Meri's Musings

Sometimes we get so wrapped up in our perpetual way of seeing things, we lose the ability to see potential, to open to surprise, to find a new way of interpreting what is. We become so comfortable with the stories we tell ourselves about our lives and the way things work and why things happen and who's to blame that we forget they're just stories. If the old ones don't fit, we can create new stories. "A View from Above" © 2009 Meri Arnett-Kremian What things in your life do you need to see through new eyes? Now's the time. Happy New Year.

Soul enters life from below, through the cracks, finding an opening into life at the points where smooth functioning breaks down. - Thomas Moore Sometimes, it seems, the cracks develop (or we invite them)  because it's the only way we can break free of the "smooth functioning" that is stifling us, causing us to ask Is this all there is? In traveling the lonely and rocky path, we find the quiet place where we can listen to our soul.  When we are challenged, we have an opportunity  to grow strong at the broken places.

A Whisper created the Universe. She blew a stream of air across her voice box, through the gates of her lips and words were loosed into the void. The sound increased in magnitude until it formed shouts of joy and songs of praise. The whoops of joy became waves of energy that coalesced into matter. Bits of matter became stars and plants and continents and mountains and green, green valleys  and oceans and frothy rivers and sea monsters and dancing fish and silly looking birds with long beaks and all kinds of animals.   The songs of praise separated into individual notes that became humans. The joyful noise sounded like the tinkle of wind chimes, the crash of cymbals, the curling of waves, the cry of a newborn, the flutter of wings, a chortle of laughter, murmur of love, the chanting of prayer. The Whisper made the Universe so she could send words out where she could hear them, for she was tired of keeping silent, of withholding...

I'm wishing you a world where each and every one of us sees everyone and everything through the eyes of love, through the eyes of compassion, through the eyes of peace.

It's the time of year for celebration, for family and friends, for connection at a heart level. "Dancing in the Dark" © 2009 Meri Arnett-Kremian What special things in your life make you dance with joy?

All too often, at least for those of us who prefer the status quo, parts of our carefully constructed lives self-destruct in the most disconcerting ways.  Those we love die or move far away. Relationships end with or without our blessing. Winds blow. Volcanoes blow. And we're adrift in a sea of change. The certainty we took for granted proves to be an illusion. Sometimes we feel like there's a pile of rubble where our dreams once lived. When circumstances stripped your life down to bare essentials -- and it's probably happened to all of us at least once -- how did you clear the debris and start rebuilding? Your wisdom, shared, might be a lifeline for someone else, someone who is wondering, right at this very moment, how to go on. Let's leave a map others can follow when they think they're lost.

I have a friend who once told me about a dream she'd had. In the dream, she looked into a mirror and much to her dismay, there was no "her" reflected. She was gone. Vanished. Invisible. She was absent from her own life. At least, that's what her dream told her. One of the risks of being female in contemporary society is losing our authentic selves. When we let the expectations of others dictate how we live our lives, we become invisible. When we don't take credit for our unique gifts, when we don't use them and nourish them and celebrate them, we discredit ourselves. When we are so concerned about what makes others happy that we can no longer remember how to create our own happiness, we are lost. There are so many ways in which to vanish from our own lives. Are you absent from your own life? Why did you decide to pull a disappearing act? What efforts are you making to become PRESENT and take up your allotted space in the ...

Got an email from a friend yesterday in which she passed on a quote that had been making the rounds. It appealed to me and I thought it might to you. So, with regrets that I don't know who said it and can't give proper credit, here goes: I want to be the type of woman that when my feet first hit the floor in the morning, the devil says, "Oh shit -- she's up."

If you haven't already read it, I highly recommend Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. It's a factual and informative book detailing the many forms of oppression that women and girls experience in developing countries. It also introduces us to home-grown organizations around the world that are making an impact in redressing the wrongs on a local scale. You can find projects to support that address issues such as: midwifery and maternal health empowerment of women through job training and microloans eliminating sex-trafficking of young girls for prostitution helping educate girls, which reduces rates of early pregnancy, provides a way out of poverty, and breeds a new generation of women to educate and inspire their communities and provide menstrual supplies to girls so they don't have to miss school on a cyclical basis. I've given Christmas gifts in honor of my parents who have always been committed to activism to...

One of my selves is a beautiful door, ripened with age and wearing a coat the hue of the Aegean on a cloudless day.  My eyes are glass or wood and rimmed with eyelashes of dainty filigree. I safeguard spirits embodied within and mark their comings and goings. "Guardian" © 2009 Meri Arnett-Kremian Strangers may gaze in my eyes but they will not seduce me. I cannot be tricked, for the wisdom of the ages is encoded in my core. I stand vigilant, waiting, watching, protecting. Intruders will rue my strength if they try to harm those I love. 

It's odd. I think this building is totally ugly, the worst kind of modern architecture: graceless, ordinary, a grid of supports and glass. I'd never set out to take a photograph of the building itself. "Reflections on Ugliness" © 2009 Meri Arnett-Kremian Yet when it's flipped on its head and mirrored in a pool of still water it becomes something else altogether. Ripple magic. A watery baptism that washes away all sins. Everything turns out to be a matter of perspective.

There is breathtaking beauty in the imperfect if we take the time to notice. Weathered bricks, faded paint. Laugh lines around the eyes. Strong hands that show a lifetime of labor through skin no longer taut. "Faded Glory" © 2009 Meri Arnett-Kremian The kind of beauty that is so much easier to see in the world of things, in the visages of others, than it is to recognize in ourselves. How are you imperfectly perfect ?

Becoming a Hummingbird I am becoming a hummingbird, my iridescence coloring the words  that rise in my throat a glistening red. My wings support me as I dip and soar, spiral and hover. I travel at the speed of dreams, searching out the nectar of the gods to sip for succor. My breath shapes my thoughts, a gentle inhalation  shooting straight to my core and rustling the ribbons of my soul, exhalation giving me power to exchange depleted elements for new ones, brimming with life.  The purr of my wings stirs the air, bringing a catlike contentment to those around me. The chatter of my heart sends waves of sound vibrating  into a parallel universe, fresh pulses of delight  erasing the darkness and birthing blessings for all who feel the stirring of my wings. p.s.  This is one of the creative writing pieces done on the Egypt tour. As we speak, Normandi Ellis and Gloria Taylor Brown  are compiling and editing an anthology of works...

Each of us has a distinctive way of seeing the world and representing it through imagery. Jan Phillips, God is at Eye Level "Everywhere I Look" © 2009 Meri Arnett-Kremian Everywhere I look, I find little miracles, grist for the creative mill.  Things unfold perfectly, just as they were intended, even in the least fertile ground. How do you see your world? How do you represent this to others? Tell us about it.

I was up early this morning. It's something I do now. I've learned to love the quiet of the morning, when the dog and cats are fed and watered and are content to leave me to my thoughts. This morning, I sat in my little computer nook on the second floor, reading emails and catching up on blog posts while watching the sky outside my window turn red-violet, then amethyst. It finally settled into a faint pink near the ground that graduated through the lavender range over to blue, growing faintly more intense as I looked up-up-up, but still a soft, soft powdery blue of a still morning, just after sunrise. I should have grabbed the camera early on, gone outside in the 30-something temperature and taken a photo to show you the glory of Mother Nature's paintbox. But I didn't -- I knew that by the time I pulled jeans on under my nightgown so I wouldn't scandalize my very-Republican neighbors if they happened to glance up to my deck, by the time...