37days

Freeze

I just love this. Love it. Art everywhere.

[seen here first]

What would love do?

Sometimes we get the message we need. Reading zena musings this morning, I found Carla's link to this: What would love do? It was written for me. And, perhaps, for you?

[perhaps a knitted heart is the perfect image for this message, considering the ways in which knitting can ravel, or not. Image from here]

I is for inside looking

Man need only divert his attention from searching for the solution to external questions and pose the one, true inner question of how he should lead his life, and all the external questions will be resolved in the best possible way. - Leo Tolstoy

In 2008, I will end each day by inside looking.

Naikan (nye-kahn) is a Japanese word which means €œinside looking€ or œintrospection€--seeing oneself with the mind's eye. Naikan is a structured self-reflection developed by Yoshimoto Ishin, a devout Buddhist of the Jodo Shinshu sect in Japan.

Naikan offers three questions for us to ask and answer:

What have I received from others?

What have I given to others or given back to others?

What trouble and bother have I caused them?

With gratitude for the ampersand

"I am a part of all that I have met." - Tennyson

The end of a year brings closure of many kinds. Some involve owning what didn’t get done that year; others involve thankfulness, still others center on the celebration of things accomplished, friendships deepened, things and people let go of, even.

As this second year of 37days ends, I spent today reading again the comments left on this site in 2006, as well as the hundreds of emails I’ve received from 37days readers these past twelve months, each telling a story, holding me up, helping me understand things I hadn’t seen before. And for that, my gratitude, my thanks.

Open your hand

“To receive everything, one must open one's hands and give.” –Taisen Deshimaru

“If my hands are fully occupied in holding on to something, I can neither give nor receive.”  -Dorothee Solle

One of the wisest people I know is a man named Eliav Zakay from Israel, CEO of a national youth leadership program there and formerly with the Israel Defense Force Leadership Development School.

Leave your base camp

“Money often costs too much.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson

Last Tuesday, I found myself in the unusual position of being at the very top and very bottom of Maslow’s Happy Hierarchy of Needs at exactly the same time.

I can’t recall ever being in two places at one time like this, not since 1986 when I was in Scranton with a young Chinese man who was threatening to defect, watching him waver as he decided between two distinctly different worlds.

Pop up your Nimrod

“There are three wants which never can be satisfied: that of the rich, who wants something more; that of the sick, who wants something different; and that of the traveler, who says, Anywhere but here.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

I grew up in a small Southern town where nobody knew the street names, but just gave directions by landmarks and events: turn left where the Biltmore Dairy building burned down, go straight past the Pool Hall where Guy "Frog" Ramsey got shot in the face, turn right at Mull's Feed and Seed where evidently nothing of note happened other than the rambunctious selling of feed and seed.

Daddy was the town barber. Mama worked at the bank on the Square with the Town Clock on the side of the building that was always off by 8 minutes but it really didn’t seem to matter to this slow-moving populace, perambulating past my vantage point in Modern Barber Shop like they were wading through tepid water. It was as close to Mayberry as you can get; I was Opie’s missing red-headed sister, working at the public library and taking piano lessons from Myrtle Muench once a week for twelve whole years, culminating (of course) with a slightly mechanical (yet secretly rousing) rendition of Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.”

Stop at every lemonade stand

“When I give, I give myself.” -Walt Whitman

Quiet bouquets

Leaving West End Bakery on Friday, having eaten quite possibly the best strawberry scone ever baked in the history of the universe with real, big slices of sweet strawberry tucked throughout it and I want another one right now, I noticed an old man sitting quietly on the edge of the stairs in the parking lot with a small piece of newspaper spread at his feet in a perfect square.

A sunny day tempered with a brisk breeze and shadows from buildings were the cause for his small, tight overcoat with each of its big round plastic tan buttons neatly buttoned high and his corduroy hat, a bucket shaped one with a 1-inch brown grosgrain ribbon quite round it.

He had hands like big steaks, stuck far out from his sleeves like that photo I have of my father as a teenager too big for his Sunday go-to-meetin’ coat and too poor for a new one, hands hanging vulnerably, awkwardly below cloth.

Celebrate every orange flag

“The truth is that everything that can be accomplished by showing a person when he's wrong, ten times as much can be accomplished by showing him where he is right. The reason we don't do it so often is that it's more fun to throw a rock through a window than to put in a pane of glass.” - Robert T. Allen

Three stories, one theme:

The first story

One afternoon a few weeks after my older daughter started first grade, I picked her up from school and drove to my husband’s bookshop to say hi. When we pulled up, John ran out to see us, leaning in the car window to give Emma a kiss. “How was school today, Buddy?” he asked.

“I had my first test today!” she exclaimed brightly. (How wonderful, I thought. A whole lifetime of testing has opened up for you…).

What was our first question to her?  “How’d you do?” (Yes, let’s get straight to the bottom line.)

Squeeze in next to someone, arm to arm

“In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.”–Albert Schweitzer

Well, I was going to write about convertibles and fuzzy boots until I watched this week’s installment of videos from keynote speeches presented at the 2004 Omega Institute “Women in Power” conference. (Never fear, "Always rent the convertible and wear fuzzy boots" will get to your inbox sometime soon).

It was 77-year-old Jungian analyst and author Marion Woodman who captured my imagination with her address on “Women, Power and Soul.” Even the introduction she got from the conference organizers was compelling. Described as having “unrelenting intelligence” and being both “sweet” and “formidable,” I settled into my folding chair to hear her talk to me about the loss of relatedness and recognition in our patriarchal world, and about surrender.