List 10 simple pleasures.
#1 10 little babies…
A poem is read. A question is asked… What if?
Write for 30 minutes.

I have a sense this morning, first thing as I arise, that the foundation of my personal belief regarding myself and my place in the world has been utter fallacy all along. Still I keep trying to believe that my greatest pleasure, simple to the core, is the time I spend alone in my studio. Alone that is with an entire pantheon of divinity and a zoological cadre of saintly companions: alone, as the lone human.
I see at the top of my list of simple pleasures: 10 little babies. Only once, for a very blessed period of time, have I experienced that pleasure. Three or four days a week for two years I was in the company of 10 babies. For me the changing of a diaper was an act of reverence. I was aware of their awareness of my attitude, our mutual awareness, encouraging my devotion.

Rule #1 To heal the child within…bless the child without.

I was once changing the diaper of a strapping young child of about two and a half years of age. He was destined to become a man of great size and strength. But he was only a child, a baby in diapers. When I did my cautious peek, to see what I had to deal with, he flinched! He fully expected to be hit for pooping in his diaper, he was not yet three! I looked him in the eyes and said, “Oh, no. It’s ok, the diaper is for pooh.” If only once he hears it, at least he hears it once. If only once he feels the tenderness of a woman honored to change his diaper, perhaps choice will be a part of his experience. Somewhere in his psyche being allowed to be a baby will exist and perhaps tenderness will have a chance to bloom in him.
The baby learns like a sponge, absorbing everything equally: every sight, every sound, every emotion, every word uttered in their presence. Women and all child care providers hold the destiny of humanity in their hands, literally. The single most important “ Job “in our world goes disrespected, undervalued and its true importance unaccounted for. The future of humanity is determined by the changing of a diaper, multiplied a billion times. The future of humanity is determined by the cooing or cursing; the respect or neglect a child receives from day one, multiplied a trillion times. To gaze deeply into the eyes of a baby and communicate to them their humanity is our first task. And then to never forget that if they seem to fail us in their humanity, it is we who have failed.

Shar Shk Buk X

I have found at last the man of my dreams:
His name is Hafiz.
He breaks my heart
with his love,
and sends god’s lion
to lick the wound…
until I swoon in ecstasy
and weep at the sound of His name.

I have found at last, the man of my dreams.

Cathie Jo aka Shar Shk Buk

Until Hafiz

I had been looking for God
for so long
I feared that I had lost my way…
Until Hafiz
emerged from the sands of time.

And now my souls desert
blooms
a lush, mad jungle
of beauty and Love…

Every unexpected flake of snow
a Valentine from
God.

Hafiz calls out:
“SNOW DAY!”
Let us make love, Hafiz
Lying naked,
stretched
across the sands of time.

Cathie Jo, Valentine’s Day 2013

One of the blessings of being severely underemployed just might be that one is required to spend 5 days being “under-payed” and blessed, beyond measure. On my feet for 8 hours a day, flagging cars and literally running down the ones who choose an attitude of “I’m not paying for parking!” Bear in mind, that this is a parking operation generating funds the education of our most precious resource: our children.
For me to come out of the desert on an unknown mission and find that I am going to get payed to work with some really great people and laugh nonstop for 5 days is pretty sweet. Laughing at everyone and everything under the sun (or snow as the case may be) ourselves included… is a deep and powerful blessing and generates a tsunami of healing energy.
There are some aspects of the healing process which can only be addressed in the holy practice of mundane daily life: The struggle to pay the rent. There is salvation in falling in alignment with a seemingly random team of perfectly imperfect humanity and falling together, in love. Faith grows, in walking the talk of willingness… in faith. Hearing the inner, intuitional voice of the heart and allowing it to trump logic; builds heart muscle. Allowing magic to disprove science allows God to live: becoming so real that everywhere you look you see Them. Seeing half a dozen laughing Buddhas, here, and knowing you are one, is living divinity. Realizing 3 or 4 Ganeshes are moving things around on the periphery, there, is realizing Gods power in us all. Seeing a gaggle of baby Jesus’ and little holy Mary’s under the tutelage of one earthly Quan Yen or Krishna is bearing witness to the sanctity of humanity.
It’s just Old Man Coyote refusing to pay for His Parking and making you run Him down on foot (beep, beep) or showing up for work drunk so you can work on your supervisory skills and give Him the boot! It’s the holy practice of being human that is so much fun for the Gods.

Cathie Jo aka Shar Shk Buk (Roadrunner)
February 14, 2013