My Thanksgiving Prayer

I am grateful
In this present moment
To be with you, cherished friends and family
On this day of prosperity.

I am grateful
For all of our ancestors
Who bore burdens and strife
To bring us to this point in time.

I am grateful
For the great abundance and opportunity
Creating the freedom to actualize our dreams
And contribute to the welfare of humanity.

I am grateful
For simple pleasures,
Serendipity, the kind gesture,
And the touch of grace which whispers joy.

I am grateful
For the comforting call,
The supportive word, the reassuring hug and
Knowing you will always be there.

I am grateful
For saying hello, knowing how to say good bye
Embracing change with courage and
Being inspired by creativity and clarity.

I am grateful
For all those we love,
All those who love us,
And all those who are still undecided.

I am grateful
For all that I am, all that I have
All that I give, and all that I receive.

Choosing to be Free

This morning while doing spiritual readings, I ran across this from "The Daily Word":

'Today, I choose to be free.

 

Freedom is a state of being beyond external circumstances. I can experience freedom regardless of what I see outside myself. I choose to be positive in my thoughts and feelings, attitudes and perceptions. By choosing to focus on the good, I am free.

I release negative thoughts and emotions, and feel lighter in mind, body, and soul. I nurture my mind with ideas of health and well-being and experience the freedom of a balanced and productive life. My outlook is positive—I expect only good.

Freedom is a choice, a state of mind. By holding positive thoughts and feelings, I experience life to the fullest. Today I choose to be optimistic. Today I choose my freedom.'

How often have I been so mired in my own dramas and internalizing that I have lost track of my freedom of choice? That is the freedom to not engage, or forego, or to distract, to make friends with, and actively and positively let go, etc. How do I incarcerate myself with my own imprisoning thoughts? Time to dream, think big, focus on graces I receive.

Precision, Gentleness, and the Ability to Let Go

The lovely blog title was taken from Pema Chodron's book, "The Wisdom of No Escape". In the 4th chapter she expounds on ripening the qualities of precision, gentleness, and the ability to let go through meditation. What inspired me the most about this chapter is her explanation that Buddha taught there is kind of and "innocent misunderstanding that we all share, something that can be turned around, corrected, and see through, as if we were in a dark room and someone showed us where the light switch was. It isn't a sin that we are in the dark room. It's just an innocent situation, but how fortunate that someone shows us where the light switch is. It brightens up our lives considerably."

Isn't this a inspiration to ponder? My experience with Catholicism told me I began with original sin, something I spiritually inherited. It was a bummer to live with the fact I was destined to a life of sin for someone else's mistake. That is why I like the Buddhist version better. In her book, Pema Chodron offers alternatives to dealing with the sufferings of life through Buddhists teachings which speak to the heart.

"In the same way, if we see our so-called limitations with clarity, precision, gentleness, goodheartedness, and kindness, and, having seen them fully, then let go, open further, we begin to find that our world is more vast and more refreshing and fascinating than we had realized before. In other words, the key to feeling more whole and less shut off and shut down is to be able to see clearly who we are and what we're doing."

Pema Chodron is clear this is not a self improvement plan or trying to be a better person. She has stated that the desire to change is fundamentally a form of aggression toward oneself because our neurosis and wisdom are made out of the same material.

"The idea isn't to try to get rid of your anger (or whatever emotion is predominant), but to make friends with it, to see it clearly with precision and honesty, and also to see it with gentleness. That means not judging yourself as a bad person, but also not bolstering yourself up by saying, 'It's good I'm this way, it's right that I' this way. Other people are terrible, and I'm right to be so angry at them all the time.' The gentleness involves not repressing the anger but also not acting it out. You can let go of the usual pitiful little story line that accompanies anger and begin to see clearly how you keep the whole thing going. So whether it's anger or craving or jealousy or fear or depression-whatever it might be-the notion is not to try to get rid of it, but make friends with it. That means getting to know it completely, with some kind of softness, and learning how, once you've experienced it fully, to let it go."

What if my routine, deadening life could be infused with this sense of restoration? How would I be different? What energy would be rechanneled positively because it is not being zapped by my own critical, harsh, and protective ways? How would my pitiful story change by precision, gentleness, and letting go?

"This is probably one of the most amazing tools that you could be given, the ability to just let things go, not to be caught up in the grip of your own angry thoughts or passionate thoughts or worried thoughts or depressed thoughts."

Amen.

Homage to My Mother

Today is my deceased mother's birthday. For thirty-one years I have not have to buy her a card, worry about what present to get her, or attend another stressful family birthday event. Yet, not a year has passed since her demise that I do not remember her on her birthday.

My mother was a very pretty French, Irish, English Scorpio with the trademark dark hair and dark eyes. She also had the Scorpio sexual allure-she had six children. There is no doubt my mother chose a hard life for herself. At eighteen she eloped with my twenty-seven year old father who then was shipped overseas in World War II. For four years she did not see him. Because he had married her against his parents wishes, he ran away once he returned from World War II to Council Bluffs, Iowa, for a period of time where no one seems to know what he did there. My mother never spoke of this; I learned about this incident from another relative years later. It must of been crushing to wait all those years and then have your veteran husband disappear. The only consolation she had was living with her parents, her sister, Betty, and my cousin.

