A Holiday Toast ~ May you Know Peace in Your Heart of Hearts! And may it know you... when you wake it up in the wee hours of the morning.

“Everyone, 

at some point in their lives, 

wakes up in the middle of the night 

with the feeling 

that they are all alone in the world, 

and that nobody loves them now 

and that nobody will ever love them, 

and that they will never 

have a decent night’s sleep again 

and will spend their lives 

wandering blearily 

around a loveless landscape, 

hoping desperately 

that their circumstances will improve, 

but suspecting, 

in their heart of hearts 

that they will remain unloved forever. 

The best thing to do in these circumstances

is to wake somebody else up, 

so that they can feel this way too.”

  

– Lemony Snicket

Barefootin' It! ~ "Undaunted Courage"

 

I'm Barefootin' It!

with 

"Undaunted Courage"

over at 

American Expedition!

Where conservation begins!

A resource to help you plan conservation projects with kids!

"Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet
and the winds long to play with your hair."  -Kahlil Gibran

Summer's End

♥

Life's Inspirational Valiant Endeavors

~ Summer's End ~

"We carry within us all the wonders we seek without."  ~ Sir Thomas Browne

  

Summer's end always sets me on a familiar path; tender shoots of late summer grass beneath my feet, sunlight that plays on my face and warms my toes, cool breezes dancing through the trees, fire smoke on the air, and the promise of time to come shared with friends and family. Already well acquainted with autumn's glory, though having grown unaccustomed these last miserably hot months spent indoors; still the question is raised in my mind... am I living a meaningful life? If I am to believe 'to everything there is a season' then why do I always find myself contemplating my failures, rather than applauding my successes?

I, in fact, did plant my garden this summer... only to stand by, feeling incredibly lazy in my helplessness, as the fruits of my labor shriveled in the harshest drought these parts have seen in a long time. (Fail.) 

I did weep over my losses, and mourned as long as mourning was acceptable in the normal order of things. (Success?)

 I did refrain from smothering embracing my children when my needs exceeded their own. (No wait. I got this one. Suc-cess!... *High fives everyone.* I think.)

I do did, I occasionally, inflict self-loathing onto my sometimes delicate voracious psyche. 

(I suck.)

And I did, in fact, not speak when I should have cried out from the top of a mountain. I may have taken some liberties with this one a bit. Though still true. (Complete and utter failure.) 

I suppose one could argue (me) that I did, in theory, succeed at something. I did contemplate my failures, while at the same time basking in my success(es)... that I had, at the very least, truly contemplated my failures. So there's that.

"A time for every purpose under the sun" right? Perhaps the answer, interwoven deep within these failures of mine, is where I will triumph at last. At the moment, I think I may have forgotten what I have failed and or succeeded in to begin with. So the point is moot.

***

To everything there is a season,

a time for every purpose under the sun.

A time to be born and a time to die;

a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

a time to kill and a time to heal...

a time to weep and a time to laugh;

a time to mourn and a time to dance...

a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing;

a time to lose and a time to seek;

a time to rend and a time to sew;

a time to keep silent and a time to speak;

a time to love and a time to hate;

a time for war and a time for peace.

~ Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 ~

 ***

A meaningful life? 

Ahhh, September! 

How do I love thee? 

Let me count the ways.

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time. ~John Lubbock

  ***

On a good day, a day like any other, a day when searching for and accepting balance into my life is my heart and mind's sole purpose; I suppose that is a day lived in the pursuit of meaning. That is a day when love and wisdom take charge, watching over my successes and correcting my failures. And that is more than 'good enough'. That is a force for good. Though it always helps to be reminded, every once in a while. We learn through repetition, after all. And it all started...

Well, very close to kindergarten.

"All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten"

~ Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things ~ 

By Robert Fulghum

"All I Really Need To Know about how to live and what to do and how to be 

I learned in kindergarten. 

Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, 

but there in the sandpile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned:

Share everything.

Play fair.

Don't hit people.

Put things back where you found them.

Clean up your own mess.

Don't take things that aren't yours.

Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.

Wash your hands before you eat.

Flush.

Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.

Live a balanced life ~

...learn some and think some

and draw and paint and sing and dance and play

and work every day some.

Take a nap every afternoon.

When you go out into the world,

watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.

Be aware of wonder.

Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup:

The roots go down and the plant goes up

and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.

