“Change is good.” So said Jiffy Lube’s advertising fourteen years ago. I haven’t heard that slogan for a long time. Maybe it was a hard sell. Maybe it met with some resistance! Maybe it was just easier to promote oil changes. When I was moving from San Clemente to Santa Barbara, I spoke on the topic at church, beginning with a rock-and-roll song parody: “Change, change, change…”
Change is a constant. This recent cascade of changes began when I left Santa Barbara ten months ago, in February. That move triggered an avalanche of changes – to my health care, automobile care, real estate licensing, housing.
Appropriately, the first change, to my health care, took place at Jiffy Lube during one of my initial house-hunting visits to Albuquerque. As a symbolic thinker, I’ve noticed similarities between what is going on with my car and what is going on in my life. Out of gas? I’m exhausted, drained, empty. Need a new transmission? I’m changing gears. Flat tire? I’m out of balance. Front or rear tire? Conscious or subconscious mind. Right or left tire? Corresponding feminine or masculine part of the brain. I have come to think of my car as a vehicle for my body just as my body is a vehicle for my soul.
An attractive, well-dressed couple were my waiting room companions at Jiffy Lube. The wife and I exchanged pleasantries about my move to New Mexico and what she liked about living here. Her name was “Vangie,” short for Evangelina. One of my immediate concerns was transferring my health care coverage. On Medicare, I had a wonderful internist as my primary care physician in Santa Barbara at the highly-regarded Sansum Clinic. It was an HMO through United Health Care. When our conversation turned to business and career, Vangie handed me her business card. She was a United Health Care insurance representative. Peace and relief flooded through me when I realized I was in the flow, the Universe was continuing to love, support and provide for me. I now had a warm, personal, professional contact to assist me with transferring my health care coverage. It was so comforting. I don’t believe in accidents or coincidences. I believe these synchronicities, this “being in the flow,” is a result of ongoing spiritual practice – clear intention, prayer, meditation, belief. For me, it makes life a lot less stressful, more peaceful, more satisfying.
Several months later, when I moved to Albuquerque, I had an emergency hospital stay. It was time to transfer my health care, so I called Vangie. As soon as I said “Jiffy Lube lady,” she remembered me. After more than twenty years, she was no longer with United Health Care, but she had a referral for me to her colleague, Mac. He and I met for breakfast to review plans. When he described his business practice as based on repeat and referral business from happy, satisfied clients who value honesty and service, I beamed. “You couldn’t have said anything better to me, Mac. That’s the way I’ve practiced real estate for more than thirty years.” Mac and I are the same age. I’m now on the same top-of-the-line health insurance plan he has. I can go to any doctor, anywhere in the U.S., any time, including specialists, without a referral. He has been conscientious and caring about follow-up and follow-through. Calls are promptly returned whether for advice, information or “handholding.” I feel totally supported. I’m so grateful to be in the flow, to have my life work this way almost all the time, despite the circumstances. It has been more than worth the time and commitment to regular spiritual practice. It seems entirely appropriate to me that while taking care of my vehicle at Jiffy Lube, I took care of my bodily health too.
Monday, December 19, 2011
Monday, December 12, 2011
DMV, MVD, OMG!
DMV, MVD, OMG! Four visits to register my car in New Mexico? Seven visits by a construction supervisor to register a business truck? Three visits by a veteran to get a driver’s license? Yes. Well, that explains the proliferation of MVD Now and MVD Express offices dotting the city of Albuquerque with their LARGE red-and-yellow commercial signs proclaiming, “Why Wait?” “Skip the Trip.” “Get In. Get It Done. Get Going.” New Mexico’s MVD (Motor Vehicle Department) is California’s DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles). It was all a little confusing to this new California ex-pat at first. I had to learn the nuances. I started by stopping at an MVD Express.
Only the MVD is state operated. Any words after “MVD,” like NOW or EXPRESS, indicate a private, for-profit business that provides the same services as the MVD – for a fee. They are licensed by the state, to which they pay fees. Stop the presses! Hold on a minute! You mean the MVD gives such consumer-perceived bad service people feel compelled to go to private companies and pay higher fees (“administrative” plus MVD fees) so they can “Skip the Trip” and thumb their noses while saying, “Why Wait?” Exactly. Help me if I’m missing something here, but isn’t that a . . . conflict of interest? Giving people such bad service they go elsewhere, then licensing and collecting money from the place they go? Now that’s niche marketing. Why didn’t California think of that? And we think we’re so smart.
First, you have to find an MVD office. My State Farm insurance agent looked up the closest one for me on the internet then drew me a map. It was located on the back side of a shopping center, down an alley, with no signage at the main street. Find me if you can. Even though I arrived half an hour before opening, I was number twenty in line. Thank goodness there were people in front of me to teach me the ropes. Inside, around a corner, was a TAKE-A-CHECK machine. Overhead digital signs blinked the patron and counter numbers. A disembodied computer voice announced the next number being served. They practice triage. Everyone starts at window #1 or #2 to tell their story and be assigned to another window. “Why Wait” was beginning to make more sense. Especially when the numbers crept up into the hundreds (literally).
Chatting up others, sharing stories, helped pass the time. Last Monday was freeze-your-(fill in the blank) cold – the second day of twenty-degree temperatures and snow. The outside preopening MVD line was down to ten people. There was instant bonding. Like a tongue to a metal pole. Jokes about not giving up your spot because your feet were frozen to the ground prevailed. “Do you think they’ll open today?” No one knew. There were no clues. Well, one small, indirect clue. Someone had heard through the grapevine the MVD would open after a two-hour delay so employees could slog their way through snow, sleet and hail to get to work. No notice to the public was posted on the door. No phone number was painted on the window. There was, however, an employee email about weather delays taped inside the front door. Shuffling through my file, I found my State Farm agent’s printout. . . and, the MVD phone number. No answer. No recorded information. Just a high-pitched FAX screech after ten rings. “211. I’ll call 211,” I said to myself. They did have a recorded message: “All of our health and human service representatives are busy helping others. Please leave your name and number. Your call will be returned within 24 hours.”
