wonderlust engage.

                                The art of Whimsy and spontaneity is lost I think in many ways. I find it one of most important things we can hold. It keeps us young it keeps us from being crushed by life. The ability to be dumb and loud and silly is the most important thing we loose as we age. Seriousness of life can drowns it out from our lives. As I planned a trip yesterday with my husband and we wrote our dreams for this time away, we both struggled to actually hope we could do all the things we wanted to do to find something that fit us and was what we wanted not what we thought we needed. I can think of few of our trips that have been just what we wanted out of it we make considerations here and changes there to accommodating both each other and our budgets needs. Some times it is what we wanted some times it is what we settled for. I have never been so excited about a trip in years I can not stop thinking about it I want so badly to be go now all ready and packed.

                       I never had thought about our trip this way before. I think this has relaunched my love of travel that had been sucked dry by the utilitarian ways in witch we have traveled in the last maybe more than 10 years. I feel like a kid excited about Christmas coming the day after it came for the next year. I am going to be working very hard this year to be ready, seams so silly to me that this is going to be be the thing that motivates me to make so many of the changes I want to make. I think it is that finding a piece of us that has been gone too long the couple that woke up one night years ago and just took off for the week not even knowing where we were going. We had so much fun I forgot we were still there. I loved finding them again even if they are a little smarter and planned to have money for gas and food when they go. But I can not wait to travel with them again!

Looking back

                  So I can not divorce my self from the things that I write in my other blog about beauty today, this painting I posted today reminded me so much of my Dad's parents. My grandfather Jim had so much heart, I always remember wanting to be around him. sitting by him while he talked of the south Pacific in the war and how he would go back someday shooting riffles that knocked me on my butt in his back yard. His kind eyes smiling out at everyone. I do not think I went any where with him that everyone in the place did not know him. He smoked so much his voice was low and comforting. He was so short hardly even 5 ft. tall It was a right of passage to be taller than him. But no one could eclipse him any where he went. He was quiet but friendly and such a loving man.

                   My grandmother and him were so funny together I remember when I was 5 watching him mow the lawn he walked over to this flower bed around a tree took down the brinks and mowed the flowers then replaced the bricks. and continued to mow. I found it odd it was not till 3 hours later when my grandmother went out to water her flowers that I heard he yelling about him mowing them and how she could not understand how he could do it she had put the brinks there to stop him and he still gets them with the brinks unmoved.. I laughed but never told. They had such a funny relationship to me they called each other old crab and old crow with such affection. Too hard headed to admit they loved each other you could see it without the words. They made such a funny couple with my grandpa being so short and grandma being so tall seeming to me as child to be almost 6 ft. tall.

            My grandmother was a harder one to know with all her German stubbornness she loved but was not so much with the affection. She was a wild women in many was going to biker rallies and gay bars with her sons, a fire deep with in her. I do remember her coming to take care of us with my Grandpa when my parents went away for vacation. Sitting on the couch with them and her arms wrapped around me talking to me and tickling me. Other times swimming with her in the lake in Arkansas and stopping at any yard sale we could find every where. With all her toughness she put out there was a tender heart underneath. She was a Rosy the Riveter in during the war going to work to support her family and the men fight in the war. She had lots of determination.

                I am not trying to say they did not have their faults just that I loved them and miss them. Parts of them I would like to not know and other parts I long for more of. I miss you love you both. Relationships can be so hard with people living so far apart hell there hard living so close together.  I think it is important to take time to look and remember those that have past and not editing them to suit us ether hard or just good but to remember the whole person. I wish I had known them both better but cherish what I did have.

            I am not sure the blog world will care about this post much but I hope it stirs you to look back at some people in your life you have lost.

Only I could...

