Rest beside the weary road

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.  The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.  The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor.  And the highwayman came riding —riding — riding —  The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn door.  (Alfred Noyes)

I remember being captured by this poem out of my mother’s well-worn One Hundred and One Famous Poems, and memorized it before I was even old enough to know what a ‘moor’ was.  The refrain still runs through my mind sometimes, and I still picture the wild ride, the highwayman’s black cape flying behind him like a dark wing.

Who knows what it might have meant to a nine or ten year old, but I know what it means to me now.  What are those unknown things — adventures, relationships, new beginnings — that still come “riding up to our door” today?  And what will stir us out of our sometimes (okay, in my case “frequent”) apathy and sloth and maybe fear to actually answer the door, and open ourselves to possibility . . .

Behold, I stand at the door and knock.  What a provocative statement.

 

 

 

   This is why we need to travel.  If we don’t offer ourselves to the unknown, our senses dull.  Our world becomes small, and we lose our sense of wonder . . .we wake up one day and find that we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days.

    The fear of the unknown and the lure of the comfortable will conspire to keep you from taking the chances the traveler has to take.  But if you take them, you will never forget your choice.  To be sure, there will be moments of doubt when you stand alone on an empty road in an icy rain, or when you are ill with fever in a rented bed.  But as the pains of the moment will come, so too will they fall away.  In the end, you will be so much richer, so much stronger, so much clearer, so much happier, and so much better a person that all the risk and hardship will seem like nothing compared to the knowledge and wisdom you have gained.     (from Norburn in Letters to My Son)

 

I imagine life not as an ambitious quest, but as an anti-quest, a search for the ordinary, and a cultivation of the unexceptional.  The hidden God (for which we search) is concealed and held more securely in the ordinary than in the extremes.  God is to be found in the world God created, not in the realms we fantasize.  (from Parabola)

Dreams are illustrations from the book your soul is writing about you.  (Norman)

I awoke this morning to find myself staring into two glowing amber eyes, and the memory of a huge boulder beneath my feet.  And as Pickles-kitty anxiously patted my face, I remembered my dream of having wandered too far out onto the rocky edge of a cliff, with no way down and no way back.  And feeling the huge flat boulder to which I was clinging give way — and as I clung to empty air, I felt the huge boulder gently soar over my head and somehow slide under my feet, anchoring me solidly.  Reminded me of that Chippewa quote I love so much:  I go about pitying myself, and all the time I am being carried by great wings across the sky.”

Dreams mean a lot to me, and they figured largely in my clinical practice for forty years.  There are lotsa different dream theories, but the one that makes the most sense to me is that our unconscious mental processes work pretty much the same way the remainder of our body functioning does, working to bring us into a healthy balance.  If that’s a good working premise, then dreams are compensatory in nature, functioning as a balance to a conscious, waking attitude that might be too one-sided.  In this case, I have been feeling a little insecure lately, and the dream gave me a lovely experience of “solidity,” of being held.

As a result, I do feel more “up” this day, and a reassured Pickles is heading for her food dish.  Interesting how our animal companions pick up on what is going on with us, isn’t it?

I could go on and on about dreams, but I’ll spare you.  But you can always ask!  I’d love to respond.

 

 

Called or not called, God is there.  (C.G.Jung)

There is a story of a woman sent out by her queen, carrying a message, but she forgot.  She forgot the message and she forgot where she was going.  And so she wandered aimlessly, not remembering that she carried the message of a queen.

Each of us has been offered a Journey.  Our task is to do the individual work of the Journey — to wake up — to become who we were created to be, and thereby to serve the world.

 

One more time I kick the tainted well as I pass by, outraged that it promises water, only to frustrate again.

Am I to blame the well then, for its cruelty?  Is it an evil well?

It is only a well, sadly promising by its appearance what it cannot deliver.

What must it be like, I wonder, to be that well, always wondering why travelers do not linger to refresh themselves by its side.

