Category: A Joy-Warrior’s Journey

Sometimes, life picks you up, hurls you around, and plunks you into a whole new world. I’ve mentioned this phenomenon before. I refer to it as “the revolving door syndrome.” Well, the last weekend in November, I got swept onto a dark and heavy patch of road that started with a sudden malaise that laid me low for the next ten days. Then, when I emerged from my stupor, it was to the news that one of my dearest friends had passed away, unexpectedly, in her sleep. Her memorial service wasn’t until the weekend after that, and I slogged through the days in shock, with a broken heart.

That’s why you didn’t hear from me for three weeks. I thought of you. I saw that many of you were into the holiday spirit and happily preparing for the days ahead. That was a comfort to me somehow. Life goes on. Some of you were, like me, in pain. The weekend I lost my friend, for instance, hundreds of people lost every material thing they owned in a horrendous tornado. Many lost their lives, and their friends and families were grieving and in shock, just as I was, our sorrow flowing together into one shared lake of pain.

One day, as the crushing sadness lifted and I was beginning to breathe again, I ran across a great little meme on the net. “Misery loves company,” it said. Then it continued, “But so does Joy. And Joy gives better parties.” I laughed at the way the Yes sends you little love notes when you need ‘em. Yeah. Joy gives better parties.

You know what happens when your heart breaks because someone you love dies? A thousand memories pour out of it, showing you moments that you and your loved one shared, all wrapped in love.

I wanted to sit with those, to let myself cry over my loss, over the loss of my dreams of the ordinary tomorrows I’d share with my friend. I wanted to feel the wonder of knowing that true friendship exists in this world. I wanted to sink into gratitude for the privilege of knowing genuine friendships. When emotions are deep and raw, that’s about all you can do: sit with them, drink them in; know them for all that they are. They come, you know, as gifts of healing and grace.

So now we enter what I think of as the Week of the Letting Go. We usher out the passing year, wrapping every moment of it in a layer of acceptance, if we’re wise, as if each one of them—even the ones we didn’t really notice or enjoy—had been custom-designed for us, exactly what we needed. It’s a time to take stock of your assets and values and strengths, to commit to giving the coming year your best, whatever it may bring.

Let go of the old with thanks. Welcome the new with joy and hold a party.

Seen from a far-enough distance, it’s all beautiful.

Happy New Year, my friend.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by nck_gsl from Pixabay}

I had just cleared the rise from the edge of the lake when twin flickers of red caught my eye in the distance.. At first I thought it was pair of cardinals, but it couldn’t be. The proportions were all wrong, I lifted my camera to my eye and zoomed in as much as I could as I slowly moved forward.

When I finally recognized the figures I was seeing, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Never, ever, in all the decades I’ve been tramping through the woods have I seen such a sight. But there they were, the King and Queen of the Elves. For real. Right there in a clearing, surrounded by pines, looking for all the world as if they were preparing a picnic.

I was drawn magnetically to them, as unreal as the scene felt. I had no idea what to say to them. They were royalty, after all, to the elves. And you know how I adore the elves. But before I had much of a chance to think about it, words were blurting from my mouth.

“So this is where you go when you need a break from the elves and all those toys!” I was saying to a smiling, bespectacled face. He looked up at me in amusement as I stared at the scene before me. He was sitting in a wooden rocker beside a little table. On it sat a jug wearing the label ”Santa’s milk” and a plate full of perfectly baked chocolate chip cookies.

 I felt as if I had stumbled across a private secret of some kind and I didn’t want to intrude. But a little bit of friendly chat seemed in order. “What brings you to the forest today?” I asked.

“Oh, we’re just going to take pictures with some families,” the being called Santa said.

I wished them a wonderful day and walked down the path entranced and feeling extraordinarily lucky.

