one year ago...

it was one year ago yesterday that i landed in the hospital.  carried out of my home on a stretcher in excruciating pain.  a battery of xrays and scans later, a stunning cancer diagnosis was delivered to me.

to honor myself and this deeply challenging and extraordinary year, i've created a weekend of special events.  i've been looking forward to these, and anticipating the anniversary as a time when i would reflect on what was and what is.  i also found, yesterday morning, that fear and trepidation were lurking in the mix.  the echoes bouncing off last year july 20 were loud and painful.  they brought up sorrow and anxiety.  i feel an urgency, and then remind myself to have patience, take time...

thankfully, at the end of the day, there was a blissful reprieve and a vivid actualization of the path that feels most true to me, now.  i finished the day participating in a wonderful kirtan event and my soul sang for joy.

EVERYTHING IS WAITING FOR YOU



(After Derek Mahon)



Your great mistake is to act the drama
 

as if you were alone.  As if life 


were a progressive and cunning crime
 

with no witness to the tiny hidden 


transgressions.  To feel abandoned is to deny 


the intimacy of your surroundings.  Surely,
 

even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
 

the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
 

out your solo voice.  You must note 


the way the soap dish enables you,
 

or the window latch grants you freedom.


Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.


The stairs are your mentor of things
 

to come, the doors have always been there
 

to frighten you and invite you,
 

and the tiny speaker in the phone 


is your dream-ladder to divinity.



Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into 


the conversation.  The kettle is singing 


even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
 

have left their arrogant aloofness and 


seen the good in you at last.  All the birds
 

and creatures of the world are unutterably


themselves.  Everything is waiting for you.



~ David Whyte ~

a wonderful interview with David Whyte can be listened to here:  Being at the Frontier of Your Identity

 

which way the head

a few weeks ago, i wanted to attend a short workshop given by a peruvian shaman who was in the area.  during the workshop, she was to speak about the plants in the jungle of peru where she lives and that she uses medicinally in her healing work.  at the end of the session, she was to create a circle and perform a healing ceremony.

i got it stuck in my head that the session started at 4pm.   however, it actually began at 2pm.  when i showed up at 4pm the healing ceremony was just beginning. 

i slipped into the circle and waited as she went from person to person.  when she came to me, she spent most of the time gesturing and sounding around my head and neck.  afterwards, i sat there soaking up the reverberations.  interesting that she had focused around my head.  it often seems that’s where i can get the most caught up, and out.  that it’s the workings of my thinking mind that need some healing.   how has a pattern of thinking, a mental construct, participated in what afflicts me?   and then, as i sat there, up floated this idea and feeling - “i can just giggle my way through this.”  through the cancer, i mean.  giggling.  made me smile, even begin to giggle.  why not?  and, yes.

can you take that seriously?  no! and yes!  this gal was walloped by a very serious diagnosis last year.    as such, i am fully qualified to suggest what might seem at first, second or third glance, a perfectly silly idea.  but i kid you not.    the gods are not at all impressed by our dour and fear-based ways.  deep love and freely improvised play are the ultimate.

how interesting, no?  that it was because i got the time "wrong in my head” that i arrived late for the workshop.   and yet, i arrived just in time for the healing, and the healing was all i really needed that day.


*****

i visited the oncologist for my monthly visit yesterday.  these visits are really too close together.  and while sloan kettering does their best within that model, it is simply not a place i like to be.  big revelation, i know.    that is a place that most certainly needs some giggles.


*****

love to all!