Pamela Stead Jones

“Act the way you’d like to be and soon you’ll be the way you act.”

– Leonard Cohen

Today is September 21 — the International Day of Peace.  With all the war and all the hatred and all the separations that are very real in our world, it might seem futile to celebrate such a day.  We have become hardened to hope and accustomed to conflict.  We have forgotten to love our neighbors as ourselves.  We have hardened our hearts and found ways to justify our anger and to allow ourselves to perpetuate the division we experience that denies our human bond with all others who inhabit our planet.

I cannot think of a single time when closing the shutters has encouraged the darkness to go away  It is only Light that can overcome darkness; and it is only Peace that can end War.  On this day of honoring the dream of Peace for our world, let us remember to shine Light where darkness rules.  Let us heal anger with compassion.  Let us remember to not only do unto others as we would have them do to us, but remember to do unto others as they would have them do to them.  Let us honor our differences but acknowledge our sameness.  Let us feed the hungry and comfort those who suffer.  Let us shine the Light and act the way we would like to be.  Wouldn’t it be incredible if we discovered that we soon could be the way we act?  Let us act as though there could be Peace on Earth — maybe, someday, it will become real.

“Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”

– Malachy McCourt

Why do we work so hard at remembering past hurts and conflicts when it would be so much easier to forgive, lay down the burden of resentment and just get on with our lives?  Have you ever considered the weight that you carry when resentment hangs around your neck and weighs you down?  Have you ever considered that the pain of resentment often follows the one who has been hurt or offended long after the anger of the offender has passed?  It seems so silly to choose the burden when the power to forgive lies within each of us.  If we keep our hearts filled with love, there can be no room for resentment.  If we keep resentment in our hearts, it will crowd out the love.  Choose to free yourself.  Take out the resentment that makes your footsteps heavy.  Look at it.  Forgive it.  Give yourself the gift of peace, and fill your heart with love.

Forgiveness

“I forgive you.”

Powerful words.

Deliberate words.

Healing words.

♥

They roll off the tongue

But they shouldn’t.

They should spring from the heart

And impact the soul.

♥

Though your actions have hurt me,

I choose to let healing

Replace my resentment

And bring my soul peace.

♥

I choose now to share with you

What dwells within me,

And pray that its seeds grow

In your soul as well.

♥

Treat it kindly, my peace,

Take it in and explore it,

For once you reject it,

It won’t come again.

♥

“I forgive you”

Powerful words,

Deliberate words,

Healing words -

Words of Light.

© Pamela Stead Jones 2008

“Autumn’s the mellow time.”

– William Allingham.

There is change in the air.  I can see it in the sky.  The heat of summer that baked us with sunshine and sent us scurrying for a spot of shade and a cool drink has given over to the crisp, cool days of early Fall.  The clouds know it.  They run and fly across the sky.  Perhaps, like the birds, they too have dreams of warmer lands.  For my part, I simply watch them fly — clouds and birds that have been my summer companions; and now they leave me earthbound and feeling wistful as I realize that we have entered the season of goodbyes.

There is a change in me.  I can feel it as I exchange my shorts for some old, familiar jeans and once again enjoy the softness of a long-sleeved shirt that has spent the summer tucked away in an unused drawer of my dresser.  The energy of Fall draws me out in the middle of the day to rake the first leaves and feel the caress of the breeze at a time that only weeks ago was uncomfortably warm.  I dance through the leaves and savor the first aromas of Fall — the pungent mold of fallen vegetation, and the sweet scent of fallen apples that lie beneath the tree.   I collect the last fruits of my summertime garden and think of the sweetness of fruit on the vine that has fed us for months, both in body and soul.  I take them all in — the remnants of summer — and do my best to commit to memory each fast-flying moment that, swept by the wind, joins the clouds and the birds and is gone.

There is joy in the dance that we dance in the Fall.  In the midst of goodbyes lies the sweetness of memories; of days that seemed timeless and carefree and bright.  For a moment I hesitate, wondering whether I might will my spirit to rein in its dancing and somehow delay the inevitable day when the last leaf will fall and the earth will lie frozen and silent again.  But then the breeze blows, and it sends the leaves dancing.  They brush past my feet, and my dancing resumes.  As we spin and we twirl, we send memories flying.  We kiss them goodbye as they sail with the clouds and are gone.

