THE INJURED WOMAN AND THE ANGRY DOG

Because I have recently experienced more old “twinges” from injuries sustained in surviving a car-jacking/kidnapping/murder attempt some years ago,

Because I have recently been reminded of my “dog whispering” skills which I have never understood but always found available when I needed them,

Because I have recently been painfully reminded that not many other people understand neither of the above,

Because I have recently been painfully reminded that people often redirect their anger at their own self-perceived/self-assigned failings onto whoever is near whom they perceive as having greater skills than themselves, especially in the face of danger, I kept coming back to several versions of the following lines when attempting to complete a post for today:

OLD GRANNY TODDLED DOWN HER FRONT STEPS IN FRONT OF HER MORNING STRENGTH

OLD GRANNY SKIPPED AND SLIPPED HER TUNING WAY DOWN HER WOULD-BE DRIVEWAY

YOUNG DOGGIE, LITTLE DOGGIE BOTH DANCING AND JUMPING IN TEST OF MORNING’S LENGTH

YOUNG DOGGIE, LITTLE DOGGIE IN TURN LEADING THE SNIFF INTO COULD-BE BLYTHE-WAY

OLD GRANNY, YOUNG DOGGIE, LITTLE DOGGIE IN THREESOME ROUND THE BEND OF LIGHT

OLD GRANNY, YOUNG DOGGIE, LITTLE DOGGIE IN BANDS OF FULSOME HURL TO LEAVINGS

STRANGE DOGGIE, ANGRY DOGGIE, LARGE BRISTLING DOGGIE SHINING OUT IN MIGHT

STRANGE DOGGIE, ANGRY DOGGIE, LARGE BRISTLING DOGGIE TOOTHING CURL TO HEAVINGS.

OLD GRANNY SKIPPING AND SLIPPING CALM FINGER TO WAVE A DANCE, A SLOW DANCE,

OLD GRANNY CALM FINGERING TENDER CRUMBLIES IN ACROBATICS OF SOOTHE

ANGRY DOGGIE IN SETTLING BRISTLES WEAVING BACK TO SEEK SOFTER GROUND

ANGRY DOGGIE IN SMOOTHING THROAT BUBBLES ROLLING DOWN INTO A SMOOTH

NOW NEIGHBOR, WATCHER, AND ALL, HUFFING BEHIND HIS SAFEHOUSE

NOW NEIGHBOR, WATCHER, AND ALL, STUFFING WORDS LIKE A MOUSE

NOW NEIGHBOR, WATCHER, AND ALL, CUFFING A PHONE LINE TO PRY

NOW GRANNY, WATCHER, AND ALL, CHUFFING COFFEEDROPS IN SLY.

May there always be a jig danced, and seen, on your every pathway!

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EIGHT WEEK THURSDAY: PEACE LINKS TO GRACE

This is the promised Part Three of my QUIET-PEACE-GRACE set of essays.

So I just listened to a cloud and held my breath and smiled at a stranger.  Then he smiled at someone during their rudeness to him, and the rude one flew to a far country and smiled and someone about to pick up a rocket launcher listened to a cloud.  So now we have peace, just like that?  Well, yes and no.  Yes,  I and the stranger driving by my roses and the rude clerk and the farway fighter do now have a connection in peace.  No, not all the other neighbors nor all the other customers treated rudely nor all the other soldiers in that far way camp instantly experience peace.  BUT……..

All the other neighbors and all the other customers and all the other soldiers now stand right beside a presence of QUIET and PEACE.  QUIET and PEACE radiating outward from just one single person in each time and place form an aura, an almost-halo, a CLOUD, if you will, of prescient GRACE.  Yes, GRACE: that which makes spiritual growth possible.  And is not spiritual growth totally essential to build an environment for PEACE?

Why is GRACE necessary for spiritual growth?  It is necessary just as a seed is necessary to a plant, just as water and air and light and proper soil are necessary to a plant.  But can the plant survive, much less grow, if it is stepped upon in haste?  No, the plant must be allowed to be still, be “quiet” within its space in order to experience the peace necessary for fruitful growth.  WE must allow ourselves quiet and peace before we can receive enough water and light and air and nutrients to soak into ourselves to grow, to thrive.  And is this not one of the forms of GRACE?  And if carrying GRACE inside us, would we not then be fostering PEACE just by our very presence?  Would we not then be links in a chain of peace?

Now, are we simply dropped into little spaces of quiet and peace?  No, we surely are not.  Therefore, we must just stop, hold a breath, slow our seeking hearts, empty our searching minds, and become like Gandhi and Solzhynitsn and Jesus of Nazareth before Pilate.  Like them, we must just be quiet both with our mouths and within our very souls.

