Lonely 5 minute Friday

It is funny how we can be so isolated in such a busy world.
Fields are tarmacked
to make way for tennis courts
because kids can't play outside anymore.

I reach out with words; Fragile like tendrils.
Seeking a cane or a friendly fence on which to lean.
And talk about the day.

Five beings echo locate me early in the morning.
Brimming with the expectation of a new day...

Five facets, five perspectives, five ways of being and seeing.

Five little suns that need to deflect their light
through many different prisms, not only mine.

Light has a weight all it's own.

But who is there?

The streets outside seem strange and distant this morning.
People rush past in motion blur.

In the evening, I pull curtains over windows
Like cave darkened wing membranes of a sleeping bat.
I see others are camped around the warm glow
of their own screens too.

Panes of glass separated by panes of glass.

Silent, divided and contained.

Yearning for a common hearth,
A warm glow of earthy embers and friendship.

So we each reach out through ether
from the confines of our cells
to feel the life of a human touch

Beyond the screens and the tapping keys.

{Race} 5 minute Friday

I wake up, adrenaline surges.
Sometimes it feels like the arc of a rainbow rising through plumes of majestic, hopeful sunlight and warm, fertile rain before landing on gold.

Sometimes it feels like an ache before a storm; a build up of pressure against the valve of now and all now demands.

Life can feel like a race.

But really, truly, it's not.

I have learnt to let go of the dream of that gold medal as soon as I feel the panic thrum as if my life depends upon it.

Because not everything I think counts, counts.

So I place these pieces of me, the fragile ones that need affirmation, that worry about the future, that feel overwhelmed by a day that has barely begun, upon His alter and ask Him to burn them up and leave me  only that which is necessary, truly necessary to win this race.

And I am left with a little piece of glowing gold at the end of this rainbow.

A small Olympic torch with which to light my way to the end.

A fragment of light that has refracted

through this temporal prism

only to be passed back into light again

through an eternal one.

{Focus} 5 minute Friday

 

Joining Lisa Jo for 5 minute Friday today...
As Lisa Jo says... 5 Minute Friday is...

Unscripted. Unedited. Real.

It started because I’d been thinking about writing and how often our perfectionism gets in the way of our words. And I figured, why not take 5 minutes and see what comes out: not a perfect post, not a profound post, just five minutes of focused writing.

Word for today "FOCUS"


What I focus on expands, grows and becomes my truth.

What I focus on becomes the way I see the world.

 It becomes me.

My focus seems to shift like plates beneath the earth.

Between a hundred different voices calling my name,

I rush in and out of focus, my focus blurs in the motion

...and often, I loose it.

What I focus on is such an intentional thing, such a foundational thing.

So I focus on the new lessons being learnt,

 The squeals of delight instead of the mess of paint and paper strewn about the floor.

I focus on God, when the world tells me there are more important things to do.

I focus on the flowers she plops in a jam jar rather than the trail of muddy footprints she brings in with them.

And it's not that I don't attend to the physical things that need attention, it's just that I'm seeking that which lies beneath them.

Focusing on the eternal light

that shines through this temporal kaleidoscope.

"JOIN"... 5 min fri

Don't forget I'm  having a SALE @ my Waldorf Shop tillytilda till august 4th!!!



Joining Lisa Jo for 5 minute Friday today...
As Lisa Jo says... 5 Minute Friday is...

Unscripted. Unedited. Real.

It started because I’d been thinking about writing and how often our perfectionism gets in the way of our words. And I figured, why not take 5 minutes and see what comes out: not a perfect post, not a profound post, just five minutes of focused writing.

Word for today  "JOIN".... GO

As a child I never felt like I could join a group. I felt a burden in belonging. A fear.
I felt the pressure to "fit in"; squeeze myself into a small space that left my soul outside.

Two beings, two pieces, broken, frayed, not whole.

So I flitted between people, and places, trying to keep myself intact.

Or I stayed alone.

I remember the feeling of being on the periphery of games as the children gathered to work out who would be who and what they would do.

I found a friend in the thoughts in my head, between the pages of a book, in sunlight echoing through trees and in silence.

But the loneliness pooled.