I left to have breakfast. I mailed Christmas packages at the post office. I returned in time to get in line and wait for the two-hour-delayed opening. Interior lights were on. That was a good sign! I had time to listen to fellow waiters say exactly what they thought: “They don’t care about us. They’re lazy. They work for the state. They don’t have to work like us.” The New Mexico veteran told me he was asked for proof after proof of residency on each of his three visits. Finally, when asked, “How do we know you’re not a terrorist?” he stormed out, returned with his best proof, slammed down his VA card and said, “I am a veteran. Now give me my license.” They did. On his seventh visit, requirement after requirement later, the construction supervisor was asked to bring in the truck. “You mean I’m supposed to go get it from my employee using it on a job right now?” In all fairness, I am responsible for my four visits to register my car – an unpaid parking ticket and title paperwork in Ventura, CA storage. But it was the California DMV that wanted proof of New Mexico residency (at the address to which they sent the letter requesting it! Hello?) When I told that to the Window #12 lady, she laughed. I thanked her. I showed her my paper trail, registered mail receipts, and a December DMV warning of “Impending Suspension” for lack of insurance obtained in August.
Responding, rather than reacting, in the face of such bureaucracy is the challenge. Doing it lovingly – be the change you want to see in the world – is even more challenging. “You want me to cuss ‘em out?” the veteran offered me. “Nah,” I said, “I don’t think that would help. But, where’s the love? What about the Golden Rule? Would they want their mother treated this way? Their sister? Or would they want them to find a note on the door, a recorded message about the delayed opening so people don’t have to wait in the freezing cold without knowing when, or if, they will open.” I decided to talk to the manager about win-win solutions. Then I saw there was now a public notice of delayed opening on the door. And the Window #12 lady gave me a bright, shiny, new, turquoise-and-yellow New Mexico Centennial license plate for my car without making me repair the odometer first.
Blurbs from the Burque:
- New Mexico is one of the top ten most violent states in the nation, primarily due to increasing gang activity. Law enforcement personnel from California will offer assistance and training in how to deal with it.
- “Red or Green?” isn’t a question asked just at the holidays. It means do you want red or green chile sauce on your food? If you want both, you answer, “Christmas,” no matter what time of year it is!
- Employee shirts at Rudy’s BBQ and eat-in meat market read, “I didn’t claw my way to the top to eat vegetables.” Two LARGE bottles of barbeque sauce are placed on each indoor picnic table covered with a red-and-white, checkered, vinyl table cloth. One is labeled “Sissy Sause” (sic.) It’s vegan with no HFCS (high-fructose corn syrup).
Monday, December 5, 2011
5 Points of Power
I always pay attention.
I always tell the truth and tell it quickly.
I always ask for what I want when I want it.
I always take complete responsibility for my experience.
I always keep my agreements.
“If you practice these for one year, they will transform your life,” said Edwene Gaines, one of my spiritual teachers. She shared these 5 Points of Power at a workshop, telling us she had received them from one of her spiritual teachers, firewalk instructor Tolly Burkan.
“Bring it on,” something inside me said. I wanted to be a powerful person in the world. A person who made a difference, got things done, contributed to world peace. If committing to a daily practice of the 5 Points of Power for a year would move me in that direction, I would take them on. And I did. I typed them up, printed them out on lavender cardstock and posted them next to my desk on the wall of my real estate office.
Simple, but not easy. Some were easier than others. Paying attention was relatively easy, but confronting my office manager for opening my mail? Speaking up to “tell the truth and tell it quickly?” To “ask for what I want when I want it?” Three times? Then, finally to call to his attention that not only was it a violation of my boundaries and completely unacceptable to me to have him opening my mail, it was also a felony offense. That’s where the rubber hits the road – in personal relationships - in applying spiritual principles on a daily basis in everyday life situations. I hated confrontation. So, of course, I got it in spades. “What you resist persists!!” I began gently in our first discussion by explaining how I had been raised and why respect for individual privacy was so important to me. My mother taught us never to open another person’s mail or to go into her purse without her permission. I requested that my mail not be opened, that my privacy be respected. With each subsequent violation, the tone of the request ratcheted up until the words “felony offense” were uttered. Then I changed the mailing address - how to own your power in spite of the circumstances. Simple, but not easy.
There was no shortage of opportunities for me to speak up, tell the truth and take complete responsibility for my experience. I didn’t always like it, or what I saw about myself, but I did it. And, Edwene was right about the practice, it transformed my life.
A group of ten women, from our real estate office, with some of their friends, began meeting to practice the 5 Points of Power together. We called ourselves “Women of Power.” A French woman who had been a homemaker for twenty-five years found the courage to leave a marriage, return to school, commit to a real estate career. Another franchised her bagel stores. Yet another took her skin care line international. We met for a year, checking in weekly, holding ourselves accountable in one another’s presence, setting new intentions, sharing how the points were working in our lives, which ones were challenging for us, our successes and failures. Our gatherings kept us focused on the principles, committed to the practice.
When I realized the value of applying the 5 Points of Power, I didn’t want to stop. I actively continued the practice for a year and a half. To this day, I can write or recite the five points from memory. Somewhere along the way, around nine months into the practice, I had the profound realization that the 5 Points of Power not only applied externally to my relationships with others, but could also apply internally in my relationship with myself. Do I always “pay attention” to myself and ask myself for what I want when I want it? Do I “always keep my agreements” with myself? How many times weekly did I say I would meditate, walk, write, eat healthily, go to bed at a regular hour? I did not make a one-year commitment to internal practice of the 5 Points of Power. Hmmm……maybe that’s something I could now consider! Writing this blog post did get me up and out the door this morning to my water aerobics class (M-F, 9-10 a.m.) no small feat in Albuquerque where it’s now below freezing at night, I’ve been wearing thermal underwear for a month, and one morning, while driving to the community pool, it actually snowed, yes, really, on the hood of my car. Now, if I could only approach everything in my life that way!
