3.12.16 Any minute now

This morning my brain made this zap of a connection, sliding along the line of thought many are writing about these days, connecting up the possible tendency of Millennials to creating/insisting upon a life tailored-just-right-for-me....to the parenting we Baby Boomers, by and large, aspired to provide for them. 
Some of us were lefties when we had kids and raised kids.Some of us were brought up to ostensibly Question Authority, and Treat Others as You Would Be Treated. 
My parents certainly rued the way they taught us to protest and be involved in politics and the Civil Rights Movement, because off some of us went, really and truly doing that. Questioning Authority.
And we here taught our kids to question authority, forgetting that we would actually be a big Authority in their lives.
Somewhere is a photo of my oldest, at 3, with an EAT THE RICH1 T shirt on. And I can't complain, nor pretend surprise, that he's off there, working a million hour weeks, nicely embedded in the upper class.
Thing is, somehow in the midst of many of us studying and observing and trying our very best to do whatever it took to parent our beloved kids the very best we could, we ended up, despite limit setting and stern loving guidance, pandering.
Looking back, I wouldn't' shift it.At the time, I wasn't certain, but I'd been raised in less than favorable circumstance, so I consciously decided to err on the side of trust. Of kindness and love and empathy. And if I fell prey to kid-type manipulation and stretching things, so be it.
I had an idea that I would look back and have that good old 20-20 hindsight, and here I am, today, smack in the middle of observing the Millennials storming the Trump convention. I'm watching the kids down the road have their gun and pickup truck gatherings and cook outs and kid fun.I'm watching my own kids learn how to navigate grad school or a good solid work life without finishing high school and making their way pretty beautifully, after some pretty bumpy times.

I'm wondering what it's like to be all kinds of young people, urged into certain lives by parents and loved ones, and then finding their own way the best they can, into all sorts of ways of living, all over the world, doing what they can with what they have.Learning to trust their own perceptions.
Here in the US, however, there is a whole lot of Millenial going on. And yeah, Baby Boomers have their schtick too. But how fascinating, to watch the generation that was provided with their individual breakfast depending on what they wanted that day, going around having their very=just=for=me coffees and maybe expecting things to be just so, any minute now.

3.10.16 Oh honey, lighten up.

     The actuality of The Divine may be refractory. Does that make sense? Shifting . Our perception varied, and not inclusive of whatever                    The Divine 'is'.
     What we perceive, whatever form we relate to, might vary according to who we are, and where we stand in proximity.
     As humans, if we so wish, we have many choices
     Over my lifetime, what is true for me has transformed from a male white guy with the beard and a robe who lives somewhere up in the sky, makes decisions, and listens to our appeals- when we want something different than what we have, or a continuation of our present good luck ( or parking space).
     Very gradually this has shifted to some amorphous deep internal sense of All That Is.
     Thing is, lately, what with the present complexity in my life, I wrestle with this.
     I smile affectionately at myself.
     I struggle with that very phenomena which the atheist and agnostic speak of. .
     About really wanting to believe in a version of The Divine that I can ask for support. That is somehow some sort of 'someone'.
     But whom I can ask to please, come here, and hold me up, when I feel that I cannot stand alone.
     To please come here, and make their presence known to me. To fill me with their grace and love and peace.
     As if I were a child alone in the desert, longing for somebody to come and help me.
     Lately, I remind myself that there are no rules. That in this regard, depending upon our beliefs, or the rules we have chosen to live by, we can do anything we want. And if I want to try floating some configuration of my own Divine, and bring it for a spin for a minute or a week or year, I can see how that works out.
     That its OK. To let up on myself, and my ideas. And thoughts.
     I remind myself that if I was living in another place, or another time, I might simply be so comfortably acclimated to the faith prevalent with those I live with, or the place I'm living, that the practice that involves a day-to-day life would possibly be a great source of comfort and joy. And cohesiveness in my life.
     That all of this left brain acerbic questioning and standards could possibly be irrelevant, in my day-to-day life.
     I embrace myself. I say to myself "Oh honey. Lighten up.
Try out 10 versions of 10 different ways of imagining The Divine.
     Please remember that all things are possible."

3.11.16 Ask.

O   utside there is a small sliver of the moon visible, and then an endless mass of stars, bright and decipherable and immediate. The night is mild, and the wind just sort of shifts through the foothill of the range, as city lights through the woods, and across the river, remain, because we have not yet been filled in by Spring's rich canopy of leaves. 
     I stand in my nightgown and my worn out slippers, feeling the scratchy driveway on one worn out heel, as I hold the pup on rope, who seemed to need to go out, yet now simply holds the leash happily between his jaws, as the tenant's dogs, from their crates, yip and bark and bark, and my big boy races back and forth in his favorite tied-on-a-leash game.
     I'm desolate and disconsolate and a whole bunch of other things that need no words. And I'm not thinking, but instead pulling myself along by the hand, to not think and to just let things move, in and then out. Like breath and thoughts and fears and happenstance. Past and this moment and all the sorts of things we humans pass on by, or get taken out by.
     I'm breathing in and out and slowly I begin to notice the reassuring weight of my existence pull me into my earth. Wordlessly settle me down.
     As the moon and the forest, with its night sounds and whispering wind, all offer up the way to pull pull us into some sort of settlement, if we only ask.

 

3.10.16 Taken out

Sometimes you're just going along in your morning and afternoon, doing what needs to be done and chin up and being with what is when all of a sudden all of what seems to be comes barreling down that old path of life and you could swear you just got taken out at the knees.

 

3.9.15 All hail

Hail, early March evenings

of 64•, no coats, and the great Moth emergence . 

Of the next door neighbor's motion detector outdoor light going off all night long 

 as beautiful wild ones awaken or just get going into Spring.