Pamela Stead Jones

“Never be in a hurry; do everything quietly and in a calm spirit.  Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset.”

– St. Francis de Sales

“Never be in a hurry; do everything quietly and in a calm spirit.” I know that this truly is the way to live my life lovingly, peacefully, and effectively; but when the pace goes from fast to frenetic, it can be difficult to maintain the inner peace that allows me to proceed from a place of confident calmness.  It it a challenge to stay in our peaceful center when we feel as though we’re running to keep up the pace required of us and feeling short of breath in our effort to finish all that lies before us and make it to the end of a demanding day.  How can we make sure that we don’t lose sight of our inner peace when life becomes challenging?

The first three words that come to my mind are love, hope, and forgiveness.  How often do we take the time to remind ourselves of the things in our lives that we truly love — the things that are constant and uplifting and fill us with joy?  First, there is the gift of life, itself.  Each morning, when you open your eyes for the first time, remember to love the fact that you are here once again and have the gift of another day to live and love on planet earth.  I love to lie in bed for a minute or two and acknowledge just being alive — “Wow!” I say out loud, “Another day!  I wonder what excitement lies ahead?”  I love waking up and discovering that I am still alive.  There are small things — and not so small ones — that decorate my days, and I try to be aware of them and not take them for granted.  Of course, there are the people I love who love me back — my family, my friends, the ones who have gone beyond my world but still are with me.  It is good to remember to tell them I love them, even when I don’t see them every day.  There are the tiny pieces of beauty that lie all around and need not to be overlooked — a small flower, a towering tree, a sky of blue with feathery clouds, a butterfly, the kiss of the breeze on a hot afternoon and the warmth of a favorite scarf when the winter wind blows.  Whatever it is that makes your life beautiful, let your heart overflow with love for these gifts.  We must not become unaware of the things that lift our spirits.  We must cultivate gratitude.

On days that are busy and filled with challenge, we  must remember to hope.  We must think of the other times when life seemed overwhelming and draw on the memories of challenges met and conquered.  We must trust that we will be up to the tasks that face us and find the calm that allows us to prioritize so that we can see what is truly important and what can wait until tomorrow.  We must hope and trust that when tomorrow comes we will have another moment of awakening when we discover that there is another day at our disposal to complete what needs to be done.

Above all, we must practice forgiveness — with others, of course, but first with ourselves.  When life becomes more than we can manage, we need to acknowledge our humanity and see our limitations.  Then we need to forgive our desire to be super-human and the temptation to ignore our limitations.  We cannot be perfect; we can only do our best.  It is in knowing ourselves well enough to understand that we are doing our best that we are able to let go of wanting to hide our limitations.  When we uncover our true identity, what we find is the peace that lies at our center, free of the debris we create to hide our humanity.  It is that peace that allows us to remain calm and loving and, ultimately, effective as we greet the tasks that make up our day.  It is that inner peace that allows us to transcend our doubts and fears and live from a place of love, hope and forgiveness.  Even in the midst of a world filled with turmoil, we can remain calm and centered and meet our goals.

Finally, when the day is done, remember to love the chance to rest and regroup for tomorrow.  As I fall into my pillow each night and prepare to enter the land of dreams, I say out loud, “I love my bed;” and I swear it wraps its arms around me and replies, “I love you, too.”  Good night.

“All life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other.”

— H.P. Lovecraft

How much of life simply happens to us, and how much of life is of our own making?  What is the jumble of physical, emotional, and mental imagery that rolls around our brains and translates into our view of reality?  We look at a building, a tree, or a flower and say, “it is what it is;” but isn’t it true that we pass the images through the filters in our own minds in order to create what we see as the true essence of each of these things?  I only say this because I know that my own view — my own definition — of a building, a tree, and a flower has changed dramatically through the years of my life.

