Fill 'er Up

I had a blog ready to go last week. I wrote it on Wednesday, then looked at it again on Friday. I tried tweaking it, but by Saturday evening, I gave up.

“I’m not sending it out, it’s crap,” I told the Resident Sweetie. “I am empty.”

(a New Yorker cartoon which expresses a very common phenomenon)

Scary business, being empty. You have nothing to say if you are empty. Sure, you can put out lots of words, but that’s fake news, and everybody knows it.

If a car runs out of gas, it can’t move until you fill the gas tank. If a battery is flat, it can't power anything. Batteries and cars can’t run on empty. Neither can I. “Inner emptiness comes from a lack of connection with your spiritual source of love,” says psychologist Margaret Paul in an article in the Huffington Post. (You can read the whole thing by clicking on this link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/margaret-paul-phd/inner-emptiness_b_869421.html)

I noodled on that idea for a while, and realized its truth. I needed a fill-up, and I knew it.  So I went to the tried and true places that fill me up and reconnect me to my spirit and my spiritual source of love.

On Sunday, I went to church. Pulling your eyes away from your belly button and looking up, way up, is a good way to start.

While at church, I saw a poster advertising a book study on The Wisdom Jesus by Cynthia Bourgeault. It sounded like a big stretch for my head and my heart, and so I signed up. Nothing like stretching your head and your heart to make room for new ideas, insights, and thoughts to flow in and fill you up.  On Monday, I attended the study. Wow. Yes!

On Tuesday, I took this new book, my journal and  my morning coffee to the dining room table and spent 45 minutes reading, writing, and thinking. Quiet reflection may not fill the tank, but it will show you where the empty pockets of your soul are that need filling.

 Then I put on my walking shoes, grabbed my cell phone/camera, and went down to the woods. How long had it been since I’d visited my sit spot? Too long. Just descending the path into the woods is like entering a temple. A special serenity and light suffuses you, and you are filled with a sense that you are just a small piece of something much bigger than you, something that is incredibly precious and loved by the Creator of it all.

And it was so beautiful down in the woods – the sun was shining through the lime green and gold leaves, the water in the brook was sparkling, and on its surface were little moving circles, created by waterstrider insects. I zoomed in on these almost invisible insects with my camera, and snapped a photo.

The result? Not at all what I’d expected, but beautiful in a new way I’d never seen before.

Now I began looking at the woods and the river with new eyes, and once those eyes were open, I saw things I’d never seen before. These new sights, sounds and smells filled me with delight.

A rotting tree stump became a piece of abstract art.

 The bridge wasn’t just a bridge, it was a home for a spider that had woven a shining web.

Why had I never seen the interplay of light and shadow on the path ahead of me?

And look: an enormous orange fungi right out in the open, and yet I’d never noticed it before in my treks along the well-worn path. Changing one's perspective opens the channels for inspiration and wonder to flow in.

There was more: Wednesday delivered a double dose of nourishment when the TWITS (book club) met – so much to talk about and ideas to explore! – followed by listening to four authors reading at an event. These creative folks sharing their thoughtful and often funny insights, stimulating me even further. And laughter is good medicine for the soul, too.

The week continued with more blessings, some sublime, some mundane: – deep discussions with friends, a successful morning in the kitchen with the RS canning pears, watching a delightful movie on Netflix (A Man Called Ove). When you begin to look at your life with new eyes, you see things that might have passed you by before. All these rich experiences that reconnect you with the spiritual source of Love  were there for the taking -- and yet, I was slowly starving myself.

 It's an old message we seem to need to learn again and again: take the time to stay connected with your spiritual source of love so you'll never be running on empty.

On Sunday, I’ll be working with the children at church. Perhaps I'll teach them an old song that's new again: “Running over, running over, My cup is full and running over.”

Playing Hide and Seek

A few weeks back, I blogged about getting in touch with my inner child: the one for whom everything is amazing, wonderful, and worth checking out. And nothing is too silly to try out just once.

Then I created a self-portrait  to reflect the inner child at play and to remind myself  not to take life so seriously all the time.

I decided I needed to take this idea a step further. I should let my inner child write the blog. So I invited  her to step up to the computer and take over. “Have at it,” I said. “Say what you want. It will be fun.”

Big problem: it appears I have a recalcitrant inner child. I showed up at the computer every day last week, but she didn’t. Isn’t that just like a child – never wants to perform on demand, especially if the parent is wanting to show her off. 

What do you do when your child won’t come out of hiding? I called my friend Trudy. “Hey, Trudy, my inner child has disappeared. Have you seen her?” “Just a minute,” said Trudy as she laid down the phone. I could hear some rustling in the background, and I could hear her asking her cats Jack and Oliver if they’d seen my inner child. Then she picked up the receiver. “Nope, she isn’t here,” she said. “And now that you mention it, my inner child has disappeared too. I’m thinking they might just be hanging out together, in some dark corner, reading books and ignoring us.”

Well, that makes sense. Our inner children have been kept in the basement for so long while we’ve been busy being grownups, they’ve forgotten the sound of our voices. These poor little things could just shrivel up and die of neglect. This is not a good situation.  “When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names for hell,” says Brian Aldiss. Strong words, indeed! But there’s some truth in them.

looks like a pile of blocks, doesn't it?

I needed to know more about inner kids and play, so I declared a Google Binge Day. I researched what play was, how to encourage it, why we don’t do it more. Adult play, it appears, is serious business. Have you heard about The Strong? Me either. “The Strong® is a highly interactive, collections-based museum devoted to the history and exploration of play. It is one of the largest history museums in the United States...” It’s located in Rochester, New York.


Google will tell you about this museum, about university studies in play, about conferences focusing on adult play, and many more things. Play is art, books, movies, music, comedy, flirting and daydreaming; lack of play is just as important as other factors in predicting criminal behavior among murderers in Texas prisons; playing together helps couples rekindle their relationship; play can even facilitate deep connections between strangers and cultivate healing. Etc. Etc.

What Google does not do is entice your inner child to come out and play. She just wouldn’t write the blog for me. I was stumped.

Just then, the phone rang. My son told us he was taking the beautiful grandchild Grace to swim in the river by our house and invited us to watch. We were in the middle of a record-breaking heat wave, and the invite sounded good. The inner child stirred. “Put on your bathing suit,” she whispered. “Nah,” said the adult, “The water’s cold and there’s too many slippery rocks on the bottom of the river.”  When we got to the river, there they were, having the time of their lives, giggling and jumping and splashing.

“Get in there, for goodness sake,” the inner child urged impatiently, much more loudly this time. “But I’ve got a dress on,” I argued. “So what?” said the inner child. “Get in there. I’m coming in with you.”

So I (and my inner child) splashed into the water. It sure felt good. There were perfectly sane adults on the beach, watching me and wondering who the crazy old lady was, but my inner child ignored them. I even put my face in the water and blew bubbles with Gracie and her mom. My dress got pretty wet and my feet slipped on the rocks and the water was cold, but it was all good. We giggled. We laughed. We had fun, like playing kids do.

It turns out, if you want to meet your inner child, you should just stop trying to be a smart know-it-all adult. You have to keep your ears open and listen. Your inner child is there, but she's playing hide and seek. If you listen carefully, you may hear her whispering your name. Be sure to follow and see where she leads.

And then again, maybe I’m on to something here. Maybe the inner child has morphed into a crazy old lady having fun. Maybe I should let her out more often.

And maybe she’ll write my blog, too.