New year’s resolution…

I love it when people share their dreams with me…

And because I have an ego I especially like it when I’m in the dream and I show up at the door in bare feet,

wrapped in an old blanket…

Handing over, not a fertility amulet or a ritual doll…

but something innocuous…

Then the blanket falls away…

like a curtain…

and I am standing there in my New Year’s underwear…

Not a thong… and pasties…

but real lingerie…

the French kind…

All laced up…

in red velvet…

I have no idea what this means because it wasn’t my dream and I refuse to participate in the arrogance of interpreting the symbols of someone else’s dream…

but I am grateful to Prudence for sharing a piece of her individual story, of which I am clearly a part of…

It is important to remember that women, men, and children were, and continue to be persecuted for their process and acts of creativity…

Burned as witches…

and locked up in madhouses…

along with their wisdom…

Niki de Saint Phalle created The Tarot Garden in Tuscany as an homage to women, who over so many centuries were not allowed to create…

I didn’t know anything about her, and her philosophy, until yesterday… [http://www.nikidesaintphalle.com/]

but when I was high school I wore her trademark perfume…

because I liked the smell of her philosophy…

 

Last night, an inquiry was made into New Years resolutions…

I started writing one yesterday but it hadn’t fully come into focus…

In music, resolution is the progression of a voice part or of the harmony as a whole from a dissonance to a consonance…

Sometimes it takes a while for the words to flesh out the pictures I feel in my body…

and vice versa..

But this is how it started…

Something like…

imagine if we set out with all intents and purposes…

to grow soul…

and if we made it our individual and collective mission to guide everything we think, feel, or do for the sole purpose of evolving group consciousness…

so that every time we look at, or think of someone or something, we do it with the best good in mind…

A few years ago, I wrote an essay titled Growing Soft Hearts on the Narrow Ridge… 

Gordon Neufeld talks about growing soft hearts…

and Martin Buber writes about the narrow ridge…

Imagine that as you walk through life you are balancing on a ridge with a sheer rock face dropping off either side…

and that you must find a way of holding every person you meet and pass on the ridge…

meeting and passing so that each person can continue on their way…

with no one being pushed off into the chasm on either side…

This is something you should definitely try at home…

The professor  marking the essay wanted to know what definition of soul I was working with…

in my paper…

This question misses the point…

 

I’ve heard it said that the people we meet and connect with in mid-life become our family in our next life…

and that our family in this life become our childhood friends in our next life…

I don’t know if this is true but I put the information in my time machine…

I look at strangers as angels, and messengers… 

and life as a fairy tale…

With twists and turns and tests…

adventure…

dark corners, and blazing light…

A medical resolution is the reduction or disappearance  of a swelling or inflammation without suppuration…

I’ve always had an aversion to negativity…

and pus…

as I was growing up in it…

I noticed a huge difference when I moved from the first school I worked at, to the one I stayed at for thirteen years…

a difference in the way teachers talked about children…

I often remarked upon that in the staff room…

as I cultivated professional collegiality…

without a formal title of leadership…

Awareness of negativity can begin with awareness of how it feels in your body…

it closes around your throat…

sits like rocks in your stomach…

weighs like an anvil on your chest… 

burns like bile in your esophagus…

But that’s personal…

Purifying your system of negatrivia takes daily practice…

and commitment…

Resolution… resolve… determination… perseverance… tenacity… strength… fortitude…

This year I am going to sing the song that I have come hear to sing…

a little louder…

without fear…

or hesitation…

because I know that there are enough people ready to hear it…

and more are on their way…

Do you spend any time listening for the song that you have come here to sing???

Once you open up space for listening…

by creating silence…

and healing wounds…

the song begins to sound…

You don’t necessarily have to leave home to hear it…

it could be waiting across the street from your house…

with the heart of a voyageur…