Wednesday Wish (105); Live With Imagination

body painting art by johannes stotter

What’s the difference between life and imagination?

Where you decide to put your heart.

*          *          *

I imagined he was smiling at me, with kindness, with love.

And so he was.

I imagined it was a sunny day even when the blues grew darker, and darker still. For her eyes set sparkles free, inviting me to catch them like shooting stars. And his, still more. And hers, more still. And suddenly, the blue day became light. Because my imagination told me so.

I dreamed things would work out.

So they had no choice

But to do as I imagined they would.

“Miss Brynne?”

“Yes, little one?”

“Are you a kid or a grown up?”

“Hmm, let me see,” I said, tapping my chin. “Today, I am a kid.

“Just as I thought,” she said, as she ran off to play.

I drove everywhere that day.

Up the streets.

Down the avenues.

Seattle saw me and my car all over the place.

And everywhere I went, people honked and waved.

This is the friendliest city I have ever met!

And I have travelled many places.

But did you see the Tupperware you left upon your car's roof all day?

said the cynic with a knowing furrow upon his face.

Why no, I said, with a dreamy smile.

Ahh, yes. Now I understand.

Seattle must’ve been happy to see I was eating so well.

I used to be afraid to fly

Because in a past life I died in a plane crash.

You did?

Uh huh.

So what changed?

I listened to my fear,

Let it teach me why it was there.

And when I did,
I grew compassion
For myself.

And that fear?

It went away.

Poof!

*          *          *

What’s the difference between life and imagination?

Just your heart.

just Your heart.

just your Heart.

My Wish this week is that you put your Heart where it wants to be. 

In a world you Wish yourself to be … in a world that awaits … in a world that already is … just an imagination’s jump away.

Wednesday Wish (104); Pass It On

photo by abf via
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Heart_of_snow.JPG

When he saw my car, he didn’t know I was having an eventful morning, that I had already iced two cakes and still, my daughter wouldn’t eat her breakfast because, among other things, there was a white mink in the mousetrap. He didn’t know I was hosting three authors for dessert and that after dropping my daughter off at school I was headed to pick up one of those authors at the airport. And he certainly didn’t know that when we finally got into the car and out the driveway that my neighbor was having a crisis of her own, the whole series of events making us terribly late.

Even though I had never met my neighbor, I stopped to ask if she needed help dragging her huge bag of garbage to the end of the road.

“No, no,” she said, almost breathless. “But there is something else you can help me with. Could you call a locksmith? I’m locked out.”

            “A locksmith?” I had no idea where a locksmith might be in my new little New England town and the thought of leaving her outside in her bathrobe, boots and parka in sub zero snowy weather left me almost speechless. “Sure. I’ll find you a locksmith. But are you sure I can’t do anything else for you? What if you wait in my house to stay warm?”

            “No, no. I’m fine,” her face looking half frozen. “Just a locksmith.”

            “You sure? Just a locksmith?”

            “I’m sure. Just a locksmith,” her teeth now chattering as her flannel nightgown fluttered in the breeze.

So I drove off blinking hard, wondering if I was really living my day, not just making it all up.

He didn’t know any of this as I sped by. And how could he—an innocent police officer enjoying his uneventful morning until mine collided to contradict his.

As soon as I saw his lights, I pulled off to the side of the road, grateful that I had already made the appropriate calls for my neighbor.

            “Hello, Officer. I’m so sorry. You wouldn’t believe my morning ...”

            “I’m sure I wouldn’t.” He was formal and well spoken, a true police officer with confidence and command. And he didn’t seem to budge under my gentle emotional distress. “Do you know you were going 40 in a 25?”

            I gulped. I didn’t. But I wasn’t about to argue. Instead, I apologized and begged for a warning, telling him at a pace equivalent to speed dial how new I was to the community and hoping the story of my white mink, or my neighbor freezing outside in distress, or the icing of my two cakes or even my trip to the airport after dropping my daughter off at school … some of it, any of it, might help. And I swear that when I did, his eyebrows rose.

I gave him my insurance and registration cards, and waited. And waited. And waited. And soon, just as I was sure my daughter would miss her entire morning at school and I would miss picking Charles up on time, he got out of his car and headed for mine.

            “Please watch your speed in town, Ms. Betz. And tell your daughter’s teacher I made you late.”

            “Oh thank you, Officer, thank you so much. As for telling the teacher, though, no way! I can’t tell her that,” I said with an overflowing smile. “I have to preserve my upstanding reputation and a run-in with the law would never do.”

            He handed me my paperwork.

            “You know … Paul,” I found his name tag, “I want you to know that I write about the little things that make life magic and your gift of kindness today won’t end with me. I’ll be passing it on. Promise.”

            “Wait, wait,” he said, giving me a double take, “you write about the little things that make life magic?”

            “Uh huh,” my eyes now sparkling.

            “You really do?” he asked again.

            I nodded. Like a golden retriever. “I do!”

