a free gift for you :: Heart -Centred ebook (+ a peak at my essay)

Guess what? I have contributed to a new ebook titled Heart Centred Living with Intention, Grace and Growth edited by Deb Dane from Home Life Simplified. 19 essays, nearly 100 pages of mama essays about living the creative, self care filled, heart centered family life. 

You can download the free book here! Pop it on your reader and enjoy the essays when you have little bits of down time this season. 

Here is a peak at my submission

On the Runway

We are sitting by our neighborhood urban lake. There are as many birds, ducks and water fowl as there are cars rushing past and buildings full of dutiful workers.

A feather captures my attention as it floats by on the surface of the water. The contrast of the natural unfolding beauty of this place with the hectic pace of human activity always makes my gut lurch. The distance is so wide.

Suddenly,  geese from just around the bend charge us! There are nearly twenty of them running like a derailed locomotive, honking, wings outstretched far. Eva grabs our tiny dog and dives to me for safety. We look at the onslaught with mouths agape as the geese go around us like a river around an ancient boulder. They head into the road squawking and sounding like a chaotic brass horn band playing a cabaret song that has been unwound and spills from the sheet music. The sound, the song is immense.

"I wonder what they are doing?" I wonder out loud to no one in particular.   

"Mom, they are taking off and we are in their runway" my son answers.

"We are in their runway."

The words wash over me as powerfully as the birds had passed. As we all look at each other with eyes still wide, I thought, this is what I want for my kids. To always be on the runway, the place of action where dreams and ideas are taking flight.

I want them to either bear witness to the luminous action and explosive ideas around them or better yet, to be in the thick, messy nidus of it.  Always near the pulse of human (and animal) creative longing and making.  

The exhilaration of sitting near the flow of creative energy offers unparallelled motivation to engage and change the world. We need to be like dowsing rods, highly sensitive to the flow just beneath the surface. We have to look past the noise of the informational glut. To see under the celebrity and  commercial crust that surrounds us and seems impenetrable. Listen closely! We can hear all that us underneath. And we connect with other diviners and become the creators, not the consumers of our lives.

The thing is, the action is not always as cacophonous as a gaggle of geese. In fact, most times it is subtle and tiny and discreet.  My job is to encourage them to stop, look and then find a way to make sense of the experience,  through talking, writing or art/sense making . That is our curriculum. We spend our days lost in thought. Laying under trees. Reading. Looking under rocks. Wondering. Seeing shows. Asking. Making food. Talking to strangers. Getting lost. And then plotting our way back.

After the geese, we spend time watching an ant who fell off a twig into the lake.

Elliot says, "Oh no! My ant is drowning!" He scans the ground nearby looking for the materials to initiate a rescue. But then he sees that the ant is swimming. It is hard, slow work, but he is doing it. We all cheer for him as he climbs up onto a piece of floating duck weed.

“I had no idea ants could swim.” he whispers to no one in particular.

“Maybe we all have secret, hidden abilities that become accessible in certain situations.” I answer.

Maybe. Maybe we do not know what we are capable of until we see others struggling against their own limits.

Maybe the answers are always all around us. Our creative impetus is fueled when we  stop and listen and look and record and play with the ideas.

That is it. That is all it has always been.

It is all quest. There is no destination when we are on the runway.

let's science some pond water

We have recently spent hours upon hours looking at water underneath a microscope. We might need to get another one because we are all fighting and jostling to see each new creature. We have found amoeba, diatoms (little glass houses) and whirling spheres of some sort of algae that rush out of the viewing field as soon as they are spotted.

We have this microscope and have been very pleased with it. It allows you to light items from above as well as below. So you can look at slides as well as more three dimensional objects like leaves or cloth.

I remember the highlight of college biology (and maybe of all my first few years of college) was finding and watching an amoeba in a microscope. It was a little mind blowing to see this very tiny life force just doing its thing. Makes you wonder about all the unseen universes existing around (and on) you. I think if I had been given a more inspiring science education in school I might have pursued it. Unfortunately, I hated science. It brought up so many questions that my teachers refused to answer.  For my kids, it has always been their favorite subject to study. And why wouldn't it be? The study of science helps kids understand the world they live in, which is something I believe all kids are driven to do. They even use the word "science" as a verb, meaning to explore and think deeply about something. The will say, "let's science that mushroom/flower/machine..."

Do you look under the microscope much? Ever surprised at what you see?

lake morton :: day 20

wood storks followed us 

circling through the tree tops

too many to count

lake morton:: day 10

the trees watched the moon in amazement at her size....

lake morton:: day 7

lake morton :: day 6

cool and breezy

the sky was so low we could touch it

& the clouds were blowing

the palm trees like

dandelions

lake morton :: day 4

an entire afternoon

basking in the sun, chilly in the shade

weaving bits of nature

climbing rocket ship trees that really took off

lake morton :: day 3

determined to get in our daily walk

we ran through the night

unencumbered by the dark

Lake Morton for the month

There are so many great month long projects out there in November. I contemplated writing a novel. Or joining Shannon in a month of gratitude. What I have come up with is more personalized to my life and callings.

This time of year is gorgeous in Florida. When most people are hunkering down for a long, cold winter, we are finally able to be outside all day long. It is sunny with a cool breeze. A little rain here and there adds to the cozy fall mood. So, my month long challenge is going to involve being outside, writing and photography.

My kids and I plan to walk around our neighborhood lake everyday this month. We walk around it a lot already, so it might not seem like much of a challenge - but I think the daily habit will be transformative.

We are very lucky to live by Lake Morton. It is one of the places I have always loved. As a kid, we came to the lake to feed the ducks, and I always knew that if I were to live here I would want to live near this bird sanctuary that is packed with swans, wood storks, aningas, great blue herons, geese, bald eagles and mallards. So, now I do. For the last 10 years we have lived just a few blocks from it. I walked around it trying to convince my first child to leave the womb; I have walked it with babies in slings and strollers. I remember when each kid could walk the whole mile on their own and now with three big kids, we can stroll the lake with no problem at all.

My husband walks or bikes by the lake on his way to work. My daughter and I used to meet him with a picnic dinner when our family was just three. My son fell in the lake with a freshly broken arm and a stroller filled with books from the nearby library rolled into the lake once. We have seen art, fireworks, and protests all from the shores of Lake Morton.

The secret about this lake (and anyplace in nature) is that it is never the same. We see something new EVERY time we walk around it. Everytime. A new flower in bloom, an alligator that should not be there, a hawk eating a duck, new ducklings and cygnets (their numbers getting smaller as the days progress). Stories and narratives unfold the more frequently we go.

So this month, we will go, and watch, and record and feel deep gratitude for a place so near to our home and hearts.

Is there a place near you like this? A place that is woven into the intimate fabric of your life, but begs to be more deeply regarded?