krishanna|dot|com

Grace

I was talking with a friend recently who was having what I assumed to be just a bad day. As we talked, I tried to lift her spirits and lighten her load with some laughter. I reminded her that whatever it was could be worse. She could be like me: fat, crippled, and leaky. She simply said flatly, "It IS worse. I just found out my kid has a congenital heart defect." I was stunned into speechlessness. It sure beat the hell out of out MY stuff.

Her son, who is nearly a couple of years old, had just been diagnosed with Subaortic Stenosis a few days before. Now, out of the blue, she and her family have been dropped into alternate world where everyone's kid has a life threatening illness. I can't help but think that my friend and her husband must feel as though have been kicked out of the ordinary world they resided in before and are now citizens of the Land of the Screwed.

They now must live with the fact that their son has this defect that narrows the ventricle of his heart and can severely impair the blood flow out of his heart. Treatment depends on the cause and the severity of the narrowing. It can include drugs or surgery. It amazes me that my friend, the mother- a talented, creative spirit, accomplished writer, and highly successful, self-employed business woman can still even dress herself, let alone stay so strong and tender.

Last week was a kind of rough one. The flu and pneumonia are no fun and I started feeling like a wired, tired toddler who had way too much sugar and not enough naptime. I decided to have a chat with the Goddess, "You know what? I'm sure you know what you’re doing”, I said accusingly, “but my patience is beginning to wear REALLY fucking thin…"  It took awhile to get past the cacophony in my head to remember that all I needed to do was to be kind and gentle and SILENT with myself.

Silence, I think, comes from the same spot in the universe that gives birth to appreciation, space and breath. Its magic can sometimes lull me into a state of meditation instead of frustrating rumination and hand wringing.

So sitting there, resting in the pristine stillness of silence, I again thought of my friend and her family. I looked around and asked the Goddess, "What on earth are you THINKING?! WTF?!"

It then occurred to me that I don't know why life isn't put together safely and seamlessly, why stuff can fall so short of our expectations sometimes, why we can make such dazzling mistakes, why our hearts get broken. I don't know why it isn't more like it is in the movies, why lessons can't be learned when you are in the mood for learning, why circumstances don't always turn out neatly, why grace often comes in such garish, unsightly packaging.

Maybe I am not supposed to know.

My friend has a tribe of good friends around her, that all want to help in someway. So, I thought maybe we all can build a sort of barn around my friend, her son and her family. Even though we tribal members may not know one another personally, we can show up and be there. We can listen to the tears and then make laughter. We can let her know that she and her little family don't have to carry this all by themselves. We can give them a lot of privacy and space. 

 

We can stop trying to make things turn out better than they are and we can offer the gift of no comfort when there being no comfort is where she lands. We can let her dump when she needs to and we can raise energy, send healing and love and pray for miracles. Not the kind where the Powers That Be will reach down from the sky and restore her son to perfect health but the little dusty red wagon kind of miracles of everyday life: love, comfort, strength, forgiveness, and grace. 

GRACE. 

Grace is having knowledge and an acceptance of being ineffective and it could be that thinking otherwise is the major stumbling block to drinking from the clear, cool well of clarity and love. I don't understand the mystery of grace at all, not at all. I know only that it seems to greet us where we are and rarely leaves us where it found us. It can be received eagerly and gladly or cynically and begrudgingly in little licks or giant gulps. It doesn't seem to matter. As long as you are willing to accept it, you are given the gift of grace. 

I believe that all you can really do for someone in crisis is suit up and show up, when all is said and done. It seems so inadequate and impotent but when you do but it can radically change everything. By just being there, standing in a scared friend or loved one's line of vision can be life giving because sometimes everyone else is hiding. 

So you keep them company when feels like the entire world is crumbling around them and just your presence there says that even if it is for one tiny moment, that teeny portion of the world is better. It says that when the hard winds and cold rains come, we will all come too because we will have been building grace all along.

There will always be shelter because we will have built a barn out of grace.

