A necessary part of the journey home.

“This is my life. It belongs to love. This is my love; it belongs to life.”

Yes, those are the words that came to me this morning. Woke up with a slight neck ache. Decided to give myself over to love today. Not trying to work, not trying to get organized, not trying to do anything. Being doesn’t try. Being is what breaks through trying!

Yesterday an old friend from a past life got in touch with me via email. I realized how far I have come. I have journeyed from the intellect to the heart. Now I must trust the journey. I often don’t. I find myself back in my headbone wrasslin’ with the alligators in the swamp of thought.

This old friend said to me simply and honestly that he loved me. His exact words were, “I can say I love you and I am sure you understand.” He allowed me to look into the mirror of myself and see only love. It’s that simple and that rare.

Love is awareness and awareness is love. Never think they are separate. Neither has our name on it, for names and forms melt away in this state. It’s like buttah….

This is my life. It belongs to love. This is my love; it belongs to life.~Vicki Woodyard

“Take on a big project, like Noah.” ~Rumi

I have been having an ongoing conversation with a wonderful woman with ovarian cancer. We email daily, both of us sharing the reality of living/having lived with cancer—me as a caregiver, she as a patient/survivor. Our conversations might be called big projects. Why? Because when we talk, we ignore the cancer so as to engage the shamanic qualities of our friendship.

She has recently come to the realization that she is a natural shaman. Her gifts have healed me in small ways, which is what a big project does. Big projects, as I see them, involve living out our unique visions in as many small ways as we can. The small becomes the big. And so we weave emails through our daily lives.

When I had some rooms in my house painted last spring, she dreamed about it. So did I. So when David came to paint, we both “knew” him from our dreams. Oh, not right away, for dreams are always mysterious. The interesting thing is that David recognized me! Within the first half hour we were sitting in silence together. The magic was happening.

I believe that David and I have known each other for lifetimes, so our friendship may be what you call a “big project.” Certainly Betty and I are weaving an email tapestry that is proving to be a beautiful thing. We have both been through the eye of the needle countless times, over and over and over again. She is teaching me to trust myself more and more fully. I am not sure what I am teaching her, but something is being transmitted.

My writing is a big project. It is a daily dose of both being and doing for me. Vitamin E(ssay) kicks off my day. It revitalizes me and shapes my life into an ark. So there I have found the thread weaving these words together.

“The Ark is ready.
The wind is favouring.
The sea is calm.
So taught I Noah.
So I teach you.

God is your captain, sail, my Ark!”
~The Book of Mirdad, Mikhail Naimy

Thought for the Day:

Accept yourself
so deeply
that you are not afraid to let go
of what is not you.
 
Ivan M. Granger

“I have let go of what is not me. Therefore, I have nothing.” Oh, how I wish I could live up to that statement. Unfortunately, I am like Maxine, a cranky old broad on the spiritual path. “I am that” could be pointing to her! I call the first two months of the year Janu-weary and Febu-ugly. And they can be interchanged—fancy that! Janu-ugly and Febu-weary. In these months I do nothing more than regret what I have just done. For I find myself indulging in eating stale cookies, leftovers of any description and heaps of anything that happens to be called “food.”

Yesterday I had cabin fever. I drug myself to Macy’s and found myself in the Shoe Department. (Remember yourself, always and everywhere, especially in the Shoe Department). The sales clerk was friendly and a blonde woman visiting from Florida and I were both looking at boots. I am not a boot person, frankly, but I get desperate in January. Soon my new friend was telling me how cute such and such a pair of boots were. She bought a pair and left and I found myself buying TWO. Once home, I emerged from the Dream of Boots. I will return them tomorrow.

