Spiritual Thirst

It's strange sometimes, isn't it? It's hard to understand. To know. Beyond a doubt, without question, that life...this life...is a blessing, a gift, an undefinable thing. And we're often hopeless at it.

When I sit on a sun warmed rock on a cool fall day staring at the sea, feeling the noise of it pounding in my ears. Chaos echoing chaos. Chaos calming chaos. I know. I want to see the waves break against the rocks, I want to witness more power, and at the core of me, I want to see some sort of glorious unimaginable destruction. It would please me...it would answer some sort of obscure question in me to see it all fall to pieces. It would help me know that things can break outside myself too. And this great hope. This great great great hope is that somehow, I wouldn't be hopeless at living.

I turn calendar pages, scribble out "30" and replace it with "31", watch William's face change from a baby to that of a little boy. I look out my window and see a profusion of flowers and green and wonder how I could have ever lived without these shades of green. But I do manage. For months and months I manage. I look out of my window and see rain and darkness. Snow. New growth again. All too fast. All in the blink of an eye.

I wonder, what am I growing toward? Who am I becoming?

These questions are positive, strength infusing things. They keep me from running in circles, from stagnation, from feeling hopeless.

I want to strip away the useless, the negative, the fear and uncover a dazzling depth of honesty in myself. To confront myself. To grow. To set out upon the most spiritual and life changing of journeys without ever leaving my living room.

I think sometimes it would be so much easier to physically set out on a spiritual journey. To visit a place of solitude and reflection. To take up a backpack and make a difficult pilgrimage across narrow mountain roads. To be taught. To pray and meditate and focus. To go away and come back changed.

It's harder to change in a familiar place. It takes discipline to get out of your own bed each morning and think "Today I am going to learn and grow. Right here where I am. Because this is the option I have open to me right now." Examining the soul is always challenging and often unsettling. It can certainly be unpleasant at times. The alternative is to go though life blindly, always distracted, never achieving awareness or questioning yourself. Never growing. (And yes, I believe there are people who go through their lives never growing or stretching themselves.)

I like myself. I like a lot of things about myself but God forbid I ever get to a place where I feel I have no more growing or seeking left to do.

On a whole other note, my vibrant, fun and life-loving friend Serene from http://elegantbohemian.blogspot.com/ gave me this lovely award the other day:


The deal with this award is simply:

1. Thank the giver and link back to the blogger who gave it to you.
2. Reveal your 5 blogger picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.
3. Copy and paste the award on your blog.
4. Hope that the people you have sent the award to will forward it to their favorite bloggers.

So here goes:

1. Thank you Serene! (Link to her site is already posted above...if you love color and originality in clothing and character I encourage you to check it out!:)

2: - My brother Kelly at http://kellyjwilson.blogspot.com/ because he is a great writer and super intelligent and you know, he's also my brother, born on my birthday and I like him. (I'd also like to recommend you drop by and "like" his FB page which is found here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Articles-of-Faith/209796632440184 :)

- Lovely Lidia at http://mla-crownofglory.blogspot.com/ whose writing always leaves me wanting to seek the Lord on a deeper level.

- My sister in law Olga Marie at http://kreativemariet.blogspot.com/ who creates a variety of beautiful things.

- Corinne at http://www.everydaygyaan.com/ because she is one of the most entirely positive and generous-spirited people out there!

- Jane at http://northfinchley.blogspot.com/ because I enjoy her excellent writing and her sense of humor and attitude toward life.

3.) Done.

4.) Hoping. :)

On that note, I wish you all a very happy new year. May it hold love, peace and joy for you all.

"It's Just Not Fair"

"We have no right to ask, when sorrow comes, 'Why did this happen to me?' unless we ask the same question for every joy that comes our way." Philip S Bernstein

There are certain lessons we learn our whole lives through. Patterns, habits, thoughts and actions we fall into again and again and again and then feel like giving ourselves a smack on the forehead as we think in exasperation (or sometimes despair) "Didn't I learn this last time around?!"

Many of us live under the illusion that life needs to be "fair" to us. When something isn't fair, we experience numerous reactions: childish petulance, outraged hurt, anger or we find ourselves falling into despair, anxiety, fear, a spiral of negative emotions...

When our precious sense of fair is tampered with, we often lash out at others, God, ourselves, in the immaturity of our understanding.

Where does our sense of entitlement come from?

There are many, many things in life, the world and history that aren't fair. Horrendous things happen to good and innocent people and good things happen to misguided, cruel, and evil people. Why are we always surprised anew by this as though the world has always been a haven of fairness and justice and our experience is the first of its kind? Perhaps because we were created with a deep craving for justice? Created with an innate sense of dignity that in a perfect world would always be respected and valued? Or less lofty but worth mentioning, because we are essentially selfish beings who have difficulty rising above a situation that hurts us, looking at it from angles other than "it's unfair"?

It isn't wrong to think things like "Why me?" or "It just isn't fair.". But it can't end there...those thoughts need to be the beginning of a journey toward a broader and more enlightened understanding of the situation. We can choose to step out of the role and mentality of being a perpetual victim and into one of maturity, grace, and acceptance.

I think that overcoming the idea of unfairness is a lifelong battle. I didn't think it was fair for example when shortly after learning my husband and I would never have biological children, I read a story in the newspaper announcing that Karla Homolka was pregnant. (For those of you unfamiliar with the name, she and her husband together raped, tortured and murdered many teen age girls and women, her own sister among them.) That is when the absurdidty of it struck me most intensely. I had been telling myself that I didn't deserve children, I wasn't fit to be a mother, all sorts of hurtful, self destructive things to be able to bear my own feeling of it being unfair. It struck me reading this piece of news that if Karla Homolka can get pregnant and have a baby, then fairness really has nothing to do with it and obviously neither then did the notion that I somehow wasn't fit to be a mother.

