Oh how very, very blessed I am feeling today…a quiet day cooking at home with my son, Steven. We put Playing for Change on the radio as we snack on deviled eggs and prepare our Thanksgiving feast: Roast turkey, baked sweet potatoes, wild rice, steamed broccoli and carrots, a big, bold salad full of olives and avocado, cranberry sauce, and on and on…almost too much. We talk about how fortunate we are. Steven is ten years a survivor of Hodgkins Lymphoma. Most members of our family have survived cancer; we have all survived generations of physical, sexual and mental abuse, and most every addiction known. Steven gets to count today as one successful day without a cigarette.
We are alone today because our family is widespread across the Midwest and south to Florida, with friends around the country…I am estranged from a sister, but spoke to my niece at their house. They are eating well despite the hardships. My father, alive eight years out from a terminal diagnosis, is having too much food with my brother. The same is true for my other siblings…
Today my heart is overwhelmed with gratitude. I hope yours is, too. My dogs get gravy on their food tonight. I shovel snow to get out to fill the suet cages and watch the patient woodpeckers fly in. I pray for grace for all those displaced and hungry who aren’t enjoying our bounty. I am thankful to all of the soldiers willing to put their own lives aside for this privilege, even as I pray that we soon find another way to coexist on this shrinking planet.
For Steven. Thanks, Babe. I love you.
“Lay down your arms, and come without defense into the quiet place where Heaven’s peace holds all things still at last. Lay down all thoughts of danger and of fear. Lay down the cruel sword of judgement you hold against your own throat, and put aside the withering assaults with which you seek to hide your holiness.” -A Course in Miracles
For Turkey Day, I thought I’d share a dining room tour with P. Allen Smith. It is the home of the artist Rebecca Thompson, whose studio I featured yesterday. There are so many design elements I admire and ascribe to, especially the personal touches that delight the senses…home is, after all, heaven for beginners.
Listen to the details that this design genius points out; I always learn from him. Enjoy your dining today…XO
Where do I begin to talk about this creative genius? Again, one of my guilty pleasures (which I never actually feel guilty about) is watching the You Tube channel ehow home of P. Allen Smith. I have never had the privilege of meeting this man, but I love him nonetheless…
He has about two hundred educational videos posted, and they comprise a “how-to” for home life. Many of them don’t interest me. I don’t plan on raising chickens or ducks, but there are so many great ideas. What a fabulous way to spend a snowy morning.
Here he showcases an artist’s studio, a subject I’ve been threatening to feature in my blog for months now. So, let’s get started with this, but do yourself a favor and click over to You Tube and watch more of his wonderful videos! You’ll be glad you did…
Small space? No problem. No budget? No problem. Don’t let your limitations define your creativity! Look at what Charlotte Brown does with 300 square feet…
Inspiring…and fun. She makes a cozy, comfortable and functional home.
Here’s another great one, with an entirely different feeling:
One of my favorite guilty pleasures is the Canadian shelter magazine House and Home. Lucky for us, they also boast a television program available online at houseandhome.com/tv as well as a YouTube channel…(insert THANK GOD for technology here.)
This morning, watching some of the hundreds of videos available, I came across this terrific illustration of living in your artwork, and how dramatically it can effect the space around you…enjoy the next five minutes, and then, go play house…
The fourth vignette makes MY heart skip a beat…which is your favorite?
It is eight o’clock in the morning, and I have been up for two and a half hours. Pretty typical these days, and I find that I love the wee small hours. I am loving my sweet little life right now…quiet and serene…just me and my dogs and my imaginings. Upon waking I slip on jeans, boots (yes, we have ice and snow here now), a coat and head straight out the door with the dogs. The wind blows and the crystals sting me in the face as I head into the dark, flashlight in hand.
Last night I showed pictures of my new home-to-be to a friend. When she saw the beautiful park across the street with willow trees hanging over the river, I explained that this is where we will walk every day. She said, “Perhaps that’s the name of your new house, A Walk in the Park!”
