On Apple Blossom Festival Week-end in Sebastopol

I am excited to write - fluttering like the black bird that just flew over the orchard - the sky is blue with some white subtle streaks of clous above the row of tall trees to the left. The sun is hot on my face as I write from a faded blue fold up chair facing the rows of apple trees as far as I can see straight and to my right; to the left is a yellow tractor with a great big wheel with a yellow rim, with rows backed by higher rows of trees behind it. That is my world now.

And birds high and low sounds as if everyone's eatin' breakfast or getting dressed to eat - everything is in motion and the green weeds near this brick square of porch and the leaves of the apple tees blowing.

I am in motion - I am receiving a little piece ofheaven and even a moth or buterly that just visited on the glass sliding door behind me. I am in motion in my heart remembering my feriends who are in hardship - one whose husband has cancer - I know the worries that accompanied that for me when John had cancer four and a half long years but so short now. I remember Christine whose husband Phillip recently died. (Mr. Face just rubbed my legs passing by on his path. He is an Egyptian cat who sleeps with a Goddess - an adorable being next door Cassandra. It is she who inspired the human temple word in an affirmation about enjoying taking care of my human temple. That is a big affirmation to grow into).

[I have only 30 minutes on this library in Santa Rosa to write you and find another place to live for 8 weeks. In case I forget I want to add this note from an old big-hearted friend Layla, who when she heard of this bank wrote: Affirmation Bank! What a great metaphor for the way things work. Positive thoughts/words add to our "balance", while negative thoughts diminish it].

I want to reach out to them and see how they are and say I apologize for leaving L.A. at least for now. But when I journaledseveral months ago in L.A. I found myself writing: Living here is shattering my spirit.

I slept with a phone so I could phone 911 if someone broke in. (Once a man with a gun was discovered by me on my porch on Halloween, and before I left, a travel bag with someone's possessions was dumped on my doorstep, apparently a theft). I felt stuck - disliking the prospect of driving freeway to temp jobs and seeing that the commute had perhaps a wear and tear effect on John.

My life is far from perfect on all levels. I have much paperwork a-waiting my attention - paperwork I've avoided for two years. But, yes, but during that stuck angst I got a call about a possibility of a social work travelers job that would pay for me to live and work int he Santa Rosa area. I could not believe this would come through because they could have hired through an agency in Northern California. So I was surprized one day when Lily (who I later learned has the same birthday as me) called with her up-beat high voice offering me this six week job. And - friends...I was out of cash.

I keep saying - and there may be truth in it - that I think John and the Creator set this up for me. Now I'm not sure why. Perhaps - I can't remember - it was days asking for healing and help.

Now I've been offered eight more weeks here. The job is almost impossible - it requires everything I have and pulls on my least developed "functions" - being detailed and decisive. It makes me forget about myself - my past troubles.

I am seeing how my daughter and I can create a new little (or big - anywhere between) life and that we can make new connection with heartful and spirit-turned and solid people and generous people, peiople with greyer hair and perhaps mroe time to talk and more space to touch a person casually when they meet cause there's a bigger sky here and the nurture to the heart of the views. And perhaps some more contact with the wildness of horses, cows, goats, turkey buzzards, chickens.

I have tried before to be brief (there's a neon yellow-green small plane flying overhead and it's loud). Now there's a blue one following.

I'm now under a green leaved apple tree's shade. I will just share a few notes from my walkin in the orchard this morning. They may not relate linearly.

I appreciate where my soul's longing goes to.

With Your Brush
I paint Yoru Colors
With Your Love
I am Happy
WIth Your Apple Blossoms
I am Delighted
With Your Tests of Friends
I find Caring in me
WIth Your Creativity in me
I am excited and full
It is Your _____
To Make Me All I am
To Transform Me
Into Delight in Your Gifts
And Express Your Virtues in me
All have you as their potential greatness
and gifts to others within

* * *

Up close an
apple blossom
bud is
mysterious
and
feminine and
gorgeous and
succulent

How can I
be closed and
conforming

when I am
surrounded by
thousands of
blossoms
in
thousands of stages
of
unurling
themselves
bud to
decaying

_____ expect people
to behave
in certain
ways so
we feel
secure
don't have
to stretch
to attend
be
present to
their expression
at any
moment

* * *

Follow that intimation of heart, subtle.

