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Mountain waves (visual poem)

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mountain waves 031116

I spend part of May in the Blue Ridge mountains celebrating my wedding anniversary. The view from Grandfather Mountain (in Western North Carolina) is like this – when is it a mountain, and when is it a wave in the ocean? It is overwhelming, especially at sunset

This is composed of cut up cardstock tests of Distress Ink – the edges of the main test. Reassembled like this, it looks like I’m trying to take pictures of the mountains, and putting captions underneath.

Card stock
Distress Ink
gold paint with glazing medium
Tim Holtz Idea-ology quotes.

 

(Click on the image to see it larger)

Objects in life

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Objects in life1 012916
Objects in life are closer than they appear.

Thoughts that arose while making it:
Scale is important. Compare this to this. Otherwise you are lost, even with a map.
Everything is relative. How do you indicate place when a part of the frame or reference is missing?
The edges are there but the middle is blank.
How little rivers look like lightning.
When lost, follow the river. You’ll find people. (Are they good? Is this safe?)

Ingredients:
8.5 x 12 inch Strathmore visual journal
Matte medium, glue stick.
Map. Card stock. Distress Ink (rusty hinge pad, crushed olive spray)
Gel pen. Art paper (K and Company designer paper by Susan Winget)
Created 1/29/16.

Blessing for everything

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“To ‘bless’ does not mean the same thing as ‘to thank’. …it is too much to expect most people to actually thank God for the bad things that happen to them. Barukh, the Hebrew word for ‘bless’, comes from the same root as the word for knee, berekh. Many scholars see a connection: To bless God is to kneel or bow before the Divine (either literally or symbolically), acknowledging God as greater and more powerful, and the Source of all – both good and bad – that happens.”
– from “Swimming in the Sea of Talmud” by Michael Katz and Gershon Schwartz

To bless God for everything is to acknowledge that God is making everything happen. If we truly believe that God is One, that God made everything and everything is from and of God, then we have to believe that everything that is and everything that happens is from God.

Perhaps we never left the Garden. Perhaps when we ate from the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil, we saw with new eyes. Our eyes had seen only things as they are, not differentiating between Good and Evil. Things just were what they were, with no judgment.

When we divide events and people and things into Good and Evil, we have left Paradise, but only mentally. Physically, we are still there.

When we decide to withhold judgment and just see events and people and things as they are, not deciding that they are Good or Evil, then we reenter Paradise.

Nothing is absolute – events that seemed bad at the time turned out to redirect us towards a healthier path. People that seemed bad at the time turned out to have problems that we didn’t know about – we “cut them some slack” and our relationships improve. That food that we didn’t like as children? Years later it is our favorite snack. Things change. Our experiences expand us. We don’t have “the big picture.” Time gives us perspective.

Hold on. Trust. God is in charge. We don’t have to fix it all, and that is a great mercy.

The sages say that the things we perceive as “bad” come from the first two letters of God’s name, the “yud” and the “hey”, while the things we perceive as “good” come from the second two letters, the “vav” and the (second) “hey”. Both are from God. They are neither Good or Evil, deep down.

They just are. No judgment. No definition.

Start blessing God for everything, acknowledging that God is God, and God is good. Ask God for new eyes to see the beauty in everything, and for patience to trust that God is working out God’s plan.

Death is not a failure.

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We need to turn around our view of death in the society. Death isn’t a failure. Death is a person transitioning from one level of existence to another. They are graduating. They have completed their mission here on earth and are now moving on to their next assignment.

In the same way that we gather together when someone is being born, we should gather together with the same joy and excitement when someone is passing on. When someone is being born we don’t even know who is being born. But when someone is dying we know who it is. We get to celebrate all that we have done with her or him together and that we were blessed with the opportunity to know her or him and share a little bit of our lives together.

I find it disturbing that the dying process is not taught in nursing school. I find it odd that a separate organization generally known as “hospice” had to come into existence to assist people and their families with death. Death is a fact of life. If you are alive then you will die. But we’ve isolated ourselves from this knowledge to the point that death seems to be something that happens to someone else. The medical institution treats death as a sign that their efforts have failed – they have not cured the disease.

