Kissing Juno Goodbye! (The Final Photos)

It all culminates in a sweet kind of solvency, closure, and then ultimate continuance...
Towards more love, more creation, more questions and relationship-building...

What follows are the final images from 1188 Juno days: the final party and fire, the move, and signing the papers to hand over the keys! Yes! Onward! Mad love! Woohoo!

Saturday's Final Soire: the Early Crew

Pops holds down the "alter" or "shrine space" as it gets built...

I love circles of friends...

Matt thinks he will convert my father back to the Democratic party...ha-larious!

The final shrine for Juno: including Kenyan Wedding candles; South African Art; The Buddha/ Mary/ Jesus/ Faith markers; Spiral embryo mug and champagne cork; Medicine Wheel stone, and fire kindling from snow-day transformations...

North High Colleague, Dear Friend, and Mom-to-be: Julie!

My love and appreciation for ritual possibly was born here: With April, Colleen, and Matt

Former student, dear friend, daughter-woman: Joy Chaney and my own mom, Beth.

Fire on fire

Zac, Jody and Michael stand back...

Toasting

Talking

Memories, tales, more talking

I love this shot...how things blur but are still illuminated...(not unlike my whole life)

Cheers!

I am so happy!

Former house-mate, key friend in faith and this journey: Zac Willette

Ms. Ann, the anointing one...

New Loves: Em and JP!

Sunday, post-mass the moving begins with my new pastor, Fr. Jules, from the Church of St. Philips, coming to collect the green leather couch!

John Michaels and Trevon Money: Goofballs!

Let the heavy lifting begin!

Wooho0! Church People permeate all parts of this journey.
Here: Melissa, Fr. Jules, Trevon, Mary Michaels

Monday and the Moving van arrives

Such a glorious motley crew!

JP arrives with the food!

Em serving things up..

We have worked for 3 hours moving by this time and are HUNGRY!

Willette and B'Mo are professional organizers!

Pretty much my entire life is in here...

Cleaning essentials: includes bottles of wine?!

God, I love these people!


To my new neighborhood!

"Be the bridge, be the water..."

With Second shift mover and my new neighbor: Kirsten Jamsen!

We are packed in, but all is good!

Again, where would I be without my CSP crew?

The blessed new owners of Juno!

I have a feeling this payoff will come in many forms...

LOVE!

An Elizabeth Bishop Poem: On Waking up Together, Love.

Amen!
-M

It is Marvellous to Wake Up Together
by Elizabeth Bishop

It is marvellous to wake up together
At the same minute; marvellous to hear
The rain begin suddenly all over the roof,
To feel the air suddenly clear
As if electricity had passed through it
From a black mesh of wires in the sky.
All over the roof the rain hisses,
And below, the light falling of kisses.

An electrical storm is coming or moving away;
It is the prickling air that wakes us up.
If lighting struck the house now, it would run
From the four blue china balls on top
Down the roof and down the rods all around us,
And we imagine dreamily
How the whole house caught in a bird-cage of lightning
Would be quite delightful rather than frightening;

And from the same simplified point of view
Of night and lying flat on one's back
All things might change equally easily,
Since always to warn us there must be these black
Electrical wires dangling. Without surprise
The world might change to something quite different,
As the air changes or the lightning comes without our blinking,
Change as our kisses are changing without our thinking.

"It Is Marvellous to Wake Up Together" by Elizabeth Bishop from Poems, Prose, and Letters. © The Library of America, 2008. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Cherokee Rite of Passage Legend

I like this. As forwarded email from Writer/ Poet/ Friend,  Julia Dinsmore. As Cherokee Legend. As inspiration. Yes. 

Cherokee Legend

 

Do you know the legend of the Cherokee Indian youth's rite of Passage?

His father takes him into the forest, blindfolds him and leaves him alone.  He is required to sit on a stump the whole night and not remove the blindfold until the rays of the morning sun shine through it.  He cannot cry out for help to anyone.  Once he survives the night, he is a MAN.  He cannot tell the other boys of this experience, because each lad must come into manhood on his own.  The boy is naturally terrified. He can hear all kinds of noises. Wild beasts must surely be all around him. Maybe even some human might do him harm. The wind blew the grass and earth, and shook his stump, but he s at stoically, never removing the blindfold. It would be the only way he could become a man!  Finally , after a horrific night the sun appeared and he removed his blindfold.  It was then that he discovered his father sitting on the stump next to him.  He had been at watch the entire night, protecting his son from harm.