“Out of this world” Blurbs from the Burque!
Expensive plane fare! More than 450 people have purchased tickets, at $200,000 each, to fly into suborbital space with Virgin Galactic from Spaceport America, the world’s first spaceport, in the New Mexico desert near Las Cruces, NM. British Billionaire, Richard Branson, signed a 20-year lease on the facility where the terminal recently opened. Flights are scheduled to begin in 2013.
Mars rover “Curiosity” The next generation Mars rover is equipped with a specialized laser that can vaporize rock from more than 20 feet away and survey the remnants from afar to determine whether the spot contains any signs of life. The team deciding which Martian rocks to zap to smithereens will often pull the trigger from New Mexico. Developed by researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory and put into use by scientists at the University of New Mexico, the laser is one of several connections between “Curiosity” and the Land of Enchantment.
I always tell the truth and tell it quickly.
I always ask for what I want when I want it.
I always take complete responsibility for my experience.
I always keep my agreements.
“If you practice these for one year, they will transform your life,” said Edwene Gaines, one of my spiritual teachers. She shared these 5 Points of Power at a workshop, telling us she had received them from one of her spiritual teachers, firewalk instructor Tolly Burkan.
“Bring it on,” something inside me said. I wanted to be a powerful person in the world. A person who made a difference, got things done, contributed to world peace. If committing to a daily practice of the 5 Points of Power for a year would move me in that direction, I would take them on. And I did. I typed them up, printed them out on lavender cardstock and posted them next to my desk on the wall of my real estate office.
Simple, but not easy. Some were easier than others. Paying attention was relatively easy, but confronting my office manager for opening my mail? Speaking up to “tell the truth and tell it quickly?” To “ask for what I want when I want it?” Three times? Then, finally to call to his attention that not only was it a violation of my boundaries and completely unacceptable to me to have him opening my mail, it was also a felony offense. That’s where the rubber hits the road – in personal relationships - in applying spiritual principles on a daily basis in everyday life situations. I hated confrontation. So, of course, I got it in spades. “What you resist persists!!” I began gently in our first discussion by explaining how I had been raised and why respect for individual privacy was so important to me. My mother taught us never to open another person’s mail or to go into her purse without her permission. I requested that my mail not be opened, that my privacy be respected. With each subsequent violation, the tone of the request ratcheted up until the words “felony offense” were uttered. Then I changed the mailing address - how to own your power in spite of the circumstances. Simple, but not easy.
There was no shortage of opportunities for me to speak up, tell the truth and take complete responsibility for my experience. I didn’t always like it, or what I saw about myself, but I did it. And, Edwene was right about the practice, it transformed my life.
A group of ten women, from our real estate office, with some of their friends, began meeting to practice the 5 Points of Power together. We called ourselves “Women of Power.” A French woman who had been a homemaker for twenty-five years found the courage to leave a marriage, return to school, commit to a real estate career. Another franchised her bagel stores. Yet another took her skin care line international. We met for a year, checking in weekly, holding ourselves accountable in one another’s presence, setting new intentions, sharing how the points were working in our lives, which ones were challenging for us, our successes and failures. Our gatherings kept us focused on the principles, committed to the practice.
When I realized the value of applying the 5 Points of Power, I didn’t want to stop. I actively continued the practice for a year and a half. To this day, I can write or recite the five points from memory. Somewhere along the way, around nine months into the practice, I had the profound realization that the 5 Points of Power not only applied externally to my relationships with others, but could also apply internally in my relationship with myself. Do I always “pay attention” to myself and ask myself for what I want when I want it? Do I “always keep my agreements” with myself? How many times weekly did I say I would meditate, walk, write, eat healthily, go to bed at a regular hour? I did not make a one-year commitment to internal practice of the 5 Points of Power. Hmmm……maybe that’s something I could now consider! Writing this blog post did get me up and out the door this morning to my water aerobics class (M-F, 9-10 a.m.) no small feat in Albuquerque where it’s now below freezing at night, I’ve been wearing thermal underwear for a month, and one morning, while driving to the community pool, it actually snowed, yes, really, on the hood of my car. Now, if I could only approach everything in my life that way!
“Out of this world” Blurbs from the Burque!
Expensive plane fare! More than 450 people have purchased tickets, at $200,000 each, to fly into suborbital space with Virgin Galactic from Spaceport America, the world’s first spaceport, in the New Mexico desert near Las Cruces, NM. British Billionaire, Richard Branson, signed a 20-year lease on the facility where the terminal recently opened. Flights are scheduled to begin in 2013.
Monday, November 28, 2011
From Beach to Bosque (or "Breadcrumbs")
“Oh-dark-thirty” my sailing partner used to call the predawn hour we met at the marina to launch. It was the same time I found myself following a steady stream of red taillights through pitch black New Mexico farmland heading for “fly out” at the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge - 5:00 a.m. When dawn peeks over the mountains, it awakens thousands of sandhill cranes, snow geese and ducks overnighting in ponds, safe from predators. The clamor of whoops, calls, hoots, squawks increases until it’s overtaken by the sound of flapping wings in mass ascension. It is an experience not to be missed. Breathtaking. Incomparable. I was ecstatic. Bundled up in jeans, jackets, thermals, hats, gloves, scarves, forty “birders” stomped in the cold, cameras ready. So many snow geese flew over us at one time, barely any sky was discernable. The Rio Grande is a major flyway for migratory birds. Fish and Game rangers reported the arrival of 10,000 cranes, 50,000 snow geese and 120,000 ducks. Flying in from Canada, Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, they winter in New Mexico. They “fly out” each morning to feed and socialize then “fly in,” row after row after row, at sunset to roost in the ponds. The refuge grows corn and other grains to feed them. Each November, the week-long Festival of the Cranes welcomes thousands of visitors for tours, lectures, workshops and an art show. Bosque del Apache is 20-minutes south of Socorro, NM, which is 90 miles south of Albuquerque.
