A Prayer for Protection

Plump, swimsuit-clad gummy ladies ride sugar seahorses across the blue icing pool on Andrew's goodbye cake this morning. Standing guard in camouflage at the corner of the cake is the soldier he will become. This is his final week as our aquacise instructor before he flies to Ft. Benning, GA, to become an Army Ranger. Two years of his four-year contract will be on active duty, two in reserve. Then his education will be paid for – if he lives, whispers the concerned mother’s voice within. The “seahorse” exercise involves half the class straddling a “noodle” and riding it to the end of the pool and back, first forward, then backward, while the rest of the class works out with Andrew then switches. It’s his signature exercise. I’m choosing to know he too will go there and back. Twenty of us surprise him with a potluck lunch including the cake, ice cream and a balloon-fiesta-gift-wrapped money box with a slot on top. He's so young to go in harm's way.

If I were Andrew’s mother, what would I want for him? What do I want for my own son, for every mother’s son? I want to know he is under the umbrella of the Prayer for Protection, so I write it on my small gift envelope:

The Light of God surrounds you.

The Love of God enfolds you.

The Power of God protects you.

The Presence of God watches over you.

Wherever you are, God is, and all is well.

The blessing goes with him as I let go, let God.

Being present and paying attention to common, everyday experiences reveal a universe at work beneath the surface of appearances, surrounding, loving, enfolding, protecting and watching over us. Deepening our faith and trust, these experiences become a reservoir of comfort, confirmation and peace, a resource we can later draw on in difficult times. At a recent Southwest Writers meeting, I was present, paid attention and had just such an opportunity to watch the universe at work.

Each month, a door-prize ticket is given to those in attendance. The drawing is for. . .what else. . .books. Some new, some used, some by writers who are members. I knew my ticket would win. It is the third one called, three for the trinity – Father, son, Holy Ghost, symbolic of Grant’s dad, Grant and Spirit. The digits of the ticket, #0032, add up to 5, the number that represents change. From more than twenty available selections, I choose Elizabeth Berg’s book, Home Safe. I heard her keynote address at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, resonated with what she said and wanted to read her work. Here it is. Handed to me. For free. Not only was I listening to the universe, it was listening to me and saying, “Your wish is my command.”

The story is about a woman writer whose husband dies, father dies, daughter grows up and moves away. “. . .it seems her life is beginning to change in ways  she is only beginning to understand.” Synchronistically, the protagonist and I have at least ten things in common. Both of us have been through deaths, losses and periods of not writing, both are facing unknowns, both have adult children entering relationships and starting new lives, both of us know it is time to grow and take on new responsibilities, do more letting go.

She “thinks of all she has lost and will lose. All she has had and will have. It seems to her that life is like gathering berries into an apron with a hole. Why do we keep on? Because the berries are beautiful and we must eat to survive. We catch what we can. We walk past what we lose for the promise of more, just ahead.” The experience of winning and reading the book, of watching the universe work, deepens my trust, my faith. It provides comfort, confirmation and peace to sustain me through difficult times. Through it all, we arrive, Home Safe, at home with spirit, our lives, ourselves. The universe is surrounding, loving, enfolding and watching over me. It speaks to me through a book this time.

Charlotte

Yellow, plastic “crime-scene” tape is anchored from a terracotta flower pot on the ground to a clothesline with a wooden pin on the other side of the morning glory fence I share with my neighbor, Betsy. She knows about it. She put it there.

 

While watering my garden one morning this week, I heard a keening cry. It was Betsy. I stopped what I was doing to see what was wrong. “I accidentally walked into the web. I forgot it was there. I’ve ruined it. Charlotte. . .” “What would Wilbur say?” I asked, referring to the children’s book, Charlotte’s Web, the story of a spider with a humble pig for a friend. At first, Wilbur thinks humble means "close to the ground." After talking with Charlotte, he knows it means "teachable." Everything in my experience is an expression of spirit, the one universe, and is speaking to me. Do I listen? Am I teachable?

Lamenting the damage she inadvertently caused, Betsy genuinely felt bad. As the daughter of a biologist and a geologist who writes and illustrates children’s books, many about animals and insects, Betsy has an innate affinity for the natural world. She keeps a terracotta pot saucer filled with water beneath a bush to attract toads to her yard. She makes sure the bird bath is full so they have a place to bathe. Every monsoon season on her morning walk, she rescues as many as 150 baby frogs washed into the gutter by the first rain, picking them up one at a time and returning them to the adjacent field in a nature preserve.