Being a creature of contrast, I was immediately reminded that the house I am selling and leaving has never had a name. All of my life I have named my homes…until this one. I have lived here almost ten years. Then I remembered that I TRIED to name it for about the first year here, but nothing ever fit. Anything I thought of seemed contrived – because it was. This was never my home. This was the house my husband wanted, and where we housed any number of transitioning friends and relatives over the years, including foster children, and my Dad – but I have never been happy here. And yet there were many good times, of course; important always to remember that THESE are the good old days.
This was Curmudgeon Cottage…or maybe Castle. It was the old man’s hangout, recliners and big screen TV’s everywhere, cigar smoke, grease on the stove, yelling so you could be heard house. Yuk. My next home will be A Walk in the Park…I wish you the same blessing.
My home just sold. After twenty-some years living in a small mid-western town, I am moving back to a larger city. Never having locked my doors here, I search for a key to give the new owners at closing. The home I will move into has an alarm system. My sister tells me that’s a good thing, as a single woman moving to a strange place. I have two dogs who would feign protection, but truth is, their affections can be bought with cheap lunch meat. Commandos we are not.
Last night’s news told of the growing number of women buying firearms (now, THAT’S scary!) and taking classes with them. I won’t be among them. It isn’t that I begrudge them any sense of security this might provide, it’s just that I can’t believe in it. I suspect that, like violence, fear begets fear. You see, I am invested in overcoming the familial habit of being afraid to participate fully in life…My adorable mother lived most of her life afraid of just about everything, from spiders in the basement to the greedy salesman out to take advantage. At the young age of sixty-nine, the cancer of her fears overtook her.
“In my defenselessness my safety lies” has long been one of my favorite lessons from A Course In Miracles. It isn’t speaking of physical strength, but rather of a conscious approach to life. I have learned through personal failure that I scare myself far worse than anyone else ever could, and I have come to treasure my vulnerability.
For a period of time, I may live with the new security system as I get to know my neighborhood. I doubt I’ll keep it. My gut will direct me to right action. Grief was the tuition exacted for having learned to be comfortable in my own skin, to learn to trust my intuition. I am not about to relinquish my hard earned security to the world.
“I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life, and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing I’ve wanted to do.” – Georgia O’Keefe
Another of Doris the Resourceress’ favorites that she used to sing to me as a child…in case you didn’t know how lucky I truly am…
“You may be wealthy with treasures untold, chests full of jewels and coffers of gold, but richer than I you could never be – I had a Mother who read to me.” -author unknown
She sang to me, too…I never appreciated her enough…
Since divorcing two years ago now, I have dated one gentleman who liked to correct me about my “magical thinking.” It prompted me to evaluate what that meant, and whether or not it was a bad habit to be eradicated – like smoking, or speaking poor English. I have now decided: I am a magical thinker.
It occurs to me that magical thinking allows for anything to be possible. It affirms that reality is not limited by the perception of the five senses, but broadly utilizes the imagination to define it’s environment. Magical thinking is intuitive. I am intuitive.
Most of my life people have commented that I was living a charmed life; I never thought about it consciously, and I didn’t know what they meant. They recognized that something quite undefinable was happening: that I would think of something, and it would come to be. I can’t explain that. But I have also met many (mostly men!) who thought of me as unreasonable – because you can’t talk me out of my fantastical magical thinking. It is my personal experience of reality.
Friends would call asking for things they needed or wanted, and puzzled, I would wonder why they were asking ME for these things…”Well”, they would say, “you manifest anything you think of. So manifest me two wing back chairs this weekend, would you, please?” And I would shake my head as if they were looney, and go off to brunch at a co-workers house. Pulling in the driveway, my co-worker and his partner would be dragging two lovely wing back chairs out to the curb in hopes someone would pick them up…and instead load them into the back of my car. An hour or so later I was pulling into the friend’s drive who had called that morning, with her chair delivery. This kind of thing happens regularly. Magical, I guess. Or is it?
I can’t help but wonder if, in fact, this isn’t just NATURAL thinking. It never occurred to me that things didn’t work this way all the time for everyone…until much later in life. If I try to REASON this, it goes away. So, I no longer try to reason. Maybe reason works for some people, maybe some of us are wired differently. Beats me! I’m willing to deliver the chairs…I am an unreasonable, intuitive, magical thinker.
