I was just reading the Huffington Post this morning about how Palin is depressed by the media coverage, so her staff was telling her not to watch it. While at a rally, she said,

"that while she doesn't always appreciate the way reporters portray the GOP ticket, she's been bolstered by the prayers of many of the campaign's backers.

"But yeah, sometimes you do get depressed watching what it is that they're reporting and the spin and some of the distortion of what our message is and what we stand for. Sometimes that, that gets draining," she continued. "But it's at events like these and our rallies that we are so energized and inspired and we know that we are not alone. We feel your strength and we feel the power of prayer, so many of you tell us that you are praying for us and praying for our country and that's why we so appreciate you being here."

So my question is: How will they handle this new episode of cognitive dissonance? With so many Christians praying for her, and their ticket doing so poorly, and most likely losing the election, does this mean that the Blue Meme Traditional Jesus they worship might not exist? Will any of them see that their particular brand of Christianity is ready to be put on the shelf? Is this nation ready to move back to the more respectful, quiet type of choice of personal relationship with a Higher Power that doesn't come shreiking out every election cycle? Or are these lost children just going to pray harder for the Apcalypse now?

Well, it has been three months since my father's death, and it seems that the strange world of mourning moves through my life more today than it did the first two months. Since having gone through deep mourning transformation 11 years ago when my mom died, I know better than to expect this process to be linear.

The realm of death, the underworld the ancients liked to call it, is anything but straight forward, regular or every day. That is why it is the underworld. It is the realm where all that needs to be put upside down will be, and all that needs to be dismembered will be, and all that needs to be put into its proper place will be too.

I have many sayings and mantras that are helping me right now - I call my life The Magical Mystery Tour because magical and beautiful things are happening to me and it feels like only the Mystery of Life could be bringing them to me. Another is Shock and Awe - the shock of death can lead one to see life in a whole other way that can only lead to awe. And the last is All of this is just part of the Web of Love and Light that holds me. Living in this liminal space is challenging.

A part of me wants to just be done with it, be back in the groove, and feel normal. But I know that I am being pulled through the eye of a needle right now, and well it can feel a bit strange in here. But because the Greek Goddess Persephone got to eventually leave the underworld to return to the world of the living transformed into her true nature, a Queen, I trust the process, and wait patiently as my True Nature awakens within me too.

Dear Friends and Fans of my dad,
I am so completely touched by all your love and support for my father and for me right now. It is a strange thing sharing this with the world, and yet, this is what I have always done.
He was a kind man, a great father, and a deep and thoughtful voice for the world.
Now it is our turn to tell the truth and never tolerate mediocrity. Some saw him as a man who had given up on the world, I know that he was always trying to wake us up and make us take back our power.
Dad, I love you, miss you, and will carry on the torch.

Please donate to
The American Heart Association - http://honor.americanheart.org/site/TR?fr_id=1030&pg=tgreeting
The Thomas Jefferson Center - www.tjcenter.org

There is something about the days getting shorter that thrills me. The thought of darkness, stillness, and hibernation ruling our psyches and lives gives me full permission to dive deeply into the realm of soul.

Being still enough to hear the small voice that connects us to Source, the infinite, is, for me, the profoundest honor of being a conscious being. We get to stop, listen and commune with God/The Universe/The Cosmos. What a privilege. What a miracle. What a true gift.

Musing on the symbols and ideas of this time of year - miracles, light emerging out of the darkness, giving presents - we are given many opportunities to go within and meet up with the miracle that WE are. The GIFT that we embody. The LIGHT that can only be known because of the darkness.

In the Greek myth of Persephone and Demeter, this time of year is when Demeter is still wandering the earth unsure about where her daughter Persephone has gone. All she knows is that she has lost contact with her, and her heart breaks for it. This can be seen as part of our own journeys - that time when we may have lost contact with our own innocence, full potential and possibility, and all we can see is darkness and confusion. But what Demeter, and our own ego selves don't know is that Persephone is indeed in the Underworld - a place of death, stillness, stasis - and yet in this place she is separating from all of her past ways of being, and being enthroned as a Queen. She has become sovereign over her destiny. Her ability to live with, and stay with Hades (death, stasis, stilness) allows her to remake herself with more power, grace and a new destiny.

As the Level 3 of the human psyche, the wolves and the planet moves into this deepest time of hibernation (Winter Solstice is the 21/22), I want to leave you with an appreciation of the hibernation that we are all living on some level, and with a poem that I wrote last year at this time.

Winter Solstice.

Here comes the light.
Here comes the sun.
Gather your wisdom, your selves, your deepest parts,
Turn toward where you are headed
and know that you have everything you need
to make the journey home.

Spring calls you like a whisper.
Persephone rustles underneath us.
Demeter mournfully wanders still in search of her potential.

Take a moment today, that very same moment that the earth takes to be still,
and ask...
What call still whispers in me?
What rustles underneath my consciousness?
What search is unfinished?

Bury your answers like a bulb in the soil.
Light a candle to show you the way.
Something indeed has been born today.

Don't know why, but I felt pulled to show up here this morning. Usually I have something that is just dying to be expressed, something that just won't let me go, and so I come here and share. But this morning, it feels like the space has just invited me in to show up first, and then create from the space it holds.

