Author: admin

Goodbyes are not forever, goodbyes are not the end.  They simply mean I’ll miss you, until we meet again.  (Unknown)

We have to say farewell before we can meet again, and meeting again ,whether in moments, or after a lifetime, is certain for those who are friends.  (Bach)

Life is full of good-byes.  We move, switch jobs, end relationships, retire, and ultimately leave this world.  If we are not left, we are the ones doing the leaving.

The fosterling-kittens left today to seek their fortunes. This is a group of happy extroverts and I have no doubt their adoptive homes will treasure them.  But I will miss them, as I always do, and it made me think yet again of how many leavings we have in our lives, how many times we have to say good-bye, in so many different ways.

Saying goodbyes to our animal friends carries its own poignancy.  One of my fantasies is that when I get ready to cross that “rainbow bridge,” waiting on the other side to meet me will be all those animals that I have loved.

How lucky I am to have something that makes saying good-bye so hard.  (Winnie the Pooh, Milne)

You have been my friend.  That in itself is a tremendous thing.  (Charlotte’s Web, White)

Don’t cry because it’s over.  Smile because it happened.  (Dr. Seuss)

Why can’t we get all the people together in the world that we really like and then just stay together?  I guess that wouldn’t’t work.  Someone would leave.  Someone always leaves.  Then we would have to say goodbye.  I hate goodbyes.  I know what I need.  I need more hellos.  (Charlie Brown, Schultz)

Glitter on, Helen . . .  (A dear young friend — thanks, Sunny!)

The house has been decorated for Christmas for a week or so, and I never tire of looking at it.  Every year I swear I will downsize our decorations, and I never do.  I can’t bear to throw away even the most threadbare or tarnished ornament, or bedraggled wreath.  The result is a hodgepodge clutter of mismatched decorations from different eras in my life.  While it ain’t ever gonna win a prize, it warms my heart.

And it glitters.  Shining, sparkling, glowing, giving off light . . .  So beautiful . . .

I have always loved glitter.  And surprisingly, to me at least, I recently learned that one of the reasons that humans like glitter and glitz is because of our evolutionary instinct to search out water for survival. so we’re always, somewhere in there, looking for shimmer and shine because we gotta hydrate.  Go, figure.

Maybe it’s like that in the inner world as well. The metaphoric scent and ‘shine’ of water lures us on, sometimes toward that which is life-giving, sometimes toward destruction.  Because after all, old sayings like all that glitters is not gold came from someone else’s painful life-lesson.

So glitter, I reckon, like everything else, has its down-side, no matter how beautiful.  When I was much (much) younger, I used to dream of having long shimmering gowns, covered in sequins.  When I first saw Mozart’s opera, The Magic Flute, the Queen of the Night’s long, glittering black gown was to die for.  But that Queen of the Night was one bad mama.

And alas, never have I owned so much as one sequin.

But in my heart, and my decorations, I glitter on!

As it was, we didn’t have to worry about Miz Suze Campbell gettin’ away that day, ’cause she up and asked Granpap Ed if he had a room to rent.  Well, Grandpap Ed, he shot Mam a look, and whatever he saw there musta overcome his fear of havin’ a possible murderer on the premises ’cause he agreed to let her have one of the unused rooms upstairs.

She’s been here a week, and doesn’t go out much.  The sheriff, he came by and talked to her a long time, but the word that got around was that he couldn’t get anything outa her, and didn’t have no evidence to do anything.  We all kinda thought, well, it’d be mighty strange if she was the murderer, since she wanted to stick around.  And Mam, she’s been takin’ her meals up to her, and, to most folks’ surprise, seems to like her.  Grandpap Ed, he’s still kinda wary-like.

So on this early December day, we were all just kinda loafin’ around, feelin’, at least if most folks were like me, pretty bored and uneasy at the same time.  Somethin’ needed to happen.

And happen it did!  Miz Suze, she happened to be comin’ downstairs into the store just about the time one of the ornery Turner boys who owns the now defunct mines was comin’ in the door.  He took one look at her, and turned his sorry self around and high-tailed it back out the door quicker than a wink, but she was on him like stink on poop (pardon the expression).  We could hear a big ruckus commencin’ on the front porch, and all of us nearly busted a gut crowdin’ together at the door to see what was happenin.’

