The Point is.....

I get to the end of so many days, especially those spent home, alone - and wonder "What, exactly, is the point?"   Like the old song: "Is this all there is?"    Even writing in here I have interpreted that in various ways......I'm a Scorpio, I am not content with a quiet life. I need to take on challenges, have everything called from me. And yet it takes a lot from me to conduct my current life.....perhaps precisely because of it's quietude. But tonite I thought for the first time (tho it seems logical) perhaps the Point Is....precisely how one conducts one's life, whatever it happens to consist of. 

On my wall I have my own writing: "What if all my Doing here were from a state of Grace?" What if all my doing were from a state of Grace? Well I think I will "chew" on that for a few days.

HESITATIONS AND AN OMEN

Two days ago I wrote in my journal, “Truth is I’m not so interested in Africa, now.” Strangely, after all that passion, I have been feeling that. In part because of so many negative reports in the two books on Africa I read (and noticed I have stopped reading.) Mostly that. Also some creative work emerging again at home and work; finding something in my life here to be more interested in. So last nite at women‘s group, one woman said, “I have the Alchemist on tape!” Another friend and I responded at the same time: “Oh I’d like to hear that,” so the woman gave it to my friend and she would then give it to me. Suddenly I remembered I had already read it or started it, so I really didn’t want it that much, but my friend said, “Here, you listen to it first - I don’t have the time.” At that moment I wondered why it was being thrust on me, and I remember wondering if there was something in it “for me,” some message, perhaps. 

Well I had forgotten that the story is of the little boy who is moved to follow his “personal legend” (myth, as I get it) and his dream is to go to Africa. Well, really Egypt, but they refer to it first as “going to Africa.” And he gets waylaid at various points along the way, and thinks “well, really this little life here is very nice; I should settle for this, and forget about all those dreams....probably they are not realistic anyway.” But along the way he has all these encounters, learns to “read the desert,” “to look for omens to guide him,” to trust himself, etc etc. And at each step he thinks, “well maybe this is enough.....” or "oh the dream is just too hard to achieve..." But something keeps urging him onward. So.......How might this apply to me??...... My attempts to get my birthcertificate and passport have been a nightmare, due to some name changes in the past that I never made legal, so there are still steps to go, and the trip a little over a month away. It is good that I have the "omen" of this story to keep me moving.

War, and Peace

Today is the anniversary of death and destruction and deceit at Pearl Harbor. It goes on and on. Shouldn’t Shakespeare’s plays about these same issues in the time of Richard III and Henry VIII tell us this is How It Is? Shouldn’t any perusal of history, especially up close, tell us that this is the way mankind is? Still I think we have to say, though it is the same, still things now are better or more humanitarian than in the past. We are not putting heads on pikes outside the White House and not chaining retarded people in dungeons in Chicago, nor burning people in New England for believing differently than we do, anymore (tho of course we come close at times, and metaphorically still do some of the same.) And of course el Presidente is close to calling this a religious war. I wanted to write about Presence tonite; I’ve been thinking about it for days, but once again a bit of news has me incensed (Bill Moyers' article on The Rapture viewpoint.) Maybe we are approaching Armageddon - that is, the clashing of worlds, of world-views. Maybe this is a huge battle, but not the one they think. And maybe the battle IS on a spiritual level. The trouble is, it is always enacted physically, and there the death and destruction. Occasional glimpses of the future I see frighten me. Revolution, “Cleansing” by the Religious Right, After the Fall of Civilization. The "Mad Max" period of a frightening future. I reassure myself that sometimes the lessons Mankind has to learn can only come in this sort of testing, but always I fear for the innocent. It also scares me for the tests that will occur between family members or neighbors with different religious views. I know the horrors that have befallen women and children (and men) in Rwanda and many other countries...horrors beyond anything but a few victims in America have ever encountered. I know people (men AND women) are capable of behaving worse than beasts. It scares me. I work to maintain composure, and Faith.

Well, I will write about Presence. Everyone seems to talk about it these days: living in the " Now," living in the present moment. "The past is a memory, the future is a fantasy." And yet most people live in those two states incessantly. And so do I, for probably 75% of my non-working hours. Even when I'm walking the dogs I have to remember to pull my attention outward, if the wind on my face doesn't do it for me.

