Gobble Trouble - A Turkey Story

Only wanting to save myself time,
and not have to cook a turkey for hours,
I went on-line...

I thought I had planned well ahead...

ordering a"pre-cooked" turkey instead...
from a local grocery -
to be picked up
Thanksgiving mid-day
ready to serve...

But I guess I Googled the wrong key word
assuming "pre-cooked" meant the bird
was cooked in the store and placed under
a warming hood...

But no!

The story did not go the way I saw it in *my* mind...

Sent my husband to pick up the "cooked" turkey
at the appointed time...
Arriving home -- I saw the look in his eye -
that said something had gone awry...

The "cooked" turkey was frozen - he said...
We were both dismayed at how this had played...

I called the store, there must have been a mistake!
But it had closed, so their employees
could enjoy a Thanksgiving dinner plate...

I sputtered and agitated
wondering what I should do...

Instructions said thaw in refrigerator
2-4 days!  But that wouldn't do...

You'd a thought when I talked to
customer service pre-ordering the thing
she would have warned me it would be fro-zen
 but I didn't understand her Mandarin...

So it sat in the sink - only an 8 pounder,
but hard as a rock -
while I dealt with the shock...

I turned on the faucet following the sink thawing
instructions, which would take 4 hours! - or longer...
Still doable - I thought - but the pressure turned up
my self-imposed holiday expectations,
for a Thanksgiving feast
that was turning into a fait accompli...

Two hours into thawing I began to stress
about the mess I had gotten into,
making assumptions,
trying to live up to "tradition" - in my own
Thanksgiving rendition -
sitting in the sink hard as a rock,
the Turkey that is :)

A command decision had to be made.
Thanksgiving dinner would be delayed.
All 3 of us agreed without much sorrow,
after all it's just another day, my sister
reminded, and there's always tomorrow.

So now what to do bout - dinner...

Home made bunless hamburgers and 
roasted red potatoes
would have to make do...

While the Turkey gobble sat in the sink
waiting to thaw through...

I finally remembered, as I lay down my head,
that it's not about the meal
on "Turkey day" - 
but real gratitude instead...

Mystic Meandering
Nov. 28, 2024

Photo - the Turkey

 

A Heart Warmer...

These photos are so heart warming.  We received them from an
online friend back in 2011, and I can't even remember who.  But

I think they are from England, and I was so moved by them
that I wanted to share them again, after 13 years...

This is the short story that came with these pictures:  Lily is a 
Great Dane that has been blind since a bizarre medical condition
required that she have both eyes removed.  For the last 5 years,
Maddison, another Great Dane, has been her sight.  The two are,
of course inseparable...

This was the caption at the bottom of the photos:

"People will forget what you said; People will forget what you
did.  But people will never forget how you made them feel."

~~

"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives
means the most to us, we often find that it is those who,
instead of giving much advice, solutions or cures,
have chosen rather to share our pain
and touch our wounds
with a gentle hand.

The friend who can be silent with us
in a moment of despair or confusion,
who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement,
who can tolerate not knowing,
not curing,
not healing,

and face with us the reality of our powerlessness,
that is a friend who cares."

Henri Nouwen

~

Wishing you many blessings of love,
especially in these challenging and
 less than loving times...

MM

 

Love Cries...

Love Cries...

For loss of the innocence of children
traumatized by
the world as it is...

For the compassion of strangers
lifting you up and walking you to
the "finish line" when you fall...

For the little things that touch your Heart
and open it - again;
a kind word, a gentle touch...

When the heart softens,
as the world hardens...

For fellow humans caught in unbearable
suffering - by those wielding delusional power...

For unexpected blessings
when all seems dark...

When you wake to a sense of inexplicable peace
in the midst of personal dis-ease and chaos...

When you hear the caring voice of a friend
you thought was lost to you,
suddenly call on the phone...

Love hears the Cries of our Hearts...

Love feels...

Love knows Itself...

Mystic Meandering
Nov. 20, 2024

~

My next post will have a story about
the dogs in the photo above with more
photos.  One is blind!  It is definitely
is a heart opener...

 

The Cosmic Symphony...

The Cosmos plays a continuous symphony of Silence
that only Inner Stillness can hear...
We have forgotten the music of the 
Celestial Songs
that sound the stellar light language of 
Love ~

Our remembrance lies hidden deep in
the cave of the Heart - untouched...
The unspoken language of the Heart
longs to be opened - awakened...
The dormant vibration calls to us,
to resonate with the tones of Light
in the Space of Silence ~

Listen deeply and hear the

Celestial Symphony
within the Stillness
of the Heart ~

Follow the cosmic waves,
the pulsing sound of Life,
into the Vastness
of Being ~

Find your own resonance
with The Rhythm
in your Heart ~

- and know -

We are all a tone of  Love
playing our uniqueness in the
Chord of Life,
reverberating with the
Sound of Source ~

Mystic Meandering
Aug 1, 2001

~

Photo from the James Web Telescope

 

Religion and Spirituality - Wayne Teasdale

There is a difference between
religion and spirituality.
Spirituality refers to an individual's
solitary search for and discovery of
the Absolute or the Divine...