“Don’t you miss the ocean?” I’m frequently asked by people who know I’ve lived by it my whole life. Surprisingly, no. I’m in love with the Rio Grande. The “bosque” is the forest along the banks of the Rio Grande and in its floodplain. It is lush, green, full of cottonwood and willow trees. How did an ocean girl wind up in love with a river? Like Hansel and Gretel, I can follow the breadcrumbs, or “clues” back to the first hints of this change in my life. These “hints” or “clues” provide me guidance. As an English Literature major in college, I was trained to be a symbolic thinker, so Spirit “speaks” that language to me, providing symbols - images and information – as a pattern of meaning. I always pay attention (topic of next week’s blog).
On May 5, 2008, in the Santa Barbara Independent, Rob Brezsny’s Free Will Astrology (also featured, to my great joy, in Albuquerque’s Alibi) addressed me personally at a time of great turmoil in my life. LIBRA: “ ‘What makes a river so restful to people is that it doesn’t have any doubt,’ wrote columnist Hal Boyle. ‘It is sure to get where it is going, and it doesn’t want to go anywhere else.’ Your assignment for the rest of 2008, Libra, is to do whatever’s necessary to make yourself fit this description. The next eight months will provide unprecedented opportunities to turn yourself into a river flowing toward your destiny with surprisingly sublime freedom.” I was so impacted by what it said, I cut it out, pasted it on a pink notecard, put it into my daytimer – where it remains to this day – and followed its guidance for the rest of the year. That was the beginning of my relationship with a river. Breadcrumb #1.
Breadcrumb #2 really got my attention. When you read something in a book and it takes physical form in your life in less than 24 hours, you don’t even have to pay attention – it’s hard not to notice!!! I attended several writing workshops in Taos, NM, with Julia Cameron and Natalie Goldberg. My writing partner and I used Natalie’s book, Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir, for weekly writing prompts. When I read Natalie’s powerful story of Jimmy Santiago Baca, from Albuquerque, I cried. Orphaned, illiterate, poverty-stricken, he found himself in jail at the age of twenty on a drug charge and ready to stab another inmate. He learned to write – and to study poetry – in a maximum security prison. Poetry saved his life. The following morning, I found an email in my Inbox from UCSB’s (University of California, Santa Barbara) Arts and Letters announcing a lecture, by Jimmy Santiago Baca, to the Chicano Studies Department. He was receiving an award, one of many, for his writing and his work. I knew I had a divine appointment. After the lecture, I purchased his autobiography and one of his eleven books of poetry: Winter Poems Along the Rio Grande.
Two months ago, I found Breadcrumb #3 in the Albuquerque Journal. Bookworks, an independent bookstore in the North Valley neighborhood adjacent to the Rio Grande where I want to live, was hosting a book signing for The Rio Grande: An Eagle’s View. “This book will change your life,” an internal voice said. I knew I had to go. There I met John Horning, executive director of WildEarth Guardians, and Adriel Heisey, photographer, who dedicated ten years of their lives to creating a magnificent and intimate photographic portrait of the 1,885-mile-long Rio Grande from its headwaters in the Colorado Rockies to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico. I don’t know why guidance has led me to this river for three years. I’ll just keep taking the next step. Is it my deep love of nature? Is it inspiration for my own creative self-expression through writing, poetry and photography? Am I to be active in the preservation of the Rio Grande? In recent years, sixty miles of the Rio Grande went dry. At the book signing, I asked John and Adriel, “What is your intention for this book? What would you like to see it accomplish in the world?” They want the river to have the right to some of its own water, to continued existence. They hope the book will inspire people to have an intimate relationship with the Rio Grande, the Great River, so they care enough to influence future legislation in favor of the river’s right to be. On my birthday, I became a friend of Albuquerque’s Rio Grande Nature Center. Last weekend, I joined the friends of Bosque del Apache. More to be revealed…..
After I finished writing this post, I read a story in the Albuquerque Journal about the inaugural issue of a new literary magazine titled bosque (the magazine) for serious writers. Story contest winners, from writers over 50, will be published in the 2012 issue according to the two Albuquerque women who founded the magazine. Their website was provided. Again, more to be revealed…..
“Don’t you miss the ocean?” I’m frequently asked by people who know I’ve lived by it my whole life. Surprisingly, no. I’m in love with the Rio Grande. The “bosque” is the forest along the banks of the Rio Grande and in its floodplain. It is lush, green, full of cottonwood and willow trees. How did an ocean girl wind up in love with a river? Like Hansel and Gretel, I can follow the breadcrumbs, or “clues” back to the first hints of this change in my life. These “hints” or “clues” provide me guidance. As an English Literature major in college, I was trained to be a symbolic thinker, so Spirit “speaks” that language to me, providing symbols - images and information – as a pattern of meaning. I always pay attention (topic of next week’s blog).
On May 5, 2008, in the Santa Barbara Independent, Rob Brezsny’s Free Will Astrology (also featured, to my great joy, in Albuquerque’s Alibi) addressed me personally at a time of great turmoil in my life. LIBRA: “ ‘What makes a river so restful to people is that it doesn’t have any doubt,’ wrote columnist Hal Boyle. ‘It is sure to get where it is going, and it doesn’t want to go anywhere else.’ Your assignment for the rest of 2008, Libra, is to do whatever’s necessary to make yourself fit this description. The next eight months will provide unprecedented opportunities to turn yourself into a river flowing toward your destiny with surprisingly sublime freedom.” I was so impacted by what it said, I cut it out, pasted it on a pink notecard, put it into my daytimer – where it remains to this day – and followed its guidance for the rest of the year. That was the beginning of my relationship with a river. Breadcrumb #1.
