Posts Tagged ‘Love’
Recovering Slowly
It’s a process. I’m still sad about the embarrassing outcome of our election, but some of the shock and traumatic stress is wearing off. The commodity of a good night’s sleep, which I hold dear, is possible again after several disturbing bouts of disruption. It is a mental illness I know all too well that leaves me wide awake at oh-dark-thirty with unhelpful thoughts running rampant.
I know depression. The events that played out to even allow the President-elect to be a choice in the end was depressing enough, but for the voting results to prove there are that many people in this country who would accept his rhetoric as deserving nearly sent me back to my darkest place.
How can I live with that? I live among them. How do I deal with this disturbing reality?
Love.
It’s all I can do. I know how I recovered from my life of depression. I will work my program. I will send love in every direction. I will strive to love the men and women who believe things with which I disagree. I will find a way to send love to people who find solace in hate and fear. I have fears, too, but we don’t fear the same things and we don’t respond to our fears in the same way.
Nothing is as exclusive and extreme as our minds are inclined to perceive. There is “both” where we see “one or the other.” We tend to be more similar to those with whom we disagree than we want to admit, especially in times of conflict.
People are inclined to inflate a point in order to make it. It’s too bad humans haven’t instead worked to develop a keener sense of detecting a point so there would be no need for the inflation.
Spend a little more time around horses and you can witness the art of keen perception. You can also come to discover the incredible power and reach of a heart-field.
Our horses help me to send love everyday. They are tapped in. We put the soccer ball out for them yesterday because the weather was nice and they were showing signs of being in a playful mood. Legacy spent the most time testing out the odd obstacle while the mares focused on their grazing, well placed in comfortable proximity to him.
Hunter expectantly waited for a turn.
They eventually moved over the hill and left the ball alone for a while. When we came back after lunch, the ball was all the way down the slope up against the fence, so someone had been playing with it again.
I’m following their example and letting my perceived obstacle be ignored for a while. When I reclaim my heart center and bolster my love beams, I can approach the situation again to see what happens when I show up.
I am not any less of a person as a result of what happens around me, unless I choose to react poorly.
After some faltering, I’m choosing love.
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How
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that light
is too bright
especially at this time of night
I can feel my eyes
putting up a fight
with hopes of saving
some small shred of sight
despite the unwelcome fright
of seeing what just might
transpire
I cannot understand
how so many people
would knowingly raise their hand
in support of one particular man
who has demonstrated time and again
so many traits unpleasant
while he repeatedly fanned
flames of hate, fear, and banned
good sense or even
complete sentences of real plans
just a catch phrase or two
bullying braggadocio
rising on the worst
his cultivations rehearsed
to prey on some rabid thirst
void of real love and honesty
what remains is some kind of curse
how?
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Some Days
Yesterday at work I found myself a little short of feeling like my best. Was it simply a result of it being a Monday? Possibly. More likely, it had something to do with a sub-par night’s sleep. I couldn’t get myself to turn off the Cubbies Sunday night as they eked out a victory in game 5 of the World Series. That kept me up past my bedtime.
In addition, my days of having the whole bed to myself came to an end when Cyndie arrived home from visiting the Morales family in Guatemala in the wee hours of oh-dark-thirty. That’s about the worst time of night to have a sleep cycle interrupted.
As I sat at my desk trying to shake out the cobwebs, the thought crossed my mind that maybe I should have just stayed home for the day. It wasn’t anything physical. I felt fine, I just didn’t feel all that… fine.
Then an issue needed to be addressed, and another, and another. Good thing I didn’t stay home. I may not have been my best, but I was present and available to at least contribute in the moment. Some days we need to allow ourselves to accept this as good enough. Half-speed is better than no speed at all when there is work to be done.
So, Cyndie got home in the middle of the night and I left for work in the dark of morning. She was back, but I hadn’t seen her yet, so I was getting excited to get home. I had no idea I would find this:
She had a fire in the fireplace and the kitchen filled with the aroma of fresh-baked cookies, there were scones she’d baked for breakfast, and that bread was rising on the stove. Oh, and it was nice to be able to see her, too.
As it was, a day that started out less than fine, turned out pretty darn good in the end.
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Today I’m
Today I’m not preparing to evacuate a hurricane zone. In the middle of the country, the biggest threat from hurricanes on the east coast is that they might temporarily stall the usual flow of high or low pressure weather systems that move across our region.
Today I’m purposefully ignoring anything that democrats or republicans want to tell me about how awful and scary the “other” party candidates are. Just not gonna allow them to sully an otherwise promising possibility for goodness and prosperity to spring forth from even horrifically dire situations.
Today I’m remembering how it felt to be chronically depressed and appreciating the grace that allowed me to discover I had power over my thoughts and my body chemistry to navigate my way to better health. Eat well, exercise often, focus thoughts and actions in the direction of optimal health. Repeat.
