Big Spirit

Sometimes  I experience the sensation  of expansiveness.  It happens most often just as I am waking up or drifting off.  The best thing about this sensation is its optimism.  This sensation  tells me everything is as it should be.  It's all good.

I can describe it is as a pot boiling over.  I'm the pot and my spirit is the liquid inside the pot that expands until it can't be contained and starts to run over the edge.  When your kitchen pots are boiling over it's a sign that you're doing something wrong.  When your spirit wants to expand beyond the container of your body, it's a sign you are doing everything right.  Just let it go.

I'm  not sure if the sense of expansiveness is just my  spirit letting loose with its bad self,  or whether it is my portion of spirit joining with the mother spirit.  Whenever it happens I get a glimpse of the person I can be, that I truly am, without the shackles of my ego, fears, values and social  mores.  The real me is playful, fearless, loving and curious. The real me really loves you.  Even if you are being a bit of an asshole, I love you.  The real me can see the real you inside of there.  The real me knows the real you is being contained in this moment by all of your ego, fears, values and social mores.  The real me wants to hug you or wink  at you or tease you or give you whatever you need right now to let you know that everything is as it should be.  You are all good.  The real me trusts that when the situation is reversed, you will also love me.  Imagine if the real me and the real you busted out at the same time?  How great would that be?

The real me would like to invite the real you out to play.

Chicken  out

Nothing Left Undone

A couple of weeks ago I lent my Mother-in-law a book. It was A Paris Wife, by Paula McLain; a novel based on the first marriage of Ernest Hemingway to Hadley Richardson.  I had bought it  for myself and had already started  reading it but noticed when we saw her that she didn't have a book,  which was unusual. I thought she might like it and passed it on.  The timing seemed to be right.  She mentioned she had just finished a book.

She passed away yesterday.  It's funny, the small things that stick in your mind when a loved one passes. I'm thinking of that book sitting in her bag, maybe, or on her bedside table, waiting for her to come back and finish turning its pages.

The unread book led me to think of other things she might not have gotten to finish. Was there a card she wanted to send, a person she wanted to connect with, a song she would have liked to have heard one last time?  Was her last thought about something left undone?

I don't think so.  She took  her last breath bathed in love and surrounded by the family she nurtured. I think it was all she would have wanted.  Nothing was left undone.

Safe journey, E.  Thank you for being the mother you were, which allowed me to have the husband I have.

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
and rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

-an Irish prayer

Chicken out