“Things don’t go wrong and break your heart so you can become bitter and give up.  They happen to break you down and build you up so you can be all that you were intended to be.”

– Samuel Johnson

Has your heart been broken?  There have been times when I have thought mine is fractured beyond repair, yet here I sit with my heart still beating.  Life is filled with challenges, and sometimes those challenges can seem insurmountable.  If I think about the conversations I’ve had in the last week alone, three people come to mind who are struggling with such painful life experiences that they wonder if they will be able to recover and regroup and go on living.  As sad as these times are, and as dearly as we wish we could skip such experiences and simply live happily ever after, the truth is that we grow the most in the midst of our pain.  We simply do not recognize that growth until the painful part has ended and we reflect on the ways we have changed.

There are so many examples I could offer of the phenomenon of growth after breaking, but I will go directly to the most profound example in my own life, so far.  My mind returns to a day in February 1980 when my son, Brett, was playing outside with his brother and some neighborhood children.  In the midst of the excitement of playing and with all the impulsive energy of an almost-seven-year-old, he darted into the quiet street in front of our house and was hit by a car.  He did not survive the traumatic injuries he suffered, and my life was forever changed in a split second.  My heart was broken — no, my heart was shattered.  It exploded into a million shards, and there were days when I really wasn’t sure that it still was beating.  I was certain in the days and months that followed that I would never again know happiness, that I would never again feel safe in this world, that I would never again risk loving another child as deeply as I had loved my son.  The pain was simply unbearable.

What followed this time was an equally painful task of gathering up the million shards of my heart and returning them to the place at the center of myself so that I could try to discover who I was now that everything had been taken from me.  Each shard, it seemed, had razor-sharp edges; and retrieving them was a long and difficult process.  There were many events that followed my shattering and contributed to the healing of my heart.  I will share one with you today, because it offers an example of the way we can use our own experience of breaking and regeneration to encourage others who face pain that seems insurmountable.

In the months after Brett died, I spent every minute of every day terrified that something awful might happen to one of my surviving children.  My duty seemed to be to worry about them, as though my worrying might have some effect on the outcome of their days and somehow keep them safe.  As you might imagine, all this worrying was making me ill.  Not only did I live with constant anxiety and dread, but I was beginning to have physical symptoms as well.  Although I was only thirty years old, I worried that I might die of some terrible thing that was taking over my body.  I made an appointment with my doctor — a bona fide country doctor, whose home was a farm and whose feet were planted firmly on the ground.  He listened to my worries about my health and then asked me how my family was doing.  Out poured all my fear and all my worry for the safety of my other children, and he responded with some wisdom that was the turning point in my healing.

“Do you garden?” he asked me, knowing from past encounters that I did.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Do you grow tomatoes?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Which would you rather have for lunch today —  a warm, juicy tomato from the garden with a few blemishes and a bug or two or a beautiful, smooth, pink tomato from the hothouse?”

“The garden tomato, of course.”

“Well, then,” he said as he looked me square in the eye, “don’t be in the business of growing hothouse tomatoes.  You probably won’t be happy with the results.”

In that moment, I understood what he was saying.  I was spending so much time trying to assure that no hurt would come to my children that I was not allowing them to grow strong.  I was doing the same to myself, and I realized that there were many painful things that had come my way before the loss of my son that hadn’t even made me blink.  In the aftermath, all pain felt the same, and it would have felt devastating if my child had so much as skinned a knee.  I needed to find my strength again.  I needed to find my ability to discern survivable pain from the kind that takes life away.  And so my healing began.

I picked up a huge shard of my heart that day — the one that vowed not to let fear overrule reason as I allowed my children to grow in the garden instead of the hothouse.  The miraculous thing is that once the first heart-shard was back where it belonged, it became easier and easier to reclaim the others.  My heart will always bear the scars of this experience, but scar tissue is pretty tough.  As grief and fear gave way to healing, I discovered that I could be happy again and that I could again feel secure enough to move forward with living instead of sitting in a corner, paralyzed by fear and dread.  No less that five more children have come into my heart and into my family since that time; and I have learned that I can, indeed, love them wholeheartedly.

