We took our seven-year-old granddaughter, Evey to see the movie that John Krasinski and Ryan Reynolds were in called IF (Imaginary Friends)
A great movie that just doesn’t pull back the curtain on what I don’t want you to see, it rips it from their rod so that I could really see, feel, experience what I’ve never really lost or even forgotten so much as embarrassingly remember, and now kind of horrifyingly admit: I’VE GOT THEM; Yes. . . I’ve got THEM; not so much imaginary friends, IF’S, but things that bring me exceedingly comfort, peace, happiness, contentment and unconditional love
Oh, that’s right and the real fun began afterwards when we went back to their house and grandma helped plant flowers while Evey assisted and every time she took up a worm or yes, even a grub, she talk to it, named them, treated it is if they were her new best friends. Before playing in a bucket of mud (of which I don’t think her mom especially liked)
reveling in joy and hopefully never forgetting what I have most often:
YOU ARE ALWAYS A KID!
E N J O Y
HAVE FUN
DON’T EVER STOP
Now. . .about that Emotional Support Pile of Books. . .
FIDDLE FARTING AROUND
I know, I know, it almost sounds like Charlie Brown’s teacher, here, blah blah, blah blah blah, and I really do wish it was more of Kurt and less of the commentator. However, the quotes are real. The lessons are true, especially since they are so very, very simple, and I also include my own poem, which was somewhat inspired by Kurt a long time ago when I was so fortunate and grateful enough by taking a cold wintry afternoon off in January fiddle farting around to go see him down at Severance Hall. Case Western Reserve University put on a symposium that featured Mr. Vonnegut giving a lecture. They put me down in the second row so when they filmed it, it looked like it was a full audience. CLASSIC STUFFS that I’ll forever cherish, even all the way back then as I scribbled down these lines on an old left over orchestra program.
FIDDLE FARTING
Don’t fiddle fart around
they all said
grandparents, parents, teachers, friends
because it’ll all lead to NOTHING
they all said
Now your words won’t come out
and your thoughts won’t go away
as you lay in a hospice bed
where other Fiddle Farters have died
Your memories rattle much louder
than your wheezing-can’t-take-in-any-more-air-lungs
knowing that fiddle farting around
was much more than a NOTHING
and a flavorable dash more of SOMETHING
that’ll have you dying wishing
for a lot more of EVERYTHING
Thanks again, Kurt for an awesome fiddle farting afternoon and now, a lifetime of ongoing lessons, especially seeing the miraculous in the mundane. . .
A PIECE OF AMERICANA PIE
I love pie, especially pecan, but I’m a sucker for a good piece of AMERICANA PIE no matter whenever or however it’s served up. Nobody serves us a better slice than the late, great Paul Harvey. Here. Enjoy a slab of AMERICANA PIE:
PAUL HARVEY’S LETTER TO HIS GRANDCHILDREN:
We tried so hard to make things better for our kids that we made them worse. For my grandchildren, I’d like better.
I’d really like for them to know about hand me down clothes and homemade ice cream and leftover meat loaf sandwiches.. I really would.
I hope you learn humility by being humiliated, and that you learn honesty by being cheated.
I hope you learn to make your own bed and mow the lawn and wash the car.
And I really hope nobody gives you a brand new car when you are sixteen.
It will be good if at least one time you can see puppies born and your old dog put to sleep.
I hope you get a black eye fighting for something you believe in.
I hope you have to share a bedroom with your younger brother/sister. And it’s all right if you have to draw a line down the middle of the room, but when he wants to crawl under the covers with you because he’s scared, I hope you let him.
When you want to see a movie and your little brother/sister wants to tag along, I hope you’ll let him/her.
I hope you have to walk uphill to school with your friends and that you live in a town where you can do it safely.
On rainy days when you have to catch a ride, I hope you don’t ask your driver to drop you two blocks away so you won’t be seen riding with someone as uncool as your Mom.
If you want a slingshot, I hope your Dad teaches you how to make one instead of buying one.
I hope you learn to dig in the dirt and read books.
When you learn to use computers, I hope you also learn to add and subtract in your head.
I hope you get teased by your friends when you have your first crush on a boy / girl, and when you talk back to your mother that you learn what ivory soap tastes like.
May you skin your knee climbing a mountain, burn your hand on a stove and stick your tongue on a frozen flagpole.
I don’t care if you try a beer once, but I hope you don’t like it… And if a friend offers you dope or a joint, I hope you realize he/she is not your friend.
I sure hope you make time to sit on a porch with your Grandma/Grandpa and go fishing with your Uncle.
