Tag Archives: stillness

STARTING AGAIN WITH LESS – Day 99 and 100 in a year of…

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Day 99 and 100, November 1, 2016 @9:06 am

Surprising how busy and strapped for time I feel these days.  When I get ***over with, I will do *-* is often in my thoughts.  That time never comes.  Something always fills that *** space.  I’ve been feeling fatigued and stressed the last few weeks.  My goal yesterday was to do less.  I did not succeed.

img_8287Today is November 1st.  October is over – an ending and a new beginning.  I can try again to find that space of restfulness, of non striving, of doing one thing at a time.  What better teachers to sit with than Melli O’Brien and Dan Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence?  I’m learning not to feel the overwhelm.  I’m reminded to take small steps.  I’m appreciating the gift of sitting still with things as they are. The practice of coming back again and again to stillness, myself and what is important is worth the effort.

WRITING ON THE WORD

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IMG_39192015 is over. We are into the second day of 2016. There has been no big bang.  No celebration.  None that I’ve felt nor seen anyways. It’s disappointing in a way but it’s all good.  It’s a slow comfortable ease from the old into the new. Let me celebrate it now with my words and pictures.  Let me draw back the curtain and close the door. Let there be no distractions while I sit in the STILLNESS of last year’s word and think about the ORDER I want in the coming year.

IMG_3925My tea is made.  I am ready to sit in silence and look backyards to what I have left behind.  It is peaceful here looking out to what was. What was fell short of my intentions of stillness.  It happens.  Shit and failure can happen.  I see that now. I am not that powerful.  I am not in control of the Universe.  I cannot wave my magic wand and make VOILA! happen.  I can’t even tell you a good fairy tale.

 

IMG_3930What I can tell you is that the stillness I intended and longed for is here within me now.  In this moment as I am tapping out my words, I feel its presence within.  I look up and I can feel my ancestors looking down on me.  I hear a whisper.  ‘Be still and you will find order in your life.’

 

ALL THAT THERE IS

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IMG_2241It’s 9:45 Saturday morning.  The sun is finally making its entrance.  He knows how to be dramatic.  He peeks slowly above the rooftops one minute, the next thrusting its rays full force, like Jimmy Durante dancing on stage.  VOILA!

I say it’s about bloody time!  These heavy dark mornings gets on a girl’s nerve, never mind her heart.  I can almost hear that shoeglass dropping.  It shatters into a million shining splinters, the sun bouncing off the shards as they fall.  Everything is all right.  It’s just an imaginary playing in my mind’s eye, much like a dream.  I am made of sterner stuff.  I do not shatter so easily.

IMG_2240I am doing so much better than I realize. This is how my desk look this morning – better than it has for a gazillion years.  You can actually see the glass desktop.  It does feel infinitely better not to have my usual pile of clutter piled in front of me, pushing me down, squishing me in.  My sun room is my sacred space and it is about time for me to give it the respect.  Thanks to a blog called simply + kierste on how to have to clean home every day.  I get it now.  There’s holiness in clean uncluttered spaces.  I am loving the ritual of cleaning and clearing.  It calms my heart and eases my mind.  It puts me in the stillness of the Universe.  I am saved another day – to breathe, write and love all that there is.

STILLNESS

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IMG_6947I see life in words and pictures.  And if I was to choose a word for 2015, it would be STILLNESS.  I see the beauty of it right before my eyes – so brilliant and still.  It awaits me, telling me I can do it.  It is within reach if I wish.  All I have to do is nothing.

I have not been good at stillness, at doing nothing.  Even at rest, my hands betray me with their tapping, their fluttering.  My thoughts run away every chance they get.  My mind is not a restful place.

With no more STATS or Code Blues to run to, no call bells to answer, no one’s call of nature to take care of except my own, is it any wonder that I’ve been a little more quirky and unsettled the past year?  I have been like a runaway train on a roller coaster, careening out of control.  There is no one to save except myself.

STILLNESS is a good word for me.  It stills the flutter in my heart, quiets the voice in my head.  You are not so powerful, it whispers.  You can’t fix everything.  I glide smoothly into the warmth of the water and it is totally silent.  I’m blowing bubbles through my nose and mouth.  I have no room for thoughts as I lift my arm up and roll my face out of the water to breathe.  I roll my face back, blowing bubbles and lift my other arm.  I follow the black line at the bottom of the pool.  Lift, roll, breathe, roll, lift over and over the length of the pool.

IMG_2135I am suspended from thoughts, held in the moment, breathing and living in stillness.  It is stillness and silence that I want for 2015. Let me just be for then, perhaps I can see clearly and hear the call of my heart. I have time to be still.  There is no fire, no one to rescue.  There is just me for now.