What Is Heaven?

I spent a good portion of my day yesterday doing a Tarot reading for a friend. This can be time consuming as I don't rush, and want to be thorough. I was intending to paint, but I sensed perhaps there might be a pressing need for this friend to get a reading as soon as possible. I don't see my kind friend during the Winter, and so wanted to get the reading done, which I eventually finished, but first there was a problem of power.

I had just started to cook supper, and had been working away at my friend's Tarot reading, when the lights flickered during what wasn't supposed to be a big ass snow storm. Fortunately I had a candle burning, and so I wasn't in total darkness when the lights went out. The weather developed into a big mess. I lite all my candles, kept feeding the wood stove, and had containers of water because I have had some 'pipe issues.'

I thought, well it's way too early to run to my bed, and I'd made up my mind I was going to refuse to give in to having a lack of power, when I have personal power to make the best of this situation. So I wrote in my journal, listened to my radio, the country station which was barely coming in, because the batteries were near dead, and decided to transfer my uncooked supper onto the wood stove. I cooked my grub and made a hot pot of tea. Oh I was so grateful for  'old faithful', my New Olympic Record Foundry wood stove, made in Moncton New Brunswick, probably 100 years ago. She's a great old beast, and got me through many a storm. I was grateful for my beautiful maple wood, my radio, and for being warm, full of supper, and hot tea.

The power was off for about three hours and came back on by 7p.m. I have been without power much longer in past days, over the twenty years I've lived in the country. When the lights came back on this time, I was so frickin' joyous and grateful I felt like I had been given the best gift and a new lease on life. I was high on happy. Later, I'd wondered why I'd felt this way. I attribute it to having a number of 'things' that have gone off the rails so to speak, nothing too serious, just the usual life events. But out of these events, I have really come to appreciate the little things so much, that it brings me a lot of happiness when things are right, and the ability to cope when things aren't.

Mind you, no one wants to be endlessly without power. Truthfully I resent being so dependent on the power company, especially here in Nova Scotia were we have some of the highest rates int he country. I dream of being of the grid.

And so I assure you, I am not Pollyanna, though I do like her I admit, because she had a good attitude of gratitude, in spite of her shitty life, but I think she knew how to focus on what she had, instead of what she wanted, and that's why she was happy because she was grateful  for what she had.

I'd never seen or heard this quote by William Blake before, but oh, it is a good one.
What is heaven mean to you?

Robin Williams - " Why Funny People Kill Themselves "

A very, very sad day today, after learning of Robin Williams death. Death has a way of bringing life in to focus, close-up. When you experience death, your priorities change, especially if you have been touched by the death of a loved one by suicide, or ever contemplated suicide yourself. Having experienced, both, and knowing loved ones, including my late husband who suffered from mental illness, and took his own life in 1980. And when you see those in the public eye, suffering from depression, mental illness resulting in suicide, it brings it all to the surface.

I have thought a lot about this today, and just beneath the surface, perhaps on an unconscious level, I understand it, but it is difficult to put it into words. But I found an article written by David Wong that is very insightful Why Funny People Kill Themselves
It explains a lot, and it is an really important thing for people to know and understand.

I posted this picture of Johnathan Winters and Robin Williams together because my late brother Ralph loved these two so much. He strongly identified with them, as did my late mother, and I.  They both helped to change pain into laughter. We spent many hours following their performances all along and from their very beginnings.
Heaven is a funnier place now.

Bringchange2mind 

 http://suicideprevention.ca/

Life Death Life Cycle

Caitlin Doughty is a Los Angeles, CA. mortician and a writer who started The Order of The Good Death in 2011. I heard an interview with her on CBC radio for a second time. The first time I didn't listen as intently as I did on this occasion. Why I paid close attention today was because a close friend's brother-in-law died just a few days prior to Christmas. I came to the realization that I think deeply at Christmas about those that we love and loose to death, under very difficult and painful circumstances, that perhaps we can ever imagine.

