Beyond Broken

Wendy’s Writing

Reflections From Nature

Last Saturday the Alt Right came to Charlottesville.  We witnessed them from our favorite breakfast spot.  They marched straight down Market Street in front of our window seat.  We witnessed one battalion after another dressed in different colors, representing differing ideologies with shields and clubs.  Some were outfitted with heavy combat gear including large guns and grenades.  We went out to the streets propelled to make real what felt so improbable.  Pepper spray and crowd agitation chased us away.  A state of emergency was declared 20 minutes later.  It was 11:00 am.  The Rally was not supposed to begin until noon.
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The Builders – What Are You Building?

This scene of our littlest grandchildren so earnestly at work moving sand this way and that and the Mary Oliver Poem, Song Of The Builders collided in my mind on an early morning,  just past sunrise, this week.

As Mary Oliver sat one morning to contemplate God she witnessed a grasshopper hard at work moving grains on a hillside.  She see’s both humility and great effort in the grasshopper’s task.
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Are you keeping ‘cool’ this summer or succumbing to the heat?

 

Are you keeping ‘cool’ this summer or succumbing to the heat?

Learn more about what happens in our brain during ‘cool’ and ‘hot’ moments and what huge differences it makes in our relationships.

We are only three weeks into the summer and already there has been a lot to learn.  Most of us continuously find ourselves judging others and making assumptions about other people’s behaviors. We do this continuously in a scanning function in our brain. These assumptions justify our defensive behaviors. Our untested ‘realities’ give rise to disconnection, wall building and subtle and not so subtle negativity in our relationships.
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My Wanting Has No End

 

This phrase comes to me on a walk to the river.  Why is it so comforting?

“My wanting has no end.”

The first thing I notice is there is no judgment attached to it. If I say it this way, “there is no end to my wanting,” I hear judgment.   Judgments I have heard my whole life — “You are a bottomless pit and you are too needy.” I feel the familiar shame of my needs and wants. And almost before I feel this I feel an even more familiar litany of anger at all those who deny me. To be honest this “why haven’t you, why didn’t you?” plays in my head for a great majority of every day in a constant stream of turmoil and unrest.
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Follow Your Heart

When I took my first serious writing class I learned a startling fact: To write you must read. “The more you read the more you will be inspired to write and the better writer you will become,” my teacher said. I had never linked these two activities.

As an only child I kept myself company with books. The characters became my friends. The children’s book The Lonely Doll, by Dare Wright in 1957 expressed my dilemma. “Once there was a little doll. Her name was Edith. She lived in a nice house and had everything she needed except someone to play with.” I was four when the book was published.

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