Pots? The Law of Attraction Brought Me Pots?

Flowerpots—Brought to Me By

the Law of Attraction

Letting People Know What You Love

Brings More of That Love to You

I say, "Thank You" to my neighbor and
to the Law of Attraction

I didn’t know I wanted the three huge vintage-looking flowerpots my neighbor gave me on Monday. All I knew was that he startled me when I was “in the zone” gardening and up to my knees in dirt and compost. After my surprise, he asked if I wanted the pots. Of course, first I said yes and then I trotted across the street to decide where I’d put them before he and my son schlepped them to our yard.

My neighbor must have known I would want them. How did he know I wanted those pots? He knew because of the law of attraction. My yard isn’t the most tidy and the lawn/grass/weeds often go weeks before getting a good trim, but he sees me outside. He sees me digging, pruning, weeding, watering. He sees me planting. He sees the flowers in the ground and in pots. He and other people on the street see the flowers, in spite of the distraction of the less-than-pristine lawn. It’s obvious that I love flowers. When he noted his long-empty pots, it occurred to him to ask me if I wanted them.

Lady Margaret passionflower no longer in need of a pot

What he didn’t know was that weeks earlier, I had purchased a Lady Margaret passionflower and the day before, I finally bought a trellis on which to grow it. All I needed was a place to plant it. My property has few trees in the west-facing front and it gets blazing hot in the summer with no shade to cool the sun’s fire. I’ve seen full-sun-recommended plants sizzle, so I know even if full sun is advised, it often fries and dries what I plant in it.

I wanted the passionflower in the front, but I didn’t know if it would survive the summer heat. To plant or not to plant was the question. When I saw the flowerpots, I had my answer: “Yes, to plant, and in this pot.” If the sun is too hot, the pot simply must be moved. Because it weighs about 100 pounds, I don’t even have to do that: One has sons for that sort of task.

I am certain the law of attraction brought me those pots. The law of attraction happens when I, you, we let our love and desires be known, even if we aren’t certain of those exact desires. By demonstrating my love for flowers, for gardening, I attract those flowers to me. I attract butterflies and scent and beauty. My love for growing things has brought me treasures from other people’s gardens—irises, crinum lilies, Amaryllis, palm trees, aloe—all gifts because people know I love and care for them. I have even revived a few pitiful, distressed orchids given to me because I’ve been vocal about my orchid love.

That Law of Attraction works for you, too. What do you love? What do you want more of in your life? Attract it!

Choose Life--While Driving

Right to Life

Choosing Life While Driving

“Choose Life” announces the Florida specialty license plate. I see it when I can get out of the way and let the road-rage-filled driver pass me. I just spent desperate minutes wondering when I would be rear-ended and have a crushed vehicle, whiplash, or worse. So I’m relieved when “Choose Life” and the vehicle it marks fade in the distance as the driver races toward his or her destination. I’m safe for the moment and still have my life intact.

Vehicles—note the plural, it’s been more than one, two, or even three—with Choose Life plates have tailgated me, then passed me at high, unsafe speeds, sometimes in residential areas, and sometimes in no-passing zones. When I read the blur of the plate’s admonition as it speeds on its way, each time I’m stunned at the audacity of the message in view of the driver’s actions. Choose Life? Isn’t my life important?

I’m not in the womb and haven’t been for 60 years and some months, so I made it out alive. On the roads of our nation, it’s a gamble whether I’ll make it to my destination alive.

It’s a sorry example to advocate choosing life and then endanger the lives of others by choosing to break even the most basic safety rules, never mind the most egregious.

When I get behind the wheel of my car, I choose life for myself and the people with whom I share the road. If those drivers who want me to Choose Life would extend me and everyone on the road the same consideration, I’d be ever so grateful.

Bury My Face in Bliss

Carpe Gardenia

Seizing the Moment to Bury My Face in Bliss

Spring’s first gardenia spread its petals to the world late this afternoon. Seizing the moment, I bent my face close to the bloom, breathed deep, and enveloped myself in the scent. What a delight to welcome spring and bury my face in bliss.

Mind Less Mondays

Mind Less Monday

A Case Against Being Mindful

Mind less. I don’t want to be mindful all the time or even most of the time. It’s a worthy endeavor, but my mind is already full most days. If I give careful—that is, mindful—attention to everything, I foresee serious brain overload, resulting in something akin to the infamous Microsoft Blue Screen or the Mac spinning rainbow of doom inside my head.

To avoid such an experience, and contrary to all things Zen, I have decided to have mind less Mondays.

