Phyllis Edgerly Ring's Blog, page 47

Gleaming forth, unmasking the world

Gleanings here and there – urgings -

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

~ Franz Kafka

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

~ Mary Oliver

The source of crafts, sciences and arts is the power of reflection. Make ye every effort that out of this ideal mine there may gleam forth such pearls of wisdom and utterance as will promote the well-being and harmony of all the kindreds of the earth.

~ Bahá’u’lláh

Photos courtesy Nelson Ashberger and Diane Kirkup.

View artist Diane Kirkup’s work at: http://www.dkirkupdesigns.etsy.com

Giveaway Week 2

Each week between now and December 13, visitors to this blog are invited to enter a weekly giveaway. Leave a comment on any post here at Leaf of the Tree, or send an email with “contest” in its subject line to info@phyllisring.com.

Each week’s gift package will include winner’s choice of a signed copy of one of my books and a pair of hand-crafted earrings from New Hampshire jewelry designer Diane Kirkup. Contest will receive entries through Friday of each week, with a winner drawn on Saturday mornings.

This week’s contest will award the Tanzanite-colored Swarovski crystal earrings pictured here.

View more of Diane’s designs at:

www.dkirkupdesigns.etsy.com

Not what we were expecting

Happy to share some thoughts and memories at BoomerCafé this week:

On my family’s first visit to the Hotel Schwan in the small German town of Wertheim, we found the entire staff assembled out front in two lines on either side of the door.  Even at age four, I could recognize this as the red-carpet treatment.

The telegram that had advised the hotel manger of our military family’s pending arrival had carried the words “General Alexander Patch” at the top, the name of the humble Liberty ship that brought us from New York to Europe in January of 1960. 

This general’s troops had liberated most of this region and neighboring France at the end of the war.  Our welcoming committee was eager to meet this celebrated visitor who’d help put an end to the miseries of the Third Reich, and treated Germans fairly in that process.  They were no doubt anticipating a line of dark vehicles with noisy accompanying entourage. When our travel-weary family of four with whining child (played by yours truly) rode up in a battered taxi, they must have been very disappointed indeed.

The weight of those next few moments was palpable even to a distracted kindergartner like me.  I can imagine how much more my parents felt it, and my (10 years) older sister.  There are things silence conveys so much louder than words.

Read the rest here at BoomerCafé:

http://www.boomercafe.com/2013/11/12/look-back-nostalgic-treasured-memories-life/

‘neath the shadow of justice and truthfulness

Sending love and prayerful blessings to all

on this anniversary of the Birth of Baha’u'llah.

“The incomparable Friend saith:

The path to freedom hath been outstretched; hasten ye thereunto.

The wellspring of wisdom is overflowing; quaff ye therefrom.

Say: O well-beloved ones! The tabernacle of unity hath been raised;

regard ye not one another as strangers.

Ye are the fruits of one tree, and the leaves of one branch.

Verily I say, whatsoever leadeth to the decline of ignorance

and the increase of knowledge hath been, and will ever remain,

approved in the sight of the Lord of creation.

Say: O people! Walk ye neath the shadow of justice and truthfulness

and seek ye shelter within the tabernacle of unity.”

 ~ Baha’u'llah, The Tabernacle of Unity

Giveaway Week 1 – the divine in the details

Each week between now and December 13, those who visit the blog can be entered into a weekly gift giveaway by leaving a comment on any post here at Leaf of the Tree blog.

Each week’s  gift package will include a signed copy of one of my books and a pair of hand-crafted earrings from New Hampshire jewelry designer Diane Kirkup.Isn’t the painting of hers included above beautiful? Do you see the ascending angel within it? Took my breath away when I did.

Each contest will begin on Saturday evening and receive entries through Friday of that week, with winner drawn on Saturday mornings.

This week’s contest will award the earrings pictured above along with a copy of

Life at First Sight: Finding the Divine in the Details. The book is a  collection of essays that aim to lift up the heart and help us remember each day that the divine really is waiting in the details, hoping we’ll find it. Just like that angel in Diane’s painting.

Learn more about the book at:

http://www.amazon.com/Life-First-Sight-Finding-Details/dp/1931847673/ref=tmm_pap_title_0

Painting from Diane Kirkup: “River of Life”

“The greatest revolution”

The unexpected and the incredible belong in this world. Only then is life whole.  ~ Carl Jung

When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.  ~ G. K. Chesterton

The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.   ~ William James

Photos courtesy Lara Kearns.

The spiritual gifts of fear

Fear can be instructive when I experience it, though I’m not meant to dwell on it, or in it.

If I understand the inner signals of fear, whose purpose is to educate and inform me, I can choose to make the necessary adjustments in belief and behavior that will prevent for me the unhealthy and painful mental state of being consumed by that fear. Most often, that state seems one of attempting to avoid the fear, rather than meeting it and receiving what it has to reveal.

In the physical world, a fear signal is often a potentially life-saving reaction that prompts me to move quickly out the way of harm to my physical self. In spiritual terms, I can also experience triggers of fear that point to what could pose danger to my own true and most enduring reality. This signal often arises when I cross the line of moderation and form an attachment to some aspect of the material world.

