January 14--Huh?

I have always known that at last I would take this road, but yesterday I did not know that it would be today.  --Narihira

    This quote is another of the occasional "head scratcher" variety for me. It could be about realization of a long-held dream. Heck, it could even be about death. The more I ponder it, it seems that we have a general plan for life, but sometimes life surprises us with the unexpected, good or bad. 

    I leave it to you, dear readers, to ponder for yourselves on this lovely Thursday.

        Leta

January 13--Keep Experimenting!

Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.  --Ralph Waldo Emerson

    Sometimes it feels like everyone else came in with a life instruction book, and someone forgot to give me the book. Alas, no one gets the book, as Emerson states. We are all experimenting, or as I learned to view life through yoga, we are all practicing. What if all the great inventors gave up after their first failed experiment? We'd have no light bulbs, phones or electricity, just to name a few. What if we gave up the first time something didn't go the way we wanted? We'd have a long boring life sitting on our duff not willing to experiment further. 2020 gave us an opportunity to figure out new experiments, and that's a good thing. More experiments, more learning, more adventure, more LIFE! 

    Leta 

January 12--It Can Be Messy

We spend our lives avoiding the situations that help us grow. It's when we stay with uncertainty and discomfort without trying to fix it that we connect with our own innate joy, wisdom, and love.  --Pema Chodron

    Here's an excellent piece of advice: when you encounter someone who is crying, let it be. Don't touch, speak, comfort or attempt to fix him or her. Doing so displays your discomfort with his or her distress. This was a new concept offered to me many years ago at a retreat, and upon considering it, I have found it to be very wise. If I'm crying, I don't want to be fixed. I just want to do some soul-rinsing, a vital human capability. 

    "Situations that help us grow" certainly can be messy, and it's not unusual to attempt to avoid such. The trouble is, however, that they don't go away. They keep presenting themselves to us until we deal with them, "staying with the uncertainty and discomfort," until we free the pent-up emotional energy that has disconnected us from our inner joy. At 65, having spent decades working on those "situations," I can say I am glad for every bit of effort, no matter how messy. I will have those "situations" as long as I live, but each time one is conquered and released, it makes me stronger and more willing to take on the next. My "innate joy, wisdom, and love" continue to expand. 

    Be brave,

        Leta

January 11--Reaching for Better

If there were none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach for anything better.  --Florence Nightingale

    I love it when awesome words to share for the day's topic magically appear in one of my morning readings. First we look at the concept of "framing story." This comes from Richard Rohr and Brian McLaren of the Center for Action and Contemplation:

A framing story gives people direction, values, vision, and inspiration by providing a framework for their lives. It tells them who they are, where they come from, where they are, what’s going on, where things are going, and what they should do. While we all have stories that answer those questions on a personal level, a “framing story” dictates the general beliefs of a culture, nation, religion, and even humanity as a whole. Our growing list of global crises, together with our inability to address them effectively, gives us strong evidence that our world’s dominant framing story is failing.

Brian McLaren continues:

If our framing story tells us that the purpose of life is for individuals or nations to accumulate an abundance of possessions and to experience the maximum amount of pleasure during the maximum number of minutes of our short lives, then we will have little reason to manage our consumption. If our framing story tells us that we are in life-and-death competition with each other . . . then we will have little reason to seek reconciliation and collaboration and nonviolent resolutions to our conflicts. . . .

But if our framing story tells us that we are free and responsible creatures in a creation made by a good, wise, and loving God, and that our Creator wants us to pursue virtue, collaboration, peace, and mutual care for one another and all living creatures, and that our lives can have profound meaning if we align ourselves with God’s wisdom, character, and dreams for us . . . then our society will take a radically different direction, and our world will become a very different place.

    Certainly 2020 and just a few days into 2021 are showing great discontent. We have huge incentive to reach for something better. 

        Leta

Which framing story shall we choose?

January 10--Chaos

In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.  --Sun Tzu 

    To this, I would add the Deepak Chopra quote: Every great change is preceded by chaos. The applicability of these to the past week's events in the U.S. capitol is perfect indeed. It is my fervent hope that at least some Trump supporters wake up and see the completely self-indulgent, destructive, mentally ill man that he is. This is yet another case of a sick cult leader. And yes, I realize that "sick cult leader" is redundant. 

    We have had four years of chaos, and it has generated great opportunity for us to see the direction we do NOT want to go. We have the opportunity for great change. Let's embrace a brighter future!

        Leta

January 9--Stuck? Muddy?

We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves so that we don't become stick-in-the-muds. --Goethe 

    Let's play with "old." I can do this, because I'm 65, have gray hair and plenty of wrinkles, and I am what a 20-something would say is "old." I giggle when I refer to someone as "old," because I fall in the senior citizen category, too. However, I don't feel old in any way. I'm still curious. I want to go and do and learn. I stay active. I read a lot. Heck, I rode on a merry-go-round just last week! I'm fully into the "renew and rejuvenate" practice--it keeps life interesting, and heaven knows, there is infinite opportunity to explore on our fabulous planet. 

    Most likely, we all know someone whom we think of as a stick-in-the-mud. Someone I dearly love stated recently, "I'm just sitting in my chair waiting to die." Certainly chronic health issues can cause us to lose interest in life. I get that. It's likely that we each have one or more areas in life where we would say we are a stick-in-the-mud. Mine would be clothing/fashion. I have no idea what current fashion is. The whole idea scares me. I hate clothes-shopping. I live in "Life is Good" clothes and jeans or shorts, or yoga clothes. I'm OK with this stick-in-the-mud aspect of myself. I have my priorities relative to expanding in this lifetime, and fashion is not one of them. 😉😉

    We humans are a mixed bag of loving change and fighting it. Loosening up our mental death-grip on how life should be gets us out of the mud. 

        Leta

An uplift from Brian McLaren: The universe is God’s creative project, filled with beauty, opportunity, challenge, and meaning. It runs on the meaning or pattern we see embodied in the life of Jesus. Newness multiplies. Freedom grows. Meaning expands. Wisdom flows. Healing happens. Goodness runs wild.

January 8--Keep Going

Wherever we are, it is but a stage on the way to somewhere else, and whatever we do, however well we do it, it is only a preparation to do something else that shall be different.  --Robert Louis Stevenson

    Or, as Ana Forrest often stated in yoga teacher training, "Evolve or die." We are never complete. We have never "seen it all." There is always more to experience. We keep on moving, learning, growing. There's no end point, not even death. Death is another transition to "something else that shall be different." This is wonderful. How dreadful it would be if there was a defined end point! 

    Everything that has happened to me, all the relationships, events and circumstances in combination, have brought me to the place and person I am today. Certainly there has been unpleasantness in my history. But life has moved on, and each experience prepared me for the next phase of life. It has been a relatively orderly flow. I enjoy my own company. I look forward to the steady progress of life. 

    Onward,

        Leta