Rest beside the weary road

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart.  And try to love the questions themselves.  Do not seek the answers that cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.  And the point is to live everything.  Live the questions now.  Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.  (Rilke)

Animal lovers are a special breed of humans,, generous of spirit, full of empathy . . .  and with hearts as big as a cloudless sky.  (Josh Grogan)

A dear friend recently visited me, and brought an assortment of wonderful toys for all our rescue animals.  Their usual toys figure largely along the line of twigs and stones and bugs and (unfortunately and to my great dismay) a few birds.  The house now resounds with chirps, squeaks, peeps, and squawks. Who knew they made such toys for critters??

Our gang sure didn’t, and they are totally delighted.  Ole Hank even has a new indestructible ball, and a long skinny fox with two squeaks and NO stuffing, thank the powers that be, since stuffing and Hank are bitter enemies (or maybe friends, who knows— at any rate, he eats it with single-minded determination).

My friend’s simple generosity in giving me something that she knew would delight me as much the animals says a lot about her caring and sensitive awareness.  May we all be blessed with such friends, and when it comes my time to give gifts, may I be inspired to give those that provide such pleasure.

It doesn’t matter if you have a head, you must wear the right sort of hat.  (Kazantzakis)

That’s why I keep my hat on, so my horns don’t show.  (Ward Bond)

All hat, no cattle.  (Unknown)

Halloween decorations are popping up around every corner.  Actually a Celtic holiday on which people believed they needed masks or disguises or “hats” to protect themselves from evil spirits, today it’s an occasion for a rollicking good time.

If someone “wears many hats” it is usually assumed that they have many different roles or tasks to perform.  A hat is like a mask, chosen and worn so that the “world” (the evil spirits of Celtic times??) sees us in a particular way instead of how we really are.  Maybe one of our greatest fears is that if we show our true selves, other people won’t like us.

But you are the only personality, creativity, and spirit that is uniquely YOU.  No one else can be that person.  The irony is that we often wear a hat (whatever that may symbolically represent to you) to mask that part of ourselves and lose our greatest potential.  And it’s exhausting to live an inauthentic life — how if you forget who you really are!

What would it be like to put on our “no hats,” and be exactly who we are.  What then??

A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves.  (Proust)

A storm swept through yesterday, taking our warmer-than-usual-for-autumn weather out with it as it left, leaving us with a bright blue and golden day today.  Our seasons again flip-flopped overnight, and it’s now quite chilly, making one sorry that the chimney hasn’t been swept yet, and wondering if we dare risk a fire.  It’s that time for kicking our sandals under the bed and looking for socks, and do we have any of our warmer clothes handy anywhere . . .

We laid in a supply of kindling, and even invested in a sturdier log tote-er today.  Don’t quite know who to believe about what lays ahead.  The Old Farmers Almanac forecasts a warm, wet winter, and The Farmers Almanac forecasts a cold, snowy one, each claiming adamantly that they are right.

Taking each with a huge grain of salt, we’ll take the adventure that comes, and for now enjoy this first beautiful day of what actually feels like fall.  Except — where are the colored leaves??

If you are going through one of life’s storms or what seems like an unending valley, and want only to escape, consider this bit of wisdom from C.S. Lewis’s The Pilgrim’s Regress:

“. . . you must dive into the water.”

“Alas,” said he,  “I have never learned to dive.”

“There is nothing to learn,” said she.  “The art of diving is not to do anything new, but simply to cease doing something.  You have only to let yourself go.”

“It is only necessary,”  said Vertue with a smile,  “to abandon all efforts at self-preservation.”

“I think,”  said John,  “that if it is all one, I would rather jump.”

“It is not all one,”  said Mother Kirk.  “If you jump, you will be trying to save yourself, and you may be hurt.  As well, you would not go deep enough.  You must dive, so that you can go right down to the bottom of the pool:  for you are not to come up again on this side.  There is a tunnel in the cliff, far beneath the surface of the water, and it is through that tunnel that you must pass so that you may come up on the far side.”