I moved away, tried to find my "tribe" in the alternative groups, the punks, the goths, the outsiders.
It wasn't long before I saw that they too had their "rules" an esoteric criteria of who was "in" and who was "out".

And somehow I new I couldn't squeeze my soul into those spaces either.

Motherhood came... wife-hood.  Suddenly the rules were different. These clubs had clubs within clubs!

There was every kind you could think of...words I'd never needed to use before suddenly became part of my inner vocabulary.

And then the religion thing... I'm still not sure how to describe myself on that one.

But my soul who doesn't use words says it comes down to how we treat each other.

When, as a child...and as an adult I've felt the loneliness pool, and my legs wobble, My God has held my hand.

He gave me the gift of a little girl, birthed in streams of morning sunlight when I was eighteen and the only group I was in was the single, teen Mum one.

I had wondered why I couldn't get the name Emmanuelle out of my mind for nine months.
 I later learned it means "God with us"
Of course now she's just my Emmy.  but the meaning hasn't changed.

When I've been lost and not known the way He knelt down beside me on the aching street and whispered to me:

"Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, "This is the way; walk in it."

Maybe none of us really fit in.

Maybe that is okay.

{stretch} 5 min Fri

 

Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.

Today's word from Gypsy Mama "Stretch" 

I remember a time when I felt stretched.

 I was pregnant with baby number four, platelets were low, thyroid was low.

 I had a little baby, a 3 year old and a school child.

Tani was two months away from getting his visa.

We didn't know if our children would end up English or Albanian!

It was warmer day than usual as I carried the 7 month old upstairs to her cot.
It was my last day of antibiotics for an infection.

I could feel my heart pounding, my legs weak, buckling, before I blacked out.  

I still think God must have caught her, and the little one still nestled inside.  Apparently He's got quite big hands :)

It is strange to bring up a family alone, just one or two to raise children, keep a roof, pay bills, deal with a hundred different bureaucracies, fold laundry, prepare meals, wash the pots after...

And childhood is so different. Full of "necessary" pressures.

It is a way of living far beyond that of the past, when communities and extended families worked to raise the children together. 

I often think of the Amish women washing jars and canning together, older children tending to younger ones as the work sung through the water, and their hands.

Togetherness takes the strain of the stretch.

My little girl tells me she wants to live with us in our little house forever. Her eyes are wide as skies.

And why should it not be? What is this "normal" aloneness?

Carving out our own island surrounded by other islands.

When I walk down the silent street in the evening and the lamps glisten on the asphalt. And the stars disappear in the swill of their orange glow  I see the flicker of screens behind every curtain of every house.

In some places people gather at dusk, out in green spaces under trees and women knit and talk and fires are lit.

 

"Connection" 5 Minute Friday

5 minutes of writing, no editing, no grammar checks...

Word for today....Connect

GO...

connected at the core
at the roots

and in the spaces between we still reach like branches to one another.

As children do to a mother or father

I  recoil like a fern at the thought of being so obviously vulnerable
and deep in need of connection.
Of love.
Still it's true.

It takes courage to connect.
Love the big the little and the middling in another.
 In myself.

It takes courage to disarm and be vulnerable and true to the person I really am inside.
Bring her outside.
Let her dance.

Connection can make me afraid

What if I'm not what you want me to be?
What if I am not enough?

What if I am not worth connecting with?

See with connection we trade a little of ourselves.

But I'll tell you this.

I'll put my strongest arguments aside
so I might look into your eyes
and really see them.

See your pain and joy
the child inside
your memories
and the story that writes them.

Connection can't be rushed or forced it is a slow intermingling of roots beneath soft earth

Knowing that the earth feeds us both.

We have the same mother
The same Father.

We are sisters
We are brothers.

Backwards...

Joining Gypsy Mama today for 5 minute Friday
Got five minutes? Let’s write. Let’s write in shades of real and brave and unscripted.
Let’s just write and not worry if it’s just right or not.


1. Write for 5 minutes flat for pure unedited love of the written word.
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. Get a little crazy with encouragement for the five minuter who linked up before you.

Go...


Sometimes it feels like I'm moving forward only find I'm really going backwards.

Backwards.
To take the hand of the child who stared at her feet as she walked past the big kids on the swings.

Backwards. To put her hand up for the girl who never tried so that she would never be the one to fail.