So I decided today to write a blog about a practice I have started since some friends of mine and I started doing a book club about this one book Practical Genius, love the book read it if you can. In this book one of the challenges in it is to take in beauty every day really soak it in. like going to a museum and find one piece of art that calls to us and feel it write down your thoughts about it this could also be done with great literature read something beautiful really soak it in not just read and go on. So I started doing this but had not written down my thoughts about it so I figured if I am going to do this I want to share them with people and have them share with me. Kind of a I'll show you mine if you show me your kindda feel to it. so I did I looked up a very famous museum been in movies and everything  and looked through found the piece and wrote down my thought really one by one wrote them out I am figgin odd ball because I came to the conclusion in my head that this beautiful statue was the birth place for sci-fi and the modern block buster alien invasion movie. really I did (shakes head), only I could take a statue of Nike and make it Super 8 movie, or Battle Star Galactica.  here it is if you would like to read it. http://platypus-takes-in-beauty.blogspot.com/

Authenticity and stuff through other stuff

              I have been listening to a women named Brené Brown Talk about Vulnerability and shame. I like such a cheat taking great research and ideas and restating them but I can not get them out of my head. There were things I have believed in my heart for years and struggled to make true in my life for longer than that. I have had this idea ruminating in my heart of what I wanted to write here for days, weeks, OK, well in between the Buffy episodes and the Holiday, any way, but could not quite get my mind formed around the notion I was grasping at.  After listening to them I ran across a quote I want to start out with, a quote from  Elisabeth Elliot "There is nothing worth living for, unless it is worth dying for." Amazing right, unless you look at all the things that kill us silently, we die all the time inside to protect ourselves 

from being vulnerable: from the feeling of standing naked in a room of people with all of who we are, spread out without guarantee of anything. People: unless they are nudest or expeditiousness die all the time to avoid that feeling, it is when we can go there that we will be free. not actually standing naked in a room of people that is crazy talk. The thing of nightmares for most but the nightmare of all: to be vulnerable with something more precious: our hearts and the real us to bear him or her and let that be OK, not only OK, the norm of how we live. Most of us would rather be in the room naked as horrific as that may seem to some; because we could blame it on the alcohol or at least hide the real us behind the shock factor or beauty; the image of our outer self holds. 

        Brené Brown is a women that researches and tell the story of what the data tell her, she has spent 13 years so far looking at shame and vulnerability. I am sure she has other things too but I am going on what the videos say.  she has found and written about  Vulnerability this well my notes an expounding on of it.... People who feel worthy have a strong chance of worthiness not because of anything other than they believe they are worthy. Those who think this way can be best described as wholehearted. They have the curage to be imperfect, compassion, to be kind to themselves and others, connectedness a result of being genuine letting go of the idea of who they should be and accept themselves as they are, and embraced vulnerability, is what made them beautiful and it being fundamental.

           Vulnerability it's the birthplace of shame, fear, and loneliness, but also joy, creativity, and love. In those three things, you can't have them if you are not vulnerable. To be creative is to put your heart out there to love, it's the same to feel joy is to let go and to experience it without worrying of the drop from having experienced full joy with your whole heart. Full Joy is the mountaintop experience but is not the same without the valley, it's Nebraska flat land. however comforting that may seem it is not real living. This idea reminds me of my father and what he used to say to me about emotions, not that it was healthy but it was said often whether I was very excited or upset and it was the life view presented to me "Rain in your emotions. if you let yourself go to the top you will have to go to the bottom, stay steady even keel" That is not the place I long to live in my life so I will take the pain too. 

                             Living in a way that can open us up to vulnerability is scary and hard to face, no one can live there all the time, we all numbing vulnerability with addictions, eating/ not eating, shopping/ saving,  drinking,  whatever they are.  When you numb one emotion (IE pain) you numb them all (IE joy). A not so looked at way of numbing ourselves it's making uncertain things certain. Look at our culture today: Religiousness, Politics, anything people hold a firm belief on: Star Wars vs. Star Trek, anything there is no common ground. We are right, you are wrong,  I am brilliant,  you are not. This idea of arguing our point or as some say having animated discourse (IE fighting) is keeping us away from the uncomfortable idea that there may be room for others to hold an opinion I do not share and that's a valid place to because then we would have to live in the place of uncertainty,  a free flowing place with little firm ground but much more room for not only ourselves but others. Another  numbing technique that goes along with this it's when we blame, this gives us  a way to discharge discomfort. Getting a little relief from feeling overwhelming,  feeling of  being vulnerable. So much easier to cast that on to others than to live in a place of nakedness and honesty with ourselves.