One place I find it easiest to remain in the present is when I'm working on jewelry - when this activity draws my attention to color and shape and my emerging skill - or in my garden, with its soil texture and small insect life and shiny red tomatoes and open golden roses. The quality of the objects in my home also can call my attention outward.....the glow of my friendly woodstove fire, the good wooden handles of my chopping knives, my handmade wooden cutting board with its rich walnut grain, and my own actions: chopping baby carrots finely, noticing the glossy green leaves and bright red stems of the chard also under my knife. Recognizing that these foods were raised naturally by someone who cares about the quality of the food (even when not from my own garden;) knowing that they are full of vitamins for my health......these awarenesses nourish me and warm my spirit, and keep my attention on the meal I'm preparing. My dishes - most individually chosen at one time or another, brightly colored - and the warmth of the water and the shiny soap bubbles make this also a meditative activity.

Objects on my windowsills speak back to me of my delight when I found them in stores, the woods, the beach....not that I think back to those moments, but that they mirror that pleasure back to me. I live in rooms in which I've chosen the color for the walls, the paintings on them, the cloth on my couch, the rug - well, now I'm talking more of the pleasure given back to you when you have made the room your own. And of course in my case, I built the house, chose the wood on the walls, remember the trees the wood came from, cut and stacked and planed and bleached it (in the early days,) and have lived with it through some changes for 23 years.

These things warm my heart, make me notice details - thus drawing my attention outward and keeping it there. As do the sounds, the smells of the forest outside my home. I think the times I have stayed present longest was squatting in my chicken yard, watching their little chicken social life.....watching my large many-colored rooster with his majestic tailfeathers as he cracked corn and clucked the baby chicks over to it, watching the "pecking order" carried out between the hens, their competition over a bug, or special bit of feed.....and at night, as I closed the door to the chickenhouse, listening to their sleepy murmuring to each other: "I'm here, are you?" "I'm here....."

But no chickens in the yard any longer; not since the mother bear came and knocked down my fence and ate them one after another. I was incensed, I hammered boards and added more wire, and put stakes in to hold the wire to the ground. I spoke to her in my head, called on the Spirit of Bear and felt I actually connected when the image came of a Kwakiutl woven bear-head. I told her, as I hammered, "I too am persistent and strong, and this is my flock!" challenging her to recognize our common desire to nurture and caretake, but she came back and knocked it all down with one blow and ate the rest of the chickens. So no chickens, and now no many-colored fertile eggs with their bright orange yolks.

I think a life which includes as many natural objects as is possible for the place you live will draw your attention outward, will allow you to notice and appreciate your surroundings, will keep you in the present moment, the "Now." "This is a gift - that's why they call it The Present."

“SATAN’S” PULL and My “Conundrum” Revisited.

Many years ago, again on my deck, I first came in contact with what probably were only God we’d all follow Him and everything would be hunkey-dorey and no challenge, no task, no material plane. There‘s also the yin/yang idea - that both are needed for the material plane to exist. This is to day, in that particular moment, it was perceptible to me that there is a downward pull. If God is upward, then the pull away from God is down. But I don’t get this like “Evil” (though I suppose it could be) - it can be as simple as sloth, fear, hesitation, self-indulgence, self-doubt, and all the various temptations. All those things which pull you away from the task you were put here for.........to become fully and truly yourself. So when I look at the my life at this moment, (and we’re back to the conundrum, of course, because that’s what a conundrum is) my question is: Is my desire to do something larger, more out-in-the-world, more all-consuming (whatever form it takes) a natural outgrowth of my path, my coming-into-full-Being? or a flight from the tasks at hand? Is my feeling I should just continue to do what I’m doing, but perhaps with a fuller heart - part of “Satan’s” pull on me? Sloth? Self-indulgence? Turning me away from my grander vision? Fear? Or a more mature and realistic way of pursuing my life?

When I work with people with similar questions, I always ask, “What is your habitual response to things?” My thought is that our habitual responses are connected to old ways of being, and the things we struggle with are part of new growth. (Astrologically, we look at the South Node and its connections as part of past behavior, and the North Node and its connections as the path for this lifetime, though you often do, and should, USE skills from the past toward your new goals.)

