Pretty Things

I left my childhood with a bag of goodies that would help me get along in this world.  As I pick through my bag, looking for the right thing that will help me in this situation I find some sparkles, some fluffy, cuddly things and some half eaten bag of chips.  I slowly realize that the bag i once felt so useful is more like a cozy blanket that does nothing besides providing a false comfort.

I look around and everyone seems to have a bags full of shiny tools that help them pave a solid pathway to happiness and wholeness.  Not only do they have tools but they know how to use them.

I run down to the water to reflect.  I run like a child, falling awkwardly, bumping my shins on random objects until I arrive all scuffed and dirty.  My hair is knotted, my teeth crooked and I can’t seem to see clearly through my watery eyes and the matte of hair hanging there.

I start to look along the shore, ignoring the shiny reflection of the water for pretty shells and rocks that I collect and throw in my useless bag.  I seem trapped in a repetitive cycle of distraction refusing to reflect or to find the real me.

I stop at the waters edge.  I see something flicker in my reflection.  I feel something swoon in my head.  I hid something in there a long time ago.  What was it?  I feel movement that makes me dizzy.  All of the sudden i feel a big wet shoe in my mouth.  It is pushing to get out.  I open my mouth and a girl covered in a proverbial goo comes falling out.  She looks like I did so long ago.  I ask her if she’s okay but she does not speak.  She scurries away to find a dark crevice.

I leave her there as I am too confused to understand and look to the sand for more pretty things.

Crashing in the Surf

The last time I went to Mexico I spent awhile mastering the boogie board as I have found that I am terrified of huge waves (and by huge I mean anything larger than a ripple).  So there I was getting tossed around, upside down, sideways and headfirst into the sand by three foot waves crashing into the shore.  I was getting frustrated and scared.  Erik told me to just stand up, for God’s sake it’s only two feet deep!

And so I did.  I stood up.

Here I am getting pummeled by waves of emotion that send me spinning, upside-down, sideways and yet here I am letting myself eat sand instead of standing up.  I am gladly throwing myself into the ride of the waves, being taken into the loveliness of the smooth, refreshing emotions letting them caress me, carry me…. and wondering why i’m drowning with a mouth full of sand.

But where are your legs within this analogy?  I’ve seemed to have lost them along the way… or forgotten completely how to use them.

Maybe I am really a mermaid!  and if that’s true, then all i have to master is breathing under the water with sand in my mouth….

Beauty

is a perspective.

You watch it as it grows within.  The appreciation of the world around.  You’re held in captivation as you look toward it in awe.

I have watched beauty grow out of homeliness.  A boy who seemed lost and failed showed himself to me and blossomed into a beautiful soul and though i don’t know him today, i know that he is still beautiful.

I have watched it disappear in death.   My grandmother, the saint of my world, died and i took all the pictures of her i could find to make a shrine of the most beautiful person in the world and found only pictures of an old woman looking back at me… all the beauty was lost when the energy of my grandmother was gone.

Beauty is a perspective that is shown when your heart opens.

Love, then, is an expansion of the beauty… as you identify, accept and hold that beauty love encompasses the heart.