For every worldly attachment I make, I can gain an unhealthy fear, then easily become overwhelmed by such fears. The remedy, detachment, is in refraining from allowing my physical possessions, the things I do, the things I think, feel, believe, to possess me. For these are what perish.

The heart, it seems, is never at rest and never finds real joy and happiness until it attaches itself to the eternal, to what does not perish.

Adapted from With Thine Own Eyes: Why Imitate the Past, When We Can Investigate Reality?,

coming soon George Ronald Books.

Photos courtesy Nelson Ashberger.

Along the Snow Fence Road

I’m honored and delighted to share a Guest Post about

Snow Fence Road

at Night Owl Reviews this week:

I sketched down Snow Fence Road in my 30s after a vivid dream about the trauma that shatters its hero’s life, then spent the next 20 years writing nonfiction. Finally I realized after half a century of life that what I want most is to explore the real power of relationships – their healing power. And if they are the gold on life’s path, fiction is all about them.

There are the relationships that the characters reveal to the writer, and the ones that writers and readers develop with them – and ourselves – as we connect with their story. Hearing that characters remain with readers like enduring friends is a wondrous gift. Yet the only reason this book exists is that the characters stayed with me for so long, reflecting what I was learning about giving and receiving love.

Once a rootless military kid, I find that place becomes a living part of story, for me. When readers say Snow Fence Road feels like an actual visit to Maine, I’m grateful because this place I love so much has always felt like a “fully-developed character”, to me. Small-town life there, as in the story, is human-scale. That’s the one that helps us learn the most about others, and ourselves, I think.

Read the rest and enter to win a gift package that includes

hand-painted earrings from New Hampshire jewelry designer

Diane Kirkup at:

http://www.nightowlreviews.com/v5/Blog/Articles/Snow-Fence-Road-by-Phyllis-Edgerly-Ring

Photos courtesy Diane Kirkup.

Snow Fence Road, a 2013 release from Black Lyon Publishing,

can be ordered here:

http://phyllisedgerlyring.wordpress.com/make-a-beginning-and-all-will-come-right/

The mercy of contradictions

A phrase in a passage from Abraham Hicks stands out this week: “the vicinity of appreciation”.

“Love and appreciation are identical vibrations,” it says. “Appreciation is the vibration of alignment with who-you-are … When you tell the story of how you want your life to be, you will come closer and closer to the vicinity of appreciation, and when you reach it, it will pull you toward all things that you consider to be good in a very powerful way.”

That certainly leads me to breathe more deeply, and say, “Yes.”

Then, of course, there’s what I “consider to be good”, and why that is, and how open I am about the possibility of its changing. For life continues to show me each day how important – vital — contrast is for observing, discovering, recognizing, and learning.

Even as Thomas Merton said: “The very contradictions in my life are in some ways signs of God’s mercy to me.”

Finally, thanks to The Oneness Model and Becoming the Self Beyond Lore for the reminder about how beneficial it is to “uncover historic perceptions hidden in our belief codes, tucked away and bound to every modality of human experience … all disguised as truth”.

Phew!

We always do well to investigate, ask, ponder, and reflect, every single day.

And, of course, with as whole a heart as possible, to then take action.

Blessings to every one as another week comes to its close.

Photos courtesy Lara Kearns

Investing in what’s real – and what lasts

It’s a very powerful choice, the option I’m given each day of where I want to direct my energy and attention, and how I might raise my emotional tone. This is my gift, my freedom, the one I have already won. I needn’t earn it or even search for or figure out how to “get’ it. It’s the prize waiting for me, each day and hour, and moment. And there is no limit to its supply.

     And if I forget or slip into ignoring or overlooking the option, I can start again, as many times as I like, or need. And the more that I do, the more that practice helps me to reach for this option more quickly – to want to reach for it, even when the pull from inner insistence, demand to be right, tug at me especially hard. It can feel like an act of empowerment to choose this constructive response over allowing those other reactions to run wild like a pack of unruly dogs.

     Why does that old pull succeed in snagging me at all? That’s what I need to ask myself.

     The answers are typically the usual suspects. Firstly, it will bring some sort of pay-off – some degree of pleasure, certainly, and also, some element of pain can be a pay-off, too, because it’s more fuel for the story I’ll tell myself about it, and the identity I’ll start to spin and weave around that.

     Oh, the sweet freedom of stepping into the mid-air spaciousness of not choosing any of those old, misdirected habits, those premature conclusions based only on past experience. The lower end of the emotional scale has one agenda: let’s wallow in what it means to be miserable, and let’s be right. And, perhaps, an even bigger agenda: let’s avoid facing the reality of the matter at all.

     Eroding into a negative and displeased emotional tone is usually about either resisting or running away from emotion that arises, rather than actually meeting it and feeling. Like waves that are going to wash up on the beach of my life, feelings will come, and bring with them an energy and a momentum.

     When I don’t invest in a lower emotional tone, don’t buttress and reinforce it, shrug it on like a cloak, take it up like a duty or a sentence, there’s an inner vision, a spirit of faith just waiting to reach toward the lift and propelling joy of a higher one. It gives energy rather than taking it. It feels wonderful, like a favorite memory. It’s always a possibility, as long as some story, some made-up figment that’s never been real, isn’t allowed to convince me otherwise.

     I must remind myself that the human world offers very little reinforcement for this; sometimes, none. But I am well capable of remembering what does.