perspective

Rain to Ice – Day 543

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Photo: L. Weikel

Rain to Ice

As I sit here trying to decide which of the myriad emotions I’ve felt today I want to express in this post, I hear a whoosh of what I think is the wind. But it’s not the wind. It’s rain.

But the rain isn’t steady. It sounds as if only some of the clouds blowing through are filled with moisture too heavy to contain. Other clouds just pass right by. I can feel a distinct shift in the air, though. Markedly cooler air wafts in through the screen of the open front door.

This is just the beginning of a wild weekend, weather-wise.

It’s May, right? May 8th, in fact, in this crazy year of 2020.

Perspective via Polar Vortex

We’ve had one of the mildest winters I can remember, so of course there’s a “freeze” warning in effect for tomorrow night into Saturday. And of course, while my area will probably ‘only’ get a coating of ice, northeastern Pennsylvania and points north, including much of New York state, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont are bracing for 6-8” of snow, and even as much as a foot of heavy, wet stuff in some areas.

Hopefully, people won’t lose their electricity to downed wires caused by the storm.

It seems we keep getting reminders on the importance of perspective. If we start paying attention to what’s going on around us, perhaps we’ll stop thinking, “Things can’t get any worse.” Because it’s precisely when we make that cavalier statement that we’re often given a good dose of “Oh yeah?”

What is True

There’s a lot going on out there that’s escaping our perception. We’re being bombarded. We need to keep our wits. We need to remember what’s important. We need to take deep stock of ourselves and who we trust.

Everything we believed we knew for sure is being challenged right now.

We need to stick together. We need to be there for each other. This is when our integrity shines through and calls us to perhaps take leaps into an unknown we never thought we would.

We must stop denying what we see with our very own eyes. This really is as bad as we feel, deep down inside. Does the rain need to turn to ice in May? Do we really need to experience even worse before we wake up and See?

Tigger – Photo: L. Weikel

(T-568)

Timely Question – Day 542

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 Sunset on Fire – 5 May 2020 – Photo: L. Weikel

Timely Question

I had to go out the other day to do a grocery run to a special store I haven’t been to in almost eight weeks. It was the first time I’ve been in my car for a while, so I was enjoying just driving along listening to the songs on my iPhone, when a timely question was posed from an unexpected source.

Some Background

When I used to drive the Grey Ghost (aka Good Girl), I would listen to my iPod all the time. Remember, Good Girl was so old (2005) that she hadn’t come with a standard connection to electronic devices. She had a cassette tape deck and a CD player. So a few years later, my guys bought me an upgraded speaker system and a connection to my iPod for my birthday or Mother’s Day, I can’t remember which. But I do know I made very good use of it.

It wasn’t until Karl died, though, that I started listening to my iPod with it set on ‘random.’ I have a collection of well over 3,000 songs I’ve accumulated over the past 15 years or so, most contributed by my three sons. After losing Karl, I was so numb I couldn’t make a choice of what to listen to if my life depended on it. So I set it on random.

And that’s when I discovered his easiest – and most effective – means of communicating with me.

Quick Search

I just did a quick search of all my blog posts and I apparently have never written about this before. I’m astonished. Honestly, I thought for sure that I’d shared this cherished aspect of my life with all of you already.

Well, realizing this at this late stage of the game makes me see that I need to write about this in more depth another time.

The point of tonight’s post, though, was to share with you a song Karl brought to my attention yesterday, when I was in the car. As usual, I was sort of half listening to what was playing and then drawn up suddenly when I realized what the lyrics were actually saying.

The Question

Where do we go from here?

It’s not just the question posed by the title of the song. It’s the lyrics as a whole and their eerie applicability to the precise situation we’re facing globally. Right now.

Turns out the song was published in 1970. Huh. Who’d have thought Chicago would be so prescient?

As soon as I realized what the lyrics were saying, I knew I wanted to share the song – and the timely question – with all of you. Because I feel this is precisely what we all need to contemplate and decide.

