Boomerangs from the Universe

Posted on November 4, 2015 by Heloise Jones

To awaken alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest experiences
in the whole world.
~ Freya Stark
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lieke03
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What a strange week. I shoulda guessed that super moon rising through the clouds as I drove from Ojo Caliente hot springs held something more than mesmerizing beauty. I emerged from the valley seemingly overgrown with cottonwoods blazing yellow-gold just as dark descended. Cruised through the short stretch on the outskirts of Espanola, crossed the Rio Grande, was headed home. Got caught on a sideways glance. The moon so huge, brilliant, I pulled to the side of the highway, barely noticed cars whizzing by. That night I didn’t sink into bed like I usually do after a Ojo soak. Instead I stayed up, wrote a blog, retired at 3am. The next morning I rose early, feeling strangely rested for so little sleep. By Wed., cold and stingy rain moved in, energies turned weird. A trip to the market, three people nearly collided with me as I stood choosing food, as if I was invisible. I settled in. Planned work and research went undone. 6+ hrs. online with Microsoft to re-install Skype so I could say Happy Birthday to my grandson produced nothing but a corrupted hard drive and no Skype. I wanted to rewind, recover my days. Then, like a boomarang, the Universe swung around. I was buoyed by a rendezvous Friday with new friends met my first day here. Two other people at a workshop on traditional publishing I felt compelled to go to Saturday (though I’ve studied the industry for eight years, delivered a presentation on the subject at a Florida Writers Assoc. meeting) became friends over a long breakfast Monday. Sunday I celebrated a birthday and marriage with a best friend and her family. Monday, dinner with the first person I met when I moved to Santa Fe in ’94. Tuesday, lunch with another new friend.

Elizabeth Gilbert posted the quote at the top of page on Facebook, added “just for the pleasure dreaming, let’s all name today the one place in the world where we would someday love to wake up alone.” Key words – dreaming, some day, alone. As of 1pm EST, it had 3,355 Likes, 502 Shares, 430 Comments. I scrolled 100 comments, all by woman. Eighty focused solely on quiet moments. Listening to a breeze, watching water, reading, contemplation, strolls on the grounds, peace inside. Twenty added exploration and adventure. I understand it all. The desire for space with uninterrupted thoughts, with no distractions, obligations, or others pulling. Space to dream without guilt. The need for comforts. The added delight of discovery, awe and inspiration in the new. The whole ball in one dream of coming back to yourself, living your own definition of what that means.

Today I leave this house I’ve occupied nearly five weeks. I’ll miss the multitude of potted plants, the large windows, watching strips of salmony-pink and otherworldly blue flatten onto the far mountains under a lightening dawn sky. Miss the birds, animal visitors. Especially miss the utter silence outside my own thoughts and movement, the occasional rain or wind. And I’m glad to leave the quirks of the place, the collections of colorful toys, sculpture, textiles, aged South American pottery that cover surfaces, fill shelves and cupboards. Happy to be moving to the northside where I spend my time out, where I can walk to the plaza. I want to believe the traffic sounds buffeting the silence there are simply gentle acclimation to re-entry Florida in two weeks, where there’s not a moment’s respite from noise at home.

Last night I learned my husband lost his job. A big loss in a year with a fraction of usual income. That he’s dealing with something physical, and it won’t go away, that it makes things hard. It all really sucks. But I handled things differently this time. Decided not to be scared, or worry. And I couldn’t do that had I not experienced these weeks living the dream of time and space the women on EG’s post hold. Woven with this strange week concluding in a tribe for me. Which helped me ask for support in thought on Facebook, take heart from the tribe there. Opening my mind to what I can offer to another tribe to generate income. Turning this scary situation into a better conversation about life.
Tell me, how has life woven you to this place?

Another small journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life

bear & tea *

A favorite: Silence and solitude, with tea.
A secret: Vulnerability still feels wiggly.

Illustrations by Lieke van der Vorst

Buddha-Made Teapots

Posted on October 27, 2015 by Heloise Jones

Imagine your tea cup is three thousand years old,
it was made in Egypt by a High Priestess
during a magical ceremony
to bless and infuse every cup of tea with celestial healing.

Imagine you had to scale
fifty foot cliffs for your honey
and carry it down on your back.

Imagine you dug the earth
and prayed and weeded
and danced and harvested
and chaffed and ground and kneaded
and baked the wheat for your bread.

Imagine you fed your beautiful
brown eyed cow nice grass
and you milked her and you churned
the cream and sand the Come Butter Come Song
and you paddled the butter into its mold
and this is the butter for your toast.

Imagine you walked to Tibet from here
and you gathered the tea in your skirt on a steep
windy hillside, and then you
dried the tea in the sun for days
watching over it, you slept beside it
at night under a full moon.

Imagine the Buddha made your teapot.
He gathered the clay by the banks of the Ganges
and fashioned a teapot just for you
and built a fire of sandalwood to fire it in, and he walked
to Nepal to get the turquoise he ground for the glaze for your
teapot and on it he painted a Lotus flower.

Imagine now, there are angels singing to you because
You are so loved, now, while you are having tea with cream,
and toast, with butter and honey.
Enjoy.
~ Rachel Ballantine (Tea and Toast)
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Chama River Valley – October 23, 2015
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I have a present for you, she said, and pulled out a book she created. We sat outside eating giant cinnamon buns under the shelter at Tesuque Market, a pinon fire in an oven behind us barely cutting the almost too chill air. Noon, a time I’m not usually there. The small parking lot full, muddy with big puddles from the cold rain we’d had off and on for three days. I’ll read you a poem, she said.

I met Rachel on Facebook. She constantly has me chuckling with her stories, her sense of humor, wit, observations. We planned to meet last year but she couldn’t make it. This past winter she noted my interest incorporating bodywork in writing workshops, sent me a book for study. It arrived with a book of her poetry. This summer I got a 505 area code call, knew it was New Mexico, no one I knew. I want your opinion, she said. We talked for an hour. Last Friday I picked her up at the Santa Fe Train Depot, offered a day in town or a drive in the country. She opted for the drive. It turned out to be a gift to both of us. She needed escape from noise and place. I needed something perfect. We rode under splendid skies through the spectacular pattern and color of New Mexico countryside, the horizon clear, haze washed away. Drank in jewels of light sparkling on Abiquiu Lake, and blazing yellow-gold cottonwoods in sunshine, their bark like brown-black charcoal drawings amongst the color. We both felt fed, satisfied when I dropped her off. The next day I stepped out on the porch to the delicate fragrance of the live piñon trees spread out before me. Rare in the desert where the air’s so dry smells have little to cling to. Felt like a blessing.

Rachel shared this about the day: The Train Trip and The Fourth Dimensional Puzzle, or, A Harmonic Convergence. . .“it was my intent to take a train to see a friend and so all of the cosmos lined up for it to happen, from the past, from everywhere. I wore my grandmother’s Zuni earrings that my grandfather bought at Zuni from a ten year old boy, they were his first pair he ever made. that was in 1930. I wore my new jeans , made in Bangeldesh. I bought gasoline, where did that come from. the nice lady from Mexico at Lotaburger made my burrito, where did the beans, the flour come from. where did the coffee come from. I was grateful. I drove to the train station listening to Alice Cooper on my cassette player ‘I like the way you crawl across the cathouse floor’. At the station I think about the train tracks in the sun, who made them, who set them. who built the train? who wove the seat covers? watching the landscape I love the adobe houses and heard a woman behind me from New York City say ‘look those houses are so drab, so homely,’ I thought we take ourselves with us wherever we go. I met a nice lady who said she will buy my book. anyway my point is that when you have an intent all things converge like a giant web or fourth dimensional puzzle to make it happen. we are all in the midst of this every second. we are all held up by a million actions and people and unknowns every moment in utter connection. think about it!”

Yes! Exactly. And how many times have we done something never knowing what it means to either ourselves or another person? I questioned myself offering a ride in the country as I said the words. But it seemed right, and in fact, was exactly right. I can only think more was involved than random thoughts. It’s happened to you, too, right?

Another small journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life.
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Rachel

I love Rachel’s book, Recipoetry of a Kitchen Mystic, A Cookbook Scrapbook.
It’s a beauty of poetry, recipes, handpainted and collage pages. Get it here.
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A favorite: Tea and toast for breakfast. Really.
A secret: I’d noticed her earrings, studied them. The turquoise, silver squash blossom.

Better Angels of Our Natures

Posted on October 13, 2015 by Heloise Jones

The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be,
by the better angels of our nature.
~ Abraham Lincoln

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I love ravens.
Crow with orange ‘Strange Fruit’ by Eric Hynynen
We have a different meaning for strange fruit in this country, don’t we.
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Saturday a friend said all her spiritual teachers say everything’s perfect as it is. What about Gandhi and Martin Luther King, I said, they didn’t see a perfect world. Do you see yourself as Gandhi, she asked. I should’ve said I don’t know, who knows.

It’s all perfect, we’re all perfect. How many contexts have I heard this. This is what I think – the only perfection in the violence, hate, fear, cruelty, abuse, inhumanity to all things human and otherwise, is it pushes us into being our better selves. Into remembering we are essentially one and the same when we come out of the womb. All wanting connection, sustenance, comfort. Love. And it shows us the extreme of the choices, forces us to grow into our choices.

