A Step Forth In Faith...

Whenever you may find yourself with a circle of light surrounding you and you're faced with stepping into the darkness of the unknown beyond the circle, faith is knowing one of two things are bound to happen:  either you will stand upon something solid or you will suddenly be given the ability to fly.

The Rare Gift...

Webster's Dictionary definition for the word listen is to pay attention to sound such as music, nature, or talk; to hear with thoughtful attention; to give consideration by listening; to be alert to hear.

I learned a powerful quote from "To The Lighthouse" many years ago I strive hard to abide by, both in my spoken words, and the written ones online.  As I have shared, I know deeply the painful effects of words meant to ridicule and be mean all too well, for I encounter them each time I leave my home.  Words whether spoken or written have the power to either hurt, anger, inspire, convey love, laughter, or wonder.  The quote?  To listen more than one speaks is a rare gift.

To listen becomes a rare gift when we become aware and strive TO listen more than we speak.  Or as we "speak" through social media online.

In his amazing, beautiful book, "The Prophet," Kahlil Gibran touches on this subject in the context of talking.  He says when we do not listen we cease to be at peace with our thoughts and we no longer dwell in the needed solitude of our heart.  Then the words from our lips (or fingers) becomes a diversion and a pastime, and in so doing our ability to listen and think are diminished like a caged bird.  We often tend to do this through fear, such as insecurity, and of aloneness because the silence of being alone with our thoughts is so revealing, we speak without listening.

I love the quote about artists...that we dip our brushes deep within ourselves painting our very soul in our paintings.  Most of us cannot create unless we spend a great deal of time in solitude.  So what I call stinking thinking has no place in the needed peace of thoughts within as I paint my soul in my work.  The same with my piano playing.  And writing this blog.

We need to listen deeply.  There is magic when we do.  On a windy day place your head deep into the grass of a field and listen.  You will hear sounds upon sounds.  Or listen to the waves of an ocean.  Nature is full of rhythm.  And if you listen deeply, everything pauses for a moment.  I gave my horse Selah that name because it means peace or pause.  Remember the word Selah.  Speaking of horses, one of the most wonderful sounds I love the best of all are hearing the clippity cloppity of hooves upon the ground.  And the neigh in response to my calling their name.

Now to return to the rare gift of listening.  Everywhere in the world these days are many ceaselessly talking and writing without listening, with no regard to the hate, anger, truth, fear, sadness and hurt they unleash.  We cannot avoid it.  Yet what we CAN do is strive to nurture the rare gift of listening within ourselves.  We have the power within to do this.  All it takes is a tiny seed to make a huge tree grow, dear ones.

There is peace in silence.  And remember, to listen more than one speaks (or writes) is a rare gift.

Selah.💫

Far And High...

Give all to love,

Throw open thy heart,
Follow it utterly,
Hope beyond hope,
Far and high,
With wing unspent,
Soar into the sky,
And ever ascend.

             ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Blanket...

When my dear mentor friend Jackie (with the unique loud laugh) was in one hospital dying of cancer, I was in another hospital struggling to learn to walk again.  So I couldn't be there, nor could I even get to attend her funeral.  For years it left me with a terrible sadness I seldom shared with anyone.  I needed closure, but how?

Several years after Jackie passed away, I was talking with a minister friend about this.  She asked, "What are some of the things you and Jackie did when she was still alive?"

"Well, one thing we laughed...a LOT.  You know, the kind of laughter where tears are streaming down your face and you nearly wet your pants?  We both had a wicked sense of humor.  And now and then we would drink a glass of wine and talk about the arts, love, horses, sorrow, being on the road, and all the things we each still hoped to do someday.  Whenever I came to town I would take her on long drives and she would pour out to me all the things about her cancer battle Jackie felt she could not tell  her family because it upset them."

"The two of you were really very close," said Lori.

"Yes, we were.  She was much older than I but we had a very close bond.  I was close to her family too.  And they all had horses."

Suddenly Lori had an idea.  "This is what I want you to do...and I realize it may seem crazy, but take a bottle of wine, two wine goblets, and go to her grave you have never been to yet.  Pour wine in a goblet for each of you.  Talk to her as if she is right there.  Pour your heart out."

"Are you serious?"

"I am very serious.  Then I want you to tell me what happens after you have done this, okay?"

"Which means I am going to have to do this, huh?"

"Yep, you got it!"

So this is how I ended up at Jackie's grave pouring wine into two fancy goblets late one afternoon.  

As I began talking to her the floodgates opened and all my sorrow being held back came pouring out.  

Afterwards the sky suddenly opened up with a beautiful, glorious sunset. 

And you know what?  I felt better...a lot better.  I even felt as if Jackie were there.  Then it hit me how much Jackie absolutely would have loved being served wine by me on her grave.  I realized sorrow is not bounded by time, nor diminished...that it is possible to reach an acceptance...a peace, in the midst of loss.

Before I left I poured the rest of the wine on Jackie's grave symbolizing the release I felt.  That is the exact moment words she had written to me years earlier came flooding back:  

"No matter what happens, know my love will always be your blanket of love, dear child of mine."

Live love, for the love we live remains like a warm blanket of love, my dear ones.

The Big Caper...

Sometimes when one is hospitalized for a long period one can make a friend for a lifetime... 

 

When my blood counts were plunging out of control my doctors wanted to try a new drug that went into the bone marrow.  So I was admitted to a pediatric cancer ward in my twenties.  

However, there was another young man my age named Michael who was battling leukemia like most on the ward much younger than us.  We immediately bonded and became the "pied pipers" of the ward.  

