Saturday, April 25, 2009

Yum Food Dichotomies

I must be really dehydrated these days, because I'm craving liquids out the wazoo. So I'm looking at what cravings are at the forefront and found what I call, "Yum Foods that Make Me Hum":

Perrier lemon sparkling water

Yogi gojiberry green tea (with raw honey and lemon)

Imagine Natural Creations organic vegetable soups

Milton's all natural multigrain crackers (okay technically, they aren't liquid but they go really well with the soups)

Synergy organic raw kombucha -- gingerade (although they make a delightful variety to tempt all tastebuds, including divine grape, guava goddess, strawberry serenity...)

Starbucks green tea soy latte

Bolthouse Farms Green Goodness drink

Pea green, microgreen sprouts

Bigelow chamomile tea (with raw honey and lemon)

Dannon all natural plain yogurt with berries and a dash of cinnamon

Campbell's homestyle chicken noodle soup with cayenne pepper, onion powder, garlic powder and dill weed (yeah I know, soup in a can!)

Of course, I'm also into icy bottles of vanilla Coca Cola and raspberry Krispy Kreme donuts...I'm all about the paradoxes these days. And, apparently, the brand names.



Credit: Photo courtesy of Coca Cola Company

Green Tea Soy Latte Wisdom

Today we enjoyed cold, drizzly rain -- (hello spring, goodbye winter :0) -- so a stop at my favorite weekend comfort splurge, Starbucks, was on the menu.

Here's what the green tea soy latte had to say:

People need to see that, far from being an obstacle, the world's diversity of languages, religions and traditions is a great treasure. affording us precious opportunities to recognize ourselves in others. ~ Youssou N'Dour, Musician, The Way I See It #21.

Amen, dude! You are echoing something Adyashanti says in his book, The End of Your World;

The truest sign of an awakened heart is that it is an indiscriminate lover of what is. This means it loves everything, because it sees everything as itself. This is the birth of unconditional love.

...it loves everything and everybody.

...the awakened heart loves the world as it is, not just as it could be.


I mean, NOW I can shut up.



Credit: amazing photo courtesy of MARK'N'MARKUS'S flckr photostream

Friday, April 24, 2009

Shut Up

So, it's Friday (TGIF to high heaven, because it was the day from hell) and my co-worker told me to shut up during serve (we work as lunch ladies at our childrens' elementary school) because apparently I talked too much....

Excuse me? You want me to what? I mean, seriously, ask me something I CAN ACTUALLY DO for Pete's sake! "Talks too much" was the most common complaint, I mean, constructive criticism, on my grade school report cards.

So, back to my co-worker; I told her to bite me.

And then the kids showed up...

(This photo is the only one I have from my job -- pre-45 lb. gain from eating all that crappy, I mean, government mandated, school food -- so my co-worker is not in this actual photo, but still, you get the picture.)

Monday, April 20, 2009

The Gift of Life -- Love














Motherhood...

Birth mother.
Grandmother.
Adoptive mother.

Comes in many beautiful forms.

Friday, April 17, 2009

Life Blessings


This weekend my grandson is receiving his baby blessing with his adoptive family. Our household is brimming with barely contained excitement.

The event is divided into two days of celebration; a luncheon on Saturday where we party with everyone, and the ceremony on Sunday. Now, normally I am not into rituals and such, but this generates excitement because we get to see him. Which is a rare gift for me, one of his birth family's grandmothers.

It's all so surreal in a way, as I don't know how to "be" in this situation, i.e. what feelings to have. Joy for his sweet parents? Joy for the bundled of energy that he is? Joy for his dear birth parents? I mean, it is bittersweet for me, but there is so much room for gratitude here. I'm awed by the whole experience. It's so tempting to drop the 'bitter' and just revel in the sweet.

I'm happy he gets to experience life on this amazing planet. I'm happy his adoptive parents get to experience him, and I'm happy his birth parents get to experience what they have created together. I'm happy we get to experience all this in whatever way we can. It's quite beautiful when I focus on that. When I drop my concept of what grand-parenting 'should' look like, it doesn't hurt. And that alone is worth the experience.

All I know is there is a lot of love in this world, and this is just another way to feel it.

Feeling very blessed in this moment.

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Fresh Air

One of the reasons I love going to and being in the mountains is fond childhood memories of treks in the wintry forest in Germany with my brother, dad, cousin and uncle.

I remember how peaceful the quiet felt, not a single bird whisper, how our footfalls were muted, muffled by the snow blanketing everything. Occasionally you could hear our boots crunching in the snow if it was hard, but mostly I remember just this quiet stillness.

The sky--usually blanketed by gray clouds that seemed close enough to touch--made me feel very protected there, surrounded by peacefulness. I don't remember feeling the cold either, because just being there felt so good.

Now, sitting in my van at the American Fork Canyon I feel the blinding sun warming my arms. In the all-encompassing absence of city noise, my skin is absolutely tingling. This tingling sensation is running through my body, which I don't notice in the noisy distraction of home, at work, or driving to and fro in my busy life, even though it is probably happening there too.

I'm hearing birds, different kinds, high up in the trees making various bird calls. No singing like in late spring and summer. They just seem to be talking. And surrounding everything is this deep stillness, punctuated only by the intermittent bird chat. In the distance and up high, all around.

Occasionally a wind current sweeps the van but in here I feel sheltered.

When I look up at Mt. Timpanogos, ringed by clouds against a blue sky, I can see the climbing trees, which always remind me of the Lord-of-the-Rings questing Frodo, Sam, Gandalf, Aragorn and the rest on their way to Mordor through the snowy mountains. And I'm noticing the sunlight beaming off the snow--glistening like eye-piercing diamonds and giving me a headache in the process (sigh).

So why I'm really up here, what I'm really doing, is continuing a passage I read earlier today, which excited me so much I had to come all the way up here to be immersed in perfect still awareness to absorb the words undisturbed.

This passage is from The End of Your World by Adyashanti, and I gotta tell you, his book ranks higher than my other favorites, including Wake Up Now by Stephen Bodian and Beyond Awakening by Jeff Foster. This book of Adya's, affects me as much as Eckhart's A New Earth. I'm continually blown away by what I'm reading.

Right now he talks about coming out of hiding;

...most people have a fear of being truthful, of really being honest--not only with others, but with themselves as well. Of course, the core of this fear is that most people know intuitively that if they were actually totally truthful and totally sincere and honest, they would no longer be able to control anybody.

Most people are protecting themselves. They are holding a lot of things in. They are not living honest, truthful, and sincere lives, because if they were to do so, they would have no control. Of course, they don't have control anyway, but they would have no illusion of control either.

...the place to start is with yourself--can you be totally sincere with yourself? Can you go to that place that is beyond blame, beyond judgment, beyond should and shouldn't? Can you go to that place that is so sincere you won't shy away from any part of yourself that is still in conflict; you won't use the perception of truth to hide from something that feels less than liberating?

...You feel your heart opening, your mind opening, you feel yourself opening on levels that you never dreamed possible. These levels are not just transcendent of humanness, but also right within your humanness, because there is no separation between your human being and your divine being.

I mean...!

His words just blow me away.

And that is how I ended up enjoying the mountains today.

Loving it. And you.