I stand before my inner fire and bow my head in gratitude for the losses in my life.
Thank you to my parents for their blundering pain and wounded abandon as I define my safety with my healthy boundaries.
Thank you for all my heartaches, for the strands of every heartache leads to defining my heart’s needs and discovering I am the lover I’ve most wanted.
Thank you to my late wife for choosing to exit so suddenly and tragically for her surrendering granted me a window through the veil into the other side where I touched the incredible grace of departure.
Thank you Fibromyalgia for gifting me body knowledge so I am able to define my body’s needs with acceptance and surrender.
Thank you my daughter for your courage in living with a devastating disease, for you are my teacher in this classroom of life. I learned to love myself with grief and fear and most of all with courage I learned from you.
Every loss and pain and embarrassment and humiliation has taught me there’s a gem in every experience. The idea of finding a silver lining seems so cliché when looking from my other side of want.
With breath, with patience, with reflection, my gifts are apparent. I am grateful.
Staring at the Bones by Danna Faulds
Sooner or later, life in its variety
And wisdom, chews the meat from
The bones of my illusions. It sucks
The marrow from inside, and throws
The dry bones to bleach in a pile.
Expectations are treated with equal
Disdain. Stripped of their finery, they
Are revealed as nothing more than
Future plans, easy ways to stay safe,
Roadmaps drawn by a blind cartographer
Trying to imagine distant destinations.
This is the present moment’s boot camp.
Life’s lack of rules will be obeyed or I’ll
Spend my time peeling potatoes in the
Past. I can choose to leave behind the
Skeletons of what I thought I knew and
Raise the flag of truth on the front porch.
I can take a single step and wait for the
Next one to be revealed. I can only
Know where I am in this moment.
Anything else is a desperate attempt
To clothe the bones and set them walking.
Participants’ Reflections:
How beautiful. It’s one thing to be grateful when things are going good. It’s another to see the beauty when things can be sometimes viewed differently. Thank you very much.
The words came to me not to ask the moment to be other than it is. I was thinking of the words that Emily says in Thornton Wilder’s play, Our Town about living every day where you are. Do we ever appreciate it? I also read this morning to love what you have, not what you wish you had. It all comes back to feeling where I am right now and treasuring that.
I think it would be a good exercise for any of us to look back at some of the hardest places in our lives and see compared to where we are today, how the ingredients have made us who we are now. These ingredients have contributed to the hardships and weaknesses and are part of every one we see and meet on an everyday basis. Even if we don’t know them. It really calls for a lot more patience and non-judgment, non-critical, all the good non’s.
What struck me today was there is a gem in every experience and that resonated with me when I think back on different experiences, trials and tribulations with my life. With every hardship there was a silver lining that came out of it. I’m grateful for that.
I think one of the things I’ve come to realize, and I’ve got a long way to go to actualize it, is not make assumptions about people. I just can’t tell what they’ve endured, what they’ve been through. I have to assume the best from people and assume while I’ve been learning from adversity, they have as well. I have to be fully in the moment and not be captured by the past.
I’m convinced that assumptions are based on fears, and how quickly I jump to assumptions because I’m feeling fear.
I was thinking when I look back at the past, if I can reframe some experiences through the lens of gratitude, that changes perspective a little bit. The importance of being in the day, not ruminating too long. I could have sworn you said peeling potatoes from the past—what a colorful way of describing it. I’ve heard it’s okay to look back but it’s not polite to stare. Acceptance versus expectations; gratitude versus bitterness are things of a lifelong journey. Sometimes the old tapes are poor me, poor me. Thank you for that sharing this morning.
Thank you for your continuing readings and writings. I made a mental list of things that happened in my life and separated them into what I could control and what I couldn’t control. I guess the hope is what I can control I learn from. It was very clear the things I couldn’t control, rather than deal with anger and bitterness, give as much love as I can hoping it helps.
What came to me in my contemplation time was I was sitting here having these outside thoughts coming to me. I would say stop and come back and it reminded me of the story of Jesus in the desert sitting there, or Buddha sitting under the tree being tempted. In my contemplation it occurred to me that all of these thoughts coming to me from the outside are like temptations pulling me away. I need to say no, stop, stay here with God.
I was thinking back over my life. Some things have softened and I see the lessons in them. I still struggle with other things. My father drowned when I was 20. It certainly made me have more compassion for anyone going through this type of experience. I learned months later of another family going through a similar situation, and I remember sending them a prayer. I hope with the idea of collective consciousness, those prayers go to them even if they don’t know it.
I occasionally watch a TV show called “I Survived” about people who have survived terrible situations. These people are just amazing when they tell their stories and how they survived and some of them go on to do greater things to help others. These testimonials are so empowering.
Thank you for your time and your sacred presence in committing to the practice of silence, sharing and feeling your heart because it takes courage.