 

“I put up the tape to remind myself the web is there,” she says. I know she needs consolation. “It’s okay, Betsy. She’ll just repair the web. Spiders know how. They do it all the time – every time an insect ventures into the web for dinner. They have everything they need within themselves to do it, just like you with your painting and writing.” “I wish I could capture my dinner,” she muses, “but I don’t have silk in me. This would be a good topic for your blog.”

 

“What kind of spider is it?” I ask. “I think it’s a New Mexico Orb Weaver,” Betsy replies, “I looked it up.” The spider has beautiful red and white markings and makes a large, spiral, wheel-shaped web. I’m hoping it will catch some of the pesky flies plaguing us. Today, around noon, I stopped by for an up-close-and-personal look at the spider, the web and the crime-scene tape, but the spider wasn’t home. Later, I saw her on the web again. Wikipedia explains most orb weavers tend to be active during the evening hours. They hide during the day. Toward evening, the spider will consume the old web, rest for approximately an hour, then spin a new web in the same general location. I was gratified to learn some are semi-social and live in communal webs which have been cut out of trees or bushes in Mexico and used for living fly paper.

 

Symbolically, to Native Americans, spider is grandmother, the link to past and future. Unlike insects, spiders have two body sections instead of three, giving them a figure-eight appearance, when horizontal, the sign of infinity, representing the wheel of life flowing from one circle to the next. In his book Animal Speak, Ted Andrews provides an extraordinarily rich symbolic description of what it means if a spider has come into your life or is your totem. It is powerfully appropriate for Betsy and me and perhaps for you too.

 

“Spider teaches you to maintain a balance – between past and future, physical and spiritual, male and female. Spider teaches you that everything you now do is weaving what you will encounter in the future.” Andrews mentions that the spiral shape of the web is the traditional form of creativity and development. “We are the keepers and the writers of our own destiny, weaving it like a web by our thoughts, feelings, and actions."

 

The spider is considered the teacher of language and the magic of writing because a primordial alphabet was formed by the geometric patterns and angles found within spider’s web, according to Andrews. Most of their movement occurs  in the dark, often in inaccessible areas. “Weave your creative threads in the dark (It’s 1:00 a.m. as I write this) and then when the sun hits them, they will glisten with intricate beauty.” Andrews presents a series of important questions to contemplate if spider has come into your life:

• Are you not weaving your dreams and imaginings into reality?
• Are you not using your creative opportunities?
• Are you feeling closed in or stuck as if in a web?
• Do you need to pay attention to your balance and where you are walking in life?
• Are others out of balance around you?
• Do you need to write?
• Are you inspired to write or draw and not following through?

"Spider can teach how to use the written language with power and creativity so your words weave a web around those who would read them,” Andrews says. I saw a toad in my garden this evening for the first time in a long time and a hummingbird earlier today. Dare I look them up? I have enough to think about now. I’m trusting you do too.

 

 

 

 

 

BBaddict’s Evening with Gus Fring

Fifty-seven channels and nothing on. . . yeah, that’s what turned the Spiritual Adventuress into a BBaddict. Scrolling past “Breaking Bad,” she thought why watch a show about a meth lab. . . even if it is filmed in Albuquerque. But there’s nothing else on, maybe I’ll just check it out. Two days and twenty-one episodes later, she was as addicted to the story as drug lords are to power, as addicts are to meth – so addicted, that she hooked a friend in California. “Well,” she consoled her now bleary-eyed co-addict, “At least we’re not as bad as they are! Unbelievable!!” Then she shared breaking news about Connecticut viewers so outraged by an ill-timed cable outage during Sunday night’s episode that they called 911, unable to connect with the fix for their habit (fact).*

“We are receiving numerous 911 calls regarding the [Cablevision] outage,” a representative wrote on the [Fairfield Police] Department’s Facebook page. “This is neither an emergency, nor a police-related concern. Please direct your inquiries to Cablevision.” The rep also warned that “misuse of the 911 system may result in arrest.” “Clearly Fairfield PD doesn’t watch Breaking Bad,” one Facebook user replied to the department’s post. Ahhh. Vindication.

