Round & Round. Hothouse for blooming.

I’m preparing to move back to the Monterey Peninsula, again. Pebble Beach this time. November 1st.

What magic, mystery, karma, true nature – is guiding me back to this place, where my soul, can bloom and thrive. Nurtured by the place, the people, the possibilities, the naked truth of me.

Interesting how we feel that thriving is like the environment we had that felt most pure, as a child. I spent alot of time in the woods – of my parents 40 acre home – in South Central Michigan.
I don’t go there anymore.
Not since 2001.

I drew a line in the soil. We need to draw boundaries sometimes. From these boundaries – we build our home. The wall of the basement – is the boundaries we drew yester-month.

Who’d know that many years later -I’d open my eyes on a Sunday morning – in the foothills overlooking Pebble Beach – hearing the roar of the ocean meeting shore – below – and thinking – how lucky I am – to be here now!

I am living in the forest – out of the traffic of the city – off the beaten trail of the auto – and clamoring crowd. Living in the rich silence of the woods. I strain to hear the wind whisper through the trees. Cliche yes. Cliches are Cliches because they are real.

It’s so simple. And so hard to get. That peaceful, rich, full, and simply beautiful place where we realize, finally, that we are like flowers, inhaling nurturance, our friends and family and even a stranger’s love, curiosity, longing to know us; it all counts to fill us with wonder, and transcendant awe.
We are all like flowers – subtly dependent on the weather to cause us to bloom. We look to situate ourselves in a hothouse environment – where we are sure to bloom. But we’re left to find our own hothouses. Where is my hothouse?

Once Benjamin said about purpose, “We might be on earth -for the one moment – to say hello to a woman in the gutter – who needed to know – she was seen by someone – in that time – in that place.” My sons are rich – having made their own lives meaningful to them – for now. I know they’ll awaken – and it’ll all change – or at least look different – down the road. Sometime soon.

Blooming is all we really want in life.
How hard it is to find – how good it is to find – how simple it is to find – when we finally find it. . .
Our blooming self!

Bloom

Quick Update

Someone asked me recently – “Now that you’ve sorta moved into your Carmel-like Monterey home – what are you doing these days?” So, this is a good opportunity to update lots of folks and my blog.

Aside from playing with my Grandson Edison for 24 hours over July 4th weekend, I’ve been volunteering. Volunteering is a way to get to know the community.

As in most good things, asking for what we want usually leads to getting more than we can imagine. I’ve been asking and receiving abundantly.  Here’s a quick overview.

 The Community Hospital of Montery Peninsula One day in early June I read in the Monterey Herald that there was an “urgent call for type O+ blood (after the Memorial Day weekend.)  Since I was a regular donor the last year I lived in Lodi, I though it would be a good way to get to know a few people and contribute. What a friendly and animated group! While sitting there in that comfy chair I got to listen to M. Rau talk about her month long trip to Tuscany with her family. Animated and exhuberant about the villa they enjoyed and the great food she swept our imaginations to Tuscany for 20 minutes. As she got to know me a bit – she suggested that I volunteer at the CHOMP. Not knowing what the CHOMP was – I asked. “CHOMP is unlike any hospital. Thanks to the larghesse of the people of this region – it is more like a five star hotel than a hospital. You’ll meet very fine people and be treated very well! It’s a good start.”  So, after background checks, TB tests and a two hour orientation I was assigned to the Gift Shop two evenings a month. Not wanting to keep the title “Provisional” I’ve signed up to volunteer six evenings by August 21st. M. Rau was correct. It’s a little bit of heaven within the resort like property called the Community Hospital.

The World Affairs Council of Monterey Bay (thanks to a friend of Les) may be my first board position in this region. I received a call just yesterday asking me to submit my bio for consideration in being nominated a member of the board. I’m delighted and honored to be consided – since this collection of people present speakers and a network of movers and shakers. The Defense Language Institute, Monterey Institute of International Studies and Naval Postgraduate School (all located here in Monterey) are well represented on the board and membership.)

This year is the 70th anniversary of the Carmel Bach Festival. A realtor showing me a home took the time to answer my question: “Which organizations or events would you recommend to get to know the “flavor” of folks in this region – who’d also appreciate me?”  Her answer was quick: “The Carmel Bach Festival.” So, after a few visits with the staff, I’m the woman people meet on Monday and Wednesdays when they come to the box office for tickets to any of the 3 weeks of classical concerts. I meet friendly people from all over the world! Amazing to realize how much is going on – that’s world renown – right here!

The Summer of Love Concert in Monterey on July 28th & 29th (After attending an event sponsored by the Monterey Chamber of Commerce, I met the Publicist for the event. Wendy Brickman and I seem to be kindred spirits and after a white linen table cloth lunch in a closed restaurant (she’s well known by local restauranteurs for obvious reasons) she invited me to assist her with the event. I’ve always wanted to shadow Publicists and P.R. Folks!

Concours d\’Elegance August 15-19 in Pebble Beach – will be my final volunteer effort this summer. As September approaches – I imagine I’ll be moving toward the “for pay” efforts that are now simoultaneously appearing on the horizon.

I’m meeting with new friends to discover needs that I might fill in my “new business” venture – whatever that will become. Thank Goodness for the fine people I’ve met here. Seems to me the doors of opportunity are opening – more easily in this region – than anywhere I’ve ever lived. Amazing and encouraging.

Journal 6.18.07

A rainbow of quick thoughts in this blog. It’s been too long since I’ve written – and I miss writing and posting.

Here’s what’s moving me this morning – in the fog and sunshine.