            “Well, isn’t that amazing,” he said shaking his head with a smile.

“It is?” I asked.

“It is! Because guess what? I do, too! Now if that isn’t a beautiful gift from the universe, I don’t know what is!”

            And right then and there, we both started to laugh. I shed my stress, he shed his title and for a few beautiful moments, Officer Paul and I were just souls on a journey sopping up our serendipitous connection.

            “I’m probably going to have to write about this.” I yelled out to him as he made his way back to his car.

            “I was about to say the same thing to you, too, Brynne,” he yelled back with a big delightful grin.

And then we laughed some more. In our own cars. Mine with a new peace, crawling the speed limit back to my neighbor, to insist on warming her up. His driving off with a lighter feel … yep, that magical feel the universe shares every time you heed its call. And I think it’s safe to assume that we both drove away happy, happy that we had made a new friend.

*          *          *

Pass it on. Pass on the kindness in your heart even when it isn’t appropriate or the rules say otherwise. Do it because it is right in your heart, right in your soul, right in that place that believes in magic and the goodness of people. 

Wednesday Wish (103); Protect Your Magic

photo by zev at fiddleoak.com

“Did you remember the cupcakes?” said my best friend Jenny, twirling her braids and chewing her day old gum.

          “Yep,” I said, proud of myself for not accidentally-on-purpose forgetting and then gobbling them up like a belly-happy beast.

          “And what’d ye tell your mom?”

          “That we were looking for four leaf clovers. Same as I always do. What’d ye tell yours?” I kinda knew, but it was what we always asked each other. As if to be sure neither one of us had been forced to reveal even a smidgen of our secret.

          “Nothing much. Going outside to play. She isn’t like your mom. She’d probably make me stay inside if I told her we were hunting for—“

          “Shhh—someone might hear you!” One could never be too safe.

          “Thanks, that was close. Good thing your brother wasn’t around. He’d probably have me in a head lock by now. ‘Say it! Say it, Jenny, or I’ll rip it off….’” Jenny rubbed her neck, her eyebrows peaked over her bright brown eyes. “He’s a bully, that brother of yours.”

          “I know. Come on, though. Twilight is comin’ fast and you know we only have a little bit of time before dinner.”

          “Our dinner or theirs?”

          I giggled, “Ours, silly. Fairies don’t eat like us. They just nibble on forest treats all day long. And anyway, I’m sure they’ve been watching us for the past few minutes. Bet you my favorite purple pen that their stomachs are grumbling right about now. Once a fairy gets a whiff of these cupcakes, they won’t be able to focus on anything else.”

          “Ya,” said Jenny with a grin, “I bet you’re right. I know I can’t.”

          I giggled right back, “I love you, Jenny. And I love trying to find our real kin together. Not another person in the world I’d wanna do it with.” I reached for her hand and squeezed it good 'en hard.

          “You mean you wouldn’t wanna meet your first fairy holdin’ hands with Jon Foster instead?”

          I made a barfing noise and within seconds we were a  mess on the forest floor, me throwing leaves and Jenny huckin’ acorns, the two of us bursting at the seams.

*          *          *

My Wish for you this week? To protect your magic. You see, sometimes we come across a magic in our lives, either in our imagination or in our waking world, that changes everything—that lightens our heavy. For some of us it’s an afternoon of fairy hunting with a wide-eyed imaginative little friend but it can also be as simple as an idea for a book, or a painting, or a new business. For others it might be a belly-flutter when someone walks by, or a lovely heart-pounding when a certain reminder happens upon our path. No matter what it is though, we must always—always—remember one important thing. We must protect those magics in our lives. We must keep them growing and even thriving. Like a fairy in the wood or a whisper in the breeze, magic can be elusive and if it is not treated with the utmost care, it can slip through our fingers, leaving us once again with a heavy load upon our backs. So this week, protect your magic. Give the magic in your life room to flourish. And share with others only when you no longer need to defend what you know to be true.

Wednesday Wish (102); Replenish

photo by katerina plotnikova

I sat cross-legged on the grass. It was itchy in the way tropical grass always is. Was it uncomfortable with itself, too? Grass never seemed as happy in the heat as palm trees or orchids or gardenias did. Maybe their itch was their way of expressing themselves. But before I could wonder anymore, a few people sat down beside me …

One had a bone through his nose. He said it was for picking food out of his teeth or getting dirt from under his fingernails. I thought him resourceful. And his eyes, they talked kindly to me. Another sat down with tattoos all over her face. They highlighted the beauty that she was. A darker brown on her brown was beautiful. She nursed a baby on one breast and a pig on the other. She was smiling. I was, too. So was the man with the bone in his nose. Still more joined us. I can’t remember all of them, but each was unique, each was beautiful, each touched me with their genuine selves worn so effortlessly.

They asked me questions. Why my skin was so light. Why my hair was so straight and long. Could I help them grow their hair long, too? Could they have some of it to remember me by? And then ... they asked me what I would do when I went back to my home country, when I went back to where I was from. I swallowed hard and decided to tell them the truth.

