4 LAMEST NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS FOR 2106

resolutionsblog

 

These are my lamest resolutions, found in my journal almost every New Years going back at least a decade.

1) Drink less red wine.

This is a dumb resolution, but made for a good reason: There is the potential for abuse where alcohol is involved. But, if I’m honest, it has more to do with others, their own issues, or what they might think, than it does with me. I like red wine. It’s beautiful to smell, see swirling in a gorgeous glass, and to sip and enjoy at day’s end as I play the piano, or indulge in something covered in tomato sauce. I’ve already given up gluten and most vegetables by necessity. Small pleasures are not inconsequential.

2) Eat healthier.

What does that even mean? Healthier for whom? Gwyneth Paltrow?  I’ve been “ watching what I eat” for years, with decreasing levels of enjoyment. (See number 1) I’m not overweight, and though my cholesterol may be a tad high at times, my heart is healthy.

Basically, I’m watching what other people eat and trying to copy them. That’s stupid.

Maybe my body needs what it craves.

3) Exercise Every Day.

I’ve spent years lifting weights. I hate them. I also spent years running on a treadmill like a gerbil, which I only enjoyed on days where I felt so stressed I would stroke out. I wanted to look good, compared to others. Who cares? I got to about 9 or 10 percent body fat and discovered I looked like a well- muscled, but very sick skeleton. Exercise is never a bad idea, nor is eating well, but my body type does not look good doing exercises I hate. I’m never going to look like Ronda Rousey. I loved running outdoors and put in about 6 miles a day doing it, until my knees mutinied. Now, I swim outdoors. The common denominator is the outdoors. Today it was 40 degrees and I still swam, because I love it.

4) Lower my stress level.

This has never happened because starving and doing things I don’t like makes me irritable and nervous. I’m all for pushing past my comfort zone, but if I push and still hate kale, can I stop eating it?

 

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These resolutions are all extremely desirable and effective habits, but they were lame for me because they attempted to impose dramatic changes from an outside source, like a prison warden.

They fail, because my life is the manifestation of my thoughts, and those are so much harder to control than my waistline.

If I get no joy from something, I’m not going to keep doing it.

This year I resolve to renew my mind and soul, thereby changing from within at just the perfect, organic pace. I resolve to collect friends, joyous moments, and time with my own spirit until I become a better version of myself that pleases others and my Higher Power. That might be something worth putting in my journal.

 

DIGITAL GOD

IMG_2819

He sits on the couch beside me

tending his Digital God.

She stops mid – word

heeding her Digital God.

I schedule my Tweets and Posts

to serve Him or Her,

fearing I’m not fast, witty or prolific enough.

I travel only at the Navigation Minion’s behest:

Siri is a power- lusting bitch.

She leads me to the middle of nowhere then, according to her whims, says, “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand that. Did you mean Istanbul?”

The Memo Pad barks its commands

and I spring into frenzy while

the owl outside succumbs to sleep.

I can see it now:

Death by To Do List

I am absolutely in love with Twitter. Nothing but death will part me from it. It stimulates my creativity and my intellect, and I love its brevity and immediacy. One can get involved and informed immediately. But I fight being a slave daily. Without the proper mindset, I become nothing more than the agent of my digital tools.  The  infinite totality of digital access (Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, Vine, and all of the others) makes me twitchy and affects my creativity. It says, Hurry Up. I’m never going to catch up- ever. .

It’s like the proverbial Lays potato chip: there is no such thing as viewing only one cat video or vacation photo from someone I met 10 years ago at a conference, at least not for me. I love that I can keep up with friends and family quickly on Facebook. Sometimes getting a window into someone else ‘s life is thought provoking, inspirational, and a blessing. But, it’s like quicksand.

image002As an artist, I need the digital media to get my works and myself out there, but, without balance or a limit, it stops me from creating. Ultimately, it’s what draws me closer to my higher power that must be my treasure and my priority, for, without that link to infinite intelligence, love and creativity, I will be dominated by external criteria ultimately having nothing to do with me. That divine link is sparked by the act of creating, even if no one sees the creation.

It makes me joyous, and that draws me into my ultimate creator’s arms.

So, I’m going on a digital diet. Not a complete fast, just a daily time limit for all things digital.:) If you need to get in touch with me, tweet or call. I’m running a little behind on my e mailJ (5000 unread messages).

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Matthew 6:21

 

 

 

DIG

SHOPPING MALLS. ENTRY HALL TO HELL?