The fate of our country, and quite possibly the world, relies on us getting this right. And I can’t help but feel Karl sees all of this from a different perspective – and is making an effort to get our attention.

Raindrops on the Tohickon – Photo: L. Weikel

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Didn’t See That – Day 538

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Angel’s Wings – Photo: L. Weikel

Didn’t See That

Walking this early evening was a particularly spectacular treat. The setting sun toyed with the clouds that cascaded across the sky and created moment after moment that demanded our attention. I would try to swear off taking any further photos, only to relent to the temptation time after time. One particular effort, though, yielded a photo that simply didn’t resemble what we were observing. “I didn’t see that, did you?” I asked Karl when I showed him the photo on my iPhone’s screen.

We both looked up at the sky, the clouds arcing across the sky before us. Then we looked down at my iPhone. Nope. Not the same.

Angel’s Wings

There a chance that even transferring the image to a larger screen (such as a laptop or desktop) will wreck the effect of what we both saw within moments of each other – and that’s the angel’s wings.

To both of us, the photo seemed to clearly reflect wings high above us, holding, protecting, and shielding us (and all our neighbors – indeed, the entire world) from harm. But when we simply looked at the sky, all we saw was the initial beauty that had warranted taking the photo in the first place.

We kept looking back and forth between the actual sky and the photograph. It was as if an angelic or higher force is trying to keep us protected and centered, but chooses to remain anonymous. And it was only through the perspective afforded by the camera’s unique lenses that revealed the support hidden in plain sight.

And regardless of the objective ‘truth’ of unseen protection, it is a comforting thought sometimes to think that it might occur, especially when so many people are refusing to take responsibility for themselves (and all of us). When everything else has failed, there is a power in allowing our imagination to ease our stress even just a notch or two, simply by bolstering a sense that a higher power is protecting us from the most dangerous among us.

Even the most cynical among us cannot dispute the research that establishes that stress makes us more vulnerable to illness and other maladies. Surely feeling that there’s some unseen protection can bolster our immune systems even a little bit?

At the very least, it made us smile.

Sunset Spectacular

About a mile of our walk later, we crested a hill and encountered a sunset of epic beauty. Perhaps it’s a result of all the rain we’ve had lately, but wow. In spite of the reality of the astonishing number of deaths occurring in our country and across the world, it is indisputably easier – at least for a few short moments – to disengage the clutch that always has our minds in gear and allow ourselves to simply get lost in the unspeakable beauty of a moment.

Everything about this evening has been exquisite. The song of the frogs and peepers, the brilliance of the first quarter moon and Venus, the darting and dives of bats freeing themselves from the confines of their homes (perhaps our attics?) as they lunge after mosquitos and other winged morsels.

Yes. For just a moment or two, or maybe even an hour or two if we were lucky, it was possible to imagine that this pandemic was a very grotesque dream. Of course, indulging in such an imaginary experience is only possible if we are lucky enough not to be in the throes of grief; of feeling the oppressive loss of someone we love to this killer virus.

But if we can, if we can find those moments when we can immerse ourselves in the magic that may be accidentally revealed to us every now and again, then maybe we can also find the grace to carry on one more day of ‘physical distancing’ while embracing ‘spiritual union’ with All That Is. You may initially think, “I didn’t see that.” But when it’s revealed, you’ll know; and feel all the stronger for it.

Sunset 2 May 2020 – Photo: L. Weikel

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Odd Impulse – Day 509

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Reaching for the Sky – Photo: L. Weikel

Odd Impulse

I’ve noticed myself having an odd impulse lately and I’m not quite sure what to make of it. It’s probably nothing. But the urge is definitely there, palpable and a little bit strange.

It happened again just this morning.

I was doing the dishes, contemplating life and all its complicated intricacies. Thinking about how long the strictest aspects of this surreal situation will probably need to remain in place. Wondering what parts of our lives will never be the same again.