Every year something like this happens, something out of the ordinary and wonderful. It can be a big thing or something little. But sooner or later, some piece of magic floats in and dissolves the humbug I wrap around myself in multiple layers as winter approaches. I am not a fan of the cold. But every year it happens–some little miracle–and I awaken to a world where every sight and sound and thought and circumstance and amazing human being touches me to my core. How poignant it all is! And how beautiful! How deserving of our compassion and appreciation, our gratitude and joy.

It stays with me, this trance of wonder, right into the new year. Then I’m caught up in the events of the world again and wonder steps back to smile at me from behind my shoulder, winking at me now and then when it catches my eye.

But right now, I stand enshrouded by wonder, stunned and moved by the world’s beauty, by the magnificent benevolence and perfection inherent in its movements and design. And we are here to see it. And the universe will go to such extremes to awaken us that it will even send Santa Claus and his wife to picnic in the woods on a late November day at the very hour when you followed its nudge to go there. What are the odds of that!

The elves told me once that if you see Santa in person, you get to carry the warmth and merriment of his smile with you to pass out to others as you go. So here! Have some!

It’s full of magic, you know. The kind that flows out from the center of everything and tastes and feels of love.

Warmly,
Susan

What was, isn’t. What is, won’t be. But always, there’s the now. Right in front of our noses. Full of everything and always a different shape than it was before or soon will be. And most of the time we don’t even notice, being all caught up in our stories and calculations and all.

This time of year, I’m spending a lot of time in my living room, working on my laptop. I don’t own a TV. I usually sit in the same place. I like the view and it’s comfortable. Every time I look up from my laptop’s screen, the walls and furniture, the plants and lamps and paintings are exactly where they were before. The only thing that seems to have changed is me. And it wasn’t, I can tell you, much of a change. Maybe I wasn’t wiggling my toes before. My thoughts were different. There’s a little gnat exploring the laptop’s screen now. The furnace’s fan has kicked on. Other than that, same old same old.

It could seem like a pretty boring place, I suppose. But that’s only the case if you forget that the walls have another side. One of them even has an outside, and that’s a doggone huge place. You can’t even get to the end of it, it goes so far. And just down the road a piece, there’s mountains and deserts and forests and oceans, and all of them with their own inhabitants, every one of them as real as you and alive in this very same now. And some of them are humans.

And for all you know, a particular human you’re thinking about right now might be thinking of you, too. Maybe because they felt your thoughts in some subliminal electromagnetic way. Or you felt them. And once you start thinking about another human being, you can drift off into all kinds of imaginings and memories and dreams.

So what difference does it make if the walls don’t seem to change? A patch of relative sameness is a good thing. It can give you a sense of stability, something to hang on to in when the winds are fierce.

Be grateful for the slow-to-change, for the ordinary and familiar. Someday you could be amazed that you ever took it for granted.

Rest in that. And from there, watch and let go.

Remember that what was, isn’t. And what is, won’t be.
But there is always now, dancing, and it goes on and on and on.

May its dance bring you moments that glow with peace and shimmer with joy.

Warmly,
Susan

People think I’m kidding when I tell them I believe we’re part bear and we’re meant to be hibernating now. But I must tell you a big part of me would like to snuggle into my den and nap until the berries are ripe. I do not like the darkness and the cold, and winter creeps closer every day,

Even if you’re awake this time of year, it seems to me, reality itself has taken on the quality of a dream. It morphs so much and it’s so outrageous. Who could have imagined such a thing!

I heard an interesting speculation the other day. The plasma tube, the story says, in which our solar system–our sun, all the planets–is traveling through the universe has hit a section where it’s running so close to another plasma tube, which holds whole other kinds of worlds, that our energies sort of bleed through into each other’s plasma a little bit, and we find the effects disorienting. It sounded like as good a theory as any.

Nobody’s got the whole picture, you know. We all have our core beliefs. But really, no one sees the whole thing. Not anybody walking around in a human-suit anyway. Not even you or me, as much as we like to imagine so.

Basically, I think we’re all here to witness it, and the more we see of it the more we realize we need to be kind to others, whatever their own views might be. Even, and perhaps especially, when their views seem contrary to our own. That does not mean we must tolerate wrongs. It means to use balanced action when dealing with them.

