We've started doing a new thing.  Every Sunday, we open up our home (which in and of itself is a feat, given how reclusive and private we tend to be) to friends and tribe for the Sunday Fireside Chat (aka Eat, Drink & Burn).

We never know who's going to show up.  It's like pushing the 'random' button on life--a fine exercise for people who normally exert white-knuckle control over things.  Last night, 12 people wandered in, from 12 weeks old to almost 50.  We started the discussion with who taught you how to forgive, and how.  It was fascinating to talk about; we had to back all the way out into defining forgiveness.  That's when things got interesting.

One person told a fabulous story about having smelly feet on a train and how an impassioned Irish bricklayer was certain it was him; a psychologist intervened, and he had just enough time to go wash his feet before the adamant Irish came in for a whiff.  We had a story about a hitchhiker was picked up, and began telling the driver about how they'd been stabbed.  The hitcher got dropped off at a trailer park (that later, didn't exist) and totally creeped the driver out.  It was surreal, like an honest-to-campfire ghost story.  We heard a tale of mind altering substances and a trip in an elevator that, when told to go to heaven, went to the ground floor and they couldn't get back in the building.

We'd pretty much stopped directly discussing forgiveness at that point, and contented ourselves with talkstory.  But I never stopped listening for it in all the stories.

Smelly Feet was forgave the Irishman his insistence (especially since he was able to go was his pedic culprits).  Driver forgave his hitcher for scaring the crap outta him; the tale was worth the ride.  Acid in an Elevator forgave the scalper he had to buy tickets from to get back into the show he'd wandered out of on the elevator.  And all those instances of forgiveness pretty much occurred spontaneously, without any overt, deliberate effort to be forgiving.

Isn't that how it should be?  Isn't it true that our ability to forgive is directly related to the amount of ourselves that we've insisted remain connected to the original incident that caused the need for forgiveness in the first place?

Forgiveness seems inclined to happen on its own.  How's that for a novel concept?  Let's take that a step further: what if the only thing that stops forgiveness from occurring is US.  That means that we're living outside an intended state, impeding our own capacity to forgive and create compassion by our rabid insistence that we will NOT forgive, no matter what! 

Or what if forgiveness doesn't occur naturally?  That, like patience, the only thing we get when we pray for forgiveness is the opportunity to learn it via experiences?

I forgive myself for not knowing these answers.  I think myself clever for being willing to ask the questions.  I think about smelly feet on a train, the eerie dead hitchhiker, and about going down in an elevator on acid.  I am amazed and delighted by the myriad of human experiences being had outside my skinsuit, available to me if only I can forgive people for being such doofuses in general, and open my home up to people so that they can bring something to the fire--something to eat, drink, or burn.

Do ya think that when the Republican Convention had musicians do a song called "Raising McCain" that they were aware that they're playing on a phrase, "raising Cain" which refers to Cain and Able, the two early Biblical brothers who ripped each other up?  Do ya think they caught the irony of representing their candidate for the Presidency by implying the action of brother against brother in the name of lust and greed?  Cain, a farmer (the first, since he and his bro were the first and second sons of Adam and Eve) commits the first murder in history by killing his brother, Abel (the first shepherd) because Cain didn't like that God accepted Abel's sacrifice and not his.  Sounds petty to me.  This story occurs in all 3 Abrahamic faiths: Bible: Genesis 4: 1-16; Qur'an: 5:26-32 and in the Talmud in Moishe 5:16-41.  "Raising Cain" means to get all ate up about something and then do murder to get what you want.

This disturbs me in and of itself--all the moreso as part of a political campaign,

I try to keep a level heart in these matters, and look for the threads of truth in what's being said, regardless of who's saying it.  McCain, at the end of his RNC speech said something I believe to be utterly true: the greatest source of happiness is to find something more important than you and give your life to it.  I think he actually mean that.  I heard stuff in the DNC speeches, too, that made sense--and plenty to piss me off.  But this?  "Raising McCain?"  the deep, energetic threads of resonance frighten me.  Please join me as I pray for our people, and all the citizens of Indra's Jeweled net as we face a rather large collective choice point, and create the next edition of our collective reality.  Pray for peace, for reasonable thought, for evolutionary impulses to win out over lower-chakra habits.  Visualize balance, and manifest in in your own life so that it may seep into the collective consciousness.  But above all, please join me in my fervent hope that this world we live in does not become a case of brother against brother, in a petty, jealous battle about who God likes better.