Wholeheartedly.  Did I really say that?  In many ways, I think the growth that has followed my sorrow has made my heart bigger and stronger than it was before it knew shattering.  In gathering the shards and putting them back together, I discovered some strong glue that has become a part of my healing — Love, which surrounds me and uplifts me; Truth, which pushes fear into the background and allows me to walk with confidence; and Faith, which reminds me on difficult days that the outcome of every challenge will be growth.

If you are one of the three people I carry in my heart as I write today, I hope you will find comfort in hearing my experience.  We are not so different, you know; and it is part of being human to have these experiences.  Without them we would never have the incentive to become more than we are.

“Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.  A joyful heart is the inevitable result of a heart burning with love.”

– Mother Teresa

Love is such a miracle.  It can carry the passion of falling in love and motivate us to make a commitment.  It becomes the commitment, transforming from emotion to verb, and stands firm when the excitement of falling in love has passed.  Love can be tender and gentle, like the first caress a newborn feels when her mother runs a finger along the side of her cheek and teaches her to trust.  Love can be soothing when someone is hurting — it binds the wounds and heals the heart.  The strands of love that weave through our lives create a web that encircles us all with life-sustaining, uplifting Love.

As we allow each strand of each facet of love to attach to our hearts and become a part of who we are, Love begins to celebrate within us and we find that we are filled with Joy.  Joy is the love that is so infinite that our hearts cannot contain it.  It springs from our souls and is cast like a net that stretches over all we meet and draws them into the celebration.  Joy is irresistible and captivating, and those who are caught by it find themselves reveling in their captivity.  Is there any work we could hope to do that would be more fulfilling than spreading the net of Joy wherever we go?

We cannot have Joy unless our hearts are fueled by Love.  We must empty ourselves of all the things that put out the fire and let the space carry only the burning Love that transforms us and overflows wherever we go.  Hatred and resentment must be bound by the strand of love called forgiveness and left behind us as we walk our paths.  Jealousy must be tied up with gratitude and tossed aside.  Judgment must be wrapped in the golden thread of compassion and transformed into thoughts of tenderness and understanding.  Only then — when all the debris has been removed — can the fire of Love burn so brightly and so warmly that Joy will dance ahead of us wherever we go.

With our hearts filled with Love — and only Love — we can carry the Joy that will transform the world.  Let your Joy dance before you and touch the hearts of all you meet.  Let your Love be the spark that kindles the fire for the person whose love lies buried and whose flame burns low.  Cast your net of Joy, woven from the strands of love, extend from your heart to all you encounter.  Let your heart burn with love, and you will set the world on fire with Joy.

“Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought.”

– Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

When I was a child and I would begin to express a strong opinion about something, my mother would always caution, “Remember, there are two sides to every story.”  That was good advice, but what my mother didn’t tell me was that there were infinite ways to look at things — and sometimes, if we are very fortunate, there are “aha!” moments when our eyes and minds are opened to a whole new view of an old idea.  When we open ourselves to limitless possibilities, we also open ourselves to discovery and growth.  What my mother only hinted at ultimately was taught to me by my own child.

This lesson is fresh in my awareness right now, because we are in the beginning of a new school year.  I was a very good student in my day.  I was attentive,  I took notes for later study, I did my homework, and on test days I came prepared to show what I had learned.  It was a simple formula for success; and when I became a mother, I shared the stories of my school success with my children and encouraged them to use what I had learned as a way to find their own path to learning.  My methods worked pretty well for my older children; but when my third son reached second grade, it was apparent that something simply was not clicking for him.  Testing was done, and the results were shared with us in a rather detailed report — our son was dyslexic.  He also had difficulty processing spoken language and producing written language.  I was stunned.  Someone was telling me that my beautiful little boy — the one who could solve mechanical problems more quickly than an adult — was different in a way that might keep him from learning the things he needed to be successful in his life.

