Lunaea Weatherstone's Blogue

A rich and beautiful life

Sometimes books that don't really feed my soul can still provide food for thought. I recently finished Nick Hornby's How to Be Good, and though I love Nick Hornby as a general rule, this wasn't one of his best. A good concept that didn't really go anywhere -- or at least, didn't go where I wanted it to go. But in the book, the narrator/heroine reads a book review of a biography about Vanessa Bell, where the reviewer says that Bell lived "a rich and beautiful life." This phrase sets the heroine musing about her own life and set me musing too. My first impulse was to find that biography and see if what made Vanessa Bell's life rich and beautiful could also apply to my own life. One thing that comes to mind right away is that a rich and beautiful life for me would be one that continually changes, evolves, deepens. This is one of those "be careful what you ask for" wishes, of course, because life-change isn't always pleasant or comfortable. But comfort is probably pretty far down the list for the rich and beautiful life, come to think of it. Richness and beauty are jewel tones, and comfort is a nice soft earth tone. I do so like my comforts -- I'm somewhere between Karen Blixen's "I like my things" and full-on hobbit snuggery. But at the end of the day, at the end of my life, will I feel that I took full advantage of the opportunities to make it rich and beautiful?

For many years, I've had a quote on my inspiration board that I found in a magazine somewhere. It is by Elsie de Wolfe, and it says, "I am going to make everything around me beautiful. That will be my life." I too want to make everything around me beautiful, and I want to see the beauty that is already present in all things, even the terrible things, the things Joseph Campbell called "sublime" in their awe-fulness. I want to embrace the richness of change and the richness of fully being present in the moment. 

Looking at lives that appear from my vantage point to be rich and beautiful, like Vanessa Bell's, I see common threads. Inner joy that is expressed to the outer world. Fully making use of your gifts. Finding that thing within you that must be brought forth, the thing it is death to the spirit to deny. Fully connecting with other humans, without fear of heartbreak or loss. Small delights. Big dreams. Courage.

How do you make your own life rich and beautiful?

Hedgehog thinking

I went out to dinner last night with my friend Bryn and afterward we sat on a bench overlooking the ocean and mused about this and that. One of the things we had been discussing over dinner was starting a local tarot salon. I said that I couldn't think about starting anything new just yet, as I want to give good attention to the things I've already committed to. Talking about multitasking, Bryn wondered aloud why women seem able to do so many things at a time better than men do. My rather cynical reply was that it's because women just do it, often with the attitude of "if I don't do it, no one will." I think we take pride in our ability to handle many (MANY) tasks and responsibilities at the same time. It's one of our Goddess-given, ancestrally blessed, highly practiced skills. Unlike the hunter, who focuses intently on his target with full attention, we women move among the myriad plants looking for the edible, the medicinal, the magical, all the while with parts of our attention on the surroundings, the offspring, the weather, the shelter, the future . . . on and on, all the many concerns and tasks that make up a rich life. We do it all so well.

But do we take it too far? As much as I'd like to undertake a tarot salon now, I know that it would shortchange other projects. That's pretty easy to spot. Less easy to identify are daily choices, all the ways I multitask when unitasking might be much better. For example, when I'm at the computer doing editing work, I usually also have my email program open and a browser. My email program checks for new mail every two minutes. I don't have to stop and answer it, of course, or even read it, but the new-mail notification pulls my attention from the task at hand, and once that attention is re-routed, it's all too easy to go off on some other mental tangent. With the Internet laying the whole world of ideas at my feet, mental multitasking is like falling off a virtual log. Even having music playing as I work is another attention-pull. All the undone tasks that await me clamor in the background. Were even our multitasking female brains (and hearts) intended for so many tasks at the same time?

It's like the ancient Greek saying: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." I'm used to feeling smart and capable about all the things I can handle at once, but now I'm thinking that it would be better to put really solid attention and intention on One Big Thing at a time. Rather than fifteen minutes of editing followed by fifteen minutes of email answering followed by fifteen minutes of cleaning the kitchen followed by fifteen minutes of working on a rosary -- and so on through an entire day (week, year, life) -- what if I gave myself completely to each task for an hour? An afternoon? Until it is completed? It's a new way of thinking for me, and probably for a lot of other women too. We are foxy! We know many things. But can we move into hedgehog thinking? Is there One Big Thing that calls to you for your full attention?

Timeless Joy

Happy summer solstice! On this longest day, I offer you this thought, from Sister Wendy’s Book of Meditations:

The way into blessed freedom may be to live without too great a dependence on the passage of time, on the inexorable approach of tomorrow and mortality. The sense of joy in Renoir’s Children on the Sea-shore seems to flow from the timelessness of their experience. It is not a real world, with its softly colored pastel background made up of a blur of bathers and with the children themselves half melted into their context of color. They are responsive only to the immediacy of their sun-filled leisure. We feel that this visit to the beach will be recalled, in the future, as joy, though perhaps not yet fully realized as such.

May your own experiences today and in the summer days ahead be recalled as joy in the years to come!

Where do you hear the voice of inspiration?

When I write my memoir of the time I’ve spent living in my present house, I may just call it “Bath Girl Trapped in a Shower World.” My otherwise delightful Lunadoon home has only a very small bathtub, excellent for an eight-year-old, but not really feasible for someone of my proportions and aged creakiness. Aside from the benefit of (as my sister Lynn says) “getting the day off you,” baths have always been a time when flashes of inspiration come to me — new projects, solutions to problems, helpful ideas, and above all, reassuring messages from the Goddess that help me feel I’m on the right track. Now that I’m not soaking in water on a daily basis, I’m forced to look elsewhere for those flashes. And I’m finding that they still come in watery form — taking a shower, washing dishes, watering the pots on the deck. There is something about running water that sweeps my thoughts along with its flow, refreshing, cleansing, revealing unexpected treasure under the everyday brain-muck. Last summer I spent many happy hours floating in a little 10-foot kiddie pool — a gift from my friend Kat. It was spirit-saving — maybe even life-saving — during a fierce heat wave when temperatures went to 110. The siren song of that cool sweet water calls me again as the days grow warmer. That splashing sound you hear may just be me frolicking like a happy sea lion!

Where do you best hear the voice of inspiration?