Category: spirituality

community · growth · painting · school · spirituality

Spirit Animals & Oil Paint

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

So, this may be a mini-blog, as I’ve got to run to get ready
for the annual new year’s retreat I’m going to today through tomorrow up in the Napa Hills. I’m excited. I never know
what will come of these, but there’s always something.
I was reminded yesterday of accepting things as they are, not
as I want them to be. And of the phrase, We ask G-d for what we want, he gives
us what we need, and in the end, it’s what we wanted anyway.
I got a text from the Catholic saying he was bummed; and I
admit that I am too. But I let it lie, because there’s nothing really else to
say. It’s a decision I’ve finally made, and maybe it’ll change, but for now,
this is an option I’ve never let myself explore, and if that’s not being open
to change, I don’t know what is.
Another thing on my mind have been creeping thoughts of
“not good enough” as I begin to prepare for my singing and acting auditions
next weekend and the following. But, luckily, I heard myself telling my friend
yesterday that, to quote Julia Cameron’s Artist’s Way, we’re in charge of the quantity, G-d’s in charge of
the quality.
That, and maybe I really do need lessons of some sort. Maybe
I don’t have to do it on my own. And maybe, as this is the consistent nudge
I’ve been getting toward performance, maybe a miracle of funds to afford
said lessons will “appear” or make themselves available, or maybe my ideas of
my priorities will change and the money is actually already there.
I have, however, been thinking “car.” One of next week’s
auditions is for the live modeling guild. It’s reputable and on the up and up,
and you need reliable motorized transportation in order to be a member. So,
that, and the desperate desire for the freedom my own car would provide… I get
my student loan money soon, and will be filing my taxes early online as usual,
and although I didn’t work as much as I’d anticipated this week due to being
sick, I will have some money from this temp gig to throw in as well, with my
January costs all still being covered from the work I was able to do in
December.
I think part of my self-doubt around performance too is that
I have been sick and sort of isolated this week, which contributes to too much
time in my brain – and feeling lethargic is not a good motivator. But, I’m on
the mend – this retreat will help recenter me, I hope, as will getting back to
work, and getting back to school … which begins the week after next.
You know what I’m taking? Painting. Advanced Oil Painting to
be exact. What else? My thesis credit, and that’s f’ing it 😉 I’m so excited to
get back into the painting studio. I’ve tried to use my kitchen as a studio,
and even have a small easel that I got off craigslist, but it’s not the same.
The light, the space, the feeling of being in an artistic venue. I’m so excited
🙂
I will also be taking the other half-credit of my Community
Teaching Project class, which will be the execution and implementation of the
Spirituality & Creativity workshop I created. And to be honest, going to these
retreats & workshops with this woman over the last 4 years has absolutely influenced the
way I see my workshop, and I model a good deal after what she and Julia Cameron
have to offer. I have some great teachers.
Maybe I’ll let myself have some teachers in performance too.
I ran into a friend at the modeling gig I did about a month ago. He was one of
the musicians in the band I sang with about 4 years ago – it was one song, to
be performed in the one performance of one local community play, but I
rehearsed with the band, I practiced my song, and what did my friend have to
say to me last month? That when I finally let myself really let go, I was
great. And, I believe him. It’s letting myself get there that’s the frightening
part.
To shedding that which no longer serves us, See you on
Monday! xo,m. 

