Happily Ever After

St. Paul teaches us that “in all things,” we must “give thanks.” In the last few weeks, I’ve totaled a car, killed a doe, found and lost a wonderful job, and, like many of my countrymen and women, perceived the world order has changed in ways that cannot possibly end well.Tomorrow is our national day of Thanksgiving, and St. Paul’s words confound me more than ever.But if I take him to mean that whatever desolation happens, there is something also happening (or present in the chaos) for which I can be grateful and feel consoled, well, then, it begins to make sense. My task is not to dwell on the seeming despair, but to locate the hope also present, and rejoice in it, give thanks for it, share it. It may be a moment of unexpected kindness; a gorgeous sunrise; a friend; a 4-legged companion; a moment to breathe; a sweet apple; a task accomplished; a recognized healing; an opportunity to witness love in others; a laugh, a life story shared in sacred space; a glass of wine…a husband unwavering in his support and love, when I feel most unlovable.The mountain of excrement erupting smack dab in the middle of my life (and in others’ lives, I know) reminds me of the fairy tales I was told as a child. Fairy tales can come true; they can happen to you. Of course they can. They are always happening. The symbols and terrors and loss and despair of real lives lived led to the creation of our fairy tales and myths. They’re all true, but we forget that when birds are singing and the sun is shining. Happy endings are so lovely.But the fairy tales exist, really, to help us navigate through the dark forests, complete impossible tasks, and summon the heroines and heroes within, despite mishaps and setbacks. Happy endings have to be earned. Losses will be suffered. But we’ll make it. Or those following us will. Nothing to stop us from beginning. Some heroes die. (But they really never do.) Nothing to fear, just immortality and eventual joy. Believe and begin. In all things give thanks. Ready?This is the part when we’re deep in the forest and all seems lost. Up ahead is a clearing leading to a cliff and we’ll be pushed towards its edge; you betcha, boys and girls. Let’s hold hands and solve this. Let’s look for the dragon flying down to help us. Possibly better, let’s fashion wings of our own. But expect dragons when we need them.It will end happily. I believe this. If it isn’t yet happy, it isn’t yet the end. All things work together for good for those who love. So let us feast on love and offer it to those hungry for it. Let us name our treasures and be grateful. Let us be the light for others finding their way. Let us take their hands and, together, create the happy ending.
I’m looking at you. I’m grateful for you. If I needed anyone beside me in this terrible, very bad, no-good mess, it’s you. All of you. My friends, my family, the strangers who smile and encourage me, the artists, the brave, the funny, the creative, and the wonderful…Let us fill our wings with so much gratitude that we can soar on it all the way to our happy ending.Here is a blessing
Tagging you on the back.
You’re it.
You’re the blessing.
Be the light for those in darkness.
Be the love that thaws a heart.
Cause a thank you to fill the world.
Heal the broken.
Charm the disenchanted.
Lead the dance.
Bless us with your gifts.
And tag us, to bless in return.
Give thanks; give thanks; give thanks.

 

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without Catherine O’Meara’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors.

Happy Halloween From Full Moon Cottage

May you be blessed with the lovely gifts the dark months bring: Stillness, centering, introspection, orientation, and gentle peace. And may all the spirits who gather round you bring their sweet memories and commune with your heart, reminding you that love never dies. May all things that go bump in the night be us, tripping over insights the season offers. May we walk merrily into our darkness, willing to embrace the mystery that always surrounds us.Let’s grab our mugs of cocoa (or glasses of wine, or both); sit by the fire; tell stories; share wisdom; dream out loud; and locate good chocolate. Autumn is my favorite time for dancing. Shall we? Maybe I’m not a nasty woman, but I’m definitely one who cherishes her wild side and shakes hands with her shadow. Darkness is only scary until we enter it and listen for its invitations. Let’s welcome it. Let’s show it a good time.Let’s release the anxiety the world is pushing so very intently these days and create what the world needs that only we can offer it. There is so much to notice and love in the world, and so much in a day to treasure. Let’s gather in the souvenirs the days offer us and build a gratitude altar, a tangible sign that blessing and hope are more plentiful in our lives than what many in power (or who are seeking it) would have us believe.Here’s an idea: Let’s elect ourselves and put ourselves in power regarding the way the world will work: See what it can be? Look! In so many little ways (that can become the only way)…Joy is winning. Love is winning. Kindness is winning. Peace is winning. Take heart.Happy Halloween from Full Moon Cottage!

 

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without Catherine O’Meara’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors.

Aremus

I collect quotes and snippets of wisdom wherever I find them. This usually results in happy synchronicity, when I rediscover scraps of paper in drawers, pockets, purses, and books, upon which I’ve scrawled sources of inspiration. The words I saved and tucked away months, or even years ago, often so perfectly describe or deepen my current experience that it’s like receiving a perfectly-timed gift from myself.

