So, we can all guess the “spiritual” significance of pain in the back–carrying too much, feeling pushed, unable to lift the load.  But letting go and just lying on a heating pad is not always the cure for the inner spirit that insists that the work (lifting, carrying, pushing) can be ignored.

It is amazing that the mind believes that it can push us to our demise with well trained judgment, criticism and harassment no matter what the body says.  That’s where my voices need some serious team building.

When a part of me says no, we all should honor that and stand or sit back to listen to the warnings,  Honoring each other is the way to a well-oiled human machine experience. 

So today I will be listening to the pain in my backside “we need to stretch this out”, And then again hearing the screamer that says “I don’t want to exercise or stretch or do anything cuz it hurts!”

Let me be as easy as the bush branches in the window, waving in the spring breeze, letting the Breath of Heaven move it where it will.  I will let Her have Her Way with me today once again.

We played dominos games last night with dear friends.  And I swept the hands, winning more than I had ever altogether!  It was an unusual feeling, as we get competitive and strategy is a bit up to chance.  Whatever dominos you happen to pick is the hand you are dealt.

It does feel good to beat the odds, squeal with that last tile on the table, hands up in the air and groans and yells from friends.  But I don’t try hard in life to beat anyone but the inside voices.  So my mentor tells me to use team building for my voices, to “win” the sometimes noisy anxious arguments that hammer through my head.

Team building for the voices instead of relying on serendipitous chance.  First we need to check in with each other and discuss our mutual vision for this life. 

Love and be loved is a good start.

The bushes have such normal confidence in forever.  Growth, hibernation, death, disintegration and growth again is never a decision or trouble or fear or doubt.  It just is.  Berries or blossoms follow the seasonal path as for eons of eons on the planet.

The house, however, may not last more than a speck of time, comparatively.  The chairs, the table, this sweet little laptop–all will be gone in a puff of time.  Not even any memory will hold my space.

Then again, my dust will serve for another’s season of life, even if it melts into the sea for a new ocean floor.  And for a tiny time, my bones may rest on the earth next to those my kin of thundering fallen trees.

What a dear thought, that we melt into this precious earth hand in hand.  But today I am a moving tree, and watch for the subtle path of heaven that leads me into mysterious ways glory and grace to behold.

We’ve had a cold rainy couple seasons here in the Pacific Northwest, but today the sun has no barriers.  The morning is brilliant, sky pure blue, flowers bursting from their green shells, eating the air feverisly.

It hurts my eyes.  I am, after all, a mole person.  I am used to the gray day, splash in puddles, and feel the deep nourishment of the moist foggy air.  Today everyone will be smiling, happy, excited, as if the sun had truly left their lives.  I will stay in the shade, or have my hat on.  I can leave my hat on.

Many days I feel I am wired backwards, slinking in the shadows of the bright sun, eager to go out in the rain, ward off milkshakes and eat coarse cardboard-like crackers.   But I have the Lady by my side, carrying an umbrella for me–in the sun.  Her warmth does not make me squint.

I am nourished even in the piercing bouncing frantic driving of the sunniest day.

It’s cloudy outside this morning.  Across the street is still sleepy and foggy.  The cat is waiting for me to go out and open the door for him. 

Smell of the crock pot soup filling the room from cooking all night.  Clock on the mantel ticking away each second.  Crows fight over bread morsels.  Tiny blue bells on the lawn open to the day.  It is time to open up to the day.

Selfish or self-care?  That is the question today.  And the answer is an argument–keeping to the problem level.  Let me be kind to myself today.  Despite frustrating tears, angry self-recriminations, doubts and irritations–let me be kind.

My life is filled with loving kindness.  My life is well.  My life is peaceful and at ease.  And my life is happy.

I sit and am blessed to watch the trees dance with the breeze.  Blossoms on the branches bounce and wave, bushes now full with red leaves sway back and forth.  Oh to be green and allow the seasons unravel me. 

My sluggish human form forgets how I am that.  My aching joints are merely a sign of thick old limbs on a tenured tree.  Wrinkle on my face show the same scars as do torn branches and twisted trunk from many waltzes with the wind.

Every ache and flesh change in my body is a sign that I have been gifted to be on this precious planet for years and years.  I shift in my vision to see the Presence in the presents I have received.

People bump into each other especially when they live in the same house,try to communicate when tired, achy, off balance.  Sometimes it’s just a little nudge and we giggle.  Other times, it’s like a toss down of a red cape and the bulls inside of us square off to the corners of the house, ready to charge, or circle or retreat-eyes staring at each other from inside our hearts.

Nothing is wrong.  Communication accidents in bad weather.  Still, there is that chill that settles over things for a day or so.  I pray for more sun, or rain that keeps me sheltered and cozy inside of myself.  But the constant replay of who said what just repeats inside my head.

What is the message and where is the center of serenity?  It has to be kindness-to myself first?  to the other first?  We are taught to take care of others to a fault.  Or am I truly being selfish?

I retreat into the Divine Center, the resting place and seed of all kindness.  I close my eyes and I am a tender sprout of a birch tree, in a grove of slender wonders, thriving in Her Love.

The trees shepherd me, I surrender all my cares to them.  They lead me on soft safe pathways near gurgling laughing waters, and open wondrous green fields; they refresh and restore my soul.

Though I walk through the darkness of doubt and despair, they are my strength.  The trees spread a feast of green wherever I see, over all the land, forming a canopy embrace.  They comfort me.

Surely goodness and kindness will follow me as the wind whispers home through their branches all my life.  And I will dwell in the forest of the Tree of Life forever more

Theresa talks about the very heart of the castle where there is nothing nothing nothing that keeps me from complete union with the Divine.  It is for me the deepest sense of Home.  That is why it sounds so much like “oooooooohhhhhhhmmmmm”–the chant that created the universe, the tone that is the Divine spark, the yod of All There Is.

It is so rooted and anchored in me that there is nowhere I can go that it is not intertwined with the best of goodness, brilliant light and embracing love.  Lucky for me it comes with me when I am around crowds of people, walking the hallways of a busy oblivious corporation, and even when I must visit the pasted happy sad forced faces at a church.

I carry my home within my heart.  She lives there and has a cup of tea always hot for me.

As Hafiz would say, today I am listening to that mad person inside my brain that keeps taunting me with unhappiness and disappointment–that doesn’t really exist. He says