 

I was talking with a friend recently who was having what I assumed to be just a bad day. As we talked, I tried to lift her spirits and lighten her load with some laughter. I reminded her that whatever it was could be worse. She could be like me: fat, crippled, and leaky. She simply said flatly, "It IS worse. I just found out my kid has a congenital heart defect." I was stunned into speechlessness. It sure beat the hell out of out MY stuff.

Her son, who is nearly a couple of years old, had just been diagnosed with Subaortic Stenosis a few days before. Now, out of the blue, she and her family have been dropped into alternate world where everyone's kid has a life threatening illness. I can't help but think that my friend and her husband must feel as though have been kicked out of the ordinary world they resided in before and are now citizens of the Land of the Screwed.

They now must live with the fact that their son has this defect that narrows the ventricle of his heart and can severely impair the blood flow out of his heart. Treatment depends on the cause and the severity of the narrowing. It can include drugs or surgery. It amazes me that my friend, the mother- a talented, creative spirit, accomplished writer, and highly successful, self-employed business woman can still even dress herself, let alone stay so strong and tender.

Last week was a kind of rough one. The flu and pneumonia are no fun and I started feeling like a wired, tired toddler who had way too much sugar and not enough naptime. I decided to have a chat with the Goddess, "You know what? I'm sure you know what you’re doing”, I said accusingly, “but my patience is beginning to wear REALLY fucking thin…"  It took awhile to get past the cacophony in my head to remember that all I needed to do was to be kind and gentle and SILENT with myself.

Silence, I think, comes from the same spot in the universe that gives birth to appreciation, space and breath. Its magic can sometimes lull me into a state of meditation instead of frustrating rumination and hand wringing.

So sitting there, resting in the pristine stillness of silence, I again thought of my friend and her family. I looked around and asked the Goddess, "What on earth are you THINKING?! WTF?!"

It then occurred to me that I don't know why life isn't put together safely and seamlessly, why stuff can fall so short of our expectations sometimes, why we can make such dazzling mistakes, why our hearts get broken. I don't know why it isn't more like it is in the movies, why lessons can't be learned when you are in the mood for learning, why circumstances don't always turn out neatly, why grace often comes in such garish, unsightly packaging.

Maybe I am not supposed to know.

My friend has a tribe of good friends around her, that all want to help in someway. So, I thought maybe we all can build a sort of barn around my friend, her son and her family. Even though we tribal members may not know one another personally, we can show up and be there. We can listen to the tears and then make laughter. We can let her know that she and her little family don't have to carry this all by themselves. We can give them a lot of privacy and space. 

 

We can stop trying to make things turn out better than they are and we can offer the gift of no comfort when there being no comfort is where she lands. We can let her dump when she needs to and we can raise energy, send healing and love and pray for miracles. Not the kind where the Powers That Be will reach down from the sky and restore her son to perfect health but the little dusty red wagon kind of miracles of everyday life: love, comfort, strength, forgiveness, and grace. 

GRACE. 

Grace is having knowledge and an acceptance of being ineffective and it could be that thinking otherwise is the major stumbling block to drinking from the clear, cool well of clarity and love. I don't understand the mystery of grace at all, not at all. I know only that it seems to greet us where we are and rarely leaves us where it found us. It can be received eagerly and gladly or cynically and begrudgingly in little licks or giant gulps. It doesn't seem to matter. As long as you are willing to accept it, you are given the gift of grace. 

I believe that all you can really do for someone in crisis is suit up and show up, when all is said and done. It seems so inadequate and impotent but when you do but it can radically change everything. By just being there, standing in a scared friend or loved one's line of vision can be life giving because sometimes everyone else is hiding. 

So you keep them company when feels like the entire world is crumbling around them and just your presence there says that even if it is for one tiny moment, that teeny portion of the world is better. It says that when the hard winds and cold rains come, we will all come too because we will have been building grace all along.

There will always be shelter because we will have built a barn out of grace.