Years prior to this I had read the beautiful book written by Doris Lund detailing her amazing son's leukemia battle.  Eric was diagnosed at 17, fought hard, yet died age 22 in 1972.  

One of the things Eric did once while hospitalized for a long while was to put a live goldfish in what looked like a glass I.V. bottle then attached a line which appeared to go into his arm.  When his team of doctors came in they saw him uncharacteristically hunkered down in bed.  They asked what was wrong.  Eric replied, "I'm feeling very scaly."  That's when the doctors then noticed the goldfish and loved it.  

So this brings it back to Michael and I...  

When we both weren't desperately ill from the treatments we were getting we found ways to keep ourselves going and the whole ward going with courage and laughter.  Since the ward was kept in very sterile conditions we were isolated so moments of laughter in the midst of hell could go a long way.  

One day I told Michael about Eric and that was all it took.  We had to try to do what we then called The Goldfish Caper.

Our first priority was to make absolutely sure no goldfish would be harmed in any way.  Since we were confined to the ward we had to enlist our friends "on the outside" to help.  And it all had to be done secretly.

First, I had a friend get a large glass bowl for the fish, besides a decanter which resembled the glass I.V. bottles on the ward.  I painted numbers on so it would appear real.  Michael was able to get his hands on some I.V. tubing.

Then Michael had a friend get two goldfish and food.  We were ready.  

The next morning we got Michael situated when the doctors came to make their rounds on the ward.  I expressed concern to them that Michael wasn't doing well at all.  They entered his room.  Saw him "miserably" hunkered down in his bed.  Concerned, they asked what was wrong.

"Doctors, I feel very scaly inside," said Michael.

That's when they suddenly caught sight of the goldfish in the I.V. bottle.  I don't think I have ever seen doctors laugh so hard!  Then we were applauded.  They loved it!  We were immediate heroes of the ward for the kids.  Soon the whole place heard what we did.

I treasure the memory of this because Michael later lost his fight.  We had talked about death and dying late nights when the ward was quiet.  For at night was the time to stare deeply at our hopes and fears and talk.

This has been another one of those "deeper the sorrow, the more joy" moments of many on my journey.  For you see, had I not been so ill with plummeting blood counts I never would have known Michael.

And never had the "Goldfish Caper."

Oh, and the two goldfish?  

They blissfully lived a long time on the ward.  I later heard the nurses had named them Michael and Adelaide.🐎😃🐎💕💫

Who You Are...

Remember, it is never who you ARE that may hold you back in life.  It is who you THINK you are NOT that does.

The Meadows...

"Rhonda and Adelaide please quit giggling and go to sleep," said Mrs. Holcomb who was a dear House Mother for one of the Girls' Cottages (Dormitories) at the boys and girls orphanage I was staying at.

"Yes, Mrs. Holcomb, we promise!"

We often broke our promises though but dear Mrs. Holcomb was very patient and understanding. 

On the edge of the town surrounded by vast fields and trees, besides having a lovely long tree-lined drive into it was The Meadows Orphanage.  Because the kids went to the same school as myself we quickly forged deep bonds.  Not only did the older kids always look out for the younger ones but they looked out for a height challenged nine year old one too.

Often a mean group of older kids would surround me chanting, "Midget, midget, the scum of the earth, the slime of the sea, the lowest of all humanity."  And without fail the older Meadows kids would rush in taking them on even if it meant coming to blows to do it.  Even all these decades later my eyes fill with tears by how touching it was these kids always did this for me.

So The Meadows Orphanage really played an important part of my journey I am profoundly grateful for.  From the age of two to nine my parents moved twenty-seven times from city to city, state to state.  Like many of the kids, I too had just arrived to yet another place, another new school.

Yet I was blessed to spend a lot of time staying at The Meadows as a child then.  For you see one thing I have so often found on this journey of mine is how those of us who either need each other, or are living with similar tough challenges, or those of us who need loving older mentor friends, always are blessed to find one another.  The dearest people have always entered my life when needed the most.  

Now not all the kids at The Meadows were orphans though.  Some had to be sent there due to abusive home situations similar to mine.  Some because of extreme poverty or parents incapable of caring for them. 

Because we never really got to BE kids by what we had to endure we were already adults in kids bodies.  We had to be in order to survive the awful situations our adults kept us in.  As a child I constantly would have to keep my parents from killing each other.  And many times crying, begging for my drunk father not to shoot himself with the loaded gun in his hand.  Or me.  Other kids endured far worse.

So we shared very deep bonds because of this.  And because of what I also had to deal with in a body like mine, I was embraced all the more in acceptance, trust, and love.

The kids were allowed to have a school friend come stay on a Friday or Saturday each week.  Soon I was spending whole weekends there.  I found out the kids had been telling their Housemothers about me.  They in turn talked to the Director who gave special permission to have Adelaide stay full weekends.

Each cottage had numerous bedrooms with four beds in each room and four bathrooms in a cottage.  In addition each cottage had its own kitchen where the Housemothers prepared meals, but with each kid helping with chores assigned to them including me drying dishes.

The summer after I turned eleven the unthinkable descended upon us.  The state was closing The Meadows and began placing all my friends in foster homes scattered everywhere.  Tears are running down my cheeks recalling the helpless pain we all felt.  These were my friends...my fellow adults in kids bodies.

For awhile some of us kept in touch.  Then the letters ceased.  Many years ago I had a chance to drive by The Meadows Orphanage.  Other than a section of the long beautiful tree lined drive remaining it was all gone.  Replaced by a subdivision. 

The Meadows Orphanage became yet another dear sweet small chapter of my young journey within a terrible childhood that helped me survive it.  And I am forever so grateful it was there.