I just learned the phrase ”balanced action” this week. The guy who used it really caught my ear when he spoke it as part of the even-better phrase, “the joy of balanced action.” I loved having words for it at last,

That’s kind of what I strive for, that perfectly balanced dance of joy. Alive. Aware. Loving. Grateful.

Yeah.

That.

Help yourself to some. It’s good stuff.

Warmly,
Susan

I^{mage by Pixamio from Pixabay}

Every year, I forget how deeply the beauty of winter trees touches me. Instead, I only remember how unpleasant I find the cold. But here I stand, in the midst of all these trees, most bereft of their leaves now, and I’m caught in a spell of awe. I realize I don’t mind that the air is cold. And somewhere inside myself I quietly say, “I’m sorry. Please forgive me.”

I say it to my spirit. “I’m sorry that I let what I labeled as discomfort eclipse the memory of the astonishing beauty of bare trees. And just look how the frost on this fallen leaf glistens in the sun! Please forgive me,” I ask, “for overlooking such incredible gifts.”

Instantly, of course, I feel a shower of bright, warm, unconditional acceptance wash around me. It tastes golden, like joy, and my face spreads in a smile. I am humbled by it, and I whisper, “Thank you; I love you.”

All this because of the forms of the trees, naked against the clouds, and the shimmer of light on this leaf. But beauty isn’t the only thing that evokes my appreciation. Sometimes encountering truth will do it. Sometimes it’s goodness in one of its myriad forms.

I happened to notice my copy of Letting Everything Become Your Teacher again yesterday. It’s been sitting on my coffee table for weeks, unopened. Seeing the title is often reminder enough. Everything brings the gift of fresh lessons.

For me, the lesson brought by November’s bare trees and frosted leaves is to be aware that not everything I label as unpleasant is so. In this case, I could see that cold was just a sensation. I could call it brisk or crisp as well as bitter or biting. Then, having classified it, I could let it go and see what else there was to see.

Remember the game I told you about where for five minutes you let yourself notice whether you labeled things as either “pleasant” or “unpleasant?” (That’s all there is to it, in case you don’t recall it.) You just notice which way you’re judging things. Then you can use the secret power-question on yourself, asking yourself if your judgment is true.

You know what you’ll find? You’ll find that it’s only a judgment, whether you currently agree with it or not. Realizing that’s the case is good because it opens you to options. It keeps you from overlooking things by slapping a judgment on them too soon. Things change. Our perception of things changes. The world truly is a kaleidoscopic place, you know. Try to see what’s in front of you with an open mind. Keep a good helping of curiosity handy. It will wake you up if you’ve fallen asleep. It will say “What?! Look again!”

You never know when what you thought was a barren November landscape was in fact a scene of stark beauty, alive and dancing.

It could be. You never know.

Warmly,
Susan

Here’s my Halloween tale for you.

I was eight years old and in the third grade. I had a cousin who was three years older than me, a beautiful being, who took dance lessons. I inherited her costumes, to my great delight. This year, just before Halloween, she gave me a costume that had pale purple satin ribbons tightly curled in clumps on the bodice to look like a bouquet of grapes, and beneath it flared a stiff little skirt made of layers of netting the exact same color as the grapes. When I put it on, I felt like a princess. But my mother said I couldn’t wear it to school.

Instead, she built a pumpkin costume from chicken wire and orange crepe paper. She rigged my dad’s suspenders so the contraption would ride on my shoulders. It came with a crepe paper-covered paper plate for a hat with a green construction paper stem. It was embarrassing.. I didn’t want to be a big orange ball. It was far more wonderful to be a princess.

Mom and I negotiated until we reached a compromise. I could wear the grapes like underwear, beneath the pumpkin outfit. I could be a secret princess in a pumpkin disguise.. I wasn’t thrilled, but I agreed for the sake of peace. Besides, Mom’s argument that I would be cold wearing only the grapes made sense. I had to give her that one.

