COMFORT ~or~ CLARITY?

A key difference between myself & Mom was that where she sought comfort, I sought clarity.  Comfort was often buffered with soft-lens obfuscation, while clarity was often accompanied with discomfort, even pain.  Mom shunned disquieting clarity, while I flee from reality-fudging comfort.

Pretty interesting twosome for the Universe to pair up for almost 50 years.  Yet somehow we survived each other, even grew from the challenges presented by the other.  I was her goad to a more wholesome, accepting view of herself, while she provided the friction that turned into my current pearl of a life.  

an unexpected angel

 

As astonished as I am at how often dark forces rise up when my mind embraces important goals – the more important the goal, the more powerful the assault – am beyond astonished at how forces of light present themselves as protectors.  Often in unexpected guises, in unforeseeable manners.

Consider my current work as an elder care anarchist, a work I want to expand through  a much-talked-about, still-to-material crowd fund request seeking underwriting to attend as many 2015 conferences & workshops & classes as possible.  What happens before I get the request online?  WHAM!  Hit with two teeth that need surgical extraction – and not the two I expected.  Mere coincidence?  Experience tells me to think otherwise.  Divert offered funds from crucial work to attending to an all-too-temporary body.  I have no idea how all this will play out, but my clear life purpose will not be held hostage to a lump of quarks.  

Even more of a challenge is my inner struggle to get past the limiting behaviors that have been part  & parcel of my life.  It is easy to say they do not serve me, that I need to focus, to determine what I really want to do & pursue and what I really don’t want in my life & don’t do what welcomes it in.  But the doing, even doing something that feels my suppressed natural self?  Going against a lifetime of self-defeating behaviors demands  consistently taking best next steps.  Not a few, all of them.  It requires being completion focused.  

Was looking at my dental health & my own lack of focused oomph, when I was gifted with a guardian angel.  Literally.  I never met Cheryl Giobetti Hoffman, who died in August 2008.  She was just 54 years old.     

We connected through her daughter-in-law, the author, Chandra Kistner Hoffman.  Was it simply serendipity that lead me to a 2010 blog posting Chandra wrote about her mother-in-law?  I think not.   . 

 

Get chills that she issues a collection of flute & organ pieces titled Miracles - it so feels like her coming into my life at just this point in time is miraculous!

Blessing on all the forces that lead me to open that link.  It introduced me to a remarkable spirit who said what I deeply needed to hear someone say – GET OVER YOURSELF.  And rephrased something that’s been simply loitering on the edges of my intentions – The breeze at dawn has secrets to reveal.  Don’t go back to sleep.  That’s Rumi, but Chandra’s phrasing of Cheryl’s sage advice is as uplifting inspiring butt-kicking ~  you have to rise with the dawn chorus.

I was feeling low this afternoon, sapped.  My penicillin is running low, I barely have the money to cover x-rays, let alone the first of several costly dental procedures.   Monies diverted to something that is going to be stop-gap in the long run – we all go, some day – is money not used for what can be of long long lasting  use.  Then,  on a whim, I hit a highlighted name.  And everything shifted.  More to the point, a whole bunch of dangling loops suddenly tied themselves into a spectacular bow.  

It is beyond astonishing, how things mentioned in Chandra's post about the remarkable of Cheryl Gobbetti Hoffman speak to my deepest self.  From Get over yourself - so my core problem - to advising the best way to get things done is to get up early early (have known for  years that my best time for getting up is 5:30 a.m.), my day is ending on an unimaginable high note.  

The forces of darkness are always looking ways to distract & divert, but praise be for the more powerful power of light.   

 

 

unexpected best

 

What interesting sensations at the tag end of this holiday season.  In so many ways, it was our best yet.   

It was about as bare bones as we’ve ever been, with NO lights outside, with the house not at all in the order that I’d like (every time I cleared & cleaned, an avalanche of stuff seemed to resurge), with the Murphy village never set up or the ice cycles dangled from the upper edge of the living room wall.   

But the nativity was the first thing set up and Flipper is safely rescued from behind the china cabinet & ensconced in Santa’s sleigh, the table-top tree John gave me on our first Christmas is atop the book case (well out of reach of interested cats) & we made it to Tableaux as well as Christmas Day church service.   

Maybe it's as simple as realizing out Christmas was more Maud & Mischa Petersham, less Norman Rockwell.

 

It was certainly our best yet - OUR best, not necessarily anyone else's.  We spent Christmas Eve watching a marathon of Jack Benny and Ozzie & Harriet Christmas episodes, which lead to us sharing memories from our own early Christmases, his on Akron Street in Philadelphia & mine at the Lockharts' various Bryn Athyn homes.  We took a grannie client to another friend's house for Christmas Day breakfast, then escorted both to church.  Immediately after church, we were off to the cozy home of friends where we have been welcomed for Christmas dinner ever since Mom was reunited with her O! Best Beloved.  Christmas night - another marathon, this time of Beverly Hillbillies, Bob Cummings, Racket Squad & Annie Oakley Christmas shows!

We still await opening our own presents.  It became a tradition to hold off gift-giving until the new year back in the days that John had tight end-of-year deadlines for commercial clients.  This year, he has a very nice assignment, but without the stress.  Were supposed to be celebrating today, New Year's, but that didn't work out.  Sunday?

Am taken aback by how I am processing it.  It was our best, yet part of me feels like we did it wrong BECAUSE it was so laid back.  Peter & Mim were even part of it, at a safe (for all of us) but loving arm's length!  And there were all those marvelous photos of Riley to hold in my heart.  

Reminds me of how it felt when I discovered at literally the last moment that I couldn't go to my first workshop at Rowe - disappointed, but not crushed.  Felt strange, not feeling despondent, just regretful that it was the best course of action given our finances at the time.  

Feel sort of the same right now.  Experienced our best Christmas yet, but am weirdly  resisting savoring it, like enjoying a Christmas without all the trimmings of yesteryear is somehow wrong.  Interesting to experience, important to hold onto what is actual - that it suited us to our very core - rather than fall prey to ghosts of Christmases Past.