Heart

Be Happy

August 31, 2023 by Barbara

It’s the end of August
Official month of
“It’s ok to say you are happy”

I’m not a “Debbie Downer”
or, in my case, a
Barbie Bummer

I stand for the right
To be happy in the midst
Of world chaos

I watch the sky
Pet animals
Smile at people I don’t know

Paying attention
I read headlines but
I stay with facts

Drama helps no one
Being scared and worrying
Changes nothing

Thoughts become things
What we believe we become
Where we focus we follow

All life is precious
I find beauty and
good everywhere

Peace is a choice
I ask and I’m guided
And, I believe Love will Prevail

Filed Under: We are creators Tagged With: choice, Heart, Love, Peace

The Storm

June 15, 2022 by Barbara

The wind whipped around and through
The tree limbs followed, wildly dancing
Swaying, twisting, bowing

I felt Thunder in my bones
“Danger, go inside”
But in awe I couldn’t leave

Powerful, wild, alive
My heart was drawn in
Connected to this dance of life

This storm was trying to tell me something. In the chaos and tragedy going on these days, what do I see? What does my heart connect to? Is there always a choice between fear/anger and something more? Is there always beauty in the chaos?

I’m being told to move away from either/or, right/wrong, good/evil. Can I hold it all?

Filed Under: Life, Love, We are creators Tagged With: anger, Chaos, Heart, Life, Love

The Deluge

May 29, 2022 by Barbara

The heavy rains came
Even the thorned Barberry
Bowed down under the weight
Gray days hovered
Everything heavy

Then this morning
in the soaked grass
The bare dandelions
seeds washed away
became Starbursts

These times are hard. After Friday’s storm, the Roofer came and checked. He said the fallen tree limb hadn’t damaged the roof.
This morning City Workers filled the potholes in front of my drive.
And today once again, mothers are mourning their dead children and
communities the loss of their cherished members.

The routine of life cut open by the horror of killing, rooted in prejudice, racism, and the acts of the wounded who are acting out their trauma and illness on others.
I pray to experience what the mind cannot define or comprehend; the love of God that can hold all of this.

I pray that I remember we are all connected, that there is no “other” unless I close may heart.
I strive to avoid language and words that create the illusion of separation: e.g., they, whites, blacks, liberals, conservatives…. Labels that lump people into faceless boxes that are too easy to dismiss and belittle.

I strive to love myself and to learn what it means to love others: starting with accepting and seeing the person as they are and who they are. “And may that love move me to co-create justice and well-being for all.” bell hooks

Filed Under: Emotion, Life, Love, We are creators Tagged With: grief, Heart

A Way Through*

October 23, 2020 by Barbara

Like a rusty hinge
the news these days grates
It needs an oil of acceptance
mixed with an ounce of heart
seeing possibilities
instead of apocalypse.

Thanks to Robert Faron on Chalkboard for this prompt of “rust.”

Filed Under: We are creators Tagged With: acceptance, apocalypse, Heart, possitbilities

Grace

May 5, 2018 by Barbara

This poem/prayer came to me in my meditation after a struggle with that part of me that always wants to get it right, the “I’m supposed to be better than this…” part of me. Each line speaks to me though they aren’t words I would have chosen.

Receive!
Back strong.
Heart open.
No begging.
No collapsing in.
Grace flows.
Just because.
You are His.

I say it when I start to forget how blessed I am. I say it when I remember my intention to keep my heart open to Divine guidance and then to actually follow it. I say it when I feel myself start to physically slump, caving in on myself. I say it when the old “I’m not good enough” belief vies for my attention.

I share this as a reminder. We always get what we need often in surprising forms.

Filed Under: Heart's wisdom, Life, Love, Oneness, We are creators Tagged With: grace, Heart, Love

The Mystery of Writing

January 14, 2017 by Barbara

For a while, I haven’t written. I wondered why. Nothing seemed compelling enough to write about. OK, actually no ideas were coming at all.

Rilke wrote in Letters to a Young Poet, “Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write…ask yourself…must I write?”

Elizabeth Gilbert in Big Magic, writes, “Ideas are a disembodied, energetic life-form…driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner.” p. 64 She goes on to say, you can say “no” when an idea comes, but it will move on to someone else.

So I waited, trying to be alert to what might offer itself to me. One morning, the words started to come. I understood, at least for me, my writing. And, I started letting it happen.

WRITING
You write where you are
Not where you are forever,
Just where you are
in this nanosecond.

Words flow through, Spirit, waiting to play.

To give voice to the words
that comes through you.
Traveling fast, as if sent
urgently from a distant place.

The ones that pay a surprise visit
as you’re about to fall asleep; the ones
urging you to write them down, to
hold them to a page so they can’t fly off.

Sometimes you think them
too bold for print, you fear
what others might say.
Still, you write the words.

