One of my favorite things about spring/summer are fireflies, and I saw my first ones a few nights ago. I knew them growing up, when my father/mother/daughter family spent a couple of weeks with another such family up in northern MN, fishing, and then they disappeared from my life as it became much more urban-focused. Eventually a friend moved to the country, and I re-encountered them when I went for summer visits, but it wasn’t until I moved to N.C. 10 years ago that they became such a large part of my spring/summer consciousness. I had an especially meaningful experience with them a few years ago when, unable to sleep, I got up around 3am and went into the kitchen, which had a sliding glass door to the deck. And there, on the deck, were about 20 fireflies which, as I watched, settled into a perfect circle on the deck floor and just lay there, blinking, until dawn. I had never seen such behavior, and to this day don’t know what it meant, except that I felt very connected to these creatures, and filled with a silent joy which arises again each spring with the first sighting.

Today I went to a friend’s 60th birthday party and discovered it was, primarily, an ecstatic performance, by her, of some dance/story/sign language pieces which she offered to us, her friends. It was delightful to see such an expression of joy in her and in us. May we all express ourselves with such joy and abandon in our own lives.

“Radically new or innovative; outside or beyond established procedure, principles, etc.: a revolutionary discovery.” dictionary.com
“Does a man become a revolutionary out of the belief he’s entitled to joy rather than submission?” Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna
I had never thought of myself as a revolutionary before reading The Lacuna; idealist, perhaps, but never a revolutionary. But if entitlement to joy is a benchmark, then I am, indeed, a revolutionary, albeit a fairly quiet one. I don’t pick up arms, or even a megaphone but, at times, the quill. Or, just as likely, I quietly practice tonglen (a Buddhist breathing practice of breathing in pain and suffering, your own or someone else’s, and breathing out/sharing joy, delight, peace, etc.). I gave up my license to practice psychology because the methodology and bureaucracy no longer afforded joy to me or my clients; now I practice coaching people on how to experience more joy in their lives. Never mind previous life experiences—find joy in the moment, in the NOW, and the rest of it falls away, at least for as long as you maintain the practice. As w;ith any such practice, you simply keep coming back to it, without judgment about how easily you fall out of it. Even sitting here in McDonald’s, when I look for joy within myself, I find it. And then it appears without, in the delighted voices of some children who just entered. Squeals of delight; ignited by me creating my own reality? Who can say.

I first came across sloughs in my mid-thirties as I travelled around northern California; ;these small, muddy areas were often labelled with signs which simply read “SLOUGH.” (According to an online dictionary, a slough is “an area of soft, muddy ground; swamp or swamplike region.”) For some reason, I began calling my moments of despair the “slough of despond” which, whenever I thought of it, tended t pull me immediately out of the despair into a lighter state; in fact, it often got me laughing out loud because of how ridiculous it sounded. It occurs to me now that this was an interesting intuitive understanding on my part, as sloughs are exactly the kind of murky “shadow” realm whiere one is likely to find gold and pearls. What do you find in your “slough of despond” when you look more deeply?

On the drive into town this morning I heard a the Bach Cello Suite #1 in G by Yo Yo Ma, and I was reminded of the first time I ever heard him play this piece. It was part of a program which aired on PBS called The Music Garden, about an imagined music garden in the middle of Boston where, instead of Muzak, ou would encounter various pieces of classical music, each evoking or heightening a different mood, as you strolled through the garden. It reminds me of the beauty of the labyrinth.

Yo Yo Ma playing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZn_VBgkPNY
A link to the makers of the film: http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/mgd.html

The Packers had won, there were beautiful, light flurries coming out of the mountains, and a bassoon concerto was playing on the radio; what could be better?

There was nothing I could have done differently; one moment the dog wasn’t there, the next he/she was. A man in a truck stopped and confirmed that for me, so why did I feel so awful? He tried to comfort me by saying, “I just read in Scripture yesterday that dogs and other animlas have no Spirit; they just go back to the Earth” If I believed that, then I would experience far less joy in life than I do, but I didn’t tell him that; I just thanked him for stopping and drove away. What gave me a glimmer of some comfort was something Abraham said about animals sometimes jumping in front of cars in order to drop their old bodies and move on to something new. Interestingly, when I replay the moment over in my mind’s eye, what I see is a dog dancing in front of my car just before I hit him/her. Dancing. It reminds me of a friend who died of a massive heart attack while dancing. He simply sat down with a big grin on his face and left. If I can believe Abraham, then I can only hope that I can leave this life dancing like my friend and the dog; please let me be that awake, and that joyful.

I was driving home from work, developing a plan for telling my roommate that our arrangement wasn’t working for me. (My recent trip to WI for Thanksgiving helped me clarify that I either want to live alone or else in a situation of a certain level of sharing—including an occasional meal which we co-create.) So I arrived home and my roommate came out of her room to announce that she was moving out. . .tomorrow! Well, the part of me that is concerned about money freaked out, but then I told myself (as I had on my recent trip) to relax/breathe/trust. I went back and forth between freaking and trust a few times before I actually began settling into something closer to excitement; yes, excitement about the possibilities. (Of using the second bedroom as a real studio, or perhaps a friend who is coming for solstice and will now have an actual bedroom to stay in might decided to move in for a while; the possibilities keep growing!) And then I went online to check/send some emails, and there were two, count them, two, with offers of money!

It began with a late afternoon car ride down to Charlotte. As I approached the city, traffic came to a near standstill and I began calculating how much time I had left to get to my flight; if we continued at our current pace, I would miss it for sure. “Let go, relax, and trust,” said my inner voice, and within moments we were moving swiftly. As I approached the extended stay parking area, I was informed that my usual lots (1,2, and 3, which charge $4/day) were closed. Now what? I could feel panic rising up. “Let go, relax, and trust,” came again, and then there was a sign which directed me to lot #4, where I was charged a mere $10 for the entire 10 days I would be gone. At the terminal, I put my bag on the scale and watched the numbers climb: 25, 33, 38, 47. . . 50! I breathed a sigh of relief and headed to my gate, where I sat as our boarding time came and went, then our flight time came and went. I only had 55 minutes between touchdown and take off in Detroit, and I usually had to go from 1 concourse to another.. “Let go, relax, and trust.” I have a pass to the Sky Club; I’ll have food, drink, and a comfy place to sleep if necessary. When I deplaned, I discovered that my next flight was just finishing boarding at the very next gate. During both flights, I had free wifi, so I was able to handle those last minute e-mails I hadn’t gotten to at home. I landed in Madison and was taken to my friends’ house where the Nutcracker Sweet tea I had asked for was waiting for me. “A client just happened to gift me with me it, so I didn’t have to buy it,” she said, smiling. And the magic, and gratitude, just keep coming, including the sighting of a pair of bald eagles just a few hundred feet from me. I hope you all had as magical a Thanksgiving as I and my friends did.

I was wanting some small pine cones to put into my potpourri jars and let several of my friends know about it, but no one was coming up with anything. Then, on a warm day in November my cat, Clive, begged me to come out and be with him on the front porch. Like him, I lay on my back and looked up—to see the tree above me laden with the very pine cones I was wanting.