Devil_cartoon_charactor

I found this little rhyme I did many years ago:

 

Hell’s Entry Hall

must be a shopping mall.

Vendors try to take from me

my most precious commodities!–

money and time,

while I wander

like a listless lab rat fed too much soda

in an IQ measuring labyrinth ,

the piped -in Christmas music-like sounds of singing slot machines of Vegas quickening my pulse,

urging me to hurry, hurry “ save 50%”

of nothing I would want to buy.

Is there an exit, not blocked with perfume-spraying trolls?

Kudos to those with mall- mastery.

It is above my pay grade, and brings only misery.

If I wake up after death, strolling in a mall,

it means God had no faith in my choices at all.

~~~~~~

I don’t feel this way because I’m virtuous, but because I am completely tasteless.

Right now, I am wearing super low- rise jeans that were in style two years ago. Because of weight loss, they fall in the wrong place and look like the SNL sketch about the repairman unknowingly displaying his butt crack. All that is missing is the tool belt. I don’t care.

I still have sweaters from my college days, which were an official eon ago. I once had an employee tell me I looked like a homeless person, and take me shopping, because to be seen with me embarrassed her. I don’t care.

I will probably always be a little out of date, or as I prefer to call it “ classic”, because the time I don’t spend looking for ways to spend money is time I can spend, writing, creating or making music or spending time with those who do.

Someone said that wealth is discretionary time. To me this is true .It is also freedom. It’s freedom to do what I love to do, measured in minutes hours or days. It’s not how much I can buy or even how much I can buy on sale. I save money in other ways: I tend not to spend it at all. Christmas is the exception and the Wild Card. It is fun shopping for other people, but I’m not going to take out another mortgage on my house on the 50 percent chance the gift I buy is what they really, really want.

For me, biology creates destiny: I am a woman born without the shopping gene. My mom and grandmother were born without it too. Childhood shopping trips usually resulted in tears all around.

Hey, Mall Mastery is an adventure and a challenge. I prefer walking a different type of tightrope– the life of the artist– gathering my creations, going through the painful process of self- editing, assimilating them in some semblance of order or perfect disorder, and standing there naked, daring someone to react. That means, if I do get paid, it is rarely and not much.

The less I buy, the more time I have to engage in this process, and the less pressure I have to put on myself to be a product instead of producing one. I still do, but not as much. So, if you see me on occasion wearing my clothes backwards, kindly tell me:)

 

GUILT. (DON’T SHOULD ON YOURSELF!)

nightwithmoon

 

You don’t have to suffer continual chaos in order to grow.

John C. Lilly

 

It’s so unseemly when we should on ourselves! Yet for almost all of us, except for perhaps those on Capitol Hill, guilt seems to be the Great Common Denominator. We torture ourselves with it, sabotage ourselves with it, spend millions of dollars in therapy because of it, and warp our religious heritage because of it.

I spent more than half my life dragging my own personal Old Testament Tribunal with me everywhere I went: finding myself guilty and choosing my own punishment, until I escaped because I learned I was treating the wrong things reverently.

One day recently, I was watching television. During the holidays, certain commercials play on what seems like a continuous loop. I saw the one showing the abused and neglected kittens and puppies, with the sad, pleading eyes. Only $19.50 a month would save them. “ I should save them!” I thought. I felt like a personal failure for not taking all of them home. Before, I knew it, I was in the middle of a second commercial for the Wounded Warrior Project. Only $19.50 could pay for a caretaker for one of these magnificent warriors. “ I should do this! They fought for my freedom!” Before I could even reach for my check book, a third commercial appeared about becoming the benefactor of a starving child in a far- away country for only $19.50.

By the time the three ads finished running, I was convinced that the Pergo floor my chair rested upon would open up and my immediate descent to Hell would begin. I felt guilty that I was confused as to which charity I could afford to give that money. I felt guilty that I actually assessed my budget and whether it would support this monthly commitment.

Then, I remembered that I am supposed to tithe 10 percent to my church, and if I gave to these charities, I would not be able to do that. The bonus of legalism had crept into the mix in the span of 3 minutes. Guilt had led me down a labyrinthine rabbit-hole to a place where God would be mad at me for giving money to the less fortunate, because to do so, would lessen my tithe. I had should on myself until I couldn’t see straight. I had confused compassion for those who are hurting, with being the source of that pain. Did God send these confused and guilty feelings? No. I generated them in my own spinning little brain in response to a thing created by humans, designed to move other humans to gratitude and compassion.

 

What is the remedy for this dire state of affairs? A little bit of irreverence– enough to gain a fresh perspective.

