This might need to be my new mantra

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.



I'm about to embark on something tremendously difficult for me. My guts kind of shiver when I think about what lies ahead. And I know that my light will tend towards dying a little bit as I make my way through this. I don't know if I have the energy to rage but Dylan Thomas seems so very sure that I ought to - I must say, I'm tempted to try. I'm not dying, not even close to it. But sometimes, life's waves just tire you out, y'know?

To thine own self be true

Sometimes "positive thinking" drives me NUTS!

Notes written on walls of statements you don't truly believe but recite each day in hopes that you can convince yourself to ignore your true feelings. "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough and doggone it, people like me."

What if people don't like you? Seriously, what if there was something about you that repelled others. Is it really better to try to convince yourself otherwise and be "positive" than to take a serious honest inventory of yourself and figure out why you are repelling people and then work on fixing the problem.

Same with people who aren't happy with a situation in their lives but pretend that they are happy with it. Like in the past four years of staying home with my boys I wish I could say that I've loved every minute of it - but I haven't. And I think those moments when I just leveled with myself and opened myself up to how I was really feeling - when I let myself admit "I hate this." that's when I was able to deal with my unhappiness. When you don't allow yourself to say "I hate this" then you also make no room for "I hate this, and am having a hard time with.......what can I do to make this work." Then solutions start presenting themselves and when you pray, you speak honestly with God about what you need - and because God LOVES honesty, miracles can happen and genuine happiness and gratitude can replace the misery.

I guess what I think is: if it smells like bull*$#% - don't buy it
because I think the truth is the only way to true happiness.

The truth of it all is that life constantly offers us reason for happiness, gratitude - a song in our hearts, and if we follow the truth we'll hear that music playing...eventually. It may take a little longer going the truth route rather than the lying to yourself route but I think the end result will be satisfyingly worth it.

sleeping is great until you wake up and realize you've missed the carnival

The following is an excerpt from a post on the blog "state of friss"
She doesn't write as often as I'd like, but maybe if she did, I wouldn't like what she wrote as much as I do.

"my challenge today is how to say what i mean, and to be brief.

that's one of the great challenges of poetry of course, and you all know how i like to record those moments when a poem intersects my real life perfectly. sometimes those moments are truly, rarely, devastatingly accurate. for just a bit you can forget to breathe and your whole body says, gah, that's it!

the German poet, Ernst Stadler died in 1914 on the Western Front, killed by a British shell. the poem following poem, "The Saying" is a translation {hence, an imitation} by Stephen Berg of Stadler's original poem, which ends with the line, "Mensch, werde wesentlich!" ("Man, become substantial!").


The Saying

In an old book
I stumbled across a saying.
It was like a stranger
punching me in the face,

it won't stop
gnawing at me.
When I walk around at night,
looking for a beautiful girl,

when a lie or a description
of life or somebody's fake
way of being with people
occurs instead of reality,

when I betray myself with
an easy explanation
as if what's dark is clear,
as if life doesn't have thousands

of locked, burning gates,
when I use words without really
having known their strict openness
and put my hands around things

that don't excite me,
when a dream hides my face with soft hands
and the day avoids me,
cut off from the world,

cut off from who I am deeply,
I freeze where I am
and see hanging in the air in front of me
STOP BEING A GHOST!

:: :: ::

and anyway, who out there is fully awake? who is living out every second, confronting fear and earnestly seeking understanding? i think there are such people. but not me. i think i am mostly half asleep."

Money does buy happiness...and maybe sometimes misery too.

When I was young - I think I was in fifth grade - I remember a teacher telling the class "money does not buy happiness." I shot up my hand and said something like "Then why do I feel happy when I have money?" The teacher firmly maintained her position and after a few minutes of arguing with me...gave up, and moved on. I wasn't convinced. I'm still not. Extreme povery can be soul destroying:

watching your children die of starvation = misery.
buying your children food so they don't die of starvation = joy.

It's pretty hard to argue that having enough money to cover your basic necessities buys a lot of happiness. The saying "money isn't everything" - I have no problem with that one. I think money buys happiness up to a point and then, I don't know...does it buy a little bit of misery? Does too much money take away from the satisfaction of life the way eating too much food does. I don't know, I've never really had too much money (except when I was teaching in Taiwan and had so much money I was taking taxis everywhere I went...perhaps I should have been walking...perhaps my extra money did buy me some misery)

Jord and I watched a documentary "Lucky" the other night which followed the lives of several lottery winners. Pretty interesting to watch how money changed all of their lives.

