The Minute You Feel

When the mind is quiet, the heart opens. A frantic mind keeps all the energy above the neck and keeps the heart closed. Sit quietly, breathe, and ask yourself how you REALLY feel. 


The minute you feel, your heart opens. 

- Chandra Alexander

Letting Go Of The String

Michael laid his hand on my heart.


"Feels like something's shifted in here," he said.


And up came the summer of the lost kite.


We were on Martha's Vineyard, beloved island.
Set up at State Beach where the water is calm and the Cape is across the way. Fat, white ferries passing by. 


The kite was bright yellow with a red dragon. 


Michael had tied it to a beach chair, the handle and string wrapped around the aluminum, holding fast. The wind was good. The kite was way up, flying high. We were looking up, admiring the yellow against blue sky when a gust whipped up, and it unraveled, the kite handle skidding and bouncing across the sand, the kite still high in the sky.


"Catch it, oh no!" I cried out.
"Daddy, get the kite,"Claire called out.


Michael ran, as if saving a drowning child, and dove into the water after the kite. He reached for the handle, string taut, kite full of air. 


It would not be caught.


We watched it, sad at first, flying over the morning water, kite high in the sky, a splash of yellow and red, the handle a skipping stone across the water. 


"I almost got it," Michael said.
"You were amazing, " Claire and I said.
Then "It's okay."


We watched the yellow kite, flying across the morning water, high in the sky, a splash of yellow and red.


The kite got away. 


This morning with my husband's hand over my heart, I felt the perfection of the lost kite, the cut-looseness, the release in letting it fly away, the relief in dropping the sad, the shift, letting go of the string, 


the flying.

All At Once

all at once like a flash flood of love, grace, and need,
the Heart finds its release

- Gus Brett

Good With My Time Here

Sam was out running with her dog when she came upon a small tree that had fallen across the path. When she moved the tree, a sudden terrible pain pierced her chest. Somehow she managed to get home to her husband and three children. That same day, she had emergency triple by-pass heart surgery.


When I heard the news, I damn near fell to my knees. 

How could this happen? 
She's young, fit, forty. 
It happened.

I was lucky and this was a freak thing, she wrote in an email. I still have "lots of livin' to do" (to quote Bye Bye Birdie)! I will value that and be good with my time here.


Sam is very lucky and very brave.


Just for today, let's feel very lucky (and very brave) too.  


Repeat after me:


I will be good with my time here
I will be good with my time here.
I will be good with my time here.

After Every Heart

The morning phone call went like this:


"Hi Dad! How are you?"
"I'm very happy," he said.


That stopped me. I'm very happy? I can't recall the last time I answered how are you with I'm very happy. 


"Wow, Dad."
"I was telling my physical therapist," he jumped in, "I think her name's Paula. I was telling her about when Snuggy and I were young boys and we'd sing these little songs, maybe at Wednesday evening Bible class, or some other...Do you remember this one?"


And he burst out singing:


I've got the joy joy joy joy down in my heart
down in my heart, down in my heart
I've got the joy joy joy joy down in my heart
Down in my heart to stay!


By the end I was singing along, inserting WHERE? after every HEART because I know this song too. Dad taught us when we were kids. My brothers and I shouting the WHERE with a fervor, mingled with laughter, seeing who could sing in the loudest voice.

Keep Coming Back

notice where your mind is right now...
if it's scurrying here and there, like the White Rabbit,
try gently saying something like:

worrying worrying
planning planning 
thinking thinking


take a long inhale, filling up the belly
then a deep, relaxing exhale, 
slowly emptying all the way out.


come back to the breath,
the dog at your feet,
the child in your arms,
the beating of your own heart,
the blue sky...


keep coming back.

A Very Foreign Language

...be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign language. 
                       
                           - Ranier Maria Rilke

Only A Path

I am watching the baby turkeys stumble over the brush pile. The air is thick; heavy, buzzing with cicadas. A flying bug keeps banging its head on the window.

I do that.

This morning I opened Mom's meditation book to this:

Any path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you.

~ Carlos Castaneda

Thought: release yourself