Today I’m revisiting my realization that I am the only one who sees things exactly the way I do while standing in my shoes, and the view from every other vantage point is not necessarily wrong. Many could even be the exact opposite. Whether you need to turn left or right to pull into our driveway depends completely on whether you are approaching from the north or the south.
Today I’m going to laugh at something, because the universe is filled with comical possibilities. Even our horses have demonstrated the art of prankish shenanigans. It’s all in the timing, and they obviously have a sense of it.
Today I’m publishing this post, because you might stop by to read it and I want there to be something for you that wasn’t here yesterday at this time. A morsel of *this* John W. Hays’ take on things and experiences that I captured in the moment. A glimpse of the ongoing drama from my world that I hope dances around being relative to something for you every now and again.
Today I’m sending you peace and love from beautiful Wintervale Ranch in Beldenville, WI, USA.
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It’s Silly
It’s silly, I know, but I can’t help thinking maybe somehow that is the secret to what makes it so. Silly, that is. Like a dream that makes sense, only it doesn’t at all. Time gets all mixed up, and the characters, too. How can the ages of people get all misconstrued? Even those who’ve passed on show up, still doing what they do.
Well, there are those who see this as not dreamy at all. It’s actually explainable in their point of view, with time being hardly linear and spirits always present, yet mostly unseen. It is exactly what is happening, like a coupon being redeemed. There for the taking, if we choose to direct our attention in the general direction of effect.
To be aware, or be not. That is the question. Whether ’tis nobler to notice what is there all along, stumbling and rushing through mere air without care, or bumbling along just the same, yet with a certain savoir faire.
It’s energy, is all. An emanating, radiating field of unscientific particle waves. It’s anger or love that flows with abandon in directions intended, or not, at speeds and distances that defy what’s made sense since the time we left caves.
See, feel, and touch all you can possibly reach, then know, like the molecules too small to detect, there is more making contact than we’ll ever be aware, even those who detect what most of us perceive as not being there.
I choose sending love, whenever I can. Forward and back, even through time, just in case it might work. To those whom I know and even more, those I don’t. It would be silly, I think, to believe it a risk. I’m sending love, yes indeed, even while writing all of this.
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More Love
Picking up where I left off yesterday, on the subject of love…
I had a moment —well quite a few moments, actually— of being overwhelmed by simultaneous competing demands on my attention at the day-job yesterday. In the midst of the crazy-making, I felt an urge to be standing in the energy of our 4 horses.
I think they were sending me love.
I made a mental note to get myself down with them when I got home from work, rain or shine. This region has been under siege by downpours of heavy rain lately. My late departure from the cities turned out to be mostly trouble-free, both from traffic and precipitation.
When I got within a mile of home, I spotted standing water in some of the farm fields. As I pulled into our driveway, I saw water running in our drainage ditch. We had obviously received a significant amount of rain just a short time before. Cyndie confirmed it had poured hard.
The rain gauge contained 1.25 inches. The horses seemed entirely calm and collected with the situation. I needed to dig out a run-off route that had filled in and caused water to flow where we don’t want it to go.
Working there in the paddock put me right where I wanted to be among the herd. Legacy was particularly friendly and approached me to connect in a way that seemed a little uncharacteristic of him.
I think he knew it was just what I was hoping for.
Standing with them, breathing, loving, and feeling loved.
Horse medicine for what was ailing me.
I loved it.
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Trying Not
I’m trying not to succumb to the outrage. Outrage may well be deserved, but it doesn’t serve me well. I have to choose a different path. I strive to avoid getting my feathers stuck in the tar of controversial opposing opinions, but maybe venting about some of the insanity will bring about an inspiration to counter the inherent despair.
Does any of this make sense?
How did Wells Fargo bank get away with years of creating bogus accounts without customers’ consent?
How did the Sugar Association get away with paying off Harvard scientists?
How do political campaigns succeed by only focusing on the perceived bad things about other candidates without providing any substance of their own in ads?
How did we get to a point where there are only two unpopular primary candidates for President of the United States?
How do people feel comfortable publicly supporting a candidate who demonstrates such contemptible characteristics?
Why do people allow religious ideology to lead them down a path of choosing to injure and kill others?
What if creative people like Lennon & McCartney were able to write songs about peace and love for all of the world to hear?
What if that made all the difference?
All you need is love.
Love is all you need.
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Pequenita consoling me while I distract myself with word games… That’s love.
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Anniversary Thirty-Five
Happy Anniversary today, Cyndie. Thirty-five years in a blink. How’d that happen?
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At the same time, today is also Julian’s birthday. Thanks for sharing this day with us, my other jwh, and making it even more special than it already was!
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Relative Something 