I M Perfect lady

Tag: teaching

  • God’s Peace

     I was asked, "Do you love your mother?"  And this is how I feel.  I wrote this almost 3 years ago…

    “You are the mother you have been waiting for.  When you focus on the mother, you become motherless.”

                Byron Katie

     

    Happy Birthday Mom, I want to thank you for all you taught me.  All the pain you suffered so I could get it right.  I want to thank you for staying true to form, for staying the course, so I could see by your example where it would lead me.  I had you to show me the awful way it would turn out, if I was not strong, if I had no courage, if I had only fear.  

    It is your birthday, and I wish you well, I hold no resentments or anger.  I have lived as you and wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.  Your walk is hard it is not an easy one.  I know the trials on the way, the blindness, the unknowing, no memory, no path, the lost hopes, the dreams that never arrive, the pit of desperation, of false hopes, of others changing, endless roads to no where.  

    I know how it is to hurt unintentionally, to see but not see, to hear but not hear, to have children you can’t protect, to lose more than your heart can hold.

    Some how, by some miracle, I have been spared of lifetime of that.  I have been allowed to spring free, allowed to know a new me.  I was able to walk free of the prison that holds you so tight. 

    We don’t know why I was set free, why I walked away, why I could see what you never could, why I could hear reality.  All we know is that the two of us are the same, but different, for some reason you had to be left behind in a hole of a million sorrows. 

    I stand here outside in the brightness of day, with truth and honesty, reality and kindness. I know why you did what you did, for you didn’t have another way.

    If I had to wish a wish for you, it would be this, “I wish you love, peace and joy, a Heaven of bliss”.

    It is because of you, I am who I am. 

    Ironically we were both motherless yours died when you were two.

    You had no one to show you the way. 

     As a mother I know it would bring me great peace to know that my life was for naught.

    Yours was not, for you gave birth to me.

    If only I could return the favor and lead you out free, but it doesn’t seem to be the way of it for now.

    I leave you knowing where you are, and I wish you peace.

    God’s Peace.

     

     

     

  • “Called Out of Darkness,” a Spiritual Confession by Ann Rice

     …was playing in my Mail Jeep today.

    It is a very interesting journey, from being a Catholic, to Atheist to…not sure, not done with the book. 

    It was very interesting to see her viewpoint of religion and really life itself.

    She is about 20 years older than me, for she graduated the year I was born. But she noticed as a child, that the adult didn't like the children, and often times treated them as if they were innately bad. That if the adults were not watching the children would naturally misbehave.  

    She didn't like the way adults treated the children.  Her parents were different, and to them the kids were just other people in the house…and she never even was treated like a girl, but just a person.  So, she didn't have gender self esteem issues.  In fact her parents named her Howard and the kids called their parents by their given name. They didn't know authority in their home.  An interesting way to grow up.

    Imagine the hidden ways in which we lower a child…naturally.

    She said children are told things long before they have a question about things.  What an interesting observation. Imagine if we didn't tell children things, but waited until they asked???

    Her mother was teaching her religion…long before she could even understand the dynamics of it.  She does however recall feelings of awe and wonder about the Saints and Statues etc.  

    Life to me is lived mostly from the Authority viewpoint and imagine how much better we would all be IF we took the child's viewpoint instead?

    Lots of our religion can't be explained to a child, yet a child can tell you all the wonders it sees as they walk through life.

    She has a very unique viewpoint of her life…and herself.  Her novels spoke of her internal spiritual struggle that she failed to realize until later…I know the feeling.

    Listening to her story has provoked many new things to ponder.  I like it when books do that…nothing I love more than to see things from a new angle.

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  • The Raw and Perfect Truth.

    As I thought about the way we paint people, how we are taught at a very young age to temper our truths, what we see and how we feel, how we not only learn to paint ourselves in false colors, but others as well. 

    We tell little children it is ‘not nice’ to call a fat person fat.

    It is not nice to say that someone who is mean is mean.

    That it is not nice to say grandma made you feel bad.

    We are teaching them, It is not nice to speak your truth…

    And, speaking your truth will make others feel bad.

    Is that right?  How can that be?  How in the world are the child’s words and feelings put aside to protect the mean or fat person?

    And then we wonder why they don’t come and tell us when a mean Uncle so and so did bad things to them.  They have been taught that their feelings don’t matter and that the truth is not kind.

    I am quite certain the fat person knows she/he is fat.

    And perhaps it may be better for us to engage in a conversation about it. 

    When I began speaking my truth, it felt like I was doing something bad.

    Like I had broken the ‘golden’ rule of kindness, that I had turned a corner into the forbidden territory, and all hell would break lose.

    And it did, the pretty painted picture shattered and crumbled.

    I lost friends and family when I spoke out loud and became like a very very stubborn child. I refused to give up what I had seen, how I felt and how the other person’s actions affected me.

    For once in my life, I looked at me in truth and how the world around me felt to me, looked to me…and my coloring people crayons disappeared.

    And the paints I used to tone down what I saw and how I felt…completely dried up. 

    I then discovered an incredible freedom and how easy it was to not have to come up with an excuse for others or worry how my truth would make them feel.

    Byron Katie’s book, “Loving What is” showed me how it was okay and actually a very sacred place to be.

    I was walking with God in reality. 

    I saw what God saw.

    He didn’t paint a sunset over to make it into a bird, nor a tree into a river.  He kept them all in their natural states.  I could then see the perfection in everything. 

    A mean person is mean.

    An unhappy person is unhappy.

    A homeless man has no home.

    A biting dog bites.

    A pedophile abuses children.

    A drunken person drinks.

    A neglectful mother neglects her children. 

