Under a Cornflower Blue Sky

Hiking at Barr Lake before the leaves came out this spring

These last two years have a been a wild ride. The grief part was not so fun, but the rest I've enjoyed more than a body has a right to. After I let go of the need to control my world (and the idea that I actually could control my world--ha ha), I had a lot more fun.

Talking to a new friend last night at happy hour, I explained my philosophy. Nothing really irks me, or if it does, it's momentary. Sure, sometimes I get down or anxious, but now I can recognize the old pattern (neural, emotional, behavioral, physical, whatever) and that it doesn't serve me anymore. The lesson of, "Notice it, sit with it, laugh about it, and then let it go," has sunk in after much repetition and practice.

"You realize that's an extraordinary claim to make," my friend, Adam, said, referring to my self-proclaimed ability to be content and happy 99% of the time. I looked at him and smiled. That's all I can do these days, smile and laugh. But he believed me. I could tell. There are some people you meet, and you immediately know they are genuine. He's one, and I'm one.

Finally, finally, I'm doing nothing but attracting the right kind of people into my life. These are the folks who speak their truth, have a deep understanding of how lucky they are to have the things they have, and can accept who they are right now while being open to change. Manifestation is a powerful, powerful tool.

And speaking of lucky, I haven't made a gratitude list lately. Here it is, in no particular order:

• Friends and family who love me, support me, and challenge me to be a better person
• My teacher and classmates in the year-long seminary program I am about to complete (see my website at TheDivineInYou.com for more info on my intuitive healing and spiritual facilitation services)
• A beautiful community to live in, and the bike path I can hop on at a moment's notice
• Sunshine, the smell of flowers and freshly mown grass, bird song
• A reliable car
• Healthy food to eat
• My health
• A certain little brown dog who lives with me
• Technology
• Music in its infinite variations
• Really good stout beer
• Consciousness and connection to the larger world

Amen!

More recent adventures that are part of the new, "Let go and have fun" philosophy:

Messing around at the Stock Show in January

Visiting the tiny little house I grew up in this spring

About to dig in to a delicious dessert to celebrate the New Year

Fathers and Forgiveness

Recently, I heard Ira Glass, who publishes This American Life on National Public Radio, speak at an auditorium in Fort Collins, Colorado. He talked about why the stories he tells are so compelling and move millions of people. In the Q-and-A portion at the end, a woman suggested a story on estranged parents. She estimated that half of the people in the room were currently or had been estranged from at least one parent and wanted to talk about why that was and how it could be remedied, if at all.

Her take was that she wanted to tell her dad what he had done to hurt her so much. Ira wasn't sure about the story, whether it would have enough of an element of surprise to make the cut. As Lacy spoke about her experience, I started to cry. It touched a soft spot, as I had just reconciled with my dad after nine years of silence.

My dad divorced my mom when I was 30 years old and my sister was 17. His inability to have a relationship with me after that, or so I interpreted his behavior, had huge ramifications on my own marriage and my ideas about men in general. I tried to create a new and different relationship with my dad, but it seemed I couldn't connect no matter what I tried. I gave up. He gave up. We stopped speaking.

My sister, who is one of my best friends, continued to have a relationship with my dad throughout the years, mostly through sheer force of will. Over time, she built a friendship not only with him, but with his second wife and my now four-year-old baby brother. I stayed in the loop that way, but was somehow comfortable with the idea that I would never see my dad again.

As my sister earned her Master's degree in psychology, she started to see things in my dad that neither she nor I had seen before. Good things. Great things, even: open-mindedness, kindness, vulnerability. He went through his own trials, including suffering with polymyalgia and losing his job. I could relate--I had dealt with my own health issues and had lost my job four years earlier. I listened to everything she had to say about him with rapt attention.

Last year, my husband left our 20-year partnership. Through several transformational events, including months of weekly psychotherapy, regular yoga practice, bicycling like mad, and meditation, I was born anew. In the difficult process of extracting my life from my husband's--physically, emotionally, intellectually, financially, and spiritually--I learned a beautiful, quiet kind of acceptance of my life and everything in it. I sold my house, moved to an apartment, and began a new career by enrolling in a non-denominational ministry program.

I went from control freak to live-and-let-live, from CPA and business consultant to energy healer. I started dating and was amazed by the big, big world out there. I even befriended my ex-husband. Life was flexible. Life was good. It was time to talk to my dad again.

One sunny Sunday morning this October, I called and asked if it was OK to go up to my dad's house in the mountains to see him and his family that day. On the drive up, I felt completely centered and at peace. I wasn't tied to any particular outcome and was content knowing that I was taking this step toward reconciliation.

Happily, the reunion was a success. I felt welcomed, loved, and loving. No one had any need to talk about blame or hurt or fault. We were all just so glad to see one another, and there were hugs all around. Champagne toasts, lots of catching up, and dinner followed. I gave my baby brother a goodnight hug. On the way home, I stopped at the top of the pass, in the complete darkness, to wonder at the sheer brilliance of millions of stars. I couldn't have been any happier at that moment.

So I wonder, how did holding on to that hurt and blame for all those years serve my highest and best good? How did my dad's fear of conflict serve him? Does it take tragedy in our own lives to learn compassion for others? Does the forgiveness process have to take years of our lives, or is there a spark that we can somehow use to light the flame in others' hearts that allows them to let go and love those who love them?

To Have or Not to Have, That Is the Question

The last couple of months have brought with them so much fun and so many valuable gifts that I think I'll call July and August two of my best friends. While I've been listening to music, admiring beautiful art, and breaking bread with friends, I've also been learning and growing so fast it makes my head spin. One of the interesting teachings I've received is this: to coexist with the duality of being able to have something and not being able to have it brings with it peace and harmony.

Havingness is the ability to receive the full beauty and grace of something--fame, wealth, friendship, love, or anything else. For example, a person might be wealthy in financial terms but constantly feel that she is going to lose it all and one day have to beg for money on the streets. She is not in a place where she can have her wealth. Another person can be relatively poor in financial terms but feel wealthy because all of his basic needs are met and he enjoys what few possessions he does have tremendously (think Gandhi).

Someone who can't take a compliment is a perfect example of a person who is unable to have. Perhaps you can relate? Have you ever denied it when someone told you that she admired your taste in clothes? Have you countered that compliment by immediately complimenting the other person's taste, whether or not you believed what you were saying? To fully have everything good that life brings you seems like it would be easy, but it can be surprisingly difficult. Being able to have can take many karmic lifetimes of practice.

And THEN, once you FINALLY learn to have, you have to learn how not to have. What? This sounds crazy. But if you are equally comfortable not having that thing--fame, money, love--in your life, you make space for it to come into your life in all of its glory. Think about that woman who has oodles of money but spends her whole life thinking about how someday she might not have that money. She hasn't learned to have, and she hasn't learned not to have.

Where are you on your journey?