As a college student in my late 30’s, I learned the word patriarchy for the first time. How it shapes societies. I remembered my frustration five years earlier working in a fine-dining restaurant where women were not allowed to wait tables at night, earn the big money. It was a domaine reserved for men. In school I listened to young women students accept date rape as part of their culture. Found no official university statement against rape. I was outraged. I spoke out, centered all my independent studies on a goal to provide a space and forum for women, a Women’s Center. They said it wouldn’t happen. I didn’t have to put my life on the line, but something huge did indeed happen for thousands of woman students that I can almost call Gandhi-like. After the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, I remembered I once did the impossible, wanted to do it again, change policy. What I learned is sometimes we have other work to do before we can save what we love most.

I’ve been married 29+ years. During this time I’ve managed every aspect of our lives together – finances, household, investments, travel, home creating-breaking down-moving-creating x6, all things physical-world. Four single spaced pages of roles. The work I’ve done outside always secondary to my husband’s job which brought in the bacon. It allowed me freedom to explore, delve into work I may not choose if money was the primary factor. Allowed me to develop my craft as a writer, be an author, imagine a life writing novels, traveling, doing authorly things like readings, conferences, teaching. Then the job market shifted, our income dwindled. And I got pushed out from my vision into preparing for a different, more public life as an author-entrepreneur. Creating things I never intended to create. Holding a vision for bettering others’ lives in a way I hadn’t imagined. In the process strengthening and developing myself for the hard stuff standing at my edge. Seeing myself as a person of influence. Recognizing I always have been.

We are all persons of influence. Every one of us. We start close to home, and if we think about it, trust the ripples. It takes strong feelings and impulses to see ourselves with power in a wider arena, prick us into action. Like I felt when I held that vision for the Women’s Center. But we hear about everyday people doing great things in the world all the time. I personally know people who are. It’s in all of us. I let myself see me as small. I can’t anymore. Because I feel strongly we can see differently, be touched by the better angels of our natures. And I wanna help. It’s what I can do. I’m good at it. + Anything big and snarly that’s changed, whether close to home or in the world, has come from vision and dogged persistence. Dogged, don’t let go, keep on going and going and going persistence. I’ve got that, too.

Tell me. . .how can you see something or someone differently, even for a moment? shift to the better angel of your nature?

You can start here. . .
Upon waking, notice the negative space around you.
See how many places you see the sky, besides through the windows.
Look at the shadows.

Now tell me. . .What do you see differently?

Another small journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life.

A favorite: ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ by Margaret Atwood.
A secret: I try hard every day to be kind.

Angels on the Highway

Posted on October 6, 2015 by Heloise Jones

When you’re on the highway of intuition,
you’re going to be picking up angels who are hitch-hiking there.
~ Matthew Fox

SF cloud w:eye First dawn here. Sun at my back. Moon in a crystal blue sky.
Eye in the cloud.
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When I was a tiny girl we lived in a 100-yr. old house in northern New Jersey. A tall two- story four square covered in blond, most likely asbestos shingles. It had a giant living room the full depth of the house. An open hall without railings on the second floor encircling a wide stairwell. I remember hearing how broken down the house was when my parents bought it. The warnings it could never be leveled on the side with the collapsed foundation. How my father used levers, jacked the house a little at a time, let the old boards settle. Find their true before he wracked them again. My mother often said you’d never guess how fine it was on the inside by the looks of the outside. I remember listening to songs on a record player at the back of the living room, loving my first Alice in Wonderland, the Disney version. Peeking over the sofa at kids in the street on the first ever trick-or-treat. And snakes – on the front path, traveling from the woods to under the side deck, once under the dining room table.

My intuition showed up there first, too. I walked the house at night, never fell off the edge into the stairwell despite no lights from outside or inside. They called me ‘cat eyes’ for seeing in the dark. My father said he’d look up, see me in the window watching him leave for work at dawn. Never a peep before that moment, as if I felt him, he said.

We moved when I was five. Intuition showed up as I got older, too. But I felt no more than a brief notice or unusual recognition of something-someone-someplace. Until recently, when I claimed it.

This is my twentieth trip back to Santa Fe since moving away. The only year I didn’t return I grabbed it as a tonic for my depression, made reservations for January. A time usually brutally frigid in the high desert. But that January the weather softened, warmed as if it was fall, after all. Only once has Santa Fe pushed me away. When I schemed to return for more than an extended visit. And I got the message. This is my place to remember who I am when life scrambles me up. A place where I open, feel expansive, leave different than when I arrived. Like the cave to the monk.

A few years ago I noticed themes in my sojourn, each determined by where I was in my life. A full social calendar the year I craved friendships after a difficult move and a new lifestyle. Nurturing and healthcare the year my heart and mind needed clearing. This year it’s about the work I’m creating. And I’m definitely on the intuition highway. Angels at my elbows.

