As I was driving to work this morning these little friends were in the road on their way to somewhere…

Speaking of wool...

A few months ago I brought home some wool batting for a project. I walked in the door and set it on my bed. Simon, my cat friend, jumped up on the bed and started to sniff it… Next thing I knew he had buried himself as far as possible into the batting and fallen asleep. Some time later he hurled himself out of there in what seemed like a big fat hurry and I realized he was too hot! But, it made me realize that he really enjoyed the wool. I also had some raw wool which I brought out to see if he liked as well and he did! So, I took a big bunch of the raw wool and stuffed it into his favorite bed which is one of my old Cashmere sweaters. He was in cat bed heaven! He sleeps on it a lot. When I go to bed at night he is often sleeping on the wool/cashmere bed right next to the heater. And then, sometime in the middle of the night when he crawls under the covers with me all I smell is warm lanolin...sweeeeeeet!

This is Fuzzle who just plunks directly onto her pile of wool and goes in cognito!

Fox Friendly

I been seeing so many foxes these last few months...you know how it is when you "need" a particular animals' medicine? They just tend to repeatedly show up.

There were two evenings in a row when I saw fox kits in my headlights driving home. Then this afternoon I was walking up my driveway and out from behind my car came a fox...No more than maybe 12 or so feet away. I swear, it looked like it had been sleeping! My heart was so, so glad...I just kept saying to it: "I am so happy to see you." We looked at each other for a bit then it turned and took a couple steps away then faced me again. Then repeated the same thing. Finally, it turned and trotted away. Another very lucky moment.

Gift of The Day

I had the greatest good fortune of spending the evening with my nine month old swami G friend.

There were so many highlights...but one, in particular, was when I was laying on my back and he was laying on his back on my abdomen and chest with his little arm on my neck...just laying and breathing together. He was kinda dozing while I was busy appreciating the very simple beauty and tenderness of the moment...the trust that naturally and effortlessly gets extended that he will be held and cared for...oh, it just slays me.

Quaker Speak

Once again my friend, Stephanie, had an interesting tidbit on her blog from Parker Palmer, whom I very much admire:

