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SS

Stephanie Sugars
Welcome, dear friends and guests!

SS

The uninvited guest

Redtail Hawk - Kate Wolf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udRFQOsrjpU

xox

The guest is inside you, and also inside me ~ Kabir

xox

The drain is clogged again this morning.

I find myself receiving the uninvited guest - a watermelon belly pressing against the laptop computer. The fog outside my window wafts in lemon scent and I'm plunged into the moment again.

Yesterday, Judy made peach ice cream and we sat out by the pond with Pam and the grand sons feasting on the fruits of this season. So sweet, so tender, so ephemeral. The cool-warm breeze came to break the most recent heat wave. The phoebe darted from the willow, dragonflies floated by and the poplar trees flashed its leaves from across the water.

All is in summer color - the grass is golden and the valley oaks are a dusky green. Tomatoes and peaches claim the season, but other fruits and vegetables are noble too.

I'm uncertain what to do next.

It's the weekend.

The hospice doesn't have equipment to irrigate the drain. I have non-sterile irrigation equipment from last Thursday (was that really only two days ago?). Do I take matters into my own hands? Ask for help? Just take the drugs I've got for nausea and pain? Stop eating except for watermelon and ginger-lemon ice?

My Circle of Care meets this afternoon and I'm so grateful I can lean into their wisdom, but doubt anyone else has any easy answers.

Love - it's the simple but not easy solution to insoluble situations.

sending much love, friends! ~ Stephanie

FOR A FRIEND ON THE ARRIVAL OF ILLNESS

John O'Donohue

Now is the time of dark invitation

Beyond a frontier that you did not expect;

Abruptly, your old life seems distant.


You barely noticed how each day opened

A path through fields never questioned,

Yet expected deep down to hold treasure.


Now your time on earth becomes full of threat;

Before your eyes your future shrinks.


You lived absorbed in the day to day,

So continuous with everything around you,

That you could forget you were separate;


Now this dark companion has come between you,

Distances have opened in your eyes,

You feel that against your will

A stranger has married your heart.


Nothing before has made you

Feel so isolated and lost.


When the reverberations of shock subside in you,

May grace come to restore you to balance.


May it shape a new space in your heart

To embrace this illness as a teacher

Who has come to open your life to new worlds.


May you find in yourself

A courageous hospitality

Towards what is difficult,

Painful and unknown.


May you use this illness

As a lantern to illuminate

The new qualities that will emerge in you.


May the fragile harvesting of this slow light

Help you to release whatever has become false in you.

May you trust this light to clear a path

Through all the fog of old unease and anxiety

Until you feel arising within you a tranquility

Profound enough to call the storm to stillness.


May you find the wisdom to listen to your illness:

Ask it why it came. Why it chose your friendship.

Where it wants to take you. What it wants you to know.

What quality of space it wants to create in you.

What you need to learn to become more fully yourself

That your presence may shine in the world.


May you keep faith with your body,

Learning to see it as a holy sanctuary

Which can bring this night-wound gradually

Towards the healing and freedom of dawn.


May you be granted the courage and vision

To work through passivity and self-pity,

To see the beauty you can harvest

From the riches of this dark invitation.


May you learn to receive it graciously,

And promise to learn swiftly

That it may leave you newborn,

Willing to dedicate your time to birth.


Listen here:

http://canadapodcasts.ca/podcasts/OnBeingWith/3325429

xox

Willingness implies a surrendering of one's self-separateness, an entering-into, an immersion in the deepest processes of life itself. It is a realization that one already is a part of some ultimate cosmic process and it is a commitment to participation in that process. In contrast, willfulness is a setting of oneself apart from the fundamental essence of life in an attempt to master, direct, control, or otherwise manipulate existence. More simply, willingness is saying yes to the mystery of being alive in each moment. Willfulness is saying no, or perhaps more commonly, "Yes, but. . . ."

Gerald G. May, Will and Spirit: A Contemplative Psychology (HarperSanFrancisco: 1982)

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