My habit is to run. From one thing, to another, to another. As each new interest (drumming, jewelry, weaving, singing, dance, furniture-making, working on my house) proves to require more work to become really proficient than time and patience I have available; as it doesn’t bring me the attention and recognition I crave, I run to the next thing which then becomes my new obsession. I would say the more recent political work is the first time I've gotten caught up in something that I have just done what I felt needed to be done and recognition was not the goal at all. (Conversely, of course, I got quite a bit of local recognition......or maybe it just felt like more because I wasn’t looking for it.)  I felt the evenness with which I did this work was part of the new non-ego-oriented way I was learning.

So again, the question is: does this huge desire to give all of myself to something, to be totally engrossed with team-mates in a large task of humanitarian significance of some sort - is this NECESSARY to my life-path? Or am I just running again?   As is my bent, I turn to my horoscope to understand myself:   My Sun in Scorpio brings me passion and obsessiveness, in the 10th house of my horoscope it is played out in The World, the public eye. Conjunct the MidHeaven - right at the top of the chart - it is the desire for public recognition and presence. My Sun - the described configuration - is opposed by Uranus, the revolutionary, the impulsive. And it is in good aspect (trine) to Saturn, the slow and patient. Recognition of this was what sent me back to grad school and a traditional occupation........which has worked very well for me, at least financially, and to a large degree in keeping with my natural Being, my interests, my caring for people, my desire to help - my Moon sign in Aquarius.

If I look to my South/North Node for help in understanding my “conundrum” - the South (the past) is in Cancer (home, family, children) and in the 6th house (work, employment.) So that is what I’ve made this life out of, too. Many years as a mother (a stretch of 33 years over 4 kids,) although I also worked at times and pursued my education. And then working with children, adults and families on a regular basis for the last 20 years. So my North Node (and I find myself hesitant to look at this) is in Capricorn (work, struggle, unearthing) in the 12th house (isolation, spirituality, the psyche.) I find it hard to interpret that - except it doesn’t sound very out-in-the-world or working with others. It sounds like what I’m doing now........working on others’ psyches (with a lot of mothering/parenting thrown in) and on my own.

And here I am at the moment, isolated in my home (though I rarely feel really isolated)........muddling about in my psyche, trying to figure myself out, as I have in various ways all my life. Is there anything about 12th house/Capricorn that suggests the larger world, or any of these prospects I look at for doing humanitarian work around the world? Capricorn is the 10th house sign......the world.......work.......career. But in the 12th house? I could imagine I might have some connection with a group doing work around the world where my part is to work at home on my computer......as I did answering emails from around the nation for the Kucinich website, during his campaign. But that is not EXACTLY what I crave. The 12th is self-sacrifice.......Hmmm.

I can of course ask God. And I have, but the answers I’ve gotten to the various parts of the question are very mixed, which usually tells me I don’t see the whole picture to know what to ask, yet.

So we’ll leave it at that for the moment. ...........as a Conundrum.

Dreams and Reality

I asked my son Michael tonite whether he has a need to feel he made it forward a step toward some goal or other each day, or whether he just “goes along.” Somehow he understood me and said he thinks he’s more in the “just go along” mode most of the time, though at work he likes it better when he has some goal or challenge to meet. My bet is that, as a Libra, when he has a partner and they’re getting along (and last year he got “married” to a really nice person) that he’s fine. I think a partner takes up that space for most people. I know with my husband in my life there was always the sense that he would bring something into the day, whether some love moments, or an idea, or a suggestion..........it wasn’t all dependent on me. I think that’s something most people run away from. Alone, I keep busy and am full of thoughts, but in those moments, like tonite, waiting for the water to boil.....there was that sense that it’s just me, or you - and the room and whatever you are and whatever your life is....... And that can seem scarey. People drink and shop and work to avoid those moments. “Just what is my life anyway?” “Just who am I anyway?” "What is my place in all this? "And what IS all this?" (Life.) I think we all start out in our teens and twenties with such big ideas, big dreams......and somewhere in our forties there’s an assessment of whether we made it or not. That’s the point at which our abilities and effort and luck has tested those dreams. People with more talent may not hit that til their fifties. I can’t tell you how many really talented people I’ve known - two husbands and one close friend, and at least 4 people I’ve known well - from our early days in the “big city” - all talented musically and artistically, way beyond the average talents (which I have, myself,) who did not “make it” one whit. Some were in bands, made records, even got a little “name,” knew the big names personally........but for whatever reason did not fulfill that early promise. When you reach that point of assessment in your forties or fifties.....I think one’s reaction to the recognition that maybe you’re NOT going to be all you thought you might, is the testing, and hopefully the making of the “man.” So many people drink or do too much drugs, or begin to live a fantasy, or bury themselves in one thing or another to avoid the pain of not living up to themselves. Or go into depression or decline. In grad school I ran into the concept of “Existential Anxiety” with a great feeling of recognition - “oh it’s not just me” who feels this pain, this anxiety of the discrepancy - the distance - between who I am and this great person I feel inside me. 

