The Circular Table: Always Room For One More

                                    Have you ever wondered why so many dining tables are rectangular or square?  Why fewer of us choose round tables in which to gather , when redesigning spaces for and with others. The  small round circular table is used when space is the restraint in most family homes.

I suppose cost of material is the biggest reason.  It is easier to cut a slab of material or extrude it when it is square or rectangular than  to create the round .  The round also leaves the manufacturer or designer with waste or left over material that may not be repurposed for something else.

The round table also has another design element of being created into a pedestal table with a single large anchor of support, rather than the multiple legs that I run my long and misused  legs into so very often.


So why my musing of the round table this morning as I sip my java on my sofa, not my round cafe' high top settee?

Last evening around a small round table conversation with friends began before a meditation session.  The sun was in some eyes, so we slid around its circumference crunching in to see each other without bright distraction.  As someone else came we comfortably slid again with the flow of the size of the group.  There was no vying for position at head of the table to repositioning someone's back up against the wall.  The circle , the table, always called for the enlarging of it and the shrinking of it..

Not only in accommodation to the size of the group, but to its activity and its conversation.  Nothing was lost nor shifted as we engaged with other and the group morphed.

So, the next time you buy a dining room table... take a look at how your table works for you?  Take a look at what shapes surround you and then shape the activity and you.Shape the kind of person or persons you allow into your circle of friends or influence.


I have been truly blessed by a circle that morphs, for me and a God that expands incessantly to gather us all together for each other.

My present dining room table is elliptical... Guess I am on my way....

By the way, Karen, sorry for the crumbs left on that circular table of yours!  Will bring a bucket and rag next time!

Night of the Soul

I wonder where I am this dark night


The silence, with the layering of the pendulum clock, moves my heart forward


Yet my mind is still lost and confused


Confused in its longing for more even when these abundant blessings abound within and around me


I cry out, "What more can I give or understand, dear Lord?" and the clock pauses with the click of the gears moving within the momentum of  the pendulum's swing


My soul feels heavy, like the brass weight that releases the pendulum swinging back and forth
I am stuck in this dark night, moving side to side and tossing back and forth again and again


Help me to remember the place I hold in your plan , Lord


Help me to consider the place that I hold in your heart. Lord


Help me to rejoice in the ordinary and mundane, the back and forth of life as with the tides and the moon, remembering You alone control it all and I am with you and You are with me.

Basted with Love

You push and pull through the initial layers

The illness of your own body

The lightening of your soul soul to the truth of what is today


We expose our sides

our wounds in loss

Our new skin


We climb to overlook the new horizon

we balance on new found limbs

and sometimes we slip again, we fall


The valley appears so close again

but one hand remembers it is higher than it was

the last time this happened


Grief it tears and it is torn

Grief it reaches and falters

Grief it exists because of love in your heart

Room For Change:Appetite For Life

Room For Change is transforming to Appetite For Life.  Why?  Just because it feels right. I am hungry again as my time in grief and loss has dissipated but not been forgotten.
Trust the gut, feed the appetite.

This is a new adventure with new vistas appearing everywhere, like the spirit shape shifters of Indian lore.

Appetite For Life.  What will it hold?  Brainstorming, Jumpstarting with a dash of mental nutrition.

The menu, the book, will be  divided into seasonal delicacies for  you to peruse with an array of selections.  Using regional ingredients and individualized seasoning, a menu will emerge.  Parings will be suggested, but it will be ultimately up to you to create the courses from the selections for the fanfare meal. It will be you who will mindfully partake of the meal and digest it  and observe how it nourishes your body and soul.

These musings, from Appetite For Life ,  will help me to compile those menu selections.  Please  email me your favorite menu selections along the way.  They may be a perfect recipe to nourish the body or may be something you did in a  season of your life of which I am pondering and writing about. I am truly interested in making this next book a collaboration of stories, tastes and selections of all of us. All of us that wish to glean that gusto of life out of each and every day and each and every season of our life.

So with this introduction, let the seed be planted, let the rain fall and may we all be pleasantly surprised and nourished with the growth of this little yet mighty seed.

Okay you foodies and you soul filled or even soil filled friends.  Let it rain!  The seed is planted for Appetite For Life.


I need lots of help on this one!  The tools are ready, just need your hands and hearts.  Blessings. Susan

Room For Change: Dance in Grief and Loss

What do you hear from others within the loss experience? " Move On!" "Get out in nature." At the same time you hear comments of " Don't change anything during the first year." "Never move or sell your home." Keep your distance from this or that experience.

 Nothing is complete in grief and nothing is static. Loss teaches us the lightness or heaviness of each moment  and even creates pockets of numbness and observation.

The country song, with lyrics of " one step forward, two steps back" echoed as a gift to my ears in grief.
Other lyrics of " Life's a dance , you learn as you go, sometimes you lead, sometimes you follow" inched me along.

Friends and loved ones' intentions  are meant to keep you moving. Your loss is often their loss too maybe of dreams, friendship and the continuity in their lives.

Acknowledge where you wish to be placed and at imagine at what moment you wish to be there.

Grief , the dance, sometimes you lead, sometimes you follow- It's all good.  Move where you wish, forward, backwards, sideways , up or downwards.  Just Move.   Someone will be beside you.

Your partnering may change but keep moving. You are worth it!

Room For Change: THE GUEST

                                                       

Welcoming the Guest
He has been with me
from the beginning


I have served the others
knocking
I have left the doors wide
open for others to come in


Yet I neglected to 
welcome the Guest
The God within me


From which shines
everlasting peace
not only within me
but through me


Welcome Yourself to this, Your Table


Blessings   Susan

Room For Change: Crossings and Crossfires

Crossing Across
Crossing By
Crossing Under
Caught in the Crossfire?


Life full of Crossings
Full of Catches
Full of Tosses

When I observe, nothing is tossed nor caught... It is like that majestic fly ball that keeps going and going, keeping everyone in blissful awe... because it just is.

No one knows if it will be caught, dropped or in fair play.. It sails and is observed in its precious moments.

Too often I place myself in imagined crossfires, instead of crossings... Tossing myself into unimagined dramas or unimagined ecstasy.

With this thought today, I may just have to pick up a ball and bat and give life a swing again.

Play ball and heads up!