Notes from the Purple Bench

Do you ever have moments where you wonder if you are doing enough with your life? I do. I'm not a rocket scientist, nor am I a PhD working on the latest cure for cancer. And for the most part, I am satisfied with how I've participated in the career world and in my personal life. It's curious however, that I continue, now and again, to have these kinds of 'less than' thoughts.

My greatest accomplishment to date [according to me] may be summed up in two really nice human beings I birthed and loved into this world. Yet there are times when in the midst of people with impressive educational acronyms behind their names, a shadow is cast in self-doubt and reflection of what kinds of value I have contributed here during my time of Earth.

Why is that?

It seems, in America at least, the standards of success and value are wrapped up tightly in what we do as workers, how much we bank, what kind of car we drive and where we live. This is the short-list of those sort of markers of "making it."

And so I wonder...am I supposed to be doing more, being more, making more, buying more? Just yesterday I actually had one of those damn thoughts waft through my head!

And then something happened to stop me in my thoughts.

I carry a belief the 'Universe' can hear what we think, say, question and feel, and will respond [sometimes in record time] in-kind with some type of message. On the heels of my thought/question [am I doing enough?], I found a note from the Universe in the form of a yellow sticky wrapped around a music CD I had left on my purple bench for neighbors to take, the one that sits on the city parkway for my neighbors to take a load off during their neighborly strolls.

I had just decided the day before to begin a collection of photographs of the bench. I occasionally see neighbors sitting on the bench, but more often I only know someone has been there with the obvious shuffling of pillows rearranged for each person's individual taste and comfort. Evidence that someone has been there when I wasn't looking. I snapped the first in the series and walked over to the bench to see if the CDs had all found new homes.

There were two remaining out of the original five and oddly one of them had a note attached. Strategically wrapped and tucked into the CD sleeve to keep it from blowing away, here is how it read:

"Hello Sweet People on the Corner. I really enjoyed listening to this CD. Thank you for sharing your positive energy and for also making this a happy corner in the neighborhood. My daughter and I come by every day on our walk. Thanks! Noelle & Grace."

A blanket of warmth ran over my heart as it grew exponentially with the reading of the note. This 3" x 3" yellow square a prime example of what money does not buy, the priceless value of humanity working at its best and a note from the Universe [and the purple bench] that I am enough, I am contributing something of value and making a difference here on Earth.

I've also decided that my curriculum vitae [the course of my life] may need a little rewriting to include a section titled, "Notes from the Purple Bench." Signing off to write a note back to Noelle & Grace and post it on the telephone pole.

Love: Lost and Found

At age 18, what usually marks the time to spread one's wings and fly free from the family tree, I fell fast and hard from the nest instead. My wings unprepared and entangled with the twigs and twine of the nest builders, only to become paired up with another fledgling.

I've often thought that my life as a budding adult, through what is deemed as the 'identity phase' [roughly18-25] was put on pause. Over the years, I've looked inside from the mature responsible woman's exterior and could still see and feel the 18 year old in me waiting for the fun, adventures and reckless abandon to begin. Hold please! The path of individual growth merged with the care and responsibility of other fledgling beings. Forty years down the road I still have a sense of her and through later-in-life experiences she has emerged ethereally a beautiful bird soaring at unimagined heights with layered depths of perception.

I've listened with big attentive ears to the stories of youth through the breathed memories of others. I can't say I ever really feel sad or a loss around my chosen path versus the path of [natural order]. It's as if I already knew it, through a past life perhaps, and so I walked before I crawled into adulthood, I mothered on the edge of transition between child and adult. Many of my ideals and dreams stowed away for another time. That time is now.

The recent passing of my 58th birthday has me reflecting on my wants and desires, the list of which has been tempered with time. Shortened to nothing that money can buy. A sincere soulful attempt to "do unto others" from the book I've never read and to love and honor myself. To understand and live the rest of this life knowing that, just as I am—I am enough. To no longer rely and look for praise and love outside of myself, for that path is entwined with the opposite effect that can clip our own wings of wonder. Everything else that arrives at this point is, as they say, icing on the cake.

I've arrived at this much spoken about [unaccepted] place of self love. Not withstanding going through some very low, alone and dark places. Those places might just be prerequisites and damn hard lessons in the cirriculum of life. (Insert smiley face here.)

I wish everyone could feel this kind of love. It is freedom, it is peace, it is love. It's our birthright.

This Moment

If all I have is this moment, then what?

I slide into the perfection of support from the genuis of an Adirondack chair.

I gaze out from the deck into the enchanting forest inhabiting the island.

I see the sun rising in a quiet peek-a-boo through the trees.

I listen to the sounds as the winds dance in whispers around limbs and leaves. 

I smile as the sun's shine paints in hues of warmth and glistening effects. 

I admire the fluttering leaves above dripping like diamonds against new morning skies.

I thank God for allowing me, in this moment, to be in "it."

Little notes from the A-frame on Islesboro Island, Maine. 

