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Retro Thursday 6-3-2021

 BY ATHLING2001

Waiting To Be Reborn

“If you live in the dark a long time and the sun comes out, you do not cross into it whistling. There’s an initial uprush of relief at first, then-for me, anyway- a profound dislocation. My old assumptions about how the world works are buried, yet my new ones aren’t yet operational.There’s been a death of sorts, but without a few days in hell, no resurrection is possible.” ― Mary Karr, Lit

I am waiting to be reborn.  I feel like a caterpillar enfolded in darkness, changes happening inside, waiting for the moment when bindings break, allowing in the shine of a new sun.  I don’t know what is waiting to be reborn. I never know. I do know something is changing: newness growing in the darkness, waiting to take wing and fly. I know this new beginning will be joyous, life expanding, another leap forward in the seven-league boots of my soul. I never consciously make the decision to be reborn.  My world turns inward, chatter quieter, characters hunkered, awash in the realization that I am not breaking but becoming new.

One day, when I least expect it, my life will split open and a fully formed butterfly will emerge, wings drying in new air. What color will those wings be? What shape?  What part of me will shine?

The mystery is waiting. One day soon miracles will occur.

I am waiting.

Waiting.

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Retro Thursday 4-29-2021

What does it mean to be strong?

What does it mean to be strong? There are many kinds of strength. Physical strength. Mental strength. Psychological strength. Strength in math or writing or baseball. We all know what strength means, or do we?

The Dictionary defines strength as:

1: the quality or state of being strong: capacity for exertion or endurance

2: power to resist force: solidity, toughness

3: power of resisting attack:

4: legal, logical, or moral force;

5: strong attribute or inherent asset

6: degree of potency of effect or of concentration (chili peppers in varying strengths) intensity of light, color, sound, or odor; vigor of expression; force as measured in numbers: effective numbers of anybody or organization (an army at full strength).

7: one regarded as embodying or affording force or firmness

8: maintenance of or a rising tendency in a price level: firmness of prices (the strength of the dollar).

9: basis—used in the phrase on the strength of (from strength to strength); vigorously forward: from one high point to the next.

Strength is inundated into our very being. We are expected to be strong, men and women both. Weakness is not tolerated in this world of succeed or fail.

The strength of our leaders, whether political, clerical, movie stars or sports heroes, has been transformed over the years. Men and women in positions of strength, whether mental or physical, are falling to weaknesses like wood into a chipper. Most people can name at least ten, probably twenty or more, leaders who have fallen from grace. Strength has come to mean invulnerability to many of those in positions of strength.

They are no more immune to attack and destruction than anybody else in this world. They are just better at pretending. There is no strength without weakness. Weakness is the ability to bend but not break. We all need to be strong and weak in equal measure. Those in power who feel that they cannot be torn down are broken because they refuse to bend.

Light cannot be strong without comparison with dimness. A chili pepper can’t be hot without the comparison of mild. An army can’t be strong if they are never willing to bend and fight another day. Phalanxes which fight to the death look impressive, but when the battleground is layered with bodies, what then? Was their strength well used?

One can’t be strong without having been weak. Otherwise, how would know you were strong? Currency can’t be strong without also being weak, even if we’d prefer it not weaken. One cannot go from strength to strength without first having been weak.

I hope that what we are seeing is a revolution against those who hold all the strength, those men and woman who wield strength to benefit them, not those who watch them or elected them or pay their salaries. Those people who think the rules and laws, not of nations, but of humanity, don’t apply to them.

In order for all of humanity to be strong, we must all be strong and weak. There is no strength in millions of people starving or having no safe place to live, no safe water or food, the security of knowing they are safe from the strength of those who would destroy them. Millions of tribesman murdered because they belong to the ‘wrong’ tribe. Strength?

Children bought and sold. Strength?

A finger on the Red Button? Strength?

Torturing an animal? Strength?

No to all the above, but many people will think strength.

This world will not survive on strength alone, no matter what definition you give to the word. So when you think about strength, remember that weakness can be as powerful as strength. Make sure you learn to be weak in order to be strong.

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Question of the Day 2-12-2019

Please feel free to answer these questions on your blog or in the responses. You can also feel free to forward these questions to anybody who might be interested. Thank you to those who have already shared their thoughts.

What is something people think you don’t or wouldn’t do, but you know you would do?

Most people who know me seem to think I am this calm, controlled, non-cussing, person. I can be that most of the time, but there are times when I’m not. I do, however, try to be out of control, angry, and a speaker of bad words when I am alone.

One time when I worked at the hospital, a PCA called on the Intercom to yell at me for paging her when she was in another room. Problem was, from the front desk, I could not see the ends of the hall so there was no way to know if she was in a patient’s room or not. I told her, rather forcefully, that  if I could not see where she was, how was I supposed to know if she was in a patient room or not?

When I hung up and turned around, everybody at the nurse’s desk was looking at me like ‘did you just yell?’

No, I didn’t yell, I just raised my voice slightly to be heard over her ranting, but nobody expected that of me.

Not sure how I got the matronly mom label.

In my writing, I write ‘sex’ scene when needed and have had people read my work and then say ‘I’m not the person they thought I was.”

It is what it is. I am what I am. Those people who really know me know what a little (calm) hellion I can be!