 

It then occurred to me that I don't know why life isn't put together safely and seamlessly, why stuff can fall so short of our expectations sometimes, why we can make such dazzling mistakes, why our hearts get broken. I don't know why it isn't more like it is in the movies, why lessons can't be learned when you are in the mood for learning, why circumstances don't always turn out neatly, why grace often comes in such garish, unsightly packaging.

Maybe I am not supposed to know.

My friend has a tribe of good friends around her, that all want to help in someway. So, I thought maybe we all can build a sort of barn around my friend, her son and her family. Even though we tribal members may not know one another personally, we can show up and be there. We can listen to the tears and then make laughter. We can let her know that she and her little family don't have to carry this all by themselves. We can give them a lot of privacy and space. 

 

We can stop trying to make things turn out better than they are and we can offer the gift of no comfort when there being no comfort is where she lands. We can let her dump when she needs to and we can raise energy, send healing and love and pray for miracles. Not the kind where the Powers That Be will reach down from the sky and restore her son to perfect health but the little dusty red wagon kind of miracles of everyday life: love, comfort, strength, forgiveness, and grace. 

GRACE. 

Grace is having knowledge and an acceptance of being ineffective and it could be that thinking otherwise is the major stumbling block to drinking from the clear, cool well of clarity and love. I don't understand the mystery of grace at all, not at all. I know only that it seems to greet us where we are and rarely leaves us where it found us. It can be received eagerly and gladly or cynically and begrudgingly in little licks or giant gulps. It doesn't seem to matter. As long as you are willing to accept it, you are given the gift of grace. 

I believe that all you can really do for someone in crisis is suit up and show up, when all is said and done. It seems so inadequate and impotent but when you do but it can radically change everything. By just being there, standing in a scared friend or loved one's line of vision can be life giving because sometimes everyone else is hiding. 

So you keep them company when feels like the entire world is crumbling around them and just your presence there says that even if it is for one tiny moment, that teeny portion of the world is better. It says that when the hard winds and cold rains come, we will all come too because we will have been building grace all along.

There will always be shelter because we will have built a barn out of grace.

Grace

I was talking with a friend recently who was having what I assumed to be just a bad day. As we talked, I tried to lift her spirits and lighten her load with some laughter. I reminded her that whatever it was could be worse. She could be like me: fat, crippled, and leaky. She simply said flatly, "It IS worse. I just found out my kid has a congenital heart defect." I was stunned into speechlessness. It sure beat the hell out of out MY stuff.

Her son, who is nearly a couple of years old, had just been diagnosed with Subaortic Stenosis a few days before. Now, out of the blue, she and her family have been dropped into alternate world where everyone's kid has a life threatening illness. I can't help but think that my friend and her husband must feel as though have been kicked out of the ordinary world they resided in before and are now citizens of the Land of the Screwed.

They now must live with the fact that their son has this defect that narrows the ventricle of his heart and can severely impair the blood flow out of his heart. Treatment depends on the cause and the severity of the narrowing. It can include drugs or surgery. It amazes me that my friend, the mother- a talented, creative spirit, accomplished writer, and highly successful, self-employed business woman can still even dress herself, let alone stay so strong and tender.

Last week was a kind of rough one. The flu and pneumonia are no fun and I started feeling like a wired, tired toddler who had way too much sugar and not enough naptime. I decided to have a chat with the Goddess, "You know what? I'm sure you know what you’re doing”, I said accusingly, “but my patience is beginning to wear REALLY fucking thin…"  It took awhile to get past the cacophony in my head to remember that all I needed to do was to be kind and gentle and SILENT with myself.

Silence, I think, comes from the same spot in the universe that gives birth to appreciation, space and breath. Its magic can sometimes lull me into a state of meditation instead of frustrating rumination and hand wringing.

So sitting there, resting in the pristine stillness of silence, I again thought of my friend and her family. I looked around and asked the Goddess, "What on earth are you THINKING?! WTF?!"

Anti-Choice Nitwits

He's so right...