Guilt is a serious subject because I take myself way too seriously. It stems from the delusional and arrogant belief that I should be perfect and be all things to all people, and when I don’t meet this standard, I fail.I realized that I suffered because I chose to punish myself with guilt. It was an albatross I was voluntarily strapping to my back.

I finally got that guilt is always a choice and that shoulding on myself isn’t ever divine. It is exactly what the expression implies: a decision to denigrate and punish myself for human failings. A loving Creator, who created me to be me, would never give me the near constant message that I was not enough. I no longer believe that God has a smite button he longs to hit whenever I fall short of the mark. I believe I cause most of my own suffering, with my beliefs and attitudes, and that God does not want me to take on his job of judging or punishing. I believe my Higher Power rejoices in my progress and the fact that I am imperfect and fearful enough to constantly seek him and his guidance. He rejoices in forgiving me.

Guilt does not lead to spiritual growth or transformation; it prevents it. It keeps us regretting the past and fearing the future and robs us of peace and the ability to fully give ourselves to others in the present. True remorse and a desire to obtain forgiveness for our wrongs brings us closer to our Creator, while guilt causes us to run and hide from our Creator and those we may have wronged, because we haven’t acknowledged these mistakes and decided to make amends and do better. God’s grace is inexhaustible.

 

For we are his workmanship, created … for good works, which God prepared beforehand. Does this sound like a creature to be should upon?

Ephesians 2:10.

 

 

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN HEAVEN AND EARTH CONVERGE?

cloudsonwater

 

The picture at left was the view from my balcony this weekend. The heavens appear to be literally touching the water, but it’s simply the vivid reflection of the clouds off the ridiculously clear water. Me being me, I immediately began wondering, do heaven and earth collide, and what would it look like if they did? I’m always reaching and looking towards Heaven and squinting really hard to see if I can get even a faint glimpse.

I think I now have a surprising answer. Yes, all the time, and it doesn’t look like what one would think.

I don’t know why I have to travel hundreds of miles away from my life to figure out things in my life, but apparently I do.

Because of my biblical training, steeped in Saints and martyrs, burning bushes and of course, Jesus’s example, I actually had it wrong. I thought a bridge between heaven and earth was huge, rare, probably involved the heavens literally opening and God saying something like, “ Hey, you! I’m right here!”

I now know differently. Heaven and earth collide all the time. All that is necessary is a small bridge between the two. I like to call it a Bridge to Marvel. Something that takes us, if even just for a moment, out of our worries, our fears, and ourselves and seems to direct us to focus towards a Benevolent Father long enough to notice he is there.

There was no cell service in the canyon, so I had 3 days where I was forced to pull my head out of my own purse long enough to see these amazing Bridges to Marvel happening with regularity. The first day without Twitter I was somewhat twitchy, but that sustained period of focus produced a multitude of these beautiful little bridges.

The first was the most annoying monarch butterfly in creation. Every time I got away to myself even for just 30 seconds to sit in the sun and reflect on something a speaker had said, she would show up. Not one for subtlety, it took about 10 times for me to figure it out. She would circle me and then go straight for my face, startling me. Every time. As if to say, “ Hey! I’m right here!”

My second bridge was a public one and everyone in the room at the time, knew it. God appearing in a grand flourish. The last night of the conference, there was a campfire where everyone gathered for friendship, and conversation. There were some great professional musicians there, who blessed us with their gifts. But, these musicians encouraged non- professionals to jump in. They used their considerable gifts to bolster and support people trying to escape their comfort zone. The last song of the night, a non- musician stepped up and started singing an old hymn. The guitarists joined in. Something happened. All of us, every last one of us, were pulled into the song and each other and everyone sang, harmonized, drummed and strummed. We all looked at each other like 6 year olds surveying their Halloween bounty. We could not believe it was happening, but it was. It was magnificent. It was reaching up to God and finding him.

My final bridge to marvel was in the person of my roommate. She was the closest thing to the embodiment of an angel as I’ve ever seen. Of course, she did not look like what I thought she would. She was in her late 70s, walked with great difficulty and was too tired to do the late night campfires. She had the most radiantly happy countenance. One day, she got up to sing a song about her son. In a clear, soft voice she sang of how she knew she would meet him again, for he had died of a brain tumor years ago. She sang it with that same radiant countenance. The next morning, she casually mentioned that the reason she could not join me in many of the conference activities was that she had been diagnosed with cancer for the third time. She supposed that the stress of being at her son’s hospital bedside for months on end and finally watching him die had been the culprit. Then she said, “ I’ve learned that we have to give praise anyway.” Boy, she taught me a thing or two that I still ponder and will for some time. She was a bridge to heaven. “Hey You! I’m right here, looking at you!”