A Fork in the Tree

It was the last morning at the A-frame on Islesboro Island, Maine and the sun was shining in full strength for the first time in a few days. The surrounding landscape of trees, the enchanting forest, started to come alive.

In one unfolded moment, a beam of light projected itself onto a tree to my right, illuminating first a section of its branches then the leaves. The branches formed a couple of V-shapes with my mind bent toward this thought, "A fork in the tree."

What followed next goes a little something like this: A chipmunk scurried up the trunk of tree. Like a fork in the road it hit a point of decision, where two branches meet. One going this way, the other going that way. And unlike the human-way...the chipmunk at the fork in the tree, with great instinctual nature and without a moment in hesitation—made its choice.

Time and Space

A middle of the night thought, time and space, still present in the early morning waking. Time and space, time and space — on my mind.

It has been said by many, "Time heals all wounds." I believe that and have experienced this phenomena of time as healer. As time ticks on the density and depth of a wound fades to a misted memory. Like the fading memory of a distant dream.

Space a gap of time yet not ticking like time. A place of expansion and growth, like ground to roots. The absence of time, people, places and things. To be, to feel, to absorb the rich offerings from the passings of time — to fully embrace and understand and put them in their proper place. Inside the heart.

Photo courtesy of Paul Tibbets.

Divine Decades

When I first purchased my vintage Spanish Revival bungalow 10 years ago, it was a dream realized. I never dreamed however, that I would burrow-in as a single occupant for this long. Looking back, I never consciously had that as my intention—it was not my plan at all. Then there is that nagging saying, you know the one, "There is my plan, and then there is God's plan."

I wrestled with this reality for a good number of years during this past decade, coming off of an 18 year marriage and not seeing myself as one of those "single-people." I handed down a verdict of self-judgment that was reflected back by numerous people through their broken smiles uttering things like, "I can't believe you are still single!" Or, "You're so (fill in the compliment), how come you don't have a boyfriend?" 

The year 2012 brought in profound and significant losses that permeated my life, mind and heart. It paved a new road of thought and, in retrospect, became a pivotal time for the way that I would think about my world moving forward. I was still here, while others were no longer. I dug deep beneath my skin, burying my head so near to my heart, almost as if to ensure it was still beating. Grief is an odd and unpredictable station in life.

Fast forward and through most of it...grief that is, I arrived at a place of contentment. A profound sense of peace and joy with my life as it is, my place in and around it, an elevated sense of self and the release of mind as judge, jury and sentencer. Released out into a life with open hands and heart to the faith and fate of my destined journey. The mantra "Let go and let God" along with a few "Hail Mary's" and in alignment with my own acceptance, because that is the only way that miracles can get in, has brought with it a bounty of gifts that I could only experience through the light of divine connection and recognition of it as such. Oddly enough, (not really) the hand-held mirrors from other people were placed face-down. The once hard-to-hear remarks muted from outwardly conversations—and erased from my own internal struggle of a voice.

At the beginning of this year I heard Jacob Glass, a teacher of spiritual thought say "You are the glory and greatness," we all are. I scribed that on my bathroom mirror where I would see it every morning, and I would say it repeatedly to myself—no matter how hard or foreign it was to hear. It's true, it is how we were first delivered as babes unto this world and, in short order, sadly forgotten by many—and most of the time by ourselves. 

My life is and has been through a long lineage of divine decades, and this one in-the-making is proving everday to unfold more divinely than I could have ever imagined. 

The Fear of Being Loved

"All You Need is Love." The Beatles sang it, the sages proselytize it and today you can simply purchase the saying on a wood block as decoration. I own one. I chant it, I believe it at my core and at the same time I am challenged by it. 

If love is all you need—all I need, then why does the prospect of it with another raise an eyebrow of disbelief, or have my heart drift behind the clouds of self-protection? Why is something that seems so profoundly simple and innate to our humanness become a struggle, a fear? These are the questions before me today. Good morning Lori.

Of course, I believe to know my own answer. Somehow writing it out becomes a process of working it out. I'm fairly certain it begins with the beginning, my grand entrance into the world. Held in the naive pairs of hands that carried me home, to nurture and love me the best way they knew how—in that moment.

From there, etched in stone, were definitions of love—their definitions. The stone ultimately rolled out into the world, down a few hills (at times mountains), taking little or no time to gather the moss of its own identity. The etchings of what was known of love carved deeper and deeper in definition. Tumbling down farther along the bumpy roads of life and further away from the divine truth of love. 

Until one day, and there have been more than one, the stone came to rest—to stillness. The etchings of love halted and hiding, peering out from behind the bent brim of experiences. Allowing for a more peaceful passage of time. Time and space for the moss to grow, nurture what defines its core and ponder the meaning of love. Time as healer, smoothing out the nicks of pain and shaking off the dusty-heart of a jarred journey. 

The etchings are scars trying on new definitions for love—challenging my mind's heart not to be afraid. To roll on, now with a softer surface and understanding.

Wishing for it to be simpler or I were more courageous about living into the mantra of love. I'm still working on it.