I could tell a half dozen stories of seemingly magical ways people and things manifest from the moment I step out and about here. I think the best, tho, is one day when I walked with purpose toward a destination and glanced across the street, noticed a store. I stopped to look, not knowing why. Scrunched my eyes to see the clothes in the windows. If that was it. Twice I continued forward, and stopped. Turned and stared at the store. Before I crossed over. I don’t know how the gal who worked there and I dove so quickly into personal conversation. Why our connection was so perfect I felt sparkly. All before I learned she lived in San Miguel de Allende, a city I considered moving to. Had created a writers conference there, led it for years. That she had a similar vision for Santa Fe, was building a business of online courses, ones I could teach. We talked for twenty minutes, not another customer in the store. After we exchanged cards, they poured in.

I think synchronicity and coincidence are simply the Universe showing up to meet us. Always with something wanted or needed, often with answers to questions. And tho I stumble, I finally know not to dismiss random thoughts that make no sense. Because the fruit of the follow-thru usually does. I call it Presence. And it’s fun. Like magic.

Tell me. . .what synchronicities and random coincidence have you had?

Another small journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life.
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A favorite: Yellow-gold cottonwoods against that special saturated blue of a Northern New Mexico sky.
A secret: I think it’s time I move back. No scheming. It’s just time for a magical, expansive life.

Look Over the Wall

Posted on September 29, 2015 by Heloise Jones

“Faith grows when it is lived and shaped by love.”
~ Pope Francis, (USA 2015)

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The Beginning is near.

Over the Wall

My ladder is off to the side, out of the frame.
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I stood on our street corner. Felt happy and special that the overcast sky opened so I could see the Super Blood Moon eclipse to full shadow before the clouds closed back in. A neighbor stood with me. She commented she felt small after seeing it. I’m the opposite. Whenever I see phenomena like this, or see a large ‘star’ at the horizon I know is really Jupiter, a pink small twinkling ‘star’ that’s Mars, a helicopter bright star that’s Venus, I feel huge. Connected to something grand. And I see big, round, colorful planets. Feel on the edge of some great story, part of it my story, turning with the Solstice and season, all surety stripped except knowing I’m okay.

A hint of the turning arrived on a flash of inexplicable happiness the other day. Sparkly Happy swimming through for no particular reason I could discern. Lasting long enough to notice and sit with, and share on facebook because that’s what you do with the good stuff. I thought perhaps decisions made had sparked it. Climbing toward Santa Fe a week from that exact moment perhaps (since all time is simultaneous, right?). Maybe seeing a few intentions realized. A friend called it Joy. Said a Jesuit priest defined Joy as “the infallible presence of God.” I’ve never really understood Joy. For something touted everywhere, the word has always confused me. I could grasp inexplicable happiness is probably right on, though. In any case, the feeling comforted me. And the association with God seemed an affirmation, because I needed it that very moment. I’ve been climbing my ladder at the wall in that picture since announcing no small happy life for me. It’s a tall wall.

Today on the radio I heard details of slaughters in Sudan – children hanged, entire villages wiped out except the 15 yr. old girls taken as slave brides, women & children in the river up to their chins, hiding all night as soldiers shoot into the dark water. The ones who escape, devastated by malaria epidemics in refugee camps. Listening, I thought of all the people, millions, who live in hell on earth. How privileged I am, what I must do with that privilege. Later I walked by a newspaper headline, “Pope Leaves a Message of Love.” He’s my sign of what’s over the wall. The head of a huge staid religious institution I might have prejudice toward. But he’s using his influence with Love. Stepping up as a progressive for how to live in the modern world while holding the basic tenets of his faith. Saying flat outright the planet must thrive for humanity to thrive, we are connected. And he tempers his statements with conditions (ie. ‘unfettered’ capitalism) vs. absolutes, because by golly, things are complicated. I’ve listened to the media, their ongoing dialogue about his cloaked references to Catholic doctrine. How he’s gathered support from people like me, hinting perhaps we don’t get it he’s Catholic (I really do have a hard time seeing him as religious) I want to shout, of course he’s Catholic. It’s his container. So what?! This is HUGE. And in the secular world, Bernie Sanders saying out loud the same thing with different words.

In the mid-eighties I wanted to know how to hold the concept of God. The usual words never feeling as present as the connection to that inexplicable something I feel. A metaphysical video passed into my hands. God is in the spaces between the molecules, it said. A spark of recognition – the Universe. We use the word Love a lot. I’m not sure most know what it means. But I’m confident a focus on it as a choice, looking up with that focus to see another for just a twinkling the same way ripples, can have tsunami effect. Faith grows, as the Pope says. My faith in humanity, that Hell won’t win. My offerings to the world will be driven by Kindness and Love. I can do that. Let’s do it, okay?

Another small journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life.
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A favorite: Anything celestial.
A secret: The super power I would choose – flying.