A Million Light Years of Being

•  [Art Diana Sudyka]

By J. L. Stanley​

[taken from Cosmic Dancer]

​  ​

"When they ask to see your gods

your book of prayers

show them lines

drawn delicately with veins

on the underside of a bird's wing

tell them you believe

in giant sycamores mottled

and stark against a winter sky

and in nights so frozen

stars crack open spilling

streams of molten ice to earth

and tell them how you drink

a holy wine of honeysuckle

on a warm spring day

and of the softness

of your mother who never taught you

death was life's reward

but who believed in the earth

and the sun

and a million, million light years

of being."

​~ J.L. Stanley

Gratitude as a Reset for Thought

There was an interesting editorial in the Christian Science Monitor which talked about gratitude in times of crisis. Gratitude was expressed for health care professionals working to contain and treat the current virus outbreak, among other things. The essay mentioned how gratitude helps put a focus on the good in a situation, dampening fear. It helps people form stronger bonds across borders and through their differences. It encourages generosity. I found it particularly interesting that they referred to expressing appreciation as a kind of reset for thoughts, saying that it allows calm reflective thinking, which is just what we need to bring a healing perspective during these times. These wise words can certainly be applied to many situations in our current atmosphere, don't you think? I'm going to practice this as a way of turning around fearful or defensive thinking when it occurs. If someone is expressing a thought which I find abrasive, I will find something to be grateful for about them. When a politician has upset me with his actions, I shall try to follow my own advice. Whatever the case, I love thinking about gratitude as a "reset"!!

"Gratitude is much more than a verbal expression of thanks. Action expresses more gratitude than speech." Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 3:25-26

The Thought System of Separation

creations of and photo from Dale Johnson

I listen to audiobooks while I do chores and cook. Lately, I’ve heard numerous thought-provoking books. Right now, I’m listening to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, and the concepts presented are fascinating. A young 19th-century girl laments her life, wishing she had more freedom and wasn’t being forced into a marriage. She makes a pact with the “old gods”, but she wishes for the wrong thing and ends up living forever, but no one can remember her once she’s out of their sight. The life of isolation she is thrown into is haunting, frightening, sad. Her plight brings to mind the many present-day people who are lonesome. I listen, trying to understand what brings on their feelings of wistful longing. Or is it even longing? I’m not sure, but I’d like to empathize. Another recent audiobook, What Alice Forgot, is about a woman who has a head injury and forgets the last ten years of her life. The lack of connection she feels with family and friends is sort of the flip side of Addie’s isolation. It takes my thoughts to the different aspects of loneliness and the perceptions associated with this feeling of lack. Perhaps the quest to understand our unity, to feel unseparated from our source, precludes this feeling I do not know. Walking with God may not mean the same thing to me as it might to others. This is yet another thing to ponder on these winter evenings! Stay warm and happy, everyone. Namaste…

“The ego thought system must hide our awareness of our oneness in God in order to make the image of having a separate life for ourselves alone appear real to us. In order to experience this false thought system, we must be willing to set up barriers against remembering God’s oneness through denying our natural awareness of Love’s eternal presence. To experience this thought system of separation, we dream up a world where separate bodies rule the universe. In this dream, we, as separate individuals, are the judge of what is real and what is denied. We build up images of a kingdom that we rule alone and God’s oneness is sacrificed.” A Course in Miracles, Chapter 26, Section I. (pages 542-544)

Is Happiness a Learned Behavior?

 

photo from movie, Brad's Status

After watching the movie, Brad's Status, I'm seeing people in a different way. In this movie, Brad -- played by Ben Stiller -- is dissatisfied with his life. He thinks all his friends are better off than him, in every way. When he sees that they're not really, he decides they're not even his friends, but only pretending. Everyone he meets, he imagines enriching his life, then quickly imagines them using him and throwing him away. He thinks his son is going to Harvard and gets very excited thinking about his success; then he imagines his son making fun of him on national tv and he resents the imagined success. This goes on and on with every situation, until finally someone he has just met calls him on his self-pity. I won't tell you how it ends in case you want to see this film. But I did have the realization that many people I know feel exactly the same way as Brad. What causes some people to be happy with what's right in front of them, and others to want everything to be different? I don't know the cause, but I do know the cure: Gratitude for every little thing you see and do. I think being happy might just be a learned behavior. We tend to think of it as some sort of divine dispensation, but nothing can give you what you do not want. This movie has given me much to ponder. Namaste, my friends ...

"Many theories relative to God and man neither make man harmonious nor God lovable. The beliefs we commonly entertain about happiness and life afford no scatheless and permanent evidence of either. Security for the claims of harmonious and eternal being is found only in divine Science." Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 323:5

The Storm - by Mary Oliver

 

Arthur Bruno's Dog, Winter

The Storm - by Mary Oliver​

Now through the white orchard my little dog
romps,

breaking the new snow
with wild feet.


Running here running there, excited,
 hardly able to stop, 

he leaps, he spins


until the white snow is written upon
in large, exuberant letters,


a long sentence, expressing
 the pleasures of the body in this world.


Oh, I could not have said it better

Have a Dream

 

art by Jesse Stone

I read the below-cited quote on a social media site called Cosmic Dancer. When seeing it was from The Alchemist, a flood of memories rushed at me. When I first read this book, my gallery was on the verge of closing down due to lack of business. This book caused me to open myself to the field of infinite possibilities, and we ended up staying open five more years, in a different and exciting location. The gist of the quote which changed my life is this: “Most people don’t realize they have a dream. Of those who know they have a dream, most fear to follow it. Of those who follow it, most stop one step short of realizing it.” Wow. I knew I had a dream and I was following it. After reading this book, I knew I couldn’t stop short! Authors such as Paulo Coelho have helped me to see the advantages of concentrating our intentions on what we DO want, rather than passionately worrying about the down side. And I am grateful…

“We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.” ~ Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

Feast on Your Life

 

Good Friend on Ozark Farm

photo credit: Donna Doss

Love After Love -- by Derek Walcott

The time will come

when, with elation

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott