The Relationship and the Robins - for Earth Day 2020

Earth's desperation has eased, partially lifted, as humans halt their activity when it's too late. They should have let her be. 

Her furry inhabitants take careful strides into the places where humans used to be. They search for a blade of grass among an unrecognizable array of human doing.

Earth's Moon sees her more clearly now, and is warmly reminded of her powerful beauty. Rivers roaring, land masses shifting, night's darkness absorbed into her, day's light converted into life. She is water, wind, and sand, and she is eternal.

Poor Moon, so unaware, so innocent. The cycle of billions of years is now spiralling off it's path, after a short two-century stint of humans.  And they will be back. No, Moon, there’s more going on than you can see from afar. 

Now, she is delicate. She has been harvested, trampled, robbed, and burned. She has been worn thin by the weight of humans. She is well beyond her human capacity, and they don’t stop procreating. 

She cries quietly as she carries the human suffering all over her scarred face. She knows it cannot be reversed. Not for her, not for them. 

All the warning signs had been ignored. The humans didn't cherish what they needed for their survival. Now her regions have become twisted, mutated and empty. She is no longer in her natural rhythm. Easily, her wounds can be observed, but the humans carry on. 

It was inevitable, she thinks, because she couldn't protect herself. 

She has seen it all, and felt it all. She has ancient vulnerability. Her oppressors have just begun to recognize one of theirs. The darkness of their fear replaces the exhaust fumes. 

"The humans cannot breathe," she tells her Moon.The humans now have something in common with her. Their systems are being attacked with no warning and no predictability. The lungs, the kidneys, even the blood.  The coal, the trees, even the air. It's all too familiar to her.

She wonders if there will be a new sense of connectedness between them, among the surviving humans. Like the early human days. It could be us against the, well, not world. It could be us against the..greed! Reciprocal care and consideration is our only hope.

In the still streets of this chaotic carnage, the robins come. They flock to areas where there are still places to build their homes. They remind the walking humans that there is still simplicity. There is still stable living. 

The robins seem fearless. Earth and humans both grasp for hope. None of them seem to have any control right now. But the robins don't seem to mind. 

They live simply, and need only to feed themselves. They do not hunger for power or gold. 

But power is in the wind and gold is in the sunshine. All the goodness runs through Earth's veins and arteries, rivers and lakes. Doesn't every being know that?

"Cherished Earth, this is my white flag, this is my wailing, my begging for mercy, my apology, and my plea for restoration. I am ready to take responsibility," thinks a human, dying alone on a ventilator.

"Calm now," she says, "Have peace. I suffer like you, and with you. And I am still fighting to live, and so can you. In life and in death, I will give you what I have, and I will take you into what's left of me. This is our destiny. Unconditionally, I love you; you are mine, and I am yours."

“Please love me too.”

copyright Theresa Ullyot 2020
photo cred: The New York Times

Living as a Creative Survivalist- "Concentrate on the bare essentials, so you'll really live."

        "Now here's a surprise: The master praised the crooked manager! And why? Because he knew how to look after himself. Streetwise people are smarter in this regard than law-abiding citizens. They are on constant alert, looking for angles, surviving by their wits. I want you to be smart in the same way - but for what is right - using every adversity to stimulate you to creative survival, to concentrate your attention on the bare essentials, so you'll live, really live, and not complacently just get by on good behaviour." 

Luke 16:8-9

This passage, so eloquently put in the Message version of the Bible speaks very much to my story and my intuition. Sometimes it feels like no matter how hard I try to do things in the law abiding acceptable ways, it gets me nowhere. If I am having a good day, I will realize the yearning to provide for myself and family, the constant pressure to keep my skill set up to date, to increase my income, to meet the bottom line, it's all stuff the birds never do.

The birds just build a nest from whatever they find suitable around them, the eat, they fly, they chirp. Inside, my voice is often telling me to lean into my current capabilities, how birds (who are naked underneath their feathers, by the way) just do their thing. The outside tells me I am not good enough, ever. Especially when I am at the mall, or asked to drop my daughter off two blocks down from her friends or school so no one will see that we don't own an Audi or a BMW.

Two nights ago I tried to explain in a concise way, how I am constantly feeling called to live. (from the inside voice). I definitely wouldn't get by on the good behaviour, so I'm glad there is another way. This passage really takes the shame out of the things I've done that are not considered to be upstanding motherly things. I am sure most of us have unproud moments that still felt right, felt necessary, but it seemed confusing. And on the outside the upstanding folks didn't like it.