When I was a child, a building was simply a box with doors and windows — only on the side I was viewing at the time, of course.  A tree was a sort of stick with a lollipop of leaves plopped on top.  A flower was its petals, and mostly its aroma.  As my experience and my understanding grew, buildings had girders and wallboard and carpets.  They had wires and pipes that carried electricity and water.  They had doors and windows in the back as well, even if I couldn’t see them from my vantage point.  Trees had branches, an intricate network of arms that stretched from a thick base near the trunk to delicate twigs at the points where the leaves sprouted; and the leaves were individual parts of a greater whole whose shape changed with the winds.  Flowers had stems and leaves and stamens and pistils.  They held pollen that assured the growth of more flowers; and when I saw a dust-covered bee, I knew he had visited a flower and collected its pollen.  Without seeing the flower, I still recognized its essence in another place.  My experience has taught me what to expect of the things I have experienced.  I suppose you could say that my own thoughts about a building, a tree, and a flower are really what gives them meaning in my world.

If I look back to the early days of my life and the limited experience that created my first definitions of reality, I can see that the world I carry with me has changed a great deal.  I no longer rely on the assumptions I made as a child who saw things for the first time.  Now I must begin to wonder.  Suppose there are other perspectives I have not yet learned about reality?  Suppose the building I see across the street really has no doors and windows at all, but I expect to see them and therefore they exist?  Suppose each leaf has its own awareness and moves in its own way when touched by the wind?  Suppose the flower calls out in a voice audible only to the bee, so that its pollen might be carried to another plant?

We must be careful to remember how we limit or embellish reality based on the thoughts we mix with the images around us.  There may be a whole lot of life that we still have to discover.  When we mix our own dreams with a love of life, we create a reality that calls us to dream some more.  Indeed, we do shape our lives by mixing all the parts of the world with all the parts of ourselves.  Have a beautiful life today.

“Abundance does not spread; famine does.”

— Zulu Proverb

We just returned from a week’s vacation, and the first thing we have had to do is deal with our abundance.  We have so many things to unpack — so many clothes to wash and dry, suitcases to put away, electronics to stow.  We have treasured things we took with us and new things we accumulated as souvenirs of our trip.  We have a lawn to mow, pear trees to pick, and a garden that looks like a tropical rainforest.  It is really tempting to feel as though we are burdened by all these things, especially when we are tired; but the truth is that we are incredibly blessed.  We have come home to abundance, and we must not take that lightly.  With abundance comes responsibility; and each year at this time, we are compelled to spread abundance and see that nothing goes to waste.

How sad the Zulu proverb is — that famine spreads but abundance does not.  How sad that we become so caught up in owning the gifts of abundance that we feel the need to hoard it all for ourselves rather than letting it overflow and benefit others as well.  I look at my vegetable garden, fenced against the bunnies and the groundhog who would make short work of all that grows there, and I wonder whether building that fence has created in me a sense of ownership for the food that grows there and magically appears each night on the plants I tend.  I want the fence to protect my crop, but I don’t want to find myself using it to keep the bounty all to myself.  One thing that my years of gardening have taught me is that abundance that is not shared soon will rot on the vine and ruin the garden.

Look around your world today and see the abundant blessings that are part of your life.  Then look again, and see that you are blessed with an abundance of neighbors who might also enjoy the fruits of your labors.  Take down the fence that contains the abundance and let it flow out to all who might need it.  Be sure that nothing goes to waste.  What is extra for you just might feed someone who is hungry.  Let’s prove the Zulu proverb wrong and begin today to spread abundance.  There is no excuse for famine in the world we all should share.

“What would I give to live where you are
What would I pay to stay here beside you
What would I do to see you, smiling at me
Where would we walk
Where would we run
If we could stay all day in the sun
Just you and me
And I could be..
Part of your world.”

– “Part of Your World” — The Little Mermaid

Home.  What a wonderful feeling!  Although it may seem as though I’ve been here all the time, I am writing my first post in a whole week.  Through the magic of automatic scheduling, all the pieces that have appeared here since August 11 were posted before I left town.  It’s great to get away, and even better to be home again, with a whole new collection of memories.