All of a sudden I caught myself thinking, “I need to call Mommy and see how she’s doing. I wonder what she thinks of all this.” In that moment, I could literally feel and imagine myself speaking to my mother on the phone, each of us marveling at the dramatic shifts in our reality.

An Impossibility

When I realized exactly what I was imagining, I sort of jolted back to this moment in time, my hands once again in the hot, soapy dishwater – not holding the receiver of a telephone. I recalled a similar fleeting sense of being oh-so-close to having a conversation with her having passed over me only a day or so earlier, as well.

The trouble with those fleeting thoughts lay in the fact that my mother passed away in 1991.

Perspective

I’m reminded that she was two years old when the Spanish Flu of 1918 hit our country. Surely she must have heard stories about that horrible event, even though she herself was too young to recall its effects.

And yet I don’t recall hearing even one story about that time in our country’s history.

I wonder: did my grandparents discuss the situation with my aunt and uncle, who were both much older than my mother? Did any of them wear masks when they went outside? Did they make a point to ‘stay at home?’

I wonder if that epidemic influenced my aunt, who was thirteen years old at the time of the 1918 flu, to ultimately major in microbiology and serve in Massachusetts’s public health system.

And how is this global disruption of our lives and the way we interact with each other influencing the strands of destiny of each and every one of us? How weird is it to think that the babies being born right now will never know life without this pandemic as the beginning of a new normal that we have yet to imagine?

Sometimes we just want to talk to our mothers, I guess. And now is one of those times for me.

Photo: L. Weikel

(T-602)

Initiation – Day 491

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Tree Gnome/Wisdomkeeper – Photo: L. Weikel

Initiation

We are entering a time in our evolution, as humans, in which we are facing some fundamental, existential choices. And this ‘time’ that we’re entering is not some epoch or age, some grander than our mortal lives massive measurement of time. No. We are in the initiation. The existential questions are being asked now. Right now. Right in the midst of our tiny, very tangible and measurable lifetimes.

I’ve mentioned before as this pandemic started looming on the horizon (before it was even characterized as a pandemic) that I sensed some major shifts in our reality coming toward us. Shifts that make us realize that the course we’ve been following not only is unsustainable but has hit a wall. Shifts that tell us, “Nothing is going to be the same.”

Self-Inflicted 9/11

In some ways, we might look upon what’s happening as a self-inflicted 9/11. When the United States was attacked by those three hijackings that gorgeous, azure-skied September morning, and we watched the twin towers crumble before our eyes, we knew instinctively that nothing would ever be the same.

And yet…in many ways, we humans resumed our blind and tone-deaf ways. While the world stood with all of us in the U.S. in the days and weeks following 9/11, eventually we – our government, our leaders – turned those events into the perfect justification to not only continue on our selfish, unsustainable path of war and greed and abuse of power, but to double down on it.

Greed Unchecked

Indeed, our selfishness and greed roared back to life, seatbelts or restraints on behavior that could easily get out of hand were removed. Everyone in the U.S. celebrated the amazing recovery we were enjoying, not a little bit funded by the seemingly never-ended wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, neither of which had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks, which supposedly justified them in the first place.

And then the 2008 financial debacle happened.

That, too, was going to change everything.

It didn’t.

Not only didn’t our over-consumptive, unsustainable, greedy ways continue. No, we flouted the existence of climate change. We pursued fracking here in the United States, a process of injecting unbelievably toxic materials into Mother Earth all in the pursuit, not only of unsustainable energy to burn but also money to burn. Climate effects be damned.

Out of Balance

All of these opportunities to make choices on how we are going to proceed in our evolution (or not), have resulted in us making choices that have caused us to grow more and more out of balance with everything else on this planet, including the planet herself.

The virus we’re facing right now is ravaging our species – all over the world, without care of nationality, skin color, religious affiliation, sexual orientation – because we have no natural immunity to it. And because we’ve lied to ourselves and willingly swallowed the lies being told to us. In order to deal with all of this, without losing massive numbers of our own, we must work together.

So far, our reaction, the reaction of the United States, has been barreling along on the trajectory we seem to have been following for many years, but most especially since entering this century.