The Clearness Committee
A Communal Approach To Discernment
From A Hidden Wholeness
by Parker J. Palmer 
Many of us face a dilemma when trying to deal with a personal problem, question, or decision. On the one hand, we know that the issue is ours alone to resolve and that we have the inner resources to resolve it, but access to our own resources is often blocked by layers of inner “stuff”—confusion, habitual thinking, fear, despair. On the other hand, we know that friends might help us uncover our inner resources and find our way, but by exposing our problem to others, we run the risk of being invaded and overwhelmed by their assumptions, judgments, and advice—a common and alienating experience. As a result, we often privatize these vital questions in our lives: at the very moment when we need all the help we can get, we find ourselves cut off from both our inner resources and the support of a community.
For people who have experienced this dilemma, I want to describe a method invented by the Quakers, a method that protects individual identity and integrity while drawing on the wisdom of other people. It is called a “Clearness Committee.” If that name sounds like it is from the sixties, it is—the 1660’s! From their beginnings over three hundred years ago, Quakers needed a way to draw on both inner and communal resources to deal with personal problems because they had no clerical leaders to “solve” their problems for them. The Clearness Committee is testimony to the fact that there are no external authorities on life’s deepest issues, not clergy or therapists or scholars; there is only the authority that lies within each of us waiting to be heard.
Behind the Clearness Committee is a simple but crucial conviction: each of us has an inner teacher, a voice of truth, that offers the guidance and power we need to deal with our problems. But that inner voice is often garbled by various kinds of inward and outward interference. The function of the Clearness Committee is not to give advice or “fix” people from the outside in but rather to help people remove the interference so that they can discover their own wisdom from the inside out. If we do not believe in the reality of inner wisdom, the Clearness Committee can become an opportunity for manipulation. But if we respect the power of the inner teacher, the Clearness Committee can be a remarkable way to help someone name and claim his or her deepest truth 
The Clearness Committee’s work is guided by some simple but crucial rules and understandings. Among them, of course, is the rule that the process is confidential. When it is over, committee members will not speak with others about what was said and, equally important, will not speak with the focus person about the problem unless he or she requests a conversation.
Guidelines for facilitating Clearness Committees at retreats:
Facilitators assign members to committees. But before doing so, ask each focus person for a confidential list of any persons he or she especially wants to work with or feels unable to work with. Promise focus persons they will be given as many names from the first list as possible, and none from the second list. 
At a retreat, focus persons are asked to reflect on the following three areas:
•    a concise statement of his or her problem, even if it is not clear—this process can work as well with murky issues as with clear ones;
•    a recounting of relevant background factors that may bear on the problem;
•    an exploration of any hunches the focus person may have about what’s on the horizon regarding the problem.
This is done so that the focus person can present their problem orally to the committee at the start of the session in a concise but helpful way, ten or fifteen minutes maximum. 
Clearness Committees last two hours. A detailed schedule is provided to all committee members before the process begins. When fifteen, and then five minutes remain, someone on the committee needs to notify the others, for reasons explained in note 9 below. Committee members for whom note-taking enhances attentiveness may take notes, turning them over to the focus person before leaving the room. This helps guarantee confidentiality and is a great gift to the focus person, helping him or her remember the questions and answers in the hours, days and months to come.
The meeting begins when the focus person breaks the silence, and gives a brief summary of the issue at hand. Then the committee members may speak—but everything they say is governed by one rule, a simple rule and yet one that most people find difficult and demanding: members are forbidden to speak to the focus person in any way except to ask honest, open questions. This means absolutely no advice and no amateur psychoanalysis. It means no, “Why don’t you…?” It means no, “That happened to me one time, and here’s what I did…” It means no, “There’s a book/therapist/exercise/diet that would help you a lot.” Nothing is allowed except real questions, honest and open questions, questions that will help the focus person remove the blocks to his or her inner truth without becoming burdened by the personal agendas of committee members.  I may think I know the answer to your problem, and on rare occasions I may be right. But my answer is absolutely no value to you. The only answer that counts is one that arises from your own inner truth. The discipline of the Clearness Committee is to give you greater access to that truth and allow you to have a personal dialogue with it—while the rest of us refrain from trying to define that truth for you or guide that dialogue.
What is an honest, open question? It is important to reflect on this, since we are so skilled at asking questions that are advice or analysis in disguise; e.g., “Have you ever thought that it might be your mother’s fault?” The best single mark of an honest, open question is that the questioner could not possibly anticipate the answer to it; e.g., “Did you ever feel like this before?” There are other guidelines for good questioning. Try not to get ahead of the focus person’s language; e.g., “What did you mean when you said ‘frustrated’?” is a good question, but “Didn’t you feel angry?” is not. Ask questions aimed at helping the focus person rather than at satisfying your curiosity. Ask questions that are brief and to the point rather than larding them with background considerations and rationale—which make the question into a speech. Ask questions that go to the person as well as the problem—for example, questions about feelings as well as about facts. Trust your intuition in asking questions, even if your instinct seems off the wall; e.g., “What color is your present job, and what color is the one you have been offered?”
