Do you and your ideas shine bright like a diamond?

I have a box where I keep ideas, like props I want to play with some day. In that box sits a light bulb twice as big as my palms.

It’s hard to hold onto ideas, sometimes. They’re fleeting. Unclear. Brilliant but bygone as soon as you try to fill them with details and words.

This light bulb wove its way to the top of the box and the top of my mind, after decades encased with a clip between plastic and cardboard. “It’s my time,” it whispered, then rattled some more.

The sun had barely crept over the mesa when the light bulb woke me that day. At first it asked to simply be held and beholded. It was slippery, that idea. My lack of opposable thumbs didn’t help!

I sought a twist-tie in the kitchen, but it was too short. Then I found a rubberband in my junk drawer, where other ideas toss-tumble and jumble, waiting their turn. Now I could hold that idea more firmly, testing its shine as the sun spilled over the peaks, past orchards and pastures, into my window. I leaned into listening to the idea, so quiet at first.

When have you heard an idea beginning to form? Does it whisper? Does grab your attention with a blinding Aha!!! ???

Snowflake, having finished her breakfast, had questions about this idea. But it was too early to clarify with any coherence, so she glared instead.

“Too bright,” she mutter-meowed.

Truth. Beauty. Love. Good words. Good ideas. But where do we go with concepts like that? We must lift up ideas to be seen, examined, experienced…

Let new ideas swirl in the light of day dawning…

Go toward the light. To the window! To the view!

“Staying indoors is not good enough,” said the idea. “Go outside and play,” it insisted. Ask other bulbs how do they grow…

When queried, “How do you do? And by the way, how do you shine?” the grape hyacinths answered, “We simply bloom from our bulbs into blue. We just be as we do.”

“So that’s how you shine?” I and the light bulb replied, our question mark rising an octave.

“I’m beginning to see,” I said to the light bulb, meaning this idea about shining your light.

Aha! I declared as we brimmed full of photons. We are diamonds in the sky, day and night.

We can twinkle in daylight, we can twinkle in dark. We can dream in starlight and sunshine.

What ideas are coming to life because you’re shining your light?

How are you holding the light that YOU are, not just in your mind but your soul?

We love the idea of YOU and your light! Please keep shining brightly!

View this post on Instagram as a reel with music.

A post shared by Shelly L Francis (@shellylfrancis)

Blue Door Signs from My Soul

emotikin-bluedoor600

Blue doors have been my thing for a very long time. I’ve always claimed blue as my favorite color, sometimes periwinkle, sometimes cornflower. But blue. I’ve never had a blue door though I’ve painted blue walls.

I have a blue door in the alpine meadow of wildflowers where I go when I meditate really deep. It stands there, no walls, in the middle of the meadow, as if I’m supposed to go through.

But I couldn’t. I would sit down with my back against the door. I heard a laughing invitation to just walk around the side, that I didn’t have to go through. But I couldn’t. I was stumped.

Another time, not long ago, I landed in my meadow out of the blue. I opened the door. Beyond it was a dark midnight sky full of stars. I stepped through and soared through the stars for a bit, tethered to the doorway by a silver cord. I didn’t stay long.

A few weeks ago, I finally stepped all the way through, not just that door but a whole series of doors. I erased some hard parts of the past, walked down paths now easier to see and to choose. And I heard, “Trust and believe. Expect miracles.”

I didn’t expect what happened the very next day. I saw my blue door, live and in person, around the bend in an old country road, in front of a cottage for sale, with a tree swing out front. I screeched the car to a halt and pointed. “Look! A Blue Door!”  We sat there in awe. Then we got out of the car.

bluedoor-sq-600

bluedoor-opening600This blue door beckoned. It seemed to lead to a land of bliss and enchanted forests and talking trees and one friendly sit-on-your-shoe kind of squirrel. The cottage holds a piano, built-in bookshelves, and wrap-around windows with a view to the sea. Only a cane in the corner would have made it feel like our own Miracle on 34th Street. It seemed to say, here is your doorway to heaven. You’re welcome. Come in.

So the question is whether this cottage for sale, this land of bliss, this tree swing, this door, this meadow with room for a horse and some chickens, is supposed to be ours.  It sure feels like a soul sign. It sure feels like a miracle.

I do know, at the least, that this real-life blue door is a sign from my soul to pay attention to miracles. To pay attention to gifts that come out of the blue. To open the door and walk through, with courage not fear. With hope, not with doubt. With wonder and more wonder and more wonder yet, and some patience to wait for the answer to “I wonder what this all means?”

I don’t know the answer. Not yet. We’re doing some work called Logistics and Research. That hard human work that makes miracles happen for real. Or at least invites the result. Accepting the invitation to a miracle takes as much courage and work as you can muster, it seems.