We can still turn this around. But we need to do it now. We need to take to heart this dramatic, unprecedented challenge to what we think of as our lives and our societies and make some drastically different choices.

A Wonderful Perspective

I recommend this lovely thought-provoking piece as a completely different way of looking at what we’re experiencing right now. I, for one, would love to continue reflecting upon the questions posed here as the days, weeks, and months of this new life of ours unfolds.

Let’s reflect together.

Hopefully where we’re headed – Photo: L. Weikel

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Chupacabra – Day 468

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Chupacabra – Photo: L. Weikel

Dingo Or Chupacabra

The lonely figure loping across the field strikes terror in the hearts of those who catch sight of it. Seeing it directly or out of the corner of the eye, it causes gooseflesh to rise without warning.

Mothers clutch their babies to their breasts, terrified that the beast, be it chupacabra or dingo, might randomly turn its ravenous, amoral gaze in their direction, stealing their child and dooming them to a life of despair and lamentation.

Their blood runs cold. They’re nearly paralyzed with fear. They sense stories of this encounter will be handed down for generations – if they, and their loved ones survive, that is.

Check It Out

While this reaction is understandable, it’s essential to step up, check things out personally, and make sure what’s being seen is real. A lot of times, our minds leap to conclusions, causing us to interpret what we see as something far scarier than it really is. Indeed, our imaginations can run wild if we let them, especially if we’re prey to the stories we’ve heard from others.

But investigation can sometimes feel daunting and scary. If we take a chance and get too close, perhaps it’ll turn on us. Maybe it’ll even savage us!

Yes, it takes courage to stand up to the fear that might overtake us and cause us to either freeze in terror or run the other way.

Not This Time

Not in this case, though. It wouldn’t take a lot of courage to sniff this baby out.

This time it was remarkably easy to stop for a moment, take a breath, and engage in one’s ‘due diligence.’ All you had to do was take a few steps back, shift your perspective, and follow the leash.

Not-quite-so-scary Sheila – Photo: L. Weikel

(T-643)

Change In Perspective – Day 466

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Lampshade  (usual view) – Photo: L. Weikel

Change In Perspective

So much of what we think and how we conduct our lives is predicated on the particular perspective we hold. It stands to reason, then, that a change in perspective can alter the trajectory of our life’s path. At the very least, it can have a significant impact upon the choices we make in our day-to-day lives – and those can, as we all know, potentially change everything.

Whether it’s how we look upon who we are in general, or the attitude we hold on an issue we’re facing; whether it’s how we view the relationships we have or the perceived consequences – what we believe we stand to lose – if we decide to follow a certain course of action.

Perspective Is Everything

One of the primary requests I make of Spirit when I’m opening Sacred Space before working on a client is to have our point of view raised up enough to allow us to look at the client’s life, experiences, and circumstances from a different ‘place’ than they may have ever looked at their life before.

When we are used to looking at our life or looking at a particular situation in our life, such as what we do for a living or our marriage, we usually look at it from the same point of view. From the way we ‘always’ think about these things.

Oftentimes we don’t even realize there is a different perspective. Many of us are taught to look at our life based upon the same benchmarks our parents used when they looked at their lives. We’ve been taught that life unfolds a particular way and not to expect ours to evolve any differently. Many of us look at our lives from the same starting point, with the same fundamental assumptions – and we wonder why nothing ever changes.

A Startling Metaphor

The other day I was taken aback by an accidental discovery I made.  I can’t quite remember why I was fooling around with my iPhone, but I was. And given that the discovery I made was photo-related, chances are great that I was taking a photo of one or more of my beasts. Indeed, as can be seen from the photo above, Cletus did managed to get in the shot that I would contend is my ‘usual’ perspective of my lamp.

I wish I could remember what I was doing, but I know the first photo was accidental.

