'Twas a Dark and Stormy Night

You know the times!  There are days (and nights) when we can't seem to connect with the higher good, when we're just putting one foot in front of the other, when surviving is all we can manage.  Where the hell is the Big Dude or higher power or universal intelligence or God or whatever?

What is it about the human condition that a sense of belonging or an awareness that we're connected comes and goes?  I guess if we were always connected, we'd have reached enlightenment which isn't entirely possible.  Even the Buddhists agree that the complete enlightenment of one can only exist with the enlightenment of all.  Some days that's comforting and other days, like today, it does nothing for me.

What's wrong with me today, I ask?  Maybe it's that I hate this computer which has Windows 10 and it just seems to have a mind of its own jumping around to pages I don't want and dumping things I do want.  It's like a metaphor for my life.  I set out to write something (have a good day) and the cursor has moved itself so that what I write is mushed into something else I was writing (my day takes an unexpected turn for the worse and another and another).  I end up in Adobe when I'm supposed to be in Word (end up tangled up in my mind when I want to be in my heart).  Maybe it's that I gently set a boundary for my housemate and, not being good at that, I now feel guilty and worried that I hurt her or that she's going to come home later to argue the point.  I hate confrontations!  Maybe it's that I've had a summer of catastrophes to my car, my budget, my body and so on; or, maybe it's that those things served to tweak the part of my mind that cries:  "What am I going to do--nobody has my back!"  That's the same part that yells:  "What am I going to do--my computer won't do what I want and I have no one to ask about it--Damn it!" Ultimately, that all means: "Where the heck is God?"

And so, I'd probably welcome an actual dark and stormy night. I'd worry about the power going out instead of whether I'm losing my mind.  I'd be looking for flashlights and batteries instead of looking for answers. I'm reminded suddenly of a Robert Frost poem. He wrote:

But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have seen me when I was taken and swept
And all but lost.

That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather. 

The "outer weather" is so much preferable to the dark and stormy "inner weather," isn't it?  Roxie

Me and My Neighbor

Did you ever wonder how the heck we're supposed to go about loving ourselves? I'm thinking abut Jesus' idea that we should love our neighbor as ourselves.  When I watch the news, I can't comprehend the horrific ways we treat our neighbors, but this morning I knew the answer:  We, humans, don't love ourselves.

The outside world mirrors the interior human condition; don't you think?  If I'm worried about the state of the world, perhaps I need to look at the state of Roxanne.  Have I treated myself well this day? Did I eat healthy food?  Did I exercise? Did I rest? Did I journal, meditate, and read for spiritual food?  Did I seek the love and companionship of friends?  The only question I can really ponder is not "Why is the world not at peace?"; it's "Am I at peace?"

I'm not.  I worry about my health.  I get totally frustrated in filling out insurance forms.  I cuss as the pen runs out of ink sending my dog cowering into her crate.  I grit my teeth when the toilet breaks down.  I suspect the worst when a friend doesn't call at the agreed upon time.  I yell at other drivers on my way to the grocery store where I roll my eyes when the person ahead of me has the dreaded coupons.  I'm almost never at peace.  Why should I expect it of the world?

Granted, I don't express my inner rage and fear with weapons of mass destruction and I rarely even use words to state anger at another person.  But, on a spiritual plane, this seems a difference in degree rather than kind.  My anger, however it is expressed, is THE ANGER,  My fear is THE FEAR.  Anger and fear fuel war and terrorism and domestic abuse.  The gun isn't in my hand; it's in my heart at times.

I read the following line somewhere and wrote it on my reminder board at home:  "I am my only project."  I'm thinking if we love ourselves, we love the world.  If we love ourselves, we make a deposit in the world love bank.  Which brings me back to the question of how I go about loving myself.  In a perfect world, I would have learned love from my family.  Many of us didn't learn it there.  My question to my readers is:  What do you do to love yourself?   Roxie