“When I go home,” I said with tender eyes, “I will have to get a job. I will have to work. And probably not on the land, but in a building.”

“Work? Inside? But why would you want to do that?” they said to me.

“To make money. Because, you see, if I don’t have money, I won’t have a place to live or food to eat. If I don’t have money, I will go hungry.”

Their faces looked at me, blankly. And then the man with the bone in his nose said, “Don’t you have land to use? Don’t you have family? Can’t you plant sweet potatoes?”

“I can plant sweet potatoes and I will, but still, I will have to work to pay for my house, just as the rest of my family does. It is what we all do in the United States. We must. To survive. We have to work for not just what we want, but what we need. And sometimes we even have to work at jobs that we don’t like just to have enough money to live.”

And do you know how that beautiful group of natives reacted that day in the heart of Papua New Guinea?

They wailed.

They wailed with tears streaming down their faces.

For me.

For you.

For all who struggle in a system that doesn’t naturally feed their souls.

*          *          *

My Wish? That you replenish your soul. That you see the system you were born into and work through it. Not against it, but through it. There are always ways to replenish your soul. There are always ways to feed your spirit. Listen to your soul’s desires. Honor those desires, those wishes, those secret, but not forgotten, dreams. Let them guide you to a life of your own choosing, a life that you love, a life that makes you feel as if you have wings. Then fly, my dear …. FLY!

Wednesday Wish (101); Ask

angel machines by nick bantock via flickr

He had always been a favorite author of mine so when I opened the finely wrapped gift on Christmas morning, my hand rushed up to cover my mouth. How did I not know he had written a new book? How did the gift giver beat me to it? I could hardly wait to be alone, to dive into this new world, to watch his words come alive, to soar with his imagination. You see, it was a particularly difficult Christmas for me. I was newly divorced, back home with my parents, and honestly, I was sad. Sad that my life wasn’t at all like I hoped it would be. But … as I would soon find out, my imagination was exactly what my spirit needed. And a new read from a favorite author? Well, that part at least, was even better than I hoped.

I tucked my legs up under myself for so long, they ached. I laughed out loud. I filled my eyes with tears. And my body, well, I’m pretty sure it lost some of its heavy emotion. And all because of one man’s gift of imagination. Thank you, dear author, I said to his picture on the back cover when I was finished reading, thank you for bringing a smile to my sad heart. And universe, if you are listening, I’d like to thank him one day in person, to tell him what a gift he has been to me this Christmas.

And just like that, I got on with the rest of Christmas.

Until the phone rang.

It was a friend of mine. She wanted to meet me for lunch the next day. At a bookstore in an out-of-the-way-town. I agreed. And hung up with yet another smile.

The next day, in a town about forty minutes away, I was browsing through books, waiting for our name to be called for an open table. I was wandering, probably daydreaming, when I looked up and saw who I thought was the author I had just read the day before, the author who had transformed my Christmas. I blink-stared. And blinked some more. He doesn’t live here. It’s the day after Christmas. He’d never be here … would he? I went to the shelf where his books lived to double check what I was seeing, the face on the back cover with this face I was seeing in person. I crept around the corner, peering as discretely as I could. It was him. It was definitely him. My heart picked up its pace. I knew exactly what I had to do.

“Excuse me, but are you Nick Bantock?”

He turned to face me with a sly smile, “I am.”

I’m sure I swallowed a big gulp of air, “I thought so. Well, there’s something you need to know.” And I proceeded to tell him how he saved my Christmas, how his words brought wings to an otherwise heavy heart. I thanked him again and again and again.

And do you know what he told me?

That earlier that day he felt a strange urge to pull off the freeway, that amidst protests from everyone else in the car, he just knew he had to stop in at the out-of-the-way bookstore in the out-of-the-way town but he didn’t know why.

And then he said, that lately, the past few months anyway, he had been doubting his worth as an author, that he wondered if anyone ever read him anymore and if he should just stop writing all together. He looked at me, talked to me, his eyes begging for answers he just couldn’t find himself.

“No, no, no!” I said. “Please keep writing. I know I am not the only one who needs your imagination. If you buoyed me, a heavy-hearted new divorcee on Christmas, I can’t possibly be the only one.” I searched his eyes. Was I reaching him? So then I said,  “You know something Mr. Nick Bantock in the out-of-the-way-bookstore on the day after Christmas? I’m a reminder from the universe to keep writing because what you do is magic. And we need magic in this world now maybe more than ever.”

And I swear to you, right then, his eyes caught fire.

As did mine. And maybe not just my eyes. No, I am sure my heart did, too.

*          *          *

Ask. Ask for your heart’s desires, for the feelings, the connections, the answers you need. But please don’t forget to expect those desires to be met. For you see, Nick Bantock isn’t the only magic one here. I happen to know that you are, too. You just need to believe it, for yourself, and especially this week, today …  right now.