It may have been an accident, but once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it. And quite frankly, I don’t think I’ll ever look at my lamp again the same way. Its beauty has taken on a whole new dimension for me. This lamp has now become symbolic of just how different even the simplest things in our lives can appear when we shift our perspective.

So What?

I don’t know. Perhaps I’m idealistic. Yeah, maybe I am. But I’ve also had an incredible number of experiences being with and watching people as they made the choice to see something they’ve looked at or thought about a million times before only from a completely different perspective.

And when they’ve allowed themselves to do this, it has changed the game.

The Lamp

Karl and I picked this lamp out for our living room probably 20 years ago. The colors of the antique glass and the pattern of the design appealed to us both.

But I have to tell you. When I accidentally snapped a shot of the lamp from underneath, looking upwards, I was taken aback. My heart expanded. All of a sudden, I knew why we’d chosen this lamp. Somehow, this pattern was something I was meant to see at this time. It’s as if it flipped a switch in my head.

I can’t say at the moment what this shift in perspective means. Perhaps it was simply a catalyst for this post. Who knows?

And perhaps someone reading this will realize that if they keep looking at things the same way they have for the past year, ten years, or forty years, nothing will change and they’ll never give themselves the opportunity to witness the exquisite beauty that may be hiding right there in plain sight. They just need to look at things from a completely different perspective.

A totally different perspective – Photo: L. Weikel

 

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For You, For Us – Day 446

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Photo: L. Weikel

For You, For Us

It’s been a week.

Actually, I’m pretty sure we can all agree the ordeal’s been going on for far longer than a week (and will undoubtedly spin out into the foreseeable future). But this week, in particular, has been especially brutal. And this evening’s climax, albeit both predictable and foreseeable, was nevertheless searingly disappointing. And deeply worrisome.

A Respite With and For My Friends

While I was noodling around FB a little, contemplating what I might write this evening, I came across a ‘share’ from a friend of mine that shifted my perspective. It immediately made me think of you – the people with whom I share myself, my thoughts, my joys, my worries, my peeves, and my devotion.

Right away, I knew I wanted to share his share that shifted my spirits, with you. Why? Because of this truth: a joy shared is magnified exponentially, just as a sorrow shared is halved.

What I find especially fascinating, though, is that I call this man who touched my heart with his FB share my friend. The truth is, we barely know each other. I live in Pennsylvania, he lives in Salt Lake City. We met eight years ago and spent maybe ten days total in each other’s company in Iquitos, Peru. We’ve not seen each other nor spoken since the end of February, 2012.

We rarely, if ever, communicate directly, even though we’re FB ‘friends.’ But FB does give us the ability to stay in touch tangentially. And one of the greatest blessings, for me, are the thoughtful and often fascinatingly beautiful or poignant posts he shares. They’re often insightful in some way, provocative of a different perspective, or simply loving or peaceful.

This friend I made eight years ago when I was in the throes of grieving for my son makes a difference in my life. His posts often touch my heart or make me think or perceive in a different way. And yet, as I said, we (he and the eight or so other people in our group) only spent a total of a little more than ten days together- albeit ten intense days.

The Briefest Encounters

My point is that the briefest encounters can make a huge difference in our lives. Kindnesses, smiles, words of encouragement, gestures of hope…they make a difference.

We make a difference.

Here again is the song my friend Brock shared on FB this evening that shifted my perspective. I needed to hear it. I bet you do, too. I hope you feel what I did when I listened because we need to carry on and not lose our heart.

It’s all right – we have each other.

Photo: L. Weikel

(T-665)

Bummer – Day 320

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September Sunset – Photo: L. Weikel

Bummer

I wasn’t going to write about this tonight, but I have to tell you: it’s not easy coming up with something to write about every night. And that holds especially true when something kind of crappy happened during my day and it’s sort of the only thing that’s occupying my mind.

Well, there are a couple of understatements: ‘kind of crappy’ and ‘sort of the only thing that’s occupying my mind.’

I realize, believe me, that facing the fact that my car has two tires in the junk yard is a miniscule concern compared to so much of what so many other people are dealing with. I know that. But that doesn’t mean this isn’t big in my world at the moment.

