LIFE IS TOUGH, SO MAKE IT WORTH THE EFFORT

I have fallen back in love with Joseph Campbell.
He became trivialized with his phrase--"Follow your bliss."-- which is the exact right thing to do with a life.
But it was misinterpreted to mean, Follow your bliss--SO THAT YOU WILL BE HAPPY.

No no no no no no no no!!!

Follow your bliss:
To live your particular life--your authentic life print
To answer the challenge of the Hero/Heroine
To face what you must face to transform yourself
To take the journey from ego and dependence (on people, on stuff, on status) to  self-responsibility and expression.
To mature spiritually
To go forth and make a difference and to come home to  "self" transformed
To listen to the demands of your heart and your spirit
To make friends with fear and the moment of jumping off alone into "new"

Wonderful Campbell statements:

Find the place in yourself that is quiet.  Let action come from that.
Do not be compelled by desire or fear.

Your answer preexists.  It is the question that is needed.

The adventure you are ready for is the adventure that you get.


So don't let your life be tough.  Make it tough. Get ready for your adventure. Choose to answer the Hero/Heroine's call.  Live big.  Live idealistically.  Live true to your heart and soul. Live scared.  Live your particular challenge Live a story worth telling.  If life is tough, regardless, then make it a grand epic.

I love Joseph Campbell

THOUGHTS FROM A FAMILY TSUNAMI!!!

I've been hit and hit hard by a huge wave of family.
Seven days of 18 people, sometimes 21.
Coming from five states.
Loving one another.
Needing to see, smell, and learn one another anew one more time as we all change and grow.
Needing to come out of caricature into full blown wonderful irritating family members.

In seven days we:
Had a gorgeous brunch on the front porch-all happy to be together looking good.

Had one car accident.

Survived one totally torrentially rainy day that almost broke our back but Rummy Cube and kid videos saved the day.  That and a little late night scotch.

One disaster with bed bugs in one of the houses we used.

Pesticide on the front lawn of our house so no kids could play on it.

A lovely celebration in the early evening of the newest grandchild.  We created a blessing bush (nothing tricky--a bush with blessings hung on it) and gave our favorite childhood books to the new one.

A formal baptism ceremony for the new baby.

An improvised store created by two 5 year olds with stuff they decided I needed to sell.  Silent auction of my jewelry.  I declared bankruptcy and took it all back.  Desparate measures for rainy days.

Created a Game Club in the basement.  Only people who played fair and took turns could enter.  Anyone could get kicked out. Endless negotiating between a five and a six year old.

Constant creation of meals and take-out and clean-up.

One glorious 4th of July beach day with lobster up on a deck overlooking the ocean where everything worked, love abounded, sparklers were awe-inspiring,
all kids cooperated, fireworks could be seen-------until mosquitoes and bedtime wrecked havoc.

Lousy hot good-bye day.  Packing, kids fussing, grown-ups growling under their breath.  Ocean forgotten for coming to home base and grand parents.  More hands needed.  Then  a new wave of energy and all adult children off for a night on their own and happy grand kids with videos and pop corn and grandparents falling asleep in the midst of it all.

Why do I share all of this?

Because so many families are far flung.  We don't get together for only fun and  the perfect moment.  Although I still plan them, they never happen by plan.  Just by serendipity.  And so we enact a microcosm, a hologram of family as if we all lived next door to one another. It fills that void. I share to validate this new type of close but geographically spread tribe.

And because I saw a needed skill for all families that I used by  my wise adult kids.  Perhaps a skill of successful combined families.
Forbearance.  Cutting slack.  Holding back remarks.  Waiting for something to get better.  Affection for foibles.  Managing the self for the good of the whole.
Plain ol' patience.  Forbearance.
Not tucking things under the rug.  Not being a martyr.  Not being quietly furious.  Forbearance.

My thoughts from the debris.  Toys on the lawn (pesticide rained off). Beach towels everywhere.  Kids books under foot.  Kitchen in disarray from so many hands.  Games pieces in random places.  