Where your attention goes, your energy flows and the result shows. Divine Flow took over in an amazing, synchronistic way with delightful results. You knew this would connect to spiritual practice and principles, didn’t you? But isn’t it an adventure each week to see how? It’s like six degrees of Kevin Bacon. Reading Albuquerque’s weekly independent Alibi on Saturday afternoon, the Spiritual Adventuress noticed a special event that evening at the Kimo Theatre. The very same magical location where, last fall, Zia Pueblo Indians sang “Happy Birthday” to her in their tribal language on the sidewalk in front of the theatre. Presentation of the Robert and Sibylle Redford Creative Achievement Award to Giancarlo Esposito would follow a showing of “The Usual Suspects,” a film in which Esposito portrays a policeman. Giancarlo’s current role is Gus Fring, ruthless drug lord in “Breaking Bad.” The final season, the last eight episodes of a five-year run, would begin the following evening. I went.

A long line of people clutching $21 computer-printout tickets snaked around the corner and down the street. As I approached an event staff person to ask questions, a man on the street asked me, “Do you have a ticket?” “No,” I replied. “Here,” he said, handing me a computer printout. “A friend couldn’t make it.” As I reached for my purse to pay him, he said, “No, he told me to just give it away.” It was second row, center, at a sold-out event. I was literally ten feet away from Robert Redford and his wife and Giancarlo Esposito. But that wasn’t the miracle. The miracle was Giancarlo Esposito, who he is as a person.

In the Q & A following the film, Giancarlo described his thirty-year career and the thinking which informed it. He began on stage, singing and dancing, taught by his African-American, opera-singer mother how to use his voice. He knew he did not want to be limited to being a theater entertainer, so he left to explore other art forms with the clear intention of expressing all creative aspects of himself. Film clips from about twenty of his fifty-eight films disclose very diverse roles. Esposito, whose father was Italian, grew up European. He had “to learn how to be black” for parts in six Spike Lee films. He hung out on the streets of Philadelphia to learn both language and body language. Pursuit of excellence in his craft extended not only to learning to speak Spanish to play Gus, but also to hiring a coach to teach him Spanish with a Chilean accent since the character was from Chile.

Giancarlo shared not only his outer expression, but also his inner expression, woven naturally into the conversation, revealing his beliefs about energy, intention, meditation. Referring to his daily meditation practice, he said, “I listen to the mountains.” It is in meditation he receives guidance. His commitment to doing what he loves with passion and at least one thing each day to move his life vision forward has served him well. He urged audience members to do the same. The description of his first meeting with Robert Redford at Sundance sixteen years ago reveals a great deal about both of them. They were drawn together by, and resonated with, each other’s energy. Seeing beneath the surface of outer appearance into deeply connected spiritual lives was both uplifting and inspirational. Comfortable with themselves, they allowed the essential truth within us all to be revealed.

With great joy and delight, I couldn’t wait to get home to call my California co-addict to say, “Guess where I was? I spent the evening with Gus Fring.” Only another BBaddict can appreciate what that means.

*As reported by Ethan Sacks, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, Monday, August 19, 2013.

Mirror, Mirror. . .

Today is the day. Today we receive PET scan results. Today, after three years of being symptom-free and in remission, my son faces the recurrence of melanoma. A meeting with his primary care physician last week revealed “activity spots” in three locations. A meeting today with his oncologist will provide details, and, hopefully, information about a treatment plan. “At least it’s not in my liver – that would pretty much be it,” Grant informs me on the phone. “Once it’s in the liver or the lungs, it’s untreatable. I’d talk with you longer, but I’m baking. I’m making cornbread for our office picnic tomorrow, and Natalia is coming over to take me out to dinner. I love you, Mom.” Life goes on. Thankfully.

I have been living with the recurrence information for several weeks, trying to adjust to it, but having a hard time. Although I know there's a center of strength and peace within me, I've had trouble finding it, trouble residing there. Waves of sadness wash over me. I feel helpless, powerless, out of control. Negative thoughts keep flitting through my mind like the pestering plague of Albuquerque flies now torturing residents. Ideal weather conditions of drought and downpour have provided an endless supply.   

