The Sun

by David Whyte

This morning on the desk,
facing up,
a poem of Kavanagh's
celebrating a lost love.

"She was the sun," he said,
and now she still
lives in the fibre
of his arms,
her warmth
through all the years
folding the old man's hand
in hers
of a Sunday
Dublin morning.

Sometimes reading
Kavanagh I look out
at everything
growing so wild
and faithfully beneath
the sky
and wonder
why we are the one
terrible
part of creation
privileged
to refuse our flowering.

I know
in the text of the heart
the flower is our death
and the first opening
of the new life
we have yet to imagine,

but Kavanagh's line
reminds me
how I want to know
that sun,
and how I want to flower
and how I want to claim
my happiness
and how I want to walk
through life
amazed and inarticulate
with thanks.

And how I want to
know that warmth
through
love itself,
and
through the sun itself.

I want to know
that sun
of happiness
when I wake
and see through
my window
the morning color
on the far mountain.

I want to know
when I lean down to the lilies
by the water
and feel their small and
perfect reflection
on my face.

I want to know
that gift
when I walk
innocent through the trees
burning with life
and the green
passion
of the pasture's
first growth,

and I want to know
as lazily
as the cows
that tear at the grass
with their
soft mouths.

I want to know
what I am
and what I am
involved with by loving
this world
as I do.

And I want time
to think of all
the unlived lives:

those that fail to notice
until it is too late,

those with eyes staring
with bitterness,

and those
met on the deathbed
whose mouths are wide
with
unspoken love.

Every year
they kept me faithful
and help me
realize there is more
to lose
than I thought
and more at stake
than the mere
possibility
of a recognized
heroism.

They remind me
why
I want to be found by love,
why I want to come alive
in the holiness
of that belonging,
and like Kavanagh

I want to be courageous
in my terrors.

I want to know
in life or death
all the ways
the warmth of that
great rose fire
sun
in its heaven
has made me.

And everything
that made me
has been
a sun to my growing,
that is the article
of my faith,
even the darkness
of that soil that went
before the time of light
was another
kind of sun.

What I am
is what I have
been grown by,
the sun,
that great love,
all the many small loves
and that one love too
who waited so long
to find me and
who has always
walked by my side
folding my
remembering
hand in hers.

What it's like to wake up wealthy beyond measure

Yesterday was the first day in weeks that rising wasn't a snarking and gagging my way through a heavy chest and head full of phlegm to clear airways, sputtering and coughing to consciousness already exhausted. Today I am *finally* blessed with the precious gem of health after being so sick for three weeks, and I am so grateful for each clear breath today.

The back yard shines a gorgeous wealth of gold and green through the freshly washed blinds after a weekend of spring cleaning; the whole pride of fresh dandelions brilliantly rears their golden manes just for me.

I woke to a jackpot of kisses from my beloved wife. There is absolutely no amount of money I would trade for her; she is my love of a lifetime and each kiss makes me a billionaire, every touch could pay off the national debt, her loving glances fill my coffers scandalously full.

I rise to the best organic, fair-trade, bird-friendly coffee in the world GoddessKaffeina.com and a feast of whole oats cooked in apple juice with seeds and cranberries, seasoned with cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cardamom.

My daily investments are paying off like never before! I write out my morning pages in purple ink in my latest purple journal. I am finally doing the daily work of getting the hell out of my own way, freeing myself to pursue my creative dreams with all of my energy. I have never known internal spaciousness like this before; I am lifting off the paralyzing criticism and harsh negative beliefs that held me. I am letting go of the endless anxiety of To Do lists scratching out my energy line by line. I am emptying out this nonsense that ruled my time, so now I can fill my days all the way up with creative energy in action.

Even my action plan for this week is a riot of prosperity: solidifying lesson plans for all of my new private students, creating my solo choreography for Mira's performance intensive, working through a Suhaila Salimpour DVD from the library, practicing giving my posture and arms lessons in French before Tribal Umrah in July, arranging a barter for my very first voice lessons, going to classes for drumming and dancing and yoga, feeding the bunnies in the park, purchasing airfare for intensives in April, May, July and August, clearing out old donations and recycling to make even more room for fresh energy in our life.