Breadcrumb #2 really got my attention. When you read something in a book and it takes physical form in your life in less than 24 hours, you don’t even have to pay attention – it’s hard not to notice!!! I attended several writing workshops in Taos, NM, with Julia Cameron and Natalie Goldberg. My writing partner and I used Natalie’s book, Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir, for weekly writing prompts. When I read Natalie’s powerful story of Jimmy Santiago Baca, from Albuquerque, I cried. Orphaned, illiterate, poverty-stricken, he found himself in jail at the age of twenty on a drug charge and ready to stab another inmate. He learned to write – and to study poetry – in a maximum security prison. Poetry saved his life. The following morning, I found an email in my Inbox from UCSB’s (University of California, Santa Barbara) Arts and Letters announcing a lecture, by Jimmy Santiago Baca, to the Chicano Studies Department. He was receiving an award, one of many, for his writing and his work. I knew I had a divine appointment. After the lecture, I purchased his autobiography and one of his eleven books of poetry: Winter Poems Along the Rio Grande.
Two months ago, I found Breadcrumb #3 in the Albuquerque Journal. Bookworks, an independent bookstore in the North Valley neighborhood adjacent to the Rio Grande where I want to live, was hosting a book signing for The Rio Grande: An Eagle’s View. “This book will change your life,” an internal voice said. I knew I had to go. There I met John Horning, executive director of WildEarth Guardians, and Adriel Heisey, photographer, who dedicated ten years of their lives to creating a magnificent and intimate photographic portrait of the 1,885-mile-long Rio Grande from its headwaters in the Colorado Rockies to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico. I don’t know why guidance has led me to this river for three years. I’ll just keep taking the next step. Is it my deep love of nature? Is it inspiration for my own creative self-expression through writing, poetry and photography? Am I to be active in the preservation of the Rio Grande? In recent years, sixty miles of the Rio Grande went dry. At the book signing, I asked John and Adriel, “What is your intention for this book? What would you like to see it accomplish in the world?” They want the river to have the right to some of its own water, to continued existence. They hope the book will inspire people to have an intimate relationship with the Rio Grande, the Great River, so they care enough to influence future legislation in favor of the river’s right to be. On my birthday, I became a friend of Albuquerque’s Rio Grande Nature Center. Last weekend, I joined the friends of Bosque del Apache. More to be revealed…..
After I finished writing this post, I read a story in the Albuquerque Journal about the inaugural issue of a new literary magazine titled bosque (the magazine) for serious writers. Story contest winners, from writers over 50, will be published in the 2012 issue according to the two Albuquerque women who founded the magazine. Their website was provided. Again, more to be revealed…..
Monday, November 21, 2011
Questions That Keep You Awake at Night (or “Film at 11”) Part 2
This is a continuation of last week’s posting, my response to an email question received from someone who has known me for more than 50 years asking me the question I’m asked most frequently: “How could, or why would, you move to New Mexico?” Here’s how she expressed it: “I thought about you all night. Why, at this point in your life, have you moved away from Bill and even Grant? My Elizabeth is pregnant, and I wouldn't think about being anywhere else. Pregnancy is quite common. What Grant has been through isn't! You are such a brave and independent woman, but....” She was asking how I could move 893 miles away from my son, recently treated for melanoma.
Continued…
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) “Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.” (Psalm 119:105) This has been a journey into the unknown, one of faith, trust and surrender. Most people deny, rather than embrace, the unknown. It’s challenging, and can be terrifying, to acknowledge we live at the edge of the unknown every moment of our lives. Embracing the unknown and taking action is different from just acknowledging the unknown. It takes not only faith and trust, but also the courage to surrender to the guidance received, to act on it. The Aladdin-like oil lamps of history cast a small amount of light, only enough to reveal the next step, on the path. I have faith I will be shown the way, a step at a time. My life is about “Where the rubber hits the road,” or applying spiritual principles in the physical world.
I also believe the best way to teach my son is by example, to be a role model of how to live life – courageously listening to one’s own inner guidance, trusting one’s own knowing, instincts, intuition. While attending college and working for the Ritz-Carlton, Grant was presented with an opportunity to relocate to Florida. I saw clearly he might move far away to live his life…and that I needed to live mine.
Elisabeth Kubler Ross’ writing about wild geese, quoted in Edwene Gaines’ book, The Four Spiritual Laws of Prosperity: A Simple Guide to Unlimited Abundance, was pointed out to me by a friend leafing through it on my bookshelf as I prepared to move from Santa Barbara. I hadn’t read it yet!
How do geese know
when to fly to the sun?
Who tells them the seasons?
How do we humans know
when it is time
to move on?
As with the migrant birds,
so surely with us,
there is a voice within,
if only we would listen to it,
that tells us certainly
when to go forth
into the unknown.
My moving to New Mexico is a demonstration to Grant that I know he is healed. Grant was on many prayer lists, involved in several miracles, including the fact that he’s in the 15% of the population who respond to Interleukin-2 treatment for melanoma. He no longer needs me. He can go on with is life. What I am doing, he can do. Our lives parallel one another, are mirrors for each other. My leaving is evidence of the gift he has been given, the gift of life, and my encouragement that he accept the gift. Here is what he recently wrote on my birthday card: “Happy Birthday, Mom. Thanks so much for being there for me in one way or another over all the years, but particularly the last 3. I’m blessed to have a person like you in my life, and despite a physical separation, you are with me every day! Love, Grant.” When Grant and I want to be together, we are a two-hour and $223 airplane ride away. Once I have my own home, we’ll share face time on Skype.