          Another  way we numb  it's perfecting ourselves, or our children, or those around us. It's the same principle to me as The standing in the room Naked idea.  It's putting the front out there so we don't have to be vulnerable. Children were never meant to be perfect, they were never meant to be looked at after they were born "I  told you are perfect I want to keep you this way". they are only perfect because they have not made mistakes yet, It's so much better to look at them in the honest light of "They are who they are and who they are is enough" no one gets through anything without mistakes, it's when we believe that is not the end, we can move on. This goes back to the people who feel worthy knowing they are not perfect and that being ok. 

              But when all that fails we have Pretending. Pretending  what we do doesn't have an effect on others and I would add ourselves to this, this is the choice of many putting our heads in the sand or fingers in our ears and LA LA LAing our way along/ because like the 5 year old playing hide and seek in the middle of the floor with just his eyes closed and nothing in front of them, if I can't see it or at least do not acknowledge it:  it is not there.

                    The only way through life without  numbing in both addiction type ways and the ones listed  it's to let ourselves be seen, deeply and authentically vulnerably, seen without guarantee people will get it or except it,  To Love with our whole hearts even when there is no guarantee that we will be loved back: practice love and joy in the face of rejection and pain, and believing we are enough, then we face those internal and external, telling us, otherwise to be strong enough to be  kinder and gentler to ourselves and those around us. 

                        I am drawn to the words of Jesus "Love others you as you love yourself"  You can't have compassion or real love for others if you can't have it for yourself. This mostly thrown out there as the idea that we are so full of ourselves, we can't love others, I would stand in the face of that backed up by this and other research that says "We struggle to love others because we struggle to love ourselves". We see Vulnerability as weakness, however Vulnerability isn't weakness. Vulnerability it's our most accurate measure of Courage. To stand in vulnerability takes more grit than to hide behind all the mentioned numbing techniques we all have perfected so well. It is also the birthplace of Creativity, Innovation and Change. Adaptability to change,  it's all about Vulnerability. How can you have any of these things while standing on the norm, they do not live there. The most extraordinary people we all know even look up too live in this place. You can't have success without failing, the two are intertwined. What stops us from living in that place?,The Critic. However,  Isn't The Critic that gets the credit,  the credit goes to the person doing the task because when he fails he does so daring greatly.  I have to say even though I loved Oprah before, her shows have been the background words in places of my life. I love that when she stepped away from her giant success of a show she tried something new and it has not gone so well and she has done it with grace and openness that people loved her for she stayed in vulnerably daring to fail but daring to do so greatly. 

             The Critic we all face, if we are honest with ourselves, if ourselves comes in two forms: Shame and Guilt. Shame it's two things: Never good enough and Who do you think you are? Shame and Guilt are different,  Shame it's focused on Self , Guilt it's focused on Behavior. It's the I am bad vs. I did something bad. I am sorry I made a mistake (Guilt) vs. I am sorry I am a mistake (Shame). Shame is correlated to: Addiction, Depression, Violence, Aggression, Bulling, Suicide, Eating Disorders. Guilt inversely correlated with those things. 

                The only people who do not experience Shame are those that do not have the capacity for connection or empathy; a sociopath as I said before,  so stop shaming yourself for having it. I think it's the better choice. Shame has a different relationship connected through each gender, both feel it, again as humans without sociopath  tendencies. For women "Do it all" and "Do it perfectly and Never let them see you sweat" A web of conflicting competing expectations about Who are supposed to be? "Bring home the bacon, fry it up in the pan and make you man happy"  while being everything for children, family of origin and friends both making new and keeping close ties with the old. You can see the plate spinner running and juggling one after another,  It is exhausting and unobtainable. for men is not it, it boils down to one thing,  "Do not be perceived as weak"  Men see the world as people needing them to be on a white horse, unable to "Fall down" or "Step Off". I propose there are some man that refuse to even get on the horse not letting other trust or rely on them They,  are out of fear of falling, never get on the horse. Make no mistake this in not just their friends, coaches, bosses and other men, this is women too. I would say this is women more. Shame is an ugly place, lonely but for most it's safer than Vulnerability.

