I need an office.  Trying to write, in this atmosphere, is at times a futile gesture.  Insanity rules in a house with teenagers and while I am trying to think deep and important thoughts, I can’t write with a teenager screaming in my ear.  This is especially true when the undercurrents of what is being screamed is, “I need to be grounded because I have an out-of-control smart mouth that is just begging for you to discipline it.”  Get the picture?

I have found my office.  Online no less.  I just have to pony up the bucks (about $150K) and find the trees and its mine… all mine.  I love the whole premise.  It isn’t the Ewok thing.  To me it is more reminiscent of Robin Hood (the movie) and anything that might happen to bring Kevin Costner along is also, very okay. 

I can just picture the inside filled with my teddy bear and doll collection.  I can hear the music I love playing within my spherical dwelling.  I could have a little refrigerator in there filled with my favorite goodies - well, it has to be a freezer because I have to have my ice cream.  With that, in my future sphere, I can write the Great American Novel.

I am just hoping this thing comes with a “NO KIDS ALLOWED” sign!!

Free Spirit Spheres

One technique that has become popular in journaling circles is rewriting past life experiences. I have heard that psychologists use this technique as well. The theory is that by rewriting the past, at least the parts we are not happy with, we can heal. I don’t think this is such a great idea. Perhaps like Captain Kirk said in one of the Star Trek movies, “I need my pain.” If we take away our pain, are we taking away part of what makes us who we are?

I understand the principle behind this practice. In the instances of abuse, physical violence, or a traumatic event, recreating the past and having it end better could have its therapeutic uses. I can see how it would be very helpful for people with PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) deal with the unwanted and untimely recollection of events that were devastating.

But aren’t we a sum of all of our experiences? I have had some traumatic experiences - some I dearly wish could have ended differently. I think about what I might have given to have had those circumstances changed, and I shudder inside. The price may have been high but at the time, I would have paid it.

And as I look back, I see that those experiences have made me who I am today. Yes perhaps I have memories that are so painful I can’t look them full in the face yet. And yes, I am sure that there are things that had they not happened I would be happier, healthier, and more secure. But those things were part of the weavings of my life and to say they should not have happened, or should have ended differently, is a little bit like playing God. A little bit more than I am comfortable with, at any rate.

I believe that writing down our experiences and changing the outcome is only putting a facade on our lives. I think that doing so, changes us even more and it is not a positive change because it isn’t reality. Learning to cope and understand, as much as we are able to understand, what these sad or painful experiences have to teach is what being human is all about.

I think it took me reaching fifty to understand that. And it took a lot of painful, some exquistely so, experiences to teach me that although I cannot change the events around me, I can change my reaction to them. And isn’t that what maturity and growth are all about? Isn’t that life is all about?

I got an email today from John, our intrepid owner, about the blistering heat and thunderstorms in the U.K. recently. So I wandered on over to Weather.com and checked out the weather in London. It’s in the 70s. Blistering? John, you are a true lightweight where this whole weather thing is concerned.

I live on the edge of Tornado Alley. It’s hot. Really hot. I can say blistering and mean it.  It was over 100 degrees today!  And thunderstorms?  Now if they are having thunderstorms when it is 70 degrees out, they must be little teeny tiny thunderstorms.  We have real, honest-to-goodness thunderstorms! The kind that crack so loud above your head, the house bounces.

And that of course, reminds me of a story, which I will tell at the expense of my poor dear mother.  My mother is terrified of thunder and lightning. Genuinely scared to death of the stuff.  She hears one clap of thunder and she freaks out.  (Sorry Mom, but you do - you started to freak out over the one you heard on the phone when you were talking to me that time.)  She lives in Seattle, so she too is a lightweight about this weather thing, just like John.  At least they are in good company.

My mother has had two major run ins with thunder and lightning.  Probably more, but only two that I have been privy to.  The first one was when I was a kid, maybe about 13 or so?  She had a friend who was a very Charismatic Christian - he believed you could handle anything through prayer.  I believe that too, but I think he approached it differently than I do.  But that isn’t the point.  He suggested, while watching my mother panic over the thought of a forecasted storm, that she take the bull by the horns, and attack the fear where it lived.  In other words, in his eyes, the Devil was the problem, so therefore she didn’t need to deal with the weather, she needed to deal with the Devil.  The advice was noted and thought about for some time.  Eventually it was acted on.

A thunderstorm rolled on in and it really was quite a noisy one for the Seattle area.  She screwed up her courage and did as she had been advised by an old trusted friend.  (This is the part where I crawled under the bed and pretended to not know the woman.  “Nope, never met her,” while waiting for the third crowing of the rooster but it seemed a wise option under my adolescent circumstances.)

