POEM: SQUIRREL JOY!

Trees abloom in scampering squirrels

circling, chasing, with acrobat twirls,

they hang upside down in sheer jubilation,

knocking off snow’s new accumulation.

Racing each other to the tip of each limb

a fluffy gray one leaps off on a whim,

landing below with agile grace

he skitters back to rejoin the race.

Alive with fur balls, a dozen or so,

the tree branches welcome the go-go-go

of circus performers with bushy tails.

Their entertainment never fails

to bring a chuckle or at least a smile

as I watch entranced for a little while.

To live in a moment of unbridled fun

is the best gift we give ourselves, bar none.

I let go of thoughts that are weighing me down

to enjoy just a moment of playing the clown,

to feel energy flow, to revitalize,

to lighten my step and brighten my eyes.

Thank you, squirrels, my heart is warmed.

Enjoying  your antics I am transformed. 

6 word Fridays:  “Hold”..... This is a new challenge from a new friend.  She sends out a word each week and the response needs to be in six word increments.  So here is my poem for the word "hold."

My life is on “hold” now.

Or so it seems to me.

Events contrived to stall me cold.

Where to from here? Who knows?

I hold my breath, expectant, hopeful.

How long can I hold on?

I walked a labyrinth this morning.

It was a holy holding pattern

that led me into helpful thoughts.

I left refreshed, ready to delight

in the surprises, possibilities, new births

that come when “way is opened.”

Hold fast!  Be patient! Find purpose!

By Kathie Houchens 11-15-13

POEM:  Summer birds

by Kathie Houchens July 19, 2013 (Copyright)

Descending in a cloud of

flutter and twitter

an avian nebula settles on my feeder post

-- lots of options for an easy meal –

peanuts, safflower, thistle, suet.

Only the hummingbird goes to the arbor for his

sweet nectar,

placed where he can imbibe without the traffic jam.

Finches - gold and red, sparrows, a nuthatch, the woodpecker pair

are regulars.

An occasional bluejay or starling gang

stops for a quick gobble.

The garden is abundant now

with rudbeckia, zinnias, Echinacea and more.

Insatiable, it seems, the flocks forage

among the flowers, too.

Not far off, the pond and stream

offer drinks and baths for those who care to tarry.

The rare appearance of the great heron

sends the fish down deep.

I ask myself how supplying the heron with a meal

is any different than providing seed or suet?

Somehow it is.

I’ve stopped naming the fish, though.

Summer birds!  I love

the flash of their wings,

their cheerful song to start the day.

From Richard Rohr's Daily on-line Meditations:  (highlight mine)

“Peace of Mind” Is a Contradiction in Terms  Meditation 43 of 52

“Beginner’s mind” is actually someone who’s not in their mind at all! They are people who can immediately experience the naked moment apart from filtering it through any mental categories. Such women and men are capable of simple presence to what is right in front of them without “thinking” about it too much. This must be what Jesus means by little children already being in the kingdom of God (Matthew 18:3-4). They don’t think much, they just experience the moment—good and bad. That teaching alone should have told us that Christianity was not supposed to be about believing doctrines and moralities. Children do not believe theologies or strive for moral certitudes. They respond vulnerably and openly to what is offered them moment by moment. This is pure presence, and is frankly much more demanding than securing ourselves with our judgments.

Presence cannot be easily defined. Presence can only be experienced. But I know this: True presence to someone or something allows them or it to change me and influence me—before I try to change them or it!

Beginner’s mind is pure presence to each moment before I label it, critique it, categorize it, exclude it, or judge it up or down. That is a whole new way of thinking and living. It is the only mind that has the power to actually reform religion.

Copyright © 2013 Center for Action and Contemplation 

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Be a child today...and if possible be WITH a child, too.

In a mother's womb were two babies. One asked the other: "Do you believe in life after delivery?" The other replies, "why, of course. There has to be something after delivery. Maybe we are here to prepare ourselves for what we will be later. "Nonsense," says the other. "There is no life after delivery. What would that life be?" "I don't know, but there will be more light than here. Maybe we will walk with our legs and eat from our mouths." The other says "This is absurd! Walking is impossible. And eat with our mouths? Ridiculous. The umbilical cord supplies nutrition. Life after delivery is to be excluded. The umbilical cord is too short." "I think there is something and maybe it's different than it is here." the other replies, "No one has ever come back from there. Delivery is the end of life, and in the after-delivery it is nothing but darkness and anxiety and it takes us nowhere." "Well, I don't know," says the other, "but certainly we will see mother and she will take care of us." "Mother??" You believe in mother? Where is she now? "She is all around us. It is in her that we live. Without her there would not be this world." "I don't see her, so it's only logical that she doesn't exist." To which the other replied, "sometimes when you're in silence you can hear her, you can perceive her." I believe there is a reality after delivery and we are here to prepare ourselves for that reality....