To a cat’s eye, all things belong to cats.  (English proverb)

. . .the wildest of all the animals was the cat . . . And the cat said,  “all places are alike to me — why should I not go, too, and see and look, and come away at my own liking” . . . (Kipling)

From my vantage point of early morning coffee-on-the-porch, I observe that it is mostly cloudy, but I do see enough blue sky up there to make a pair of cat’s britches.  That means it’s gonna clear up.  How can I forecast the weather based on cats’ britches, you ask?  Let me tell you a true story.

My sister’s cat, Toby, was once invited to the Fairy Queen’s party.  It was the Queen’s birthday, and everyone was asked to wear her favorite color, blue.  Toby is the sort of a cat who definitely dances to his own drummer, hanging out in shorts and sandals most of the time, and had no nice clothes.  Toby went immediately to Jim-the-weather-guy and asked him if he would give him a bit of blue sky so he could make himself some britches.  Jim-the-weather-guy was a crotchety old thing (sort of like Toby) and said he didn’t want to because he’d just gotten the clouds together for a good spell of rain, and the clouds, being even meaner than the weather guy, wouldn’t cotton to any kind of request to get lost for awhile.  But Toby, being a clever sort, was able to persuade the weather guy to give it a try.   (I won’t tell you how, since this is a short blog, and cats already have a bad name in some quarters.)

So Jim-the-weather-guy pushed and pried the clouds apart enough that quite a nice piece of blue showed, and he gave it to the clever crotchety cat, who hurried home and made himself a pair of britches in no time.  But the clouds, being ticked off at having been so rudely poked and pried, not only refused the weather guy’s request to come back together, but showed him their rear ends as they drifted even further apart.

The weather was fine for the Queen’s party, and Toby looked splendid in his new blue britches, which he wears to this day, altho’ they are now kind of raggedy. Unfortunately Jim-the-weather-guy had to work all night to make up with the clouds, (and even then they wouldn’t let loose more than a few drops of water), and he resolved never to help out a cat again.  But this isn’t his story, so that doesn’t matter.

And that’s the story of why, to this day, when you see enough blue sky to make a pair of cat’s britches, it’s gonna clear up.    (With apologies to Rose Fyleman who wrote a far more sensible version of this in 1923.)

While there’s life, there’s hope.  (Cicero)

Sometimes what we thought was the ending is just the beginning.  (Unknown)

My husband and I recently visited an enchanting shop full of unique arts and crafts that delighted and intrigued me. As the proprietor was ringing up my purchases, I was chatting with him enthusiastically about his beautiful pieces and mentioned something to the effect about how cool it must be to work there.  He looked at me with some moroseness, and said,  “Well, I don’t know about that. I’m 74; I’m on the downward trail, you know, just waitin’ for the big hammer to fall.”

Acckkk.  What horrible faux pas had I made?  Was he dying?  Nope.  As he continued on, it seems he just wasn’t the most cheerful of types.  As I finished my purchases, I sent him some positive thoughts, wishing for him that the beauty and whimsical humor that surrounded him in his shop might lighten his load, and give him a sense of the possible.

Contrast that with the next place we stopped,  JoboJoe’s, an outdoor coffee shop, where the lively old proprietor greeted us with a twinkle in his eye, and served up our coffee with the observation that it was a mighty fine day ’cause he had wakened up on “this side of the dirt.”  (I think he meant that both literally and figuratively.)

Maybe the difference between the two men was all those coffee fumes JoboJoe inhaled, but I don’t think so.  There are two distinct world views implicit in their brief comments — which one would you choose?