Eventually I reached a place where fair and unfair took on different and more perspective definitions. As we progressed in our first adoption journey, I came to understand fair is a bigger picture than what I can see and understand...it's so subjective. Instead of thinking "Why us? Why will we never have children of our own?" I slowly began to think "Why anybody? Why this mother in Sri Lanka who has to give up her child? Why this little boy? Why this hurting broken country?" None of it is really fair. The issue was so much larger than my initial "why me". I believe there are answers and most of the time the struggle is simply to think outside of ourselves. Let go of our sense of fair.

The Joy of Giving

I want to write about gifts. Being joyful, thankful, appreciative, and gracious in both the giving and receiving that we do.

I was told some rather surprising things about myself during the past week (at least I found them surprising:) and after thinking a little bit I suppose that this is my response. Please read it in the spirit it's written in, which is that of realization and explanation. It is not meant to be snide or the taking up of a private issue publicly, simply my own thoughts on giving and receiving gifts.

Alright, I'll end your anxious anticipation and say it's very simple for me really. :) I always have liked finding gifts for other people. I try to always choose them with thought and care and occasionally a sense of fun. I love when I find that "perfect" something for somebody else or even just something I know I would appreciate getting myself, however small. (Although here I must be careful as not everybody appreciates sparkly, bejeweled small elephants the way I do.;) I truly do believe that it's the thought that counts and that there is a big and quite obvious difference between a gift chosen with love and one just grabbed off the shelf with no thought what so ever. I think things like candles, special teas and coffees or pretty soaps etc make lovely gifts. I think those things are thoughtful even though they are small. I don't stress about buying gifts, I try to enjoy it and generally have fun doing it. It's a genuine pleasure to give gifts to others and I treat it that way for the most part.

I also love receiving gifts so I'm not entirely sure where the idea that I don't appreciate them came from, unless from my own jokes about being a grinch (which I assure you are just jokes, I am not actually a grinch) or from my real desire to live with less materially. The fact that I want to try to own less doesn't mean I don't receive joy from being given a gift. Of course I do. I value the thought and love that went into it when there has been thought and love that went in to it. I don't often say what I'd like but I'm not a difficult or a picky person because I like almost everything people get me. What I don't appreciate though is the idea that a gift must be expensive to have worth. I will be honest and say that means nothing to me. It doesn't impress me or make me feel loved. What does make me feel loved is when I see someone has found something they think I'd enjoy...my sister in law recently gave me a big, cozy mug with a bag of loose specially flavored tea for my birthday and I love that sort of thing. My brother often sends me books he thinks I'd like. Another sister in law has made me beautiful cards. What I'm saying is those are the things that warm my heart to receive. Not large, expensive items. They just do nothing for me. :)

I know this isn't a deep or profound post but I have had all week to consider this and I wanted to clear the issue up for myself and perhaps for others as well. I wanted to do it kindly but honestly. I think we should both give and receive without obligation. With a joyful, thankful, appreciative, and gracious heart.

Much love, C.

Not Waiting For Someday...

From my previous post it's clear that I occasionally wonder why I live here, here of all places? Come on God, why not Italy? It looks fun there, I'm a terrible driver and I love pizza and gelati and have always wanted an old crumbling farm house surrounded by the scent of rosemary and thyme. And art and frescoes and dining al fresco. I even wave my hands quite dramatically when I speak and once a handsome dark haired Italian man told me I have "an Italian face", come on, I'd fit right in! ;)

I have felt especially discouraged here because there are few people who share my Catholic faith and it's tiring to have to always explain what I think, feel, and believe. To be judged only on the grounds that I'm "Catholic" and that is "strange" rather than people taking the time to talk to me, to find out who I am underneath all the easy labels. But then again, it is with easy labels that we all dismiss others. Refuse to look for the individual. Words can only explain so much and they are never adequate when it comes to trying to cover all of the reasons, opinions, actions, beliefs of a person. We were created as terribly complex beings and yet, we are terribly simple as well.

Whenever I begin to dwell on the fact that I would rather be some elusive "elsewhere", God always reminds me that it doesn't matter where I am. Today as I was praying the rosary one of the meditations was "God can be loved - wholeheartedly - anywhere. Loving God does not depend on the kind of place I am in but rather, on the kind of person I am."

I can't put off loving my neighbor until I live in Italy. I can't wait until I live with sunshine all around me to really be "myself", to live a life that radiates joy and energy. I can't wait until I am elsewhere to be kind and compassionate. To learn wisdom and to grow in my faith and understanding. In fact it wouldn't even be right to wait until I live in Italy to wave my arms dramatically in the air while I speak! Those are not someday things. Things to do and ways to live when I am where I want to be, surrounded by the sort of people I want to be surrounded by and in a place where life feels easier. This is my life. This is the daily nature of my living. I can't put it off because everything depends on the sort of person I am today. Everything.

I'm a slow learner. I have a head full of stubborn ideas of what I want. The title of my blog is "Carpe Diem, Gorgeous" not because I already have this concept down pat but because I need to be reminded daily to live. To love. To take this life I've been blessed with and not wish it away...wish myself elsewhere.

"Act with love in the place where you live." Medjugorje Message