I am wealthy beyond measure, and it doesn't even matter what's in the bank!

Push through the dark

From "The Heretic's Daughter" by Kathleen Kent

"People will ask those who have lived beyond terrible trials, ' How did you come to get beyond your loss?' as though the survivor who suffered the loss should simply stop up their nose until breath is starved from the lungs. It is true that some people will lose their desire for life and refuse food and drink after the death of a beloved, or if there is too much pain and injury of the body. But a child, so recently come into the world from the void of creation, can be more resilient than the strongest man, more strong willed than the hardiest woman. A child is like an early spring bulb that carries all the resources needed within its skin for the first push through the soil towards the sun. And just as a little bit of water can start the bulb to grow, even through fissured rock, so can a little kindness give a child the ability to push through the dark."

Anger

From Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way"

Anger is fuel. We feel it and we want to do something. Hit someone, break something, throw a fit, smash a fist into the wall, tell those bastards. But we are *nice* people, and what we do with our anger is stuff it, deny it, bury it, block it, hide it, lie about it, medicate it, muffle it, ignore it. We do everything but *listen* to it.

Anger is meant to be listened to. Anger is a voice, a shout, a plea, a demand. Anger is meant to be respected. Why? Because anger is a *map*. Anger shows us what our boundaries are. Anger shows us where we want to go. It lets us see where we've been and lets us know when we haven't liked it. Anger points the way, not just the finger. In the recovery of the blocked artist, anger is a sign of health.

Anger is meant to be acted upon. It is not meant to be acted out. Anger points the direction. We are meant to use anger as fuel to take the actions we need to move where our anger points us...

When we feel anger, we are often very angry *that* we feel anger. Damn anger!! It tells us we can't get away with our old life any longer. It tells us that old life is dying. It tells us we are being reborn, and birthing hurts. The hurt makes us angry.

Anger is the firestorm that signals the death of our old life. Anger is the fuel that propels us into our new one. Anger is a tool, not a master. Anger is meant to be tapped into and drawn upon...

Sloth, apathy, and despair are the enemy. Anger is not. Anger is our friend. Not a nice friend. Not a gentle friend. But a very, very loyal friend. It will always tell us when we have been betrayed. It will always tell us when we have betrayed ourselves. It will always tell us that it is time to act in our own best interests.

Anger is not the action itself. it is action's invitation.

The boring truth about living your dream

From Suzanne Falter-Barns' How Much Joy Can You Stand?

"The popular belief is that inspiration 'strikes' us, like a lightning bolt from the sky. Actually, it's the other way around. In reality, we strike inspiration much the way miners strike gold. By ceaselessly working, reworking and reworking the old territory, sooner or later we'll run into a little nugget of something wonderful, something better. The more we dig, the more we'll find, until -- if we're very lucky and very persistent -- we hit the mother lode. In reality, creative work is no different than swinging a pick. For every day of incredible divine intervention, there are probably ten spent sifting through the dirt... Each day spent digging puts you that much closer to the gold. And over time, if you keep at it, a curious thing happens: you begin to love sifting through the dirt. Some of your happiest moments can come during the seventh and eighth rewrites of a novel, when you're reinventing your character's walk for the umpteenth time. Happiness can be found in the small hours of perpetual sanding you've put in on a fine piece of furniture, when the wood grain begins to be as smooth as silk, and you begin to feel the rightness of what you set out to do. Finally, you can understand all those curious twists and turns you took and see the larger, greater picture that they form. And this is when all your doubts about your goal begin to blow away... This is also the point when you come close to sensing the divine in your work. It does not arrive heralded by trumpet-blowing cherubim or even in a blast of nonstop inspiration. Rather, the divine steals over you in the small, humdrum hours of your undertaking -- during the checking, refining, editing, and polishing. The divine creeps in during yet another unexceptional night in your workroom, exactly when you least expect it."

