Category: Love & Compassion

Posted on

Advice to Myself – Keep on Flowing

 How do I stay true to myself as I flow though this world?  

“Do I change like a river, widening and deepening, eddying back on myself sometimes, bursting my banks sometimes when there’s too much water, too much life in me, and sometimes dried up from lack of rain?

Will the I that is me grow and widen and deepen?

Or will I stagnate and become an arid riverbed? Will I allow people to dam me up and confine me to wall so that I flow only where they want?

Will I allow them to turn me into a canal to use for they own purposes? Or will I make sure I flow freely, coursing my way through the land and ploughing a valley of my own?”

–Aidan Chambers, This is All

Can I keep flowing and resonating with my joy, my truth, even when surrounded by others who are awash in sorrow or fear or rage?  How do I hold my ground and allow the world to be however it is today?  I will not do any good to anyone if I drop my light, my joy and resonate with the pain of those around me.

Maybe it isn’t cruel or crass to stay joyful while others in the world suffer.  What if our joy is the most potent medicine there is for the wounds of the world?

I want to acknowledge joy as the amazing gift it is. And to keep opening to joy, even in the face of the darkness and pain in the world around me.  May I hold my joy sacred and allow it to flow far and wide.

☾☽

“But just as the river is always at the door, so is the world always outside.
And it is in the world that we have to live.”
-Lian Hearn

Posted on

Being the Joy of You

Joyful Baby Me

Joy spontaneously flows in us, as us, from us
When we remember how AMAZING we truly are. 

Can we allow ourselves to BE that space of flowing joy? 

What will it take for each of us to relax into Being Joy? 

What will it take for us to live from that place of flowing joy? 

How much joy can we embody and share with the world? 

✧✧✧
These are the questions I wonder about, that matter to me.
Am I willing to open to the possibility of more Joy every day?? 
How about you?   Would you like to live in joy every single day? 

If your answer is YES, please join me by phone from wherever you find yourself on September 13 and / or September 20th.

Let’s explore remembering who we truly are!  Let’s explore being pure joy!

What: Being the Joy of You Tele Call Series
When: Thursday September 13th and September 20th, 2012.  Attend one or both calls – your choice.
Where: Phone in from Any Town, Anywhere
Cost: $19, includes both Tele Calls on Sept. 13 and Sept. 20

✧✧✧

Contact me if you want to be part of this Joy thing:  nancy@nancylankston.com

Posted on

Advice to Myself – Seek Joy

Morning Glory

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world
and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”

–E.B. White

Why choose one or the other? What if BOTH are possible?

What if I can work with Joy, eat with Joy, move with Joy, live with Joy AND leave the world a better place?

What if the simple act of going for Joy brings light to the entire world, to all humanity?

What if the seemingly selfish act of  pursuing Joy is the easiest, most graceful way to change everything?

✧

EVERYTHING within me that’s getting in the way of JOY, blow it up!
Make space for Joy now.

Posted on

Safe Travels, Dad

My Dad

I spent a lot of time with my dad this weekend. Dad is 85 and lives in a locked nursing home unit. He is locked in because my mom is fading away with Alzheimer’s, and my dad cannot wrap his head around the idea of letting her go. Dad literally cannot conceive of allowing her to go without him. He has had multiple strokes as his body-mind fights against the inevitable.

Dad obsesses about my mom’s deterioration, he yells at her and even smacks her because she no longer knows who he is. All this craziness from a calm, gentle soul who adores his wife. This from a man who rarely raised his voice before my mom got sick. Now Dad tries to guard my mom. He constantly worries that someone on the nursing home staff will hurt her or kill her. His behavior has gotten so bad, that my siblings and I reluctantly moved him to a locked unit. Now Dad rarely gets to see the love of his life.

This move has been another heartbreak for Dad. And it is heartbreaking for me to watch. Now that he’s separated from my mom, he is rapidly deteriorating physically. This man who never took medications and was always strong and tough as nails is fading fast now that his last job – the job of protecting his wife – has ended.

I sat with my dad as he slept this weekend. I watched him sleep and thought about everything that he has been through. My dad is strong willed and tenacious; he doesn’t give up easily. As a young man, he pushed and worked and became the first person in his family to go to college. Then he pushed and he worked and he became an award winning engineer with patents in his name. He pushed and he worked and he went much further than his parents every dreamed was possible for him. And then life threw something at him that only got worse when he pushed against it. Life threw something at him that demanded surrender and allowance.

I have not seen my dad for about  6 weeks, and there has been a big shift in his appearance and his behavior; he has transformed in just a few short weeks. He has stopped trying to halt my mom’s deterioration. He has finally stopped pushing. He has let go. I sat and looked at my dad’s body that has aged so much in just a few weeks. I sat with Dad and watched his peaceful face as he slept. I sat with Dad and I knew that he will soon let go completely and leave this body and this life that had become so painful for him. I sat with my dad and I cheered him on; YES!  Let go, Dad. Surrender. Allow life to be however it is. Let go and leave all the pain behind.

This could be a story about the pain of love lost or the harsh realities of aging and dying in America today. My Dad’s past few years have overflowed with both of those things. But for me, this is a lesson in how life can deteriorate into pain and pure misery if I grasp at it and try to hold it still. My Dad’s story teaches me what can happen if I resist and refuse to flow with whatever life throws at me. It’s a lesson about how I can create huge problems and pain when I resist the change that is an inevitable part of life.

I love you, Dad.  Leave this painful place.  Let go and go.  I will miss you so AND it’s OK to go now. Safe travels, Dad.

Posted on

Flow Like a River

“May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.” 

~Rainier Maria Rilke

When I get impatient with myself or the world, I try to pause long enough to remember the river, the flow of the river that I love so much.  When life does not instantly present me with the exact and perfect outcome – the perfect and glorious outcome I had all planned out in my head in excruciating detail – at those times, I try to remember to just breathe and flow with how things ARE, rather than how I wish they would be.

Resistance is futile; life is NEVER perfect. And life unfolds in its own wild and wonderful way, no matter how hard I kick and scream and struggle and fight against what IS, trying desperately to get the exact future I had imagined and dreamed of.

Sit and breathe. And breathe some more…
until I can stop whining and fighting against what is unfolding right here and now in front of me.

How horrible to miss out on today because it doesn’t look exactly like my dream of it yesterday!

Life is not the way it’s supposed to be. It’s the way it is.
The way you cope with it is what makes the difference.”

~Virginia Satir

Posted on

River Love

The Path Home
The Path Home

One of the many things I love about living in Lyons, CO is the pathway that follows the St. Vrain River.  This river is why the town of Lyons was placed in this spot. It’s a special place where 3 creeks converge  into one and form the St. Vrain River.  Water is valuable here in the foothills of the Rockies; it is absolutely required for human life, and the dry climate can make it quite scarce.  The Ute Indians knew this – the tribe lived in this area for generations. And  in the 1800’s, when the white guys arrived, they looked around and decided this place by the river looked like the perfect spot to stop and settle down. I agree with them – it’s a bit of paradise.

Even in the heat of July, the riverbanks of the St. Vrain are wet and green with growth. The open grasslands around here are yellow and dry, but the banks of the river overflow with green growth. And the temperature literally drops 5-10 degrees within the shade of the trees lining the river.  That’s probably why the  path that follows the St. Vrain as it meanders through town is a favorite spot of mine for walks with my hubby David and Dog Goddess Brigit.

Rivers are a natural travel route for humans and other hairier mammals as well as birds, reptiles – it seems every form of life is drawn to the river. Dog Goddess Brigit has a field day sniffing her way down the path every morning.  I wonder if she can distinguish which animals came by the night before? I wouldn’t doubt it – dog noses are amazing!

Today I am grateful to live in a home that is within walking distance of the St. Vrain River and its gorgeous, green riverbank trail.

☾☽

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. 
I am haunted by waters.”  

– Norman Maclean,
A River Runs Through It