Well, furniture was a’flyin’ through the air, and we all dove for cover, includin’ the Turner boy.  That Suze, she was on a rampage, and the air was blue with some of the language she was usin.’  He was kinda cringin’ on the floor in front of her, tryin’ to protect his head from the blows she was rainin’ on him with that knapsack of hers, and she was callin’ him every name in the book.

As it turns out, what we came to find out from our eavesdroppin’ (although we couldn’t help but hear by a long shot) was that Suze was thinkin’ she was married to that sorry son-of-a-gun, and that letter she’d been waitin for? — well, it was evidently from her lawyer, stayin’ she wasn’t, ’cause, as we all knew, that Turner boy, he’s already been married and has a kid.  And she was lettin’ him know in no uncertain terms that she was not pleased to find herself hitched to a bigamist, especially seein’ as how she was with child herself (I think Mam either knew or suspected, and that’s why she was kinda sympathetic-like to Suze).

It was a regular mellerdrama, and relieved our minds from bein’ so worried and down and all about the mines closin’ and havin’ no work.  And as nobody sided with that Turner guy, Suze was gettin’ a lot of attention for her plight of bein’ married to a bigamist.  Although I gotta say, she really didn’t need it, our sympathy, I mean. She was one  heckuva woman.  By week’s end, she had got a bundle from the Turner lawyer, and as a last favor to Mam for bein’ so nice to her, she had extracted a promise from that lawyer to get each laid-off man a nice bonus.

Now while that wasn’t  gonna solve the problem, it did relieve a lot of minds and hearts, leastwise for a little while.  And although Mam, she begged Miz Suze to stay, she wouldn’t do it — she had a promise from somebody out in Texas about teachin’ school, and maybe, she said, she’d even get a husband if she had to.  Me, I’m bettin’ on Miz Suze.

With that chapter kinda closed, our minds turned back to the murder.  And the silver . . .

First of all, you must believe in yourself.  (Santa’s psychologist)

Today is December 1st, time to open the first little door on our Advent calendars and retrieve the chocolate, or toy, or ornament inside — the countdown to Christmas has begun!  And I was thinking: if you were the mythic, storybook Santa Claus, what would you be doin’ right now?

Really!  Beyond all the stories, movies, animated television shows and such that you’ve likely read or seen about Santa Claus— what would you be doing right now, December 1, if you were Santa?  And the answer all kinda depends, first of all, on whether you’re able to enter into this in your imagination, and if so, who you believe or project Santa to be.  Because the Santa you see is the Santa that lives inside of you!  Pretty cool, huh?

I see Santa as a real organized old gent who’s had his act together probably since the end of July, and certainly since September 1. Everything created, loaded, ready to go.  December’s just a time to kick back and enjoy cookies and card games with the reindeer.  Elves have the month off.  He has a little trouble because sometimes in the night he gets this really great idea for a new invention or toy, and has to restrain himself from plunging into creating before his start-again date of January 1 — those ideas capture him every time.

And sometimes I think Santa might get a tad pensive and wonder why it’s him that gives all the time, why no one ever gives to him.  And then he remembers all those cookies left for him, and feels guilty for having those thoughts . . . this ole Santa within me can get himself in a real double-bind, huh?  I think it’s just when he gets tired that he feels that way —  most of the time, he’s mighty happy that he’s Santa, that he is truly blessed among men.

For now?  I’m gonna relax and enjoy those card games and egg nog.

Waters choked me to death; the abyss whirled around me.  (Jonah, the Bible)

We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.  (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

In his wonderful book, Dark Night of the Soul, Thomas Moore addresses the question of how we find our way through life’s ordeals.  He perceives these times as spiritual challenges, a time of calling to be more than we are.  Perhaps like the 135 pound mother who finds within herself the strength to lift a two ton car off of her trapped child, we become more than we knew we could be when we are challenged by life’s hardships.

At some time or another, most people go through a period of sadness, trial, loss, frustration, or failure so disturbing that it feels it will never end.  You may be in a difficult marriage, you may be dealing with chronic or terminal illness, trying to come to grips with a terrible betrayal, grieving a deep and aching loss, or going through a period of emptiness and lack of meaning.  This period of desolation is often called the dark night of the soul.  If you are like most people, you have gone through several dark nights of the soul.  You may find yourself in one right now.