So off to school I went that Halloween morning snug in a sweater and slacks over the grapes and the pumpkin over that. Then the school bus came and to my immense humiliation I discovered that my pumpkin wouldn’t squeeze in the bus door. The driver came to help me. But then I couldn’t sit down. I had to stand all the way to school, holding the bar around the driver’s seat, right up front, and everybody snickering behind me.

When we got to the school, the driver helped me to the ground. And by then I had my plan made. The very first place we went when we got to school was the coat room, a great big walk-in closet with hooks on the walls in the back of the classroom. I took off that stupid orange pumpkin and set it in the corner, and the hat with it. I hung my sweater and slacks on my hook. And then, as if I were a beautiful butterfly, I danced to my seat.

The day was great fun. We had music and games and treats.

Mrs. Waltz helped me unfasten Dad’s suspenders from the pumpkin and said she would take care of it. She said to tell my mom that she was sorry it got so bent on the bus, but that it was a wonderful idea.

It was too cold, Mom was right, to wear the grapes trick-or-treating. She quickly fashioned a hobo outfit for me instead. And I was glad. It was warm. At school I got to play the trick of turning from a pumpkin into a princess. And now I got to go beg my neighbors for treats with my pals.

It was a wonderful Halloween.

Hope yours is today! Whether you play, or just watch and let go.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Andreas Lischka from Pixabay}

Listen; I want to tell you something. Whether we have ever met in person, or talked together, or exchanged a few notes, even if you only linger here quietly, a name on my mailing list, whenever I think of you, I send you my love. I try to imagine who you are right now, what you might be doing, what it would be like to spend a couple hours together sharing stories.

One of the things I’ve discovered on my trek through the years is that people seem to play prominent parts in the theater of my mind. When I check in to see what I’m thinking, I often find that I’m having an excellent conversation with someone. I’ll hear her voice or his laugh, notice a characteristic gesture, feel what it feels like to be with that particular person, so different and distinct from all the others.

Even when we have never met in person, when all I have of someone, maybe you, is a name, maybe a few words and maybe a picture Even when someone exists only in memory now and some memories stretching back as far as childhood. Whatever the particular circumstances, I always swirl my love around them–around you, when you’re the one who has drifted into my thoughts. You, my fellow human being, are a significant part of my life. You provide the lessons and impart the meanings. You, my wondrous one-of-a-kind fellow human, are what gives life its most amazing flavor.

I think we’re all like that–that we all think about the people in our lives almost all the time. I think we all connect with each other like that. In our imaginations. Just because you are “only” imagining doesn’t mean what you’re experiencing isn’t real. Remember, we’re in a very mysterious place in wholly uncertain times. It’s a good thing if we hold each other in our minds, see each others’ smiles, dry each others’ tears, send claps on the back, wrap each other in encouraging and comforting hugs I think we strengthen each other when we do that–if “only” in our imaginations.

I just wanted to share that with you, send a batch of warm energy your way.

Pass it on, hey?

Smiling at you,
Susan

I was reading passages from Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Letting Everything Become Your Teacher: 100 Lessons in Mindfulness. I found it on a bookshelf accidentally a few days ago and brought it out where I could pick it up and read at random. You probably play that game, too—just letting yourself be led by the Unseen Hand.

One of the first times I opened the little book, I found myself reading Kabat-Zinn’s counsel on pain. So many of my dear ones are going through patches of pain right now that it seemed particularly relevant. We’re on rough ground here, all of us. Pain isn’t an abstract for anyone.

So the lesson I was reading, by happenstance, was about pain. He says not to expect pain to disappear, but to watch it go through its changes. It’s that “learning to surf” idea wrapped in different words. He tells you that the whole of it is the process of “watching and letting go, breath by breath, moment by moment.”

The world becomes such a kaleidoscopic place when you let yourself do that. You’re up to your eyeballs in it, just watching it float by, every moment full of everything, and oh! what music!

