Wednesday Wish (174); Unwrap Your Smiles

Every year I look forward to seeing how my favorite sign is affected by summertime in the South. For anyone who lives in the South, summertime means the return of the jungle, the return of Kudzu.

Most people I know down here, loathe kudzu. One person I met was so convinced it was growing before his eyes that he measured it and discovered it grew almost a whole foot in one day. For people who live in the country, that moves weeding into a whole new category. Along freeways and in forests, entire hillsides are transformed into green sculpture gardens literally overnight. That’s a lot of jungle even to this Pacific Northwest girl from the Evergreen State.

 

So, as I was saying, every summer with the return of the ‘vine that overtook the South’, comes my excitement at seeing how it will transform my favorite sign. For many years, I’d just chuckle as I passed by, but this year, a year that’s felt like an unusually potent year of growth and transformation, I needed a picture. And with that picture, came reflections about why it always makes me smile.

 

*There’s something special about seeing behind the veil to what someone or something really is. And when that veil confirms what’s beneath, well then, in a world filled with a lot of things that don’t always makes sense these days, it’s awfully comforting.  

*Seeing someone’s hidden gifts is satisfying… both for the seeing and the seen. When connection happens, it feels good and right because connection is good and right.

*Secrets hiding in plain sight, especially those you know most people miss, are sweet-bright spots for heavy days.

*Homeopathy, something I’ve been studying for years now, states that ‘like heals like’. From that grows the idea that since the sign heals me with smiles year after year…we must be alike in some way.

*What parts of me are hiding in plain sight? 

*Do I find satisfaction sharing my gifts, but only with those who have eyes, (and hearts) to see?

*Are my outsides aligned with my insides but is that unknown to most people who pass by me? Does that matter to me? Or do I keep shining, regardless of who ‘sees’ me for who I am…simply because I love being me?

 

What about you?

What makes you smile these days? Can you sit with it, can you let the connection that brought about that smile grow even deeper gifts within you, gifts you can unwrap for days?

 

What if you unwrapped one smile and I unwrapped another and everyone around us unwrapped their own… would our world transform? We’d definitely have more to smile about and with more to smile about, maybe we’d even grow the perspectives we need to make our world a kinder, more smile-inducing place.

 

I’m in!

Are you?

Wednesday Wish (173); Glow with Imagination

(photo via stockcake.com)

The first time I saw a golden hue around someone’s head and shoulders, I was thrilled… and genuinely scared. The warm pulsating yellow was as clear as day and yet no one had mentioned to me that they’d ever seen such a thing before. Why then, was I? It was beautiful in a way that felt spiritual. So it had to be good. It touched me deeply, running tingles up my arms and neck. So it had to be right. But it wasn’t normal. It wasn’t expected. It wasn’t part of the world I was raised in. 

I smiled at him serenely as I watched it ebb and flow. I tried to contain my tears at his beauty, to not disturb him by telling him what I was seeing. I didn’t say a word. But I’d sneak a peek any time I could to see if he was still glowing. I wanted to know if I’d imagined it or if it was still there. Sure enough, every time I looked, there it was. The golden glow with tufts of pink warming his head and shoulders before me.

 

 

*          *          *

 

When was it, how old were you, when someone told you how the world works? Do you remember the face that told you trees are green, flowers bloom in the sun, the seasons are the same every year, and your imagination isn’t real? Was it the same person who told you that sentences are read left to right, that each letter has a different sound, and that not only is sugar bad for you, but germs are, too? Or was it a different person, the same one who also told you that love is good, but money is necessary?

 

Did you ever draw a tree in the 80’s only to have your teacher tell you to use your head, that trees aren’t purple?

 

Did you ever try to convince your parents that you really did see colors around that man’s head?

 

Or what about that dream you had? Were you the only one who knew what you felt was real, a foreboding of what was to come?

 

I was raised in mainstream American culture that valued the individual, but more than that, a culture that prized the individual who toed the line, who upheld the tried and true, who continued a pattern set out by those who came before me. 

 

Mavericks were disrupters.

True artists were freaks.

People who didn’t make money didn’t earn equal respect.

 

I saw these things and kept anything outside those lines to myself.

 

Was that ever you, too?

 

Who are we when we don’t fit the mold? Are we disrupters? Antagonistic feather rufflers? Freaks? Or are we moving something invisible toward something brighter? A future that makes our imagination sing even if it makes no sense to the mainstream mind, that mind that keeps threatening to rip the reins from our soulful hands? What if the rule-breakers, the creatives, the dreamers, the You in me and the Me in you, are the few who can get us through these new times with our hearts still intact? Shall we dream that for a minute together…yes, why don’t we? 

 

*          *          *

It feels to me like we’ve stepped into a new era, a flavor of life we haven’t ever tasted before:

 

*An era where colors aren’t just for our eyes, but for ‘seeing’ deeper things.

*An era where flowers don’t just bloom to look pretty, but where they are needed. With energetic messages. For those open enough to hear.

*An era where seasons are no longer predictable, but reflect the state of our being, showing us what we need and what we don’t need. As a people. On a deeper level.

*An era where imagination is the only path forward, for if we cannot imagine it, how can it be?

*An era where sugar grounds the soaring and homeopathic germs free us from our unhealthy ways.

*An era where…love is the new sun to realign ourselves with, to revolve around, because nothing else matters more.