(Source: current.com)

Play...find time...let your inner child develop fully.

Thanks for the reminder, Friedrich Froebel.

Look for magic!

SPRING FIREWORKS

By Kathie Houchens April 22, 2013

Awed by the colors, surprised by the bright blooms of spring exploding from trees, shrubs, bulbs and bushes,

I drive down an ordinary street and it seems a floral Fourth of July. 

The white cherry blossoms burst bold and full in round formation,

             like a million lights against cerulean skies.

Cascades of delicate pink from the weeping varieties follow. 

Their drooping branches drip with fresh petals like sparklers sending showers to the ground.

The chartreuse contrast of new foliage on early maples

impacts the eyes like a sonic boom the ears. 

Tulip magnolias mix cream and purple,

 draw me into the fragrance as well as the fullness of their flowers.

 In succession an arboreal parade along the avenue lifts me out of everyday mode

 into a spirit of holiday. 

Celebratory  ground displays of tulips, daffodils and hyacinths

punch out gutsy red, orange, yellow, blue and purple.

Festive Spring, you excite and delight!

DORCAS

Dorcas

By Kathie Anderson Houchens, April 15, 2013

This week’s lectionary readings include the passage in Acts 9:36-43 that recounts the resurrection of Dorcas, also called Tabitha and meaning Gazelle.  Just a couple of weeks after Easter, resurrection is a word that haunts my comprehension.  Yes, I believe, but, Lord, help my unbelief.  This is, to the logical grown-up mind, a great mystery.  Even more so as we watch our friends and acquaintances meet death and leave us wondering, “How can this be?”  Perhaps, once again, it takes the childlike willingness to trust in Truth not yet fully revealed, to trust that in time “when we grow up” we will understand, even embrace the ultimate “Good News.” 

Clear images surface each time the story of Dorcas comes around for me.  I played the part of Dorcas in a church play when I was a child.  I can remember the green and black pattern of the cotton fabric that my grandmother had made into a skirt and a head scarf that I wore.  We took our places in the organ loft at the front left of the sanctuary.  As in the scriptural account there was much loud crying by the “widows” when I fell lifeless to the floor.   The physical involvement created a visceral memory for me as I first “played dead” and then “arose” after “Peter” prayed over me.

I was probably about nine at the time.  When I was five I had been quite ill with an extended period of fever, strep throat, ear infections, achy joints and other unrelenting symptoms.  I spent months in bed with twice daily visits from our family doctor.  The hushed conversations in the hallway outside my bedroom and then the visits from well-meaning clergy introduced me to the limbo-world of expecting to die.  Friends brought coloring books about missionaries, boxes of little “open one a day” gifts to cheer me, simple embroidery projects and art-oriented games to play in bed.  There were prayers said over me by family and local pastors, and the doting attention of my “Nanny” (maternal grandmother who lived with us, or rather we with her.)  After a long siege of treatments, medicines, and a tonsillectomy (a topic for another day)I was healed!

So the “Dorcas” story cycles into my awareness yet again.  I remember the ease with which I accepted the “resurrection” story as a child; yet I am challenged in my “adult world of thinking” to believe without seeing.  So I return to another childhood memory that has served me well, Psalm 23, also in this week’s lectionary.  So good to have memorized these precious promises…..of goodness and mercy and forever dwelling with LOVE eternal!

I wonder if the rising of Dorcas (who in many ways IS the grandmother who loved so warmly, who sewed so expertly, who baked so deliciously, who shared so generously) happens when I invite those same passions and gifts to expression through me?  Let the Creator keep on creating and bringing us to life anew and renewed.

RETREAT DAY - Monk, Artist, Mystic

I promised myself a "retreat" day, and in life's usual way of surprising me, it didn't turn out at all the way I had planned.  I was to go off to a park for the day to enjoy an experience planned by a friend who leads retreats.  That was cancelled at the last minute, so I still had the day "cleared" and decided to make it an "at-home retreat."  