And they haven't done anything to decrease abortion rates with all their screeching, name-calling and ugliness. It's been us Pro-Choice folks who believe in EDUCATING girls and women about their CHOICES and reproductive freedom that has actually made a dent reducing the need for abortion and pointed a light on raising healthy families, instead of using infants and children as "consequences" for "sinful behavior".

Quote: "We disagree with you. You want to criminalize women and their doctors and we disagree. I reduced abortion. Tell the truth! Tell the truth! If you were really pro-life, if you were really pro-life, you would want to put every doctor and every mother, as an accessory to murder, in prison, and you won't say you wanna do that, because you know that you wouldn't have a lick of political support. Now, the issue is, you can't name me anybody presently in politics that did more to introduce policies that reduce the number of real abortions, instead of the hot air putting out to tear people up and make votes by dividing America. This is not your rally." - Bill Clinton

The Receptionist

My appointment was for 11:45 AM.

I arrived at 11:25 AM.

I signed in as usual and confirmed with the receptionist that my insurance had not changed since my last visit.

I sat down in the waiting room smack in front of the door to the Inner Sanctum at 11:27 AM.

I called up a recent Keith & Girl Show on my Zen ( since being ill I'm a bit behind on my listening) and watched people filter in a filter out as I listened to Keith and Chemda talk about Celebrity Rehab.

At 12:05 PM, I hit hit the pause button, got up, went to the front desk and asked the receptionist if she would please find out how late my doctor was running.

"What time was your appointment?", she asked as she glanced at the clock.

"11:45".

"Well, it's only 12:06. As soon as they have a room free, I'm sure they will come and get you".

"But that isn't what I asked you. I asked you to please find out how late he is running", I replied as patiently and carefully as I could.

" I answered you, M'AAM. As soon as they have a room available someone will call you".

I stood there and just looked at her a minute and said, "You don't get it", from behind my raised my eyebrow.

I have no idea if she responded in any way because I had turned my back on her and returned to my seat.

I touched the "play" button on my Zen and sat watching her as she worked, like a little bug behind glass, noticing her over-processed blonde hair needed a touch up under the cheap plastic headband she wore and stuck out like straw from a scarecrow's hat. Her eyebrows weren't just tweezed pencil thin but shaved; rearranged and arched unnaturally with a pencil on her forehead. She was concentration camp thin and her red lipstick made her look vampiric.

This silent scrutiny must have made her extremely uncomfortable because a few minutes later after a few furtive  sideways glances at me through the glass, she opened the window and said: "I'm sure it won't be long."

I remained unmoved. Only a slight nod of my head  interrupted my steady gaze in her direction.

This clearly irritated her.

At 12:20 PM, my name was called and I went in to see the doctor.

My doctor doesn't act like my time is less valuable than his. Neither do his nurses.

I wondered why then, his front desk staff would behave differently. Because honestly, I don't give a shit whether you actually feel that way or not. All you have to do in a situation like this is pretend that you do. You don't even have to be happy about it.

But I called the office manager when I got home to discuss my  reception experience and was told that:

"Our receptionists would never get their work done if they called the nurse's station every time a patient wanted to know how late the doctor was running".

"Uh, isn't that part of their job description?"

"The physicians in this practice hired me to run the office as I see fit.  They trust me to keep things moving".

"But that isn't what I asked you...nevermind. Maybe there will be a new office manager  next time I need to see my doctor".

One can only hope, eh?

Yay me.

I'm still reading and still around but may not feel up to posting long just yet.

I was feeling kind of yucky last week.. you know depressed and down.. low energy.. that kinda stuff and I just pawned it off on my usual cycles with depression. Manthing was out of town on business, I didn't get as much cleaning done as I wanted and I just felt like yuck.

After much chiding and hairy eyeball looks from Manthing,  we went to the doctor yesterday  for what I thought was a bad cold complicated by asthma only to discover I am actually dreadfully ill.

I am the lucky recipient of pneumonia and as an added special bonus, I also have the new strain of the flu which I probably got from the fucking para-transit van, I ride to and from work.

Go me.

Not.