Here in this passage, is a good place to practice casting off the layers of self condemnation and start seeing how goodness can be found in any role. It explains that the key here is that no one falls outside the circle of acceptance, no matter what they are doing to survive physically, emotionally, in all the ways necessary.

How does a person focus on the bare essentials? I like to think of these things. The here and now. The connections. Compassionate thoughts. Noticing feelings in the midst of circumstance, and then remembering who I am. Taking big, deep breaths. Building a nest, bird seed.

And what is right? The best way I understand this is, only I know what seems right, for me. Living as a creative survivalist probably involves some discomfort (to take this analogy even further), but it seems to me a good reason to commit to honouring your own walk.

Chirp chirp

Empty Space

"While I was with him I stretched out to accommodate him. In the end, it was creating just a bigger place for emptiness to reside in once he was gone."

Chante Ishta - The Single Eye of the Heart -The Language of the Universe

On my quest for learning how to heal myself and others....


It was 2012, I was living in Korea. On a faded and ripped paper I kept a list of algorithms I had learned and used to solve the Rubics Cube. I had been working on the Cube to force myself to escape the pain and isolation of living in the countryside, having been deserted by someone I loved with no warning, my heart broken into a million pieces, not able to cope with my reality. No one to talk to, I thought if I kept myself busy, I could make it through the year with a level of self preservation that allowed me to be a good mother and successfully complete the year of teaching I had committed to.

During that year I developed a cyst on my ovary which had mutated cells and became the size of a grapefruit. Although it was finally removed safely, it could have taken me down if the cancer had spread. At that time I had no idea why a cyst would take up house in my body, but I knew I was in pain, I knew it was related to that, I was trying to live as healthily as I could. I grew my spirit in the ways I felt were best listening to lectures and reading the bible. You do the best you know how to do at that time. This is my belief. The cyst, a dark fear ridden place in my womb, brought shade to my life, but it must have had a purpose. In all things, I believe there is a purpose. Sometimes it just takes a while to figure out what that purpose is.

Although I do not remember doing it now, on the algorithm sheet, I had drawn a small symbol..a heart, open on one side, with a big dot in the center of it. Now and then, I draw symbols, and have done it all my life. I am not sure why or where they come from, but they show up in my mind and I draw them. In the past, I have left them alone, forgotten and seemingly worthless. Just scribbles. However lately I have learned not to ignore them.

Since returning from Korea, I have had the cyst removed, healed from the loss that nearly killed me, and started to take back my life. Circumstances have permitted me to follow passions, nurture relationships and find out more about how I am.

I have taken to watching videos about healing. I have been doing it since I returned. I have covered a few types, such as Christian healings, touched on Reikki, learned about subconscious mind, a few others and am currently learning about quantum physics and how it relates to ancient scripture and modern science. I am finally finding my way in this life and I know it related to healing myself and healing the people I care for.

A few nights ago I learned how to see the brain in a new perspective, in regards to knowledge. According to the lecture I was listening to, the Western world sees knowledge as something that is located in one's brain, however the Eastern world sees knowledge as something that exists in the form of energy and is available to anyone, in a limitless capacity. Our brains are receptors to accessing the units of knowledge. The key is to know that you already have access to all of the knowledge of the world, and learn how to access it. This is consistent with scriptures I have read, books I have read, both new age and ancient.

This explains why I sometimes know parts of things that I don't understand but later I come across the meaning, or why I draw symbols that later make sense. I have always attributed these experiences to being God's ways of proving to me that I have divine nature, and although this is still my true belief at the end of the day, it is interesting to learn more by seeing that the principles of this are consistent across scriptures and science.

So a few nights ago I was listening to a lecture and with a completely unrelated thought, I stopped and looked around in various old books, trying to find my algorithm sheet. I had no idea why, but I had an urge to solve my Rubics Cube (which I hadn't done in two years) and I needed that sheet. I found the sheet, almost effortlessly, and set to work while listening to the lecture. The sheet I left laying beside my computer, waiting for the next time I could work on it, since I had forgotten have the algorithms and needed more practice.

This morning, as I continued to work on the Cube, I saw the cute little symbol I had written and I thought..strange symbol but it needs to be on my arm. So I took a pen and I copied it. I am getting attached to this little symbol. Later I came home and threw on a new video, as I had finished the last one. Four hours..lots to take in, but I love this speaker and I wanted more. I was starting to understand how the principles work, but I wanted to learn more about application.