A understanding, a phrase…
not for forever, just for right now
for this nanosecond
for this poem.

besliter, January, 2017

Filed Under: Heart's wisdom, Love, We are creators Tagged With: Heart, Intuitive listening, Love, Spirit, Writing

Mothers (grieving and processing continues)

July 4, 2016 by Barbara

MOTHERS

birth mothers,
earth mothers
stepmothers

awkward roles assigned
archetypes embodied
stereotypes enacted

primal roots
patriarchy
tribal law

we carry bits & pieces
cluttering the present
with long forgotten fears

Maybe three years ago, Kelly decided she wanted to call me Mom. We agreed, but I had no idea what that would mean to me as time went on. That simple word turned out to make demands, stir fears I didn’t know I had, and trigger roles I didn’t know I would take on…

Nurturing Mother: As her disease progressed there were times she needed a nurturing mother, not a stepmother, not a friend. She wanted the “just hold me and make it all better” mother. The mother she needed when she was 3, 10 or 13 years old, but never had because of her birth mother’s illness. And worse, I couldn’t be that for her. I’m not a cuddler. I just learned how not to duck when a friend goes to kiss me. I can hug. But what I am wasn’t enough. I felt lacking in the deepest way. I’ve been working through my own sense of shame (I just figured out it is shame) that I wasn’t more in those times. It’s getting better.

Responsible/socializing Mother: And then there were those times I responded to “mom” by trying to socialize her (a little late in the game). She felt criticized, and she was. The unconditional love she needed was absent. On reflection what surfaced were primal fears of distant times when daughters who violated the tribal norms were stoned. Free spirits were not rewarded. It was dangerous. Mothers who failed were shamed.
Where did this deep compulsion, this tribal consciousness for conformity come from? My Mother’s version was “What will the neighbors think?”. How many generations has this fear been passed along, unconscious, under the guise of being a good mother? How did I not know?
Once seen I could shift and that surprised me as well. Awareness again brings freedom.

Mom: And then there were all the times when she was just my daughter, my heart open. It was clean, without old tapes. It was love. For these times, nothing much needs to be said. Actually, nothing much can be said. Those times just were. Love just is.

Life’s gifts: My time with Kelly was, and is, humbling. I saw how much I could give, but also how much I couldn’t. I was a doer. My caring could have a sharp edge. I’ve had to remind myself over and over, we’re all full of paradoxes and imperfections, and to not discount what I had to offer because of the things I couldn’t. I’ve had to learn to stop trying to fix me, so I could stop trying to fix everyone else. Self-Acceptance! Sounds so simple. I’m closer as a result of my time with Kelly: greater awareness and greater acceptance, even of what is unfinished….not bad.

Filed Under: Choice, Fear or Courage, Heart's wisdom Tagged With: connectivity, Heart, Life, mom, mothers, step mothers

It’s my birthday…

February 20, 2016 by Barbara

My friend Cheryl texted me about her birthday. She was noticing that her age, the number ascribed to her by the calendar, seemed young to her now. She didn’t feel old, the image she used to have of someone in their late 60’s. It got me to musing……and this is what I wrote:

It’s my birthday and I’ll cry if I want to….*

Will I start hanging out in coffee
houses hoping for conversation?
Volunteer at soup kitchens just
for something to do?

Will people see me in the garden
bending over – a cliche?
Or maybe I’ll discover my right
brain, another Grandma Moses.

Will I succumb and buy some
plastic surgeon his next BMW?
Or, will I just relax,
surrendering to each moment?

Do what I’m doing but with
a little more awareness.
Slow down enough to
really taste my food.

Feel the sun on my skin.
And maybe wear what
I want simply because
I feel good in it.

Birthdays are reminders.
That it is our life to live,
and to notice when we try
to live someone else’s.

It’s my birthday and
I’ll cry if I want to….
my tears will not be of sorrow
but for the joy of being me.

*adapted from:
“It’s my party, and I’ll cry if I want to
Cry if I want to, cry if I want to
You would cry too if it happened to you.”
sung by Lesley Gore – It’s My Party

Filed Under: Life Tagged With: birthday, Heart, Life

How’s it going?

January 2, 2016 by Barbara

Recently Sally Schneider posted at Improvised Life about not knowing. She asks the question, “Can you hang with not knowing.”

I understand not knowing. Not knowing the MRI results, the outcome of an operation, whether an organization will turn around in time, whether our favorite oak tree will succumb to the Bacterial Leaf Drop… the list goes on.

I wrote this poem a year ago. It is as true today as it was then. However, there is a difference. I’m listening a little harder, trusting a little more, and importantly, more at peace with just “the next step.”

How’s It Going?

“I don’t know”
Not a satisfying response
Most prefer a polite lie,
Definitely more certainty.

But the small voice
of wisdom won’t
be ordered about,
has its own timing.

So when the veils
haven’t yet parted,
how do you
walk through life?

The sun rises and sets
Baby birds hatch
Trees lose their leaves.
Life in its rhythm.

Surely you too are part
of life’s flow, as important
as the field mouse,
the fallen bird.

What’s left but
noticing what calls you.
Trusting you’re guided
Always the next step.

besliter

Filed Under: Heart's wisdom, Life, We are creators Tagged With: faith, Heart, Life, not knowing

I said, “It made me cry.”

March 24, 2013 by Barbara

As I watched, the tears came. It was a video a friend had sent me. When I told my friend I cried he got concerned, and said he wouldn’t send any more of those kinds of videos.

He thought my tears were a bad thing. But really, they were the kind that come when you ‘re caught unaware and, unbidden, your heart just opens. You deeply appreciate someone’s courage, their caring, their pain, their triumph…

This is very different from becoming distraught, worried or distracted by another’s experience. This is about genuine caring: witnessing what is and not pushing it away, appreciating the human experience without getting lost in it.

Crying when your heart opens is like going through a doorway to a place where the “we vs. them” disappears. It’s true love and appreciation.

An open heart, even with tears– it’s a good thing.

Filed Under: Creating with others, Emotion, Heart's wisdom Tagged With: appreciation, crying, Heart