reclassified ~

11 Thursday Jun 2015

Posted by tornadoday in a time for telling, Poetry, Rambling

Tags

acceptance, as easy as breathing, beauty, blessings, divine this, family, forgiveness, gravel roads, home, knowing, lessons, letting go, life, love, nothing is ever lost, only, sacred intimacy, simply, truth, understanding

Try as I might, from time to time I need reminding (or, as my Ma Hutch would have said, ‘a skillet to the head’). I can get so caught up in the drama that I forget the bottom line. I neglect the one thing that matters most.

If there’s a rule by which my daddy lives, it’s simply this. “Don’t ever let a problem become bigger than a person to love.” He makes it seem easy, to be honest.

And sometimes, it is easy. Like when everyone agrees or we’re all focused on that single one brilliant thing that takes our collective breath away.

But most of the time, opinions get caught in the middle. Egos stand in the way. Perceptions about things that no one even witnessed – well, a lot of things get in the way. And before you know it, we’re arguing about whether it’s too early to plant watermelon or too late to start a movie.

And the thing (love) that was absolutely the most important thing is somehow ‘managed over’, reclassified into the ‘not so important’ file in error.

That’s not to say that love is forgotten (I love you; it’s the liking that hangs me up). It isn’t. It’s just a second thought, something taken for granted that never should be. It’s the lone footnote that should have been the title.

My mother meddles in things that aren’t her business. My sister struggles with demons almost 30 years old. My children and grandchildren have lives of their own, plans of their own. The moon turns a jealous eye, and before we notice, another season is passed – another time not to come again.

But if we’re lucky (so blessed), that thing that mattered (love) – it remains. When the voices are lost in argument, opinions have burned away, and the quiet settles soft like the snore of a sleeping child – it is there (still).

So, today, before I respond too quickly to an email or a text, I remind myself that nothing is bigger than my love for these. Nothing I will allow.

in fields
where yesterday
forgotten
petals crush the ground
with the memory
of every winter
frost

bring me round
one more time
before the blossom fades
let me breathe
the sweet perfume
of love –
was never
lost

. . .

the want for stars ~

19 Tuesday May 2015

Posted by tornadoday in Poetry

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

acceptance, age, angels, divine this, forgiveness, gratefulness, grief, home, loss, love

am I the proof
of sanity
and someone’s need for
closure
the want for stars
when all the night
is numb

to wishes
where our horses lay
wheat a shade
of pale
a mirror posed beneath
the starting now

am I the proof
of mysteries –
quite well though some
have said
remember where
and when
our fortune turned

loss into forgiveness
sorrow into bliss
reminders of
a prayer –
and I
the proof

. . .

if ever if only ~

16 Saturday May 2015

Posted by tornadoday in Poetry

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

acceptance, angels, assurance, beauty, becoming, blessings, connection, conscious consciousness, divine, fearless, grace, gravel roads, home, love

if ever
if only
and here we begin
the coming back whole
from the past

a living
surrendered
to demons and thieves
angels the color
of morning

linger
on windowsills
roll in the grass
laughter spilt
with careless regard

for the weight
of forever
a sweet memory
held to the heart
by the soul

. . .

love me up ~

04 Monday May 2015

Posted by tornadoday in Poetry

≈ 24 Comments

Tags

acceptance, distance, friendship, frustration, love

As of late, I’m a bit overwhelmed. Yeah, it’s the new job and a hundred other things….

But the thing that overwhelms me is something else. It’s an old familiar struggle.

I recognize the signs, and yet hesitate to do anything about it. It happens periodically that those I love want more than I can give – some reassurance of my love.

And while I have no issue with reassuring, and am sorely grateful to be loved, at some point, it doesn’t feel like my reassurance is enough. Loving becomes more like a job because if I don’t respond a certain way or within a specified time, then surely I must not love.

Instead (and I imagine you laughing even now, bird), it becomes about me showing the signs and following the rules. And once it becomes about the rules, it stops being love. Once it becomes an obligation, it stops being love.