I hope this gives you some understanding about how and why I was able to move to New Mexico. I can certainly understand and appreciate why the question kept you awake at night. It kept me awake at night too! For a long time. It was a decision that evolved over many years, a process. It was not simple or easy. And I’m still not sure about the “calling” or spiritual “pull” that brought me to New Mexico. What is that about? I don’t know. But I do have some “clues!” All I can do is continue my spiritual practices and respond to the guidance given. I’ll write about guidance in future blog postings. Responding to this question has been a rich experience for me. Thank you for asking. “More to be revealed,” as I always say, or, as a dear friend puts it, “Film at 11.”
If you have a question, please send it to terranda@hotmail.com
Continued…
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) “Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.” (Psalm 119:105) This has been a journey into the unknown, one of faith, trust and surrender. Most people deny, rather than embrace, the unknown. It’s challenging, and can be terrifying, to acknowledge we live at the edge of the unknown every moment of our lives. Embracing the unknown and taking action is different from just acknowledging the unknown. It takes not only faith and trust, but also the courage to surrender to the guidance received, to act on it. The Aladdin-like oil lamps of history cast a small amount of light, only enough to reveal the next step, on the path. I have faith I will be shown the way, a step at a time. My life is about “Where the rubber hits the road,” or applying spiritual principles in the physical world.
I also believe the best way to teach my son is by example, to be a role model of how to live life – courageously listening to one’s own inner guidance, trusting one’s own knowing, instincts, intuition. While attending college and working for the Ritz-Carlton, Grant was presented with an opportunity to relocate to Florida. I saw clearly he might move far away to live his life…and that I needed to live mine.
Elisabeth Kubler Ross’ writing about wild geese, quoted in Edwene Gaines’ book, The Four Spiritual Laws of Prosperity: A Simple Guide to Unlimited Abundance, was pointed out to me by a friend leafing through it on my bookshelf as I prepared to move from Santa Barbara. I hadn’t read it yet!
How do geese know
when to fly to the sun?
Who tells them the seasons?
How do we humans know
when it is time
to move on?
As with the migrant birds,
so surely with us,
there is a voice within,
if only we would listen to it,
that tells us certainly
when to go forth
into the unknown.
My moving to New Mexico is a demonstration to Grant that I know he is healed. Grant was on many prayer lists, involved in several miracles, including the fact that he’s in the 15% of the population who respond to Interleukin-2 treatment for melanoma. He no longer needs me. He can go on with is life. What I am doing, he can do. Our lives parallel one another, are mirrors for each other. My leaving is evidence of the gift he has been given, the gift of life, and my encouragement that he accept the gift. Here is what he recently wrote on my birthday card: “Happy Birthday, Mom. Thanks so much for being there for me in one way or another over all the years, but particularly the last 3. I’m blessed to have a person like you in my life, and despite a physical separation, you are with me every day! Love, Grant.” When Grant and I want to be together, we are a two-hour and $223 airplane ride away. Once I have my own home, we’ll share face time on Skype.
I hope this gives you some understanding about how and why I was able to move to New Mexico. I can certainly understand and appreciate why the question kept you awake at night. It kept me awake at night too! For a long time. It was a decision that evolved over many years, a process. It was not simple or easy. And I’m still not sure about the “calling” or spiritual “pull” that brought me to New Mexico. What is that about? I don’t know. But I do have some “clues!” All I can do is continue my spiritual practices and respond to the guidance given. I’ll write about guidance in future blog postings. Responding to this question has been a rich experience for me. Thank you for asking. “More to be revealed,” as I always say, or, as a dear friend puts it, “Film at 11.”
If you have a question, please send it to terranda@hotmail.com
Monday, November 14, 2011
Questions That Keep You Awake at Night (or “Film at 11”) Part 1
This week I received an email from someone who has known me for more than 50 years asking me the question I’m asked most frequently: “How could, or why would, you move to New Mexico?” Here’s how she expressed it: “I thought about you all night. Why, at this point in your life, have you moved away from Bill and even Grant? My Elizabeth is pregnant, and I wouldn't think about being anywhere else. Pregnancy is quite common. What Grant has been through isn't! You are such a brave and independent woman, but....”
She of course meant, why did I move 893 miles away from my son, and only child, who recently completed treatment for melanoma? She and I were teenagers together in the youth group at the First Baptist Church of Garden Grove where her parents were our group leaders. I left the church at 18, unable to believe babies not baptized were destined for hell along with Methodists, who sprinkled, instead of immersing like Baptists. “Two paths diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by…” How could an esoteric metaphysician communicate clearly with a fundamentalist Christian about core values? All I could do was seek common ground when I wrote back to her.
Bill and I have been divorced for 29 years. We are friends. We call each other on birthdays and holidays. When we divorced, we divorced each other, we did not divorce Grant. Fortunately, we were both mature enough at the time to place Grant’s needs first and make sure he still had two parents. Both of us were with him during his treatment at UCLA. Bill lives in the L.A. area; I lived in Santa Barbara, a little over an hour away. We might see each other once or twice a year. Friends and family members say of us, “You and Bill have done divorce better than anyone else we know.” Still, why would I ever let the whereabouts of my ex-husband determine where I live or how I live my life? It’s not even a consideration for me.
These are my beliefs and opinions. This is my understanding based on my own spiritual journey. This is how I have made my decisions, why I live my life as I do. It is my soul journey. I recognize the inherent perfection of each person’s soul journey for them.
Moving away from Grant has been easier this time, the second time, because I’ve had practice. Lessons I’ve learned and understandings I’ve gained on my path have enabled me to move forward.