In a book by Christine Valtners Paintner called "The Artist's Rule."  Subtitle: Nurturing your creative soul with monastic wisdom, I discovered a twelve week plan for "Claiming monastic gifts for creative living." as she titles the introductory chapter.  John O'Donohue's quote opens the chapter this way: "The heart of human identity is the capacity and desire for birthing.  To be is to become creative and bring forth the beautiful."  Birthing! Yes, on so many levels...coming to life again and again in an infancy that allows soul-freedom to discover and savor the new, the full expression of LOVE that is now not just from earth-parents, but from LOVER of my soul, CREATOR God who keeps on creating in me and through me.  

So I am in week two of my commitment to experience the journey, dare I say pilgrimage, to allow my inner monk, artist and mystic to meet and create a new rhythm for my walk.

Week one reminded me of the importance and necessity of quiet time, solitude, listening deeply to life in the NOW.  Week two, just completed, considered the archetypes of monk, artist and mystic, all present within.  I took a non-judgmental look at the inner conflict that comes when the "efficient" part of me (that wants to be "grown up", responsible, get things done, and meet my goals) encounters the "free spirit" part of me (that feels like a mix of butterflies fluttering inside ready to burst out and a pudding pot boiling with sweet energy ready to make all of life dessert).  Old inner messages always favor efficiency over effervescence.  In concert my two halves agreed to following through on my commitment to follow the book (efficient) and plunge into a playful state of mind and heart (effervescent) to allow the day to unfold as it would.

Week two included contemplative time, reflection on Jeremiah 6:16, visual art exploration and finally some writing prompts.  I share here the culminating prose-poem, after a free-write to open up ideas, following the three prompts "I am going to start living like .....a monk, ....an artist....a mystic."

"New Rhythms 2013" 
by Kathie Houchens, April 13, 2013

I am going to start living like a monk...
     simply - with new focus...
     not on where will I end up,
          but on where I am now;
               not fear-filled grasping for security, 
                    but grace-filled gratitude for today and for the abundance all around!
     My senses are overwhelmed with birdsong, flower fragrance, moist grass,
            colorful Spring blooms, tender taste of early lettuce.
     Dare I walk barefoot?

I am going to start living like an artist...
     freely - with new enthusiasm...
     permission granted to "play" in color, in sound, in taste and fragrance;
          not saving up "art"  as a rainy day treat
               but making it a daily pleasure;
                    not saying to myself "work must be done first, then time for frivolity."
      I awaken daily to rainbow-hope and thrill-bound joy to be alive.
     Am I ready to spread new wings?

I am going to start living like a mystic...
     contemplatively - with deep mystery,
     willing to embrace unknowing,
          releasing my tight grip on judgment and personal goal-tending;
               allowing more serendipity daily and meeting God in the unexpected;
                    open to the slowing that restores my soul;
                    open  to the silence that unclouds my  vision, unplugs my hearing, 
                         to the hum of the universe that meets all my senses in a symphony of delight.
    What instrument will I be today?
                    

A Buechner quote of the day.

One of my favorite authors, Frederick Buechner, posted this on his "Quote of the Day" today.  It speaks to my exploration of coming to all of life with a childlike vulnerability, trust, wonder, and hope.  In this short piece he recounts an important, if painful, learning about the cruel reality of human nature, even in those closest to us, maybe especially in those we love and want to keep on the pedestal we create for them.

"IN ANY CASE, OF all the giants who held up my world, Naya [Buechner's maternal grandmother] was perhaps chief, and when I knew she was coming to Georgetown for a visit that day, I wanted to greet her properly. So what I did at the age of six was prepare her a feast. All I could find in the icebox that seemed suitable were some cold string beans that had seen better days with the butter on them long since gone to wax, and they were what I brought out to her in that fateful garden. I do not remember what she said then exactly, but it was an aside spoken to my parents or whatever grown-ups happened to be around to the effect that she did not usually eat much at three o'clock in the afternoon or whatever it was, let alone the cold string beans of another age, but that she would see what she could do for propriety's sake. Whatever it was, she said it drily, wittily, the way she said everything, never dreaming for a moment that I would either hear or understand, but I did hear, and what I came to understand for the first time in my life, I suspect—why else should I remember it?—was that the people you love have two sides to them. One is the side they love you back with, and the other is the side that, even when they do not mean to, they can sting you with like a wasp. It was the first ominous scratching in the walls, the first telltale crack in the foundation of the one home which perhaps any child has when you come right down to it, and that is the people he loves."

