The healing journey of a widowed, unschooling badass in Delaware.
I doubt we ever knew this.
It returns to self love and self hate, the way we talk to the parts of our Self that we don’t like, “I hate that I do that,” or “I hate myself for…”
Until we can love ourselves for the unsightly and disagreable parts, we will never be able to love others at all.
This has been my beef from day 1 of the lockdown. We’re a society in dis-ease. The solutions are simple, but the recovery from our addiction to quick-and-easy self-medication will take a generation.
Earlier this week I wrote about a feeling of abandonment. These abushes don’t need an obvious trigger when you are grieving.
I wrote about mindfulness and the larger part of my journey, but I missed a key strategy: Feeling It. Monday morning, when the empty half of the bed was full of sad bitterness, I lied there with it. I didn’t “push through” or jump into my meditation or breathing exercises. I let myself feel the pain and anger. I forgave myself for grieving.
There are times when you have to do the push and keep on trucking. But, if you have the chance, stay with your pain. That shadow of yourself needs to be integrated in your being. That trauma is a neccessary component of your higher self.
God bless and thank you for reading, I appreciate you,
Jason
Shutting down businesses on Independence Day weekend may be the most symbolic act of a government without limits.
Museums are opening today, some businesses. Might July 1 be a new day to celebrate? A day where community organizations and entrepreneurs lead the way to a more free existence?
The enforcement arm of government is constrained by lockdown policies and a public relations landslide. Is this the time for free people to be free? Will we refuse to tolerate the suffering of those who improve our community by providing desired services and products?
Anarchy isn’t what you see on your TV. Corporate media gave up on truth telling a long time ago. If it ever was their mission, I wasn’t alive to see it. Anarchy is what we do everyday, choosing how to spend our time and resources without a governing body directing us. Anarchy is freedom. Will that be Utopia? Certainly not, humans are fallen and will continue to screw up in new and imaginative ways every day. The market will get things wrong, individuals will get things wrong. Individuals are motorcycles in an action movie, we can turn on a dime and course correct. The market is chasing those motorcycles. The relationship always has an element of adversary, but the market follows.
We go out today as free individuals who do not believe in the monopoly of violence held by the government.
Happy Anarchy Day,
Jason
This memory popped up from a year ago. I had just started a mindfulness practice in hopes of being a better parent. I had no idea that practice would help ground me in an imminent and perplexing loneliness.
The first anniversary of my wife’s passing was approaching and I was flying high in my first romantic relationship since becoming a widower. Shortly after that anniversary, the relationship abruptly ended.
I’m sure the timing could have been worse, but I was ditched at the same moment I was remembering how my wife left me, however involuntary that may have been.
My practice expanded in those days to include stretching that led to yoga and my affirmations replaced, “May I,” with “I am.”
There’s been more than a year of regular yoga and three months of Wim Hof breathing and cold therapy. During these practices I still run through many of the same affirmations and gratitudes. I flow between meditation and conversation with God.
The feeling of abandonment came back this week. A sudden morning rush. The wave was hard and short. Just a day earlier, I had woken up in that same bed with my angel of a girlfriend beside me.
That’s the damned irrational nature of grief. When you feel happy and connected, it can carry you to loneliness and anger. But I’ve got my breath, prayers, and affirmations. They remind me of who I am and how far I have come. They remind me that I am the only one who can abandon me. God won’t and no one else can, not if I’m in a place of loving myself and Him.
God bless, thank you for reading, I appreciate you,
Jason
“I never knew how many of my Facebook friends were racist.”
“I am shocked at how much stupidity is in my timeline.”
The evil in your friend’s heart is not your problem. The evil in your own heart is.
What disfunction, willful ignorance, trauma, or self hate has led you to attract these rotten humans into your life? If your friends are so stupid, how did they hide this hate and ignorance from you? Whose fault is that?
Take responsibility for the friends you have garnered in your life. The fault probably lies in you. It could be a deadly naiveté or a darker piece of you that’s easier to project on your chosen associates than to face with humility.
These quotes are the perfect markers of the threshold each of us must approach toward enlightenment. There the denial and projection of fear before awakening can occur.
Will you walk through the gate into uncomfortable self knowledge or stand rigidly where you are, pointing a righteous finger?
God bless and thank you for reading, I appreciate you,
Jason
The magnolia has gone full hydra. Every time I snip a bloom or two (three as party favors last week), more seem to replace them. Its fragrance is more pleasant than in the five years we’ve been here.
After I snipped this one, I noticed a beetle drunk on pollen. I thought he was dead and a small bee rounded the center of the flower, ignoring the beetle.
While trying to capture a picture of this special scene, the beetle crawled back to life and no fewer than three bees and a one small fly visited.
The beetle seemed to pull pistols (?) down, do some more pollen bathing, and hide away out of the sun.
I couldn’t bring myself to have this popular flower inside, so it’ll participate in the circle of life a bit longer today.
God bless and thank you for reading, I appreciate you,
Jason
If you look at Christianity from its beginning, it didn’t have that name. Not even Jesus’s students named it that while he was alive. The “Way” was one of the names.
Let me pause. I want to go simple here. I’m usually digging and learning. But when I’m lost and looking for direction, I go to the New Testament. I look to the Way of Jesus. He talked to and healed all types of people regardless of deep cultural divides. He loved and preached love. He lifted up women over and over. In one of his last commands he put his mother’s care in his best friend’s hands. There’s no simpler, clearer way for me to see life.
We’re not a Nation. We’re an Empire made up of many Nations. There is no National conversation to be had, it’s the lie of the last 100 years.
That truth is not enough. We have to break up the Nations, talk to each other as individuals, not political abstractions. That’s what Jesus has taught me.
God bless and thank you for reading,
Jason
This magnolia has more blooms each season after Mary’s passing. It’s her way of blessing our path.
“Are you more comfortable if I wear a mask? Because this is a situation where your company is more valuable than my preferences.”
Maybe we can grow as communicators.