As I listened, I had to stop and hold my head, hold my heart. Sounds dramatic, but I guess it was. Another confirmation of just how much power we potentially hold. As Gregg Braden explained the language of healing I could see a number of experiences coming together.

There, on my algorithm cheat sheet, and, on my arm, was a perfect symbol for what Braden calls,  "Chante Ishta" (in Lakota, a Native language), which means, single eye (light) of the heart. I had written in 2012..decoded in 2014.

 He went on to explain, that the world's most powerful language is the mixing of thought, feeling and emotion ( I had heard this part days ago in another lecture, about how electromagnetic power from our hearts actually changes DNA, science to prove it, and even written the name Chante Ishta in my notes, but hadn't connected it) ..The language which can be most powerful, move mountains, as several scriptures suggest, is the language of our heart. We must learn to experience feelings without judgement, bless the experience for bringing insight to our lives, accept and resolve pain, replace with beauty and the healing of the body will come naturally thereafter. There is no running from the pain. Only, there is embracing.

This is all content I have heard before. A bit of it here, a bit of it there. All sounded good, but had no meaning, as if it wasn't rooted in a truth personal enough to me that I was willing to embrace it. Put it all together, and pair it with the idea that these are things Jesus practically shouted in his life, recorded in the gospel, things Budha taught and are still practised today, and things science can now prove. The marriage of scripture, faith and science..something I have always wanted to see, is happening before my eyes.

I am learning to trust intuition, honour feelings, and see every experience as worth blessing, a window into life or the future. When I look back at the time when I was escaping pain by doing a Rubics Cube, my intuition was trying to tell me something else. Embrace all of it. 

Timelessness of True Love

An old man recently said to me, "We celebrated our anniversary this week". Speaking of his deceased ex wife. Interesting that he would still reflect on his anniversary decades after not only ending the relationship (formally) but also saying goodbye to his lover's earthly body. 

It makes me think that there is something timeless about true love. True love can possibly be measured by how much someone is loved, regardless of what happens, how she or he hurts others, desertion, infidelity, even death. True love holds on through all of it. 

I suppose the essence of who one really is can be defined in some part by how much they were loved and how much they loved or still love someone, even if that someone isn't with them or around any more. It’s interesting that an old man of 69, who has been divorced and then widdowered..(if it's possible to say that after a divorce) still thinks of his anniversary as a special day.

This lends itself to who she was. She may have felt unloved, abandoned, full of anger and resentment, but she was loved with a timeless love, even though she had a wall around her so thick she couldn't feel it at all. My hope for that woman is that after death, she has a chance to truly know how much she was loved. And that she knows that he still thinks of her, and remembers their anniversary. 

To remember: (for signing)
"I know I asked too much of you, and I'm pushing you away... I've got nothing to say to a ghost...hoping she'll fade away..I've got nothing to say to a ghost, love is not lived this way. Take your words and put them in my mouth, help me say thing things I never could say..I forgive you..so afraid I'm scared to walk away, eyes are tired but I'm wide awake, I'll forget you. My love, I've learned to let go, of all the things I though we've had. I've got nothing to say to a ghost...Love is not lived this way.." Women's Hour.

Abide

This word seems to have so many layers and meaning and it reveals them throughout the years. Today, it means walking right into the storm and just being in it. Endurance with patient affirmation that it will eventually dissipate. It is so tiring and futile, running from all of the discomfort. Time to face all of it dead on. Time to abide,  v 4.0. Time to be brave and trust.

Raw Again

raw again

after months of drought,
not a tear would show itself
cowards, afraid to streak
the face of someone so
dormant inside

the raw came back.
it rolled in like a heavy storm
i cried on the floor, head to the ground
as i have other times.
then there was that freshness after the rain

i am thankful i got my life back
the life in me, the rawness
the pain, a crisp wind inflating a spirit
the feelings washed over
a previously tired wandering person on pause

a second, third, fourth, twentieth chance
evolution stops, rests, and keeps walking on
two steps nowhere, one step forward
if i feel, i can grow, if i grow,
i can be real and live raw

The Loathing Pipe

I saw it all when I peeked through the far end of the pipe.

I saw you, wandering along the confines of the drain.
Your skin had grown scaly and thick,
Your eyes were glowing radioactive green.
Your hands dragged in the refuse as your hunch hunched onwards.