community · dating · Jewish · spirituality

Jew

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

For me, living without a connection to Judaism in my life is
like living without sunshine. You get really used to it, and begin to forget
what it was like to have the sun on your face; you forget how your internal
organs relax when you bathe in it; and simply get used to walking with a degree
of closure in your heart and body.
I am not a religious Jew. Never was; my family never was.
But, I went to Hebrew school and Sunday school growing up, while my school pals
were going to CCD (Catholic something something – which we also referred to as
Central City Dump). I had my Bat Mizvah, and learned by rote the things I was
supposed to learn to get up in front of people and ascend into “adulthood.” But
those aren’t the sunshine inducing aspects for me.
When I stand in a sanctuary with other Jews, and we begin to
sing, I am transcended.
There is an ancient movement in my body and heart which
begins to stir, and is moved to tears on occasion of its loveliness and
fullness. My first “spiritual experience,” I remember quite clearly. I attended
a Jewish sleep-away camp in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania for a few
intermittent years in my youth, and this happened when I was either 11 or 14.
Every Friday night, the entire camp would dress in white and walk up to The
Chapel on the Hill. This was an open, outdoor arrangement of lots of benches
facing outward over the soccer fields and dodgeball pits, out toward the very
treed landscape. The chapel itself is sort of an AT-AT looking structure (yes,
that’s a star wars reference), so you could see through it, and from above,
it’s actually shaped like a Star of David, I once heard.
I was sitting on one of these benches, looking out over the
landscape as the sun was setting, beginning Shabbat (the day of rest) and I was watching the
trees. Forgive me if I’ve told you this story or used these words, but it’s the
best I can do. The movement of the leaves, the undulation of the trees – I had
a moment when I felt like there was more order to the shining glints and waves
than there was chaos. But too that there was just enough chaos to make it live.
Too ordered to be chaos, too chaotic to be strict – this was my first known
experience that there must be something out there greater than myself – a G-d,
an order, a “reason,” a constant.
For me, being Jewish has (perhaps ironically considering world history) helped to save
my life. I’ve written here before and said before that for me, Judaism was a
thread throughout my life, it was just always there. Something to touch base
to, to hold on to, to get in touch with when everything else seems or feels
unknown. When I was in high school, I was not the most popular or friend-having
girl – shy, awkward, like many, I began making friends through the Jewish
community outside of high school, and began to really form my personality,
without the constraints or assumptions of people in school who had known me for
years as shy & awkward. I began to be funny, more outgoing, social. In a lot of ways, I
credit making those friendships, having met these other kids through a weekly
Jewish high school program, for helping me to survive those terribly isolating
years.
When I was living in South Korea, somehow I got hooked up
with another Jew through friends who told me about a Passover seder that was
happening on the American Army base, and I attended the seder there, with the
booklet we read from in Hebrew, English, and Korean – it was very weird, but
also, very very home.
When I arrived in San Francisco, through a series of
coincidences, I found myself a good friend of an Orthodox Jewish rabbi and his
family, who invited me to Shabbat lunches in their home, holiday services, and
