Friday, January 31, 2020

Haiku My Heart

Red flew across the green
Robin's early arrival 
Two Cardinals fought

Monday, January 27, 2020

Faking and Forgiving - Updated from my September, 2009 archive


There is the truth that meets in between reality and consciousness. Your actions, your conscious desire to forgive, are real but the realm of sleep is a playground for that which wants to undermine us from our waking desires and impulses to be good, to do what is right. If we let the realm of sleep overtake our waking time, we end up doubting ourselves. 

I don't speak from theory. I was good because I was taught to be good. And, I believed the world was good. Then I learned it wasn't always good. So, what was the next step in learning how to behave and feel the truth of who I am and how I felt? That was no easy task and I felt like I was faking it.  Yes, faking it.  Interestingly, I still feel sometimes as though I am a fake. For example, I never cried after my mother's death therefore, I didn't really love her. Ergo - I'm faking it. Of course, that's not true but forgiving myself for not crying was a hard place to arrive at.


A solution to middle-of-the-night obsessing was found in prayer. At one time it was very common for me to wake in the middle of the night filled with worries, fears, anger, doubts, and dread. I finally tried prayer; the Hail Mary and Our Father of my youth and adult life became my lifeline in periods of turbulent sleep. They acted, as a meditation, a mantra, a chant, a redirection of thought, and still do. My belief in their power restored my trust, my faith in what I really believe to be true about myself.

I often found myself feeling fake at work and the source was clearly my burn-out, my impatience with the same questions and attitudes I'd dealt with for 21 years. But, self-awareness has taught me to recognize the slide into rudeness and impatience, for the most part.  The extra effort to reach out, do good, help and offer guidance when asked for always, 100% of the time, results in gratitude because someone took the time to listen and to hear. 

Of course, there is always a voice waiting to tell me I'm such a fake. And it's not just about faking forgiveness, either. Learning to trust your own realness, in all things, just leads naturally to believing in your capacity to forgive. To not believe in our self only weakens us.  Of course, the stronger our self-belief is, the stronger the assault from outside will be to undermine our self-belief, our knowledge of who we are.  We find ourselves meeting and learning and coming to know and understand the religious sense we are all born with.  Servant of God, Luigi Giussani, explains that as “that which lies at the very essence and root of human rationality and consciousness. It is that aspect of the human individual which affords Christianity with a reasonable basis, as an instance of the revelation of God as mystery.”

Grasping this idea can lead us to strongly hold on to the reality of who we are and not allowing subconscious dreams to strip us of our knowledge of our true self as God sees and knows us.  Holding on to our true self keeps us free of self-doubt.  But, we are human and can slide into that unhappy playground that feeds our fears and fills us with self-doubt.  It is our human-ness that also has the capacity to lift us up so that we can forgive ourselves for our weakness and hold on to who we truly are.


Anne's New Leaf #2

January introduced me to a new eating habit that I think will work very well for me.  Since moving to C'ville, greasy, fried food has been the norm.  Grits, gravy, sauces, and the most unbelievable sweets were, at the least, a weekly occurrence.  And, I tasted them all.  

My primary reason for this over-indulgence was my search for food that I actually liked.  I remember, years ago, observing that, except in isolated pockets of urbanity, there was no good food outside of California.  The hubris of this sentiment is clear to me now but it does remain a fact that where I live, there are very few good eating establishments.  As a result of the long and sustained search, I gained back all the 50 lbs that I had lost.  This isn't good and I  am not happy.  Along with the weight gain, I also endured persistent bloating and nausea, something that did not happen in my former home.  So . . .

In January, I decided to try something a bit different.  On January 3rd I started serving myself smaller portions.  If it was white and processed, I didn't eat it.  I increase my fruit and vegetable intake and starting drinking lots of water.  Like a magic bullet, nausea/bloat disappeared and miracle of miracles, I lost four pounds.  The weight loss was a nice side benefit but the big payoff was my new reality of feeling much better.

With this experience behind me, I decided to continue this way of eating.  In addition to writing everything down in a food journal, I am writing down mini-goals for me to achieve each day.  Coffee and morning prayer is becoming a habit.  These are followed by small tasks that need to be tackled and as a result, while I still read a lot, I am also making some forward motion on things that need to be done.  By keeping a list, I have given structure to my daily life.  

February is almost upon us and I, for one, am enjoying the sunlight, have given up on the idea of actually seeing any snow this winter, and am in high hopes that the river's floodgates will not be closed for much longer.  And, I am approaching my new habits with an optimism that I did not have on January 3rd.  Perhaps I will lose four more pounds.

Saturday, January 4, 2020

Anne's New Leaf #1 - New Year. New Me.

I've turned a corner. I've chosen to find my way back to perfect happiness. It starts with prayer and then the accomplishment of small daily goals. It continues with being a better friend with food and how it fits in my life. It follows with driving again, exploring again, enjoying the places I love.  Welcome to my journey of Anne's New Leaf.
The food pictures here represent just a small part of the journey towards feeling better. Today I cooked something new instead of ordering out. Tomorrow it will be something else but always it will be about recognizing the importance of small accomplishments being the building blocks of a good life.