Sorry Folks

I have had to put comments back on moderation because of crazy-ass spammers who leave shit like this in my comments:

"Europe shaped like a sheep, symbolic for slaughter:::Know who your enemies are. The Italians fucked up our society. Now the gods got them into place to CHEAT you out of the Final Prophet. Italians preyed on blacks in 20th century (WWIIs Port Chicago parlayed into civil rights) and now blacks have adopted their thug-life charecteristics. Asians know very well that the Japanese are their enemy.  But you people let your enemy do it to you over and over again. The gods offered us Italy shaped like a boot and Scandanavia shaped like a penis pissing on Europe for a reason::::To help you avoid these poeple and the potential danger they bring."

And that was only the first paragraph of several.  I lost count at 6.

What were they responding to? My post last week entitled: No. B-U-S Pirates.
Worse than I hate bigotry and homophobia and I HATE spammers. They are disgusting parasites.

And Then Comes Wisdom

We are Human Beings not Human Doings. Sometimes being means we just have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

I used to be in almost constant motion- a million things to do. Some people still say that about me and it might be true but a lot of what I do now, I do sitting.

Yet, years ago, before the spinal cord injury, before the depression, there was always something that HAD to be done: dishes, housekeeping, shopping, dog walking, writing, working, etc. But in the last several years, I have had to learn how to live differently. I have had to find the ability to live with the enormity of what I can't control and what I don't know. I've found that, in reality, very little HAS to be done. The living room does not have to be dusted today; the dishes can wait, the third draft of that article does not have to be written at three in the morning.

Being unable to do a lot of anything that didn't need to be done, I did the impossible. I lowered my standards and changed my perfectionist expectations. I quit looking for that place where the happy medium resided- that spot where there is no discomfort between my need to slow down and desire to fulfill my commitments and meet my responsibilities. People sometimes tell me I am strong or brave or both when I talk with them about my daily struggles, which I don’t often do. They tell me I am deal with it all incredibly well.

But I am not strong or brave or particularly collected about my disability. I just don’t see any other way around dealing with it except to deal with it in as straightforward a manner as I do with other things. People do not always see how resentful, apathetic and hateful I can be about the pain and the other issues that come from having an invisible disability such as mine.

They don't always see my struggle to stretch in some places while learning to accept who I am now, how I am now, in others. They do not always know I am not always people friendly.  It still is not always easy to accept my limitations or recognize when not to give of my time or energy just because I think I should be able to or because I used to be able to. And so I must sometimes depend on the people around me to teach me what I must learn.

My friends and loved ones help me to learn what I can and cannot give them and when by remaining accepting, loving and honest. They remind me that it doesn't matter how far or how fast I move- only how much of myself I bring with me on the journey.

Wisdom uncloaks in shadow and is more easily seen in darkness than in light. I've discovered that if I was to find the wisdom to live with what I couldn't control, what I didn't know, what was painful and still choose life, I had to be willing to meet her in the dark, scary places. Wisdom was there, in the moment when it seemed impossible, when I thought I had nothing more to pull from; she was there in the darkness, pushing me far beyond where I thought I could go.

Wisdom reveals to us what we cannot control or change, shows us what is hard to know about who we are and our spot in the world. She scratches at what we think we know until we are submerged in the largess of the mystery of life- all the while asking that we choose to experience the gorgeous moments life offers and live full, rich and wide lives instead of just hanging on, surviving or continuing.

So what people see as bravery or strength is really surrender. It is a blatant refusal to close my eyes and heart and a choice to stay awake while I am sometimes tossed around like a ragdoll by what I can't control. It is a choice to surrender to what needs to be done without fighting it, worrying over it, or adding to the discomfort with unnecessary anxiety or anger. It is working at finding a way to simply live with the discomfort, accepting it without struggle or the expectation of resolution. It is hard work.

When we surrender, when we cease fighting life when Wisdom calls upon us, we are miraculously carried and the strength to do what must done, the grace to live with the unlivable finds us. It's only then that something can enter- there in the place where there is no trying. There is only being and doing what needs to be done anyway.