                                   A women that can sit with a man in real Vulnerability and fear, and she has done some incredible  work. a man that can sit with a women who has just had it and he really listens rather than fixing it he has done a lot of work. Shame is an epidemic in our culture, we need to find our way out from under it to find our way back to each other. Empathy is key to find our way back to one another. Empathy is the antidote to Shame, Shame needs secrecy, silence and judgment. Guilt is so much easier to cope with than Shame. I would say every time we give in to shame and guilt  we betray ourselves and reinforce them in our lives.  But to sit in this place not only ourselves but to have the Grace to let other do the same it's the essence of real love and loving.  For some they will have no more than what the picture shows, one touch, one little piece of it, finger to finger and it's enough to sustain their whole life. But , Why would we settle for such scraps when we can move to a place of more connection? We have to understand shame and it's role in our humanness. Everyone is washed in the ill tides of shame, keeping us from being able to do so much more than can be summed up here by any other words here but Life or Love.

Here are the videos I referred to from  Brené Brown.
http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_listening_to_shame.html

Why am I still so surprised?

                                    I was watching "Who do you think you are?" on Friday and Helen Hunt was the person they were researching. She had found out her great great grandmother had been a part of the Christian Women's Temperance movement and had a big reaction to it. In our Day being christian has become more about being against stuff than for things. The image and things said on a large scale in our nation we deserve that reaction. Today it made political news that Jimmy Carter left the Baptist church because of their view on women and what that view breeds in that church culture. I mourn that Christ the One who came to bring freedom and healing has been seen so much as the one who brings bondage and harm.

                                      Later in the show when Helen looked into what the organization stood for she was very proud of what it did. The Women's Christian Temperance movements were where women had a voice before they did, they stood at a time of rampant alcoholism from wounded men coming home alcoholics from being traumatized by war and all kinds of abuse against women and children. bringing light to dark hidden places saying it was wrong.  This movement turned into the suffrage movement gaining women the right to vote be counted as worthy of their opinion mattering, helping men overcome addictions and find healing and getting children out of factories. So why is it over one hundred years later Women in the church looked at with unequal eyes?


                                       Our culture has had to do the job of seeing women as worthy and abuse as wrong. I'm tired of strong smart christian women having to make apologies for their brains and positions they earned and are qualified for in the church. I have been reading Bio's on church pages of the male and female pastors both are qualified with the degrees but only one has felt the need to make the descriptions of themselves into but I cook and garden too. Trying to prove that even though they're competent and deserve their job but they are girly too. It's the equivalent of the smart pretty girl acting dumb so the boys will like them. "But I love to garden and cook. Oh and chocolate, lets not forget the chocolate, not that I eat to much of it have watch my girly figure". Pay no attention to the degrees competence and brain behind the curtain. Why are there no strong women held up from the Bible in the church? or if they are, their strengths are muted on  how God used them, they  are shushed. Where are the volumes about Deborah the judge who ruled and lead the armies into battle?, or even the Proverbs women actually being a savvy business women of her day not the parts held up for women to emulate or passages that declared our equality saying that we are neither slave nor free male or female.


                                       It is not just the men-women. It is time we stop apologizing for our strengths or accepting the negative words assigned to a strong women. Humility is not saying "I am a worm, I am a worm" It's standing in the truth of who we are, good and bad,  accepting our skills and talents and not making them seem more or less than they are. We are more than capable to run more than potlucks and child care. Women's groups can be dynamic places where we tackle life and get real with the grit of it. It is time for the women to stand and be equal,  Why is this such a threat? I will never know. The mousy women that holds her toughts and minds her place while being a chef in the kitchen, Really? Is that our ideal?