May GRACE abound!

 

EIGHTH WEEK WEDNESDAY: TINY QUIET MOMENTS HOOK TOGETHER FOR LONG CHAINS OF PEACE

 

 

As I held a “wow” gasp for an extra second this morning over my roses exploding all over themselves as they invited themselves to the Thanksgiving table, I “heard” a cloud overhead wish for more space and light, more freedom.  I started to tell myself myself it was my white-hair bordered ears straining for words from that parallel universe.  But, no, I held another breath and sighed and resolved to just continue “hearing” the clouds.  I knew they had much to tell me of space and light and freedom and peacefulness.  I knew, if I just stayed very quiet long enough, just a few more moments, I would “hear” cloud-breaths telling me of their high-up delights and their views of how all down below could become more peaceful.  For, you see, this Thanksgiving week, I am extra-prayerful for peace amongst us here on Earth.  The meditation-time song I played last Sunday evening at vespers was “Let There Be Peace On Earth”.  And, you know, it ends with these words: “…and let it begin with me.”

Now walking past the exuberant roses just clamoring to feast with us, I walked as softly as I could remember PawPaw tip-toeing to tell us goodnight and GodBless and I love you on Thanksgiving night so long ago.  As this memory drilled from my heart down into my toes, I felt I was floating, like that “talking” cloud.  The uplift came from the quiet concentration of meditating upon–and requesting–peace within myself that would be so filled with light that it would radiate outwards to connect with the tiniest sub-particles of peace in the hearts of all people I would encounter over the next few days.  I came to understand in these few moments beside the roses that I was already filled with peace because I stood in absolutely still acceptance of the roses and the “talking cloud” and myself inbetween.

Then a dear neighbor passed with a molasses-slow wave and nod in his “older” pickup truck, sharing whispers of stray out of the tail-gate.  Some of the older cousins of these very whisps were already sheltering my rose roots from the chills of late autumn.  Now, if you yourself were to stand anyway along my street in early morning; you, too, would receive this slow wave and nod: no stranger you–just because.  See?  THIS is one of the peace links I pray for; and I have just received one and picture YOU receiving one as you read these words.  Of course, you could well miss receiving the slow wave and nod if you were not very still, very quiet.  This dear neighbor does not wave and nod to the noisy, the hasty.  He knows such gestures would never be perceived by such “busy” folk.

Sighing, and then holding my breath, and then very silently sipping my coffee and silently patting my large dog’s head, then holding my breath again, I understood why I was being “told” by that cloud not to be in a hurry to get “busy” this day.  I understood why it was the cloud, and not a tree or a bird, assigned to tell me this.  The cloud knows it billows up into ever greater beauty, holding every more succour for the earth below, if it floats gently, almost still, allowing the updrafts to feed it precious drops and then HOLD that life-giving moisture for a while.  The cloud, being higher than a treetop or a bird in flight, could see further, could “imagine” further, just had more to “tell” me of the needs for peace in many more places far away and near at hand.  Naturally, those exuberant roses could not wait to remind me that their cloud friend was to be given proper credit for their own beauty and exuberance!

Now, the rising sun gleams on several new links in my chain of peace, extending a little further and little further towards the horizon.  However, I instantly knew that if I became un-quiet, breathed heavier, stepped less care-fully, I would mist over the shining links, scatter dust and debris over the precious metal of those peace-links, triggering the decline into rust and dis-use of those very links, so newly molded and polished in this early morning cloudtalk/neighbornod/rosewhisper/Pawpawtiptoe of discovery.

My prayers are being answered and will connect with your prayers for peace and connect you to yet others and others and others……..shu—uu–h!

May you hover in a silent gasp under your very own high cloud, with a rosepetal on your fingertip ready to float off to a nodding neighbor of your own.

Guess what?  That nodding neighbor might have a surname originating on the far side of the globe.  That nodding neighbor might twitter your smile to places your held breath and your rosepetal cannot reach, at least for now.  That nodding neighbor may not understand why he holds his own breath, then smiles, at a rude clerk when he stops for gas.  That smiled-upon rude clerk may be flying off tomorrow to a place five miles down a trail from a camp inhabited by followers of teachings you never heard of when your own bedtime was blessed as a small child.  Someone in that camp might stretch and yawn at sunrise to hold their breath at a cloud talking to them.

“And I shall lead you by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.”  This was a promise to the father of the three major religions of this world when he was leading his people in flight from un-peace towards the promise of peace.

 

NOTE:  Please check back in here in about  36 hours for the third and final essay in this Thanksgiving Week of 2011 set of essays on quiet, gratitude, peace, and grace.