What does this have to do with spirituality? Nothing. This is exactly what qualifies me to be a spiritual writer. Um hum, you may be saying. She wrote a BOOK about spirituality. Hmmmph. Don’t guess I’ll read that! I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t read it either. I don’t care how spiritual you are, women should never wander in the shoe department because they are bored. For you true spiritual students reading this, I will throw you a crumb. Vernon Howard had a reason for calling it the Malicious Mall. Now leave me alone or I will throw a boot at you! And another one to boot 🙂

hardscrabble [ˈhɑːdˌskræbəl]
n US informal
1. (modifier) (of a place) difficult to make a living in; barren
great effort made in the face of difficulties

I don’t know if you have heard the expression “hardscrabble” before, so I posted one definition of it. As I sat in silence this morning, this is the essay that arose and said “Write me.” I am offering you essays grown on hardscrabble ground. The words fall onto a soil that is barren. What does manage to poke up through the ground is the truth of life. It is persistent and when you try to uproot it, you find that it is not so easy to do. The Word takes root in barren places. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of the death.” That kind of place.

Bob said to me, “Find your passion before I die.” The linoleum of a hospital is hardscrabble ground. IV stands, rubber-soled nursing shoes, gurney wheels—none of them conducive to growing good crops. He must have known that I had a future as a writer. Not one that would appear in public or be visible, but one that would take root in hardscrabble and thrive.

You have your own hardscrabble ground. What are you doing with it? Your own losses and heartaches, your very real fear of death, your panic over being able to “be strong enough.” I certainly had that one. “My strength is made perfect in weakness.” My weakness was so overpowering that God took root in my words. I can say with certainty that my essays are medicinal for some of you. God has shown me when to poke you and say “Stand up straighter” and when to pat you and say “There, there.” For that is how I write. This delicate southern belle with a spine of steel will not give up. If I did, the hardscrabble would have won. And we don’t want that.

Everything is spun from the concept of “I am.” I used to have recurring dreams of pulling a tensile substance from my mouth and not being able to get rid of it. Recently it has become just a thin gelatinous strip stuck to my palate. The best form of the dream came when the substance was pure gold and spun itself into a city where a prince and princess married and they were spun with gold. This is the “I am” going from the unconscious to the conscious—a long, long journey.

Life is arduous and alchemical. If you think it isn’t, you have been listening to the wrong teachers. Those who would gather folks round them in satsang only to simplify the suffering are doing no one a favor. My own teacher pushed us deeper and deeper in to the swamp so we would KNOW we could never get out by taking thought.

He held out the promise of “I am” but never described it. What he did describe was what was spun from the concept of it. He made sure that our lessons were learned from the gutter up. I always felt like a bum on skid row when I came to his classes. One man described it as “having to lug all your junk through the airport X-ray machine.” Everyone sat there squirming in anticipation of Vernon Howard lowering the boom.

At a time when my son and I were having issues and I was in full attack mode, Vernon gave a scathing talk about a prisoner taunting a child when he was in the yard and the child walked by. “He has to return to his cell every night!” yelled Vernon. My attitude turned on a dime. I returned home chastened and straightened out. Why? Because every negativity hurled at anyone else returns you to your very own prison cell. He used to remind us that we can’t set our neighbor’s house on fire without first burning ourselves. It all comes down to “I am.” Do we say it consciously or unconsciously? That is the question a good teacher raises.

Bernard Guy’s review of Vicki Woodyard’s LIFE WITH A HOLE IN IT: That’s How The Light Gets In.

“I’ve read quite a bit in this lifetime. Books of all kinds. Yet I never came across one that weaves things the way Vicki Woodyard’s “Life With A Hole In It” does.

It’s no small feat. It integrates seamlessly a profound humanity, a true spirituality and a penetrating and delightful humor, written in a unique creative style. There’s no splitting the one reality here into good and bad, right and wrong, sacred and mundane and such. The whole of human life is taken in its stride —its flowers and thorns, its days and nights, its strengths and frailties, its crucifixions and resurrections.

Vicki Woodyard knows them well. When it rains, it pours? As it goes. God is generosity. So it pelted down on her hard enough. The beauty is how she was given to turn what she went through into food for the soul, into pathways to the Kingdom. Oysters turn into pearls, coal into diamonds, lead into gold. She shares with us her journey with a broken-open moving sincerity, with insightful intelligence and gracefulness. And humility —not the false kind, but the kind that makes one stronger, the more one’s giving in to human vulnerability.