The Varda

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The Varda was concerned. It looked out at the scene before it, wasteland, all of it. Stones atop stones atop dry earth. The desolation stretched out as far as The Varda’s eyes could see, and The Varda could see very far – at least on the right side. The left side was nearsighted, but not just in distance.
The Varda had six eyes – two for each head. Each head had different capabilities and most certainly a different personality. The left saw the past, as far back as human history began, but no further. The center saw the present in all its glory and sadness. The right saw the future, shifting and uncertain to human eyes, but solid and sure to The Varda.
The Varda was just that, The Varda. It had no other name. How could it? With three heads and one lion-like body, it was three beings and yet one. This confounded everyone but made perfect sense to it. To name each head was to ignore the very reality of its oneness and unity within itself. It was the very example of cooperation and harmony. World leaders should have studied it, but didn’t. They might have averted this tragedy.
The Varda was always “it” – never he, or she. How could you determine gender? It did not reproduce, so it had no need for the simple distinctions of language. The Varda was simply The Varda, and nothing more.
All around The Varda were the cries of pain and confusion. The earthquake had ruined the centuries-old village with its monuments and temples. Shrines were in shambles. Homes were reduced to the clay that they had been molded from.
Enough earthquakes had happened in the past three hundred years here that the people had stopped building anything higher than a single story for their homes, or out of anything more substantial than packed earth. What was the point? It was easier to rebuild if there was less rubble in the way. Sort out the few meager belongings, set them to the side. Wet the same earth over again, pack it into simple wooden frames, let it set for an hour, pop it out and let it dry. A few days later they could rebuild the house – the same, or different this time. It was like forced redecorating. They had come to accept this as their normal.
It wasn’t normal. It wasn’t normal at all. They couldn’t see this, because of their limited sight. The Varda knew better. With time stretched out before it like a topographic map, it knew the dips and peaks of human history. It knew whether the people it watched were going to have a hard climb up the mountain of difficulty or an easy time of plenty in the valley of content.
Time was flat now, even for The Varda. It didn’t like this, not one bit. In all its eons of life, it had never felt so blind, so lost. It was missing its one way to guide its people, to keep them safe.
There was no way The Varda could let them know how lost it was. Their pain would only be magnified. It had to adapt, to learn how to see just the now, the present. Right now, all three heads saw only what was in front of them and nothing more.
It had started when the volcano erupted. Started? Perhaps stopped was more accurate. The three-part vision had turned off silently and slowly, like day fading into dusk. It was so gradual that The Varda didn’t even realize it until its sight was darkness, all flat and senseless. It could see, certainly, but not with the sharpness or meaning or surety that it had known all of its life. This was different.
Now The Varda was just like the people of this land. Time to rebuild, but this time it would be different. It would have to be.

Perspective – “Lifestyle choice”

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If only the people who are up in arms about homosexuality would get a sense of perspective. How are the actions of two mutually consenting adults affecting them?

If they want to get upset, they should get upset at people who murder or rape or steal. These are “lifestyle choices” that have victims. There is an aggressor and a victim – the action between the participants is not mutual or agreed upon by both of them.

Being a murderer or a rapist or a thief is a choice. People choose to do these things. This is how they live their lives – taking from others, using others. They make themselves feel better by making other people feel worse. It isn’t an accident – it is intentional. Thus, acting like this is indeed a lifestyle choice.

The upset straight people should get upset at them instead of gay people. March against them. Protest against them. Make life harder for them. But they should leave people alone who aren’t harming them or anyone else.

In fact, it is a “lifestyle choice” to harass, belittle, and attack innocent people who are different from you. Don’t complain about gay people’s “lifestyle choice” by using your own.

Straight people have a choice too – to live their own lives in the way that they are led to, either by conviction or the rules of their faith or denomination. This means they must live their own lives, and make their own decisions about their own lives. They don’t get the right to make these decisions for others – for the same reason they don’t want others to make these decisions for them.

Gay people don’t want others to be gay, and don’t want to affect or change their ability to marry. They are not forcing how they live on others – they are not trying to turn others into them. But they also don’t want others to force their lifestyle on them.

They want to live their own lives, the same as anyone. They want to live and love in safety and freedom, the same as anyone.