So, for me it appears to be a matter of focus. If I can focus my awareness on seeing these Bridges to Marvel, they are everywhere, and if I can see a bridge, perhaps sometimes, I can be one. The hug I talked myself out of giving, the time I shrunk away from singing, speaking, dancing or loving, might have been someone’s bridge. Sometimes I am so stupid. I know that God works through people, but I try to pre- select whom he will work through. I don’t know much, but I do know that God isn’t looking for perfect people to be his reps. If that were the case, he wouldn’t have much human help would he?

REMIND ME TO FORGET

dragonfly

Next time you see me, remind me to forget for just one moment, these things:

The Meaning of Life. Commerce, Success and the Survival of the Fittest. Trying to catch up. Goals. Deadlines. Drama. Well, maybe not drama… Mortgage payments.  The Never Ending Quest.

Please remind me to forget these things just long enough to reboot my memory of who I really am:

Poet

Standing

Bleeding

Crying

Laughing

Puzzling

Preaching

Encouraging

Agitating

Moving

Breaking

Offering

Naked

Afraid

Engaging

Braving all

Remind me to forget all of the other stuff, so I can remember why I write. It is not a vocation for me, but a passionate calling. I cannot not do it.

Life is Just Moments, not goals.

It is my privilege to try to share them or maybe even provoke a few.  This is my “daily bread.” This is what gives me sustenance to go another day, another week, until those other things take care of themselves.

Give us this day our daily bread…

All that is promised is today.

All too seldom, I am seized by gratitude for all of those people whom by word, deed, and prayer or simply by their presence in my lives, have supported me in my dream of being a writer. It occurs to me that that dream is not on the far horizon. It’s right here. The ability to be passionate about something, to spread that passion and to have a loving community that supports this endeavor. What else is there?

 

RETREAT! RETREAT!

roosterLABOR DAY IS A TIME FOR RETREAT, RETREAT!

Sometimes, the better part of valor is to bravely run away, to bravely turn tail and flee~ as brave Sir Robin did in Monty Python’s Search for the Holy Grail.

Spiritual detox may be my greatest passion, but passion has its price~ Jet Lag.

The fact that I have attempted to put my head though a brick wall 100 times forces me to consider the possibility that the path does not go through the brick wall… Maybe, just maybe, the path goes around. Maybe the path goes back the way I came. I won’t know if it’s time to change course, if I keep charging ahead like a rabid bull. That will get me a concussion, but nothing else.

My go- to is power through, but if my heart rate is 150 and I feel like someone has dropped amphetamines in my Fiji Water, I don’t need to power through or ignore the heart palpitations. I need to Honor them.

This would be the time to marvel at million- dollar models gracing the fashion pages in clothing looking like someone’s 1990s practical joke, gelled and made-up to look like homeless people startled awake by the Police department. It is a beautiful and costly work of performance art. It’s time to enjoy a Crisley Knows Best Marathon, (it is addictively hilarious by the way) or to accept that for some deeply toxic reason that probably stems from potty training, an SVU marathon puts me in a state comparable to Zen meditation. Wisdom might compel me to consider the miracle of Spanx.

Resistance is the enemy. Resistance is all about my will and me.

If I get agitated, confused or overwhelmed it’s time to retreat, to run away, and to stop drop and roll. I’m never going to stop the river or change its course. I can swim upstream but only until my personal strength wanes.

Stop Driving. Stop with the goal- setting and metric taking. Drop everything outside of my body and how it feels at the moment. Roll with that.

Sometimes I look for logic and meaning in ridiculous things, because I succumb to the incorrect idea that a spiritual person must be deadly serious. It’s time to just get over myself, admit I have a wacky sense of humor, and go do something for fun, for the sheer joy of it.

Retreating gives me the chance to reboot and remember that I can start completely over a day from now, an hour from now or 10 minutes from now, giving me the chance to catch up to where God already is.

 

CHILD’S POSE

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I have never been age- appropriate, and if and when I am, I will be spiritually dead. I call my conscious lack of concern Spiritual Anti- Aging, and it works.