This was a special trip for me.  My favorite-oldest-granddaughter, Ivy, is fifteen.  Of all the members of all the generations of our family, she has been the only one who never made the trip to Walt Disney World.  When we discovered last January that this was weighing on her mind, we decided to put aside other ways to spend our cash and save for a sort of  ”childhood bucket list” trip to Florida.  It’s not always easy to be a teenager, especially when you live with your grandparents and need to deal with the old folks’ point of view about things.  Our kids face pressures that we can’t even imagine.  As one who grew up in the era of black-and-white values and the hygiene films that illustrated them, I can’t fathom being fifteen and facing the sort of adult pressures of drugs and alcohol and R-rated behavior that has become the norm.  Our children are bombarded daily by images and ideas that require them to leave the shelter of childhood and grow up way too fast.  What began as the fulfillment of a wish to complete her childhood became something much greater for our Ivy.  Rather than wrapping it up and leaving childhood behind, we spent five days watching her rediscover the part of her that still has a few years to grow up.

“Take a picture of her face when she sees It’s A Small World for the first time,” my elderly dad instructed me.  He has such fond memories of watching Ivy’s mother light up when we vacationed with them one summer.  And he was right.  It might not have been at that exact moment, but something miraculous happened during our day in The Magic Kingdom.  All the worries of being fifteen, all the pressures of teenage life, all the stresses of school and peer groups and worries about growing up melted away as we accessed a part of ourselves that still holds the treasure of childhood innocence.  We danced down Main Street U.S.A. to tunes from The Music Man.  We watched as the Beast became a prince due to the love of Belle.  We rode with Buzz Lightyear, “to infinity and beyond.”  Most importantly, though, we found ourselves in a place where there is no division between generations.  All of us were young, and all of us opened our hearts to the fairy-tale world where good triumphs over evil every single time.  For five wonderful, magical days, the generational barriers dropped and I found myself enjoying being a part of her world — the world of family and love and making memories to last a lifetime.

‘Watch and you’ll see…someday I’ll be…Part of Your World!”

“Most people are not really free.  They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves.  They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision.”

– V.S. Naipaul

Complete this sentence:  If I could do anything in the world that I wanted to do, I would…

I hope that whatever words you used to finish that statement made you smile.  I hope they transported you to a place where you dream big and expect those dreams to come true.  I hope they have called to the surface some long-held vision of something wonderful that cries out from the depths of you and begs you to bring it to life.

It is true that we carve out a niche in the world — usually for reasons of survival and security for ourselves and for the others we love.  The problem with residing in a niche is that sometimes it is difficult to see beyond its walls.  Soon we come to believe that the whole world is the one that fits neatly into our carving.  We let it block our vision of something good — something spectacular — that might lie beyond the confines of the limitations we have chosen.  There is nothing wrong with choosing the sort of life we want to live, but we must be careful not to stop living and be limited by a comfortable spot that offers us rest.  If we are truly free to carve out the niche where our lives will be lived, then we must be sure to keep on carving.  Open your eyes to the vision of your soul.  Look beyond your present existence and admit that if the end of  your sentence was not “exactly what I am doing now,” then you need to get moving!

Sharpen your tools, take them up, and begin to carve out your dream.  Don’t worry if it doesn’t take shape on your first attempt.  What is important is to keep your vision clear.  It is never too late to finish that sentence; and with practice, you just may find that your dreams will expand to places you have not yet imagined.  We are free.  Let’s not squander our freedom.

“Two persons cannot long be friends if they cannot forgive each other’s little failings.”

– Jean de la Bruyere

I was chatting with a friend recently, and she told me the story of her confusion at the loss of a long-standing friendship.  Something indefinable apparently had happened — something she could not identify — and someone who had been close suddenly seemed miles away.  She was grieving the loss of her friendship and suffering twice because of her confusion.  It seemed there were no words she could say that might bridge the gap.

My friend is a loving and kind-hearted person.  She is not malicious or vicious or mean.  I tried to imagine what she possibly might have done — or not done — to warrant such a response from another human being.  As I tried to picture her being guilty of some heinous behavior, I realized that the truth probably was that she had said or done something insignificant that had touched a sore spot in her friend.  Perhaps it was at a time when other difficulties were such a burden that one tiny oversight from someone she expected to help carry her burden made it heavy enough to break her spirit.  The straw that breaks the camel’s back often becomes the one that is blamed for the weight of the entire load.