For me, in my twenties, there were 3 dreams. (Having children was not one of them, tho I started at 19 and always adored my children.) The primary, and unrealized one - I’m not sure when it started.........maybe it was always there. In high school I was considered “the dancer” though I only took classes as a young child. But I was always the one chosen to lead the dances, to be in the performances, etc. I remember with such a leap of joy the dance role I was given in my 8th grade graduation.....the leap being literal, onto the stage at the height of a passage in Swan Lake, when I swear I soared into the heavens, carried on that incredible outrush of music. I was and am a natural dancer - music just moves my body. I’ve had the experience of dancing all over the room, in fairly recent years, with no effort whatsoever....just carried. When I hear music I CANNOT sit still. If there’s reasonable music in the room, that’s where my attention is. If the music is good, it dances me. This is the greatest love of my life. It was always clear to me that I would find some venue for dancing myself, my Being, in a way that would be healing for people who watched it. Always clear to me - and yet it never happened. Now I can say I never made it happen. For instance, I have hardly ever taken a dance class. One might think that would be the place to start, though it was improvisational not stylized dance I wanted anyway. Besides I never had money and I always had children, so there was no realistic chance.........or so it always seemed. And now I am 69. I think I have to admit to myself that there is a good chance that it ain’t gonna happen. There is one outlet for me - a physical form of telling stories which I have practiced in a group for the last 6 years. But the few performances I’ve tried have been failures. It’s too important to me to do it well, and I become very constrained - squeezed through a small sieve - in front of an audience. So perhaps it will never happen; or not in this lifetime. Once upon a time that recognition would have been a great sorrow, but now it just is. And there is a little feeling that I can nonetheless dance the dance of being me, all the time, in my life. I am less expressive than many, especially young, people - but more than many. So I’ll just continue being me however that occurs, and live with that. 

I said there were three dreams. That was the huge one. Another was to build my own house. In my twenties, talking in the cafeteria at the college with other “back to the land”-minded friends, I felt I could run up the side of a mountain and build my house at the top. Unfortunately I didn’t find my piece of land until twenty years later. But I still built it, me working with one male carpenter friend for the first few months, and then me, alone.   But that is another story. 

The last dream was to be a psychiatrist. That dream began when I was 12 years old, and read a book of my mother’s: Anna Kavan’s “Asylum Piece.” I wanted to treat sick people more humanely than those people were treated, and I never again wanted to study anything but psychology. So after my first two children, I got my BA in Psych. And 20 years later went back for my MA. And as the song says, “Two out of three ain’t bad.” So tonite - boiling water in the kitchen of that home which I built myself - and coming to that moment of awareness, of acknowledging my life and my self - it felt okay. Not that I thought about any of these things - I was just there, just present in that moment in time, and it was okay.

