In your dreams little girl

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http://milasdaydreams.blogspot.com/p/about-blog.html

Dying to Live

from ANAM CARA: A Book of Celtic Wisdom — John O’Donohue © 1997

WHEN DEATH VISITS . . .
Death is a lonely visitor. After it visits your home, nothing is ever the same again. There is an empty place at the table; there is an absence in the house. Having someone close to you die is an incredibly strange and desolate experience. Something breaks within you then that will never come together again. Gone is the person whom you loved, whose face and hands and body you knew so well. This body, for the first time, is completely empty. This is very frightening and strange. After the death many questions come into your mind concerning where the person has gone, what they see and feel now. The death of a loved one is bitterly lonely. When you really love someone, you would be willing to die in their place. Yet no one can take another’s place when that time comes. Each one of us has to go alone. It is so strange that when someone dies, they literally disappear. Human experience includes all kinds of continuity and discontinuity, closeness and distance. In death, experience reaches the ultimate frontier. The deceased literally falls out of the visible world of form and presence. At birth you appear out of nowhere, at death you disappear to nowhere. . . . The terrible moment of loneliness in grief comes when you realize that you will never see the deceased again. The absence of their life, the absence of their voice, face, and presence become something that, as Sylvia Plat says, begins to grow beside you like a tree.

DEATH TRANSFIGURES OUR SEPARATION . . .
It is a strange and magical fact to be here, walking around in a body, to have a whole world within you and a world at your fingertips outside you. It is an immense privilege, and it is incredible that humans manage to forget the miracle of being here. Rilke said, “Being here is so much.” It is uncanny how social reality can deaden and numb us so that the mystical wonder of our lives goes totally unnoticed. We are here. We are wildly and dangerously free. The more lonely side of being here is our separation in the world. When you live in a body you are separate from every other object and person. Many of our attempts to pray, to love, and to create are secret attempts at transfiguring that separation in order to build bridges outward so that others can reach us and we can reach them. At death, this physical separation is broken. The soul is released from its particular and exclusive location in this body. The soul then comes in to a free and fluent universe of spiritual belonging.

DEATH AS AN INVITATION TO FREEDOM . . .
If you really live your life to the full, death will never have power over you. It will never seem like a destructive, negative event. It can become, for you, the moment of release into the deepest treasures of your own nature; it can be your full entry into the temple of your soul. If you are able let go of things, you learn to die spiritually in little ways during your life. When you learn to let go of things, a greater generosity, openness, and breath comes into your life. Imagine this letting go multiplied a thousand times at the moment of your death. That release can bring you a completely new divine belonging.

LIFE

LIFE IS A

LEARNING EXPERIENCE.

GROW WITH IT.

Debra Clemente



Close up detail of painting "Iris Walk" by Debra Clemente



Feeling Good

  LISTEN HERE   I mean REALY LISTEN.

"Feeling Good" (aka Feelin' Good) is a song written by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse for the 1964 musical The Roar of the Greasepaint—the Smell of the Crowd

Birds flying high You know how I feel Sun in the sky You know how I feel Breeze driftin' on by You know how I feel It's a new dawn It's a new day It's a new life For me And I'm feeling good Fish in the sea You know how I feel River running free You know how I feel Blossom on a tree You know how I feel It's a new dawn It's a new day It's a new life For me And I'm feeling good Dragonfly out in the sun you know what I mean, don't you know Butterflies all havin' fun you know what I mean Sleep in peace when day is done That's what I mean And this old world is a new world And a bold world For me Stars when you shine You know how I feel Scent of the pine You know how I feel Oh freedom is mine And I know how I feel It's a new dawn It's a new day It's a new life For me And I'm feeling good

We are taught to worry

It’s really a horrible thing. I did it myself. I remember trying to at least. Weren’t we all supposed to? We seem to have programmed ourselves to believe that if we are not currently doing something that we perhaps should or could be doing then it is our responsibility to at least worry about it.

My daughter Amanda had just turned five and few days had past since the whirlwind of her birthday party. As I walked through the family room where she sat intently playing with her new toys, a thought came to me. Actually, the thought came to me again. We needed to write the thank you notes.

Amanda could sign her name and draw a pretty picture but I would be the one writing the actual thank you notes for each of her birthday gifts. I knew it was my responsibility to get this done but as well my responsibility to have her involved in the process. My mother instilled in me the importance of  acknowledging gifts with a hand written thank you note delivered timely manner. So as each day passed the guilt grew. “We need to write the thank you notes for you birthday presents, Amanda.” I said to her as she brushed her new Barbie’s hair. “So we can stop worrying about it.”

Clear as day, I can remember her looking up at me and saying “I’m not worrying about it.” It’s true she wasn’t it and that is the exact moment that I realized that we teach our children to worry. The question still remained. Should I teach her to worry about it?

Eighteen years later, it is obvious that I did indeed instill in my daughter the value of a handwritten thank you, as she regularly and promptly writes and sends gracious notes.  But I don’t think she worries about it. I certainly hope not, but I’m not going to worry about it.

My mother wrote me

I found this quote recently:

Life is a work of art
designed by the one
who lives it. . . . .

Thanks Mom!