On Choosing Joy

Dear Great Mystery,

Thank you for this life where Abundance is Truth and Scarcity is Story.

Thank you for the reminders that I am not in Control and it is Not About Me and that the more that I surrender to Your Grace the more My own Beauty shines through and my own Life takes form.

Thank you for beloved community that is family that holds me accountable to living my most magnificent life.

A dear friend helped me remember today to be the source of my own joy instead of my own pain.  It's got me reflecting upon radical acceptance of what arises and what falls away and opening to the reality that resisting what is true, resisting what has happened, clinging to stories- especially ones that involve a "poor me" who was "wronged by an other"- only leads to me getting in my own way.  And so I surrender... to my life, to my most spectacular, vibrant, rich, rich life.

Much is brewing, is bubbling, that I'm called to share- though it's not quite ready to pour into a sweet ceramic mug yet.  Perhaps I will indulge in a later post to share what this five year marker is illuminating for me.  In this moment I am simply called to share the poem that my friend read to me today as he urged me to choose joy, to choose love, to choose to wish everyone, even the most challenging of relations, even my sweet, tender, emotional, strong, emerging, beautiful, fallible, mysterious, imperfect SELF only the best- only happiness, wellness, peace, wholeness and love... and to love my self so deeply, so fiercely, that all that I experience, that I feel, that I am continues to be welcome and welcome and welcome and worthy of radical, unconditional, enduring love.

And so it is here, on this breezy California evening with the perfect combination of intimacy and distance and chosen family, that I begin.  I give thanks for how effortless it is to wish, with the quietest of minds and softest of hearts, each member of this tender community only the best.  My we all breathe in and out the goodness, the love, the joy that is so abundantly available in this life.

We Have  Come to Be Danced

by Jewel Mathieson

We have come to be danced
not the pretty dance
not the pretty pretty, pick me, pick me dance
but the claw our way back into the belly
of the sacred, sensual animal dance
the unhinged, unplugged, cat is out of its box dance
the holding the precious moment in the palms
of our hands and feet dance

We have come to be danced
not the jiffy booby, shake your booty for him dance
but the wring the sadness from our skin dance
the blow the chip off our shoulder dance
the slap the apology from our posture dance

We have come to be danced
not the monkey see, monkey do dance
one, two dance like you
one two three, dance like me dance
but the grave robber, tomb stalker
tearing scabs & scars open dance
the rub the rhythm raw against our souls dance

WE have come to be danced
not the nice invisible, self conscious shuffle
but the matted hair flying, voodoo mama
shaman shakin’ ancient bones dance
the strip us from our casings, return our wings
sharpen our claws & tongues dance
the shed dead cells and slip into
the luminous skin of love dance

We have come to be danced
not the hold our breath and wallow in the shallow end of the floor dance
but the meeting of the trinity: the body, breath & beat dance
the shout hallelujah from the top of our thighs dance
the mother may I?
yes you may take 10 giant leaps dance
the Olly Olly Oxen Free Free Free dance
the everyone can come to our heaven dance

We have come to be danced
where the kingdom’s collide
in the cathedral of flesh
to burn back into the light
to unravel, to play, to fly, to pray
to root in skin sanctuary
We have come to be danced
WE HAVE COME

With the deepest of gratitude for this web that we continue to weave,
and with thanks to each of you for agreeing to be danced with me, February after February,

Lizziebee