    I didn’t try to make any of the above different, it was impossible and not my job.  I retired as the painter to make their lives appear kinder and feel better to me.

    Instead I felt them as they were…I opened myself up to feel all the things I had previously painted, I stripped them down so only their truths shone forth.

    I felt what it feels like to have a pedophile father, a neglectful mother.  I felt it all wash over me removing my own paints of being normal and okay.

    Stripped bare I stood with a family minus the pretty paint.

    Its unvarnished rawness of glaring truths…

    It wasn’t pretty but it was my truth…and I didn’t have the strength or the desire to pick up a brush and cover it up.

    I let it lay there in all its ugly perfect glory… the raw and perfect truth. 

     

     

  • Not in Harmony

    Within me there is a frustrating dilemma, speaking out in a society that is uncomfortable about suicide or remaining silent.

     

    Silent seems dishonorable or maybe rude to not hear such an inhumane scream of suffering…indifference even.

     

    How is it possible to turn away from such a blatant act of desperation?  Surely we want to learn from this.

     

    Do we dare listen to the message?

     

    What is the message? 

     

    How is it possible to be so out of alternatives, to be so backed into a corner where living is ruled out?

     

    Where there isn’t a sliver of hope left.

     

    What is there to learn? 

    What can she teach us?  

    What are the signs? 

     

    There are papers in two different states reporting this death.  The out-of-State paper writes, “Evidence collected by the patrol indicates that she meant to step into the path of the truck.”  And the local paper writes how wonderful she was, an honor student, caring and wise beyond her years, etc.

     

    The pictures of don’t match. 

     

    What was she trying to tell us in her last breath?

     

    What is the contrast of her life and death here to show us?

     

    Due to the drastic nature of her death it seems her life had to equal it somehow, yet her life doesn’t seem to match.

     

    What lies beneath?

     

    I have heard that suicide is a selfish act, but perhaps this is way wrong.  You wonder if she is using her death to say something, loud, clear and unmistakable.

     

    Where it is impossible to call it an accident or natural cause, where it is putting her whole life out there for the world to see.

     

    What is it that she wants us to see?

     

    How can we learn from her life, to see her pathway and find the signs that were leading her to this end, so that we can put in alternative roads for others?

     

    How can her death be used for another’s life?

     

    While we pay close attention to mysterious deaths of the body and perform autopsies, we don’t look equally into suicides to see the path that leads there.

     

    What put her on this road?

     

    What I know is people who are loved, nurtured and who feel safe on this planet; they don’t kill themselves in order to leave.

     

    While it may be controversy to speak of suicide, I am thinking by not speaking of it we are screaming louder that we don’t want to hear about your suffering.

     

    If perhaps as a society we could talk openly and freely about pain and suffering, if it was okay to talk about not wanting to live, to be open and honest, perhaps we then could stop people who feel that those who suffer too much have to leave, that there is no room here for those who suffer.

     

    How we as adults talk about her death, shows the youth how much we embrace reality and truth, how much we are willing to be with those who suffer.

     

    It just seems to me, how wonderful it would be if she could spare another soul her journey.  And if we can change our consciousness about suicide, her death will not be in vain.

     

    She was here to teach us how to become more deeply aware of the signs of covering up suffering, for her social life and her death are not in harmony.

     

     

  • A field with no rules.

    Rewrite, Rewrite, Rewrite were the last words spoken in our final writing class for the year, they echoed and bounced around in my head, unsure if this was encouragement or a reprimand.

    We had just sat though an hour and a half of listening to the words the students had written. Words of emotion, of defeat, of growing up, of unique perspectives, of finding their way, and to me there was no need to rewrite a thing.

    They had given me pieces of their lives told with feelings and said out loud in fear or with great bravado, with pride and with youthful expression, to me it seemed they were perfectly perfect fitting into their life experience.

    Where they were in life fit perfectly in how they wrote. I am not sure rewriting is the answer, it seems that if you say, rewrite you are rejecting what they wrote.

    Rewrite, redo, and reword it…

    The juxtaposition between the enthusiastic teacher, her encouraging voice, and her caring eyes, and the words, Rewrite struck me with contradiction…like a smile with a slap.

    I then wondered how often I had done this, ‘rejecting the project’ while trying to teach technique.

    I began an Art Quilt group, and my intentions were to be with ladies who enjoy creating quilts without patterns, to let go of the ‘rules’ of quilting and just play with the fabrics and even mix metaphors and jumble up what those who came before us defined as perfect quilting.

    Rebels, daring to not follow the well-trodden path.

    When I began quilting, my Aunt told me that I could do anything I wanted, that I didn’t have to follow or adhere to any quilt rule or pattern, that quilting was making a sandwich, putting fabric batting fabric, and I was the creator.

    She taught me without teaching me rules.

    I wonder if you can do the same with writing, if you could just use the same writing instruments; words, paper, pencil and then allow writing to come what may.

    Let the writer go free, allow the writer to follow what feels right for him, to not make him bend and twist into a forgone conclusion of what writing needs to be.

    Whether it be writing, quilting or living life, we seem to neglect the person for the skill, toss out the personality, the Spirit, the essence in trying so hard to get to perfect.

    Maybe it isn’t the writing or the quilt or life but it’s getting to Perfect.

    Is there a way to teach without spoiling it with perfect?

    I guess what we all fear in life is not being able to measure up to perfect.

    I say, once again, kill perfect, declare it a swear word…

    Imperfect has to replace it; it will free so many from the fear of failing. Whether you are writing or creating art, if you let go of perfect you will set free in wide-open fields with unlimited possibilities.

    Lets all play in the field of pure potential as the wise masters say…a field with no rules.