I claim down time.  I claim it as long as I need it.  Licking wounds, cocooning, hiding–whatever anyone would label it.  I just grasp and sit in times when I don’t want to make extra effort to be around people. 

Sometimes it is people who know me, and I guess I don’t want to be distracted assuming what they are thinking of me.  Certainly it is not my business, and massively less than I believe they think of me.  But it is distracting.

I don’t share myself well.  I never thought of myself as a perfectionist, but I do certainly get out of whack if I make a mistake.  At those times, I want to stay close to nature.  Trees don’t judge.  Bushes are very neutral and allowing.  Grass is busy being infinitely persistent and persevering.

And my Dad–gone now for years–says to lighten up, keep flying and enjoy the ride.

Feeling quite human today.  That is, face to face with bad acting.  Or rather, acting badly.  The Taoists say to expect it.  The 12 steps uses it for improvement. I guess the 10 commandments, eightfold path and Torah wouldn’t be needed unless we stumbled, yelled, slipped, cheated or stole.

What is a bad man but a good man’s job, says the Tao.  Well, I suppose I should find a good person to make a job out of me.  I yelled at a co-worker the other day, and she called me on it.  Sure I had reasons–she continued to do something I pointed out to her–and she admitted–wasn’t right.  Oh well.  Now my anger is out there for people to point at–as they have done before and as I have humiliated myself.

Like a baby learning to walk, I sit there from a sudden fall on the floor and wail.  And pick myself up again to totter drunk-like staggerig across the room.  But when I was a kid my mom was there cooing for me. 

Perhaps here is the time once again that I see, hear and feel my Dear One smiling at me, loving me despite my anger and frustration, as She waves to me across this day, encouraging me to know that I am here and now being merely human as best I can.  I look up today and keep Her smile in my heart.

I visited my ancient kin this weekend–deep wide tall trees.  Ostensibly it was a women’s retreat.  That is for another time–always life-shifting.  But I must speak tree talk.

There is no doubt in my mind that I was once a tree.  The yearning to root back into the soft soil makes me cry each time I need to leave them.  I beg them to stay, and they remind me of my choice this time around–I am a walking tree, a human sprout, a tree with a mind of my own.

When I sit tiny among my fellows, their stillness and soft movement dwarf my spirit until they lift me up to their swaying tops.  Like them, I am where the spirit meshes with matter, where my soul dove into the dear earth and grabbed the life that bowed before me and sparked it into this fragile form.  We breathe each other; their sweet piney breath is heaven to me.

As the pine is committed to the earth, so I am wedded to my Creator, the Dear One who breathes me, whose blood runs through my heart, whose Voice is the container of my soul. 

I am stuck–or rather sitting–in a place of wonder.  Wonder and process of how to take care of myself so I can be open and overflowing for and to you.  Others.  Family.  Friends.  Like making sure I get the oxygen mask on in an airplane before I rush to help you with yours.  There is no way I can reach out when I am fighting for air myself.

My yearning is for willingness to pray that I love my body.  To stretch it each morning, feed it the best fuel, allow it the joy of interacting with the rest of Earth’s glorious creatures.  I treat it sometimes like a reluctant machine that is not maintained.

Before every concert the musicians gently tune up their instruments, twisting the knobs so the strings are taut, listening for the tone, replacing a reed perhaps.  Only then can they start their symphony with all their powers alert and ready.

I am packed I am showered, and I hereby nod and touch the hand of the Dear One.  This is my practice of tuning up for the day.

Both are illusions–dreams and fears.  Or are they?  A therapist once said to me–pretend that your life is a dream about self integration.  They believe that everything you see in a dream is a part of yourself seeking to be whole.  Take this dream theory and place it on your life.

So I have a dream that I had to forcefully pull a long icky worm/snake out of the bottom of my foot.  that it was beneath a callous I was scratching at.  Ugly and disturbing, I stuffed it into a plastic grocery bag and had to hold the top tight so it couldn’t get out.  All the day–in the dream–walking around talking to people in an event, directing visitors, I held onto this bag tightly as the snake tried to get out.  What the heck does that say about me and all my restless, irritable, discontent parts seeking integration–or escape?

