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~Amy's Writing~

BeYouTooFull

"Follow your bliss." Joseph Campbell

It’s that moment. You know the one. When the stars align and the ground you stand on is holy, and you know it. That audacious aliveness realizing,”I am!” takes over. It’s the right place and the right time; it’s here and now. You are IT! 

I’d been working on this project for about 6 weeks, finessing the details, delegating responsibilities and supporting my colleagues in their shining. I was team leader and facilitating the presentation in a sort of servant-leader capacity. Getting it all set up, empowering the team and then letting it rip! So with that proverbial rip chord in hand, I stood up to begin the evening and introduce the team. I asked the audience, “Are you ready?!” And that’s when it hit me: this electrifying fullness. Feeling more alive than maybe forever… dissolving and emerging simultaneously in connection and purpose, in light and heat and love!

Remember that game we played as kids? Where one kid chooses an object in the room and then the other walks around trying to figure out what it is, prompted by “you’re getting hotter,” “you’re getting colder?” Sometimes life feels like that to me, and the Universe is hollering: “Hot, hot… cold… HOT!”  And that heat is bliss! Bliss is God’s way of saying, “This way!” The fullness of life lights up the nervous system in joy. The soul nerve quivers in responsive harmony to the divine sensorium and you are YOU overflowing. Be this YOU too full… BeYouTooFull. That’s the way…

Affirmation:
I follow my Bliss. I trust the impulses of joy in my being. The light of love and the fullness of purpose ignite my way!

In every tear, a prayer

In every tear there is a prayer… 
perfectly encoded 
and crystal clear in its articulation. 
Watching rivulets stream down her face, 
dripping from her nose into the smile lines, 
into cracks from past addiction, 
over her jaw and down her neck, 
slipping past her collar 
and below her shirt, 
seeking refuge perhaps, 
in the skin above her heart? 
This litany of biological consciousness 
making its way from the liquid of her being 
to the light and air in this particular moment… 
a moment witnessed and held
within a silence 
acute with compassion’s humble wonder. 
Oh, to have eyes that see 
the wetness of a soul on a face.

Spring’s Blossoms

"Come quickly—as soon as these blossoms open, they fall. 
This world exists as a sheen of dew on flowers." 
Izumi Shikib

The crocuses are popping up, and the snow drops. The witch hazel tree is in bloom with it’s spidery flowers and its sweet, unmistakable, toe-curling scent. The bright yellowy sunshine of the winter aconite invades the dark patches of brown in my leaf mulched, sleeping gardens. I come to a complete standstill every time I discover a new bud. And I want to scream: Spring!

If anyone comes by, they’ll think I’m working, clipping the dead stalks I’ve left for “winter interest.” But really I’m on my hands and knees, in devotion, face to face with a checkered lily. She bows her head, completely open and yet demurely, coyly, protectively covering her golden center. Her patchwork petals so intricately patterned that I am stunned with Nature’s ability. The delicate stem, the slender leaves balance around her, supporting her stance. She is so fragile and so courageous all at once, my eyes are crying and I can feel my heart squeezing out between the spaces in my ribs.

Then later, sitting with my sister, I see her hand resting on the kitchen table. A hand I have seen a million times. A hand that looks a lot like my hand, and my mother’s. Its skin appears almost see-through and the bones and veins are miraculously revealed underneath. She taps her finger trying to prove her point and her whole hand supports her. As my eyes gently move up her arm, to her neck, to her face, I can feel my heart again breaking through my body. She is so fragile and so courageous, bowing there and laughing and trying to cover her golden center, but failing.

Affirmation:
I quicken with the Spring’s blossoming. I see her flowers everywhere! 

No Amen​
Let there be no “Amen.”
An unfinished prayer, 
and un-finish-able here really,
upon this page that I am. 
It calls me and whispers 
an ever beginning 
beyond resolution.
No neat and tidy prayer, 
answerable in amounts
or a lover’s embrace,
but time’s un-bonded slave, 
free and wild and raw.
My constant companion,
it brings me into breathing again
and in between the banging 
on the bars of this cage of a chest,
it rises again and calls me in to Itself.
An un-worded becoming it is,
breaching an ancient and gnarled
contract with deceit;
a quiet dissolving of a marriage
no longer liberating splendor,
but holding it hostage.
A prayer so quiet, so delicate,
it breaks open before sound
and it lives…
forever and ever
as a world 
without “Amen.”

There comes a time…

There comes a time when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your own heart. Learn the sound of it. Otherwise you’ll never understand what it’s saying. 
Sarah Dessen

My husband collects clocks. There are music box clocks, and revolving dancers, bobbing baby birds and clocks with wagging tails. There’s a pedestal clock that has a more elaborate chime with every fifteen minute increment, and one that lets a simple single golden ping emerge with every hour. Digital clocks and analog, clocks that talk… one lights up the time in short little sentences: “It is now eleven thirty-seven.” Another simply reads, “Now.” That’s probably the most accurate clock he has. None of the others keep good time. There’s a particularly old clock that cuckoos randomly and seems to comment on what’s happening… Often, during the news, some breaking update will be met with its, “Cuckoo, Cuckoo, Cuckoo.”

The rhythm of ticking clocks syncopates this house. Like a multidimensional metronome giving tempo to living. At mid-day, when there’s louder voices, dogs barking and banging screen doors, I don’t notice the clocks as much. But early in the morning before it all starts, or when everyone else has gone to bed, and it’s dark, and the doors are locked, the irregular patterns of the layered clock cadence takes over. And if I get very, very still, my heart seems to beat a cardiac response. The pulse of my life’s clock in my finger tips thrumming, filling the house of my consciousness with, “Now, now.” My heart is the living pendulum of being me, keeping me in divine synchronicity.

Affirmation:
I listen to my heart, I follow its beat. My heart is the living pendulum of being me, keeping me in divine synchronicity. My time is always now. Now… Now…

No Net
More blonde than yellow,
with a tiny, perfectly distinct
head on her caterpillar shoulders…
it had to be her
lack of perspective
that brought her to 
the middle of the road.
Unblinkingly inching over
the relentless gray gravel
and completely unaware of her peril.
Perhaps this being human 
compels us to interfere with Fate,
or maybe its our own that drives us.
She didn’t question the finger I extended to her,
or shrink back in fear,
she simply climbed aboard 
and clung to the print’s
grooves and swirls
with her sticky little feet.
As placidly, she surrendered 
to the broad raspberry leaf
upon which my finger placed her.
In truth she barely changed her pace.
Inching blithely across the safety it offered,
she came to the leaf’s edge. 
Still she didn’t stop
but stretched and extended 
more than half her body
into airy space…
no net…
reaching for whatever was next.
​