I knew a guy who complained about gay people being able to marry, saying that “The gay lifestyle is all about whoring around and being promiscuous.” I pointed out that the very fact that so many gay people wanted to get married, to settle down with one partner, is the very opposite of whoring around and being promiscuous. He had no reply to this.

Poem – Mountain

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Lord, I’m afraid of the mountains.
So high, so far, so few.
It seems as soon as I unpack
it is time to get going again.
I never stay here very long.

Lord, why call me to stand on the mountain
When I can’t stay there?
The mountain is to
catch my breath
or catch sight of
where I have to go.
I can’t breathe,
I can’t see,
in the valleys.
Too many people,
too many chores,
too many things.
It is too much
and yet not enough
at the same time.

I’m grateful for the view, Lord,
don’t get me wrong.
But every now and then I think
a hill
would be better
than a mountain.
Not so far to come back down.
Not so far to go up, too.

Make my path straight Lord,
so I don’t turn left or right
from following you.
But also, if you don’t mind,
make it level too.

What will they think?

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Worried about what other people think about you? Constantly obsessed about how your every action will be judged? Do you second and third guess what you want to wear, say, or do, afraid that someone will decide you are lesser than them?

Don’t be.

Here’s the sad part.

You don’t have to worry about what other people are thinking about you because they aren’t thinking about you. At all. They are too worried about themselves, and what others think about them. They don’t have time to even notice you and what you are doing.

Being paranoid about what other people think is the worst form of narcissism. It assumes they care about you. They don’t even notice you.

This may sound mean and dismissive, but that is narcissism rearing its ugly head again. It isn’t about you at all. So go on, living your life free of worry about what other people think.

In the rare case that someone does say something negative about you, think of it this way – they noticed you. So instead of being an attack, it is an affirmation. You affected them. In the big picture, it is a complement to be noticed.

Plus, they are most likely jealous of how unique and special you are. They wish they had the chutzpah you do to stand out and do their own thing.

People who try to knock you down often do it because you simply aren’t them. If you aren’t doing things their way, they think that either you, or they, are wrong. This is a dilemma for them, because it is important for their choices to be right. They will then decide that this means you must be wrong in order to keep their pride intact.

What they don’t get is that you both can be right. Your way, different from their way, is valid for you, and their way is valid for them. Neither one is wrong.

Why wait for new?

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Monday does not have to be the only day a new week starts. Any day is a good day for January 1. New weeks and New Year’s can happen every moment.

So many people think the day will go bad if the morning goes bad. They want to give up by 10 AM. Does this mean that if you have a bad childhood you have a bad life?

Every day, every moment, is a new one, independent of the others that preceded it. You can start again right then. It never is too late to reform, return, rejuvenate. It never is too late to start over.

You don’t have to wait until you find a new forest to turn over a new leaf.

Seeing bird nests

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I was at a retreat recently, and a lady said she loved late fall because you could see the bird nests. All the leaves were gone, and these things which had always been there were suddenly revealed.

This was very valuable to me.

I’d never liked this time of year because it seemed so dreary. After the long lazy warmth of summer and the glorious display of colors of the leaves of fall, I’d always felt let down by late fall. The trees are bare skeletons, the air is cold, windy, and wet. The next thing was winter- even colder, even windier, even wetter. Nothing to see here. Move along.

But this was different. A treasure was revealed to me by her words. After the winds and storms had passed, we are granted insight and access to a truth previously hidden from us. It was there all along. That which I had hated had done me a favor.

Perhaps I simply require a change of perspective.

Perhaps that which I saw as destruction is showing me what really matters. Perhaps that which I am fighting against is actually doing me a favor.

Think of this. Soup isn’t really soup until heat has been added to it. You put the ingredients together, add heat, and wait. The stuff you don’t want rises to the surface, right in front of you. Then you can skim it off, and your soup is better because of it. The heat is the catalyst.

I’m starting to feel that difficulties and troubles are the heat that shows me what needs to be removed from my life. I’m starting to feel that adversity and struggle are the winds and storms that reveal what really matters too. Instead of fighting and lamenting, I’m looking with new eyes. What needs to stay? What must go? I look at whatever I am doing and see if it serves my goal. Does it bring me further to where I want to be, or hold me back?