Dancing as Liberation

by Victoria Day

There are countries where it is a punishable crime to dance.

Women must cover their heads,
never raise their voice in song and
never ever display such immoral conduct as dancing.

Those who forbid the dance forbid life.

If they tied me in ropes
Held a gun to my head
And forbid me to dance
I would dance in my head.

If I woke up tomorrow
Without limbs that would move
I would dance in my soul.

If dance was taken from me
I would snatch it back.
I would dance with my eyes.
I would dance in my breathing.
I would dance completely still.
I would dance with the atoms moving inside me.

I would dance in the mingling of voices around me
Layering transcending swooping into each other.
I would dance in the red-blushed sky that caresses the tree line.
I would dance on the call of the geese
that cut through the sky above me,
my winged partners in the dance.

If dance was taken from me
I would snatch it back.

I would dance passion.
I would dance pain.
I would dance magick.
I would dance at my labor and dance at my rest.
I would dance my power.
I would dance my palpable joy of existence.

In some countries it is illegal to dance.
It is illegal to display such immoral conduct.

Dancing is an act of liberation.
It is for those who must dance in stillness
that I open myself up and dance.

Haunted

"The only courage that matters is the kind that gets you from one moment to the next." ~ Mignon McLaughlin

The Ghost of Surgery Past undoes me with the gnash of its terrible teeth. My right shoulder shrieks its barometric aria of sudden agony: scar tissue impinges brachial nerve plexus in a cacophony of muscle spasm and gristled pain.

This tour of the surgical layer of hell reminds me just how present the past can be. I am awake now for that four-hour operation I had over ten years ago: fused clavicle crisply snaps again while all that extra white bone that took up so much room inside the shoulder socket chip chip chips away under the cruel bite of a bright chisel.

Exorcism is a panicked one-armed dash for a hot compress and anti-inflammatories in the few moments before the throbbing becomes nauseous. Curled protectively around the pain, I struggle not to hold each breath.

Death is the mother of Beauty

"The most beautiful people are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen."

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Our happy news!

It's official!

Today the California Supreme Court denied the attempt to delay our marriage until after the November elections. We can finally be legally married in California on 17 June 2008.

Because we have just two weeks left before the happy date, it will most likely be a small private ceremony with one or more celebrations to follow on dates that work for friends and family.

Marriage proposal blog people.tribe.net/bonniemar...047c2ba471

Marriage proposal caught on video www.youtube.com/watch

How you can help people.tribe.net/bonniemar...9f9a19d376

The most meaningful way that you can support our love is to vow to vote no this November on the ballot initiative that would take away our constitutional right to marry forever.

May we all be granted access to our happily ever after!

Love, love, a lifetime of love,

Bonnie

The best wedding present ever!

The recent California Supreme Court decision was a historic triumph for equality over bigotry, for inclusion over injustice.

What we want more than anything else for our upcoming wedding is the right to have a marriage that lasts more than 173 days.

Despite the recent California Supreme Court decision that denying same-sex couples the right to marry is unconstitutional, efforts are underway throughout the country to take away our rights.

Proponents of bigotry and hate have paid millions of dollars to gather 1.1 million signatures in an attempt to invalidate the California Supreme Court decision. And they won't stop with California - extremists are even trying to add a same-sex marriage ban to the U.S. Constitution.

We are at a turning point in our nation's history and I'm hoping you'll join me in standing up against discrimination. Please sign the Million for Marriage petition and get us one name closer to showing that Americans overwhelmingly support marriage equality!

www.hrcactioncenter.org/action...-137168

Every committed couple deserves to enjoy the privileges and responsibilities conferred by marriage. Add your name to the petition and be a part of the movement to fight for marriage equality for all.

Let's gather more than 1.1 million signatures, and let's do it for love!

Bless your beautiful heart!

♥