As his mother, I knew that my son was full of potential.  No test results could convince me of anything less.  And so I began to read and learn everything I could possibly find that would help me find the way to unlock that potential and see it flourish.  No longer did I have a child who came home from school, took out his homework, finished it, and went outside to play.  Now our afternoons were filled with homework sessions with Mom as tutor.  I would read over the day’s work, present it to my son, and he would stare at me blankly.  You might have thought I was speaking Lithuanian for all the recognition that I saw in his eyes.  I would regroup and reframe and re-present in a second way.  Still the blank stare would be my only feedback.  I am not proud to say that my frustration brought thoughts to my mind like, “okay…let me put this a FIFTIETH way, you little….”  I am proud that I kept these thoughts to myself and never spoke them in my moment of helplessness.

There are two sides to every story.  That had taught me that if one way didn’t work, I should find the other one that would.  As I struggled for the tenth way to explain a concept and watched my son concentrate and try to grasp what I was saying, I realized that he was more patient than his mother.  I pushed away the view of my child as a disabled person and focused once again on the potential that was locked behind a door marked “disability,” just waiting for someone to find the key.  Through our many attempts and many tears — some his, and some mine — we found the strategies that allowed a very smart little boy to express all that he knew in ways that let others see him shine.  There were many “aha!” moments along the way, and I learned as we struggled that few successes were permanent.

I like to think that this experience has made both of us better people.  We have learned to accept ourselves and others as unique and valuable people.  We see the potential that lies behind whatever struggles others may face.  Dan is now the father of a sweet little girl with physical differences; and she could not ask for a more patient, more creative, more encouraging Dad.  I hope that he learned at least a little bit of that from me as we walked side by side into the unknown territory of dyslexia.   I am thankful for the lessons my son taught me about seeing the same things and thinking about them in a different way.  Through him, I have experienced the joy of discovery in a multi-dimensional way that cannot be found in the two-dimensional way I was taught to think.

There are two sides to every story — until you look at what everyone else has seen and then think what no one else has thought.

“Kind hearts are the gardens,

Kind thoughts are the roots,

Kind words are the flowers,

Kind deeds are the fruits.”

– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

We say we want to change the world.  Then we step away from the idea, saying it is beyond us to take on such a huge task.  There is no way that one individual can change the whole world for the better — or is there?

I live in a little tiny town called Macungie.  It covers only one square mile of land.  I would tell you to pay attention as you drive through on Route 100, because if you blink you just might miss it; but there is a reason why this is not true.  On the side of Route 100 — our Main Street — just before the railroad tracks, there is a Flower Garden.

Things are beginning to wind down there as Fall approaches, but the beautiful colors command our attention even when the lush days of summer have dwindled.  Look to the left, and there’s color.

Look to the right — more color.

Turn around, and…well, you get the idea.

As you probably have guessed, pictures simply don’t begin to convey the wonder of this oasis that pops up out of nowhere beside a busy road and railroad tracks.  Where did that come from, you may wonder?  And the answer to that question is a tale that Longfellow would have enjoyed.  In the early days of our town, a hotel stood on the spot.  In the 1980’s, there was a fire; and ultimately, the hotel was demolished, leaving a vacant spot of bare land where it once had flourished.  Then, along came a man with a dream — a vision, if you will — whose kind heart produced the kind thought, the kind words, and ultimately the kind deed that changed one little corner of the world.

The land was acquired by retired Judge Robert K. Young.  He then donated the plot to the town, and the magic soon began.  The Young family spearheaded the building of the framework of what now is our Flower Garden.  Landscaping was done, paths were laid, and a fountain was erected in the center of it all.  The groundwork was laid, and it was time for the work to begin.  What a huge job it would be for one family to plant and weed and maintain this garden!

When the structure was built, a plaque was placed near the entrance.  It would be only natural for Judge Young to take credit for his dream come true; but instead the plaque reads:

Another reason why you will not blink and miss our little town is that it is a place where volunteers make things happen.  And so it was with the Flower Garden.  The local garden club arrived in swarms and planted and weeded and watered and tended — and ten years later, volunteers still see that the garden flourishes.  Each marigold that is planted adds to the beauty.  Each weed that is pulled helps keep the garden beautiful.  And the most beautiful thing of all is the way that the vision of one man became the dream of many men and women — each bringing an individual piece that joined with many others and made the dream real.