As a large scattered family that still loves we have more strained catastrophic moments than many but forbearance pulls us through to some of the most 
unexpectedly lovely glorious moments.  Forbearance.  Much needed in our world.

I JUST ATTAINED MATRIARCH STATUS!

All of my tribe is with us in Maine for the 4th of July week-end.
From California, Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts and here in Maine too.

They arrived when my husband and I were still in Indiana attending my brother's Memorial Service.  So things got started without us.

So getting home carried the odd feeling that I had died too.
Things were getting done in the manner than I would have done.
BUT--not exactly.

AND --here I am tap dancing in my head--I soooo let go.

We rented one house near the beach because even I knew we would hate one another at the end of the week if we tried this under one roof.  (16 of us)

All of our kids since they could toddle helped with chores.  They all could pretty much cook by 4th grade.  In other words my husband and I  have never had to carry this family alone.  But we kept the control. In fact there is a written agenda for the week but not written by me.  I consulted.  Now new stage.  Wonderful stage.  Odd stage.  I am a guest at our family reunion!!  


Let the logistics begin!!

Who has the car keys to the rental car?

What time should we gather to go to the play-- one of our crew had written and directed a local play.

Should we put the table on the lawn?  Big debate about pesticide sign on lawn.  (Why did the guys come this particular week?)

Where is dinner tonight?  Which house?  Who's cooking?

We can.  We can't.  Car seats determine decisions mobility.

Where's the baby?

Where did the women all go?  (Shopping!)  What kid went with them?  Head count time.  

Who lost the RummyCube tile?

Where are the car keys?

Should we go to the Sea Dogs game if it drizzles?

My husband and I are still the default  positions for decisions and aesthetics (that's be me).  And mostly out of respect for us.   but now,  I simply say, "Talk to your brother."  "Talk to your sister."   "You guys decide."  

Why didn't I think of this sooner?
Easy.  I didn't want to.
Now I do.

I am the Matriarch!!

"NO YOU CAN'T HURRY SAD---

My daughter in-law, who has had several deaths touch her personally in the last few weeks said, "I'm tired of being sad."

I liked it because it assumed that "sad" isn't something you control, or ignore or pretend away.  And it IS something you do get tired of.

We are a culture based on the pursuit of happiness. Literally.  Pursue away, I say.  Grab  big chunks of it. But don't feel obligated to fake it.  Allow room for sadness when it is there.  Allow happiness and sorrow to mix.  Don't push them into "either/or" positions.

Even as I started to write this, I was trying to choose between happiness and sorrow, joy and sadness. Which sad story will I tell?  No, you are tired of sadness, I'll tell the happy story.

My brother may be in the last week of his life.  Sad?
All my kids and grandchildren are coming for a week starting this Friday.  Happy?

Both events have elements of sorrow and joy.
One is not only sad and the other only happy.

Our family visits make us appreciate our kids more and we get sad after.
My brother has had one of the truest love marriages I've experienced.  How happy is that?  And sad to lose it through death. No.  Happy for it anyway.

Stretching  for happiness that isn't there is sad.
Let sorrow take the time it needs.
And get tired of it when you are ready.

You can't hurry sad and you can't manufacture happy.

I live within the extremes of both right now.

I THINK I'VE REACHED A TIPPING POINT WITH FATHER'S DAY!

Mother's Day too.
After years of ambivalence, I've finally tipped to having an aversion to both.

And I am a celebrator.  I make parties out of nothing.  None events become memorable.
Taking my vitamins became a favored ritual with my California grandchildren.  We lined them up by size, by color.  We measured how many sips of water for each.  We played doctor and each girl had their tray of pills for me.  Party out of nothing.  

There is a kind of "Give your aunt a kiss"  (the one you hate, who smells, who gives you the willies)  demand inherent in the day.


I have a loving and expressive family.  We call.  We send cards.  We express our love very articulately.  We text daily foolishness.  We are connected.   STILL, on Mother's Day or Father's Day there is that running tally of who has called and who hasn't.  Or who will call before bedtime as the kids remind one another of what day it is.