GOD - questions and answers

GOD So where do I start to talk about God, or my ongoing relation to God these past 35 years? One place would be the name - I refer to Him as God, but in my spiritual exercise I call him Allah. (One self-repeating phrase is “Allah, yes God.” ) Yet I think He is not the God of the Muslims, nor of the Christians, as far as I understand either one. I sense him as a male being, but unlike one I’ve ever known in the flesh - probably closer to the Christian Jesus - very much a mix of male and female, gentle, loving, not one who wants to be feared. The construct of karma he created is the only thing to be feared - that which you do will come back upon you, in this life or the next. So take care what you do. But He is saddened, not angry, about what we do with that. The God I know is the Father of the Prodigal Son.......forgiving and understanding - re-welcoming, over and over.  Not the God of Sin and Hell and Damnation and guilt and recrimination. (You will do that to yourself, through the karma you create. ) In many ways the God I know (through“receivings;” that is, continual questioning over and over the years, and continually feeling those questions answered) is anthropomorphic . He is present in everyone and everything, but locate-able by directing your attention upward. One way I’ve come to think of Him is via the “particle and wave” theory of the New Physics. Matter can present as either particle (a finite thing, locatable) or wave (omnipresent, moving through space.) God, similarly, can be an entity, addressable, AND energy moving throughout the Universe. I perceive the latter form most in nature, in the rhythm of waves, wind, the flight of birds. It feels like something which is simultaneously rhythm/sound/movement.........an OM, if you like........which is in everything, and possibly creates the perceptible world. When I feel that, I connect with something much larger than this everyday world, much sweeter. It wakens the little song/rhythm/dance inside me. It brings tears of joy and gratitude and hope - or maybe more than hope, sure awareness that this is NOT “all there is,” that this goes on forever. My home has always been the primary place where I connect with all of this - this sensing. Standing on my deck and looking out over the valley to the distant hills..............I feel connected to the whole rest of the world and sense the vibration that moves through it all. I also feel as thought I am “she who listens” - as though I feel the whole sorrowing, joyful, seeking, miserable, wondering thoughts and feelings of all the people in the world. My job, as I sense it, is to take all this in....to the point of heartbreak - and return it back with love, cleansed and peaceful. And this is of course what I do in a more finite and specific way in my counseling work. I used to return from my job at the end of the week, and it would take about 1/2 the day on Saturday of being alone, here, before my ears would attune to some sound outside me - the wind in the trees, my windchimes, a bird cry - and suddenly my ears would seem to stretch out to that sound and my heart would quicken and the vibration would start up. And for most of the rest of the weekend I would be in that place, just heartfully present, and the last sound I’d make as I went to sleep was always “Allah.” This internal place makes me dance, makes me sing, makes me cry. The verb tense I’ve used above is the past - and to some degree this experience, even here in my home IS in the past. And this is my sorrow. Into the solitude of 13 years came my third husband, and with all the joy that he brought, his presence (though a VERY spiritual man,) the sound of the tv which he watched a lot due to his physical limitations, and my tendency to expand only so far as the next person, shut a lot of this down. After his death, I was depressed for several years and all my inner attention went to making connection with him, in an effort to “get“ what he‘d been here to teach me, and of course for the love. And then along came the constant frenzy of political activity and connection with other people on that basis, and lots of time spent in town. 

So part of my “new journey” is in fact an old one, of remembering to re-connect with God and his presence here in this home-place of mine, which includes the forest and that view out to the valley. I feel as though I am always “on His path” (on the path he designed for me for this lifetime, or the “dream he had of me when he made me”)(of course that which most fits my inner being and what it needs for its next stage of growth.) I thank God all day long for every good thing that comes my way (from finding my palmpilot when I need it, to bringing some bit of understanding, or a good connection with someone,) so it isn’t correct to think that I am not “connected with God,” but I am referring to that more expanded sense of connection, feeling the wind of God move through me. And that’s what I want to remember to make the space for. I can’t leave this topic (if I ever leave it) without describing an experience I had several months before I started on my “path with God.” I was a little high on marijuana, but I smoked for 20 years or so from my 20s into my 40s and never had another experience as strong as this. I was standing on the deck of the house I lived in then, looking out into the descent of forest that moved down the canyon below the house. Suddenly a large wedge open up in the air in front of me and the point of the wedge moved down into the top of my heart, and began to open. Inside this wedge, superimposed on the forest behind it, was a liquid golden light which was moving, dancing even, and the sense that there were large white-feathered wings, barely discernable, and an almost-perceptible but huge sound like a great choir, and at the same time, and part of all of this - all of these things were one and the same thing - was this overwhelming feeling of the greatest love you could possibly imagine and had always wished for. And I’m crying as I write this. The wedge opened, opened, opened the top of my heart until I couldn’t bear it..........couldn’t stand having what I never knew I had always wanted. And the wedge clapped shut and was gone.              I feel I glimpsed Heaven........what exists all around us just outside the sphere of influence of the earth. Astrology says that the earth is ruled by Saturn, Chronos, Time. Saturn is also the Heavy, the difficult, the suffering and struggle. It is also the Material - that place where we have to make dreams come TRUE. Where we have to work for them. I think this is the necessity of this plane of existence, where we have to come to learn these lessons. And our only hope, while we’re here working all this out, is to remember it can all be transformed by remembering the larger reality and making it be true in your heart and where you live, and extending it out beyond you, not with proselytizing but with your Being. If I could hold onto this truth strongly enough, I would be a Mother Teresa.............moving through the world I work in with gentle, absolute love and compassion, and that wider reality in my heart. Is that too grand a wish? Well, perhaps, but that’s what I wish for. In my best moments. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Conundrum