About a year later, my father returned along with the beginning of my family. My mother became pregnant with my sister, Kathy, and post WWII life resumed. Within a span of five years, my mother had four children. I was the baby of the family. Fortunately for her, her parents, sister, and my cousin, moved upstairs from us in our duplex to help out. It was truly a European-style family. Then, after ten years, my mother got pregnant with my sister followed by my brother three years later.   Though she loved my younger brother and sister, those years took the most toll on her. Just as she had a glimpse of a life without child rearing, she knew she would go into her older life saddled with teenagers. My mother told me years later, never to have children late in life (she was 39 and 42 years old when my youngest siblings were born.)

Growing up in a large mixed WASP/Polish amalgamation presented itself with constant strife. It was not just only the difference in cultures but the difference in religions. My father was a staunch Catholic and my mother and her family were less than tepid Presbyterians. Because of my father, we lived in a Polish neighborhood near his parents (who hated my mother), were raised Catholic, and we were identified with the Polish culture. Looking back on it, I can't imagine how much it must have affected her to never have anything for herself. Her life was solely about her children and living in a culture which was about my father. No one ever looked past her being a mother of six children living as a stranger in a strange land.

My mother was an intelligent and articulate woman with a high school education. She read constantly. My love of reading came from her. Had she been born in another era, I suspect she would have had gone on to college and had some sort of career. Instead, she spent her life living less than her potential. But that was the norm for women of that time. Like many women of that era, she was limited in her options to contribute more purposefully. This reinforced her underlying anxiety disorder for which Librium acted as a somewhat effective straight jacket. But it also drove her anger and depression deeper as it lulled her into a sad acceptance that her fate was sealed.

There are many things I am grateful my mother nurtured in me. She passed to me her phenomenal ability to articulate and do so under stressful conditions like legal testimony. Every week she took me to the library fostering a life long love of reading. But she also had great empathy and was always willing to help others. Because she was an especially good mother with small children, I have a fondness for babies (which is something because I am childless).  She had a great sense of humor and loved to laugh. Everyone liked my mother-she was a good daughter, a supportive sister, a perfunctory wife, an excellent friend, and a good woman.

For decades now I have lived without a mother. Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like to have her for a few more years. I would have liked her to see how successful my life has been. I would have liked her to have seen her grandchildren. I would have liked to have spent more time with her. Even after all these years I miss her.

I once had a psychic tell me a dark haired woman named Shirley was always around me. No kidding, this actually happened without me giving out any information on my mother. There is something comforting to me knowing she is still around me.

Happy Birthday, Ma!

Remember, Remember the Fifth of November-Guy Fawkes Day

"Remember, remember
The fifth of November
The gunpowder treason and plot.
I know of no reason
Why the gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot." -Traditional verse recited on Guy Fawkes Day

So, who is this Guy Fawkes and why is he celebrated on November 5th?

Guy Fawkes
George Cruikshank's illustration of Guy Fawkes, published in William Harrison Ainsworth's 1840 novel
Details
Parents	Edward Fawkes, Edith (née Blake or Jackson)
Born	13 April 1570 (presumed) York, England
Alias(es)	Guido Fawkes, John Johnson
Occupation	Soldier; Alférez
Plot
Role	Explosives
Enlisted	20 May 1604
Captured	5 November 1605
Conviction(s)	High treason
Penalty	Hanged, drawn and quartered
Died	31 January 1606 Westminster, London, England
Cause	Hanged

Guy Fawkes (13 April 1570 – 31 January 1606), also known as Guido Fawkes, the name he adopted while fighting for the Spanish in the Low Countries, was a member of a group of provincial English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605.
Fawkes was born and educated in York. His father died when Fawkes was eight years old, after which his mother married a recusant Catholic. Fawkes later converted to Catholicism and left for the continent, where he fought in the Eighty Years' War on the side of Catholic Spain against Protestant Dutch reformers. He travelled to Spain to seek support for a Catholic rebellion in England but was unsuccessful. He later met Thomas Wintour, with whom he returned to England.
Wintour introduced Fawkes to Robert Catesby, who planned to assassinate King James I and restore a Catholic monarch to the throne. The plotters secured the lease to an undercroft beneath the House of Lords, and Fawkes was placed in charge of the gunpowder they stockpiled there. Prompted by the receipt of an anonymous letter, the authorities searched Westminster Palace during the early hours of 5 November, and found Fawkes guarding the explosives. Over the next few days, he was questioned and tortured, and eventually he broke. Immediately before his execution on 31 January, Fawkes jumped from the scaffold where he was to be hanged and broke his neck, thus avoiding the agony of the mutilation that followed. Fawkes became synonymous with the Gunpowder Plot, the failure of which has been commemorated in Britain since 5 November 1605. His effigy is traditionally burned on a bonfire, commonly accompanied by a firework display.  -Wikipedia

Guy Fawkes gained a resurgence in popularity with the release of the film, "V for Vendetta":

"V for Vendetta is a 2006 American-German political thriller film directed by James McTeigue and written by the Wachowskis, based on the 1982 Vertigo graphic novel of the same name by Alan Moore and David Lloyd. Set in the United Kingdom in a near-future dystopian society, Hugo Weaving portrays V—an anarchist freedom fighter who stages a series of terrorist attacks and attempts to ignite a revolution against the brutal fascist regime that has subjugated the United Kingdom and exterminated its opponents in concentration camps. Natalie Portman plays Evey, a working class girl caught up in V's mission, and Stephen Rea portrays the detective leading a desperate quest to stop V." -Wikipedia

This is my kind of holiday. We are celebrating a rebellious freedom fighter anarchist leading a socialist movement to take back civil rights from an oppressive government by bombing the seat of authority. What a minute, wouldn't he also be considered a terrorist?