I saw you lie. Not a little white lie, but a whole slew of big mouldy lies.
You kept bad company. With dark, corrupting, life-sucking creatures of the night.
You put your things in the wrong places.
The wrong things went first and the right things so far at the end,
They fell off,  lying in your watery tracks somewhere.

You de-inspired yourself in hazy oil-thick laze, and then you bathed in sudsy excuses.
You used all the vermin you could find in the pipe.
You ate up furry little faces and
swallowed slimy slugs with your greedy smacks.
Barging through the weakness of creatures' like an open door
You dragged all your demons.

And you look so good to them all.
You got wealth, wonder and water while you wandered.
You became the object of abundant pipe-life.
You ruled the underworld.
The King of the Drain.
A person of sewer superiority.

Into just how much dinge you can decend
Is what makes you as strong as you are.
Pointy, like a drill,
You screw through the filth to the other side.
You can't walk in this ground worm forever.
Eventually you will grow big and
Get tired of bending over to fit in.
You'll bump your head on the top of this world.

At the end you will step into fresh air and green grass.
It will sting as the darkness melts off of you in the sun.
If you self peel, it will hurt more.
You will eventually forget the most putrid particles, in
A mere olfactory pond
reflecting you along with the scum of where you've been in the night.


Then I'll see what you look like in the light.
Less like a troll, and more like a human, I am sure.














 

My Puzzle

I sit, again today, and do my puzzle.

It sucks me into a place inside itself. A place with a pace of it's own, a place I cannot control. It allows me to complete it at it's own pace, not mine.

No two pieces fit into any other places, they need each other, just as mind needs body, a child needs its mother, a lover needs his soul mate, and fingers need a brain in order to will them move two pieces into place.

My puzzle calls to me.The chaos of one thousand needy pieces, the stillness of the cover with the breathtaking scene. The bigger picture.

My creator talks to me when I'm inside the puzzle. He tells me so many things I can only hear when the speed of thoughts slows to near motionless.

He puts His giant and gentle hands over top of mine so that in my blindness I can still put two pieces together exactly. The only two that possibly fit each other. Then three and four, and five and six until the thousandth piece. And I have not thought or matched or tried. I have simply picked up, and placed perfectly, as if arm, wrist, hand and fingers just knew. 

My puzzle inhales me and then breathes me out again as its life. I live for all that happens in the puzzle. The puzzle and I are one.

I will sit again tomorrow.

Oh How I Love Zumba..don't even ask..

A Pearl Project

I did this in South Korea with my good friend Bobby.

What's in Bag.... Photo.. Someone was out of bag..

What's in Bag June 17, 2012

-two wallets (small one for vital cards only.. driver's licence, shopper's drug mart point card) large mom-wallet for endless receipts that have no real purpose
-sunglasses (never worth more than 20 bucks, since they get lost all the time)
-prescription glasses, hardly ever worn
-balloons, one small, one large, for bribing purposes mostly
-excruciatingly slow drying clear nail polish (why do I own this??)
-tickets to Hope family picnic..4 adults, 3 kids under 6
-date book, half full (hard to believe it's already half done)
-pink dyed fur key chain, one of many gifts from the most kind Israr Khan
-bible..same version. ESV..more dog-eared and missing a few words from Ephesians, but functional
-beer cap from a road trip (as a passenger)
-snail mail from a very special person
-empty gum package (is it ever with-gum?)
-a list of senior kindergarten words and some flashcards
-an i cloth cleaning wipe
-business cards (speech therapist, manicure professional, club dj)
-various small forms of bribery (after dinner mints, a feather, a miffy pen in watermelon, a McDonalds happy meal toy-Madagascar penguin, "Smile and wave boys, smile and wave"

Ed Sheeran - Small Bump [Official Video]

Glimpses of Ecstasy

Yesterday little Voonie and I took off last minute and went to the lake. Best decision I've made in a while. The sky was so incredibly blue. The water was still like glass, and it was so quiet there, except for the sound of the birds doing their calling to one another. Or to their creator?  Or to Voonie and I.
Sometimes the beauty I come across is almost too much for me to handle and it makes me cry. I understand why we only get glimpses of the potential of that kind of beauty. If I saw more than what I've seen, I think my heart would break because of the intensity and magnificence of it.
Can a heart burst over wonder? Can it break over beauty? I think mine could.
I am thankful for the moderation provided to me for my own good. Cause life and creation, are just too good for me to handle.

Mushrooms