{Came to Believe}

“Look, I want to say, 
The worst thing you can imagine has already 
Zipped up its coat and is heading back 
Up the road to wherever it came from.” ― Tracy K. Smith

I've wanted to write about the journey of recovery for some time now and it's difficult to know where to begin. When this all started I was incredibly numb and confused. Naturally there was a period of denial than a slow understanding of what committing to this journey means. Never in my life have I had something so meaningful and challenging at the same time. I've always approached life with clear goals and steps to get there. Based on motivation and self-will. For things such as school, career and family it seemed to be working. Now I've been in a period of unrest since my divorce and anything but focused and clear. It's as if I'm a statue in one of God's snow globes...being shaken and turned around, snow flying in all directions. But I've never been more serene and peaceful. As the snow rests and I feel held in the Universe's hands, I know now that I'm on the right path. Those confusing years are settling... guiding me into a period of quiet discernment based on a healing, united soul guided by the hand of God (as I understand God).

{Blue}

“Happy. Just in my swim shorts, barefooted, wild-haired, in the red fire dark, singing, swigging wine, spitting, jumping, running—that's the way to live. All alone and free in the soft sands of the beach by the sigh of the sea out there, with the Ma-Wink fallopian virgin warm stars reflecting on the outer channel fluid belly waters. And if your cans are redhot and you can't hold them in your hands, just use good old railroad gloves, that's all.” ― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

{Growth.Healing}

“I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.” ― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

{A Prayer}

Refuse to fall down
If you cannot refuse to fall down,
refuse to stay down.
If you cannot refuse to stay down,
lift your heart toward heaven,
and like a hungry beggar,
ask that it be filled.

You may be pushed down.
You may be kept from rising.
But no one can keep you from lifting your heart
toward heaven
only you.
It is in the middle of misery
that so much becomes clear.
The one who says nothing good
came of this,
is not yet listening.
 ― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, The Faithful Gardener: A Wise Tale About That Which Can Never Die

{Harmony)

“Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.” ― Alan W. Watts

{Crowned}

"..I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself.
I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck..."
-Neil Gaiman

{To Have Without Holding}

Learning to love differently is hard,
love with the hands wide open, love
with the doors banging on their hinges,
the cupboard unlocked, the wind
roaring and whimpering in the rooms
 rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds
that thwack like rubber bands
in an open palm.

It hurts to love wide open
stretching the muscles that feel
as if they are made of wet plaster,
then of blunt knives, then
of sharp knives.

It hurts to thwart the reflexes
of grab, of clutch, to love and let
go again and again. It pesters to remember
the lover who is not in the bed,
to hold back what is owed to the work
that gutters like a candle in a cave
without air, to love consciously,
conscientiously, concretely, constructively.

I can't do it, you say it's killing
me, but you thrive, you glow
on the street like a neon raspberry,
You float and sail, a helium balloon
bright bachelor's buttons blue and
bobbing on the cold and hot winds of our breath,
as we make and unmake in passionate
diastole and systole the rhythm
of our unbound bonding, to have
and not to hold, to love
with minimized malice, hunger
and anger moment by moment balanced.”
 ― Marge Piercy

{New Horizon}

“Ya’ll, I know this world is far from perfect.
I am not the type to mistake a streetlight for the moon.
I know our wounds are deep as the Atlantic.
But every ocean has a shoreline and every shoreline has a tide that is constantly returning to wake the songbirds in our hands, to wake the music in our bones.”
-Andrea Gibson

I was able to attend a sunrise meeting on the beach last weekend. It was difficult to pay attention as my eyes were caught on the sun waking up over the ocean. It's the artist curse to attempt to capture the picture as seen in ones mind. These do no justice to Mother Nature masterpiece... I sat and contemplated grace. Energy swirled through and around me. It was a period of pure mindfulness. And I am again reminded of something bigger than myself, guiding my steps and coursing through my veins.