And I’m waiting to see if the sign was a “Yes, this is your home.” Or if it means something else. Trust and believe can mean anything. But I do believe in blue doors. And I believe that miracles might have a different answer than the one I first thought of. I don’t know the answer. Not yet. I just hope I am asking all the right questions so the right answer will come when it’s time.

Trust and believe.

Fingers crossed.

 

Finding the seeds of ideas

The other day as I was walking home
I found these green pod things.

Seed pods?

Aliens?

Seedpods?

It was getting dark, so I brought them inside for a better look.

What were they?

I wondered if those spiky spiny things were good or not.

Like anything, it depends on how you look at them.

Three of a kind

I wanted to look at them up close. Roll them over. See them from all sides.

Like little ideas.  Seeds of ideas.  Good or not?

Juggling ideas

Do you weigh your ideas,
or stack them up against one other?

Bigger?

Do your ideas turn into worries
and get heavier. Bigger?

Anxiety?

Do some ideas just overwhelm?

Or maybe they’re good, growing stronger.

Cradle them

I decided I liked these ideas.

We all did.

We each took one

My family each took an idea.
Tossed them around.
Wondered what to do with them next.

Wait and see, we decided.

Wait and see.

So we waited.
One day and one night.

And the seed-idea seed-pods dried up.
Seeming sad to no longer be green.

But guess what?

Those pods had a plan.

See

Shriveled up seedpods
turned into teapots
and poured out a
hundred new baby ideas

like stars in a sky
made for wishing.

A galaxy of new ideas sprouted

A galaxy of new ideas!

Wonder what will come of those?

 

What surprised Emotikin today: Nordic Neptune sporting Charon’s obol

Love written on a rock in twig-stone-shell typography

I looked to the left on the
path I walk almost daily.
LOVE on the rock, well tended,
always repaired and replaced
after each wind, rain or swipe.
LOVE is always there, its
twig-stone-shell typography changes
just slightly.

Well tended, I was thinking.

Two steps beyond, I looked to
the right, where I walk almost daily.

Nordic Neptune, face carved in driftwood

Out pops a face for the first
time, carved how long ago?

Three pennies, tails up,
on unblinking eyes, untasting mouth.
Wikipedia explains, Charon’s
obol pays afterlife fare
for this Nordic Neptune.

Well tended.

Driftwood face  in sea grass

One who walked the logs before me left a sign…

Spiral to center

One who walked the logs
before me
left a sign
saying
move inward
inward
and in
deeper
still
within
then
outward
again.

High tide calmP.S. I marvel that today’s high tide is so calm and wonder at the metaphor.

 P.P.S.  This one who walks on logs throws logs for labradors who love them:

One who walks the logs

Ocean loving labrador

Happy water doghappy water dog!

My soul showed up at low tide

My soul showed up at low tidePerhaps it’s only when you feel deserted by the ocean,
as if the water receded along with your hopes,
and even the moon seems gone…

Reflections of a soul

that your soul shows up with a story,
as upside down as it seems.
Find brimful meaning and truth
while the tidepool steeps her saltwater tears.

Her head in the clouds of low tideSoul wonders
which view you might choose.
“Girl, put your head in the clouds.”

I dreamed of my grandmother last night. She had come for a party.

gretchen-posterized

In my dream, she looked taller and thinner, and wore her pearls,
The way she might have chosen to look as a glamorous grandmother.
In my dream, she said “I left my car down the street, like last year”
and handed me the keys, meaning, “Please park the car for me.”
I don’t know what party I was having in my dream. I’m glad she came.

This is the Emotikin who lived with her at the nursing home
for the last six months.
She’s a Fairy Tale Fairy wearing butterfly wings,
with a spool of pink thread as a bracelet,
(because she taught me to love fairy tales and sewing)
and she’s dancing.
I wonder where it went when she died?
Perhaps it went with her.

gretchen-bella-book-posterized

Message in a bottle on a beach in West Seattle

whats-this-bottleon a sunless day in West Seattle
we saw an empty bottle on the beach

wrote-a-notealways wanted to send a message in a bottle,
I thought, feeling extra adventurous in my fabulous oyster-shell hat.
so I wrote one.
and rolled up a second blank one saying “write your own”
for whoever finds it next.
one should carry extra pencils for occasions such as this.
sealed-it-intucked it in, stoppered tight

sitting-with-it-sealed-a-minuteand sat there a moment, with my message
that momentarily would travel into the world
like a wish to come true

into-the-surfmessage bottles are a bit cumbersome to drag to the sea
without any handles

sending-msg-in-a-bottlehere we are, moments before it embarked…

msg-in-a-bottle-in-surfbon voyage, my message in a bottle

2-msgs-in-a-bottlewho might find it?