So do I write in my new blog that at the end of a lovely day at home, with a little political “work” on the computer, and a walk in the wet leaves with the dogs, two reasonably good movies, a conversation w/ each of my daughters, and a good meal......that I STILL have that feeling: “is this ALL there is?” What is it I need that would feel Enough? I think all-engrossing work on a cause (an AIDS orphanage or school or social service scene where I LIVED with the people I work with and care for) would be enough. All-engrossing, that's my Scorpio sun. But I’m 69 yrs. old, not 29! How much energy can I keep putting out? Over time I have learned to pace myself; I have learned to deal with a lot of shit and just keep on trucking; I have learned not to let things GET to me - to just keep putting out the energy that flows through me, and not worry about the end-product; I have learned to do FOR what I’m doing for and not for me................... Would that get me through indefinitely? Just to stay in the flow....to keep moving.....to do what needs to be done..... To continually do, but not from a place of Doing, if that makes sense. To be in the place where Doing just flows through you effortlessly, like Being. And then hopefully my Aquarius Moon can also act to separate me from all that when I need renewal, replenishment. Well. The best thing is that I know whatever is mine will find me. “The crane does not have to stand on a high hill to find its young. The young hear its call and come,” (from the I Ching.) And I know what is Mine may be to stay right here and to struggle with this frustration..........to learn to make my home life “the well from which my work in the world will issue forth.” That would make the most sense. [My children would certainly prefer it.] In some ways I feel this lust to go somewhere else to find my life is just a running away from all the incomplete things here, from this reality [which was for 20 years a fantasy] to a new fantasy. Like running from a marriage to a new man. Perhaps I can find my passion here.........in the rainy nites, the beautiful snowfall, the wind in the trees, the sense of God all around me..............and let that carry me all the days and nites I’m home, until I’m called out into the world again. So that's the conundrum, and the answer.

getting started

It seems like all my life I've had a need to be public about my inner life, but found no viable venue to do so. In my mid-twenties, a filmmaker friend said with surprise, "...it seems you have no vehicle!" Despite all the artistic things I've attempted, that has been true. So now the Universe cooperates by setting up the unimaginable: a place one can write privately and (potentially) be heard all over the world. For a very physical person, this holds some inherent frustration. Self-expression for me necessarily entails moving my hands and body in response to the movement of my emotions. But any readers here will have to imagine that part. 

I probably should say at the outset that this journal will have to do, naturally, with the pervasive themes of my life: social/political concerns, humanitarian interests, spirituality, relationships, "psychology" and creative expression. Minor themes will be living "ecologically" and in the country, relationships with grown children, astrology, life after death. I will probably keep certain details of my life off the page here simply to allow me to be LESS private - more public with thoughts and feelings - than I might be able to otherwise, since I live in a small community. 

