Use What You’re Given

Soup’s On

“Every situation, no matter how challenging, is conspiring
to bring you home to you.” ~Panache Desai

A nasty February blizzard is cooking outside – the wind is blowing so hard that the snow is not falling to the ground so much as blowing south horizontally.  I watch it blow like stink and Thank God for indoor plumbing… Can you imagine having to wade out to an outhouse in this??!

So, what goes best with a blizzard? It’s definitely den time with the family.  And I find myself craving soup. Yes, soup sounds yummy. But I hadn’t really planned on making soup this weekend. I didn’t buy soup fixin’s… what to do? what to do?  Hmmm, maybe I can use what I’ve been given and rustle up some soup anyway. I love a challenge.   🙂

After rummaging through the refrigerator, here’s what went into the soup this morning:

1/2 onion, chopped
1 celery stalk, chopped
1 cup fresh spinach leaves     I live on greens – my nickname around here is Popeye, so I always have spinach or kale or something green in the fridge

1/2 roast chicken, bones removed, skin tossed in to make broth     This is leftover roast chicken from 5 nights ago. I bought it when I didn’t feel like cooking
1/2 lime, juiced     I’ve never put this in soup before, so it’s purely experimental
1 Clove garlic     Required – my hubby LOVES pretty much anything with garlic in it
Salt and Pepper

In an hour I’ll pull out the chicken skin, add water and toss in 1 cup rice, 1 tsp. dried lemongrass and let it simmer a few minutes longer. The smell is already filling the house and making my mouth water!

 Use what you’re given is an idea from a little book, Instructions to the Cook, written by Glassman & Fields. These two Zen practitioners ran charities that provided food and housing for the homeless on a shoestring budget for years. So they know all about creating something special from whatever you’re given. And their little book has inspired me on many occasions to stop, take a deep breath and figure out how to happily use whatever life is giving me in this moment.

“Life always gives us 
exactly the teacher we need 
at every moment. 
This includes every mosquito, 
every misfortune, 
every red light, 
every traffic jam, 
every obnoxious supervisor (or employee), 
every illness, every loss, 
every moment of joy or depression, 
every addiction, 
every piece of garbage, 
every breath. 

Every moment is the guru.”

 ~Charlotte Joko Beck
 
 
Use what you’re given.
Every moment can be bliss or shit – you choose.

Maybe Good, Maybe Bad

 

We Live in a World of Duality

Form /  Formless

Life  /  Death

Light /  Dark

Physical  /  Ethereal 

Earth  /  Heaven

Moon  /  Sun

Female  /  Male

Shakti   / Shiva

Love  /  Hate

Sorrow  /  Joy

Yin / Yang

The energy of our Universe flows and dances constantly between tangible form and formless energy. We are part of an intricate weaving of light and dark, form and formless, growth and decay. Duality is woven into the very fabric of our Universe.  And duality is a natural part of the miraculous dance of Spirit within earth, air, fire and water.

How do I keep my balance within this ever shifting duality? 

Pain and problems arise when I turn duality into polarity – when I attach an emotional charge to a person or  event. For example,  I might label something bad and reject it… or decide someone else is wrong and I am right… or push an experience away as bad and unwanted… or desperately crave something I don’t have. Pain and disconnect are inevitable when I polarize my experiences.

Judging and labeling EVERY single experience as good or bad
only makes me crazy and miserable!

What if I stop judging and labeling every aspect of Life as good or bad, right or wrong? What if I stop living in a state of charged polarity? What if I choose to actually live by the wisdom of the Tao?

“If good happens, good;  if bad happens, good. ”
~
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

One of my favorite parables about good and bad:

A farmer had only one stallion. One day, the horse jumped a fence and ran away. All the neighbors came by saying, “Oh no!  Such bad luck! You must be so upset.”  The man just said, “Maybe good, maybe bad – too soon to tell.”

A few days later, his stallion came back and brought twenty wild mares with him. The man and his son corraled all the horses. All the neighbors came by saying, “Wow! This is such good news. You must be so happy!”  The man just said, “Maybe good, maybe bad – too soon to tell.”

A few weeks later, one of the wild horses kicked the man’s only son, and broke the boy’s leg in 3 places. All the neighbors came by saying, “I’m so sorry. This is such bad news. You must be so upset.”  The man just said, “Maybe good, maybe bad – too soon to tell.”

The country went to war, and every able-bodied young man was drafted to fight. The war was terrible and killed many young men from the region, but the farmer’s son was spared; his broken leg prevented him from fighting. All the neighbors came by saying, “You are so lucky! Your son didn’t have to go fight”  The man just said, “Maybe good, maybe bad – too soon to tell.”

~Author Unknown

 

What if I stop judging myself and all my experiences? What  if I meet EVERY experience with the energy of, “Maybe good, maybe bad – too soon to tell”?

God already has everything under control, no matter how it looks in this moment. Maybe I should just open up and embrace the natural and inevitable duality of this world.

Can I stop judging and polarizing everything that happens to me? What if I allow my world to just be however it is today?   To allow is not polarized; to allow is a loose, easy state where I am open to possibilities. When I relax and allow my life to unfold, peace fills me. And balance follows.

——

Al·low    v.
          al·lowedal·low·ingal·lows

1. To let do or happen; permit
2. To permit the presence of
3. To permit to have
4. To make provision for; assign
5. To plan for in case of need
6. To grant as a discount or in exchange
7. Chiefly Southern & Midland U.S.

 

a. To admit; concede
b. To think; suppose
c. To assert; declare
(from http://www.thefreedictionary.com)

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!