I love what Wendell Berry writes of in this poem.  A Mother’s love
that is so willing to rest always in love.  No matter what little or big
things come up, that love remains.  In other words, those things
that can come up — she ‘pays it no mind’.

Believing in someone is always a force for the good.  It is to merge
Heaven on Earth, as Wendell Berry brilliantly reflects in this tribute
to his Mother.  Enjoy!
Love, Bethie

To My Mother

I was your rebellious son,
do you remember? Sometimes
I wonder if you do remember,
so complete has your forgiveness been.

So complete has your forgiveness been
I wonder sometimes if it did not
precede my wrong, and I erred,
safe found, within your love,

prepared ahead of me, the way home,
or my bed at night, so that almost
I should forgive you, who perhaps
foresaw the worst that I might do,

and forgave before I could act,
causing me to smile now, looking back,
to see how paltry was my worst,
compared to your forgiveness of it

already given. And this, then,
is the vision of that Heaven of which
we have heard, where those who love
each other have forgiven each other,

where, for that, the leaves are green,
the light a music in the air,
and all is unentangled,
and all is undismayed.

Well you know how Abraham encourages us to chill out and pet a cat?  I don’t know if it’s my hearing or what but I get slightly confused.  Somehow I think they are actually saying chill out and ‘get’ a cat.  After all they sound the same, it’s only one consonant difference, right? 

So now meet the new addition to our family - Allie.  Isn’t she adoreable?!  She’s pure white with blue eyes.  Here she is sleeping in the bed that Kayla, my youngest has made for her.

Right now she’s resting in a room separate from all the other animals that I’ve gotten, since I’ve done quite a bit of chillin’ and gettin’.  :)  Soon she will meet the rest of her new family.

Meanwhile when she wakes up, we’ve got little ribbons tied and dangling for her to play with.  Welcome to your new home Allie - sleep tight.  All is well.

Love, Bethie

I got in the car with Kayla, my youngest daughter today.  Our cats were living the indignity of eating dog food, it was time for a trip to the store!  To our right was sun and to our left was rain.  I said to Kayla, today is a great day for rainbows and at that very moment I turned my head to the left and what did I see, not one but TWO rainbows and I could see one of them from end to end.  I’ve seen rainbows a couple of times out here max and to have it happen today just after I re-found my alignment on a subject so dear to me was very beautiful to witness.

Anything is possible.  It’s always been that way.  I had a brief time where I had forgotten that I live in a Universe that provides completely and totally.  Now I remember.

Love, Bethie

Kahlil Gibran was a Lebanese-American artist, poet, writer, philosopher and theologian. He is said to be the third-bestselling poet in history after William Shakespeare and Laozi.  This is one of his most renowned writings on children.  Today it takes on even new meaning for me in my life.  Enjoy…

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let our bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Leave the beaten track behind occasionally and dive into the woods. Every
time you do, you will be certain to find something you have never seen before.

-Alexander Graham Bell

What an interesting quote on the virtues of an adventuresome spirit.  I was
pondering if Abraham’s definition of contrast, or what feels like unwanted
events, isn’t an invitation to leave the beaten track.  They used to call it ‘data
collecting side trips’.   We sometimes get lost in the midst of one but it never
seems to fail that we always expand as a result and enter fresh, untrodden
territory.

So what if I just started seeing all contrast as an invitation to leave the beaten
track?  What if it is calling me to stretch beyond previous limits and knock
down old boundaries?  What if I viewed it with the eyes of an adventurer?
What if I knew from the onset that this data collecting side trip, this slice
of contrast, would launch me in new directions, open new pathways and
new ways of being in this Universe?

I am an adventurer at heart.  I think when Abraham says “life is supposed to
be fun”, I’ve never fully jived with that.  It didn’t always seem fun.  Tell me that
“life is supposed to be an adventure” and I’m all over that!

Love, Bethie

I just finished watching this beautiful and poignant film about
the former editor of French Elle, who experiences a stroke so
severe that he has ‘locked in’ syndrome.  A rare condition where
his inner world is still intact but he is left with only the ability
to blink one eye.  There’s a great deal of paradox in the movie.
But what I most wanted to talk about was an early scene, where
he begins to pull out of feeling pity for himself and recognizes that
three things are still intact: the blinking of one eye, his memory
and his imagination.