Both psychology and religion tend to avoid these dark times by hiding behind diagnoses, medication, platitudes, or false assurances, trying to ‘cure’ them or make them go away.  But what you are going through is not just a mood or a ‘feeling.’  Rather, as More asserts, and I believe, it is an experience that pares life down to its essentials, and helps you figure out what matters most.  This experience is not extraordinary or rare, but a natural part of life.  As horrible as it may be at the time, it can deepen your insight and compassion, and offer you an opportunity for a new start, a fresh way of seeing things, a more authentic way of being.

Grief was one of my darkest nights of the soul.  Currently I am finding, and suspect that I will continue to find, that dealing with the challenges of aging moves one into a deep silence that can be dark, but can also be restoring, and re-storying.

I once saw an inscription on a tomb that I loved; it read Further In and Higher Up!  To accept the dark times as important times of transition and transformation, to find some kind of meaning in them, isn’t easy, but I truly believe that it is another opportunity to deepen our awareness, to be re-born yet again, to move “further in and higher up.”

For every ailment under the sun, there is a remedy or there is none.  If there be one, try to find it; if there be none, never mind it.  (Mother Goose Rhymes, 1695)

An old woman sits by her cottage door, her hand on the golden cat purring in her lap.  She looks, not at the road in front of her, but at the far distant horizon of the sea.

What does she see, I wonder.  What has been?  What will be?  Is she bitter?  Melancholy?  At peace?  Does she still long for anything?

And if she doesn’t, when did she stop, I wonder.  When did the sun, and the softness of the purring cat, and the stones warm beneath her feet, become ‘enough’?

That is why, no matter how desperate the predicament, I am always very much in earnest about clutching my cane, straightening my derby hat, and fixing my tie, even though I have just landed on my head.  (Charlie Chaplin)

Do you ever find yourself in an “unpleasant or confusing situation that is difficult to get out of”?  More often than not, you say??  As I overheard my husband on the phone this morning, seeking to deal with this very thing, I vacillated between being irate and amused.  Since I was on my way to the doctor and didn’t want my blood pressure to be up, I chose to be amused.

There are several ways out of these situations or predicaments in which we frequently find ourselves, some funny, others highly creative, some pretty lame.  My husband’s way of extricating himself was that of “stretching the truth” (my mother’s infamous way of “never telling a lie”).  I thought it to be highly inventive since it created a whole new reality of which I had been unaware.

I have recently discovered, quite by accident, a new way of getting out of a predicament, and it has quickly become my favorite:  as I sit there in my cozy little predicament, instead of frantically searching about in my empty noggin for lame excuses, lies, or even painful truth, I simply shift my attention to what might be on sale at Bed, Bath, and Beyond that day, or whether Target’s dog food is cheaper than Walmart’s, or whether leftovers would do for dinner again . . . It gives me that wonderfully obscure (or perhaps spacy) look, so difficult to read that any others involved are distracted from their point and/or the issue at hand (at least in my imagination).

All of which made me wonder just how much of history as we know it is just such a conglomeration of half-truths, myths, funny stories, sorry excuses, or flights of fancy, employed over the eons to extricate ourselves from predicaments.

Which in itself was such a disturbing thought (a predicament!) that I immediately began thinking of the lavender fields in Provence and wondering how the summer harvest went.

Or, as the French would say,  Ah, la vache!

Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.  (Winnie the Pooh)

Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.  (Anatole France)

I am fostering kittens for our local cat rescue organization again, and am deep in the midst of the detritus that five little furballs can create . . . litter spread to the four corners of the room; books, papers, and anything-within-their-reach tossed hither, thither, and yon; food spread about haphazardly; and toys chewed up, spat out, and up and over.  Ah, the joy!

As I listen to my knees snap, crackle, and pop as I bend over cleaning their litter box for the fourth time this day, I wonder if this is wise.  But then I pick up the tamest one, and his purr rocks the house, and hey, it’s a small thing, but it floats my boat.  And the others are gettin’ there with their socialization . . . when I enter the room now, they don’t ricochet off the walls with quite the degree of hysterical alarm that they did when they first arrived.  And over the years that I’ve fostered, I’ve found that the shyest, most backward, fearful, or feral kitten forgets their fear, and becomes a real sweetheart when a potential adopter comes on the scene, almost like they know that it’s time to seek their fortune now.  Knowing that each one of these five tiny beings will touch a person’s soul, or become an important part of a family’s life someday is more than enough incentive.

So I will continue on, and hope my knees will cooperate.  As they say, it’s cheaper than analysis, and I should know.