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Welcome All

I love January because it’s the start of a new year and I always start the year off with resolutions, sometimes with just one but often more. Today I wrote about my intentions for 2022 (paint and write more), things I want to accomplish (lose 13.5 pounds, fix up the house), ways I’d like to change (get back to my regular exercise routine) or places I want to go (Greece, the Riviera Maya, the Tetons, NYC, California). This year, though I have many intentions, I have one resolution only, and that is to take this poem by Rumi to heart.

The Guest House by Jalal al-Din Rumi

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

​A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

​Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

​The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

​Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

I LOVE this poem. I have loved it for years. What I love about it is the idea of allowing. Allowing difficulty and loss through the door, because they’re going to come in, regardless. Might as well welcome them. Don’t we all need this idea right now? Along with the good and kind and loving who stop by regularly, we do have unwelcome visitors, too, so unwelcome that we’d much rather shove them away. But can they really be guides from beyond? If we let them in, aren’t we really just being passive? I think not. I think it takes strength to stay open to whatever comes. It’s not easy to relax into being changed for the better by the unwelcome. It’s not that easy to relax with difficulty or loss, at all. We use tough words like fight and battle and win or lose around illness, social issues, grief, just about anything. And when we want to make positive changes, we use hard words like workstrive, and resolve. What if we tried to use a new language of gratitude and acceptance?

I love, too, that Rumi includes as unexpected guests our own dark thoughts, shame, unkindnesses, of which I certainly have my share. What can we do with those, instead of furiously growing them bigger and harder and meaner inside us? How could we welcome them in, laughing, and thank them for opening our eyes to ourselves? And when we recognize those dark thoughts, could we let them teach us rather than shame us and make us smaller in our own eyes? We could.

So here are some questions I plan to ask myself when something bad or difficult happens, when I’m feeling injured by the news, a loss, a word, or when I have an unkind thought.

a) Am I willing to be changed for the better by this?

b) How can this help me grow?

c) In what good ways can I be changed by this?

I haven’t had a big party in a long time. I’d like to metaphorically open the door, spread my arms wide to every guest, and call out,”Welcome! Thank you for coming!”
If you’re looking for my cards or art, you’ll find all of that on my website. And if you enjoy these letters, feel free to forward this one to anyone you think might like it. And if someone forwarded this one to you, you can sign up here to receive the letters right in your Inbox. Finally, you’ll find past letters and poems here.

Thanks for listening,
Kay

P.S. MerryThoughts is the name of my first book, out of print at the moment. The word is a British one, referring both to a wishbone and to the ritual of breaking the wishbone with the intention of either having a wish granted or being the one who marries first, thus the “merry thoughts.”
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Home Sweet Home

I made a rough watercolor of the cabin my sister and I stayed in at the bottom of the Grand Canyon 3 years ago.

My brother sent a photo and news video recently about a house we lived in as kids (below). There had been a fire and the friends and neighbors were rallying to help out the family. That house was not much when we lived there, and the story brought back a flood of memories.

We moved there when I was 7 years old. It was a tiny little house in a rundown neighborhood on the outskirts of St. Louis. But we had loads of fun there. I remember that very well. The house had an upstairs, more of an attic, divided into two parts. My three brothers had the side with a sliding door and we four girls shared an even tinier space with no door. We girls slept head to foot in two hospital beds our Aunt Marie, a nurse, had acquired. And we had a ton of fun, even in that tiny room. We played a sort of football game on the beds with rolled up socks, a game I’m pretty sure I made up, dubbed Hike 44. Though we were jealous of the boys’ “bigger” bedroom, we enjoyed invading their territory when they weren’t around.

Our house, sixty years after we lived there.

We’d moved there from a house my parents owned, in which all seven of us kids slept in the same bedroom. That neighborhood was nicer, though, and there was a white fence across the front and a patio my Dad had made in back, with large squares of different colors of concrete. Apparently, Dad had intended for us all to move back to California, where he was from, and he sold that house. But something fell through and we were stuck. So we moved into that little tiny rental, where Dad used to say if you were sitting on one side of the living room you’d be touching knees with whomever was sitting on the other side. We lived there for three years.

There were two houses past us to the east, and beyond them an empty lot that we took advantage of, for all sorts of adventures. Another great feature was the ditch on the other side of the house. All for our fun. We played cars and trucks in that ditch, dared each other to jump across, and had even more fun when it rained, making little streams, dams, and lakes. There were many times when I couldn’t bear to go in for dinner. That is also the house where we girls played the game of being witches, wearing a blanket or sheet on our shoulders and running around the yard, under that characteristic Midwest pre-thunderstorm green-grey sky. As tiny and cramped as that house was, we had all kinds of fun there.

I photographed this interesting house on a trip to Montana with my siblings.

Across the street from us were Mr. and Mrs. Fredericks, an older couple with no children. I was a very shy little girl, but for some reason I spent time at their house, just on my own. They had a sink in their basement, which I found very unusual, and she pronounced it “zink,” which was also interesting to me. One time I bragged to Mrs. Fredericks that my waist was 24” (apparently not bothered that made me a rather chubby little girl). She couldn’t believe it and said she’d give me a quarter if it was true. She took out her measuring tape and I got my quarter!

I bet my parents were pretty unhappy to have landed there with seven kids all crammed together. I’m pretty sure I would have been, had I been the adult. I might even have felt a bit desperate. I wonder if they knew how little it mattered to us kids?

It was just one of the four houses we lived in when I was growing up and definitely the lowliest. But it was still home to us kids and I have many fond memories of living there.

“You haven’t really been anywhere until you’ve got back home.”

― Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic

If you’re looking for my cards or art, you’ll find all of that on my website. And if you like this letter, you’ll find past letters and poems on my blog. And if you know someone who would enjoy these letters, go ahead and forward this one!

Thanks for listening,
Kay

P.S. MerryThoughts is the name of my first book, out of print at the moment. The word is a British one, referring both to a wishbone and to the ritual of breaking the wishbone with the intention of either having a wish granted or being the one who marries first, thus the “merry thoughts.”

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All That’s Needed

Quarter-sized hail came banging down and I

crossed the fingers on my two hands hoping

I might get a new roof out of it for free & oh let’s

go all the way, new siding for my house as well

& while we’re at it a whole set of windows

that go up & down easy as pie & I might as well

throw in loving sweethearts for each of my sons

actually why not just say loving sweethearts

for all young people and all right, the older ones too,

plus peace and happiness within all of our hearts,

the country and the world,

food on the table, nice homes, warm clothes,

all that’s needed for All to survive and thrive.  All.

Whyever and forever not?

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Lost and Gained

Ripe this morning for

mourning old losses

after a few hours alone

in this old house while

my dogs get hairdos

remembering too well

those grievous days

after my mother died

and Henry and Didimus too.

I spent my time wandering

any place at all that I could

think of just to be free of

the empty house that now

buzzes with the energy of

Rufus and Miles.