We can learn from this garden when we feel discouraged and think that one small kindness will go unnoticed and never change the world.  I like to think that we could transform our world into a kindness garden if each of us is willing to plant tiny seeds wherever we go, if each of us is willing to undo the hurt and pull the weeds that keep kindness from taking root, if each of us takes the time to recognize the small kindnesses that others bring our way.  I have a dream of a garden where kindness blooms and flourishes.  Any volunteers?

“The fact of possessing imagination means that everything can be re dreamed. Each reality can have its alternative possibilities. Human beings are blessed with the necessity of transformation.”

– Ben Okri

Transformation.  We talk all the time about the way that life changes — from year to year, from day to day, from minute to minute.  Some of that change is physical, and it is driven by the laws of the universe.  We are born tiny and grow larger.  We are young one day and, it seems, old the next.  These realities are part of who we are and how we are made.  We learn through our own experiences and through our observation of others in the world around us that sometimes life has finite limits — limits that we simply accept as real — and we live our days within the boundaries of reality.  Change simply is a part of life.

Transformation is different.  When an outside force impacts the change that drives reality, sometimes we find that reality is transformed.  When these magical moments occur, we find that we also are transformed in the way we view the world.  Although we still live in a changing world, the boundaries of our reality shift and we find that our old views are replaced by new ones — often more hopeful ones than we ever could have imagined.  Storyteller, Ben Okri, tells us that with imagination every reality can be re-dreamed.  Perhaps it is through this re-dreaming that we become a part of transforming our world.

I remember my childhood and the way people considered my grandparents as elderly when they had reached their 70’s.  Now many people continue to work until the age of 70 and nobody blinks an eye.  Through the imaginative dreaming of medical researchers, we now have access to drugs that delay the changes associated with illness and aging.  With discoveries by those who dreamed of good nutrition and its helpful effect on longevity, people are greeting their golden years with vitality and productivity still a part of their lives.  These changes occurred because there were people who dared to dream and dared to imagine a world beyond the confines of their present reality; and we all have been transformed by their ability to see alternative possibilities.

We all have the power to transform our world.  There is always more than one way to view reality; and we need to cultivate the ability to dream something wonderful in each thing we see.  I was looking at the clouds this morning.  Are they barriers that shut out the sun, or are they the bearers of life-giving rain?  The way I choose to dream of the clouds may not make the rain fall, but it certainly will color my own view of their reality.  When we see the changeable nature of the world and the people in it, do we dream the best outcome we can imagine, or do we see things as unchanging and futile and beyond our reach?

We were born to live within the boundaries of reality and to experience the limitations that are part of being human.  We also were born to dream and to hope and to strive — to look beyond the confines of today and stretch the boundaries that will define tomorrow.  Our world desperately needs dreamers, people who will strike the words, “this is how it always has been and always will be,” from their vocabularies.  We need to see the potential, not only for change, but for many possible changes in every challenge we face.  We must dream.  Our future depends on it.

“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places.  Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”

– Roald Dahl

I am an ever-changing being whose experiences in this life have taken me on some pretty wild rides.

In only twenty-two days, my oldest son will have a birthday.  On October 5, I will have actively parented for forty years.  That gets my attention!  I pause now and then and think of the early days of babies up at night and toddlers learning to walk and first days of school and graduations.  I think of the crazy years when we had a teenager, two pre-teens, and an infant all at the same time.  Maybe it’s the lack of sleep, but those years just flew by — so fast that sometimes I remember a sort of blur.  Three years ago, my youngest daughter graduated from high school.  This left only my resident granddaughter needing our daily attention and guidance.  As she entered middle school, the blur of the busy years began to slow a bit.  I realized that for the first time in more than thirty years I had some time to consider what I would do with the next part of my life.

I’ve heard my generation referred to as the “sandwich generation,” as we support and care for elderly parents and our children at the same time.  I’ve joked that with a grandchild to raise, we are the “club-sandwich” people — and suddenly we find ourselves with only a few crumbs and a frilly toothpick remaining on the plate.  I’m feeling full and satisfied and scanning the dessert menu.  Now that I’ve taken in all the required nutrients, what will be the icing on my cake?