This morning, as Malarky took a blessed nap, I cleaned out my top desk drawer. I’m addicted to “neat,” but my top desk drawer is like my psychic shadow, where all my secrets are shoved and stored until I confront, assess, and reorder them into a semblance of intentional and meaningful wisdom. Again. This happens only when I can’t actually close the drawer. Again.

Today, I came across a piece of paper that held this sentence: “The Wabanaki Confederacy of Native Americans called their dogs, ‘aremus,’ an honored reference that meant, ‘the one who walks with us.’”

I have no idea where I first encountered this, or if it’s true, but I love its identification of the way I’ve deeply experienced the companionship of all of my 4-leggeds as we’ve traveled through our days and years together. Their physical and spiritual presence colors my memories, which would be incomplete without them. 

Malarky is proving to be a “good boy,” who takes to training happily and isn’t shy about exploring and realizing his own personality as well. I conveniently forgot, after 15 years with Riley and Clancy, what a great amount of energy and attention puppies require, but we’ve settled into a fairly reliable rhythm, dancing mainly around the needs of puppy’s bladder, puppy’s need for exercise and play, and puppy’s naptimes. My free time to write, photograph, shop, garden, cook, bathe—you get the picture (but not from my camera)–has diminished greatly, but I know it’s a phase, and a worthy one we trust will result in a healthy, happy companion. Hopefully, when that time arrives, I’ll still be mentally capable of being his companion, because right now I’m not so sure.

I’ve developed a new-found love for Tuesday nights, because that’s when Malarky goes to Puppy Kindergarten with Phillip, and comes home ready to spend most of Wednesday in recovery from all the fun he’s had. Yes! Thank you, God of Puppy-Training!

He seems to enjoy practicing commands, which is encouraging, but responding to them when one of the cats is approaching is probably the best test for all involved. In casting about for the “gift in all things,” let us say that establishing these feline-canine relationships will strengthen and improve my patience considerably. We’ll leave it at that, for now. (Sit, Malarky…SIT, Malarky…SIT, MALARKY!) I’m supposed to use a high voice when I praise, and a firm voice when I command, and they get mixed up and have even been directed at Phillip, at times. Oh, dear. (But he sits like a charm.)

We’ve been held in the spell of an El Nino weather system for the past two months, which allowed us to set out on a warm, lovely canoe ride last weekend. Malarky seemed to enjoy it, although we kept it brief for his benefit.

Phillip is great about thinking of little field trips to broaden Malarky’s experience and social skills. We went strolling through a local park filled with effigy mounds a few weekends ago, and he’s accompanied Phillip on weekend remodeling jobs, too.

He helped us (finally) clean the gardens, on Sunday, and his obvious delight with everything he encounters continues to renew our own delight with life. I’m excited that we might receive several inches of snow tomorrow night. I can’t wait to see Malarky’s reaction when we step outside Saturday morning. Every day, his wonder lifts my heart.

I’ve been baking for Thanksgiving in fits and starts. Family will be visiting and making merry with us next week, my favorite time of year, and this year we have so many blessings to celebrate!

The last time we gathered was the day before our sweet Riley died, and so the turning from sorrow to joy marks the holidays as especially sweet this year. That, and the “Dina Tates” we harvested this autumn. They are named for a friend who encouraged me to plant potatoes and relish the taste, compared to store-bought spuds. She was absolutely right!

Yet it feels like we’re traveling into the holiday season with heavier burdens of anxiety, fear, and sadness regarding humanity’s failure to forge lasting, loving relationships. I continue to believe humankind’s currency can be kindness and our common language compassion, but the fires kindling these hopes are dying down, due to the violent and angry choices so many seem to be making. It breaks my heart to see a world of such magical and miraculous potential lack the imagination, energy, and love required to be realized.

But my darling aremus continues to pull me along into joy, each tiny miracle revealing itself and reminding me that there are mysteries of endless delight to be uncovered every moment. And each time I open a book, a desk drawer, a purse, there are words from another traveler to inspire my journey, while the one who walks with me is at my side kindling fires of hope.

May hope, grace, gratitude, and compassion bless all your gatherings and partings. May your journeys be safe and your love returned, in abundance. May hope grow and fear depart; may peace live joyfully within your heart. May we dream and then create a new world, fiercely and deeply aware of the great good possible, and believing it’s already being accomplished.

Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for.  ~Seamus Heaney

Hope is the deep orientation of the human soul that can be held at the darkest times.  ~Vaclav Havel

There are stars whose radiance is visible on Earth though they have long been extinct. There are people whose brilliance continues to light the world though they are no longer among the living. These lights are particularly bright when the night is dark. They light the way for humankind.  ~ Hannah Senesh

We can start from where we are, with what we have, and imagine and work for the healings that are necessary. But we must begin by giving up any idea that we can bring about these healings without fundamental changes in the way we think and live. We face a choice that is starkly simple: we must change or be changed. If we fail to change for the better, then we will be changed for the worse.  ~ Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community

There is no way to peace. Peace is the way. ~A.J. Muste

If planetary peace seems beyond our reach, recall: Miracles are natural when we rely on the Source of All to carry our burdens with us. Then, even peace is possible. ~ Nan Merrill with Barbara Taylor, Peace Planet: Light for Our World

It may sound trite, but using the weapons of the enemy, no matter how good one’s intentions, makes one the enemy.  ~ Charles de Lint

You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.  ~ G. K. Chesterton

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.  ~ Albert Einstein

Gratitude is so close to the bone of life, pure and true, that it instantly stops the rational mind, and all its planning and plotting. That kind of letting go is fiercely threatening. I mean, where might such gratitude end? ~ Regina Sara Ryan

No culture has yet solved the dilemma each has faced with the growth of a conscious mind: how to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in all life, when one finds darkness not only in one’s own culture, but within oneself…If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts the responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.  ~ Barry Lopez (excerpted from Arctic Dreams)

 

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without Catherine O’Meara’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors.

Thanks Be to Love

The daily round has been crammed with life, guests, listening, and activity of late. How lovely it is to have a day open before me without a list or template circumscribing and defining its hours…just a blank page to fill as I am called…I think I’ll take the pups and my camera out to the trail and return home to make that cup of hot cocoa I’m always promising myself.

Tomorrow will be filled with preparations for our Thanksgiving weekend, and that, too, cheers my heart. There are few better feelings, for me, than the anticipation of joyful community with people and 4-leggeds I love.

And so, I raise my cup of cocoa and toast us all: May we be blessed with a peaceful and joyful celebration of all that inspires deep gratitude in our lives. May our patience and humor abound.

May we forgive ourselves of all those errors and lapses in love that arise from our humanity and so more generously forgive others theirs.

May we ease expectations and judgments of ourselves and others so as to better perceive the blessings waiting for us right now, right here, and may we be present to the lessons they have come to teach us about the ways we are infinitely loved.

May our willingness to isolate and name these gifts allow us to cherish them more deeply and share them more profoundly.

Dona nobis pacem.

Gratitude is something of which none of us can give too much. For on the smiles, the thanks we give, our little gestures of appreciation, our neighbors build their philosophy of life.  ~ A.J. Cronin

Gratitude is so close to the bone of life, pure and true, that it instantly stops the rational mind, and all its planning and plotting. That kind of letting go is fiercely threatening. I mean, where might such gratitude end?  ~ Regina Sara Ryan

Gratitude is the most passionate transformative force in the cosmos. When we offer thanks to God or to another human being, gratitude gifts us with renewal, reflection, and reconnection.  ~ Sarah Ban Breathnach

Darkness deserves gratitude. It is the alleluia point at which we learn to understand that all growth does not take place in the sunlight. ~ Joan Chittister

Can you see the holiness in those things you take for granted–a paved road or a washing machine? If you concentrate on finding what is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul.  ~ Rabbi Harold Kushner

If the only prayer you say in your life is thank you, that would suffice.  ~ Meister Eckhart

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.  ~ Denis Waitley

You have been given a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say “thank you?”  ~ William A. Ward

Gratitude is riches. Complaint is poverty. ~ Doris Day

Gratitude is twofold – love coming to visit us and love running out to greet a welcome guest.  ~ Henry Van Dyke

 

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without Catherine O’Meara’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors.

Thanksgiving!

Now is the lovely time for naming and celebrating the residents of our grateful hearts. The anticipation of a holiday gathering is as sacred as the day itself. By its happy nature, our time spent making lists and making ready confers blessing upon those whose coming is eagerly awaited.

We review the natures, distinct and beloved, of our family members and friends (although, as we age, all become family, it seems), and carefully seek means and considered pleasures to suit each one’s taste and desires for comfort. We hold their travels in thought and therefore prayer. We decorate and clean our homes, bake favorite foods, and honor traditions and expectations that make the day our own, known and spirit-soothing in its annual familiarity, while holding generous space open for unexpected rituals, late arrivals, and new participants.

We mourn the loss of those who have changed worlds. We welcome their spirits and share their stories, and realize they, too, are present in our preparations and celebration. Sweet shadows and echoes surround us; we move in patterns created and danced by generations, our hearts reach and touch their light, our love gathers all to the table.

A Blessed Thanksgiving and Holy Communion to all…

 Bless our guests, those we hold in holy anticipation…

The merry,

the meek,

the picky,

the grand,

the peevish,

the extroverts,

the loners,

the funny,

the sad,

the early birds,

the latecomers…

May all feel welcomed and essential.

Bless us all in our gathering and gratitude.

And bless all in their sweet departure:

May they be fortified

and fueled by love.

 

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without Catherine O’Meara’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors.