Today I’m Grateful for… January Blue

“Blue Skies, Smiling at Me…”

“You are the sky.
Everything else – it’s just the weather.”

~Pema Chodron 

Today is another January Blue kind of day…Anything is possible when the Sky is this blue!

But, why is the sky so blue?? Why not red or purple or green?  Am I the only one who wonders about this?  Apparently not. 🙂  NASA scientists share the scientific reason for our brilliant blue sky below:

“It is easy to see that the sky is blue. Have you ever wondered why? A lot of other smart people have, too. And it took a long time to figure it out!

The light from the Sun looks white. But it is really made up of all the colors of the rainbow.  Like energy passing through the ocean, light energy travels in waves, too. Some light travels in short, “choppy” waves. Other light travels in long, lazy waves.Blue light waves are shorter than red light waves.

All light travels in a straight line unless something gets in the way to reflect it (like a mirror, bend it (like a prism, or scatter it (like molecules of the gases in the atmosphere

Sunlight reaches Earth’s atmosphere and is scattered in all directions by all the gases and particles in the air. Blue light is scattered in all directions by the tiny molecules of air in Earth’s atmosphere. Blue is scattered more than other colors because it travels as shorter, smaller waves. This is why we see a blue sky most of the time.”

(from http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/blue-sky/)

So, that’s the logical reason. Pretty cool.

But I also love this 14th century Persian mystic’s “crazy”, illogical thoughts about our blue sky:

“Even 
After 
All this time
The Sun never says to the Earth,

“You owe me.”

Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the whole sky.”

~Hafiz 

Hope you’re having a January Blue sky kind of day too.  And if you woke up to face a gray sky – inside or outside – what would it take to shift and choose January Blue instead?  Just go for it.

Advice to Myself – Meander

St. Vrain in Snow

Rivers hardly ever run in a straight line.
Rivers are willing to take ten thousand meanders
and enjoy every one
and grow from every one.
When they leave a meander,
they are always more
than when they entered it.
When rivers meet an obstacle,
they do not try to run over it.
They merely go around
but they always get to the other side.
Rivers accept things as they are,
conform to the shape they find the world in,
yet nothing changes things more than rivers.
Rivers move even mountains into the sea.
Rivers hardly ever are in a hurry
yet is there anything more likely
to reach the point it sets out for
than a river?
by
James Dillet Freeman

Me·an·der   v.
1. To follow a winding and turning course: Streams tend to meander through level land.
2. To move aimlessly and idly without fixed direction: vagabonds meandering through life. See Synonym wander.
—————————
[From Latin maeandercircuitous windings, from Greek maiandros, after Maiandros, the Maeander River in Phrygia, noted for its windings.]                                                                    From http://www.thefreedictionary.com

 
 
 ∭

We call upon the waters that rim the earth, horizon to horizon,
that flow in our rivers and streams, that fall upon our gardens and fields,
and we ask that they teach us and show us the way.
~Chinook Blessing

 

Spacious Sky, Spacious Mind

Spacious Sky
“…it’s the opening
that’s the point. It is that lightheartedness, that bigness,
that spacious 
mind and love that can hold the suffering and accommodate it
and integrate 
it and understand it.”
~Susan Salzberg
 
Advice to myself today – be Spacious, my friend.
as Spacious as the sky…

Tiny Trim Tab Ripples

Tiny Tree in Vast Sky

When I look around me, the world appears to be quite a mess; news of fiscal cliffs, disasters and every kind of human and planetary suffering abound.  I see a world teeming with negativity and fear. And many people seem to wallow in fear day after day with no way out.

If I allow myself to spiral into fear and worry, I can end up wallowing in pain and pessimism all day long. And when I get stuck in worry and fear, I can’t help myself  or anyone else; my personal angst only adds more pain to the world.

I am reminded of Buckminster Fuller’s story.  In his 30’s, Buckminster became quite depressed about how his life was going. He felt guilty about how much he drank and how he had neglected his family. He felt like a complete failure and thought about killing himself. But one day, he asked himself if he had truly tried.  And he decided to turn the rest of his life into an experiment.

“Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Mary — the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there’s a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trim tab. It’s a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. 

So I said that the little individual can be a trim tab. Society thinks it’s going right by you, that it’s left you altogether. But if you’re doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go. So I said, call me Trim Tab.”
~Buckminster Fuller 

 Buckminster went on to become an internationally renowned designer. He decided that he could be a little trim tab and change the course of the world. And he made a huge difference. Little ripples matter.

Yes, much of this world is a complete and utter mess. How do we stay calm and  keep our equilibrium when faced with such horrible news day after day? And how can one person possibly make a difference in a world that is so messed up?  What is the point in even trying?