Normally, the focus person responds to the questions as they are asked, in the presence of the group, and those responses generate more, and deeper, questions. Though the responses should be full, they should not be terribly long—resist the temptation to tell your life story in response to every question! It is important that there be time for more and more questions and responses, thus deepening the process for everyone. The more often a focus person is willing to answer aloud, the more material the person—and the committee—will have to work with. But this should never happen at the expense of the focus person’s need to protect vulnerable feelings or to maintain privacy. It is vital that the focus person assume total power to set the limits of the process. So everyone must understand that the focus person at all times has the right not to answer a question. The unanswered question is not necessarily lost—indeed, it may be the question that is so important that it keeps working on the focus person long after the Clearness Committee has ended. 
The Clearness Committee must not become a grilling or cross-examination. The pace of the questioning is crucial—it should be relaxed, gentle, humane. A machine-gun volley of questions makes reflection impossible and leaves the focus person feeling attacked rather than evoked. Do not be afraid of silence in the group—trust it and treasure it. If silence falls, it does not mean that nothing is happening or that the process has broken down. It may well mean that the most important thing of all is happening: new insights are emerging from within people, from their deepest sources of guidance.  
From beginning to end of the Clearness Committee, it is important that everyone work hard to remain totally attentive to the focus person and his or her needs. This means suspending the normal rules of social gathering—no chitchat, no responding to other people’s questions or to the focus person’s answers, no joking to break the tension, no noisy and nervous laughter. We are simply to surround the focus person with quiet, loving space, resisting even the temptation to comfort or reassure or encourage this person, but simply being present with our attention and our questions and our care. If a committee member damages this ambiance with advice, leading questions, or rapid-fire inquisition, other members, including the focus person, have the right to remind the offender of the rules—and the offender is not at liberty to mount a defense or argue the point. The Clearness Committee is for the sake of the focus person, and the rest of us need to get our egos to recede.
The Clearness Committee should run for the full time allotted. Don’t end early for fear that the group has “run out of questions”—patient waiting will be rewarded with deeper questions than have yet been asked. About fifteen minutes before the end of the meeting, someone should ask the focus person if he or she wants to suspend the “questions only” rule and invite committee members to mirror back what they have heard the focus person saying. If the focus person says no, the questions continue, but if he or she says yes, mirroring can begin, along with more questions if they should arise. Mirroring does not provide an excuse to give advice or fix the person—that sort of invasiveness is still prohibited. Mirroring simply means exactly what the word suggests: reflecting the focus person’s language—and body language—giving him or her a chance to say, “Yes, that’s me” or “No, that’s not,” though no response is required. In the final five minutes of the meeting, the clerk should invite members to celebrate and affirm the focus person and his or her strengths. This is an important time, since the focus person has just spent a couple of hours being very vulnerable. And there is always much to celebrate, for in the course of a Clearness Committee, people reveal the gifts and graces that characterize human beings at their deepest and best.
Remember, the Clearness Committee is not intended to fix the focus person, so there should be no sense of letdown if the focus person does not have his or her problems “solved” when the process ends. A good clearness process does not end—it keeps working within the focus person long after the meeting is over. The rest of us need simply to keep holding that person in the light, trusting the wisdom of his or her inner teacher.
The Clearness Committee is not a cure-all. It is not for extremely fragile people or for extremely delicate problems. But for the right person, with the right issue, it is a powerful way to rally the strength of community around a struggling soul, to draw deeply from the wisdom within all of us. It teaches us to abandon the pretense that we know what is best for another person and instead to ask those honest and open questions that can help that person find his or her own answers. It teaches us to give up the arrogant assumption that we are obliged to “save” each other and learn, through simple listening, to create the conditions that allow a person to find his or her wholeness within. If the spiritual discipline behind the Clearness Committee is understood and practiced, the process can become a way to renew community in our individualistic times; a way to free people from their isolation without threatening their integrity; a way to counteract the unhelpful excesses to which we sometimes take “caring;” and a way to create space for the spirit to move among us with healing and with power.
NOTE: People who wish to make significant use of the Clearness Committee process are urged to read Chapter VIII, “Living the Questions,” in Parker J. Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2009). There you will find detailed, step-by-step guidance, as well as a DVD with footage of the author teaching the process to a group. The Clearness Committee is a powerful method that is both simple and demanding. Done well, it is a positive experience for everyone involved. But done poorly, it can cause hurt and even harm. So a deep understanding of its principles and practices is essential to using it responsibly. People who want an experiential immersion in the process — which is, of course, the best way to learn how it works and how to offer it to others — should peruse our retreat calendar and learn more about our programs, many of which offer the Clearness Committee experience.
xox