                                   Why is it that there are never sermons on men manning up and accepting their wives,  girlfriends and daughters that are being capable and intelligent women that need support love and encouraging to stand in the shoes God gave them? There is all this back story being thrown at men about all they need is the respect of a women, really? I know a few women that want to be disrespected, and I do not think God said anything about respecting men as his goal. God says He loves them, God says He is no respecter of men. I think it's crap. I think respect is built into love in the true from on the word the dictionary defines respect as esteem for or a sense of the worth or excellence of a person, a personal quality or ability, or something considered as a manifestation of a personal quality or ability: I have great respect for her judgment. I think esteeming a person's worth and other things is mandatory in love. 

                                        Even in the way we talk about abstinence it is all about the women, every christian movie has a dad standing up and fighting for his daughters purity. Where is the movie about the son?  Or teaching respect for women.  Why is there no strong mother fighting to teach her son to respect himself and women? Not saying it is not happening but Why is that not being held up as an ideal? Why is it in every christian blog the end is for their kids even though they were strong headed as young kids it prepared them to be a missionary? Why did it not position them to take on other jobs a lawyer a  crusader for the rights of people with AIDS? being bullied by the system because none stands up for them, a Police Officer fighting for our community every day, or a Physical Therapist who helps those hurt get back into action or just a Therapist who helps heal the mind. 

                                             I think it's high time we the church start living and reading what the Bible actually says within it's culture rather than letting people tell us what it says within our own. As modern people we look at the passages about slavery and can detach from that as a cultural reference for the time it was written. we do that with so many things written there but pick a few things out to  be outraged about.  Not many keep a Kosher home nowadays.  I am not sure this post has strung together anything more than my frustration in seeing women diminish themselves to secure their position without intimidating insecure men. We all are stronger and better people when we lift one another up. there is enough for everyone, Your gifts, even if they are similar to another; your gifts with your twist on them and your bent, no one else can do what you specifically can do. We are made to fit together not by making one less so you seem to stand out but by shinning in our love.

                           

The Fallin

I have been sick for a number of days with the flu, my inflammation has been so bad it swelled up my ears so I could not hear. My energy has been zapped and I have been unable to do much other than watch Netflix on my Kindle Fire because even though my ears were swelled almost shut, if I put the little attachment speaker to my ear I could hear it. So, I started watching The Guardian, it looked interesting and had Simon Baker in it so that made it worth a look worst case scenario I get to watch Simon Baker.

                           The story is interesting in this show, it is about a man Nick Fallin who lost his mother when he was very young and was left with a father who had no idea what to do with him so he sent him away to a Boarding School. He was left alone with no one and ended up making a success of his life on the outside, great corporate lawyer but his life was out of control, he was into drugs and was caught but because of who his dad was he was given probation and community service in a non for profit law firm that fights for children and the disadvantaged people.
He is a very good lawyer and does an excellent job but his goal to start is to do his time and sees money as a very big solution for the people. He runs from one to the other, so hurried, not able to take it in, overwhelmed by life and the pressures of two full time jobs now, one with hard detail work, the other one with hard to deal with facts. The battle for his time it's a huge conflict between the corporate work and the work he finds interesting even if he will not admit it. The lack of ability to conceit to his father and others is so painfull to watch. The stories of the kids mirror his own life and being shut down emotionally, he has a hard time connecting to it on the surface to anyone let alone the threads being pulled on his heart, he feels everything very deeply. Every time he seems to get it together he blows it up, his life, his job, everything. He is unwilling to look at his problem seeing him self as being in control until it just becomes so clear he can't look at it anymore but unequipped to deal with it, he hits rock bottom, finally finds some help but some things are too broken to fix and he has lost everything he finds, all he has left is to fight for what it's right and do what he can to be a better man. I hope I did not wreck it for you. I tried to be vague so if you want to watch it you still can without a spoiler bothering you.