I had a conversation with my sister-in-law just last week. She frets because her relationship with her son isn’t what she wants. She wants to be a part of his daily life and so she calls, and calls, and calls. And eventually, he gets angry and tells her off. Then she gets her feelings hurt and calls to say that he doesn’t love her (and I’ve always thought I was a good mother).

What she doesn’t realize and I’m trying to help her see is that she has made this all about her, instead of realizing that love is about giving others what they need (even when it’s not what we need). The times I felt most loved are the times when someone gave me something they really didn’t want to give. It was in those times, their love for me was bigger than them feeling loved in return.

And yep, what happened is what I knew would happen – I loved them more.

I have a dear friend who doesn’t yet understand this simple notion. If I haven’t written, then she won’t speak to me. She punishes me for not being the friend she wants or thinks she deserves. Ultimately, she’s right for I’ll never be the friend she wants or deserves. But if she understood, she might be amazed to find that I can be a better friend than either. Instead, she sets the rules of how I should love and gets less in the process.

What my sister-in-law doesn’t yet realize is that if she allows her son all the space he needs, he will eventually come to her and she will receive more of the one thing she wants – his love. Until then, she can make herself miserable with the rules, and at the same time, somewhat unlovable.

the busy moth
a night becomes
the color of the moon
a shade the same
as breath
within the cold
ashes drift
and I’m returning
to where I was before –
awake when no one knew
to ask the dream

. . .

mysteries undone ~

28 Tuesday Apr 2015

Posted by tornadoday in Poetry, Rambling

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

acceptance, bliss, divine, echoes, faith, fearless, forgiveness, gravel roads, love, postmark, sacred intimacy, sometimes, soul, souvinirs, still, truth, value

of sorrows
I’ve forgotten much
daylight
passed between
the dark of dawn
as reason fell away
a place to keep
so holy now
resolved as once
to touch
solace meant the moon
was come to stay

poetry
of wake me up
before the light is gone
leaves are falling
tears beyond
the sun
dreams
of you remind me
somewhere yet unknown
I speak of these
of mysteries
undone

nestled down
in fresh cut grass
a shimmer o’er
the pond
a whispering of wings
above the pines
echoes fill
the places
now am I again
the same I was
tho ne’er the less
divine

. . .

proof of home ~

09 Thursday Apr 2015

Posted by tornadoday in Poetry

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

acceptance, connection, conscious consciousness, destiny, get me back, home, kentucky, seeing in the dark, sometimes, stars, truth, wandering

for every same
another was
unlike of all I’ve known
kept with me
a map of ancient roads
made of places
some have seen
few would recognize
whispered soft
the name of every star
spinning time
as ringlets
round your finger –
let me fall
into the place
where once you were
and I the proof
of home

. . .

ragged edges ~

11 Friday Jul 2014

Posted by tornadoday in a time for telling, Rambling

≈ 31 Comments

Tags

acceptance, beauty, becoming, conscious consciousness, destiny, faith, family, fearless, forgiveness, grace, knowledge, life, living, love, memory, old maps, passion, reason, spirit, spirituality, strength, truth, understanding, wandering, wisdom

This past week, I was pulled into a conversation quite by accident. I was on my way to the break room by way of the conference area where others were having lunch – mostly women, mostly young. The conversation was on soul mates. Now, my thoughts on that are likely light years from the opinions being shared in that room, and my first instinct was to walk faster. It didn’t work…

Eventually, the conversation turned to something broader – the idea of perfection. Surely you see how the concept of soul mates, would imply for many, an ideal relationship of ideal persons. And yet, how can it be when we are imperfect in almost every way?

I don’t know about you, but I’m happy to be imperfect. Maybe it’s related to getting older, but there is nothing remotely attractive about perfection. I don’t want to be it, achieve it, advise on the process of achieving it, much less sleep with it. If we arrive at a notion that we are without flaw, then what purpose living? How can we hope to learn something new, to grow from the place where a scar used to be?