Formation may be the best name for what happens in a circle of trust, because the word refers, historically, to soul work done in community. But a quick disclaimer is in order, since formation sometimes means a process quite contrary to the one described in this book----a process in which the pressure of orthodox doctrine, sacred text, and institutional authority is applied to the misshapen soul in order to conform it to the shape dictated by some theology. This approach is rooted in the idea that we are born with souls deformed by sin, and our situation is hopeless until the authorities "form" us properly. But all of that is turned upside down by the principles of a circle of trust: I applaud the theologian who said that "the idea of humans being born alienated from the Creator would seem an abominable concept." Here formation flows from the belief that we are born with souls in perfect form. As time goes on, we subject to powers of deformation, from within as well as without, that twist us into shapes alien to the shape of the soul. But the soul never loses its original form and never stops calling us back to our birhtright integrity.”
Parker J. Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life

Nuts

I'm reading this book called Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, Scientific knowledge, and The Teaching of Plants. In it, she's writing about how when her people (the Pottawatomie) were displaced and ended up in Kansas, they were relieved to find a nut (which they called pigan.) It later came to be called pecan in English.

"Today we eat them daintily, shelled and toasted, but in the old times they'd boil them up in a porridge. The fat floated to the top like a chicken soup and they skimmed it and stored it as nut butter: good winter food. High in calories and vitamins -- everything you needed to sustain life. After all, that's the whole point of nuts: to provide the embryo with all that is needed to start a new life."

That's the part I never thought about…That a nut is actually an embryo.

Did you ever think that before?

Art Project

I'm almost certain I'm not the first person to think about this idea that has been percolating in my own innards...but, i thought it'd be a very fun and cool thing for any sizable construction project to have an on-site artist (kindah like an artist in residence!) Making "art" out of whatever is discarded. Having just watched a year long construction project's "waste" stream, it kept recurring in my brain and my heart that something beautiful, imaginative, funky, exciting and thought provoking could be created out of the discarded this's and that's. I know that some contractors try their best to re-home what they can and responsibly dispose of "waste," but I think the effect of the actual on-site transformation of those things could elicit a different feeling or sense of our relationship to waste. A documentary in the making, fer reelz!

Lily's Gospel

"Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past."

Lily Tomlin

Don't Be Still, My Beating Heart!

Within the last 18 months or so my actual physical heart has changed it's modus operandi! Often, it beats very fast and I can actually hear and feel it thumping in my chest. While it was pretty unnerving when it first began to happen, I think I have, for the most part, gotten used to it. Now, I have what has become a nightly ritual in regard to my heart. When I shift my position from sitting up in the bed to laying down and the rest of my house is very quiet, my heart sounds particularly loud. So, for the first few minutes before I fall asleep I just listen to my own heart beating…to my blood being circulated...and without fail, I am reminded of the miracle that is the body. Especially when there is chronic pain or discomfort, it's natural to think the body isn't working the way it's "supposed" to. And, maybe it's not. But, I've found it both fascinating and comforting to also see/hear/feel all the "little" and "simple" miracles that are happening every milisecond within the body yet are easy to overlook. When we stop for a moment and pay attention to the hundreds, if not thousands of actions that are happening as they are designed to within the body for it to achieve the simplest of movements, it becomes mind blowing... As well as an excellent reminder of just how well the body really is working in every moment.

When ceramic artist Dick Lehman traveled to Japan for an exhibition in 1999, he was astonished by his host's parting gift: four broken ceramic cups that Lehman had thrown in the trash just a few weeks earlier. Under his host’s covert care, the cups were recovered, repaired with silver, and made even more beautiful than they were before.

Kintsugi, translated as "gold joinery," is the ancient Japanese craft of mending broken pottery with gold-filled resin. Modern Kintsugi artists use a variety of materials to decorate the scars from a repair.

"In the West, we usually expect a thing to be repaired so you can't tell it's broken," says Lehman, who now incorporates Kintsugi into his own work. Using copper powder or gold leaf to mend his pieces, Lehman hopes his repairs communicate a sense of history and care. He writes, "Kintsugi artists believe when something has suffered damage and has a history, it becomes more beautiful."

Martin and His Fleurs!

Thymus Thumping

Daily TT helps support the immune system. Give it a whirl!

PTL, Sister!

My mom's BFF at Camp Forum, the daughter of a pastor, lives by this guiding principle: "if god doesn't work, try wine!"

Memory Loss...LOL!

My dad called twice this last week for two days in a row around 6:15 am. 

On the morning of the third day I called him at 7am my time. I told him I didn't have a long time to talk as I was getting ready to go to work. That gave him the opening to wonder what time it was on my end! He said lately he could not remember if it was two hours earlier or two hours later where I lived. I told him that it was two hours earlier in California and that, in fact, for the last couple mornings he had called me around 6 am. I could hear him start to laugh as he said: "oh Lord, oh Lord.!"

So, the next day I called him up and I said to him: "Dad, I just wanted you to know that it's still two hours earlier here.!"

He didn't say a word...he  just started laughing. Laughter sure softens the sometimes hard edges of things like memory loss.

For All You Lapsed Catholics!

My friend, Stephanie, had this link on her blog and I lifted it cuz It got me so tickled.                     

Electronic Rosary

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O1SPXy460g 

Speaking of religion, I just rewatched: The Eyes Of Tammy Faye...such a fascinating story for so many reasons. It certainly forces the issue of paradox. It's a very messy human story, like most, yet in the end I couldn't help but feel deep compassion for Them both. It's definitely worth watching...unless you have a strong aversion to tv evangelism.