Does Mozart make you feel free?

I love art. There is something so rejuvenating about lifting your head from the mundane labours of life to watch someone try to show you what heaven looks like to them. I know that isn't the goal of all artists but I think for so many who try to create beauty whatever the medium, what they are really trying to do is remind those around them that heaven is closer than we think and that life can be glorious, magical and so, so beautiful.

Success is counted sweetest - by Emily Dickinson

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple host
Who took the flag to-day
Can tell the definition,
So clear, of victory!

As he, defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!

a good life

I wrote the following in a journal of mine a couple of months ago:

"aprons and open windows
chubby bums, laughter, soap bubbles
the good life"

Sometimes it is that good ladies... it really is. There is, I'm sure, a counter poem lurking within myself as well - too dark to pull out on a lovely summer day like this. But when I have a great day staying home with the boys, I kind of feel like I've earned it. I've been working at being happy as a stay at home mom for over four years now (it's taken me a while to adjust). And even though I still sometimes struggle with this role, I'm getting better y'know - and sometimes it is that good ladies... it really is.

Moments That Matter Most

A drop in the bucket

Saw this on a blog this morning and it brought up old questions about world poverty that I used to spend quite a bit of time thinking about. I think giving aid is very complicated and that sometimes offering help without understanding anything about the people you're offering it to can do more harm than good. I also doubt that the solution to cutting world poverty in half is a single number and am less convinced that the answer is totally about money. In a class of mine in university the prof told us about some country (I can't remember which country she was talking about specifically here) that was given aid from the U.S. The aid money was to be used to grow cash crops. The farmers would use the money, grow the product, and then sell it overseas (to the U.S. for a pretty good price.) But the farmers who were all men, took land that was being used by the women to grow food for their family. The men in the end had more money but more often then not, used the money for their own benefit (booze, prostitutes) and left the women and children with even less than what they had before the aid was given because they no longer had access to land to grow food for themselves.

The website says this:
"The Life You Can Save seeks to change...If everyone who can afford to contribute to reducing extreme poverty were to give a modest proportion of their income to effective organizations fighting extreme poverty, the problem could be solved. It wouldn’t take a huge sacrifice."

I think things have changed and people have gotten smarter about the way they give aid. There are some aid organizations that are very good.(microcredit is one of my favorites) But my own personal view is that world poverty is less about money and more about morality. Rich countries unwilling to live with less and dealing in a cut throat way with poorer countries. Fathers unwilling to commit to their families and do whatever it takes to provide for them. Tyrants who want it all. Corruption in government. People unwilling to forgive, sacrifice and compromise for the greater good. Greed, jealousy, pride and selfishness will always make a world with haves and have nots.
So the solution for me is so much more than just a sum of money. I think acts of giving and helping and trying to sacrifice for the greater good is pretty much the only remedy for this crazy little world we live in. And sometimes that means giving a little bit of your income away to a cause you really believe in.
There was something in the video which really touched me. "What if your daughter was the drop in the bucket? Real lives are saved every single day. People with real names whose families weep with joy to see them still alive."

I think sometimes thinking small is the best way forward - so right now I'm kind of wondering, what small things could I do to help one other person...

To bee or not to bee, is that the question?

Hum

What is this dark hum among the roses?
The bees have gone simple, sipping,
that’s all. What did you expect? Sophistication?
They’re small creatures and they are
filling their bodies with sweetness, how could they not
moan in happiness? The little
worker bee lives, I have read, about three weeks.
Is that long? Long enough, I suppose, to understand
that life is a blessing. I have found them — haven’t you? —
stopped in the very cups of the flowers, their wings
a little tattered — so much flying about, to the hive,
then out into the world, then back, and perhaps dancing,
should the task be to be a scout-sweet, dancing bee.
I think there isn’t anything in this world I don’t
admire. If there is, I don’t know what it is. I
haven’t met it yet. Nor expect to. The bee is small,
and since I wear glasses, so I can see the traffic and
read books, I have to
take them off and bend close to study and
understand what is happening. It’s not hard, it’s in fact
as instructive as anything I have ever studied. Plus, too,
it’s love almost too fierce to endure, the bee
nuzzling like that into the blouse
of the rose. And the fragrance, and the honey, and of course
the sun, the purely pure sun, shining, all the while, over
all of us.

~ Mary Oliver