And now a slight fear of handling a presentation today properly.  Where is the worm in that?

I shift it all aside for peace of mind.  The worm, the fear,  the disturbance is a part of my earth.  My spirit, however, rests in You–the Dear One who nestles Her soft fragrant face into my neck from behind me and says “You ARE earth, my dear.  This is how a flower thrives.”

Even though I am still puzzled, my breath is deeper, truer and I’m off to wave in the sweet spring breeze.

It is so hypnotic–and maybe we planned it that way–to have a body and it’s aches, wear, tear and stubborn resistance.  The mind is part of the body, set as a sentinel for the human longevity mostly it seems.  Except for when the mind goes rogue and insists on early death, suicide and violence.

But let me “immerse myself in the energy of the rising day” my Taoist reading tells me.  I laid in bed much too long this morning, breathing deep the sweet warm summer breeze that pulls in the rain.  Windows up in this old house, I pray my body allows for this same openness.

The bush outside my window waves at me, the treetop shudders with the wind visit.  I entreat the Divine to remind me all day today of the ease and kindness my body feels all around me, and the mind chatter rests on You that permeate my energy in all ways.

The Tao says crazy thing like: Those who follow the Tao follow the flow of life, yet and know and see the void.  Life is empty and meaningless, and thereby it holds all the universe.  I’m back to try and be a Know-Nothing.  Now I look for the empty space that makes life so full.

The hole in my ear allows for earrings, the empty space in my cup opens up and fills with juice, my clothes are but linings that my scarecrow body makes real and useful.

So then the feeling of a life that is empty bodes well for living a purpose.  I am here to fill up and overflow.

I had a long involved dream last night, going places, doing things with other people in tow–and my dear old (now gone) dog Lucky was by my side.  That’s heaven, to have your best and loyal companion walking with you.

We were strolling along a little stone wall next to a lake shore, and all of a sudden he jumped into the water and started playing in the waves like a puppy.  My first thought was, ugh, I’ll have to dry him off before i get him back in my friends car.  But he was having so much fun. I let him play and got him up walking with me and we rose up on a hill, now a small cliff overlooking what was more like the ocean.  And he dove off into the air diving into the water once again, splashing and diving and loving it.

My dear dog reminds me that Spirit calls us from where we walk for the joy of play.

It makes sense, don’t you think.  He was a lot like Jekyll & Hyde.  First of all he was opulently rich, never even exposed to suffering.  Then once he saw sickness and death, he exposed his body to severe asceticism, to the brink of death.  And finally, poof, under an embracing fig tree–he laughed it all off and recognized the Presence of Kindness.

Like most avatars, saints, gods on earth, his story allows us lowly humans some hope–because he did insane things like we sometime do.  Eating massive quantities of bad rich food, getting sick, going on strict diets, swearing off, then falling off the wagon and indulging.  Praying and meditating daily for months, then brushing away exercise, chants and angels in lieu of nihilism and negativity.

Thank all the gods for the Presence of Kindness that forever lives inside my soul, giggling when I throw a dirty tarp over it.  Singing sweet bird songs of fullness when I try to look away from the endless touch of nature that surrounds me.  Gratitude lifts me up today.

I was on a spiritual bliss journey.  Reading tarot to astrologers at a long-time very friendly family conference.  It felt like family.  And I got to sit next to all sorts of different parts of me at my table. 

I was a beautiful ex-stripper now a professional committed to a company that makes natural viagra.  I looked deep in the eyes of what would seem to be a tired housewife and discovered a rich blessed poet.  My cards revealed themselves in a tall blonde wide-eyed young woman who is unsure about her marriage, unconfident of her talents, and bright warm open love about her son.

My dear Divine Friend came to me time and after time to look me in the eyes to enjoy Her Gift of Me.