Are you where you want to be?

sunset

Travelling: Family & The Kentucky State Fair

When Rich and I left Rod and Trish, we headed east out of Missouri towards St. Louis.  Rich wanted us to see the “Archway to the West” and as we rode I-64 I was able to get some decent shots of the archway and the St. Louis skyline.  Then we crossed the state border into Illinois going almost halfway across to spend the night in Mount Vernon.  We attended Mass in the lovely church of St. Mary’s on Saturday 27 August which left us free to have a small lie-in on the Sunday before making tracks for Louisville, KY and Richard’s family.

Like most of the days on this trip, God blessed us with perfect weather for riding as we finished crossing the state of Illinois, clipped the bottom of Indiana, and rode into the blue grass state of Kentucky.  I could feel Richard’s excitement mounting as we rode closer to “home”.  The plan was to head to his sister Rose’s home, unpack the bike, then head over to the Kentucky State Fair with Rose, her husband Ronnie, and their kids, Megan and Kalin, to meet up with another sister, Robin, and her daughter, Brittany, and his brother, Robert and his wife, Sylvie, and their son, Patrick.  Wow, what a reunion!!  I had not seen some of these folks since Thanksgiving 2004!

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We spent several fun hours at the fair. I found some great HOT dip mixes and some wonderfully decadent fudge, while Richard ate a Krispy Kreme hamburger?????? (yes, that was a hamburger between two doughnuts!!), and later he could not resist trying some “fried Koolaid”. While some of the others went to a concert they had booked to see, Rich and I strolled around the rides for a while. We had fun tempting the “guess your age” guy who made my day and gave me a “prize” after guessing me to be 15 years younger than I amSmile. Whether he was being truthful or gallant in his guessing I’m not sure, but I was happy. Then the tiredness of the ride hit in and we headed home to get a good night’s rest. We needed to get our beauty sleep because the next day we were putting on a Bar-b-q for the family and even more people were coming.

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So on Monday we went shopping then got busy cooking and preparing food. By 4pm yet another sister, Rhonda, arrived with her daughter, Ginny, followed shortly afterward by Rich’s step-Mom Ruth, his step-brother Ryan and his step-sister Rachel and her husband Michael with his son in tow. The crowd was rounded out when Robin got there with her son Dustin, and finally we were able to tuck into all that good food. A little later, as we rested full tummies, Kalin took Dustin and they went to pick up Brittany and her girlfriend who had been attending a school sport meet-up. By that time we were ready for some dessert and enjoyed some wonderful concoction that Sylvie had made.

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Our final day in Louisville, Rich went to get his (final?? who knows) tattoo in honor of his retirement. Of his eight tattoos, Lucky in Louisville has created 5 of them. This one he actually created around a small existing one of a dolphin that Rich had done in Washington, DC some years ago. Lucky extended the water/wave line under the dolphin , then added the letters USN over the top of everything with a sunrise and the year Rich entered the Navy at one end, and a sunset with his retirement year at the other. It’s really beautiful.

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That evening we hooked up with Rose and Ronnie and the kids, Robin, and Richard’s old school friend and partner-in-crime, Fonda with his wife Sherry. We had a great meal and wonderful socializing at a very good Mexican restaurant, where we all ate a bit too much because the food was great!.

Next day, Wednesday 31 August, it was time to load up our faithful Harley, say our farewells, and hit the road again as we headed towards North Carolina.  It had been a good visit with family and hopefully it won’t be so long before we see each other again.

Shared Wisdom: More Words On The Path

 

Often times the words of wisdom that I share have come from many places in time along my path.  These few that I share today have come to me in more recent times.  They have nurtured me on my spiritual path.

 

“I turn to God not so much for forgiveness but for the power to accept humbly the reality about my imperfect self. I turn to Him for the grace to give myself the forgiveness which He gives freely.”                                                                                 from Happy Catholic

“Clear boundaries are important on the spiritual path because they tell you exactly where your responsibility begins and where it ends.”
                                                                                                                                Paul Ferrini

“Be patient with everyone, but above all with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections but instantly set about remedying them – every day begin the task anew.”                                                                                    St. Francis de Sales

“Moments of grace are transient – will we meet this moment and be ready to serve.” and “We are being called into the holiness of wholeness.” 
                                                                                                                               J. Phillip Newall

“Be one to know God. The extent to which I am divided from you, I am divided from God.”        Meister Eckhart

“May you always be overwhelmed by the grace of God rather than by the cares of life.”          Anonymous

“I speak to you continually. My nature is to communicate, though not always in words. I fling glorious sunsets across the sky, day after day. I speak in the faces and voices of loved ones. I caress you with a gentle breeze that refreshes and delight you. I speak softly in the depths of your spirit, where I have taken up residence.”                                                                                                            from “Jesus Calling” by Sarah Young

“God comes to you disguised as your life.”                                                                       from Center for Action and Contemplation

“We are not simply made by God, we are made of God – as is everything.”                            Julian of Norwich

“Once you find the light, no matter how insignificant it seems, your life will never be the same again.
A light-bearer never questions the light s/he carries. And so s/he can offer it to others patiently and without fear.”
                                                                                                                              Paul Ferrini

I love finding these words and phrases that resonate so deeply within me, and I love being able to share them out with you.  Blessings!! 