                                        I found this such a gripping story for life in general, at least for me, life has seemed this way for a while. I functioned well on the outside looking like I had it together to some degree, playing the game; it's just business right. Playing by what everyone expects of you, ticking the boxes, moving along on the path made for you until it became clear to me when my body gave out sending me on what seemed like a fall. I could not stomach, the road the was killing me inside and it started to show more, the more I tried to patch here and patch there, trying to work and just make it through my probation time, I failed to see the heart vs. expectations, I made the wrong choices sometimes and other times made the right ones. Not making the connections in front of me, being human and hating it, making the responsible choice, wanting to be this person I could just never seem to be or how to get there. Unable to know what to do with the awakening of my heart and all that brought, feeling more like the bring to life of my soul was more of a problem than healing.

The circumstances of everyone's life is different but we all face the choice of shutting down and going along or doing what feeds our souls.

                   Being in a basic isolation tank for going on three weeks with a sermon for a series bring to light many things I had not seen in myself or at least in this way. Everyone gives up on the one that acts out and can't go along. It takes courage to stand with others and love them when you can't understand their reaction because you have not walked their steps. A few good people will stand up if you are lucky. The scenarios for the placement of each in bad situations, some seem unfair, some seem to punish the victim, others reward the offender. Everyone deserves a life, everyone has someone fighting for them even if they do not like the place they end up. The Guardian's job is to do with diligence, to know where the best place is for each one and make a recommendation for their care. For a while I have hated watching so many people suffer feeling like the system of life failed them. Not liking where they were placed even when they are doing their best circumstances and wounds both their own and others just changed what should have been.

For no good reason talented and amazing people I knew lost and suffered, I saw the connection to my own losses, not that I put myself on the same platform as they were, they were great. I just was here serving my sentence. I find my self seeing this with a different view today having the sermon of the show making it to my heart. I could be OK, I could get along and join the normal wave that appears to look better, more prestigious while dying inside changing who I am, not being able to take a genuine face value because I feel so twisted, there has to be another motive. Living in a world that does not know me because the "Me, I am" is a threat to that world being ok for me.

Or I can sacrifice it all, sacrifice the image of myself and what I wanted it to look like and live, really live with an open heart without protecting myself, just being me. doing what makes me passionate and what I was made for. The whole "Me" meeting the "Me I used to show the world" and blending of the two being the true self I was made to be, To live fully. I choose to live even if it means having less, when it means. I will be embarrassed. I care so much, But happy.

Bring down a thug!!!!!!

                           Years ago I heard of night walkers children walking the night to not be taken captive and made to be solders and sex slaves for war lords in Africa. I was devastated to know there were people out there who would do this to young children. We hear please like these so often heart breaking situations that are worlds away oceans separate us more than  cultures or languages do. It is so much easier to turn it off or not hear about it than to know and stay with the feeling that there is nothing we can do about it. An impotence comes with that heart break but inability to actually effect a change.

                               For two or 3 days I have been seeing this mans face all over facebook from different people those that would in real life have no reason or place to have met each other unless I brought them together. I found it interesting but I do not often watch or read things a lot of people post like this because Like the video of the man who shot his daughter computer I just don't want to engage in conversations about it because people tend to not like my views. So if I do not see it I do not have too have that conversation. Because opinions about things such as Dad should actually talk to his child not publicly shame her with a violent act of shooting her computer are not really well revived by all. Even after I watched an interview where I watched him intimidate his Daughter shut her up belittle her and answer for her. Ya know stuff like that. 

                           How ever Today I watched this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc

and encourage you to do so also. There are a few action steps we can do to bring down this lower than life thug will you join me?  Even in looking up this video to put on there I came across peoples videos that said "Who cares I live in 'merica" REally?! We are the greatest nation on earth because we do care. Would you want someone to care that your child was so unsafe they had to roam the night to be safe. What a short sided narrow view of the world you live in It makes us all smaller when this happens anywhere! WE are the human race the moment we stop looking at that and valuing that we become less than that. Then people like this man Kony win.