You had to be there to get this, I am certain.  But I am nevertheless compelled to attempt to explain this situation.

I had dashed into my local healthy grocery store.  Feeling good, I grabbed the kale and broccoli, etc., and made my way to the check out.  My slightly less than favorite checkout woman, of dour disposition, was free at the one register.  I put my veggies down, happy and joyous and feeling free

I realized it was Monday, senior discount day, something for which I am a proudly grateful participant.  However, as I started to ask for it, and the strangest thing happened—I couldn’t remember the words, senior discount.  I got a little confused.  Was I in the Kripalu Shop, where the key words for discount are, I’m an employee?  I was pretty sure that I didn’t work in this grocery store, but I still couldn’t find the words.  So I said to the young, already getting more dour by the moment woman:

“I’m elderly”.

I’m elderly.

I told her I was elderly!

Still unable to think of the words, I started laughing.  She, really dour now, and getting pissed, said, quite coldly, “Do you want a senior discount?”

Yes, yes, senior discount.  That’s it.  That’s what I want.

However by this time I was completely unable to contain.  Some kind of childlike irrational hysteria swept over me, as I attempted to pack my box. I was doubled over, laughing, hardly able to manage the credit card experience.  By this time the register person was done with me.  And I mean, really done with me, wouldn’t look at me.  I somehow managed to stumble my way out of the store with my box of nutritionally correct food, made it the car and roared, laughed, cried, wailed, all the way home.

This is why we elderly people need SENIOR DISCOUNTS.  We need help.  Please support us and be kind when you see us in public places.

I have absolutely no idea what this reflects about my attitude toward aging or to myself.  But oh, it was so good have that total laugh experience.

Oh, and p.s.–this site is almost ready for revision–coming soon.  Thanks for abiding by the snow picture for so ridiculously long.

 

 

 

Maya Angelou says:

“Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.

Okay, so if love is a bit of an edgy word today, fill in the blank with “grace” or “truth” or “light”.

Fill in your blank.

What might it look like in your life today to trust that, no matter what is going on, no matter what is unfolding, buried in its arms are gifts of grace beyond your understanding?

What’s one thing you can do today to lean toward that trust?

For me, I’m going for a walk.  Right now.  Outside.  I’m going.

I choose to walk my trust, one step at a time!

Finally!  The Berkshire Hills yield to soft yellow flowers.

The hills from afar look streaked with the soft reds of opening buds.

It’s so amazingly restoring to see the shift into spring emerging.

We had a forsythia bush in my childhood yard—to this day, the sight of them always bring my mom to me.  I imagine her sitting next to me in this moment, silent, contained, protecting, always-silently-protecting me.

It’s a full moon tonight—the full flower moon, also called the Mother’s Moon or Corn Moon—a time of increasing fertility with warming temperatures, it is said.

Speaking of which, a time of increased fertility will bless this website.  We’ll be down for a few days as upgrades and possibilities are planted beneath the Mother’s Moon.

Remember this great song?  I never quite got the lyrics, but was mesmerized by and strangely committed to the ch-ch-ch-bit:

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strain)
Ch-ch-Changes
Don’t want to be a richer man
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strain)
Ch-ch-Changes
Just gonna have to be a different man
Time may change me
But I can’t trace time

Life just keeps coming and oh, it keeps growing us!  It comes to melt away all the parts of us that we no longer need.  What is this moment but yet another profound and damn opportunity to grow?

Big ch-ch-ch-ch-changes in my world.

The Inner Quest Intensive, one of the three massive commitments/tethers in my life, has been unmoored.  It will no longer be offered at Kripalu Center, its home for several decades.  I am slowly recovering from this surprise/trauma, and realizing that nothing, NOTHING was taken from me.  I was given by the universe that which is truly mine.

A new freedom emerges, along with its surrounding terror.

The Inner Quest will morph into an even more magnificent, even more empowering process for folks up ahead.  Of this, I am certain.  Its essence will live on, through the commitment of its brilliant core team, in forms yet imagined.

Keep tuned.

Other ch-ch-ch-ch-changes tumble behind this one.

My profound loyalty to the organization that has grown me shifts into the zone of liability.  I need to imagine myself and my work outside those walls.  Hence, this site will be renewed and reinvented.
As will I.  Kicking and screaming, I leave the nest.

David says, “…gonna have to be a different man”.

Aruni says, “…gonna have to become more of who I really am.”

Well.  What is there to say?

Keep tuned.

Like the wicked witch of the west, the mounts of giant snow/ice/frozen mush seem to be diminishing, revealing beneath itself muddied earth. Looking a tad battered but resilient nevertheless, the earth emerges, readied for this springtime, convinced of the possibility of renewal.

The mommy herons sit on their nests, high up in trees in their rookery,convinced too, it appears, of the inevitable springtime.

New life, new birth, new warmth, new possibility hover in the air.

Less convinced am I, more battered by the losses of winter. Still I choose to take my lead from the heron, from the earth,and allow the cycles of change to unfold.