside.
Megan also hired a Kora player; the Kora is an instrument from Africa with 12 strings. The woman who played was incredibly gifted and vibrantly funny. Her voice was beautiful and lyrical, and the sound of her music created the most luscious background to the evening.
At one point, Megan greeted her guests and invited us to take a moment to celebrate and give thanks to the Mother, the Earth and all that she provides for us. We celebrated the Fig tree as a symbol of this abundance and nourishment…and as a symbol of the feminine.
As we sat in this moment, my heart became so full. This moment was one of those sweet spots in life, a moment where my attention was given to the beauty available in every moment. In fact, it became so full, I felt as if my heart couldn’t hold any more – that it would burst if I allowed in one more drop of beauty.
This life is beautiful. In the moments, like the Fig Gig, when we are enjoying the party, life feels good. But, I have come to see that we can fully appreciate these moments when we also see the beauty in the not-so-great moments of turmoil, pain and grief. Opening my heart deeply to the painful moments of my life, and the painful times we are in, has also allowed me to feel the beauty more deeply of all the moments of life.
I have come to know that in these painful moments, and in the happy moments as well, that the heart can hold much more than our minds believe it can. When it feels like the heart is breaking, it’s not the heart breaking, but rather the chains that bind it…those places where we have closed ourselves off to feeling, for fear we won’t be able to handle it.
We are in interesting times. I realize now, even more clearly, that to taste the sweetness of life, we must open ourselves to the beauty that is available here, right now. We can no longer afford to close our eyes to the places that feel hard or painful, fearing them. There is beauty in them as well, for when we make ourselves available to the full range of feeling, we become vividly alive within our own hearts. We can feel deeply, the full range of emotions, and that in itself is beautiful. When we open to the dark places as well, we are available to respond to those dark places, both out there, and within ourselves.
When I worked with women who had lost their spouses and lovers in 9/11, in our dating/relationship class, we worked to open the heart, to allow the range of feelings in that one feels in deep grief. In allowing the bindings to loosen, so that grief can do it’s work, one can begin to taste again the fullness of life.
As I enjoyed the fullness of beauty of this very special evening, I realized my heart was so full, because I have allowed in the deeply painful moments in my life. In opening my heart to the places that scare me, the chains that bind it are breaking down. And in this fullness, I can begin to feel the fullness of my humanity and taste the sweetness of an open heart.
I’m curious about you. Do you allow the sweet moments of life in? Do you fully receive the bounty that life offers? Do you shy away from those painful emotions? How might your sweet spots of life taste?
A friend posted this quote on FaceBook this morning, and I just had to share it here.
“Why are you trying to fit in when you were born to stand out?” ~ From the movie, What A Girl Wants Â
I like to think of standing out as simply being what you are, the truth of what you really are. The ego is all about hiding or ‘being seen’, but there is another alternative…simply being true to your own being, without worrying about what others think of you.
A teacher of mine, Aydahshanti, says freedom only comes when we allow others to have their own opinion of us, without worrying about changing it or controlling it. This leaves us free to simply be. The tulip above, one of many I had in the house over Easter, is a great example of this. It is standing out, being itself, being beautiful and vibrantly colorful. It is simply being what it is.
What if you were to allow yourself to be unabashedly you? and, of course, unabashedly female!
Just a few days ago, last Thursday evening, I was lucky, lucky, lucky…I got to experience Mary Oliver in person in San Rafael. It was my good friend Megan’s birthday and she invited me along with her.
Mary Oliver is an incredible poet, and having the opportunity to hear her read her own words was one of those amazing moments in life. She is simple yet profound in her ability to articulate the experience of being present to the beauty of life. I found her most engaging as she shared poems about her important relationships: the one with her late beloved partner of 40 years, and the other with her dog, Percy. She is a master of speaking from her heart, in writing and in person.
I am currently re-reading one of Mary’s latest books, Thirst. It is a beautiful collection written after the death of her partner, and opens to two new directions in her work: grief and her discovery of faith. This book looks at sorrow as an opening to the awakening of faith. It reflects my own experience of the profound way that grief can move a person into the depths of the heart, which can bring about an opening into a new, very personal, relationship with life. Pick it up and be prepared to be amazed.
Amy Lenzo, of the Beauty Dialogues, was there, too. We were hoping to meet each other in person, but it wasn’t to be. The place was packed, every seat sold in advance. You can read Amy’s account of the evening in her post in the Beauty Dialogues.
I read this and I hear the words, “and then it is gone.”.
A friend posted this quote on 