generally took me under their Jewish wing. Although their religious adherences
are far more “observant” than I want to be, I love them, and they love me.
And finally, let’s not forget typing “Jewish San Francisco”
into google when I was desperate for a job, and ended up working for a Jewish
Educational non-profit recently. And last year, as I moved to Oakland, and
wanted to keep my toe “in the Jewish waters”, I began to teach 5th&6th
grade at a congregational school in Berkeley on Saturday mornings.
But, mostly, what reminds me of the unique strength of my
connection to this history, community, path, and identity, is when I went with
my friend Barb recently to a “young adult service” at a contemporary Reform
synagogue in SF. As I was raised with my high school Jewish community with song
leaders, and clapping, and laughing, and foot stomping, and singing in rounds,
and levity, this is what was reminded in me at that service. There were
guitars, and perhaps a tambourine – Jews love their acoustic guitars! And
then, there were voices.
A congregant gave a little speech during the service,
and he basically told my story. About how he is connected to this community
through song – how he’d forgotten his voice, and remembers it here. And he
cried a little with gratitude, and we all felt it. And my friend Barb and I
commented afterward that there’s a spiritual community she and I have in common
outside of Judaism, but then, there, here, we get to connect to, perhaps not
something “else”, but something more, much much more. Deeper, as if through our
outside community, we get to experience a spirituality that is skin deep, but
through this Jewish connection, we get it in our bones. In the roots of our
family trees. In the dirt of earth 6000 years old.
And as we sang that day a few months ago, I remembered the
sunlight of Judaism. Of Jewish community. It’s not the laws, the rules, the
Bible (which I have issues with, but it doesn’t really matter) –it’s that
swept-away feeling. It’s the feeling of certainty and faith I had when looking
out over the Pocono sunset.
Why mention this all? Firstly, because it’s good for me to
remember that in some ways, I’ve been living without sun lately. And secondly,
because it comes up always when I begin to date someone new – the first
question out of two of my good girlfriend’s mouths when I said I was meeting
someone new was “Is he Jewish?”. And he’s not. And like I said recently on
here, I don’t yet know if it’s a dealbreaker. I never have. I know that it’s
important to me. I know that if I have
children, I want them to be raised in a similar way that I was, with the all
knowledge that my experience may not be theirs, but I want them to know what
bubbe’s matzoball soup tastes like.
Does it matter? Does it matter if your partner is the same
religion as you? Does it matter that some of the strongest and most powerful
experiences of my life occurred and continue to occur in a Jewish setting?
Well, yes, that does matter, but it matters to me. Does it need to matter to
the other person? Such is the conundrum of modern life. And not so modern.
Questions of intermarriage are on the books, the old books, for millennia. But, I do want to be able to
exchange bubbe’s matzoball soup-type memories. I want the shared history. I
want the shared experience.
I discount it again and again. And ultimately am not ready
to give up questioning it yet. Letting the guys I date not be Jewish (My
dad’s family isn’t, and I love getting “both”).
So, for now, the answer is, I don’t know. The answer is also
to re-engage myself in the community that I miss. And I’m going on a 2nd
date on Friday night, with a Catholic. 
authenticity · creativity · fear · fortitude · performance · recovery · responsibility · spirituality