But in every moment that we wriggle free of all that energy of worry and fear – every moment free of that tangled web, is a moment to celebrate. Every moment that  we can be peaceful is a little ripple of yummy energy  sent out into the world. And every little ripple of love and joy and peace that we create matters.

Remember the power of the trim tab and the little ripples it makes that turn the Queen Mary around. Little ripples of peace and joy and love and calmness matter whether we consciously realize it or not. Every little yummy ripple we create matters.

Advice to myself today: Breathe. And breathe again. Relax.  And whenever possible, send a few ripples of peace or love or joy out into the world.  Be a trim tab!

Resistance is Futile

Flame Tree
Flame Tree in Snow

Change is inevitable. Nothing stays the same for very long.

I take the same trail beside the St. Vrain river almost every day, and yet it is never quite the same path two days in a row. One morning last week on the trail, I was surrounded by tree branches filled with fiery autumn leaves. A few mornings later, snow completely blanketed the flaming trees and the sights and sounds of winter engulfed me.

Life is filled with cycles and shifts. From the passing of seasons to the aging of my body, change surrounds and engulfs me. And life continues to shift and change every day, every month, every year. Grasping at the old form, resisting change, makes today hurtful rather than joyful. I learned this lesson the hard way;  years ago I owned a property south of Kansas City that I loved.  I adored every inch of those 3 acres – every tree, every bush, every blade of grass was special to me.  The property was so significant and special that I wrote an entire book about the place (my first book, A Still Place).

And there was nothing bad or wrong about my love of that little parcel of land. The only problem was I clung to it and vowed to live in that spot until I died.  Silly, silly woman!  Well, life happened; I got divorced from one man and married another. I had a second baby and still I held onto that property. I refused to even think about moving. Then my husband’s job dried up and we faced a move cross-country to Chicago. And I had trouble letting go; I resisted leaving my lovely little property. But we needed to move!  The only thing my resistance caused was a slow, slow house sale and a ton of pain and angst.

We eventually sold the property and moved to Chicago. I was so sad, missing my little plot of land, wishing things were different, wanting to roll back the clock and undo the move.  But gradually, I let go. And when I finally stopped holding onto my past, I “woke up” and discovered that I was living in an amazing spot.  I found myself LOVING this new place and my new life.  All it took was letting go of the old life.

That experience left me knowing that my life is WAY less painful when I allow things to change and shift without resisting or pushing against the change. Resistance is futile! Resisting change only leads to pain and misery. 

I seem to periodically have to revisit this lesson in letting go and allowing life to unfold organically.  I can still make myself miserable trying to force today to look like some “perfect” day long past – or some fantasy day that I’ve never even experienced.  I can be so stubborn!  But when I remember that little piece of land that I adored so many years ago, I remember the value of letting go.

It’s odd; I have so many fond memories of that land south of Kansas City. 🙂 But now, I also remember all the amazing and wonderful stuff that happened to me when I let it go and moved on with my life.  And you know what? Today, I live in a space that is even more amazing!  And I would have never ended up here, if I hadn’t let go of that old place.

Life is a river; it keeps flowing and changing and moving. And in every moment I have a choice;  I can cling to the riverbank and wear myself out trying to stay right here in this spot. I can fight and resist moving downstream. Or I can let go and allow the flow of life to take me. I can let go and trust that  life can be even better around the next bend.

☾☽

Can I stop resisting and be grateful for change?

Can I let go of my urge to control and push and grasp?

Can I allow life to unfold and shift organically?

Can I just breathe and allow today to be?

 

Fear of Bigness

“Our imagination flies; we are its shadow on the earth.”
–Nabokov

Am I actually sharing just a shadow of my true self with the world?  And isn’t the part of me that I dare to share limited, pale and colorless compared to what I am capable of?!  Why do I fear my true potency?

Marianne Williamson wrote about this so eloquently;  our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. We fear being too big and bright in the world. We fear our BIG-ness, our potency.

What if I finally take the restraints off and show up in my entirety?

What if the ONLY thing that will save this beautiful planet is choosing to be my Big, Gi-normous self, no matter what? no matter what others think, no matter what others say, no matter what others do, no matter how many “rules” I break in the process?

What will it take for all of us to STOP hiding out and playing small?
What will it take for us to acknowledge and own ALL of our juicy BIG-ness?!

And… what can happen to our world when we embrace our BIG-ness?

What else is possible?

☾☽

“Your divine impulse is yearning to emerge through the human you… In that shift, the more you embrace the Self, the Light, the more you surrender to your own light, the easier it is for you.”
–Sai Maa

☾☽

Our Deepest Fear by Marianne Williamson

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness That most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?  Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.