May you feel sorrow at a funeral and joy during the holidays.
I hope your mother punishes you when you throw a baseball through your neighbor’s window and that she hugs you and kisses you at Christmas time when you give her a plaster mold of your hand.
These things I wish for you – tough times and disappointment, hard work and happiness. To me, it’s the only way to appreciate life.
IT IS ALL GOOD
ALL OF IT
Hint: THAT’S THE SECRET INGREDIENT IN A SLICE OF AMERICANA PIE
(the Good and the Bad and everything in between)
Enjoy every crumb and don’t be afraid to ask for seconds; there’s always plenty for all. . .
Y U M M Y
JUST A MOMENT: UNLEARNING TO LEARN
What are some of the lessons that you learned, were taught, or even punished for not learning fast enough when you were a kid?
Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson to learn it in a new way that would benefit your life?
It’s not that we were taught things to harm us. We were always taught lessons to protect us from the world and yes, sometimes from ourselves.
Come on we, don’t wait for the rain so that we could go outside and play or barbecue or lay out. We don’t dance in mud puddles in our bare feet or worse, our brand new shoes. We know better because we were taught better and maybe, maybe we need to know a little bit more. Go ahead, take a walk in the rain, stomp in a mud puddle, even with people watching. Who knows, who knows, the exhilaration that kids have could just be what’s worth feeling for us, too.
S P L A S H
O N
FROM THE SOUL TO THE THROAT TO THE PAGE
Photo by Hannah Wright on Unsplash
My emptinesshas a fullnessthat is hard to carryIt’s a thick sludge in my veinsthat refuses to pumpthrough my soul’s heartwhile it oxygenates the darkestparts of me I wish dead
Consider these words from Richard Rohr, excerpted from his meditation on “The Sacred in the Concrete”:
Robert Frost said, “A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a home-sickness or a love-sickness.”¹ If a poem doesn’t give us a lump in the throat, is it really great poetry? My final theological conclusion is that there’s only one world and that it’s all sacred. However, we have to be prepared to know what we’re saying when we say that. If we say too glibly that the trees are sacred, along with our dog, a friend, and the roses, then we don’t really believe it. We first need to experience “a lump in the throat” to have encountered the sacred. The sacred is something that inspires awe and wonder, something that makes us cry, something that gives us the lump in the throat. We must first encounter the sacred in the concrete and kneel before it there, because we can’t start with the universal.
Poets . . . make the connection between the concrete and the universal. When we make that connection, there’s suddenly a great leap of meaning, an understanding that it’s one world. The very word “metaphor,” which comes from two Greek words, means to “carry across.” A good metaphor carries us across, and we don’t even know how it’s occurred.
. . . If we’re reading a poem too quickly, between two urgent meetings or other hurried spaces, we probably won’t get it, because we don’t have time to release ourselves. We need quiet, solitude, and open space to read poetry at greater depth. Then and only then do poems work their magic.
(My thanks to Fr. Richard Rohr, via the Center for Action and Contemplation
Robert Frost, “Some Definitions,” in Collected Poems, Prose, and Plays (New York: Library of America, 1995), 701.
It’s not that the Sun doesn’t gloriously melt through the clouds so much as we just don’t take time to NOTICE; which kind of means that the worst poem of all isn’t the one not yet written, just the one not recognized or read. . .p o n d e r e d
JUST A MOMENT: BEING IN PLACE
It’s one of the universal first lessons we’ve ever learned, and we learned it at a small age: IF YOU USE IT, PUT IT BACK! We all know there were consequences for not putting things back where we found them; maybe the lesson is there for us to learn again, especially when we feel like we literally have lost our place, where there’s no one that can find us, or maybe we’re hiding in such a spot where we don’t want to be found?
And then there’s the new mandate today of STAY IN YOUR LANE, which is a nice way to say, KNOW YOUR PLACE! But it’s true, if we just stayed in our places 100% of the time and we’re good little soldiers, new worlds as well as new adventures would never be had because sometimes the greatest thing we can ever do is being in the wrong place at the right time for somebody else.
Hey, JUST A MOMENT–notice where you’re at, where you want to be and who you’re there for in the place that you are right now. And when you’re not being utilized, put yourself safely away so that you could be available for the very next time!
FIND YOUR WAY TO BE WHERE YOU’RE NEEDED
WHEN YOU’RE NEEDED. . .
(even when it feels OUT OF PLACE)
THE VILLAGE
This video guts me. It filets me in a way that makes me more aware of what I should be aware of and maybe what I shouldn’t be aware of as much.
