The Joy of Health - some soul food for my day

The Joy of Health
“Love is the only requirement for light.” JOH, 41

“A soul that focuses on love, loves all including self. It knows no other way. Darkness has not entered its kingdom. It cannot know fear.” (41)JOH

“Traveling through life as an enlightened soul requires that we continually seek our individual balance. That balance is not OUT THERE floating in the Universe, it is within the total self of US as Earth creatures.” (149)JOH

Love sees energy. It is the mind that sees the physical being of us.

Becoming Jane

My mother recommended the film to me -

The lush green grass, the crackle of shoe
weight over sticks in the woods,
the silvery sheen of water,
glittering moss, even the incandescence
of skin next to a hair brush-

Becoming Jane
is an ultimate grown-up tale-
mothers and daughters,
fathers, sons, choices- and my mother comes
to me as the pictures play on screen.

There is memory itself
playing on faces,
reliving young times of love,
days hastening into the cozy
dark of sleep, the joy and hesitation
of anticipation,
of what may come.

What is the pain of today,
knowing all is love?
Today my father, mother gasp for breath,
struggle, and we remember,
Love is what we know,
what sustains us.

The credits roll.

*******
Chris Docker review of the film

"Firstly be warned. If you are expecting a nice feel-good movie, don't bother. This made me thoroughly miserable. Not just because a poignant lonely destiny is too much to bear, but because it's a wasted opportunity to bring a great life to the screen. Our ultimate theme Austen's writing, yet we see little to convince that this bland and photogenic girl has much between the ears. In Devil Wears Prada, an outstanding script enabled Hathaway to suggest hidden brainpower. In Becoming Jane, the occasionally erudite lines sound leaden and false. Her body language, meant to portray a rebel, seems a bit anachronistic. Although she looks quite resplendent, dashing across the hills in a billowing red dress to watch the lads skinny-dipping, the film is a sad disappointment in the development of Hathaway's otherwise promising career. Kate Winslet or Natalie Portman (who were apparently also considered for the role) might well have fared better: they have a depth and experience that could perhaps have compensated for such a clunky script. Maggie Smith and other strong actors are reduced to ciphers and little more than icing on a badly made cake.On the other hand, James McAvoy (fresh from The Last King of Scotland) is a revelation. In what seems like a flash of brilliance in the generally myopic casting, he shines in every scene. A talented actor, he also brings his skills in boxing and sport to imbue Lefroy with vibrancy and charisma. It is when he works his seductive charms on Jane that he also brings out the best in his co-star. After her first adult kiss, Jane trembles, wondering if she has done it well. Hathaway does gooey-eyed emotion much better than persuading us she is a genius about to happen. The film gathers pace as we are drawn into an emotional cat and mouse. Jane's 'experience of the heart' that will inspire her, is the one of the best things about the film, second only to the large and constantly moist dollops of budget-saving Irish countryside."

True Beauty and Valentines

Happy Birthday, John!
Story People

“As we acknowledge the continuity of life and living, we begin to see a bigger picture of our chosen reality going on within us and around us, which opens our mind to new forms of thinking and being.” (Kathy Oddenino, Feb. 10 seminar, 23)

This morning I felt energized after a bit of a slow start. When I woke up first, I felt a little low, tired, then I began to read the handout from Kathy's Sunday seminar on Hidden Memory as Cellular Memory. I had been up late, after rushing home to a new writer’s group meeting this time at my house. The rain was slanting, turning some into sleet, so street and car lights were bright, scattered reflections. Three of us talked, read poems, and when the others left, my mind was busy with phrases from the poems, images of Amy Winehouse, her knees knocking, those Cleopatra eyes and tattoos, a little girl and her princess. I’d been thinking a lot about Robert Oppenheimer, and the awful bloom of the atomic bomb. Before I went to sleep I thought more about cellular memories, and how the rain lingered, how the firewood held it and gave it off.

In the morning when I began to read the handout, I began to think about what it means to “streamline” ourselves. (“The more we expand our thinking mind, the easier it is for us to ‘streamline’ our physical self.” 23) I read about how our thinking mind, loving emotions, and Spirit senses that we use every day are the essence of us and the true beauty of who we are. I read about how once we begin to understand our eternal pattern of hidden memories, we will trust ourselves to look within our hidden memories to find the answer that we have been searching externally to find, and how our hidden memories become more valuable as we store our memories of truth.

