I’m always in awe of how time can move so slow and so fast, at the same time.  My calendar blocks fit neatly on the screen, yet with all my general to-do’s and even allocating specific time for eating and showering and sleep and working out there is always at least one which gets deleted or moved out to the next day.  Often they are the project oriented blocks, such as writing or studying or updating websites.  Before you know it there are blocks overlapping blocks competing for my attention.  It takes a good friend at my side to remind me of how much I actually do get done to keep the feeling that I lack accomplishment away.  My life is simple, I make the busy-ness.  I can barely imagine the added push and pull of having children, and equally, can only imagine the ways in which children would shape the motivation of each day.

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Often I share space with my friends ailments and stress and anxiety and pains and fears… sometimes simple large things such as finances and careers, often more intricate matters of emotion, the hearts longing and life and health, the “why we are here’s.”  Last night a friend was talking of how our culture has no preparation, no honor, no ritual around death and dying.  Of how little control most of us have over our last days and of the extreme in those who take full control of their end.  Of the fact that sometimes as witnesses there is nothing that we can do, and how very hard that can feel.  I awoke thinking that our death is a milestone in our lives equal in relevance only to our birth.  I’m moved to do more study around ceremonial grief and hospice psychology.  Please let me know if you have any good sources, guides, teachers, book recommendations or other reference materials that may be useful.  Thank you.

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Back on the east coast I met a man who offered me the vision that the smell of a burning olive oil lamp would return something to me.  I’ve yet to follow up to create the lamp and seek the gift offered, there is a bit of nervousness that I would do something wrong, use the wrong materials, find nothing.  The potential is so rich that I hesitate to destroy it by seeking… As in our meeting that day.  Rich potential not tapped to it’s depths.  Opportunity lost?  Or shall it come around again?