She went out on the front porch and defied the elements.  The wind was whipping through her hair, the rain pelting her face, and the blue bolts crashed about her.  (The story has grown somewhat significantly through the years, but hey, it was traumatic so cut her some slack.)  She then raised a fist to the sky, and shouted at the top of her little petite lungs, “Satan, I rebuke thee.”

Silence.  Not from the sky, but certainly from me and her while we waited to see what happened.  Actually, all things considered, it is amazing she lived through the experience.  My father was a bit crazy about my mother; okay, he was madly in love, and she had lots of jewelry.  Real jewelry.  Do you realize what a great conductor 14K gold is?  She was a human lightning rod! 

But it worked.  For awhile anyway.  She wasn’t afraid for probably ten years.

Then we moved to Michigan.  She was involved in helping with this move.  That probably was a really bad idea in the spring.  We were in the Upper Pennisula near the Mackinaw Bridge and there was a tornado watch.  Forget the watch though.  There was the most amazing lightning storm I have ever seen in my life.  It totally lit up the entire sky like it were noon.  The bolts were huge and they were impressive.

We got to the motel about 2am, deciding to not cross that horrible bridge in the middle of the night during that vicious of a storm.  The last I saw of her for a couple of hours was her back scrambling into the motel room in tears, with a bottle of scotch firmly grasped in her hand.

Two hours later I went over to see how she was doing.  She was fine.  Quite fine actually.  The bottle wasn’t full any more - actually it wasn’t even close to full.  She wasn’t drunk - not by a long shot - which shows what adrenaline can do when mixed with scotch, but she didn’t care about the storm anymore. 

I have asked her over the years if she had considered rebuking Satan again.  She always manages to change the subject.  She still is terrified of storms but doesn’t have to face them too often.  But I don’t know if I can ever hear a clap of thunder, see a bolt of lightning, or see a bottle of scotch without thinking of the woman on the front porch, wired as a lightning rod with thousands of dollars of jewelry, rebuking Satan.

Lightning at Night
Rife, Joseph B.
24 in. x 18 in.
Buy this Photographic Print at AllPosters.com

Adelle Tilton

You gotta love this site.  Actually, in all seriousness, I do.  I find it a wonderful site to decompress.  But when I received their email newsletter the other day, there was no possibility of decompression - unless you consider it to be the kind of decompression that builds to a huge explosion.  I love the site but all I had to say that day was, “This woman obviously does not have children.”

Again, let me reiterate.  I love this site.  It is a centering place. A place to calm and quiet the wildness of life.  I think it is interesting that the Internet can be used this way, and used successfully.  But this newsletter, hit me funny.  I quote:

My soul feels tepid as I surrender to a floating world of dreamy landscapes. I just sit here in the stillness of my hand that is symbolically linked beyond reason. A hand that colors and paints vivid images while the words fight harder to capture the wisdom my body knows.

Queen of Stillness sweetly brushes her lips
across the colored rim of suspended time.

Softly, she traces the edge of sensation
and opens the portal of the great Atlantis
that was sealed by a moment’s rapture
with no memory of our floating world.

between the dream that reflects the sun
and an infinite force of primal wisdom.

I can’t even remember feeling tepid.  That was a lifetime ago.  I am either frozen or boiling.  There is no halfway ground here.  Hot or cold (I’m not talking hot flashes - this is a state of mind thing), but tepid?  I only get tepid when I set down a cup of coffee and forget it and pick it up 45 minutes later.  As a side note, I have developed a taste for lukewarm coffee!

As far as sitting in the stillness of my hand?  I am not entirely sure what that even means, but it sounds so introspective.  So “in tune” and one with the universe and all of that.   That still hand is creating some kind of colorful reality even though it is attached to a supposedly tepid soul.

Queen of Stillness sweetly brushes her lips across the colored rim of suspended time.  Okay, now this is magic. I can’t recall the last time my lips brushed anything that didn’t say, “Stop it Mom,” and gave mom 5 syllables which is really quite talented!  I try to kiss the top of their heads just as a goodnight - they are good children and humor me. 

Perhaps the Queen of Stillness does have children.  Perhaps her lips are brushing across the heads of her children each night as well.  It could be that is the moment of suspended time.  That time of the brief encounter that still exists, despite the invisibly warm acceptance of a publicly shunned good-night kiss, between mother and not-so-child.

Sanctuary of Stillness

Adelle Tilton