As I got ready for work, then drove the country roads into Siler City, I looked into the fog and saw craggy hollow trees, brown grass, and wisps of leaves on thin branches. Beauty lingered. During the day I felt the energy intensity of physical frustrations build, and at times that lingering sense of beauty, in the energy of the words I’d read and the images of the trees, came back to me. My building physical frustration was palpable, and I felt its sharpness in my voice, in my chest. Impatience hurts.

Then, some moments are especially memorable as truth. Here is a trinity for today:

Later in the day I called my Dad to give him some travel details, and his voice was welcoming. As he mentioned my mother’s “hard time,” he told me he had bought her a Valentine’s card, and a box of (16) chocolates with cherries inside. As he read the card to me, I cried and told him how beautiful it was. The words were all love, how his promise is to be there for her, to kiss her hello each time he sees her. She’s a wonderful woman, he said, and I want her to know. I agreed. (It doesn't matter that she doesn't like chocolate-covered cherries, and that he returned the candy.:)

Once this afternoon another friend and fellow student called to say, in her loveliest voice, I realized your book is my Valentine! (She bought my book a few days ago.) It’s about love, about memories, about change, she said, and it has a lot of red on the cover. She chuckled, and I felt our smiles.

As I listened to Kathy speak with a client as her client got ready to leave, I heard the love stream in the air, wisps of it as permeable as the beauty of the fog I’d seen in the morning trees. I felt the effects within the client/friend, the way the energy all around was smoothed the way a mother might smooth a child in, under covers, before light’s out for sleep. I felt my own heart energy change, my own ruffles smooth away.

I looked at my list of things-to-do, and I let the air out of them, for a few moments. I felt my cells expand, breathe, and I let my mind go, from its desert trails to the winding streams to the beautiful grey fog and how it wraps the trees. I felt the eggs of my thoughts incubating, remembered the tiny bird’s nest a friend brought me, Must be a hummingbird, another said.

Truth is the essence of knowledge, I read. This is why the love I feel, that I recognize, permeates me, my cellular being, softens the edges, as I remember that I Am love, designed that way, to think and to remember. As energy, I remember, and sleep will help me dream myself awake for tomorrow, a new moment, day. Each cell has its own life. Imagine.

“Once we realize that we are eternal human beings as our internal Spiritual energy, with the power to create matter as a physical lifetime, we will understand how to heal ourselves and how to enjoy life as a true learning experience by living the Ethical Values of our Spirit Consciousness as our daily lifestyle.” (26)

Book Signing

Thursday, February 21, 7 p.m.Margaret Ellen Martin will discuss and sign Sensing Infinity: Finding the Love of My Life.

Market Street Books in Chapel Hill
Market Street Books at Arts & Letters Community Center is a a non-profit, full-service independent bookshop and arts-based community center, located in the Southern Village neighborhood of Chapel Hill. Our mission is to provide a destination for people who love books, theater, music, and art to come and hang out. Our motto is Contagious Creativity. Come in and experience the infectious ethusiasm and imaginative energy.

On The Outer Edge of Blooming

Ideas wake images up.
Images wake up ideas.
Dreams come alive.
Dreams do come true.

Roots need water.
Everywhere now is saturation,
except in the thirsty ground.

I remember the rich inky blackness
Of war, stamped seals of approval,
Signatures we all share.
After the bomb blew,
Who knew
What else would come true?

What would come of our destiny dreams
Some knew,
Others came to know,
As we do,
And Oppenheimer himself still
Staggers into sunlight
Wondering what happened,
Remembering, or searching for the names,
The faces, the reality of those he once knew
Those who have disappeared, now a different future.

Memory is faded,
A cloud of it,
But never truly gone-

After all, what does memory mean?
I pull a silk scrap from a drawer,
A piece given to me by a friend sewing cushions
For her handsome sons-
I thought you’d like it, she said, with a playful smile.
The cloth has a black dog on it
and pink and red designs, repeating black dots.
This silk scrap itself a sign
To simply bring a smile.

Don’t lament those long gone.
Go on, love. Love each precious One.
The energy of this scrap of cloud alone
shows me the eternal impact of what we do,
who we are, each one.
Each powerful light of thought, gift
scrap, also ripples, each touch,
A smile from eyes crinkled and dim and yet
Still somehow bright with light from within.

Dreams coming true
Wake me
As if I’d never been asleep,
And the thrill grows like a cloud
Loving the ground,
Wet steam, sun.