People are messy.  They are human.  They are not perfect.  They make mistakes.  Sometimes we become so certain that a friend is reliable that we forget their humanity.  Ironically, there are very human behaviors that we would forgive instantly in a stranger but hold against a friend.  How sad it is that my friend has lost her long-time pal.  How sad it is that whatever prompted the straw breaking the camel’s back was so painful at the time that it caused her friend to lash out at someone who loves her.  How sad that instead of finding solace and healing in their friendship, both of them now are hurting.

There is only one thing that can mend a situation like this, and that is forgiveness.  My friend must forgive the harsh words from her hurting friend.  She must see beyond her actions to the person she knows and trusts to be kind and loving and worthy of friendship.  At the same time, her friend must remember that she is relating to a human being.  And humans are messy.  They make mistakes.  Sometimes those mistakes hurt the people they love dearly.  If we are to have friends, we must remember the messy part of being human; and we must learn to forgive.

I have a feeling that these two will find their friendship again.  I have a feeling that once forgiveness is spoken, both of them will discover that their pain is lessened — and over time it will go away.  I will look in the mirror today and see my own small failings.  I will do this in practice for the times when my friends let me down.  It is inevitable.  We are human.  And being human can be a messy thing.

“It is a good idea to be alone in a garden at dawn or dark so that all its shy presence may haunt you and possess you in a reverie of suspended thought.”

– James Douglas

There is a sort of silence that speaks to your soul when you spend time alone in a garden at night.  Removing daylight from the scene transports us to a place that is invisible in the visible daytime world.  It is then that we use the eyes of our soul to truly see the splendor of the world around us.  There is something about the visual aspect of existence that calls us to catalog the differences between ourselves and the universe that contains us.  When we look with eyes that cannot see the physical world, we find ourselves in a universe that expands and calls us to break free of the container and find that we are part of it all.

As we replace the visual with scenes of the darkness, we find that we can see the aromas that rise from the earth and dance on the breeze from flowers and trees.  We can see the breeze as it swirls gently and kisses our face with gentle invisibility.  As the concrete world fades, we find that our thoughts evaporate into invisibility as well.  Soon they are swirling and dancing on the breeze, and we find that the flowers can see our aroma as we lose the containers that separate us and become a part of it all.

What a lovely backdrop for meditation.  What a lovely place to discover the limitless truth of our creation — that we are one with all that is — that we are not bound only by what we can see.  Dance in the darkness of a garden at night.  Feel the breeze blow through your mind and clear out the thoughts that set limitations.  Dance with the universe as you welcome the dawn.

“You must keep your mind on the objective, not on the obstacle.”

– William Randolph Hearst

“George, George, George of the Jungle…watch out for that tree!  OOF!”

Time after time, episode after episode, in spite of the musical warning, George would smack right into that tree!  That’s the way it is with obstacles — the more attention we give them, the more often they seem to get in our way.

Yesterday, I decided to paint a design on the skin of a frame drum I’ve had for a while.  I carefully drew the design in pencil, chose a fine brush, and sat down to fill the design with black paint.  As I worked, I thought of how the folks who create such Kanji symbols do it effortlessly with ink and a brush; yet here I was, outlining the edge with one bristle at a time.  I missed the boundary; and while the paint was still wet, I used my fingernail to scrape it away and allow me a second try.  With my brush all prepared — filled with paint and shaped to a delicate point, I set it down again and made the same mistake.  After several attempts that ended in the same way, I realized what was happening.  George of the Jungle was hitting that tree!  I had become so ensnared in my past mistake and so focused on the space outside of my line that I was putting the paint in the place that held my thoughts.  I had forgotten my objective of creating a nice, clean line.

