I’m in my usual clueless state about why I have gone quiet. There’s a vague feeling of ‘I’m falling behind, I’m missing deadlines’ but I’m not actually sure that is true.  I’m exercising daily (thanks to the puppy), I’m eating well (increasingly healthy — I gained no weight during the holidays, and am watching it slowly melt off since the first of the year).

It’s true that the only new reading I have on hand are review books. There is little or no sun each day (what there is is coming through the cloud filter). I’m feeling a bit ‘stuck’ and directionless. Finally, I’m getting a lot of neutral or negative feedback at work, coupled with a lot of ‘you need to change’ messages.  I’m not depressed (been there, done that, recognize the symptoms), but I’m not effervescent, either.

Part of me says ‘look, its winter. time to take stock, make plans, dream up the stuff you’ll be manifesting the rest of the year. In other words: it’s OK to be quiet and introverted.’

Another part says ‘I’m wondering if your withdrawal is truly introspection, or just desertion? Strong word, I know. But since I’m you, that word came from somewhere. Why don’t you take a look at it.’

In the meantime, life goes on and takes me along with it. I’m not guiding it, just being carried along. Is that an automatic negative? Or can we actually have a place where we go with the flow without being bad pagans/self-aware individuals?

“BE THANKFUL…

If you woke up this morning with more health than illness…you are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week.

If you have NEVER experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation…you are ahead of 500 million people in the world.

If you can attend a religious meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death…you are more blessed than 3 billion people in the world.

If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep…you are richer than 75% of this world.

If you have money in the bank, in your wallet and spare change in a dish someplace…you are among the top 8% of the world’s wealthy.

If your parents are still alive and still married…you are very rare, even n the United States.

If you hold up your head with a smile on your face and are truly thankful…you are blessed because the majority can, but most do not.

If you can hold someone’s hand, hug them or even touch them on the shoulder…you are blessed because you can offer the Goddess’s healing touch.

If you can read this message, you just received double blessing in that someone was thinking of you, and furthermore, you are more blessed than over 2 billion people in the world that cannot read at all.

Have a good day, count your blessings, and pass this along to remind everyone else how blessed we are.”

~ from halfwolfie

I found this in a planner I’ve used since 1994. I have no idea where I found it — but I know I didn’t write it originally. What an interesting thing I told myself, back then.

Zen Fool:  A Fool is one who goes on trusting;  A Fool is one who goes on trusting against all his experience.  You deceive him, and he trusts you; and you deceive him again, and he trusts you. Then you will say he is a Fool, he does not learn. His trust is tremendous; his trust is so pure that nobody can corrupt it.

Be a Fool in the Taoist sense, in the Zeb sense. Don’t try to create a wall of knowledge around you. Whatsoever experience comes to you, let it happen, and then go on dropping it. Go on cleaning your mind continuously;  go on dying to the past so you remain in the present, here-now, as if just born, just a babe.

In the beginning it is going to be difficult. The World will start taking advantage of you…let them.  They are poor fellows. Even if you are cheated and deceived and robbed, let it happen, because that which is really yours cannot be robbed from you. And each time you do not allow situations to corrupt you, that opportunity will become an integration inside.  Your Soul will become more Crystallized.

Two years ago, and just about a week more, my father’s wife died. Her passing was gentle, but her decline was not.

On Saturday, October 20th, my mother’s father died. He died peacefully and with only a gentle exhalation of breath to mark his passing. His oldest daughter was reading to him at the time. His decline into death was marked by increasingly ‘crazy’ behavior on his part and his admittance into the hospital was at the request of my grandmother, to keep him (and her) safe from his dementia.

With my grandfather’s passing, I will have attended three funerals in the last five years (my father’s father was the first , in March 2003) and there are no more males in that generation of my family. The women, as they do, go on.

I find myself reflecting on the lessons I am being given with these deaths. At being able to watch the process of grief play out across the family and related community. At participating in the grief myself, to varying degrees of visibility. For one thing: funerals, of  some type or another, are vital for those of us still living. Even my father, the atheist, was comforted by the funeral mass held for his wife (no body, just a glorious picture of her in a black frame with flowers in a vase nearby). He didn’t expect it, and was doing a mass only because something was needed and it was the most familiar framework for those attending.  But it helped him.

My grandfathers had the more traditional viewing (which some call a wake, but unless there is booze and singing, it ain’t a wake in my book) of the body, followed by a funeral the next day, and the burial. My father’s father had a military funeral — no mass, just readings and music and the casket draped with the flag. My mother’s father will have a catholic mass (another opportunity for those of us who no longer practice to be conspicuous as we do not stand to take communion) followed by a military funeral. (No 21 gun salute — mom nixed that — but Taps will be played).

My grandfather, the one being buried later today, was not embalmed. I am now in agreement with not doing so, in as many cases as possible. If only for the environment, and to allow the natural process of decay to work faster. But also because the embalmed and painted bodies I’ve seen don’t look a whole lot other than what they are: dead. I find it incredibly creepy when someone exclaims “He looks so good!” I know they mean well, but only tact prevents me from answering sarcastically.