“Life With A Hole In It – That’s How The Light Gets In.” Picture for a moment all things as windows, each thing as a hole —a Holy Hole— through which an inexhaustible mystery pierces and peers through. Vicki Woodyard is one of them. That’s how the light gets in. This book is a fine wine of a read for all lovers of life and truth.

Thank you, Vicki”

Please order the book!

Silliness is good for the soul. I learned that when my daughter was dying. She had just turned four, was a patient at St. Jude’s. A broken heart needs laughter, a tourniquet of giggles, a cascade of courageous chuckles. Children know this.

My Laurie needed laughter; she lay in bed facing chemo, facing being bald, facing three years of radical attempts to save her life. Some of the strongest chemo available; it left her vomiting for hours in the middle of the night. Three surgeries, two years of chemo and a final round of radiation.

When she was bald, I told her I hoped her hair didn’t grow back in like Phyllis Diller’s. We told riddles and jokes. We watched The Brady Bunch. She sat on my lap and we rocked and rocked and rocked. This is not easy to write. She is with me, though. Lately people are intent on telling me that. She is brave and strong now; she was then.

I kept writing jokes the whole time she was ill. I heard Joan Rivers and Phyllis Diller use them on the air. They paid me next to nothing. It didn’t matter; I knew I must be good for them to be buying my material.

She has been gone for many years, but not really. I am sure she loves Swami Z and the gang. She always wants me to be happy and I really try. But some days I fall down on the job. I always get back up, though. I learned that from her.

Vicki Woodyard

Consider ordering LIFE WITH A HOLE IN IT. Her spirit is in it. We need to give it the wings to fly. Just click on the book image to the right of the page. Or donate to keep the site going in her memory and her father’s. They are the wind beneath MY wings.

I am waiting to rise from my January rut. Currently I am experiencing low energy and the blahs. I took a long walk, but found myself eating way too much chocolate all during the day. Last night I had a typical “lost in life” dream. I am sure you have them as well; you find yourself trying to get back home and running into obstacle after obstacle. In other words, the story of awakening to one’s true nature.

I have spent much of my life healing from grief; I know the terrain. Can trace it in my sleep and sometimes do. There is the crucifixion road, Calvary and the stone in front of the tomb. As Maya Angelou says, “And still I rise.” That’s me. Up each morning in spite of it all. Knowing without a shadow of a doubt that nothing changes until consciousness changes. Knowing that Rome was not built in a day and I prefer it to be.

I think my sense of hurry arises because of a father with an explosive temper. I failed to work a combination lock and he unleashed a torrent of words on me. I forgot to bring the milk in (in those days milk was delivered.) I had minor surgery and forgot to tell him I had prescriptions to pick up before he drove me home. He blew up in my pale and shaking face. All my life I have done things rapidly. Inwardly there is freedom, just out of reach of him. I have forgiven him. I also stand in need of forgiveness as a parent. We are all flawed. As someone said as she was folding pants at a New Life yard sale, “We are the fallen people.” If we do not know that, we will never come to self-forgiveness.

As I work my way through my life lessons, if I am lucky I stop and remember myself. For this I owe Mr. Gurdjieff a debt of gratitude. “Remember yourself always and everywhere.” I owe a bigger one to Vernon Howard, who came to me in dreams, as he did to his other students. He said to me in one, “Don’t be so accommodating. Act a little tough.” That is a puzzlement and a life plan. Why? Because it brings a good deal of guilt with it. And as he said, “Guilt is a useless emotion.” So I continue to work on myself. Watching my fall into the rut, my attempts to climb out, my failure to remember myself and the accompanying guilt. We are all in the same boat. We might as paddle in the same direction. The Jesus prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me, a sinner.” We owe those who have gone before us. We stand on the shoulders of other people. That is how it works.