Today, I will mind less that the flowerbeds on the walkway to my door are a jumble of color, scent, and variety. I will mind less the weeds and instead see the petals. I will mind less that orange and pink and peach and red are not the best color combinations. I will mind less that some plants are too high, that some plants are too low, some are too few, and some are too numerous.

I will instead wake up to the riot of color. I will instead marvel that the Amaryllis has popped its first spring bloom. I will bend to touch the nasturtium and savor that it is orange although it sits next to pink and savor the pink that sits next to red.

I will continue to be amazed at the different varieties of salvia, the colors—pink, blue, orange, purple, red and white, red—the leaves, the petals.

I will walk with delight and mind less the chaos in the flowerbed that too often reflects my life. Instead, I will see the color, the families, the diversity that I find I mind less in all aspects of my life.

Love In the Headstones

Finding Love Among the Headstones

Walking the Road Between Life and Death

Cemeteries aren’t the usual go-to place for lunch in a shady spot on a sunny day. However, I imagine it was no accident that I found myself eating lunch in one about 48 hours after I helped welcome my daughter’s first baby to the world.

Emma Renee Pickerill, February 15, 2013

After visiting my daughter and granddaughter in the hospital Sunday morning, my sister, my son, and I were ready for breakfast, maybe lunch, even brunch. It’s rare to find a restaurant without at least a thirty-minute wait on Sundays in the south. We drove past three places when we noted the lines and realized we’d be hungry for at least another hour.

I offered to cook at home, but we saw a Burger King with no lines. We received our fast-food order fast, as expected. My sister’s dogs were in the car, so we needed a shady spot to park and eat. I then spied the lane going into the historical cemetery off a road behind the BK parking lot.

Shadows of leaf-filled trees and pine needles as they waved in the breeze welcomed us as we pulled to the side of the dirt road between the two cemetery sections.

We enjoyed the cool respite from the sun as we ate our lunch. Cemeteries don’t bother me a bit. I think they are interesting and informative. I enjoyed seeing the ancient grave markers and inscriptions in centuries-old New England cemeteries when I lived in Massachusetts.

My sister walked her dogs down the lane and I explored the peaceful green area. As I strolled, I remembered that in fewer than 24 hours, I would be driving two hours to Sebring to celebrate the life of my father-in-law, who died at 90 a few weeks earlier.

I felt the opposite poles of new life—birth—and the end of a life and how we mark those milestones in our lives and the lives of others. I felt the new life of my granddaughter, yet I also felt a keen loss knowing we would celebrate the life of her great-grandfather in only a few hours.

Rollin Raimer Smith, September 7, 1922 - January 12, 2013 

Conflicting, yet complementary emotions crept to the surface of my psyche. I felt them both—embracing beginnings as well as endings.

It was then that I noticed a headstone like none I’d ever seen, yet it was so perfect for the moment.

Love transcends life, death, birth, space, time

A giant heart shape, it reminded me that between those beginnings and endings, yet continuing and eclipsing birth and death and time is love.

Love, love, love, we begin with love, we end with love, and transcending all beginnings and endings is love. Just love.

In the Presence of a Being so Fresh from God

Pure Bliss

In the Presence of a Being

So Fresh from God

“I love these little people; and it is not a slight thing

when they who are so fresh from God, love us.”

~ Charles Dickens The Old Curiosity Shop

Bliss in the presence of a being "so fresh from God."

One who is “so fresh from God” will arrive any day when my daughter’s first child is born.

A part of me envies her as she is now, changed but not changed, as she will be after her baby draws his first breath. So, with these words, I tell her to notice that change, to be aware of that transformation as it occurs, to mark that time her soul, her entire being, cracks open and she will love like she has never loved before.

She, I, billions of other women, of course, love their babies before that first breath. It’s a love of expectancy, of yearning, of patience, and finally, impatience as the longing builds to see a face, wrap tiny fingers around your own, to feel skin against skin, warmth, scent.

With these words, I tell her to notice those moments when time stands still, when the awe of new life is infused into every fiber of her being.

I tell her to cherish as I did those sweet hours following the birth of each of my children. At that time, I entered an altered state of consciousness. In that state, I marveled at the new life, life that came from me, but somehow not from me. The deepest human connection I’d ever felt moved me away from the boundaries, the limits, of human interaction. A bliss like none I’d ever known before—or since—permeated every part of my being—physical, emotional, spiritual.

The words of Dickens remind me why: I was in the presence of a being so “fresh from God.”