The Spiritual Adventuress is currently participating in the 21-Day Meditation Challenge, "Miraculous Relationships," offered by Deepak Chopra and Oprah Winfrey. Yesterday, I decided to return to blogging after a hiatus and began writing a post about relationships as mirrors. Today’s centering thought is “The world is my mirror.” Chopra says when we recognize we can see ourselves in others, every relationship becomes a tool for the evolution of our consciousness. The synchronicity reminds me I am not alone. I am in the divine flow. 

It has long been my spiritual practice to ask, whenever I make a statement about another person, "How is that true about me?" I don't always like what I see. This week, when I sent property information to a real estate contact, a reply came back that it looked pretty good "if it's not a scam." My reaction, definitely not a response, was "Don't even go there. What you think about, you bring about." Negative thinking brings about negative experiences. It didn't take long for me to see my reflection in the mirror, swatting away pesky flies. “In order to transform that which no longer serves us into what we truly desire in our hearts, we must embrace both the dark and the light of who we are,” says Chopra. Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all? That would be you. Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the least fair of them all? That would also be you. I am grateful the mirror's reflection gave me a chance to choose again. It really served me.

Masaru Emoto's scientific experiments photographing water crystals were mentioned in another day's meditation. When positive thoughts and emotions, such as love, appreciation, happiness and truth were focused on samples of distilled water, the molecules formed delicate, symmetrical, crystalline shapes. Water samples exposed to negative thoughts filled with hatred and hostility displayed chaotic, fragmented structures. It is startling to think of this in relation to the fact that 60-70% of the human body consists of water. Meditation suggested I send Grant my copy of Emoto's book, The Hidden Messages in Water, which I read several years ago. When I went to my bookshelf to find the book, the first book I touched was Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, in which he says our ultimate freedom, which can never be taken away, is our freedom to choose how we will respond to the situation in which we find ourselves. Again, the synchronicity reminds me I am not alone. I am in the divine flow. The universe is communicating with me.

Looking into the mirror of my son, I see someone freely and powerfully choosing his response to a challenging situation. I see someone pragmatic with courage and equanimity. I see someone living his life fully, baking cornbread for a picnic, going to dinner with a friend. “I admire your great attitude and appreciate your being a role model for me,” I tell him. “Thank you,” he says. He is my teacher and my student. I am his teacher and his student. We are reflections of each other in the mirror of relationships.

"We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are."  -The Talmud

Courage Is My Word

“Courage has no guarantees, or certain outcomes.

 It is a risk taken on an unknown path.

 Courage brings about change. Growth is dependent on courage.

 I procrastinate out of fear of failure. Have I enough courage to examine that fear?”   

                                                                                                         – For Today

This week, prompted by the above quotation in a support group, the Spiritual Adventuress had an opportunity to write about courage and the fears she is encountering at her growing edge – body, relationship, writing. Beginning sentences with “I’m afraid I won’t know how…” or “I’m afraid I won’t be successful at…” revealed the path of growth, reminding her of where she needed to go, reminding her what spiritual teachers told her a long time ago.

“Where don’t you want to go? Go there. What don’t you want to do? Do that.”  By asking those questions, Val Jon Faris, co-facilitator of The Mastery, an in-depth, personal growth seminar, was shining light on the path which would require courage and bring about change. The last place I wanted to go was to sit next to Val Jon, so I did. The last thing I wanted to do was to ask for help, so I did. For me, feeling as helpless, powerless and out of control as I did in my family of origin was to be avoided at all cost, so I asked Val Jon and Cynthia if they would help me through the workshop process. Going where I didn’t want to go, and doing what I didn’t want to do, transformed my life. Now, twenty-two years later, whenever I face a difficult decision, I still ask myself those questions. The answers show me what to do next.

At the completion of The Mastery, participants were invited to choose a word to guide them, a word they would be and become. “Truth,” I said, soon adding “with compassion.” Two years later, I changed it to “Courage.” Cynthia said, “I think that will really serve you, Terranda.” It was a huge understatement. Courage accompanied me through my son’s life-threatening illness. It moved me from California to New Mexico where I had no friends, no family, no job, no place to live – but where I discovered my writing group and teachers. It joined me on a spiritual pilgrimage to Peru where it helped make decisions about participation in a shamanic journey.