I followed it with a longing for nature and it is GOOD.
Now I am open to seeing where can follow other longings into their goodness

* * *


The ladder of
Mistakes
leads to
learning
and
success

Even though my confidence and order are buds
I treasure the gifts and talents that I can't wait to blossom in my life's orchards. I entrust them to the Creator and pray for Your Guidance in manifesting them.

This or soemthing even better.

Enjoying,

Claudia

A Quick Note About the Power of Affirmations Written After Work

I'm in the basement of a hospital looking forward to being home after a long day at the hospital where I work as a social worker. People inspire me here at times, such as the woman I phoned who is on oxgen, 99 years old, who over the phone called her 90 year old husband who she'd be married to for 62 years "doll-baby."

Today there was frost on the windshield. While driving from Sebastopol to Santa Rosa one affirmation that occurred to me was:

I love being happy.

Frank Corner*

I have been letting the affirmation from yesterday work on me. I say yes to this mysterious life. I remembered that affirmations are a process, where you say them and then feel any resistances to them. I decided to consider this life as including the life here on this earth and beyond in the other worlds of the Creator. I liked better: I say yes to the mystery that is life.

I love being happy - It felt so good to sit around a round table at a natural culinary arts school founder's home (the Baumans) and enjoy a Passover seder - the avocado with bee pollen salad, the company. Earlier I loved responding to a new friend's answering machine message (where she pretends to have a French accent) by singing "La Vie en Rose" with gusto on her machine. After grieving in various ways for my hubby dying, being happy is a joy.

I remember how powerful affirmations can be. Once in my life I taped all my affirmations and listened to them. One affirmation I listened to was: I am healed from all past traumas. Oh, yes. Soonafter I was drawing and a symbol of an old trauma came up in the drawing. That started a whole process of healing. I also recall that when I studied yoga with Yogi Bhajan gazillion years ago in 1970, he said if you were sick you could use the affirmation: Healthy am I, Happy am I, Holy am I. Once when I lived in San Anselmo when I was in my 20's I felt like I was dying and I said this mantra and felt better; it took me out of that illness like Oscillococcinum can take you out of a flu if you take it soon after symptoms. I wanted to mention the power of affirmations so you might consider this when and if you craft them.

I appreciate my holy soul.

I appreciate you visiting. I look forward to reading any affirmations you want to share in your comments. KP, your comment was a huge, beautiful affirmation for me. Thanks so much. Now I will drive back to Sebastopol to the apple orchard and see my daughter and hopefully hug an apple tree. I first heard about hugging a tree when I was 17 or 18 when Leo Buscaglia discussed this in his class at USC (I also got to go to his Love Class which he held weekly). He truly decided to live life on his own terms, and I couldn't believe it when I heard he had died. Leo will never die. Never.

What is my wish? Happiness for you and I.

Light Affirmations

Wait. I am lighter having lost physical and emotional weight.

Sweet waters are rolling over me giving healing where there was pain and grieving, and giving strength and restoration where there was weakness and lack of confidence.

It was drizzling this morning as I drove my car out of the wooden fence along the foggy roads of Sebastopol and I played with an affirmation: Sweet waters are drizzling on my aura and penetrating and giving healing to my being.

You are most welcome to deposit your affirmation(s) as comments and make withdrawals or loans. I am getting interested in the possibilities of affirmations that are humorous...and healing.
I looke forward to hearing from you and from people gaining ideas from others' affirmations.

I say yes to this mysterious life.

Yesterday was my birthday! My journal question for myself, and which I offer to you is:

What is your wish?

Yesterday's affirmation was:

I enjoy the creativity, clarity, and freedom of taking care of my happiness, mind, emotions and human temple.

This affirmation helped me so much focus on creating a birthday I would enjoy, and let go of expectations that the happiness of it would come from others. When several people I'd hoped would call didn't, I called a woman who I'd never talked to before who became a fun friend, and called relatives - including a five year old niece who talked to me a while about their baby cow and the horses that ran away. It was dear. By night, my hold on the affirmation grew weaker, as I did with tiredness, but still, it helped! Yay!

A quote that inspired me yesterday was:

(About the Creator) "...For granting of gifts doth not cause Thee loss, nor doth the bestowing of favours diminish Thy wealth." - Selections from the Writings of the Bab.

This is a theme for this affirmation bank, bringing a thought of universal abundance.

As a wonderful soul Betty Pecharich says, "Make a wonderful day."

With enthusiasm, Claudia