This Much I Know

I think, because of the www.AlsoMyHealing.com blog, and www.ChelWhispers.com blog, I am getting more questions that I am used to about "who I am" "what I believe" and also, a wonderful amount of positive email, especially about the www.AlsoMyHealing.com blog.  One person even said that they felt I was a hero.

I aint no hero, that's for sure.  I'm just a regular gal who is trying to make it through the day, day by day.

IF you want to learn a little more about me this is a reprint from something I wrote several years ago, for a public speaking class (of all things) that I was taking.  Our assignment was to tell the class who we were, within a certain amount of time.  So, here's what I wrote - and I still think it does a pretty good job of summing up my philosophy of my life:

Generally speaking, I am the kind of cookie who crumbles, not the smart kind.  Still, the smartest things I have ever done have been admitting that I was powerless, and then sharing with others, all of life’s joy and pain.  Not holding it in as if it were mine alone.  Yeah, I am a cookie who crumbles, but life has graced me with the knowledge that even the crumbs are sweet.

For years, when people would hear my stories, they would respond by telling me, "Chelise, you are so strong."  But I never believed this.  I always thought they were wrong.  I can see now, what they were talking about.  It’s the fact that when life is a roller coaster, I have a tendency to wrap my arms around the people and places and things that I love, and hold on.

My mother once wrote a poem, and in one stanza she vowed to "bring beauty up."  I hope she knew, before she died, that she had accomplished exactly that.  Like all parents, fostering the miracle of life - bringing beauty up, is exactly what my mother did, when she raised my brother and me.

I think it was Albert Einstein who once said, I don’t know one million of one percent of anything, and this is definitely true for me.  I am a veritable plethora of misunderstanding, every day that I get up and walk out my door.  But who can argue with the fact that as long as you are still breathing, you still have the chance to learn more?  We are all like Michelangelo, who, after painting the Sistine Chapel, said, “I am still learning.”

As I stumble around out here, there are a few things which make the journey more beautiful.  I may not know much, but these are the things I do believe:

I believe in sunny days, and I believe the rain washes the world clean.  I believe in preserving forest and rivers, natural places, spaces that are wide open and free.  I believe in redemption and healing.  I think you can find them by eating applesauce, or reading the Tao out loud.  Or sometimes, simply by realizing that you have made your mother proud.

I believe in the sacred wisdom of Buddha and Krishna and Kali.  I believe that Christ was a prophet in our time.  But I also have some problems with organized religion, I think there is reason why the terms rampant insanity and Christianity rhyme.

I believe there is at least one angel sitting in every tree, and that when you learn to see them, all of life opens up and becomes the most lovely kind of poetry.  So I believe in reading poems to your children, and helping them with their writing.  I think parents waste their time when lecturing their kids about coloring inside the lines, or minor indiscretions, like nail biting.

I think the Bible is full of wisdom, and I do believe that for everything, there is a season.  I believe we all suffer periods of sadness, rage, and, grief that seems unbearable.  But I think that if you focus on why me, you are way too caught up in searching for an insignificant reason. 

I don’t think that grief needs a reason to be.  And in truth, when it comes to my own grief, the word unbearable, has never applied to me.   

I think it is something wonderful, and a miracle in addition, this gift we all get called the human condition.  Who could ask for anything more?

I know that airplanes can be guided like bombs and fly into buildings.  But I know too, that heroes will follow.  I think everyone on this earth should be wary of blind patriotism, I find the military concept of necessary losses, awfully hard to swallow.

I believe the Rolling Stones were right when they said you can’t always get what you want.  And I think they were on to something, when they suggested that sometimes, you just have to let it bleed.  But unlike the former song, my experience has been you don’t even have to try, you still get what you need.

So I believe in music, reggae, rock, hip hop and the soul soothing that comes from listening to a slow country ballad.  I believe that art is everything we are, it can show you the way we are distinctly separate, and also that we are one huge collective we.

I’ll tell you all this, these few things I know.  But I’ll also say I’m wary of the word believe, I worry about assumptions, I try not to espouse rigid philosophy.

I know that the ones we love sometimes leave us.  That even what seems permanent, gets annoyed by assumed permanency, and responds by going astray.  But I also believe in reconciliation, and the fact that we are all energy.  I believe in quantum physics, because physics will tell you that energy never really, goes away.

So mourning, like joy, and pain, and sometimes lovers too, will indeed come and go.

But just like the sunrise, all of it, is as it should be.

It’s not much, but it’s enough to get me by.

This much, I know.

Comments

[Scritto da: Constanza]

Chel, I hadn't read this and once again so true of Life and how fragile we are. I love how you write.

I have another great quote for you from my country which goes something like this in English

"Oh, if at sixteen I would have known how much poison life holds,
I would have hidden in my dreams as if they were a cloister Teresa Wilms-Montt

So nice to drop by via Gina Smith's Blog. I must read more about you. Friendship is of the essence. How is Jenna? Give her my love.

[Scritto da: thesis writing]

i am searching many blogs and others sources for complete my thesis writing assignment for holiday work i like your blog so informative and knowledgeable keep your blog updated.

[Scritto da: Judy Keefe]

Congratulations on your new blog Chel.

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