Depending versus trusting...

Today didn’t start well.  I had a sinking, heavy hearted feeling before I opened the shutters and soaked in the sunshine and the views of the Sierra Nevada mountains which tower behind my little orchard and the chicken run.
Erik  the rooster and the neighbours no brained dog had been awake since 3am. My inner world felt grey.  Nasty, raw, sludgy grey, the opposite of that gentle quiet clear shinning gratitude which often starts my day.

So what’s with this grey stuff ?

Well…what’s good about another major operation looming ( hip), then there’ll be an  eye operation (cataract) - how to arrange help – how to ask for help- where to live for the summer ? Then there’s all the legal red tape stuff with the lawyer and the new residencia card, and the driving licence.  And is my car begining to fall apart? No, no, no !! Please no.

And is the no-brained dog going to bark every night at 3.am? And how often will the young neighbours have a  noisy party  staring at 1am?  This morning, these challenges (especially official things, loud music, and barking  dogs)  felt too much.

So after a quick medicinal  check via FB posts - where I looked for  inspiration and encouragement -  I got it.  Really bulls eye this morning! Thank you FB.

I need to start  depending on God again, rather than just trusting Him/Her/It – for everything.  I started a month ago, then stopped it seems. I need to practice this.  Like Spanish verbs, I won’t get better at it just looking at the book on the shelf.
So how to do this? How to kick start the new habit?

First  it seems, an insight is needed to change the chip. And this morning I got three, all via Facebook!   So the day became incredible, beautiful and poignant,  and included a village funeral  at 6pm. Joaquin who died was 86.  He is part of that generation who will soon no longer exist in Spain. A truly humble gentle country man, he is a part of Andalucian  history.

 

 

 

 

 

After the mass I received so much love from my friends and neighbour in Alcazar ( I no longer live there), I came away positively glowing. Surviving cancer is always very good news, isn’t it?

This morning I realised I’ve slipped backwards in depending on God. Even in trusting.  It’s  so easy to disappear into a chaotic emotional blur when there are too many ‘difficult’ things to sort out. But where to start the sorting?

Today, before breakfast, before making any lists at all,  it was a clever little 3 question video on Fb, then a David Whyte poem that did the trick..

The questions -  you have just died- answer the following:

What did you love about your life?
Do you have any regrets now that it’s over?
If you were given one more crack at life what would you do?

First question easy.  Second question a shock and a surprise.  Third question a surprise.

David Whyte philosopher and wonderful poet writes:

REGRET is a short, evocative and achingly beautiful word; an elegy to lost possibilities ….
sincere regret may in fact be a faculty for paying attention to the future, for sensing a new tide where we missed a previous one.
To regret fully is to appreciate how high the stakes are in even the average human life. Fully experienced, regret turns our eyes, attentive and alert to a future possibly lived better than our past.

I leave you with these three simple questions, and hope they give you the kind of insights that made my day today  not just manageable, but magical. 

And as I said in my last blog, Mary Oliver  recommends we - 'pay attention, be astonished (by life), and ( then) tell about it.’

That’s what I wanting to do.

Namaste to you all.

PS. I also found this David Whyte poem this morning - What to Remember When Waking -  here are a few lines from it:

To be human is to become visible
while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.
To remember the other world in this world
is to live in your true inheritance.



Pics 1 - 5 thanks to Pinterest, the rest mine , with sincere thanks to Merxe for the unforgettable day at her grandmothers farmhouse learning how to make bread, and much more.