 

It’s the hammer of Justice,  It’s the bell of Freedom,  It’s the song of love between my brothers and my sisters,  All over this land.  (Pete Seeger and Lee Hayes)

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be.  Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.  (Paul McCartney)

The 1960s are considered by some, among them yours truly, to be the best decade for music in America.  Perhaps we always feel that way about the music alive when we came of age, when we awakened in a different way to the world in which we live.  But as a teen and young adult in the 1960s, even the names of the songs seem formative to me as I look back:  Bridge over Troubled Water;  If I Had a Hammer;  Where Have All The Flowers Gone?;  Blowin’ in the Wind . . .  So many others, songs that echo not only the disillusionment, but also the idealism and possibility of the time.  The social and political climate was one of turmoil and upheaval and transformation, and is rather eerily like the place we find ourselves today, 50 years later.

Maybe we need some more songs now like Hey, Jude — with lyrics about taking a sad song and making it better — enjoining us to a less divisive way of being, and offering a vision of a more positive, hopeful, coming-together kind of place. I long for that.  Bet you do, too.  Let’s make it happen for ourselves today.  And for others.

If you can’t convince them, confuse them.  (Harry S. Truman)

I was raised on gravy and proverbs.  My mother could no more serve a meal without the ubiquitous gravy than she could have a conversation without at least one, and probably several proverbial sayings thrown in.  Whether from the Bible or not, they always carried the weighty importance of a Biblical Pronouncement, and it was only in later years that I learned a lot of them weren’t actually scriptural.  Even my sister, an inveterate eye roller and cynic, didn’t look askance at Mama’s proverbs, and spouts them to this day. And for me, they have become a way of life, and are an invisible folk-wisdom-script underlying a lot of my thinking and values.

Beggars can’t be choosers.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  Better late than never.  Birds of a feather flock together.  Cleanliness is next to godliness.  Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched.  Pride goeth before a fall.  Good things come to them who wait.  Actions speak louder than words.  The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.  Sign of the times . . . the writing on the wall . . . nothing new under the sun . . . go the extra mile . . . honesty is the best policy . . . no time like the present . . .

And on and on.  We thought if it didn’t come from the Bible (and many of ’em didn’t), then the source must have at least been Shakespeare.  And that doesn’t even begin to speak to all the old mountain sayings and superstitions that peppered our speech.  It’s a wonder we can put two words together without some adage floating forth.

So on this day, watch out for those wolves in sheep’s clothing and that forbidden fruit.  Stick to the straight and narrow and keep mindful that a leopard can’t change his spots.  

And laughter is (always) the best medicine.

Extraordinary demons are startled when the money complex is touched.  And no complex is kept hidden with more secrecy.  Patients more readily reveal what’s concealed in their pants than what’s hidden in their pants pockets.  (Hillman)

Psychologist James Hillman reports that in a study done on therapists’ taboos, analysts were surveyed regarding what they felt they must never do with a patient.  It was discovered that touching, shouting and hitting, drinking, kissing, nudity, and intercourse were all less prohibited than was ” lending money to a patient.”  Money constellated the ultimate taboo.  Pretty amazing.  Or not.

Think about the following words:  Depression.   Inflation. Values.  Obligation.  Worth.  Deficit.  Loss.  Gain.  Promise.  Confidence. Failure.  Trust.  Think of the meaning of these words and the parallel between money and psychology, Hillman suggests.  And he cites the following as further evidence of how money touches every aspect of our lives:

-Money is the number one reason married couples split.

-Many families are torn apart by economic and inheritance issues as parents pass away.

-Money is one of the biggest triggers of stress and anxiety in people’s lives.

-Money has become equated with status, and people start to believe that who they are is defined by the dollar and the status it buys.

-Money may be the greatest taboo. Many people would rather talk about their sex lives than their money lives.

There is an individual and cultural identification with money in the (often unconscious) belief that it’s the solution to most problems and represents a scale for success and happiness.  Who among us doesn’t dream of winning the lottery?  In our major religions, there is almost a love-hate kind of relationship with money, with many double-bind kind of messages.

Money is a necessary element of survival, for sure, but how much does it influence us and our choices where maybe it doesn’t belong . . .  Instead of our owning money, how much does money own us?