“The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.”

Maybe we would do good to focus more on the fact that we are perfect. No, I didn’t change channels on you. This – the beautiful paradox. Even though I have no desire to be perfect, another voice tells me that I am already for I am perfectly ‘me’. This combination of flaws, scars, mistakes, wrong turns, and near misses – it is the formula that got me here. Were it not for the way I came, could I be who I am? Every experience, every burden is for a reason – anticipation for a future beyond our ability to see.

We only have to begin. In my harshest seasons, I’ve returned from the colorless world of heartache by forcing myself to look hard, for a long time, at a single wondrous thing – the crimson umbrella of a weeping plum outside my bedroom window, family around a table holding hands (my hands), the ghost that haunts the surface of the moon.

I’ve become an expert at learning to be in love with my life again. Like a stroke survivor relearning to walk, I have taught myself joy, over and over again.

Soul mates? Aren’t we all – in some form or another? We are tied together by invisible thread, part of an amazing tapestry of other imperfect (perfect) beings. Our purpose, our joy is in allowing those we love to be perfectly (imperfectly) themselves, without the need to make them the same as we are. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love our reflection in them. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that you don’t love someone because they’re perfect, but rather in spite of the fact that they’re not.

Anyone can love someone ‘because’. That’s as easy as folding down a page, or pushing a stray hair behind your ear. But to have love ‘despite’ – to know the flaws and love them as well. That is rare and pure and yeah, that’s perfect.

“We laugh and laugh, and nothing can ever be sad, no one can be lost, or dead, or far away: right now we are here, and nothing can mar our perfection, or steal the joy of this perfect moment.”

I am grateful to be always a work in progress.

. . .

what we keep ~

06 Wednesday Nov 2013

Posted by tornadoday in a time for telling, Poetry, Storytelling

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

acceptance, becoming, connection, death, faith, family, fearless, forgiveness, grace, knowledge, life, living, love, memory, nature, passion, reason, relationship, restless, spirit, spirituality, strength, trust, truth, understanding, value, what we keep, wisdom

Earlier this week, I received an email from a dear friend – updating me
on the health of her husband (cancer) and inquiring on the
status of a mutual friend. I responded, and her response
to me left me with a feeling – that I needed to
post this. Even in the knowing, it was
good to find someone else who did as well.

[Obviously, names have been changed; feel free to find your own.]

. . .

Dearest Beth,

Leah is fine, but I so understand your comments regarding Dan. I feel
the same about Leah. When I call in the morning, and she doesn’t answer,
I immediately wonder if something has happened. Fortunately,
there are lots of days where there is no power
where she lives or issues with the phone lines in between. Or
days when her night has been horrid and she has finally
gotten to sleep with aid of medication and she doesn’t
even hear the phone.

She knows I worry, but we’ve reached a wonderful place of knowing
– and appreciating the gift that is now. If there
is grace in growing older, it is coming to an understanding of
what matters. We’ll sometimes laugh about stuff we could be doing
but we’re not – quite simply because age gives us the wisdom
to know that the road isn’t quite as long and we’re not going
to fill it up with things that have no
value.

I’m sorry to hear about Dan, but another part of me is reminded
of a story from years ago. A dear friend spoke of her father’s passing
with cancer and I commented how hard it must be to watch a
loved one go slowly. She smiled back and said that the offset
was something so many don’t have – notice. Her family had
been given time to say aloud everything they wanted to say,
to share what they needed to share. The end was
still hard, but the ‘afterward’ much easier without
the regrets over what had
never been said.

There are a world of people out there who would give
anything for one more day, one more hour, one more time……..
to say. They had no notice. It’s a
wonderful thing to think we never hold back, but we do……..we
keep from each other the most intimate of our feelings
and then we have nowhere to put them.

May you find a place most tender.

Love,
Me