Recently, I was sitting in a very brilliant beautician’s chair, receiving a subtly wrapped judgment on age- appropriateness and how it didn’t jive with what I wanted. I politely moved on to the next beautician. I do not accept this artificial limit, or any other. Misery is a thing of adulthood, and to a certain extent we create it ourselves. Living in the past or fearing the future is a construction of adulthood. Limiting ourselves according to whether others approve, is something that grown-ups take on, as their lives become something they no longer control or recognize. Rob Bell calls this a crisis of wonder.

A child can grow up in very dark and dangerous circumstances and still see those small shards of light and recognize them for what they are. Heaven and joy and spirit reside in the smallest of things.

Think about the last time you felt contentment, peace and joy; the last time you felt really young and free. Was it because you finally achieved every thing on your to do list? Were there a burning bush and a choir of angels or was it the rhythm of the waves hitting the shore, running or walking out in the beauty of nature, or just a really beautiful connection you shared with someone? These moments are where wonder lives.

A child is not looking for the meaning of life, she is freely living it. I forget this daily. Sometimes this amnesia lasts years.

Recently, I went through a prolonged health crisis. I have always avoided doctors like Ebola, but I found myself seeing a parade of specialists, taking a barrage of tests and not being able to summon my typical energy level to do much of anything. I could no longer run or lift weights and these things had defined me.

During this period, something supremely annoying happened: every time I got in the car, the first song on the radio was Sara Bareilles’ Brave. Every time. This happened somewhere between 70- 100 times in a row. In the song the singer is daring and begging someone to just let the plain, unvarnished truth finally bubble out~ like a kid. It’s far kinder in the long run. Sometimes kid- honesty is shocking or politically incorrect, but it is always like inhaling a burst of fresh air after spending a week locked in a cube- farm.

I realized that, in large part, what were missing from my routine were not vitamins, or hormones, but candor and courage. I am working on this. For me, courage is not adult armor that I put on; it’s stripping down to the trust and loving bluntness of a kid.

 

This Spiritual Exfoliation is the way to a beautiful soul.

Youthfulness is the result of living without chains.

Art, hope, candor, courage and rejoicing are ageless. When we engage in these things, so are we.

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TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE MEETS NORMAN ROCKWELL

 

photo 35 minutes

into a conversation to which I was only collateral damage,

weapons were drawn.

(Ghosts of mother figures at 10 paces!)

The most

sarcastic

controlling

                or guilt- ridden wins.

The Horror!

Ancient family underpinnings freed from

their moth-balled coffins and running the show, while the speakers merely rumbaed like marionettes

unaware the buttons being pushed

were installed decades before today

and came with a life-time factory warranty.

Witnesses turn away, run away or watch, either with the fascination reserved for the psychological profile of Lizzie Borden

or as if re- living their own drama trauma.

And the band plays on and on….

I guess our ancestors are never really gone. photo 5

 

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A SPIRITUAL AUTHOR/ A LIGHT- HEARTED VIEW

A LIGHT- HEARTED LOOK AT A HEAVY SUBJECT

 

 

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

Theodore Roosevelt

7;30am

1)

“What if I will never be the next Nostradamus?

What if my ‘aha moment’ isn’t going to happen today?

What if I have nothing life- changing to contribute?

What if I totally miss predicting the impending apocalypse?

What if what I am inspired to say angers or offends:

The Religious Right/ Left/ Centrists

Baptists

Catholics

Jews

Universalists

Atheists

Zen Buddhists

Muslims

My family?”

 

“What if I inadvertently leave a group out? “

“What if one group thinks I am writing about them, when I’m not?”

 

“What if people come to my house with pitchforks and blazing torches, like the scene from Frankenstein?”

“What if no one says or does anything, because they don’t care or simply do not know that I exist? “

“Can I do what I feel called to do if no one knows I am there?”

 

Have existential meltdown. If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it…

 

 

2) GET OUT OF BED.

 

3) Beg/ bargain with God about all aspects of number one.

 

 

4) Drink coffee for inspiration.

 

blankcomputerondesk5) Wait for mountaintop experience to write about.

 

6) Go to job that supports writing habit, enjoying the peace that accompanies actual completion of tasks. While working, have hundreds of inspiring writing ideas, just nothing relevant to this particular writing deadline. Forget most of them before writing them down. Write down the remainder on To Do list stretching until the year 2050.

 

 

7) Resort to exercise or a nap to clear the mental pathways.

 

 

 

8) Receive desired inspiration/ word from God while engaged in inconvenient activities such as showering, using the other part of the bathroom, or pretending to pay attention in the middle of a conversation.

 

latepm9) Let the words out.

10) Thank God for doing the real work.

 

11) Collapse in heap.

 

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.

Hans Hofmann