Goldfish and hamsters and white mice

and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup ~ they all die.

So do we.

And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books

and the first word you learned ~

the biggest word of all...

LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. 

The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. 

Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

And it is still true,

no matter how old you are ~

when you go out into the world,

it is best to hold hands and stick together."

Love My Friends

... and happy learning!

“The best way out is always through.”

~ Robert Frost

 

"And they lived happily ever after!"

♥

Life's Inspirational Valiant Endeavors

~ "And they lived happily ever after!" ~

 

 

Let's see if I have this right. The prince wanders too far from the castle one night seeking good deeds to be done and a good time, inadvertently crossing paths with a witch of a woman (it's always a woman) that's just stumbled out of crazytown looking for a wayward prince she can undo (in the philosophical sense). Calling on her extensive knowledge of the black arts and the widely accepted truth that amphibians are a buzz kill in the bedroom, she promptly turns the young, impulsive, wet behind the ears prince into a toad. When asked why all the hostility, she grumbles, "...because, Dearie, I can." 

Cue the dewey-eyed, virginal prin-cess: merciful, sincere and a free spirit. This trusting, but clever young thing too big for her britches, strays too far from the watchful eye of those who practice common sense (her royally wary parents) searching for true love in the form of anything-not-resembling-a-toad... and a good education. 

The prin-cess falls head-over-heels for the toad.

The prince/de-cursed and reformed toad is humbled by his good luck.

They are wedded, bedded (in that order) and wake to a Whole New World where they all too soon stand facing the true meaning of marriage, parenthood... and, as is the way of the world and gravity,  inevitably a mid-life crisis in the halls of an empty castle, no longer ripe with their own youthful, wide-eyed optimism and the sweet anarchy which their children so generously delivered. But, glory be, if their luck has held out, they still have each other and all is well enough.

The witch still creeps about wreaking havoc on unsuspecting travelers, and kids with candy . The murky depths of the swamp still  shelters a toad or two. And dewey-eyed prin-cesses continue the search for themselves in fairy tales. Life goes on. The world still holds its place, inexplicably, in the universe. A moral can still be found in a good story.

"And they live happily ever after!"

Here's what boggles my mind, and disrupts my calm. The closer I inch toward the end of my life... Married: check. Babies: check. Empty castle: looming... the less infinite it becomes. (Why yes, I am married in my mid-forties with babies who are all grown up with one foot out the door. Why do you ask? ) 

People, please... for argument's sake:  If any point in an infinite universe, whether real or imagined, is in fact the center of that universe, does the fact that I recognize my own mortality, in my shriveling womb, somehow explain why I no longer feel like the center of my own universe? And if so, why'd I have to go and have a mess of kids that are, ultimately, just going to fly the coop ( the castle, in which, I live ) with their little royal tail feathers dancing in the winds of their own storybook universes, following dreams of their own making in search of their own happy endings? Is this circle of life thing meant to leave us doomed-to-be-empty-mortgage holders floating aimlessly in one gigantic, but limited, universe wishing for our carefree toad and prin-cess days again... and not merely as the victims of the stereotypical characterization and plot?

Searching for the answers to nonsensical questions like these keep this forty-something year old prin-cess up at night. I find the most reasonable path to sanity is to simply take a deep breath, place my head on my pillow, and try to think happy thoughts.

Like this one.

 

When my little prin-cess was still a little girl, I tucked her into bed listening as she, in her still infinite universe, stalled her bedtime with her own questions.  


"Mom," she asked, "what would you do if you were adopted by aliens?"

"I guess I'd ask 'em for a new spaceship," I answered. Why not, I thought. Isn't that what any prin-cess might ask for when presented with their new storybook alien parents?


She looked relieved. "So, you could come back to Earth then... anytime you wanted," she asked.
 
I realized then, of course, what she'd meant was "abducted". What would you do if you were abducted by aliens... not adopted. Not taken in by those who would give you your very own spaceship, dote on your every prin-cess need or whimsy, but rather those who might tear you from this world of castles and toads and fairy tale endings, thereby introducing you to real terror. 

And... there it is. The answer to my question. The very meaning of life all wrapped up in a little girl/prin-cess poised, ever so delicately, in the center of her infinite universe on the very edge of reason. 