Most of the time when I stand up for the LGBTQ Community in any of its forms, I’m often asked, “Is there somebody in your family that’s like that?” The generalize thought is that would be a reason why I should stand up for somebody that’s different than me, somebody who’s life and lifestyle I will never be able to understand or on my best day, comprehend. Somehow the thought is, “Well, I could maybe understand if someone close to you lives this kind of lifestyle or why they chose it and you’re showing support” Uh, NO, NO, when you interacted with those who live such lives and the people who love and support them suffer, you’d know it’s anything but a choosing anyone would purposely put themselves through and yet, STILL, THE ASKINGS. . .
I am also asked what’s your most difficult kind of funeral to conduct and my knee-jerk reaction often is a baby, especially one that may be premature; but in my heart of hearts, I think again the one the ones that get me the most are not suicides but suicide because somebody is different sexually, and a family member or members or society can’t accept that and they find no other way to cope, but to die, to commit suicide.
So yes, there’s somebody in my family that’s different, just like there’s somebody in your family that’s different, just like everybody in the world is different and so now I have to choose, will I be different too and maybe more importantly will I treat people differently because of my differences?
QUESTIONS, CLASS?
Uhhhhh. . .if it takes a Village
. . .maybe it really takes a
BETTER ONE!
QUESTIONS, CLASS?Uhhhhh. . .if it takes a Village. . .maybe it really takes a
BETTER ONE!
What say YOU?
EVERYDAYNESSES
“A flat tire. An extra fee tacked on to a hotel bill. A cracked screen on your phone. A bike stolen from your garage. A large charge that they won’t refund. A deal blown up by a missed email.
Nobody likes these things. But does anyone think that a life without them is possible?
No, of course not. We understand that sometimes you get ripped off. Sometimes you make mistakes. Sometimes stuff falls apart on the one-yard line.
Ok, then why are you so upset? You know it’s a statistical certainty, a basic fact of life. Yet here you are, cursing it as if it’s unfair. As if you’ve been singled out. Instead of just accepting it, instead of just saying to yourself as Marcus Aurelius tried to say of shameless people (who he also believed were a statistical inevitability), ok this is one of those people. Don’t ask for the impossible, he said, don’t get upset that someone who was bound to exist, exists or that something that was bound to happen, has happened.
We can’t escape it. We can only accept it…and be grateful that it’s rarer than it could be.”
When I read this in a random DAILY STOIC post I started wondering why I don’t like it when bad things happen to good people for no apparent reason or any catchy rhyming, especially to this trying-so-hard-to-be-a-better-person striving to do good for good. . .
B U T . . .the sacred isn’t always what you think it is or where you think you can find it. . .Embrace your EVERYDAYNESSESS
Now about that flat tire, well right after the leaky pipe but before the locked keys in the car or the lost credit card that I swear I put in my secret SECRET place and my pen, my Montblanc Pen. . .
Psssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst:
BRING YOUR EVERYDAYNESSES
TO YOUR
EVERYTHINGNESSESS
ENCHANTMENT ABOUNDS
(and be the Caring Catalyst you are but rarely recognize)
JUST A MOMENT: FINDING THE SACRED
Maybe the question isn’t so much where do you find the sacred, the holy as much as where does it find you? Just where is the isn’t the sacred, or at least, what you call it? Whatever you find holy, wherever you find sacred, whatever feeds your soul and gives meaning to you, don’t let any label like the sacred or the holy or the religious or the spiritual or the essence or the energy take you away from it. . .
WHEN YOU FIND THE SACRED
you feel Peace
WHEN THE SACRED FINDS YOU
you become Peace
THE THING ABOUT KINDNESS
Simple Acts of Kindness can change the people we become. When we take the time to support other’s needs, we create habits of change and here’s the real clincher,
WE BECOME BETTER
Here’s a thing about kindness: It’s only a word! Don’t get me wrong, it’s a really nice word but words don’t do much these days and they don’t get us too far down the road; they kind of leave us in an alleyway, don’t they? Dark. Dingy. Not always a comforting place to be at midnight with a few streetlights missing.
I mean come on, they’re just words, but when a word like KINDNESS becomes a verb that’s right, verb is just a word too. But when our KINDNESS puts on tennis shoes and workout clothes it all of the sudden becomes kindness is an action. though, When KINDNESS becomes something we do, it really defines who we are. And then PRESTO: We just don’t become different but everyone who’s shore our ripple hits and crashes down upon becomes different and a little bit better, too.
IF they become more than just words. . .
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