Courage is still my word. Now, I am calling on courage to help me surrender in areas where I want to grow. To surrender, as in give up, old ideas, thoughts, beliefs and behaviors that are comfortable friends, life-long companions who cannot accompany me to the Promised Land, the unknown terrain of fulfilled dreams ahead. Like Moses, they have brought me this far, but they cannot take me where I want to go. To do that I must rely on an obsolete meaning of courage: “The heart, as the source of emotion,” in addition to the traditional meanings of courage: having the confidence to act in accordance with one’s beliefs; the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain. The French word coeur, or heart, is the root word of courage, the terrain of intuition and feeling. The Mastery gave me access to my feelings, my emotions. Before then, I lived in my head. It took more than ten years to integrate what I learned so I could not only identify what I was feeling, in the moment, but also express it.

At aquacise today, I experienced Mastery’s precious gift. A friend asked about my recent trip to California. I told her about the magical experience my son Grant and I had seeing thousands and thousands of dolphins on a whale watching trip for his birthday. Migrating humpback whales breached, rolled over, showing us their pectoral fins, their tails. They swam under our boat, literally five feet away. I told her how happy I was to meet Grant’s girlfriend of six months, to learn they are enjoying each other. Tears came when I shared my concerns that his past treatment for melanoma might keep someone from taking the risk of being in relationship with him, loving him, marrying him, having children with him because of the possibility of losing him. She immediately hugged me. "What’s the matter? What’s wrong?” two other women asked, swimming over. Hearing the story, they both hugged me too. “Thank you for sharing that,” said one. Courage, the heart as source of emotion, gives me access to my feelings in the moment, connecting me authentically with others in relationship. I know courage will take me the rest of the way, guiding me through the unknown. Courage will help me surrender. Courage will manifest my dreams.

Someone

Someone

Tacked

to the corner

telephone pole,

someone

left a single-word sign.

On gold cardstock,

red calligraphy proclaims

Poetry

Slippery sheet protectors

shield Emily Dickinson,

Jackson Holly, Basho  

from sizzling summer sun,

wind, monsoon rains.

Filling

a cornflower blue
 ceramic glazed pot 

with Veronica spicata,

magenta Petunias, gold Celosia,

I set it

on the adobe ledge

in front of my home.

                                 ©2013 Terranda King

Fastened with binder clips to two clipboards are six poems. On the bottom clipboard, the page reads “KIDS” parallel to its left-hand edge and includes a poem about “a snail upon the wall.” No poet is named. I wonder if “Someone” wrote it.

The sign and poems have been there for months. I meant to stop. Before I did, they disappeared, and I was disappointed. Perhaps they announced a local poetry reading/writing group I could attend. Recently, the sign and poems reappeared. Today, I stopped and received the gift I'd already been given, the gift waiting for me. How many gifts await our receptivity? What difference will their contribution make? There’s no way to know who stops, how many read the poems or how they respond. The act of leaving them there seems whimsical, generously free of attachment. 

  

Almost all the poems are about nature, the night, a flowering tree, a snake and a snail, appropriate since they are posted on the street leading to the Rio Grande Nature Center. Familiar with Basho and Emily Dickinson, I had not heard of Jackson Holly. A little internet research to find his two poems led to music videos of a Jackson Holly playing guitar and singing a blues version of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.” He could be the “Someone,” I’m just not sure. If so, in these days of social media platforms, poems posted on telephone poles really are “stealth marketing.” How many people are curious enough to spend time tracking him down? Looking in his mirror, I wonder how difficult I make it for others to experience the essence of me.

The experience inspired me to express my own creativity. Since I haven’t written poetry for a long time, it was a real treat to do that. The experience made me wonder if I give anonymous (more or less!) gifts of love to unknown strangers. It made me wonder what those gifts might be. It made me wonder how I can give them more consciously, more often. It made me wonder what the world would be like if more of us did. I think we all give gifts of love to unknown strangers. I think we do it every day by showing up as who we are. Sometimes we don’t recognize how just being ourselves makes a difference, how it is a gift to others.