More Than Fair Trade!

In exchange for selling my farmer friends flowers for my financial profit, she wants me to take care of her dahlia garden!!!

I couldn't believe what I was hearing at first! Wait, I get to hang out with and love up on her dahlias AND sell her beauty-full flowers...somebody pinch me!

Vaca!

Yesterday, I was sitting at the ocean thoroughly enjoying everything about it...the sun, the breeze, the ocean smell, the sound of the waves crashing, the gulls. I remember thinking how lucky I was. Then I remembered something a friend says. After she gets done working she tells herself she's on vacation till whenever the next time is that she has to work! So, as I remembered that idea, I found myself relaxing even more knowing I was on vaca till the following morning!

Magnetism

After having brought some Parisian truffles to a get together the other day, my friend said to me: "you always have the yummiest chocolates."

I said: "well, some people are chick magnets and others, chocolate magnets!!!"

Tis The Season...OMG!

I know it says somewhere in the bible that thou shalt not covet thy neighbors legs...but how can you NOT covet those long, still a little wobbly legs?

What does covet mean, anyway?!

Sweetness

Another First!

Sri G in his first sink bath with his turtle buddy!!!

Little butterball of sweetness.

Pre Launch!

Simon, in one of his crazy, wound up moments before he hurls himself at a moving target! He makes me LOL!

My Newest Boyfriend, Petey!

Oh, I just want to snurggle him up!

Name The Poop!

If you can correctly identify this scat, you will win a prize!

A Kwan Story

i went into our local spiritual/religious accessories store today looking for a Kwan Yin statue. i didn't see the one i was after so i walked up to the sales fella and asked did they have a Kwan statue.
he looked at me very seriously and said: "you mean Kwan Yin?" (not without a bit of attitude) so, i said: "yea, Kwan." and then made the gesture of my index and middle finger wrapped around each other and said; "we're tight" while smiling. He did not find that even remotely amusing. it is attitudes like that which make me want to be irreverent to all things sacred. i can't help myself!!!
that's probably why i need sistah K so bad cuz i lack compassion when it comes to people like that!

Call and Response

It's not like this is anything new...
but somehow this general now of a portal feels particularly focused...asking us to continuously let go...to surrender deeply...and while the particulars of our lives may reflect that surrender it is the larger universal dynamic that is actually "forcing" us into as of yet uninhabitated realities and paradigms.. There is no set of instructions for how to navigate these times nor any words that fit it, really....
The one thing I really do get very clearly is that i, we, us are responding to the call, whether we consciously understand that or not. for me, the cognitive "understanding" helps me to get that I am actively in conversation and in relationship with the dynamics...with the Universe. 

my wish for us all is that we build and refine our listening muscles, without ears...
and that we find the courage and willingness to be led...

Camo Kwan!

I've Looked At Clouds From Both Sides Now!

Recently a friend and I were laying in a field working on our winter tans while appreciating the warm, cloudless winter day...when seemingly out of nowhere all kinda pretty clouds started showing up. This one here we decided looked like the Virgin de Guadeloupe!

So, I sent this photo to my friend who loves the Virgin like crazy. What's funny is that she was up the coast maybe 10 miles or so that day and took a photo of the exact same cloud. However, she thought it was more angelic than virginal...same diff, I guess!

Oh, The Parents

Not being a parent...I can't say for sure...but many parents seem challenged to TRULY see  who and what their children are as opposed to what they hope or want them to be. So many parents deal with this issue in one way or the other. And us kids....well, I do believe that no matter what we say or try and get ourselves to believe about what we really want...i think we need our parents to get us. We need their Blessing as i heard a preacher say recently. It can end up being quite a dance. I've certainly participated in that with my own folks.

Over the years my dad and I have really worked at our relationship. It's taken him a real long time to loosen his expectations or ideas of what my life should look like. He still doesn't all the way "get it" but he is more spacious than ever. So, during our New Year's Day phone call, I was surprised and deeply touched when he wished me an art-full new year. He gave me his Blessing. I honestly didn't know I needed it...but I did. What a true and beauty-full gift.

New Years Resolution

Today I asked my 93-year-old friend if she had made a New Year's resolution.

A little bit shyly, she told me that her New Year's wish was to die in her sleep soon.

New Year's Wish

May we all be nourished by the exquisite beauty of simplicity.