We, too, are never alone.  Even when we don't know it, God is watching over us, sitting on the stump beside us.  When trouble comes, all we have to do is reach out to Him.

Moral of the story:

Just because you can't see God,

Doesn't mean He is not there.

'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' – 2 Corinthians 5:7

 

 ***

"Start by doing what's necessary, then do what's possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible." - Francis of Assisi

Thanks to Blogger Peajay for the image. 

 

"Night" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Repeating a Poem from May

I posted the following blog on May 6, inspired by Garrison Keillor's reading of it that week on NPR. Today's broadcast of The Writer's Almanac includes a reading of the poem again. The repetition of his broadcast of Longfellow's poem,  inspires my re-posting of the original meditation, and the following questions: 

 

I wonder how this repetition evokes the palimpsest of our hearts? What is written there? And written over? What do we uncover in hearing such poems again? 

Enjoy!

***

Poem: "Night" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Public Domain.

Night

Into the darkness and the hush of night
Slowly the landscape sinks, and fades away,
And with it fade the phantoms of the day,
The ghosts of men and things, that haunt the
light.
The crowd, the clamor, the pursuit, the flight,
The unprofitable splendor and display,
The agitations, and the cares that prey
Upon our hearts, all vanish out of sight.
The better life begins; the world no more
Molests us; all its records we erase
From the dull common-place book of our lives,
That like a palimpsest is written o'er
With trivial incidents of time and place,
And lo! the ideal, hidden beneath, revives.

Thank you Henry Wordsworth Longfellow, Garrison Keillor and the Writer's Almanac, for bringing this forward. I'm struck by sinking landscapes and fading phantoms, vanishing clamorous pursuits, splendor. Yes! I'm excited by this notion of the better life beginning, a cessation of things that molest our spirits our hearts. (How about that for a word, "molest"? Yikes!)
And this image of a palimpsest! That a sheath, a record could possess the mutual stories (truths?) of the past, with inscribed new tales, details over the top. Oh, the discovery of the original underneath is like this dawning of a new day. Sunrise! Light! Fresh eyes! Revived Spirits! Longfellow gives this poem the title of 'Night" - but the Hope rests in the imminent rising of what seems to have been hidden. Yes! The sun will appear. It just does. As will any written-over-record of truth. Behind clouds now, this light, this ideal radiance is: ready to emerge.

Are you ready?

Peace, Happy Contemplating!
Melissa

--
Posted By Queen Mab to QueenMab Contemplates... at 5/06/2008 10:48:00 AM

Juxtaposing Catholic and Muslim Writers: Rohr and Hafiz

Friends, Family,

I found this timely to receive. My friend Daniel Kerkoff sent the following words in an email this morning. I'm not sure if Daniel placed them together, or if he heard them in succession as he was listening to some contemplative prayer CD's by Fr. Rohr.

Regardless, there's much to reflect on here in the questions of the Franciscan and the poetry of the Muslim mystic.

Amen!

***

From Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer
by Fr. Richard Rohr, OSF.

Inherent Unmarketability

How do you make attractive that which is not?

How do you sell emptiness, vulnerability, and nonsuccess?

How do you talk descent when everything is about ascent?

How can you possibly market letting-go in a capitalist culture?

How do you present Jesus to a Promethean mind?

How do you talk about dying to a church trying to appear perfect?

This is not going to work

(admitting this might be my first step).

--Richard Rohr

***

Pulling out the chair

Beneath your mind

And watching you fall upon God--

There is nothing else for Hafiz to do

That is any fun in this world!

--Shams-ud-din Mohammed Hafiz,

Muslim mystic (1320-1388)

Dancing Across the Universe: Matt Harding Video

As prayer for World Peace, as celebratory images and movement and music - underscoring how I feel about selling Juno, and stepping into this next phase of life....



Enjoy!
Love!
Melissa