Remember when you were a little kid and you threw a temper tantrum in an attempt to get your own way? Why, your very survival depended on you convincing the adults to see things from your point of view…smarter parents smiled compassionately and responded, “Drop the act.”
Congratulations on your successful acting debut…but sadly, over time, you convinced yourself your act was real.
It’s now five-thirty in the morning, which last week would have been six-thirty. The only reason that fact has any significance at all, is because last week I would have been so glad to have slept this LATE. Maybe I did get a decent nights sleep after all…
I woke worried about my brother. Yesterday my sister told me that he is about to become homeless again; he called her to ask if she could take his old dog for awhile. As it happens, he had left me two voice mail messages, but I haven’t listened to them yet. John leaves me messages all the time. He just says “I love you. Peace be with you.”
I am the eldest of five children, and for a few months yet, we are all in our fifties. How we lived this long is nothing short of a miracle. Our household was so dysfunctional, it would make The Prince of Tides look like a Disney fantasy. My first inclination was to call my brother immediately and tell him he could come here. My home is about to sell, and I don’t know where I will be living a couple of months from now…and never mind that it has taken me the last three years to extricate myself from the abusive clingings of other family addicts.
Like my four siblings, John has overcome alcohol and drug abuse. He’s even managed to quit smoking – several times. He works hard everyday. He drives truck and delivers concrete, and although he makes a decent wage, he can’t pay his rent and utilities. He is addicted to Maria and her young children from a former marriage, and Maria is addicted to prescription medication for her chronic pain. And when he gives her the money to pay the bills because he is working six days a week, she spends it and forgets to pay the rent. They have lived without electricity for months now, but winter is about to set in.
I woke hearing myself talking to my darling brother, such a good-hearted man. “Your emotional attachments will keep you living in hell. They don’t exist in the Kingdom of Heaven. God has no use for your emotions, and is not interested in reconciling them. Neither is God interested in healing your physical pain, or in saving your life as it exists here now.”
“God does not care what you are thinking. You have been brainwashed into believing that your thoughts represent you, and nothing could be further from the truth. Thought does not exist in the Kingdom of Heaven.”
There is only one mind, one consciousness. I use the term the Kingdom of Heaven, but it means enlightenment, freedom, PEACE. God, as consciousness, is waiting to welcome us into this state of complete freedom from our physical pain and mental turmoil and emotional upheaval, to will us the Kingdom. We squander our inheritance when we cry and plead for our way, for God to fix our circumstances, to help us feel better, to help us continue to exist, and to dysfunction ourselves. Our adoring “father in heaven” smiles compassionately and says, “Drop the act.”
What does this mean in our everyday struggle? It means specifically that we must overcome our addiction to BELIEVING that anything we think or feel could possibly lead us toward enlightenment. Will I still ache with arthritis? Yep. Will I still get angry when you wrong me? Sure – to the degree I am invested in the belief that I can be wronged. Some days I’ll let it go sooner than others. I’m living one day at a time, and to the best of my ability, I’m gonna drop the act.
Withdraw your attention from your thoughts and emotions, and do not participate in any decision or behavior that you think is going to make you feel better or because you should or because anyone thinks you should. Now that’s easy for me to say, I realize…I am just learning myself. But I know we must stop trying to figure it out. Just stop, dead in your tracks, and listen for that still, quiet whispered prompting from your SOUL…from love. Not need. Don’t listen to need. Tell need to move to the back of the bus, “Get thee behind me.” It will lead you astray every time.
It will appear to most that you have lost your mind (oh, we can only hope!) and become lazy, uncaring…and when some person says to you – and they will – “God helps those who help themselves,” laugh and walk away. God isn’t interested in our petty preferences. He is completely invested in our freedom.
Learn to trust your inner voice, your truth, by giving it a chance. Stop trying to get your little way in the world. You have outgrown this behavior. Drop the act.
A Painterly Home 