What if no job or house or car or ideal weight or ideal husband is what is going to make you shine? What if there’s a bucket of magic in your secret heart and everything you witness stands transfixed, watching you, awaiting that moment when you smile and start flinging that sparkle everywhere. What if everything simply ...

"Breathe," someone said to me yesterday. Good idea. #survivaltactic. How is it I had forgotten about breathing? Taking in oxygen. Even when I have worked fourteen straight days and am doing little beyond working very hard, eating and sleeping. Or especially then. I can still breathe in and out. I can still ...

Dance is a very powerful drug

"Dance is a very powerful drug, Mr. Keane. If embraced judiciously, it can exorcise demons, access deep seated emotions and color your life in joyous shades of brilliant magenta that you never knew existed. But, one must shoulder its challenges with intrepid countenance if one is ever to reap its ...

Tap here

Tap here to begin writing, someone whispered, and she realized it had already begun. It had started somewhere after her telephone call with a friend from her early life, from when she was some inconsequential, flimsy thing unrecognizable to her now and it had fluttered, birdlike, when she began her ...

Choices

I am at Silver Diner for the first time, having a delightful Saturday morning. I've helped my Dad shovel two truckloads of mulch and, after my Belgian waffles, Amish eggs and nitrate-free bacon, I am going over to lounge around with my beautiful sister and talk of anything/everything. A lovely young ...

Everyday Adventures in Beingness: Some Ideas

Here are some things that might be fun. Or might not. You decide. Research memory. Or Joseph Campbell. Or the workings of the brain. Or the Shakers, or Diane Arbus, or Walker Evans. Wallpaper the bathroom with Bazooka bubblegum comics. Plan a weird ass party. Make yourself some paper mache birds and let them ...

Angels in plain sight

Imagine that everywhere you go, there are angels in plain sight. Your waiter, for example.

Here is what happened to me one day several years back when I sat in one of my favorite coffee shops, writing, brainstorming, considering what my next move in life would be. I looked up from my notebook and was suddenly attuned to the waiter, moving across the room in all his glory, as though sent by the universe to illustrate this very idea. Then, the narrator that lives in my head started narrating:

A kind man dressed all in white carries a tray holding a glass of iced tea, a bowl of sliced lemons and a jar of honey, through which the sun shines as he moves across the room to you. While you drink this tea, place your hand on your heart and see if you can feel all the love the world has ever felt for you, coming from your heart to your hand and from your hand to your heart.

Oh, how I wish I had a picture of that waiter! Beyond the beautiful one that lives in my mind.

The luminous writer, Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy, aka SARK, speaks of looking for miracles throughout your day. Do this. You are surrounded by thousands of miracles, thousands of angels. Smile back at one of them.