 

If we imagine this, together, what then will you be in this new era gifted to both you and me?

 

What color will you glow?

What flower will be your guide?

What will you imagine into being?

And what, pray tell, will your love do if

Love itself is given full reign?

 

Wednesday Wish (169); Ask the Big Questions

(image by Colin Freeman via google images)

Our house sat like a bump on a log. Except it was a square bump perched on stilts in a grassy field in the middle of the rainforest, the only logs vertical and mostly covered with vines. Life was like that in Papua New Guinea—a bunch of contradictions but with enough similarities to trick me into thinking I knew what I was doing, or where I was headed, or even what I was feeling. I was a newly married young idealist and this was exactly where I wanted to be. 

Challenging myself to actually try to make the world a better place. 

Out of my comfort zone. 

In a world very different than the one I was raised in.

Years before we got there, the Australians had set up posts at various sites in the ‘last frontier’, their mission being to organize and perhaps even guide the various tribal groups toward some sort of nationally cohesive strategy. Modernization, maybe? Mitigating what they thought of as tribal unruliness and warfare? All we were told as US Peace Corps Volunteers was that PNG had declared its sovereignty and the Australians had gone home. We were to live in one of their abandoned houses. On stilts. In the middle of the Southern Highlands. An area still thought of as untouched, unknown, and generally unexplored.

Some days there was enough diesel to run the generator for the few houses in our little town of Komo. That meant we had lights at night and the tank on our roof would be filled up so water could run from our faucets. Most days, however, we used candles and pumped our water into the tank manually.

Eight hundred push-pulls on the baton-like stick. That’s what it took to fill up our tank, to have one shower or a few dish-washings, enough to not worry about push-pulling again for a few days, anyway. Until one day, when Bob was out with some locals teaching them to play basketball and dying of thirst. Even though we were in the mountains, we were still about 4 degrees from the equator, and it got hot during the day. Very hot. Especially on a hard, clay-packed basketball court working up a sweat. When the locals dipped their heads under the faucet of an old, abandoned water tank left behind by an Australian government official, Bob, idealistic plus-teenager that he was, didn’t hesitate. He joined in, gulping with his usual 6’4” parched ferocity.

The wooden handle was like a speedometer wand, mounted close to eye-level, on one of the stilts that held up our house. Before that day, I had only done about 300 push-pulls before my stick arms gave out and my burly husband’s beast arms took over. I had no preparation for what lie ahead. But like any devoted wife, whatever made my husband feel better, I would do. 

As his temperature climbed, my arms burned.

As his stomach hurled, my back throbbed.

As his body curled into the fetal position, my arms raced to pump as many times as I could. 

Back and forth, back and forth, hundreds upon hundreds of times to keep the water running on him, to lower his temperature, to give him some relief from the horrid experience he was having. Sometimes I’d take breaks and run up the stairs to check on him. Was he any better? Had his temperature dropped? Was there anything else I could do? Our medical kit had a few things I thought to give him, but nothing seemed to help as much as the water on his back. So I’d race back down to the pump to get my arms back in their groove again. Hundreds upon hundreds of times, pumping that thing to kingdom come.

I thought I was being a good wife. 

I thought I was giving him some much-needed relief, maybe even saving his life.

I thought I knew what I was doing, where I was headed, even what I was feeling.

But I barely knew the half of it. This was the Highlands of Papua New Guinea after all, the land of the unexpected. 

Standing there pumping away, my mind wandered. My body faltered. And my spirit…well, let’s just say it ventured into new realms. 

It started with how the hell did I get into this mess and how can I work through this pain, and soon moved into bigger questions, wider ideas, deeper concepts. . . 

Why do we have pain? Do we choose it more often than not?

What matters?

What doesn’t matter?

And why don’t we ask these questions until we’re forced to?

Why don’t we wake up sooner?

There've been more smiles here in the jungle than anywhere I've lived before. What are we missing?

What am I missing?

Why didn’t I ask bigger questions like these before?

How can I carve out time to keep digging to depths like these?

If our modern life doesn’t encourage it, how can I create a life that does?

I was a Peace Corps Volunteer pushing a baton back and forth in the middle of the rainforest so my husband would feel better. I wasn’t digging wells or bandaging gushing wounds. I wasn’t reversing poverty or teaching children how to read. I wasn’t searching for Birds of Paradise or learning how to forage in some of the most untouched rainforest in the world. 

But I was growing myself. I was learning what it meant to be connected to my deeper self. I was listening, listening in ways I never had before. Being alone with my thoughts, struggling to overcome fear, and a pain brought about by someone else but continued by my own choice, I had inadvertently found a new space within myself. 

Struggle began to transform into beauty. 

Pain into gift. 

The land of the unexpected had given me a treasure. 

A gift I would continue to unwrap for the rest of my life.

Bob survived that day and vowed to never drink from unknown water sources again. My arms obviously survived, too. My vow, however, was to never ignore the silent urgings of my spirit again. I’d take more time to unearth my feelings, to mine for the silent thoughts that didn’t always feel safe emerging, and I would always do my best to ask myself the hard questions before they were forced upon me, questions that sat like bumps on a log silently waiting to be seen. Funny though, almost 30 years later, they look a lot more like lush leaves on a jungle vine continually aching to be seen with wide-eyed wonder, revered for their inherent beauty . . . silent, but ever so rich with unfailing treasure.