Ready Steady Go

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

About 3 years ago, when I was living in Cole Valley in San
Francisco, I went for a walk. I was packing to go home for a visit, I remember,
and was feeling overwhelmed, and decided to take a walk through my new-ish
neighborhood. I took a left instead of a right, and walked past a sign, The
Sword and The Rose. Maybe you know it. Maybe you’ve walked right by it. As
unless you notice the faded paint on the cracked wooden sign, you wouldn’t know
to walk into the alley between two buildings. You wouldn’t know that beyond the
trash bins was a gate, through which is a sitting garden, overgrown with vined
plants and a running water fountain with a stone bench. Beyond this is a small
one room shop, that looks like a hobbit’s house, and you have to, well, I have
to, duck slightly through the Dutch door.

Inside is one of those curio shops. There’s a small wood
burning stove that always seems lit, around which are two high backed cushioned
chairs with ancient knitted throws. In the cases are crystals of every color and intention,
ones to wear, ones to put on an altar, ones smoothed or raw in form. The shelves are stacked high with
different types of sage to burn, candles created on different days of the week, jars of loose incense with yellowing labels of handwritten ingredients seen only in spell books.
And in the corner is a small circular table set with a stained glass lamp, a shawl, and two small straw woven chairs. It is here that you can have your cards
read.
And once, I did. Not that day, having walked breathlessly
out of my manic and nervous packing session into this stalled garden out of time.
That day when I was able to collect myself in the mystery and magic of the
darkened, perfumed room. But I knew I would be back.
The man read from Native American animal cards, which I’d
never seen or heard of before. I was not very “into” Tarot before, but I have
learned enough to know there are many paths to the mountaintop, so to speak.
It is my belief that under the right circumstances, and with
the proper intention, we are told, not “the future” or the unknown, but rather,
truths about ourselves. It is my experience that what is revealed to me,
through cards, or meditation, or other spiritual practices, are knowledges which I
already hold, which are simply being drawn out from the shadows, or crystallized
in more accessible terms.
So, when the man drew a card he called Grandmother Spider in
my reading, and told me that this card was the most creative and powerful card
in the deck, I was not surprised, but rather challenged. Challenged to live up
to this truth which I had known about myself, and which continues to be
mirrored back to me and bubbled up within me.
You can go Google the card if you like; it says that the
Spider wove the Universe. Is, in essence, the Great Creator. I don’t deign to
think that I am unique in having this spark (truly, I believe we all have it), but I am beginning to honor its
presence in my life.
Performance. People have asked me what I mean when I say I
want to perform. They ask, Act? … And that’s not the entirety of it at all. I
wrote a poem in August of last year, which I’ve pasted below, called
Pyrotechnic Performance. In my first blog-a-day posting on this website in
November, I wrote about it. (Pulling a Carmen.) And, this morning, I wrote
about it, in my Morning Pages. What do I mean by performance? And why am I called to do it?
I’ll quote here from those pages, because this is the
change of course of the Ocean Liner, this is the portend and promise of the New
Year, and most critically of all, because this is still is my challenge. I have a
financial mess, which means I cannot afford an acting coach. I am willing to
pay $50 for a zipcar tonight to get to New Year’s Eve parties, which I have
rented and am psyched about, but I am still on the sideline of my own commitment to this truth. I know this is
eroding, this stagnation, this hesitation, this fear. To loosely quote
Nelson Mandela, it is not our darkness of which we are most afraid, but our
light. Hiding in financial crises, dead-end (and deadening) jobs, being late,
being “shy,” these are the snakeskins which I am shedding.
Because I want to be available, I am coaxed by this light,
this promise, and as you’ll read, I have a commitment not only to myself to
fulfill, but one to you as well. So, to a new year, to a challenge I am becoming
brave enough to face, and to the undocumented bounty of facing a truth I’ve
known all along.
A Safe and Happy New Year, Friends. And as Bill Murray says
in Ghostbusters, See you on the other
side, Ray.
Performance, A Challenge (12 31 11)
I want to perform. I want to ignite, excite, catalyze, engender, enmorphize. I want you to witness me. I want you to be changed in the witnessing. I want the love in you to awaken and stir as I open myself to you. I want to be there for it. Present. My best, most available self. I want you to fall in love with yourself in the process. Discover the ancient and cavernous depth of your heart. I want to be your tour guide. To lead you where you are ready to be led. I want to change the world, for good. One heart at a time, beginning with my own. And I am becoming Ready. I am ready to transform.
Pyrotechnic Performance: What I want to do when I grow
up. (8 5 10)
I want to startle your emotions and steamroll you with
feeling. I want to seize and agitate the flames of my inner fuel and fury and
ignite and catch you on fire too. I want to blast you out of your seat aghast
at the wonder that is G-d bellowing through me. I want to own this. I want to
master play and expand this. I want to hone sharpen and broaden the depth of
what I have to offer you. I want to journey with you through the lands of the
psyche and crash you upon the shores of revelation. I want to allow you to lick
and contemplate these wounds as you stagger toward the exit when I’m done. 