Foolish fancy.  The well cannot wonder.  It just IS.  

It is just I who wants it to be something different than it is, because I get so very thirsty.

Why not leave the place of this well, I wonder, in my thirst and indignation. 

But it is the place where I am planted, where my roots go down.

It is up to me to dig another well in this place.  Hard work that I, in my sloth and inadequacy don’t particularly want to do.

DIG, I hear.  So many opportunities lie scorned and neglected . . .

It is hard to do this particular brand of chopping wood and carrying water.

Why are we never asked to be faithful by doing what we want to do?

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air; drink the drink; taste the fruit; and resign yourself to the influence of each.  (Thoreau)

It has finally begun to turn colder, and autumn is deepening.  As much as I hate to see the flowers freeze, it makes me think about the wisdom of cooperating with whatever is present in our lives at any given moment. And the importance of honoring each of life’s stages. . .

Cherish whatever stage you are in, knowing that life changes, and you will eventually be moving into another season . . . and another.  The seasons move through the year, and the years move through our lives. Enjoy your season and make it the best ever!

The main condition for the achievement of love is the overcoming of one’s narcissism.  (Erich Fromm)

I’m a cat-lover, but would be the first to say they tend to be more than a little “narcissistic” in nature.  But that’s their nature, and we don’t expect much more from them, right?  MO-Cat, a neutered male, moved in to the farm as a “drop-off” about a year ago, and immediately set about becoming king of the mountain with all the other rescue cats.  My vet bills have gone up exponentially since he joined us.  I’m still working on creating “helpful boundaries” for him, for without a doubt, Mo is a “narcissist”— everything must revolve around him, and he will do anything he has to in order to make sure that happens.

Narcissism has become kind of a trendy thing lately altho’ it’s been around a long time — comes from a Greek legend of a man called Narcissus who, seeing his own image in the water, fell in love with himself to the exclusion of all others.  Basically now in psychology circles, it refers to an empathy-deficient disorder, altho’ most folks who have had to live with a narcissist would probably have less kind things to say.  Being involved in an argument with a narcissist makes the old saw about “everything you say can and will be used against you” look mild in comparison.

The vast majority of us have narcissistic characteristics, because who navigates the sticky territory of childhood without some outstanding hurts?  — as a result we all have an eternal childlike part of us living within who wants her own way.  It’s what we do with those hurts, it’s the choices we make, that make a difference.

For the individual who is a true narcissist, not much can be done, other than advising anyone in relationship with him or her to have very clear boundaries.  For the rest of us who get a little testy about wanting our own way occasionally?  Try putting yourself in the other person’s place.

It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end.  (LeGuin)

There’s an old saying  that “the more naps you take, the more awakenings you experience.”  Since that’s kinda trite if you just take it literally, I reckon it must have something to tell us about our very human tendency to “fall asleep,” to forget those lessons we’ve learned earlier, and thusly, end up repeating the same old mistakes again and again.  Whether in our relationships, our finances, our choices, our boundaries (or lack thereof), we do seem to find ourself repeating old unpleasant (why don’t we ever repeat the pleasant ones??) patterns again and again.

But maybe that’s the way we grow, and we could never become more conscious about making healthy choices without repeating those patterns, and taking those steps on our paths that our feet find hard to walk.  And on the next spiral of change in our lives, we’ll know more, we’ll be more capable of choosing differently.

So the next time that you, like me, find yourself ready to bang your head against the wall in frustration at yourself for repeating old patterns, be a bit more gentle about those “naps” that create awakenings into a deeper, more profound awareness.

Inside myself is a place where I live all alone, and that’s where you renew your springs that will never dry up.  (Pearl Buck)

It is okay to live a life that others do not understand.

Remember, we’re all in this alone.  (Lily Tomlin)

Never say you are alone, for you are not alone.  Your God and your genius are within.  (Epictetus)

You are not alone if you like the person you are alone with.

Din’t mess with someone who is not afraid to be alone.  You will lose every single time.