Frightened by what tomorrow might bring, it is in our very nature to try to predict what may happen next week or next year or when we're old as dirt... as our light in this Great Big Universe passes on. Will evil ("the nasty old witch") reign? Will someone ("the strong and handsome prince") come to our rescue? Could I ("the equally strong and lovely prin-cess") summon the strength to rescue him right back? As children we are in constant motion, exercising our bodies and our senses, observing our world around us, asking questions... writing our own stories and our own endings. 

How often I do find myself lost in a fairy tale of my own making, and asking this question... Is my life a comedy or a tragedy? Well, I guess I'd better get busy writing!

Peace My Friends

... and happy writing!

“The best way out is always through.”

~ Robert Frost

 

*Life is in the journey!* ~ Whatever It Takes!

♥

Life's Inspirational Valiant Endeavors

~ Whatever It Takes! ~

 

We, the storytellers, delight in bringing illumination to the greatest of lies, and when we’re feeling particularly disagreeable with the way of things, as we are sometimes wont to feel, we especially find our peace in the unraveling of those festering subtleties of truth. And though we accomplish this by introducing our own truth, our own voice to the page, our actions offer the same to those who do not have a voice or are, not-so-simply, afraid to use it.

I think often about the subject of my writing, whether it serves as entertainment (I can dream) or even for the purpose of raising awareness, but never do I wonder about the reasons why I write. There is only one answer to that question, and it sure doesn’t feel as though it’s of my own making. Though, I often wish my inner voice was more prolific on the page, I realize, it just is what it is. Or is it? The thing is – I don’t know the answer to that question.

Today, I find myself wondering who does. Writing certainly does take a heaping heart full of stamina. Well, and the capacity for boldness, restraint when it’s called for, and a whole lot of mettle.  As writers, we know this. But what they don’t tell ya when you first pick up a pen to write your story, is that you’ll more than likely experience more than your share of heartache, leaving you with – and to steal a most famous line – the audacity of hope.

This past Saturday, April 28^th, was a birthday of note. Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Harper Lee, turned 86. Her novel, “To Kill A Mockingbird” is not only my all-time favorite but it remains for me after all these years, a beacon of hope…yes, but more so, of faith; the belief in myself that I can achieve in my writing, what I long for in my dreams – To make a difference and to be heard. 

Nelle Harper Lee is, no doubt, a tough act to follow. What set her "coming-of-age" story apart from the rest was that it didn't end with her characters, Scout or Jem, Atticus or Boo Radley. She had something spectacular to say, and boy did she say it; dropping out of law school, devoting eight years of her life to finishing the story inside of her. 

I guess in the end, that is the answer to my question. Do I have what it takes to drag my story out of me, kicking and screaming like the child that it is? It's soul-stirring questions like these that my great grandfather's words come back to me, gently nudging me forward, with a boot in my rear! 

"Whatever it takes, I happen to have it!"

~ Grandpa Willie Ball 

Now, that's some mettle I'd like to wrap my brain around!

Peace My Friends!

“The best way out is always through.”

~ Robert Frost

Speak

... and you will be heard.

For my friend.

Love! and Peace.

Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Part VII
Part VIII
Part IX
Part X

~ Sexual Assault Awareness Month ~

*Life is in the journey!* ~ Poetry In Motion

♥

Life's Inspirational Valiant Endeavors

~ Poetry In Motion ~

A Brave and Startling Truth

We, unaccustomed to courage exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.

If we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls.

Love costs all we are and will ever be.
Yet it is only love which sets us free.
A Brave and Startling Truth.

It is possible and imperative that we discover
A brave and startling truth.

When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
And without crippling fear

When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonders of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it. 

~ Dr. Maya Angelou ~

Dr. Maya Angelou will celebrate her 84th birthday 

on April 4th, 2012. 

A woman of great wisdom, beauty and courage, 

she is a most beloved poet and spiritual teacher of

love, family, humanity, hope, peace, and joy;

she who believes... 

"One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. 

Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. 

We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest."

Her triumphs make me proud, 

her beginnings bring tears to my eyes, 

but it is the resounding spiritual vibration of her voice 

carried through to the center of my being 

which stirs my soul.

True poetry in motion. 

"We have to cease the polarization and include ourselves. 

If somebody draws a line, a circle

and it excludes you...

You draw a bigger circle

and you include him."

Join Maya's Email List

Courage My Friends!
"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer,
it sings because it has a song."
~ Dr. Maya Angelou ~




"The best way out is always through."
~ Robert Frost ~