Can you see the meaning?–Dismount your donkey at the summit.  No matter what tool gets you there (wherever that turn in the path is “there”), the tool should be left free, to graze.  You ford a stream with a canoe, but don’t need to haul it across the dry plains.

Maybe love and kindness is essential to relationships, but overreaching to the other person when there IS no relationship, is running the donkey around at the top of a tiny cliff-no where to go.  Just the same view over and over again.

Let me be Your humble ass, serve, walk the path, and then graze on sweet grass at the summit.

I sink into my chair in this quiet morning room and let the soft symphony of the steady deep green blanket of rain relax all my stubborn bones.

Wouldn’t it be fascinating to learn that as angels we begged to come to earth?  As free-flowing brilliant emanations of light, we yearned to be picked to be encased in mud and ash to walk with gravity as our master?

Then the simplest movement–blowing my nose–becomes riveting.  A nose!  Snot!  Tissue! The evolution of these material manifestations are astounding.  Ok, so it does remind me of the insights I did receive when taking acid.  I am from that generation; I understand there are others still who are experienced.

But try explaining deep grief to an angel.  They are compassionate and helpful, but unless they’ve been in a body, feeling the rip of loss, the severing ache of the tiny heart and the numbness of breathing, they are a bit jealous to feel the closeness to our dear earth that we unknowingly cherish.

I kiss my path today with an angelic memory.

Says the Tao: compassion, simplicity and equality.  Balancing.  Neutrality.  Like the river.  Always moving, never taking sides, flowing without judgment.

It’s hard when death, dying, betrayal, confusion, disappointment, boredom and loneliness stories come from the over-protective mind.  “Run!”  “Hide!”  “Fight!”  It is such a sweet young eager soldier.

So if I use compassion with my busy brain and ask it to keep it simple, we have a more balanced conversation.  Making friends with my fears allows me to move forward easier.  Even one step at a time.  One breath at a time.  Rather than rushing into the woods tripping over tiny fallen branches.

This is Your face, Your money, Your home, Your breath in me today.  I walk as You.  Simply.  Humbly.  Compassionately.

Amazing how the specter of the holidays can spark little anxieties about where to go, who to see, what about a family gathering, wanting to leave town, isolate, find the mythical relationship.  Especially after a distinct shift this year of relationships and living situation.

Maybe it’s time to get a pet.

I suffer from the disease of helping people.  Wanting everyone to be happy.  It can be an obsession, just like any other escape and fear.  It’s a funny fear though, as I struggle to be kind to myself.  I’m not sure I know the balance–kind to myself, reaching out to others; service vs. selfishness vs. self-care.

So sometimes I go with the flow, sit huddled by the heater and read a magazine.  Cover up and prop up with pillows in my bed and play word games on my phone.  The moon moves.  The flow changes.  Plans sprout.  Calm enters the room.

And in this dark autumn cool morning, I lean into the fragrance of Your Presence.

The forest is quiet.  Except for a sporadic outbursts from a murder of crows fighting over the deadfall.  A loon, a duck, a song bird serenade the soothing morning after the wind and wall of rain scrubbed us up.

We lost branches, needles and leaves.  Phew, they needed to be released.  Lighter now the sky calls us.  The earth warms us.  We emerge from the shadows one by one, leaving the etched black silhouette until the evening falls.

Firs and pines deep ever green.  Maples revealing their laced under branches against the opening sky.  We stand for you.  As you.  In you.  Breathing you.  You breathing us.

Divine flow clearing my world after the storm.  My lacey under soul is showing.  The constant green of growth and heart opening sky are mine.  Fellowship of comfort.  Beckoning.  I walk.

So I once was a tree.  I look at the forest outside my window and ask myself: “What was I THINKING–ha–to incarnate with this hilarious thing called a brain, a mind, self-consciousness?!?”

These trees, losing their leaves or tossing off pine needles in the wind, have and need no consciousness as to whether it is “right” or “proper” or “part of a life plan” or even “good”.  They simply are.

“A human merely being” said e.e. cummings.  “Merely being” says to me that there is so much more. I bow to the wisdom in the branches waving at me.  The path I see leading off to the mystery of life.  I need not figure anything out, but to step by one step by one step at a time simply move and breathe.

And with the invisible Presence, I am rooted and reaching.

The complete quote is even more revealing: “How could any human, merely being, doubt unimaginable You?”

Today we celebrate those who have traveled off beyond the veil.  Actually, I talk more with my mom now that she’s on the other side than I did when she was living, but that’s another story.

So here is a photo of Mom and Dad the day they got engaged.  So happy!  He being almost an orphan and she almost the youngest of seven.  They both dove into new families.  Married dysfunctions together into a warm soup.  What an adventure.

And today my daughter celebrates her engagement to a dear friend.

Today the Divine One is dancing with all the veils, and the whole Grange Hall is up twirling and swirling and laughing and singing.

Hurray for the Dead!  Yahoo for the living!

It seems like such a long time, but then again, like yesterday.  It was a dark slightly rainy Halloween in the Pacific Northwest, and I was very pregnant.  It was time.  I left my son at a friend’s house to enjoy the evening’s fun and went to the hospital.

She was quick but was twisted around from all the dancing she was doing within me.  Without too much fussing, my daughter arrived on earth, a dear friend choosing this time and space with me.

The Tao say, do nothing and everything gets done.  My body did everything for me 29 years ago, and today I still celebrate.  I dress up funny wearing a shirt with her picture on it.  I am an angel honoring an angel who came to play.

Happy Birthday Sweetie!

The Tao cracks me up.  That’s one of the reasons why I like it so much.  Christianity just didn’t make me laugh as well.  Don’t get me wrong, Christ is an awesome guy.

But phrases like “do nothing and get everything done” and “the Tao is bigger than God” is fun to sit with.  Not understand, analyze or work through, but just to be with.  Like sitting with the trees.  Nothing to understand, just stand under.

Still, I work on catching dreams like fish so I can determine how to cook them.  They wiggle and squirm, laugh at me as they escape my net.  Like the Tao says, I have to sit quietly and let the next right action come to me.

Singing the dreams to me.

The Fool was/is always the wise one.

Appear foolish and wrap myself in the exquisite joy of simply watching the now: the chatter of women in the marketplace, noise of business, gurgle of the river pretending to move and sell and buy and plan and fix and manage.

I sit on the soft river bank with You and we sit on the soft river bank.