Beautiful

I found Rosie Thomas via Last.fm:

Killer YouTube PlayList

Sure. We all think we have the best musical taste, eh? All I can say is this is a group of songs from a whole host of sources that move me either lyrically or through the music alone. Thanks to Erica Swanson for a few. Keep an eye on her blog for great writing, great music and great design!

Most of these are pretty low key and lovely:



kd lang's version of Hallelujah

Michelle Featherstone "I'm There Too"

Melody Gardot "Worrisome Heart"

Grace Potter & Nocturnals White Rabbit

Roison Murphy "If We're in Love" (and anything by her live)

Cinematic Orchestra "To Build a Home" (stunning)

Dinah Washington & Max Richter "This Earth"

Skunk Anasie "Squander"

David Gray "Draw the Line"

St. Vincent "Paris is Burning"

Epiphany

[This has been one of my most heartily received posts, both on the other blog and on Twitter/Facebook. I'm reprinting it here because here is where it belongs but I'm leaving it there because that's where comments are.]

Relationships are hard on me. But, I finally think it is fair to say, they've been harder still on my ex-partners. When you continue to hear the same things from people you've loved and lost, you gotta wake up some time. Unfortunately, waking up isn't always clear and easy.

Folks. I woke up this week. I'm flooded by what I've discovered and it has freed me in a way that isn't easy to express because I suspect that I'm in a small, lucky, sometimes cursed group of people.

I credit this book, The Restless Heart: Finding Our Spiritual Home in Times of Loneliness, for what may be one of the most pivotal changes in my life. It is the section on "restlessness" as a type of loneliness where I recognized me. I can't copy it all here so I'll do my best to summarize an eloquent writer's words:

Many or most of us suffer from a type of soulful loneliness, even when we are deeply loved, because we have felt a fully evolved, higher level of love via spirit. We've been "kissed by God" and in most of us there is a memory of this that causes all other love to pale in comparison. (Page 54 of the hard cover).

My sister and I have what we call the "love dream". Unlike a sex dream, the love dream (with a stranger or a friend or a celebrity-the object is not important) leaves you bereft upon awakening. I've been blessed/troubled with these my whole life (because this is a serious post I will wait til another time to amuse you with the objects of my affection). I've laid in bed and cried because I could not reach that ethereal partner. As in-love as I've been, except in a few fleeting moments of physical intimacy, I've never experienced said "love dream" in reality.

So. You are my earthbound love interest. Poor you.

You simply cannot compare. Sorry. I'll beg, cajole, nag, cry, grovel, yell, scream, pout, woo, rationalize, educate you to DEATH trying to get you to conform in some way to this level of love I've experienced.

And you just can't. And you get exhausted and defeated because

It is never enough.

If I've heard it once, I've heard it 1000 times in variations.You can never do enough to please me.

When I read Father Rolheiser's words, I wept copious tears. When I read them aloud to one of my objects, I wept again. I can barely keep from weeping now, frankly.

THIS is why I feel let down. THIS is why I suffer chronic loneliness. THIS is why I'm constantly seeking the romantic love of a lifetime...and why I can never really find it except in a spiritual capacity within myself.

I think some of us have a stronger memory of our love relationship with God/spirit/Universe. We can still feel it on a deeper level than others. This is me. I've been labeled a sensualist and an empath and once wrote Diane Ackerman about this sense of loneliness which she graciously responded to with a "yes", she feels it too.

I feel free. I feel blessed. I feel a sense of understanding and acceptance I've never felt before. I've released the fantasy while retaining hope of a strong, healthy, committed human relationship and recommitted to focusing on my self and my spiritual life. Have you been "kissed by God"?

In A Mood...

...and I've missed Ani (she's particularly impish in this one):

Serendipity, Love and Therapy

If you are blessed to have a therapist like I have in the elf, you could never completely let them go It has been awhile since I saw her, but post-birthday I wanted a check-in/check-up. See, I'm in a complicated relationship. That might be an oxymoron (like dysfunctional family) but this is the meaty juicy kind of love that fills you up so much that you cannot let it go despite it having some significant barriers to what you want and think love should look like. I needed to mull over words like "codependence, love addiction, attachment hunger" and more.

Luckily for me, my therapist prefers words like "bullshit" and "fuck".

When I walked in, she had a book by her that I owned and loved (Cries of the Spirit in case you are interested). She mentioned stumbling on a piece she was sharing with someone and we settled into therapy and didn't discuss further...right away.

About halfway through our examination of the current status of said relationship, she said "Hmmm. Let me read you this piece and see if it resonates." (When she say stuff like this, you can be sure it will).
And it did.  Here it is for you. Print it off. Mine is now on my fridge where all important things reside.

Much love,
Kelly

Our Passion for Justice - Carter Heyward

Love, like truth and beauty, is concrete. Love is not fundamentally a sweet feeling, not, at heart, a matter of sentiment, attachment, or being "drawn toward". Love is active, effective, a matter of making reciprocal and mutually beneficial relation with one's friends and enemies [emphasis mine].

Love creates righteousness, or justice, here on earth. To make love is to make justice. As advocates and activists for justice know, loving involves struggles, resistance, risk. People working today on behalf of women, blacks, lesbians and gay men, the aging, the poor in this country and elsewhere know that making justice is not a warm fuzzy experience. I think also that sexual lovers and good friends know that the most compelling relationships demand hard work, patience, and a willingness to endure tensions and anxiety in creating mutually empowering bonds.

For this reason, loving involves commitment. We are not automatic lovers of self, others, world, or God. Love does not just happen. We are not love machines, puppets on the strings of a deity called "love". Love is a choice-not simply, or necessarily, a rational choice, but rather a willingness to be present to others without pretense or guile. Love is a conversion to humanity- a willingness to participate with others in the healing of a broken world and broken lives. Love is a choice to experience life as a member of the human family, a partner in the dance of life, rather than as an alien in the world or a deity above the world, aloof and apart from human flesh.

This beautiful, very human photo is by Mozinos and Flickr via Creative Commons.