Musings: Relationships

I have always loved reading.  My mother called me a bookworm.  I would devour books, rarely putting them down until the last letter of the last word on the last page had been savored.  As a little girl I heard, then read by myself, all the childhood favorites.

I learned the nursery rhymes one by one until I new them all by heart.  I remember Little Boy Blue, Baa-baa Black Sheep, Mary Mary Quite Contrary, Little Bo-Peep, Mary Had a Little Lamb, Jack Spratt, and so many others.  The characters all seemed so real to me and with my vivid imagination I would charm them all to life as I lay in bed.

Then, of course, there was Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty.  How many nights did I fall asleep with the image of myself in one of my very ordinary little dresses being turned into a shimmering creation of gossamer silver and silk.  Or seeing myself with a handsome prince (who looked suspiciously like Johnnie the boy next door!), riding off in a glimmering golden carriage into a rosy pink sunset.  And those were the ideals that were cast in stone in my childhood memory banks for the future that could be mine.  I would be “rescued” from whatever paltry life I was living and I would be carried off to live “happily ever after”. 

The only problem with Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty is that no one wrote the sequel.  So here we are left with the never-ending final scene of riding off into that proverbial sunset and being happy.  We are never shown what happens when they got back to the palace.  I presume that’s where they were eventually headed.

I mean, I realize that if they did live in a palace they would probably have access to a maid or two, and a cook, and a butler, and a gardener.  Life wouldn’t be too shabby as they created an edict or two and smiled magnanimously at their subjects. But they’d still have to think about day-to-day living and waking up to each other everyday. 

However, I have to admit, that if ever my little girl mind went further than that ride into the sunset, I always imagined Cinderella walking the corridors of her palace in different ball gowns and tiaras, and leaning out of balconies in the palace turrets as little blue birds flew down to her fingers and sang to her.  I’ve no idea what the prince was up to as she floated around in her perfectly idyllic life!!

No wonder we are set up for failure in real life relationships!  Given the state of today’s society full of drinking and drugs, fast paced living, crime and abuse, there probably isn’t more than a handful of healthy families in each neighborhood.  Pessimistic – maybe; realistic – probably.

Let’s just go back to the sixties.  Actually we need to back further still, to the time of prohibition.  Everything was forbidden, especially alcohol.  When that law was revoked there was a wild swing into drinking which eventually ended up in the free love and drug experimentation during the era of the hippy sixties.

Although the sixties ended and the hippies went out of style, drugs had taken a firm hold.  The hippy youth of the sixties became the next generation of parents.  Many of them continued to use “soft” drugs and some “not-so-soft” drugs also spilled onto the market.  You don’t need to be a psychologist to realize that these people were not the best of parents and a whole generation of dysfunctional families was created.

As their children grew up and began to look for mates we had the first layer of inter-dysfunctional marriages.  Many people used alcohol to chase away their demons.  Others got into heavier drugs which were becoming increasingly more available. Wherever there is a new market entrepreneurial minds will flourish, and many criminal minds were savvy enough to realize that there was much money to be made with drugs.

And let’s not forget the wave of people who began to turn to prescription drugs to treat the depression and other psychological ailments that came from the pain of knowing there was something wrong but not being able to pin point or explain that wrong. Very few people could bear the stigma that was associated with going to see a psychologist or therapeutic counselor, so they used whatever was available.

“Too depressing, way too negative”, I hear you cry.  “Depressingly true”, I respond.  “But what has this got to do with Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty”, I hear you ask.  “Everything”, I say.  When there is nothing, or at least very little, left but darkness or depression we look for salvation wherever we can find it.  When no decent role models are around we turn to fantasy and make believe and the realm of fairy tales and try to turn them into reality.

Is it any wonder that the explosion of New Age religions and spirituality was so enormous?  By now we have generation upon generation of dysfunctional people searching for something, searching for salvation, searching for real role models.  On a subconscious level people realize that there is more to life than “sex, drugs, and rock and roll”.

Thank God more and more people are reaching out for the help that they need.  There is definitely a movement toward the return of old values.  Many people are seeking professional help as that stigma drops away.  The rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous are growing in number and in size. 

Many people see that it takes courage to ask for help and are discovering that courage.  Even men, the proverbial “strong, silent, macho one’s” are becoming brave enough (they always thought it was a weakness!), to approach therapists.  Couples are recognizing that jumping into divorce does not remove their problems.  Divorce may remove the other partner, but each partner is still left with attitudes and behaviors that they will drag into a new relationship.

So perhaps we can lay the fairy tales to rest, or at least in recounting them to our children and our grandchildren we can help them to understand that they are just that – fairy tales.  Perhaps some new good authors will emerge who can write a “second level” of classical fairy tales for our children as they reach early teens.  Stories that will shine a light of good healthy reality on how life can and should be lived after that ride into the sunset.           

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