“But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” (Matthew 6:33) In the hierarchy of my personal values, my relationship with God has always come first in my life, next my relationship with my spouse, then my relationship with my child. My child has his own life to live. It is not my life but his life. My job is to love and support him while he is on his own spiritual journey, following his own soul path. Spiritual practice is part of my life – prayer, meditation, contemplation, listening to guidance and intuition. My actions are based on these practices and the information I receive from them.
"He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me (and is in no way fit to enter into the kingdom of heaven).” (Matthew 10:37) In 1997, I left Grant, and everything else, when I moved from San Clemente to Santa Barbara to start a church. After I let go of my business, home, church, friends, community, I was still having trouble with one last letting go - my son. When I shared that difficulty with my mentor, Unity minister Edwene Gaines, she said, “I’m going to give you a hard lesson.” She then quoted Matthew 10:37. It’s another way of saying God must come first in your life. So I let go, left my son and moved to Santa Barbara. He subsequently moved to Santa Barbara to live with me while attending UCSB, but neither of us knew that would be the outcome at the time the decision was made and the action taken.
To be continued next week…
She of course meant, why did I move 893 miles away from my son, and only child, who recently completed treatment for melanoma? She and I were teenagers together in the youth group at the First Baptist Church of Garden Grove where her parents were our group leaders. I left the church at 18, unable to believe babies not baptized were destined for hell along with Methodists, who sprinkled, instead of immersing like Baptists. “Two paths diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by…” How could an esoteric metaphysician communicate clearly with a fundamentalist Christian about core values? All I could do was seek common ground when I wrote back to her.
Bill and I have been divorced for 29 years. We are friends. We call each other on birthdays and holidays. When we divorced, we divorced each other, we did not divorce Grant. Fortunately, we were both mature enough at the time to place Grant’s needs first and make sure he still had two parents. Both of us were with him during his treatment at UCLA. Bill lives in the L.A. area; I lived in Santa Barbara, a little over an hour away. We might see each other once or twice a year. Friends and family members say of us, “You and Bill have done divorce better than anyone else we know.” Still, why would I ever let the whereabouts of my ex-husband determine where I live or how I live my life? It’s not even a consideration for me.
These are my beliefs and opinions. This is my understanding based on my own spiritual journey. This is how I have made my decisions, why I live my life as I do. It is my soul journey. I recognize the inherent perfection of each person’s soul journey for them.
Moving away from Grant has been easier this time, the second time, because I’ve had practice. Lessons I’ve learned and understandings I’ve gained on my path have enabled me to move forward.
“But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” (Matthew 6:33) In the hierarchy of my personal values, my relationship with God has always come first in my life, next my relationship with my spouse, then my relationship with my child. My child has his own life to live. It is not my life but his life. My job is to love and support him while he is on his own spiritual journey, following his own soul path. Spiritual practice is part of my life – prayer, meditation, contemplation, listening to guidance and intuition. My actions are based on these practices and the information I receive from them.
"He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me (and is in no way fit to enter into the kingdom of heaven).” (Matthew 10:37) In 1997, I left Grant, and everything else, when I moved from San Clemente to Santa Barbara to start a church. After I let go of my business, home, church, friends, community, I was still having trouble with one last letting go - my son. When I shared that difficulty with my mentor, Unity minister Edwene Gaines, she said, “I’m going to give you a hard lesson.” She then quoted Matthew 10:37. It’s another way of saying God must come first in your life. So I let go, left my son and moved to Santa Barbara. He subsequently moved to Santa Barbara to live with me while attending UCSB, but neither of us knew that would be the outcome at the time the decision was made and the action taken.
To be continued next week…
Monday, November 7, 2011
Downsizing! Homeless Realtor Lives Out of Car
"Do you love it?"* Then keep it. Otherwise practice belonging triage: Keep it, donate or sell it, trash it. Do I really want to drag the 28-year-old bedroom furniture I bought with my ex to my new home, my new life? Maybe not. Do I really want to be responsible for cleaning, dusting, wrapping, packing, storing, moving that item – investing my life energy in it?
“Time is the best editor” is one of my sister-in-law’s favorite quotations. It contains an insight that becomes increasingly poignant as you age and when your child has a life-threatening illness. She and I have a shared understanding of the quotation at the cellular level. Poet Mary Oliver puts it this way: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” How do I wish to spend my time? With whom? Doing what? On what belongings?
For me, moving stripped away the nonessential. Moving revealed my priorities. When everything is gone, what remains? What matters? Who am I without my stuff? Who am I without a home? Does that change? A homeless Realtor, how ironic. Where is my true home? Wherever I am? Am I at home with myself?
Moving from a four-bedroom beach home to a one-bedroom guest cottage to a bedroom in a friend’s condo then to a car during relocation distills life to the essential. I found myself protecting what little terrain remained – a bedroom in a friend’s home. My one request while there was for “inviolable space,” that my room be entered only by request with permission, that my boundaries be respected, because “It’s the only space I have to call my own right now.” I acknowledged it might be unusual to request that a room in someone’s home be off-limits to them, but that was exactly what I was asking. Learning that it meant not coming in just to "plug in the fan” (for my comfort), “adjust the drapes” or “remove objects I wasn’t using anyway” required discussion and clarification. The intrusions felt like such a violation to me at first. It took a day for me to let go, know it’s not who I am, realize I didn’t “need” inviolable space.
What belongings deserve my time - my "one wild and precious life"? Living in a wildfire evacuation warning zone in Santa Barbara’s downtown urban area, after 20,000 people had already been evacuated during the fourth wildfire in as many years, I could have as few as ten minutes to pack up and be gone. What would go with me? Surprisingly little. Having to prepare for that real possibility was very freeing.
It’s challenging to pack when you don’t know how long everything will be in storage. Summer clothes? Fall? Winter? Boots or sandals? What files will you need? Tax returns? Healthcare information? The pink slip to your car? New Mexico requires your original social security card to issue you a driver’s license. “Take your passport with you,” my sister-in-law said. It proved to be a great idea. What’s really precious to me? What’s irreplaceable? The things I love the most, those I don’t want lost or broken, are with me.
The stripping-away process can be welcome and daunting, necessary and challenging, freeing and frightening. The stripping away is like demolishing an old structure, bulldozing it down, hauling it away, scraping the lot, starting over. If I’m not that, who am I? There’s something refreshing, new, exciting about a bare lot of fresh dirt. With every item, with every belief, with every perceived need released, let go, I realized I needed less and less. I had a greater and greater understanding of who I am, a deeper and deeper sense of fulfillment and peace. My trust that whatever I needed would be there for me when I needed it increased. My mantra became “My needs are met. My needs are always met,” and it became so for me.
Now, after four months of renting in Albuquerque, I am almost ready to buy a home. When I returned from a three-week visit to California last week (friends and family...yummm!) my New Mexico real estate license was waiting for me. I joined the local, state and national real estate associations as well as the Multiple Listing Service. Have lockbox key, will travel. In another twenty-four hours, I will have access to online real estate forms. I'll be ready for business - starting with my own! For several months on Sunday afternoons I've looked at Open Houses. Yesterday, this is what I found in the premier "North Valley" neighborhood, my favorite, adjacent to the Rio Grande: A foreclosure property, single-storey, pueblo-style, 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, 1990 square feet, built in 2007 with high wood beam ceilings, a kiva fireplace, backing to open space in a gated community. There is an unobstructed view of the Sandia Mountains from the front yard. The price? Oh! Wait for it, you Californians - especially you Santa Barbarians!!! $287,000. Yes. Add a mil for Santa Barbara. So the adventure continues....I'm still shopping and will keep you posted!
* "Do you love it?" Brilliant sorting question from Don Aslett, author of Clutter's Last Stand: It's Time To De-junk Your Life! and Lose 200 Lbs. This Weekend: It's Time to Declutter Your Life.
“Time is the best editor” is one of my sister-in-law’s favorite quotations. It contains an insight that becomes increasingly poignant as you age and when your child has a life-threatening illness. She and I have a shared understanding of the quotation at the cellular level. Poet Mary Oliver puts it this way: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” How do I wish to spend my time? With whom? Doing what? On what belongings?
For me, moving stripped away the nonessential. Moving revealed my priorities. When everything is gone, what remains? What matters? Who am I without my stuff? Who am I without a home? Does that change? A homeless Realtor, how ironic. Where is my true home? Wherever I am? Am I at home with myself?
Moving from a four-bedroom beach home to a one-bedroom guest cottage to a bedroom in a friend’s condo then to a car during relocation distills life to the essential. I found myself protecting what little terrain remained – a bedroom in a friend’s home. My one request while there was for “inviolable space,” that my room be entered only by request with permission, that my boundaries be respected, because “It’s the only space I have to call my own right now.” I acknowledged it might be unusual to request that a room in someone’s home be off-limits to them, but that was exactly what I was asking. Learning that it meant not coming in just to "plug in the fan” (for my comfort), “adjust the drapes” or “remove objects I wasn’t using anyway” required discussion and clarification. The intrusions felt like such a violation to me at first. It took a day for me to let go, know it’s not who I am, realize I didn’t “need” inviolable space.
What belongings deserve my time - my "one wild and precious life"? Living in a wildfire evacuation warning zone in Santa Barbara’s downtown urban area, after 20,000 people had already been evacuated during the fourth wildfire in as many years, I could have as few as ten minutes to pack up and be gone. What would go with me? Surprisingly little. Having to prepare for that real possibility was very freeing.
It’s challenging to pack when you don’t know how long everything will be in storage. Summer clothes? Fall? Winter? Boots or sandals? What files will you need? Tax returns? Healthcare information? The pink slip to your car? New Mexico requires your original social security card to issue you a driver’s license. “Take your passport with you,” my sister-in-law said. It proved to be a great idea. What’s really precious to me? What’s irreplaceable? The things I love the most, those I don’t want lost or broken, are with me.
The stripping-away process can be welcome and daunting, necessary and challenging, freeing and frightening. The stripping away is like demolishing an old structure, bulldozing it down, hauling it away, scraping the lot, starting over. If I’m not that, who am I? There’s something refreshing, new, exciting about a bare lot of fresh dirt. With every item, with every belief, with every perceived need released, let go, I realized I needed less and less. I had a greater and greater understanding of who I am, a deeper and deeper sense of fulfillment and peace. My trust that whatever I needed would be there for me when I needed it increased. My mantra became “My needs are met. My needs are always met,” and it became so for me.
Now, after four months of renting in Albuquerque, I am almost ready to buy a home. When I returned from a three-week visit to California last week (friends and family...yummm!) my New Mexico real estate license was waiting for me. I joined the local, state and national real estate associations as well as the Multiple Listing Service. Have lockbox key, will travel. In another twenty-four hours, I will have access to online real estate forms. I'll be ready for business - starting with my own! For several months on Sunday afternoons I've looked at Open Houses. Yesterday, this is what I found in the premier "North Valley" neighborhood, my favorite, adjacent to the Rio Grande: A foreclosure property, single-storey, pueblo-style, 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, 1990 square feet, built in 2007 with high wood beam ceilings, a kiva fireplace, backing to open space in a gated community. There is an unobstructed view of the Sandia Mountains from the front yard. The price? Oh! Wait for it, you Californians - especially you Santa Barbarians!!! $287,000. Yes. Add a mil for Santa Barbara. So the adventure continues....I'm still shopping and will keep you posted!
* "Do you love it?" Brilliant sorting question from Don Aslett, author of Clutter's Last Stand: It's Time To De-junk Your Life! and Lose 200 Lbs. This Weekend: It's Time to Declutter Your Life.
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