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

I’m changing my diet, cutting out all sorts of food that I’m sensitive to.  My naturopath checks out my body’s electrical response, and those that don’t have a good relation according to my body are eliminated for a while.  Of course, most of what is eliminated are those things I like to eat. 

But I feel a bit lighter already.  Not quite as heavy and down.  I am suspicious of indulgent food making me dull and stupid, sad for no reason and dragging through the day.  Then again, sometimes I just don’t like to eat after so many years of reactions to subtle tiny bits of something that will ruin my whole day.  I’ve often found myself starving and arguing that I need more caffeine so I set aside the hunger.

But eating the crops–vegetables, and certain meats (God bless the animals who bow into us), carefully and with a close watch, has helped.  I am grateful for this shift of self care, as it is so hard sometimes to bow to myself–my dear human body that has carried me so gently through this adventure on earth.

Grateful today–a glimmer of light shines.

To bless means to “call it good.”  We bless the dead, calling on all of our aching hearts to know that our only recourse is to make it good somehow.  Till the soil under for the next crop.  Plant flowers that bloom in the next cycle.

Broken homes make new beginnings.  Lost loves turn into good experience.  Changing bodies allows us to be more gentle.  Each season reminds us once again of what we forgot.

Earth is a blessing, from songbirds to tiny bright and resilient dandelions, that reminds us we truly can be called good.  Why is it hard sometimes to get joy in myself as “good” and blessed?  It is that tempter of the dark side telling me entangled stories of insufficiency, bad motives, weaknesses and cheating to feed off my paranoia.

It is just a shadow and I snicker at the illusion and move into the soft warm sunlight of Her Love.

St. Theresa writes about the meditative journey into a castle with many mansions, past a ditch with nasty animals, courtyards with temptations and disturbing entrance ways.

I feel like I am stuck on the outside of the inner wall.  I got through the courtyard, but am resting with my back against the wall, content and confident that I am inside the heart of the Divine abode, but just watching the spiders and mice, scavenger birds and other rodents live their life out in distraction.

There is nothing wrong, everything is as it should be.  I am practicing deep loving kindness to myself as I am every day distracted by the parade going by inside my head.

I am both the distraction and the unmovable earth; I am the cloudy windy sky; and I am the peace that is never disturbed resting in my Mother and Father’s home.

I am.