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Showing posts from September, 2018

In the Meantime: Significant Gaps

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When I was growing up, I was very close to my cousin. We are one year apart in age and he and his sister, my other cousin lived in Chicago, and we lived in St. Louis. I thought he was amusing, he still is, and I enjoyed his company immensely. One of the fun things we liked to do together was to play ping pong. My parents had a ping pong table in our basement, and he and I would go down to play for long periods of time. Sometimes we would start playing a different kind of game where we would hit the ball back and forth over the net and see how many times we could hit the ball without missing. I remember we would get on a roll and couldn’t miss so we would turn in circles and hit the ball and still keep on going. Now we didn’t spike the ball; we were hitting it back and forth fairly easily. Once we hit the ball over two thousand times before one of us missed. That was the silly kinds of things we would do together. His sister and I didn’t get along as well, and in fact, she had t

Poem: And The Sun Still Shines

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Poem: And The Sun Still Shines I woke up this morning, and the sun was still rising in the sky And my dog was still licking my toes and shaking her ears And the birds were still nipping about on my deck looking for remnants of seed And the insects were buzzing about And my friend the spider was still by my front door weaving his web And the squirrels were still scurrying and jumping from tree branch to tree branch And the sun was still rising and shining down on us sending us light throughout our day And yet there are lies and deceit and war and anger and rage and fear and hatred and inequality and poverty and ignorance and denial and greed; in our world and in us And the sun was still shining  Reminding us of our moral compass Reminding us that life goes on Showing us the way and the way to our hearts Guiding us and inviting us to live And the sun shines on… My soothing words of wisdom for the week is about when you say, "I have to let

In the Meantime: Periods of Time

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I was speaking with a friend who was talking about a dynamic she experiences periodically that I had not previously thought about in regards to the in the meantime phenomenon. This is in regards to a time period experience. We were talking about busy time periods and then empty time periods. This particular person can dread busy time periods, yet she also feels a sense of accomplishment during them. When they are over and the following period ensues where it is a relatively fallow time, she feels one of lost and down and sensitive. Then she feels like she can't wait until things get busier again. I was thinking about this and realized this also describes one of those times when we are in the middle of a type of waiting mode... waiting until the next busy period resumes. What a fertile time to explore the feelings that come up along with feeling lost. It makes me think of a time of exploring our identity. Are we what we do, are we who we are, and who are we without doing? It be