Up all night birthing a goat

At morning’s first light–before a busy day–slowly scrolling down the Facebook home page.

Marvelling at the differences in friends, family and acquaintances.  Marvelling that I’m not feeling irritated at the differences this morning–that the mind is not judging, sorting, categorizing as it loves to do.

Instead, look at the sparks of God!

This one ponders if she’ll be up all night birthing a goat.

A week-old baby goat. OK, I didn’t help birth it.

This one hates President Obama.

This one loves President Obama.

This one wants to fight, ahhhh, she’s raring to fight today, against those who believe differently.  You’d better believe her way, the right way.  How often I’ve sat in her righteous shoes.   Oh, sister, don’t we think we know, until we don’t know a darn thing anymore except it’s a shifting kaleidoscope world we can’t control or understand, even though we try so hard every day, don’t we?

This one, oh divine friend, posts about love, awareness, spirituality, light, love, awareness, spirituality, love, awareness, spirituality, light…  How I adore these posts.  They inspire.  And some days they feel like too much light shining through, like you need some clouds, some rain, some mud, anything, before the eyes blind in so much brightness.

Yet, without the brightness, we’ll shrivel up and die in the cold, won’t we?  How I love thee, divine friend.

Bright

This one posts, oh I remember her as a child stringing daisy chains, and now she’s a beloved go-getting mama of the town, and she posts positive inspiration and pictures of wide-eyed innocent kitty cats and sometimes chastises those who get negative, darn those negative souls, why must they spoil a perfectly golden day?  (Oh, how I’ve felt the same way, the very same way, haven’t you?)

This one–someone I remember from her elementary years–someone always easily misunderstood or assimilated– posts her frustration, her anger, her despair.  It hurts when I read her statuses.  One wants to turn away, or help, or heal, but instead I’ve learned to sit with her and feel the pain.  Sometimes.  When I’m strong enough.

Sometimes I’m even strong enough to sit with my own pain.  Perhaps pain isn’t even personal.  It’s just a friend we need to learn to accept, to meet, to welcome into our snowy days, to allow her knocks at our front door.

A friend who teaches how to honor the human AND the divine. How she laughs…

This one, oh youngster, posts, “Click within 10 seconds if you love your mother”.  I ponder hiding his offerings.  But I love my mother, so I think of her and click in my heart.

My god-daughter–whom I hardly know, whom I’ve probably completely failed as a godmother–posts, “I have a secret.”  What secret have you, fair child, fair woman?  Can we almost guess?

This one posts photos of his vacation in Mexico.  My mind vacillates between envy and delight.  This one posts photos of flowers blooming.  The snow-despairing mind both despairs and delights.

This one posts photos of her children.  I miss my children.  I love that they’re out in the world, beyond the shores of the Great Lakes.  I miss them, I love them, I miss them, I love them, I delight in their daisy-chain lives spiralling out on both wings of this country…

The view from the sky. What a different perspective than on the ground.

What a painting on Facebook this morning!  What a bouquet!  You, with your birthing goat, your secret, your broken heart, your inspiration.  You are all me, expressions of the larger me, the me bigger than Kathy, expressions of Oneness, even those of you who roll your eyes at anything which smacks of spirituality.

Instead of trying to fix the Other, to make them into perfectly acceptable someones, can we simply delight in the Universe’s cornucopia?  The Universe has broken into a million billion trillion pieces just for us.

I’m on my knees in gratitude in the cold snowy mud.  Thank you for YOU in your uniqueness, your diversity.  I’m sorry I tried to fix you.  It’s just that I thought the world needed fixing.  Instead, it was my heart which needed to blossom bigger to include Simply Everything, even Facebook stories of birthing goats.