Amidst the Christmas festivity, and celebration of the birth of the Christ Child,  present to me, is a pervading sense and reminder of death. This may sound morbid, but I have come to realize this is all part and parcel of  cycle of life. It is what Jungian analyst, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola  refers to, in the story about Skeleton Woman, as being  the life-death-life cycle.  There is life after death I believe. I am not just talking about Heaven or the after life, but the kind of life we choose to live when we can face our fears surrounding death, confronting and accepting our mortality.

 I am someone who has personally experienced a lot of death with the loss of a husband at the young age of 27, loosing my mother in 1995, after one year of sobriety, and then ten years later loosing my father and my older brother within two months of one another. In considering what I have lost and what I have gained, I am amazed and so grateful to be able to celebrate on January 2nd, 2013, nineteen years of contented sobriety.

The death of my loved ones has given me an appreciation for life and a wisdom that I would never have otherwise. I learned many hard lessons from death and continue to do so. What I have gleaned from these lessons, I have to share, pay it forward, in hopes of perhaps helping another, the way others have so generously helped me.

I remember many years ago reading, Love and Will by Rollo May. He makes some profound statements that have long resonated with me, about the relationship between Love and Death. This is clarified for me is his quotation from  a letter written by Abraham Maslow, who was recuperating from a heart attack.

" The confrontation with death-and the reprieve from it-makes everything look so precious, so sacred, so beautiful that I feel more strongly than ever the impulse to love it. My river has never looked so beautiful....Death, and its ever present possibility makes love, passionate love, more possible. I wonder if we could love passionately, if ecstasy would be possible at all, if we knew we'd never die."
                                           
"Death is always in the shadow of the delight of love."

He speaks as well of the other side of the death and love relationship.

 " The obsession with sex serves to cover up contemporary man's fear of death."

At one time death was not so much at arms length as it is today in the twenty first century, much to our own detriment.

When I first came to the realization I am somewhat preoccupied with contemplating thoughts about death, especially around this time of year, at Christmas, I didn't really want to admit this to myself. However today, after closely and intently listening and reading what Caitlin Doughty has to say, I can  better embrace my thoughts and feelings about death and mortality. I now understand  and know this is healthy and normal considering what my life experience has been.

Caitlin says, "Many of us have thoughts of death, but we don't see them to the end. We get stuck in the loops, reliving the scary part over and over but never the resolution."

Prayer of Hope

" The hills and valleys of heaven will be to those you now experience not as a copy is to an original, nor as a substitute is to the genuine article, but as a flower to the root, or the diamond to the coal."

C.S. Lewis said this and I think is a beautiful description of heaven.

I have long believed in heaven and as an artist and spiritual person, I think of the God of my understanding, as being the Great Creator, the Great Artist of all. Life can be very difficult, but as Abraham Lincoln said, " Most people are as happy as they make up their minds to be."

I'm not interested in platitudes about heaven and happiness, but I do believe these quotes resound loudly and true within my heart of hearts. This may seem saccharin to many today as we live in a cynical and spiritually bankrupt world.

I have long held the belief in heaven, which was imparted to me by my late mother, brother and father who were people of faith, in the God they understood and loved. Having a belief in heaven presupposes a belief in God, but I am not here to try and convince anyone. All manner of attempting to convince another is quite useless I think, as this belief in the God of our own understanding is what we come to believe and understand, through our own experience.

Why talk of death? I think often about life, and why things happen to human beings, some folks seem to have more than their share of suffering. There is always some one far worse off than you, and we can't always understand or know what another's burdens are, but be assured they carry them, regardless of how happy they appear.

I try to look for the lessons to be learned, and know from my own life, I have learned more about living through the death of the ones I love, in their weaknesses and strengths, gained and rose above, not in spite of, but because of the things they endured. They found strength in their weakness.

Today, I have a choice. I can be optimistic, positive, and a hopeful person of faith or I can be pessimistic, negative, and cynical which will leave me thinking life is without purpose, meaningless and without hope of a life in a heavenly home.

I have chosen faith, hope and love. I don't have to let go of this earthly cord before I can experience these, which I believe to be the stuff of what heaven is made.