- Originally published in The Sacred Journey

From the thirteenth century German mystic Meister Eckhart:

My soul is as young as the day it was created.
Yes, and much younger!
In fact, I am younger today than I was yesterday,
and if I am not younger tomorrow than I am today,
I would be ashamed of myself.
People who dwell in God dwell in the eternal now.
There, people can never grow old.
There, everything is present and everything is new.

And from the Russian archbishop and physician Anthony Bloom:

There is absolutely no need to run after time to catch it.  It does not run away from us, it runs toward us.

I have been fascinated by the idea of kairos time vs chronos time.  God's time is timeless, non-linear, eternal.  Human's time is chronological, linear, seemingly going to run out.  

Think about it....what concept of "time" affects your living?

How does it  affect your "aging"?

Can you visualize your "young soul"?  .....and time running toward you?

Spaciousness!

By Kathie Houchens, March 27, 2013

Aha!  A new discovery!  The illusive formula for “happiness” may lie in this concept: spaciousness.  For decades I have clung to the theme of “come as a child” that seemed to me to be key to experiencing life in a way that liberates rather than constrains.  I have underlined books, copied quotes into notebooks, kept a computer file of links and references and even started this blog hoping that putting the title “out there” in a public way would propel my thoughts and energies into making sense of it.  

I intend to gather it all and organize ideas within the theme, but the task is daunting and I am a timid writer, especially when it comes to exposing weakness.  Children seem bolder than that, as I observe the real-life creativity of my grandchildren.  So I take some toddling steps now and begin to “walk” into the unknown in exploration of this idea. 

Recent reading has turned up the word: spaciousness.  That’s it, I believe.  Unscheduled time for listening to inner urges to follow the energy of the present moment.  Is it to rest, to listen to birdsong, to walk along a creek, to pick up a pen, a paintbrush, a trowel?  Could I spend a day without wearing a watch, without a glance at calendar or computer?  How programmed I have been to fill every minute of my life with some productive activity!  All are good, but not necessarily life-giving in the bigger picture.  What bravery would it take to re-claim the chance to “just be with what is,” as the contemplatives would encourage? 

One step in that direction might be to relinquish the quest to “be a success.”  My inner judge has a long list of criteria, accumulated through the decades as I measured myself against the lives and accomplishments of those I admire.  Books published, awards won, salaries earned, degrees achieved, positions gained, travel completed, and on and on.   Next to the composite greatness of others, I am nothing.  But maybe out of that sense of smallness I can return to the best sense of who I am.  I am created by the Great Creator God, named “I AM”, who values me, gives me MY identity, too, as “i am”, and  who offers me continuous presence and possibility.  Time is timeless for this great LOVE that was and is and will be.  To exit my “chronos” frame of mind and enter “kairos”, that spacious place of universe and cosmos, that is the gift of knowing and accepting the Truth that IS freeing. 

I set my intention now, to step, however timidly, across this threshold, this liminal place of hope and promise, sensing that this is where Easter’s Resurrection is found.

Tomorrow is the first day of Spring 2013!  The forecast is for fifty degrees colder than the first day of Spring last year.  34 degrees in 2013, 84 in 2012.  Something in between might be nice.  But I see the sun and that is hopeful.
Being the delinquent blogger that I am, afraid to post anything without proof-reading and re-writing a dozen times, I hope to be bolder in the coming months.  Why not share more than just words?  I've been enjoying the blogs of friends and acquaintances who show their handwork.  There's a good idea.  Inspiration coming and going among kindred spirits.  And while a  theme would be nice, maybe just coming, as I had intended in the first place, with childlike amazement, humor and eagerness for discovery is enough.  
So....more will be coming....Happy Spring!

2013

Christine Vaulters Paintner, the online Abbess from Abbey of the Arts, put out the challenge to ask for a "word" for the year.  It sounded reasonable, and I am a "word" person, being a writer, reader and language teacher.  So I put my own wisdom and directed thought processes aside and "asked for a word."  Here is what came next:

INFINITE:  That is the word that gave itself to me.  Funny how in awaiting a gift my expectation is for something small, humble, manageable.  How can I embrace this huge and generous word?  Maybe God knows my tendency to pull my petals inward in self-protection, to sift all the possibilities through my screen of self-imposed limitations.  Here I go, trusting in new ways, standing open-armed beneath the night sky ready to be gifted limitlessly with enough stardust to make each day sparkle in unexpected ways.