[however one knows that to be]
It involves direct mystical experience of "God"
[however one knows that to be],
or realization of the vast Awareness.
Spirituality carries with it a conviction
that the transcendent is real...

Religion is more a social organism of
worship and ritual...

We need direct contact with The Divine or Ultimate
Mystery.  The focus of Religion is on worship at a
corporate level - carriers of tradition rather than
the mystical life...

Spirituality can be profoundly transformative when it
inspires in us an attitude of surrender to The Mystery.
Spirituality draws us into the depths of our Being,
where we come face to face with ourselves, our
weaknesses and the Ultimate Mystery.

Religions depend on institutions to make decisions for
us through conformity to external religiosity and the
safe routines of liturgy and ritual.

The necessary shifts in consciousness requires a new
approach to spirituality that transcends past religious
cultures of fragmentation and isolation.
We don't need to go into monasteries to become mystics.
We need only to realize and activate that Essential part
of our Being...

How we make the journey is what spirituality is all
about, using all the resources from all the religious 
traditions available to us...

Finding our own path.

Finding a way to relate to the Divine [however one knows
that to be].  The evolution of an individual's spirituality
is a mysterious and intimate matter.  It originates in the heart,
in deep stirrings that represent an insatiable longing of the 
heart [for Source]...

We are created for the spiritual journey...

Wayne Teasdale
from: Mystic Heart

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Child of the Milky Way - Chet Raymo

I am a child of the Milky Way.  I am made of the dust of stars.
Every atom in my body was forged in a star.  When the
Universe exploded into being, already the bird longed for
the wood and the fish for the pond.  When the first galaxies
fell into luminous clumps. already matter was struggling
toward consciousness.

The star clouds of Sagittarius are a burning bush.  If there is
a voice in Sagittarius, I'd be a fool not to listen.  If "God's"
voice in the night is a scrawny cry, then I'll pick up my ears.
If night's faint lights fail to knock me off my feet, then I'll sit
back on a dark hillside and wait and watch.  A hint here and
a trait there.  Listening and watching.  Waiting, always waiting
for the tingle in the spine.

Chet Raymo
from The Soul of the Night: An Astronomical Pilgrimage

with thanks to Cate Kerr
Beyond the Fields We Know

Photo - Cate Kerr

~

How can you explain the mystery of the Inexplicable?
You can only surrender to it...

My "medicine" - my wild comfort -
is the wonderment and splendor
of the Infinite Cosmos...
It soothes my Soul

MM

_/\_

 

Unknown Wanderer - Ed Crowley

People often
ask me where
I live and what's
the name of my 
hometown road
I smile
as I tell them
it's nowhere

Yet
it's everywhere
and it's simply

my humble abode
I'm the
Unknown Wanderer
and hence
I simply wander
then I pivot
Awareness around
Into the stillness
of the Silence
as I lay my soul
down in Rumi's field
Where the
Beloved Ones
teachings are revealed
If you want to know
where I call home at
the end of the day
look up at the stars
It's beyond your vision
but if you look
long enough you'll
sense me there
spinning like a Sufi
in the boundless
galaxy
of the Milky Way

[.....]

Ed Crowley

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~*~

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field.  I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase 'each other'
doesn't make any sense.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the door sill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep."

Rumi

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

At the Edge - Czeslaw Milosz

A valley and above it forests in autumn colors.
A voyager arrives, a map led him here.
Or perhaps memory.  Once, long ago, in the sun,
When the first snow fell, riding this way
He felt joy, strong, without reason,

Joy of the eyes.  Everything was the rhythm
Of shifting trees, of a bird in flight.
Of a train on the viaduct, a feast of motion.
He returns years later, has no demands.
He wants only one, most precious thing:
To see, purely and simply, without name,
Without expectations, fears, or hopes,
At the edge where there is no I or not-I.

Czeslaw Milosz

translated by Robert Hass

with thanks to Whisky River

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

A Far Bigger Reality? - a meandering...

 

When "window sitting" in 2010 with only the bright moon lighting
the night, the non-dual concept of "me-no-me" (or self-no-self) arose...
I scratched some notes out on the windowsill in the moonlight:

"Window sitting", like meditation, takes the focus off the "me"
and puts the focus on what is Aware within me - The Silence -
at the Core of my Being - or some call it Consciousness...
This Silence (for me) unwinds the "me" - slows it down -
gives it space...

*

Pondering the non-dual concept of whether there's a "me" or no-me
is tedious, divisive, and not very helpful - a conundrum that keeps me
 focused on the "me" as if the "me" is arguing its own existence. 
The thought arose that the tree does not argue whether it is a tree
 or not...  It just bes the tree. (Yes, that is what I wrote.) :)

The so-called "me" is like a lens through which the Essence or Core
of my Beingness sees the world, sees life, how it engages with life...

*

Recently (2024), while sitting in The Silence, these words floated
through: "there is a far bigger Reality than 'spirituality', or 'religion',
or 'non-duality.  It is a Reality inclusive of our entire personal
human existence, and human experience - as "me."