And then there is the commercial aspect of it all that still feels like advertising from The Walton's era.  Electronic gadgets out of the back of the Sky Mall catalogue proliferate.  Automatic cheese inserts for hot dogs.  Knee cap slimmers.

We were out and about today and saw so many head down dads seemingly tolerating a picnic or walk or fake Frisbee fun.  Over domesticated.

OK. I've blown off steam.  I'm not really a cynic.  I loved my dad and mom.
I love my family.  I love to celebrate.  So what's my problem?
It must be the mandatory, generic nature of the day.
Makes me and my kids rebellious.

I just sat and thought about what would make the day ring true for me. 
Then I laughed.
It would all be too elaborate and not ritualized enough to actually happen.
All our kids called even if laughing about the pressure to do so.
We did  gifts and cards.
We ate special food

I'm back to only ambivalence.

DEATH IS AS ABOUT AS ESSENTIAL AS YOU CAN GET.

And so is birth.
My head is spinning from both.

My big brother is dying.  From a worn out heart.  Of course, I am sad.
I will go to visit him in Chicago this week-end.
I intend to make him play Monopoly to see if I can finally beat him.
We will remember together--family ritual, food, fights, games, sorrows and joy.
We will laugh and cry.
I will wish he would have another heart miracle.  (He has had two)
He won't.
I will mourn him well.

My newest grand child is robustly living.
She is 3 months old.
I was close by as she went from her mother to the world. 
Now there is a  transition!!
I make up songs for her.
We imitate one another as she earnestly struggles to figure out sounds.  Makes her sweat. (Learning is hard work!)
I will celebrate her living.

Normal life and death.

But up close, both are so profound that I find them disorienting.
So mysterious that time takes on another dimension.
There is a sweet essential quality to both.
To enter into them is an honor and enrichment that shifts me out of "normal" into mysterious.
I'm glad for the mystery and the reminder.
It makes me more alive and gives me more awe to work into the dailiness of
what to cook for dinner.

"Essential" relieves me of the flotsum and jetsam of all distraction.
Pure life.  Pure death. What matters.

WHERE DID THE TERM "TRUTH BURPS" COME FROM?????

Recently, I've been asked how I chose "Truth Burps" to name this blog. Not "what" a truth burp is.  That, people seem to get.  Not what, but from where.
First, how fun to have people care enough to ask.
Second, I so want to hear your voices/burps back.
Someday I'll figure out how to do that.

SO anyway, the term "Truth Burps" got started at work.
I'd be in a meeting going nowhere and I'd ask "Who else is bored to tears?"
TRUTH BURP!
Or talking about how to develop some one's leadership and the conversation was lifeless and I'd say, "Why are we faking this discussion. This person has no leadership talent?"
TRUTH BURP!
Or a conflict resolution meeting when 10,000 reasons for not working well were given, finally asking, "Do you two just make each others skin crawl?"

You get the idea. Sometimes they were helpful, sometimes rude, sometimes funny, sometimes regretful but always a spontaneous moment of truth.
I would semi-apologize and say, "Excuse me, that was a truth burp?"  People began to use the phrase.  

So that's the gist of it. 

But here's something that  just makes me happy at the absurdity of us all. 

I  live in Mexico part of the year and have developed deep friendships there.  Some read English and my blog.  So they told me about the Chaluma Indians  who live in a Tzotzil Mayan village in Chiapas, Mexico.

This is a small isolated village that doesn't allow visitors after sundown.
They practice a mixture of Catholicism and Mayan religion.
BURPING is central to their religious practice.
Burping is considered cleansing because it expels the bad spirits!!
The central church has many altars  with soda bottles playing a central role--especially Coca Cola although Pepsi and Fanta are now used as well. But Coke
produces the best burps!!  What can I say?
They have been doing conscious burping for years. Before Coke it was an herbal mixture called pox.

Look it up. 
Total truth.
Makes my day.
How could anyone not think life is fabulously funny and rich??