Just showing up and creating from what is in front of us is something humans have been doing for, well, for ever I guess. I suppose we wouldn't be here, this far along in our evolution, without that ability to create from the here and now. It seems like my ego wants to believe that I need a plan, the right tools and education, and then I can go and make something happen, or make a something. It's just not true is it? I don't know what the end of this sentence is as I type it, I don't know the end of a thought as I think it, and I certainly won't know what the end of this day, month, year, life will look like. And yet I move toward it anyway. I walk into the unknown in every moment. Funny. Funny, because so many times I hear myself and my clients talk about the fear of the unknown and the paralysis that accompanies it. But it really is bullshit isn't it. Without the unknown there is no life, no universe, nor no creativity.

Have fun in the unknown today.

Kelly

I was at Staples the other day, and I saw that there were a bunch of people in there buying school supplies. Suddenly, my body ached like it used to in my early thirties when it wanted a baby. A voice appeared, "I want to go back to school. I want to surrender myself to a new semester, a new pile of books, new teachers, promise of new ideas and directions for my mind."

School for me was easy. I loved it. It had boundaries, expectations and rewards that worked for my own particular neurosis - intellectual people pleasing. School made me feel in control of the universe. I knew what it wanted from me, and I knew how to give it. Black and white. Information in, and analysis and information out. Pure bliss.

This fall I am not going back to school. Well, at least not that kind of school. I am jumping into making a documentary, and there certainly is a lot for me to learn. But there is no ONE set of parameters, or rules or hoops to jump through. It is all a bit gray and murky - tone, visual look, approach - no where is there a syllabus telling me how to get an "A" or what is expected of me in my final paper. I am on my own here. Just me and my subject (the American Dream) dancing by ourselves as amazing people and opportunities gather around me to support my journey.

I feel a bit like Frodo. I have a mission and I'm not sure that I am up for it. But I know that I must keep marching forward because no matter what I know that it must happen. I have surrendered myself to something bigger than me, and I feel like I have been chosen.

Now that I have heard the call, maybe I need to go back to Staples and get myself a new notebook, some paper and really cool pens. I have a feeling that new teachers, ideas, directions and books are in my future. I think the real education of Kelly has just begun.

Dream on,
Kelly

I was watching some TV earlier today, and it was mentioned that it has been ten years since Princess Diana's death. I was immediately transported to that week ten years ago. A week that was the beginning and the end of so many things.

The week that Diana died I was in Santa Barbara at my very first Buddhist retreat. I and 900 others were at UCSB spending five days with Thich Nhat Hahn, a Vietnamese Zen Master. It was a miracle of sorts me being there, actually a few miracles. The first being that I had not driven by myself in my car out side of a very small perimeter of Los Angeles for over five years due to a crushing case of Panic Attack Syndrome. And yet, somehow I made it to Santa Barbara without a trace of panic, to learn to meditate and do walking meditation with this Zen Master. The second miracle was that I knew no one, had never done five seconds of any kind of meditation in my life, and I had certainly never just signed up for something like this in my life. I was even sharing a room with a complete stranger. I do not know what had come over me. Well, actually that is a lie. What had come over me was that my mother had died suddenly not three months before that. And I guess that is where the third miracle begins: I was given the gift of life through the horror and unrelenting grief around my mother's death. Suddenly all my fears, all my hesitations, all my reasons for not doing things were gone. There was just me and reality, and only so much time left on this earth to do and be who I knew that I had always wanted to be and do, but had been putting off for a time when it felt safer. Well, nothing was safe now, so now was the time to start being and doing. And that is why the fourth miracle happened.

It was on the third day of the retreat. We were invited to wake up before dawn, and meet Thay (Thich Nhat Hahn's nick name which means teacher) and his sangha (community) on the beach for walking meditation. I hated waking up early, I hated being cold, and I was not sure how to actually do walking mediation, but I was curious and so I dragged my ass out of bed at 5AM. We all gathered as the sun was rising, and slowly as a group, we walked down the beach behind Thay and some of the nuns and monks with him. Walking meditation is an act of being fully present while moving. You feel each step as you take it, staying out of your head, and with your body the whole time. After about ten minutes I looked up and it was quite a sight to see - about four hundred of us moving at the pace of a snail en masse on the beautiful shoreline of Santa Barbara. We were like a slow moving sculpture. The sun began to fill the sky, and I began to feel a level of peace that I had imagined unattainable in my life. I was filled with joy, love and calm. The ocean was glassy, and my mind was glassy too. Thay and the group moved up a trail that lead into the nature reserve on the UCSB campus. We walked slowly, carefully, mindfully along the path. Most were looking down in front of them, which is the proper practice. But, I was looking around at the trees, the birds and then the meadow we were walking through. And that was when I saw this fox. He was about 40 feet away from us. There were hundreds of us on this trail, about two or three people wide. A stream of humanity, and yet there was this fox staring at a hole where his prey was hiding. He never looked up, flinched or even acknowledged our presence. He just did what foxes do. And I realized we had become part of the landscape. Our peace, our calm, our mindful movement blended in perfectly with the meadow. A huge welling of joy leaped into my throat. And tears began falling down my cheeks. The fox, this meadow, my body, these mindful walkers were all one, one body, one mind, one being. I did not know what to make of it all, but I figured that I had just been invited into a new realm of being.

Later that day, I saw CNN announcing Diana's death. I was in a busy lobby of the dorms we were all staying in. Time stopped. Another mother was dead. I pictured the grief of those two young lads. But this time I had the meadow and the fox and that peaceful sea of humanity in my heart. And even though I knew those young lads' hearts had been ripped in half, I also knew that they were now on a journey where miracles can begin to happen too.