Backwards. To whisper hard won secrets of a thirty something in the ear of the child with her new baby, alone, raw, terrified of a love she could not contain.

In silent moments, I sometimes find myself staring out of the window.
Seeking the road beyond. Trying to outrun my past.

Among a flock of circling birds, I see myself dance as if I were free.
 Free as if I'd been born feathered.
Out there. Just beyond grasp.
Where a fledgling takes it's tentative first flight.
There between wing beats and endless blue,
I embrace the child I once was.

Unrealized dreams float silently to the ground like pollen
Planting new seeds.
Seeds of a new life. A garden of my own.

The useless regrets that clench and cling to the ache
That mire me in the mud of memories undone
Are released as I bend down to embrace that girl.
 Wipe away her tears.

Maybe I have to take those few steps backwards.
Remind her that there was something to look forward to.
Tell her tomorrow would be a good place to get to.
Small healings. These backward steps.
That bring the balm of this day to the brokenness of the past.

Sometimes backwards might just be going forwards.

Stop.

...
I really love 5 minute Fridays! For a busy Mama it is a wonderful way to practice writing in short bursts without over thinking your words. I also love the way it forces me to write without editing or analyzing as I write. The process of "just getting it down" quick as a flash sort of opens the unconscious. I read back what I have written and it is like opening a package of thought, ideas, feelings and memories that find their voice only through this "stream of consciousness" kind of writing.

5 minute Friday (Here)

No extreme editing; no worrying about perfect grammar, font, or punctuation.

Unscripted. Unedited. Real. 

Writing for 5 minutes only.

Go....

Here

Here.

We are.

I am.

Here is all I've got!

What am I to do with here?

Lot's of here's turn into a life. A "there"

"There"  seems so big and
outside of me.

"Here" seems so small and
inside me.

Almost insignificant.

Almost.

But it is the small here that make the big life. "there"

How shall I spend mine?

How do I spend mine?

Trying to keep inspired by online images and words?

Till that still, small voice says,

enough,

time to leave all this noise now, go back to those silent
Dog eared poetry and prayer books.

Music.

And then the kind of living that sieves dirt through fingers.

Real stuff.

Like cooking. There's

Preparation, heating the oven, choosing those few good, healthy ingredients.

Then there's the Mixing, Warming, Serving.

Each moment a mouthful.

Nourishing real life.

{Beyond} 5 minute Friday

 Joining Gypsy Mama today for 5 minute Friday. And Jennifer @ Getting Down with Jesus.

 

Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.

Go... 

Beyond

Beyond you call me.

You say

"go beyond yourself...

I live over that hill, see?"

You tell it like a story

But I am the one who must walk out there. Not knowing what I'm doing.
Out into the dark forests of my fears, my failings, my limitations.

Yesterday I thought I didn't have enough
money
time
energy.

I held on tight to my own scraps of each.

Threads,
unraveling,
fraying,

All material things turn to dust in the end,
 Except those woven by love.
You say "Remember, this is the only safe way."

Maybe it was a prayer with a child, rushed and hasty at first.

Or maybe the glimmer of sun before it fell away to the night,

Or a sudden feeling of being alone

In that unknown moment,
I uttered the word "Yes"
"I'll go beyond this place of only me
to touch the hem of you."

It was a brief fling of abandonment beyond.

But that's when the water came swirling, into this dry land again.

And I understood,

Beyond is just another word for home.

What is Enough ? {5 Minute Friday}

Joining Lisa Jo for 5 minute Friday today...

One word - Five minutes - write - stop.


Enough.

What is enough?

I think of a day when I sat with my friend on the concrete street and enough was a strangers smile, a free cigarette and change for a three day old reduced price sandwich.

But that lingering empty hollow that went deeper than my belly kept telling me I was still hungry.
And I always wondered when the sun would smile it's warmth again.

And now, small house, squeezed tight with love. Are you enough?

So full with imperfection that refuses to straighten up into perfection. And a life that has no time to iron out creases.

How my pride gets buried under the knowing that I'm not enough.

And that is a perfectly small place.

Small enough to fit the palm of my hand.

Like a piece of pounded sea glass, polished smooth.

Small enough to smile at a stranger without feeling afraid.

Small enough to be brimming with the simplest of things.