During my recent trip to California, dear friends in real estate had me stay at their home. They organized a Sunday afternoon BBQ, inviting people I worked with 15 - 20 years ago. It was a unique experience for me. For the first time in my life, I felt an intangible sense of perspective in time – it must come with age. I could feel the relationship I had with each person, the contributions we made to each other. It was a warm, soft, expansive feeling in my chest. One man has had extraordinary success in real estate over the years. Last year, he sold 250 short-sale and foreclosure homes. He told me that when he was new in the business, a bright young man with an MBA from Northwestern University, but a stranger to me, I was his mentor without knowing it. He told me he followed me around the office, listening to what I said, watching what I did. His telling me about the difference I made in his life was his contribution to me. Aware consciously of our contributions or not, we can be confident we make them, and that we have a choice about making them consciously.

Beloved

Beloved. We are the Beloved. In so many ways the Universe is letting us know how much we are loved. It custom tailors its messages to us so we cannot doubt they are ours. All we have to do is pay attention. In a mystical experience at Costco this week, yes, Costco, the temple of discount consumption, I received my most recent notification that I am the Beloved. I don't really care where I am when Spirit tells me that I am loved. I experience delight wherever it is and whatever form it takes.

Wow. One. There is one copy of Leila Meacham’s paperback at Costco, on top of one of two tables of books on display. Just to be sure, I circle then circle again, both tables, Doubting Thomas that I am, looking for another copy. Nope. None. Nada. Just checking. . . There’s only one, the one that is a love message of support from Spirit to me. It’s near the front, right by the aisle as I pass, unmistakable. The title, Roses, embossed in gold letters, is surrounded by a profusion of pink and red roses.              

        

How do I know it’s a love letter from Spirit? There are no accidents. It is a symbolic synchronicity, or “coincidence.” I encountered the author and book two weeks ago in person at the University of New Mexico (UNM) Writers Conference. Leila Meacham was the keynote speaker, her appearance another love letter from Spirit to me. She and I have so many things in common we could be twins. Both of us are retired teachers of similar age with first books who consider writing their job and follow spiritual practices.

Spirit told me, several times, starting with a bumper sticker, “Move forward confidently in the direction of your dreams.” At the regular, monthly meeting of SouthWest Writers, Spirit let me know about the UNM Writers Conference. Brochures were distributed and an announcement made that early registrants would receive a free, 10-minute “book pitch” with an agent or editor of their choice from New York. My book pitch was scheduled at the same exact time my writing teachers were presenting a workshop on their new book, Find Your Story – Write Your Memoir. My book is a self-help memoir. Nudge-nudge, wink-wink. Spirit keeps saying, “You are loved and supported." Keep moving forward.

Now, about that book pitch. As a spiritual mentor likes to say, “There’s one thing I am perfectly clear about. I don’t have the foggiest notion how to do that. But I didn’t know how to do puberty either. . . . .did you?” No. Fortunately, Spirit loves me through a fabulous, retired reference librarian friend who, without being asked, emails me thirty pages of the best information available on how to prepare a book pitch. It is totally relevant. Try selecting that sometime from 549,237,091 google hits on the topic. I email her a copy of the two-page pitch I labor on for seven hours. “I love it, outstanding,” she pronounces. This is high praise from someone who, for years, read book synopses and purchased books for her library. Spirit does indeed love me.  

Leila Meacham is a delightful keynote speaker - authentic, unassuming, charming and inspirational. She tells us it's her first writers conference and first keynote address. She tells us her story. She shares how the multigenerational family saga manuscript she worked on for twenty years almost ended up in the trash, rescued at the last moment by her husband when they moved. When the book is finally finished, a friend asks to share a few pages with someone. The someone “just happens” to be a very successful literary agent. The literary agent “just happens” to obtain a book contract two weeks later. The book “just happens” to make the best-seller list within eighteen days of publication. I’ll bet she didn’t know how to do puberty either.

After Leila’s talk, people of all ages thank her for being such an inspiration. Now Spirit has presented me with her book at Costco. For 624 pages, I can immerse myself in the consciousness of the 70-year-old, retired schoolteacher from East Texas, whose first published book easily and effortlessly reaches The New York Times Best Sellers list. For hours and hours, I can enjoy reading a dream come true. “If it can happen for her, it can happen for you,” Spirit says. “Here. Hold it in your hands as a tangible reality. You are my Beloved.”