As soon as I shifted my focus and pictured the completed brush stroke creating the line I had planned, I was able to achieve my goal.  This is a lesson I learn time after time, whether I am painting or working toward an objective.  Too often we become so attentive to solving a problem that it becomes the only thing we can see.  When we give all of our energy to the obstacle that stands in our way, we can become mired down in a place where we run ito it over and over again rather than moving beyond it.

If George of the Jungle had been less worried about the tree, he might have been able to focus on the empty space next to it.  As soon as I thought of my paintbrush filling the area I wanted to paint, as soon as I left the memory of my own mistake behind me, I was able to achieve my goal.  Objectives and obstacles go hand in hand.  What is important is to remember where our focus should be.

George, George, George of the Jungle…watch out for that way around the tree!  And keep on swinging!

“Shrinking away from death is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose.”

– Carl Gustav Jung

What was that country song?  ”I went sky diving; I went Rocky Mountain climbing…live like you are dying.”  This past year has been one where many friends have been touched by loss.  I suppose the fact that I am not as young as I used to be might factor into this phenomenon.  As we age, we find that we are confronted with our mortality more and more often.  Death no longer is some mythological creature that lurks in the shadows of the future.  Instead, we become aware that Death is a traveling companion who shares the road with us and one day will overtake us.

It may sound a bit backward, but I have discovered that the people who seem to live life most fully are those who embrace the awareness that one day they, too, will die.  When I was young, I would run from any talk about dying.  I remember crying bitter tears when my elderly great-aunt would say, “you know, I won’t live forever.”  ”No!” I would shout through my sobs, “you’re never going to die!”  But, of course, she did.  When I look back on our time together, I am thankful that she said those difficult words at a time when I could not accept them.  The memory of my own reaction and her matter-of-fact attitude comes together with the experiences of my own life and shows me that ignoring our mortality does not make us live longer or better lives.  Instead, it can create a sort of indifference about the value of our existence that makes us lazy about the way we use our days.

Have you ever met someone who had a terminal disease?  Have you noticed the passion with which they choose to live the shortened life they still possess?  Country songs tell us to live like we are dying.  Movies like the Bucket List portray people ramping up their desire to do all the things they have put off doing, just because there seemed to be no hurry.  Can you imagine how much more life we might live if we kept Death close and embraced his existence as our traveling companion?  Perhaps if we can accept our own mortality and look Death in the eye, we also can embrace what a gift it is to be alive.  Then, perhaps, we will live each day completely and not waste a minute.  It is through overcoming our fear of dying that we also stop being afraid to live.  Today we are given 86,400 minutes to be alive.  What do you plan to do with yours?

“When I tell any truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those who do.”

– William Blake

Do you speak your truth?

I am not talking about being truthful rather than telling a lie.  Telling the truth and speaking one’s truth are related, I suppose, but they are very different concepts.  Most of us strive to give a truthful answer when we are asked a question.  We learn from a very early age that telling the truth to others makes us trustworthy in their eyes; and if we are to interact with other people, we need to have relationships that are built on trust.  This makes truth-telling both admirable and desirable.

What about speaking your truth?  I think that truth-telling is sort of a warm-up for truth-speaking.  Truth-telling has to do with the way we relate to other people.  Truth-speaking is all about the way we relate to ourselves.  With other people, we can rely on feedback when we speak.  This helps us to understand the way our words impact others; but sometimes it is exactly this feedback that limits us from speaking our personal truth.  We don’t want to offend someone with a differing view.  We don’t want to be seen as odd or different from our peers.  We learn from a very early age to temper our own truth in order to assure that we will be accepted by other people.

Blake’s view of speaking truth offers us encouragement to stop back-pedaling from our own truth in order to avoid being seen as different.  When we speak our truth, simply because it is true and not to convince anyone else to agree with us, we free both ourselves and others from the need to compete for the best version of the truth.  We learn to coexist and to listen better when others speak their truths as well.  Most importantly, when our truth touches the truthful spot in another person, we find that each of us is encouraged to embrace what we know to be true.  Let’s all be truthful — to others and to ourselves.  Truly, it will set us free.