Poetry Illuminates, Like Paint for the Mind

This excerpt by Brandon Cesmat book: “Driven Into the Shade,” (ISBN 0-9 714003-3-4) moves me …

“If I lie down for the wheel of time

to roll over me, I am full of use;

I keep time from falling, I catch memories

and hold words as sand holds the colors of a mandala. Everyday on the beach,

blueprints to circumvent suffering are thrown

and then withdrawn to the laughter of waves.”

Today I’m practicing making conscious choices – rather than the conscious-numbing choices that tempt me into stultifying comfort zones.

Every choice affects our consciousness, like the chemistry of food affects our essence.

One more collection of moments combine into what I call the past. I wonder what today will look like in the future. Speaking of what “now” will look like in the future…

I am never in the same moment again. William James, the great psychologist-philosopher-teacher of the early 20th Century wrote that all memory is storytelling since we can never experience a moment from the same consciousness-context twice. Every moment is a chemistry of choices that shapes the next moment of chemistry – and choices. To really know the story of our lives we need to examine the storyteller.

The Math of Moments

This morning I wondered about ‘the math of our life. A day full of momentary choices occurs in the dark and light over 87,840 seconds, 1440 minutes, or 24 hours. That seems like a lot of opportunity to create. No wonder I’m tired after 16 hours. By 10 P.M. I’ve made thousands decisions! Sleep. It’s underrated.

The Impact of Child Abuse Illustrated in the play “Foreign Women“

Yesterday I saw the play, “Foreign Women” at the Carl Cherry Center in Carmel. There’s no way one can see that 90 minute play and hide from the reality of child abuse – in the faces of young adults.

Serendipity and character study guided my curiosity as the storyline unfolded.

Since it’s only a 48 seat theater in a once large home in Carmel, the audience, all 32 of us, got an up close and for some uncomfortably personal view of how people’s lives are twisted by the bully parents and relatives who commit child abuse of any sort. It’s inspiring to see (so closely) how the 20-somethings suffer the tragedy of creating functional lives while engulfed in memories of horror and shame. Seeing how some create hardened masks of anger to fend off would-be abusers, while others create lives in the shadows to avoid being found by would be abusers. Skirting the truth until the truth finds them vulnerable in relationships they can neither navigate or understand, until they’ve past. Defenseless and mute in the moments of love, they are deeply present in the tragedies and dramas of their darkened lives. Wanting to appear “normal” they pretend to be navigating the tides of intimacy they so deeply crave and fear.

The Carl Cherry Theater seats 48 so the audience is nearly on-stage but certainly intimately in the room with the emotions of 20-Somethings’ courageously persevering past the haunting memories of child abuse. It seems apparent that abuse creates a disability worse than visible or acknowledged disabilities. Cognitive, neurological, and emotional interruptions in development influence the way we perceive our choices, ourselves, our capabilities.

I wonder what percentage of the population is living with the disability created when the developmental stages of childhood were interrupted by experiences of fear, terror, violence, neglect or estrangement. Certainly adolescent drug abuse is a form of self-abuse that has developmental impact. I wonder how many people have been compromised during development – in ways they have not recognized – even now.

Only in looking back can we recognize the impact of our choices, and celebrate our courage and resilience, or face the impact of decisions that caused others or ourselves to suffer. I think we make unwise decisions when we do not acknowledged the fears, sadness, hurt, and/or rage planted in our developing soul throughout childhood.

I’ve read research about the power released when we humans can acknowledge and integrate development impacts from childhood pain. When we integrate we have more emotional and physical energy and our reasoning power and capacity expands. We make better choices when we have more reasoning resources. Our lives are comprised of the choices we make.

It may be bigger than we’ve acknowledged. I wonder how many world-shaking decisions are made by men and women who are developmentally-impacted by their childhood.

Why don’t we acknowledge and examine the impact of developmental disturbances in “functional” people too?

What if we did something BIG about the inhumanity right in our own culture? What if we were not afraid of “the bullies”? We go to war with bullies. But that’s only the displaced satisfaction.

What can we do to shake down the shambles of developmental impact of abuse, neglect, and estrangement?

What if we decided to shake-down our preconceptions about parenthood as a right? What if we decided parenthood is a privilege we all have to earn?

Dear God, wake us from the stupor of fear that causes us to stand still and silent, like Lot’s wife, frozen in salt-rock, breathless with unacknowledged desire to stay in our morbid comfort zones, burdened with unacknowledged emotional baggage.

Sometimes my courage evaporates. Sometimes I stand still in my fear. I can awaken when I remember, I will live in increasing emotional-desolation, suspended in breathless, vacant, soul-less thoughts, until I acknowledge my fear, of facing, my fear.

Writing this blog-is like hugging the part of me – that breathes, acknowledges, embraces, nurtures and restores me.

Moving Into Monterey

I’m still discovering this region, the Monterey Bay Peninsula including Carmel and the Carmel Valley. I imagine the choices I am making will become a painting, sculpture, dance or poetry reading soon.

Challenge as a Metaphor

It’s been anything but easy to assimiliate physically into this beautiful artistically inspiring, natural sanctuary, home. I still wonder what the meaning of the challenges have been. I see metaphors in the fact that essential elements of survival have needed “repair” in order to fully live in this beautiful place. For 31 days we lived with uncertainty about whether the water, gas, heat and openings to wind and weather would be secured. Some spiritual traditions talk about the “threshold guardians” as a metaphor for times when we “move up” to inhabit our deepest dreams – we are “tested” to deteremine whether we have what it takes to inhabit “more” of what we truly want – in our lives.

Results? I believe we’ve passed through the a “doorway.” And, now for the next threshold. God be with us each moment.

Adventure

Each day is an adventure of infinite moments speeding in community of artists, playfulness, and the undertow of business.