But to bring it back down to earth, there’s a lot of pain in our world right now, a lot of slings and arrows flying, and so many carrying their wounds. Be kind. Especially be kind to yourself and to the pain that you, personally and intimately, are carrying. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Remember, everybody’s hauling around his very own bundle of pain. Everybody.

And everybody carries around an enormous capacity for joy as well. Joy! Really! Right there next to the pain, and every bit as real. (Life is such a bittersweet thing, isnt it?)

I think that when we’re making our way through rough patches it’s easy to forget about the reality and presence of joy. We get so focused on our pains that joy entirely escapes our awareness.

In fact, sometimes it’s been so long since we let ourselves feel any joy that we don’t even know if it’s possible. It is, though. Fact of life. It’s always there. It just takes a little while to see it sometimes. It’s sort of like when you walk from a very dark room into a brightly lit one. You might have to ease into it slowly. To feel the impact of joy, you might want to remember what gratitude feels like, or comfort, or even wonder and awe. Think of things that make you feel all soft and cozy. Slide from there into amazement and laughter and grins. Then just settle. Watch it and let it go. Watch it and let it go. Moment by moment. Breath by breath.

Peace, my friends.
Peace.

Warmly,
Susan

I could tell that the hummingbirds were getting ready to leave for warmer climes. One week they were at the feeder every time I glanced out my window. The next week, I hardly saw any. With a twinge of sadness, I silently bid my tiny friends farewell and wished them safe travels and a fine winter.

Days passed without my spotting a single visitor. But I left the feeder up in case a straggler stopped by for a final few sips before continuing on its long journey. You never know. Then, one afternoon when I was noticing the way a golden shaft of late afternoon sunlight was filtering through the woods that surround my home, suddenly a hummingbird appeared. For the longest moment it hovered upright, facing my window exactly in the center of the shaft of light, its iridescent body glowing and golden. I held my breath in wonder until it zipped away as quickly as it had come.

I have to confess that I thought it was telling me goodbye, and maybe its spectacular display was a thank you for the summer treats and a promise to return. I hope so. I’ll remember the sight of it when I look out a snowy window this winter at the empty shepherd’s hook where the feeder hangs from early April until I’m absolutely sure that the last tiny guest has departed for the year.

I keep a little treasure box in a corner of my mind to hold special memories of the beauty life on Earth offers. I plan to take it with me when I go. I have a favorite fantasy that in the afterlife we sometimes get to sit around a splendid bonfire with sentient beings from planets all over the universe swapping stories about what it was like on our home-worlds. Somebody asks me where I came from and when I say “Earth,” everybody gasps. “Earth!” they murmur; “Earth!” “Tell us, are all the stories true?” Our planet, it turns out, has quite a reputation.

“Well,” I answer smiling, “I’m not sure what you have heard. But it’s true that almost anything you can imagine has happened there–and then some.” Then I pull out my little treasure box and set it down in front of me. “What I would like to show you tonight is a bit of its wondrous beauty.”

What happens when you share around the campfire is that your stories appear as vivid, three-dimensional holograms, complete with textures and fragrances and sounds. It’s a wholly captivating experience. I show my new friends mountainous clouds and white sand beaches, flowered meadows and deep pine woods. I sneak in a few little movies of baby animals, and some of soaring eagles, and elephants and giant leaping whales. And when my presentation is about to come to a close, I pull out the memory that holds the little hummingbird, beating its translucent wings as it hovers in golden afternoon sunlight, offering its farewell.

I don’t know whether the afterlife holds such visits with our universe fellows, but I do know its wise to keep a treasure box of beautiful memories. You never know when sharing one or two of them might come in handy. Even if you’re pulling them out only for yourself on a cold, hard day when your heart needs a spark of warmth and your face needs a gentle smile.

May your treasure box be filled to overflowing and grow richer every day.

Warmly,
Susan

I^{mage by Pexels from Pixabay}