I feel that I am going through a transition in my life. And by this I mean I feel that a change is coming, much as I might sniff the air and predict that rain is in the offing. Actually this change has already begun. After half a century of being preoccupied with my creative efforts, my life in the country, my inner life, my spiritual growth and my relationships, with the death of my husband and the beginning of the war in Iraq I suddenly found myself propelled OUT of my comfortable innersphere and onto the streets where I vigiled for peace and did everything I could to change the administration in power in the U.S. - downloading information off the internet and off of political lists I belonged to, creating flyers, spearheading a local group, organizing fundraisers, tabling and leafleting in the streets, talking to strangers, and sending a good piece of my income to Democratic campaigns around the country. [As an aside, while my personal views would probably place me in the Green category, my sense was that the Democratic party was our only real chance to change things.] I had never been so active, politically, in my life. Although I've always been a high energy person, that energy was spent building a house, raising several children and many animals, cultivating land previously covered with forest and brush, getting my graduate degree, pursuing a career, and learning a number of music and craft skills, as well as cooking from scratch, learning to work with PVC, manage a solar-powered home electrical system, and other skills of subsistance living. ETCETERA. All personal and family activities; few extra-personal. Of course I marched against the Vietnam war, in those years, and probably supported other progressive issues at a minimal level, but politically I would say I "went to sleep" for most of the years since Vietnam. I was aware our government was engaged in some shady operations in Central America, but until I started reading everything I could lay my hands on (after having to send a bunch of tax money in just as the Iraq invasion occurred and feeling that I had to do something!!! or I couldn't live with myself) I had no idea how bad things were. But I won't go too far into those discoveries except to say that I feel I absolutely can't just "go back to sleep," now that I AM aware. So part of this new journey, now that the elections are (perhaps) over, is discovering just where I am going to put my energies. What calls to me? Where can I be effective? Someone I read advises that you find something local and put all your energy into it. Although the wisdom of this is obvious, it is our country's actions internationally that upset me the most. My thoughts and feelings go out to all those women in the world struggling to raise children in impoverished countries, a struggle that is hard enough anyway, without also dealing with bombs, landmines, and other effects of war (lately two started by this country with - in my opinion - no justification.) And then there is the effect that our tentacles, the WTO and IMF, the big corporations and so forth have on 3rd world countries and the poor people living in them! So - what I am moved to is something which affects these issues, in some way. So - I am a sponsor through Women for Women International, and hope to develop a local group. I hear there is an Amnesty Int'l group in a nearby community. I'd like to be involved in the local Fair Trade efforts. Perhaps those will be adequate venues for my passionate concerns. But in my crazier (more desperate) moments, I want to go where things are difficult for people and find a way to help, directly. 

So this is my journey or my struggle at the moment: I am 69 years old. I have a comfortable and humanitarian career which makes me enough money to live decently and give away money to various NGOs. I have quite a few challenges just continuing to work in town - in the next county, even - and to live in my forest abode, with its many faculties which break down or need upkeep and require my energy. I have some selfishness which makes me think "well, that's enough..." I'll just work and hang out here and enjoy reading and my fire and the birds and my dogs.   But then, there's this craving......

I had something come into my head/heart about a year ago which said, "Go to Africa and take care of AIDS babies." Well, there's an insane idea, but something that fills this nurturing person's heart. A few months later, I went to a conference for my spiritual group and found a little note on a bulletin board saying that a woman would be talking about her involvement in Africa, and it turned out she had an AIDS orphanage. I was so turned on, but said to her, "Am I nuts to be thinking about going there at my age?" I told her something of my background working with children and women and she said, "They would LOVE to have you there!" YIKES. I went out to my car and called my oldest daughter and mentioned this to her. She said, "I didn't know you wanted to go to Africa to an AIDS orphanage..." I said, "Oh sure you did; I've talked about it before." "No you haven't," she said, "Or I would have told you the church I work for has an AIDS orphanage in Africa!" Within a week we were signed up to go on their next trip. (Did I mention I'm afraid of flying?) Since then I've been reading a lot about Africa. First a woman's Peace Corps story in Cote d'Ivorie (that land currently being torn by war.) This story is the dream of my life; everything she does just feels like ME - what I would do in those circumstances. I found myself crying deeply as I read the book - both from wanting to do just what she was doing, and from knowing that even if I were to find a similar situation, the chances of it being just like that were pretty minimal. Then I read a book by a man who spent two years in the Peace Corps in Togo. A similar story, though a different experience, but his book additionally talked about conditions in the cities (pollution, corruption) and I noticed a slight withdrawal in my feelings. Now I am reading a book about some scientific travelers in the Congo.........and with the weird food and diseases and bees that suck your eye-liquid and pygmies being used essentially as slaves, and all the other testosterone-flavored and disgusting details (tho some wonderful descriptions of birds)........ Well now I'm not so sure about this proposed trip to Africa, though we're going to an easier climate and in pretty safe circumstances. 

So this is where I live right now. ...still reading, set to go if my passport comes through. Wondering if this is an avenue for me; wondering what else might be in store. Reflections welcome. Miracles