And big enough to hold just enough bread for the day.

Still

Joining Gypsy Mama today for Five minute Friday...

1. Write for 5 minutes flat for pure unedited love of the written word on the prompt, “Still.”
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. Get a little crazy with encouragement in the comments of the five minuter who linked up before you.

It’s a great way to catch your breath at the end of a long week.

Go...

Still.

"Be still and know that I am God."

Does that mean "doing" nothing. "Being" still?

Can i maintain inner stillness even when the typhoon rages all around...

Like the center of a storm?

Can I keep my heart ...anchored in stillness...

No matter what?

I've found time and time again

Through my own errors

That it's only when I give full attention to my own peace and stillness

That peace and stillness

Can come to everything and everyone around me.

"The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament."

-Brother Lawrence

 Maybe it's true. I am the weather...

Ever creating the climate that surrounds me.

And maybe...

Beneath the currents

which seem to ebb and flow

Without any sense

of direction or purpose.

One distilled droplet of stillness

Can ripple

Curve out

Beyond itself.

And calm an ocean.


Stop.

Wonder

Joining Gypsy Mama today for 5 minute Friday

The end of the week – a good time for few words.
Want to take five minutes with me and see which ones bubble to the surface?
Let’s just write and not worry if it’s just right or not. Here’s how we do it:



1. Write for 5 minutes flat with no editing or tweaking.
2. Link back here and invite others to join in {you can grab the button code in my right side bar}
3. Go and tell the person who linked up before you what their words meant to you. Every writer longs to feel heard. {And if you love us, consider turning off word verification for the day to make it easier for folks to leave you some encouragement}
It’s a great way to exhale at the end of a beautiful week.

Go...

Wonder. 

I see it in her eyes when she catches the ball with her left hand for the first time.

I see it when she finds tadpoles in the pond, a perfect blue eggshell on the grass.

I'd lost my wonder I think.

I had forgotten how to see things anew. 

But she taught me how to find it again. 

In the curl of an apple skin taken off in one whole piece. 

The crunch of Autumn leaves under my feet. 

The wonder of possibility's just at the periphery of our vision.

Noticing the seed within the seed of all we do.

Stop.

Every Day...

Joining Gypsy Mama today for 5 minute Friday

Wanna just write? Without wondering if it’s just right?

1. Indulge in five rich, delicious minutes of pure writing.
2. Tell your readers you’re linking up here and invite them to dig in too.
3. And most importantly, go visit, read, and compliment the five minute chef who served something up right before you.

Easy peasy.

Go...

Everyday carries it's own piece of bread for the journey.

Every day is a blank canvas,

a new page,

an untouched stone.

I pick up my brush,

 my pen and

my chisel.

I paint,

write

and carve

And somewhere in the creating

I find myself recreated too.

Change {5 minute friday & Imperfect Prose}

Joining Lisa Jo and Emily today for 5 minute Friday, where you write without editing or backtracking, in a 5 minute stream of consciousness that could go anywhere .

Word for today...

Change...Go...

Trembling  in front of the mirror, on my sixteenth birthday, I cut all my long blond hair off. 
Later, with a pounding heart I watched the pink and black dye rinse down the drain.
Yet, somehow I didn't feel the smallest pang for those childish blond curls the piled upon the bath rug.

Those blond curls were the vulnerable girl, the shy, quiet girl that had let herself be hurt. They had to go. 
Be cut off, shrouded in the colours of a symbolic death.

It was like clutching hold of the sharp edged stone of my childhood and throwing it into the deepest of water.
A place from which it could never be mined.

I wanted to change my life and somehow thought that meant starting from the outside in.

16 years on and my roots have slowly grown on back through, and my truth with them.

I have come to see the truth in myself, and others, however vulnerable that might be, as the only way to live in this world. 

I can't change for anyone else anymore, I can't even change to protect myself anymore. 

I have to be who I am and live it out. 

Though change still happens.
 it now expands from the inside out,
rather than retreating from the outside in.

Like ripples in a lake or rings within the trunk of a tree. 
The finger marks in a piece of wet clay turning upon the wheel;
Layer after layer somehow grows bigger, more out of me.

Encompassing more and more of life in all it's complexity, sorrow, sacredness and beauty,