*

The sense (back in 2010 window sitting) was that we have to open
the "aperture" of the "me" - to take in the larger view, to not fixate
on *things*, like thoughts, ideas, beliefs, feelings, circumstances,
people, etc.  We have to soften our gaze to see the bigger Reality....

I/me became aware in this moment, sitting at the window, that there
 is just a fluid sense of Beingness at my Core, (the only way I know
 to describe it) - that which is Aware within me, as me, call it the
Divine Consciousness - or Essential Nature - was I now "no-me?"
And other questions arose:  Is it true that there is no "me"?
"How can that be true" (as non-dualists would argue that there is
no me - and no tree...) (I no longer ask questions regarding such
unanswerable abstractions - or maybe I just don't understand the
concept).

The sense arose in me (back then) that there is a "me" function of
"Consciousness;" a practical function.  Like a thought function, or
body function, there is a "me" function... a "me" mechanism...
(Some call this the ego)

The "me" is a function of our Divine Nature/Consciousness - not
its enemy that needs to dissolve, as some teach.  It's a conditioned
function - by life's experiences - habituated to perform in certain
ways, but that also allows the Essential/Divine Nature to express
Itself through this "me" - this human - as me...

Mystic Meandering
Nov. 2024

~

Photo taken by my brother
on the coast of Gloucester, Mass

~

You don't possess Life, Life expresses itself through *you*.
Your body is a flower that Life let bloom; a phenomenon
created by Life.

Ilchi Lee

~

The "religion" of the future will be a cosmic religion.  It should
transcend a personal God and avoid dogmas and theology.

Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based
on a sense arising from the experience of all things, natural/human
and spiritual, as a meaningful unity.

Albert Einstein

Live in Harmony with the Voice of Being - Vaclav Havel

It is I who must begin.

Here and now,

right where I am,
not excusing myself
by saying things
would be easier elsewhere,
without grand speeches and
ostentatious gestures,
but all the more persistently
- to live in harmony
with the 'voice of Being', as I
understand it within myself.....

Vaclav Havel

Teaching with Fire

with thanks to Love Is A Place

~

Photo Art - Mystic Meandering

 

The Weight of Opinions - a meandering...

While I have my personal opinions
about what just happened in this country -
and the numbing and sombering effects of
its consequences,
I must not engage in my opinions -
but turn my focus
towards the Greater Reality within myself -
for I do believe there is a Greater Reality than our
personal beliefs, religions, "spirituality", nationalism;
personal politics; and the distractions of our lives
that keep us bound to *this* time-bound reality -
that I must now learn to travel through...

For some reason this moment is a "gate" that we,
as a country and a world, must pass through  - and
learn to accept and navigate what has befallen us in
this shift in reality...

Mystic Meandering
Nov. 6, 2024

~

If there is anything you should stop wearing
as you get older is the weight of other people's
[and your own] opinions...

Author Unknown

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Go in the Dark - Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this too, was a gift...

Mary Oliver

(I still don't understand it :)

with thanks to Under My Umbrella and Beyond

~

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark.  Go without sight, and
find that the dark, too, blooms and sings and is
traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

Wendell Berry

~

Art - Mystic Meandering
Nordic Forest
(drip painting)

 

Ghosts? - Paul F. Eno

I don't believe that ghosts are "spirits of the dead" because I 
don't believe in death.  In the multiverse, once you're possible,
you exist.  And once you exist, you exist forever one way or
another.  Besides, death is the absence of life, and the ghosts
I've met are very much alive.  What we call ghosts are lifeforms
just as you and I are.

Paul F. Eno
Footsteps in the Attic

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

"Spirit Light"

~

My favorite grandmother passed 26 years ago yesterday.
My father passed 39 years ago tomorrow.
Although their bodies are gone something of them lives on
 somewhere, maybe not as the personas we remember,
although my brother insists that my father joins him on his
 motorcycle  rides quite frequently :) - not as a ghost that he sees,
 but a felt presence...  My husband's mother passed in Nov 2017. 
Two weeks after her death my husband and I both felt a strong
loving presence, and we both *knew* it was *her* presence -
how I don't know...  Not as a ghost or apparition, but as
 living presence.

A Mystery...

MM

 

Simply Silence...

In the midst of chaos there is always Silence...
In the midst of complexity there is simplicity...
Being in the Rhythm of Silence unwinds the mind -
unwinds the fears.
It unwinds the contracted body, thoughts, emotions, and feelings
that have become an habituated response to life.

Silence is the medicine that brings us back to the current of Life
again; into the Infinite Presence that lives us...

It is not "mother earth" pulsing through us,
but That which also pulses through "mother earth" -
the Cosmic pulse of Life that infuses all things...

Reach deeply into the Stillness of Silence
within you - the Primordial Space of Silence
and thrive there...

In this stillness is the congruancy of Life...

Feel the Stillness,
the Sacred Silence...
Awaken to its Rhythm...

It is not thought...
Go behind the mind,
to the Essence of Existence -
Silence...

Sweet, Sweet, Silence...

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings from the Silence
2006

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Leaves on a branch
color inverted digitally giving
this wonderful oriental, zen-like affect
of simplicity...