His imagination, where he could experience any version of reality
that he cared to.  This is perhaps the richest of all senses, what
one might even call the sixth sense.  That rich inner landscape
where new worlds are created and experienced.  A place impervious
to time, space, dimensions or limits.  Within the imagination is the
freedom to inhabit any circumstance you wish to now be alive and
present in your outer world.  Dwell in it fully and it has the ability to
transform you from the inside out.  As within, so without.

Neville Goddard spoke frequently on the power of the imagination,
as he gave many lectures on it from the 1930’s through the 1970’s.
Reading and listening to his lectures, books and audio recordings
have re-ignited a world I once delved in freely as a child.  Within my
imagination, there is no place I cannot go, no one I cannot be, and
nothing that I cannot do.

William Blake, noted 19th century poet and artist, termed the
imagination: the eternal body of man that is God himself.

I leave you with a quote from Awakened Imagination by Neville Goddard:

By imagination we have the power to be anything we desire to be.
Through imagination we disarm and transform the violence of the
world.  Our most intimate as well as our most casual relationships
become imaginative as we awaken to “the mystery hid from the ages,”
that Christ in us is our imagination.  We then realize that only as we
live by imagination can we truly be said to live at all.

Well, if there is such a thing as poetic license, I am certainly
taking it now.  I have created what is known as a ‘found’ poem.
Up until now, this poem has not existed.  I have taken a couple
of lines each from 8 different poems and two different authors.
I selected Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry for this creation.  At
the end of the found poem, I have cited the poems I used.

If you like to play with poetry, you can do this, too.  I found it
a wonderful exercise as something to just drop the day’s events
and lose myself inside the soft belly of poetry.  Enjoy…Love, Bethie

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I would like to write a poem about the world
that has in it, nothing fancy

Like our travels, our workdays
burned upon the world.

And forgetting everything I will leap to name it
as though for the first time

Turning always in my mind toward you,
your slopes, folds, gentle openings.

As a poem or a prayer, can also make
luminous any dark place on earth.

Maybe we’re necessary to each other,
and this vacant place has need of us both.

Calling us back to why, how and whence
such beauty and what the meaning.

To its joy we come together–the seer
and the seen, the eater and the eaten,
the lover and the loved.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Each paragraph represented a different poem and alternating
authors:
Mary Oliver, This World
Wendell Berry, Horses
Mary Oliver, Tasting the Wild Grapes
Wendell Berry, Letter
Mary Oliver, May
Wendell Berry, A Music
Mary Oliver, First Snow
Wendell Berry, The Hidden Singer

Just for a moment…

Be still

and know that I am God

Be still

and know that I am Peace
right along side any state of war

Be still

and know that I am Joy
even amidst your sorrow

Be still

and know that I am Faith
in between the spaces of your doubt

Be still

and know that I am Limitless Possibilities
right next to your fears

Be still

and know that I am Clarity
right beside your confusion

Just for a moment…

Be still
Breathe deep
And know that I am God.

(This has been a message from your Sponsor, who hopes you won’t entirely
return to ‘regular’ programming)  :)  Love, Bethie

The nature of *all* things is continually unfolding.

Remember that, Bethie?

Ah, I had a moment where I forgot, but now I am getting into the flow of
remembering that.  I tried to sneak in a period at the end of that experience.
Ha! but I know too much now. And as I recall the eternally unfolding nature
of all things, I also am reminded that Absolute Grace threads both visibly
and invisibly throughout all of my days.  Oh yes, now I remember there is
*no* time off from Grace at work in my life.  And there is *nothing* I need
to do to orchestrate that.  How cool is that?  These are the gifts this
benevolent Universe offers up to me each day.  Grace is breathing me right
now, right this moment.  Grace is ceaselessly at work on my behalf and the
entire Universe’s.

Always.  All-ways.

I don’t have anything else to do today except to acknowledge all my gifts.
So many gifts!

Wow, when I look at it that way, I don’t even remember what
the heck that panty wad twisting was all about!

Love, Bethie

Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by.
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows,
and on the meadows let the wind go free.

Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine,
grant them a few more warm transparent days,
urge them onto fulfillment then, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander on the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.

~Rainer Maria Rilke

excerpted from Ahead Of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose of RMR
edited and translated by Stephen Mitchell