Category Archives: Uncategorized

Don’t Miss This Unique Opportunity

During these difficult times, I’m offering the following workshops to lift your spirits. Please select from the following list those you wish to attend.

_____Whistling Your Way Past Fear and Anxiety

_____How to Succeed Without Lifting a Finger

_____Other Interesting Things To Do With That Finger

_____Transforming Now Into Then

_____How To Improve Your Marriage Using Common Kitchen Appliances

_____Coming Unglued: Detachment Made Easy

_____The Guilt  Lover’s Guide To Successful Child Rearing

_____You Too Can Become a Corporation

_____Making Whining Work For You

_____How Being Irresponsible Can Set You Free and Get You Elected to Congress

_____Developing a Mindful Bathroom Presence

_____Celebrating Dysfunction Wherever You Find It

_____Basic Paperclip Maintenance

_____Overcoming Happiness and Other Obstacles To Misery

_____Writing as Waste Management

_____Learning How To Snort Like an Iconoclast

_____101 Other Uses For Eric Cantor

_____Self-Actualizing No More

_____Awakening the Sleeping Termite Within

_____The Hidden Joys Of Catastrophizing

_____Guido’s Guide To A Successful Divorce

_____Turning Common Household Items Into Body Parts For Fun And Profit

_____Renewing Your Faith In Intimidation

_____Blogging Your Way To Bankruptcy

*I will also custom design workshops based on your suggestions. Don’t delay. Respond today.

JDG

Sometimes We Need to Build a Dike

Sometimes we need to build a dike

to hold in check

the pounding sea

of busyness.

We need a bulwark, strong and firm,

to stem the flood

of endless claims

upon our time.

Then, with that solid sheltering,

the soul might find

its ease and speak

and maybe sing.

                                                 JDG

The Compost Heap

Way in the back, I’ve cleared a space,

( for all that’s stale,

begun to mold,

release a stink )

a holding place to decompose

those leftovers

which kept  too long

turned slowly rank.

 Here such leavings as fear and hate can

reconstitute,

turn dark and moist,

give  fertile choice.

                                                                JDG

I Was Way Off Center

I was way off center when Truth

interrupted.

In a tone, not

sharp, not gentle,

without drama or persuasion ,

Truth stopped the swirl.

The clear message

came uncluttered,

minus yes or no, do or don’t –

a mere statement

of fact startling

the noise of thought,

bringing me back to the center

not only mine

but Truth’s as well.

Perfect freedom!

                                                JDG

On Those Days

On those days when the sun won’t shine,

poems won’t rhyme,

the dryer’s broke,

gone up in smoke,

and the commode has overflowed,

I want to know,

I want to see

what else might be.

“Be in the now,” the wise ones say,

but on those days

Miss Peggy Lee  *

speaks more for me.

                                                     JDG

* For those of you who are younger than I or who listened to more elevated music, the reference is to Peggy Lee’s hit, “Is That All There Is?”.

A Deep Breath Now

I can take a deep breath now.

Everything is

going to be

all right this night.

The moon spills forth upon the trees.

We drift, grandkids

and I, to sleep,

one on one side,

One on the other. Lullabies

flow us into

gentleness. We

hold each other.

                                                    –  JDG

When I built my small round house on the land overlooking the pond, I did not know that soon I would remodel the nearby shed,  holding place for the lawn tractor and gardening tools.  It was to be my office, but became instead a  temporary shelter for me when my grandchildren came to live in the round house  with their mother after the death of their father in a whitewater rafting accident. Most nights one or both of them would join me in the shed and this poem was written about those times.  Since then, the shed has also sheltered, for a time,  friends in transition and now it holds my younger sister who has returned home.

When Peace Comes

Even a long-awaited guest

can overstay,

outlast its best,

turn yea to nay.

What I totally failed to see

until peace came

to live with me

( not passing blame,

’cause who would know? ) that peace can lull

and be a bore.

A time to cull,

show peace the door?

                                                         JDG

We live, conditioned to tension and stress, longing for peace.  Yet, when peace does come,  we can mistake its calm for flatness and stir things up again just to get that old adrenalin rush often associated with vitality. This poem was written to acknowledge this temptation.  With time and openness maybe we can come to see that  peace has a vitality all its own.

Going Home

Going home is seldom easy.

My mind insists

on going off

the homeward path,

takes me down the road most traveled;

lurching forward,

going nowhere,

going there fast.

Sometimes then, breathless and weary,

I pause enough

to brake and breathe

and turn toward home.

                                                      JDG

Dreams and Meditation

     Dreams have many functions and one of them, like meditation, is to help us become more aware. Last Sunday I participated in a daylong silent retreat  led by good friends and excellent facilitators, Kay and Philip Davidson. I will be reflecting on many aspects of that retreat for some time to come, but I experienced the first gentle nudging during an initial period of silence when we were asked to allow our intention for this retreat to come forward. After consciously running some possibilities through my mind, I was able to acknowledge them and let them go and to simply sit with attention.  It was then that I knew, from a source deeper than thought, that I was here to become better acquainted with  nonresistance and noninsistence.

      I was familiar with the idea that we accentuate our pain and cause ourselves and others suffering by resisting the way things are at a particular moment. It’s as though we come out swinging or hurriedly draw back before we even know what we are fighting or fleeing. We just know we don’t like it, whatever it is, and we refuse to accept it. By not resisting, we can see more clearly what is both before us and within us and choose from a variety of possible responses. Nonresistance increases our freedom.

     What was new to me was this concept of noninsistence. As I reflect, I realize that just as I can resist what is, I can also insist that what is be exactly like I want it to be. With resistance I am caught up in what I don’t want and with insistence, I am caught up in what I do want. Both reactions cause pain and limit freedom because neither allows for what is.

     Then, to drive the point home, came last night’s dream.  I dreamed that I was in a small, rectangular, windowless room about the size of a changing room. A  bench ran lengthwise  down one of the room’s sides. In the room with me was a man  and a woman I knew to be the mother of a female acquaintance.  It seems she had had cancer. Her dress was made of a gently flowing, russet colored,  diaphanous material of uneven length  and reached just below her knees. It reminded me of  a wood nymph’s clothes. As the man and I watched she danced in this very confined space, somehow creating the sense that it was spacious. The space did not limit her movement or her capacity to express herself in any way. When she finished she said we could learn to dance like this too and she would give us the name of someone in our area who could teach us. I told her I wanted to learn from her. With a soft smile, she shook her head. I persisted, asking if she would be willing to come and teach a whole group of us. I woke up with the sense that she had again said “no”  and I was very disappointed.

     I know this dream is an important one and I will come back to it again, but for now what stands out for me is that I am in a place of change and I am being shown that it is possible to dance even when the space seems extraordinarily limited. I also think I’m being nudged to look at the way I can insist that things be exactly as I want them to be and, when they’re not, to be disappointed even though I am presented with a real opportunity to learn.

Walking Meditation

Today I began to learn, first

one step and then

another, how to

walk, how to be.

Moving slow at a mindful pace,

my step did not

falter as it can

on other days.

Some ants, a worm, traveled safely

on, as did I,

balance restored

if  but for now.

                                            JDG