It was with this transition in mind that I packed up a year ago to travel for the weekend to Shepherdstown, WV.  My big brother had moved there last year; and now that we were not so grounded by our children’s schedules, Mark and I were finally free to go visiting.  Although the focus of the trip was seeing my brother and checking out his new home, I found myself in an awesomely cute little town with shop after shop lining German Street.  After Sunday brunch, the guys indulged me and went exploring.  Now…anyone who really knows me knows I’m kind of weird.  And that’s fine with me, because I guess most normal people would see it as sort of unconventional to meet a deep-loving, deep-thinking, spiritually motivated, drumming, joyful sixty-year-old with rocks in her head.  Oh, yes…did I mention that I have rocks in my head?  Or maybe it’s in my heart.  Either way, there is little on earth or under it that can get me excited like some awesome stones and crystals.  So we were wandering down German Street peeking in store windows when we came to On the Wings of Dreams.  I stepped through the door; and in an instant I knew that I’d found a magical place.

Hidden there, in the midst of a visit to my brother, was a niche filled with all the dessert I could hope to find on that menu of mine.  I wandered through the jewelry and meandered through the crystals and lingered over the rough stones that could offer lots of fun when placed in my rock tumbler.  I sashayed past the incense and the singing bowls and landed in the back nook with bookshelves lined with title after title that made me wish I had another lifetime to read them all.  ’Maybe I do,’ I thought, as I considered my slower pace of life and the opportunities that lay ahead.  There in the center of the book section, I saw some magical artwork:

I had to take a picture on this year’s trip so I could share it with you today.  I was drawn to the Bone Sighs by Terri St. Cloud; and since I had no $$ to spend, I scribbled her web address on a grocery receipt in my purse and made a mental note to look it up when I got home.  After signing up for the Daily Bone Sigh in my email, I began to feel curious about this person.  Finally, when one of the daily mails hit right at the center of my own experience, I responded.  We wrote back and forth, tentatively at first, and discovered our shared affinity for being genuine and for falling into the sky.  Gradually, our friendship took root and began to grow.  Over the past year, the branches have spread and on each one of them I’ve found another and another amazing woman who I have come to call “sister” and “friend.”

Who could have guessed that the recipe for my dessert would begin to come together in a random trip to an unknown corner of the universe?  Who could have guessed that I would open the door to the sort of magic that would expand my circle and bring me in touch with so many other wonderfully weird women?  If you’d like to meet them, just go to my blogroll and click away — you’ll be glad you did!

I must finish now and go fill my rock tumbler with some special stones that carry the magic that flies On the Wings of Dreams.  They will serve as place holders in my heart that will transport me whenever I see them to the place where the magic of friendship cast its spell and forever changed my circle of friends.

Be sure, as you walk through the ordinary days of your life, that you view the world with the glittering eyes that expect to find magic in the least likely places.  Believe!

“The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great that I thought I was in a dream.”

– Jack Kerouac

At first I thought I was reading the description of a night I’ve known so many times.  I was loving the part about “soft” air — you know the kind — the sort that is just a degree cooler than your own skin and caresses your cheek and recalls the touch of your mother’s fingertips as she laid you in your cradle to sleep.  I love those dreamy nights when I am absolutely certain that each star in the cloudless sky is shining its message of light just for me, telling me that I am part of their world and not only living in my earthbound realm.

I still think that Kerouac was describing that sort of night; and I know he has breathed in such evenings, because his next words transport me to the passion that I feel on those magical nights — the siren song that plays as the stars twinkle and stirs my soul and challenges it to soar.  Have you ever felt this way?  Have you ever seen promise in every direction you look?  Have you ever felt your heart swell until it is so full that you simply must release that creative passion in some way that adds beauty to the world?

When waking and dreaming become entwined and the spirit and mind become intermingled, the lighter-than-air passion that fills our being can send us soaring to heights we haven’t even imagined as we plod through our daily existence.  When I read Kerouac’s words, I find myself stopping and forming an intention to wander outdoors under starlight as often as I can.  I close my eyes and recall those uplifting moments when I swear I can merge with the sky and take my own spot among the stars.  There I will sit, benevolently shining my own spot of light on all who walk the cobbled alleys and sense the promise that lies in the world where dreams become real.

Tonight I will venture outside in the darkness and breathe in the starlight that kindles the glow that reminds me that, although I am one small point of light, I do have a place in the infinite universe where each star has its own place — where the light of each star matters to one who dreams.