Moving Mountains #49

This is my first Jewish wedding. I am overcome by the depth of the tradition, the strength of families and friends that share the tight bond of their faith. Christians do not have the same experience, there are so many different kinds of Christians, sure there are different groups of Jews, but at the heart, so many of their rituals are the same. It was a beautiful and beloved service of two wonderful people who found each other after their children have flown the nest. Weddings are such wonderful statements of the endurance of love, friendship, and family.

Moving Mountains #42

Prana is the life force that moves through the body on the breath. Prana literally means, first movement. It is the most subtle form of movement. Love is the first form. Thus, prana is the physical movement of love in the body. That's right! Love moves on prana.

Prana moves into the heart carrying love on its breath. It then distributes love to the rest of the cells in the body. When we are breathing smoothly without constriction the power of love is feeding every cell of our being.

It's just another beautiful example of faith at work every day.

Moving Mountains Day #7

Father's Day Reflection

I have a wonderful father. He is an amazing man. He's soft of voice and firm with conviction about his beliefs - they are not religious beliefs, they are universal beliefs about love, kindness, and patience. He was not the kind of father that pontificated about his beliefs over Sunday supper. He led and still leads by example, by showing kindness and equality to all people. He doesn't gossip or stir the stew by talking down about others. He works hard, he fishes, watches baseball, and reads voraciously. His simplicity has been a beacon to me throughout my life.

Ruby's father, my beautiful husband Jimmy, is also a wonderful dad. He's much more extroverted than my dad and they share similar gifts the revolve around having a generous and open heart. Jimmy and Ruby share the gusto of having enormous right brains that explode with ideas and possibilities. I'll leave these two in a room together for a couple of hours and they will have improved the space with superb art direction, songs, art work, and lots of laughter and joy.

Before I met Jimmy I had very little faith that there was a man out there that was single, not gay, and as sweet and gentle as my father. I did not let myself for one moment imagine that I could find those qualities in a man that would also be a good father. It was my mother whose faith held the space for that person to come into my life. I laughed her off, "maybe that happened to you," I would say to her, "times are different now, that just doesn't happen anymore."

I thought I was safer if I closed my heart off from disappointment. I told my mom, "It's okay if I find a man that I'm not in love with. As long as he's good with kids."

Mom told me, "You don't want to do that because your kids are only with you for a short time. if you did that you'd be left with a bunch of hollow memories because there was no love at the core."

About two months later I met Jimmy. Was it love at first sight? Yes. Could I dare admit the enormous explosion in my heart? No. The first time I saw him I felt like I'd been struck with a bolt of lightening. It still took us a year and a half to admit to each other that we were in love with each other and even longer to prepare ourselves for the awesome experience of having a child.

My point is that faith was always there. When I could not hold faith in my vision, my mom did. I knew in my heart, even when my mind blocked me from admitting it, that I desired to find someone who gave me the same sense of security and home that my father gave to me. The last thirteen years has been a consistent opening to the faith and trust of a lifelong relationship. The last five years, through Ruby, has been a constant flow of patience and learning, with the payoff of love and light and pure energy -- a heart-opening experience made even stronger when I watch Ruby and Jimmy dancing their father/daughter dance.

Green is the Color of My Love for YOU

Spring is IT for me. The cactus tunas ripe with green buds that will burst soon into yellow flowers. The sky's gray flannel suit of rainclouds compliments the monochrome shades of kelly, jade, forest, lime, and grass. My critic looms large not wanting me to use flowery language, not wanting me to play and have fun with words and images, nor wanting me to alter my world into anthropomorphic hyperbole. I laugh in the face of my inner critic today. I am mentally tying her up with duct tape and feeding her all my green m&m's because deep down I love her -- I must. She's like a sister to me.

Green is the color of my love for You, the color of plants that turn sunlight into food. It is the color of the heart chakra, of the heart feeding off of the light that we give to one another in the form of love. Green- of money - our means of exchange with one another also feeds us when we exchange it for food. Envy is green - the converse of love - the other side of the coin. The green that is the greenest that is also the green of spring is newness, naivete, like that of a young child. It is fresh eyes seeing the world for the first time. It is having no preconceptions or judgements.

This morning I heard Rick James sing "Superfreak" on the radio. I hadn't heard it in a while, maybe in a few years and when that familiar intro played I time warped to the 6th grade. My family had recently moved from a small town of 1,000 people to a larger town of maybe 30,000. I was attending public school for the first time - one much larger than before. In this very coming of age moment I was invited to my first real party. My mom took me to the regional store that was a step above K-Mart. I bought my first plaid skirt -- it was the early 1980s when the preppy Scotish thing was really in vogue, at least I thought it was. I got to the party all dressed up in a kiltish skirt and white oxford shirt. All the other kids dressed in jeans and t-shirts. I felt so out of place I wanted to run and hide. That night I learned about the self-consciousness of consumerism. Gloria Vanderbilt, Jordache, and Calvin Klein jeans very hip. Plaid skirt and oxford shirt from Weiners -- very un-hip. It was also my first experience with that lovely pre-teen game "spin the bottle." It was a Coca-Cola bottle, but still, I was scared - realizing much later that I had nothing to be scared of - I was the nerd in the green plaid skirt, oxford shirt, and glasses.