Regardless, There’s No Comparison

Yeah, I write the words contained in that paragraph, above, but truthfully they ring hollow. Yeah, it stinks that my car is essentially irreparable and may conk out at any moment – and in such a manner as to render me stranded and the vehicle worthless.

But aren’t I lucky that I have the knowledge, in my back pocket, that I have AAA? Yes. I am.

And aren’t I lucky that I have the knowledge, deep within myself, that I will manifest a new car? Yes, I am.

So I call bullshit on myself.

There are simply so many things going on in the lives of people all around me, people I love and care about, people who are blood family and people who are Spirit family, people I don’t know well and those I don’t know at all, that are far worse than my car wearing out. Indeed, the very fact that I was able to take care of my car for 15 years, eke out 311,241 miles (and counting, if only by the hour!) out of her, and not have a car payment for ten years is amazing.

So, no.

Everything has a season – Photo: L. Weikel

Listening and Perspective

Because listening is so sacred to me, and because it is probably the greatest aspect of myself I can give to those around me, I can safely say that a day doesn’t go by that I don’t extend it to someone – at least one person – every day.

And lately, especially, I’ve noticed that there is a lot of upheaval in the world. People’s lives are being upended in astonishing ways: loss of loved ones (human and otherwise), profound betrayals and ugly realizations, prolonged struggles with depression and pernicious recurrences of hopelessness and despair. Fear of losing a job or the business that’s been cultivated for decades. Loneliness – even when surrounded by people or in long-term relationships that died long ago.

And of course on the world stage, there are people realizing the jig may be up – on so many levels and in so many life-altering ways.

All I Have

Meanwhile, here I am, enjoying so much. My family. My friends. My amazing four legged loves. The birds that frequent my feeders or soar above me when I ask for a message, or reveal themselves as I sit by the creek. My beloved Tohickon and the Lenape Sipu (Delaware River). My work and the amazing people I get to meet through what I do. My health.

Yes, I’m mostly speaking in generalities because to be specific feels like bragging, and that’s quite honestly the last thing I’m intending in this post.

How could I look at tonight’s sky and remain upset over my car? How could I, when I was able to walk with my best friend as the colors of the sunset deepened into an indigo that was hard to describe?

I couldn’t.

(T-791)

Nope – Day 265

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From afar – Photo: L. Weikel

Nope. Not Yet.

No, I didn’t suss out the message being brought to me by Swan and Skunk. Not today, anyway. Not yet.

Rather than pondering that mystery, I became distracted by an unexpected sighting as I was sitting, yet again, by the creek. In fact, I was sitting in exactly the same spot I’d been sitting days ago when the Golden Vinyl Swan became marooned before me.

I don’t even know how I initially spotted it, to be honest. It’s quite unobtrusive, when viewed from afar. In fact, the leaves of the weeds it was climbing hid it from view from many angles. I just happened to see it because of the unique perspective I had, sitting where I was.

Greater My Willingness, Better the Shots

I think what was coolest about this distraction was how my willingness to get closer and closer to my subject kept yielding better and better photos.

The photo I placed at the top of this post was, in my estimation, decent enough. More than decent, in fact! I was pleased by how sharp the shot was and how lovely my caterpillar friend appeared.

Perspective – Photo: L. Weikel

Then I realized all at once that this caterpillar was very unlikely to move quickly. I might actually not only get closer but also zoom in to discover even more loveliness.

And so it came to pass.

I absolutely love my iPhone and the quality of photos I’m able to take with it.

From my vantage point, all I saw was the form of a caterpillar walking up the stalk of a rather large wildflower. Had I not undertaken an impromptu ‘study’ of this leaf muncher, I never would have had the opportunity to revel in its beauty – or share it with all of you.

The whole experience of this discovery made my afternoon. Even if it did distract me from contemplating the Swan/Skunk mystery. Perhaps the understanding of that will reveal itself tomorrow.

(T-846)