WORDS
Dear Friends and Families,
I’ve known this day would come since a CT scan in April. On Friday December 8, I will have surgery at UCSF in San Francisco. It will take about 4 hours to repair my hernia(s) and reconstruct my abdominal wall. After which, I’ll be bionic, with a good amount of polypropylene mesh holding me together. I’ll be in the hospital approximately a week, then home resting and not working through the remainder of December. Beloved family and friends are coming to care for me through January 14.
If you’d like to support my journey and healing…
Feel free to send the following:
- Prayers for my medical team to be divinely guided as they care for me.
- Prayers and healing energy that my body accept the mesh completely and with the least amount of pain and discomfort post-surgery.
- Prayers for ease of movement, and a swift and complete recovery, so that I can get back to my daily Beauty as Medicine walks.
For me, Beauty is Medicine:
- Feel free to share digital examples of what beauty means to you or heals your heart. Photos, art, music, poetry, storytelling… anything that you’ve created, that you appreciate, or that brings you joy.
🌺 However, please do not send flowers or sweets 🌺
After the holidays, in January – February…
- If you’re local, call and/or come by for a visit when I’m feeling up to it. Offer to drive me to appointments, run errands, bring a meal of lean healthy food to share. (My faves: Fish, Turkey, fruits & veggies) Come play Rummicube, watch Netflix, or help me with my walks.
- For my non-local friends and family who are allergic to cats, if you want to visit there’s a new Marriott AC hotel 5 blocks down my street.
If you would like to offer financial assistance:
- Go to my Pexels portfolio, download your favorite hi-resolution image(s) from almost 800 to choose from, and drop a donation into my Paypal on the Pexels website.
- Peruse my Blurb Books and purchase any as holiday gifts for your friends and family.
- Refer me to folks needing a Spiritual Director, as I plan to be up and zoomable by January when I will have increases in both rent and medical insurance.
It is with great humility that I send this message. It’s never been easy to ask for help, so this too is part of my healing process. I am SO grateful for a loving family, many friends, and for my beloved spiritual communities at The Chaplaincy Institute, Nine Gates Mystery School, and the Sonoma Ashram. May your holidays be blessed with love, compassion and sweet companionship.
My deep love and respect,
Lisa
PICTURES
Click on any image for gallery view
IDEAS
My Wild Writing practice in response to the fuck-uppedness of the world, inspired by the poem For The Hardest Days by Clint Smith
My default mode network kicks into high gear when the world seems awry. It’s the brain’s way of filtering out much of the world’s overload so we can cope with everyday life. I listen over and over to the same news pundits, numbing myself so I don’t feel the pain. The default mode network becomes the dimmer, dumber switch. Sadly, it often filters out inner beauty, wisdom and our Godly selves, unlocked, they say, by psychedelics. But, this is what I count on. Hungry for beauty and my Godly self, I go to the ocean to walk along the beach, sometimes end to end. Soothed by the rhythm of the surf, seagull calls, pelicans gliding low over the water, I wake up, snap out of it and see things differently. Every day the beach, the ocean is different. Sometimes the surf crashes as if it’s angry at the world. Sometimes it slinks playfully up to your toes, only to shy away. The ocean, like our moods, pulled along by the moon’s silver thread, we are all connected. When the world feels awry, we can’t help but feel it too. Sometimes it’s just too much. To wake up from my dim, dumb, numb state, on the hardest days, I crawl into a flower, or a flash of nature’s color, or reflections in a lily pond, searching of some glimmer of hope in beauty, subtle or raucous. I feel the inner tensions playing ping-pong in my psyche. Grief and relief. Anger and delight. Gratitude and despair. Beauty lets me know I’m alive.
Why can’t we all just get along? It won’t happen until we lay down our arms and rise to the occasion to nurture healing. Until no one has power over any other. I feel myself bristle when someone says we just need to love one another and let our light shine. Trite old new age language. This grand experiment is bigger than democracy. It’s all of civilization and we’re failing miserably. We must turn off the noise from our screens of simpering idiots and nihilists, in favor of Truth with a capital T, beauty and goodness. Flip the dimmer switch, and raise our vibration to live with compassionate action. That might just create more hope than love and light. But more immediate concerns occupy my consciousness. My surgeon recommended that I meditate daily on a positive outcome. “Positive thoughts result in positive outcomes,” she said. My spiritual teacher said, “Keep your body strong and you’ll pull through just fine.” For extra measure, he blessed me with holy ashes, adding the power of an ancient lineage to my healing.
Namasté
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Peace and blessings,
Rev. Lisa
Spiritual Companion/Guide, Healer,
Interfaith Chaplain, Contemplative Photographer
Free Photos at Pexels
Inspirational Photography Books at Blurb
“The earth is full of thresholds where beauty awaits the wonder of our gaze.” John O’Donohue