Settling in for bed, I think about my day, see how I'm doing, check on the condition of my condition.  I think about how the day weaves into my larger creation structures--about grad school, who's going to accept me, what if no one wants me, how did today add to the pot, am I moving closer to my destination, is my will rightly aligned--those sorts of things.  I'm contemplative, and the sound of a bus enters my awareness.  I hear the bus pull up at the bottom of my drive, by the student apartment complex down the hill.  I think, "Gee, I sure am glad that I'm not getting on (or off, for that matter) a bus at 9:23 pm!"  I realized I was glad because some part of me was harboring the fear that:

I have to ride buses at night but all I want is to be home and cozy and not out doing crazy ass shit in the middle of the night like I used to even if there was once upon a time I did like riding buses at night and maybe I should like it still because I used to like it once but now I don't want to and...Oh!

Wait!

I don't HAVE to ride buses at night!

No one can make me and I can choose to create situations in which it becomes less likely that I would need to ride a bus at night (because I certainly would if that were right choosing in that moment.  It's a preference that I not ride night buses, not an insistence).
Realizing my bus-riding empowerment made me feel good, so I broadened my consciousness to see if I could find the larger pattern that was resonating, evinced by the feeling of balance and goodness that was generated by my thought patterns.  When I feel lightened by a creation, it;s generally the "right" thing for me to be engaged with.  To increase the occurrences of right-resonance, I look for a big-picture approach so that I might create more things that resonate in a similar fashion.  I've noticed it's the patterns that are important, more than the specific surface-level details or symptoms of the pattern itself.

South Park again: it's the part of the program where one of the kids says "I think we've all learned something important here today..."

My version:
Part of my anxiety about my future is the nebulous, lurking (and previously unnamed) fear that someone or something is going to forcibly drag me back into my past, with its habits, ruts and pain.  But I'm the only travel agent that can authorize that trip.  Nothing, no-one--other than me--can drag me back into my past.  it's a part of me; my biology is my biography, and every decision I've ever made, as well as its consequences, are lodged firmly in my skinsuit.  I repeat patterns when the lesson is incomplete; by paying attention, I clear the ripples of a pattern, learn, evolve, and move forward.

I never move backwards; I can't.  None of us can.  I can be afraid of going backwards, but it just can't happen, and that's one less tool my saboteur has to use against me.  I return to present moment, more aware of my fear and how it might try and stop me from dreaming, moving, creating.

I am liberated.  I can get off that bus.  Should I decide to take a night ride, I know where the bus stop is.

We named our dog Guru on purpose.  By the time we actually got him, we knew (becuase the process of getting him was lessoning in itself) that he was going to be a great teacher.  And that's what Guru means--teacher. 

He's just about the sweetest thing ever. He's unconditionally loving, forgiving and compassionate.  He doesn't hold shit against me, nor does he try to angle me for more of what he might think he needs.  He's gentle, playful and enthusiastic.  He's a blessing in an 80 pound shaggy black dogsuit.

We were playing with him last night.  We were playing "pull your ears off," one of his favorite games.  He was bounding about, dancing and dodging, yipping a playful doggie lovesong.  He ran after an imaginary something or other, only to return for some more earplay.  As he galumphed off yet again, I said, "I love my dog--but probably not well enough."

That got me to thinking.  Do I love anything well enough?  Has there ever been a situation, person, condition in my life where I was able to love well enough?  Have I ever loved as hard as I could, as well as I could?

My saboteur tells me, "Nope."  My ego tells me, "Well, you sure have tried..."  My heart tells me that the notion of loving well enough is really weird, and might even be irrelevant depending on the standard for comparison.

Is the urge to love well enough a healthy human state in which our desires--both boon and bane--help us surge forward into more and greater ways of loving?

Or is it utterly neuro, a psychotic state in which such uncertainty and fear arise that love becomes no longer the object of living but the subject of a skitzy internal discourse--and a distraction?

My jury's still out on this one.  Until I understand what loving well enough really means, I will continue to pull my dog's ears off and listen to the Universe for the yips of a lovesong that I too can sing with all my heart.

I get a subscription to Playboy.  Free.  I have for years, and no idea why.  I never renew, I never pay for it.  But it comes in my box every month.  I kinda assume that it's related to the books I've written, as if somehow my name got on a list of sex positive educators or something, and that gets you free Playboys.  Pure speculation on my part.

This month's issue is all about nude college 'girls' form the Big 10.  I think that if they're posing in Playboy they ought to be identified as women, but apparently the target market for Playboy prefers to think of women as girls.

Anyway. I have a ritual: I open the plastic casing my Playboy comes in, and I look for the bunny.  Always one hidden on the cover; this month it was easy to find.  Then I flip the magazine over, and get rid of all the inserts and paper bits.  There's usually subscription cards and some ads.  This month's full page, hard paper insert to playboy was this:

The pic's a little fuzzy, here, but you can go see the original on the Danbury Mint website.

It's a gold heart, with a fake diamond cross in the middle; around the outer edges are inscribed the first part of the Christian Lord's Prayer.

How's that for kinky?  Is it just me, or does this stirke you as ironic also?