I want
to heave you into oblivion and gently reel you back in.
action · adventure · compassion · courage · creativity · finances · forgiveness · gratitude · growth · joy · recovery · relationships · responsibility · romance · self-care · spirituality

Wet Concrete.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Today is the last day of work before the winter break. And
although mine is polka-dotted with gorgeous adventures with wonderful women,
what i’m really looking forward to is sleep! And cleaning my apartment.
There’s some kind of shift happening, or a solidification
rather. I feel the cement getting stronger beneath my feet. As though I have
poured the foundation, and it’s looked messy and strange – like getting a
degree in poetry, putting together an art show, cleaning out my childhood home
for sale, getting out of a relationship, beginning to audition for theater. I
haven’t known what any of these pieces have meant as they’ve come up and I
examine them and lay them down, like Indy choosing the right chalice at the end
of Last Crusade, hmm, consider, lay aside.
I’ve just been picking up these pieces with curiosity.
And now they’re all poured into the mold of my life’s
foundation, and I can’t explain to you why, but there is a joy that is arising
that feels so uniquely new and pervasive, that I know these are associated.
With a stronger foundation to stand on, I’m freer to explore, create, test
theories, fail, try. I’m no longer standing on quick-sand, undermining myself
as soon as a notion crosses my mind or path.
I also know that there are likely a thousand more things
that will go in this foundation, that it won’t ever be “complete,” but isn’t
that the point of life? (She says with any idea like she knows what “the point”
of life is!!)
But, I tell you, something is happening. Which is a good
thing, because I can spin out into “I have no idea what’s happening/going to
happen”-land really quickly.
For now, today is my last day of 2011 working at a job I
enjoy. I’ve been asked to come back on January 3rd when the office
reopens, and it has been suggested to pay off my credit cards with this money
I’ll earn, instead of ear-mark it for a car, … but we’ll see 😉 My credit cards
don’t have high balances (no one ever trusted me enough to give me too much
credit! – including myself), but the interest rates are exorbitant, and one of my tasks is to call to ask for a lower
rate. I’ve done this before, and they’ve said no. I’ve done this recently, and
they’ve said no.
But the woman who suggested it said that this is one of
those holes that needs to be closed up. Why pour water into a sieve? In order
for me to hold abundance in my life, there are places where I need to be ready
to receive it. So, this is one of those action places, a place where the
foundation can become firmer. The woman also suggested a script for calling
them, some key phrases and an attitude, that scare the crap out of me. Because
they mean taking true accountability and responsibility for myself and my
finances by letting someone else know that this is not okay. Paying almost 20%
on a credit card, and not touching the principal is (apparently!) not okay. And
I need to close these holes. I also will let go of the results, because they
may still say no, but the action of taking action to care for myself and
respect my own boundaries is the lesson, and the trial.
I get reflective around the turn of the year, and around my
birthday. For all the floundering I sometimes believe I’m doing in my life, the
truth is that progress is being made. It has not been the easiest year, and the
hardships have variously set me to a variety of tasks and new things:
  • the
    breakup caused me to lean on my girlfriends, and have the experience of getting
    through that “slammed by a mack truck”ness of early breakup;
  • the breakup led to
    rebounding, which produced my best painting yet (in my opinion) – lol;
  • the
    japan disaster prompted my friend to host an art show with donation to japan at
    which she asked me to read my poetry, for my first time in public outside of
    the school community;
  • my bitterly harrowing lack of income over the summer
    caused me to get in with a community of people who work on financial security
    and abundance issues;
  • later, working too
    much caused me to come up against boundaries of self-care and are helping me to
    say yes     and no with integrity;
  • packing up my childhood home for sale caused me to root out the sadness and
    grief that lived there, and here in my heart, and to begin to perspectivize 😉
    it with more serenity;
  • having that wonky conversation with my mom over the
    summer caused me to take space to reassess how I am able to engage with her in
    ways that feel mutual, responsible, respectful, and loving to us both;
  • being
    single caused me to pick up     Calling in the One to help foster love and care within myself and help
    to radiate outward;
  • my grandmother, my dad’s mom, is dying, and this is causing
    me to see my dad with more compassion than I have, perhaps, ever, and to listen
    to him as a person, not as “Dad” with all its attendant baggage and
    expectations.
So, there’s just some reflections which come immediately to
mind. There are more. But as the saying goes something like, “out of every season of grief, when life seemed heavy or unjust, new lessons for life are learned and new resources of growth and courage are discovered.” And for me, these seasons of grief were simply filtering out the junk in the pouring concrete. 
compassion · gratitude · growth · healing · love · recovery · relationships · self-care · spirituality

Today’s Lesson: Love. (Don’t Vomit.)

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Today is affirmation day.
Per the last exercise of Calling in The One workbook/coursebook/spiritual revolution catalyst,
today, I’m supposed to affirm my availability and openness to Love and to meet
love, not just in a romantic partner, though that is an aspect, but to meet
love within myself, my life, and in all other people.
When I got sober, I used to hear people say
“We’ll love you until you can love yourself.” At the time, that sentence felt
like I just got slimed on Double Dare.
No way, dude. Get it off me. Keep that gross thing, “Love” you’re calling it?, to your own
damned self.
At the time, “love” to me was a series of fabulously tragic
relationships and an invitation to be hood-winked. I imagined love was like The
Simpsons’ Nelson, asking me to sit in this
lavish chair, and just as I was bending into it, he’d pull it out from under me
with his catch-phrase “HA HA!” I can hear it. Love was not to be trusted; love
was a lie; love was an invitation to be hurt.
So you can imagine, that when people also said that “G-d is
love”, I threw up in my mouth a little bit, every single time. I still think
it’s an extremely gooey phrase, but I
don’t get (as much) acid reflux from it anymore.
For quite some time, I used to say that I received
compliments like one of those lamp-light bug zappers. Compliments, and we can
extrapolate “love,” would only get so far toward me before ZAP! Dead. You ain’t
getting in here, no way no how.
One of the meditations in the workshop I went to this weekend asked us
to envision the light from various teachers and positive sources coming into us, and to then to allow that light to pour out into others. I did this
meditation a few years ago, about 3 or 4 I suppose. At the time, I vividly
remember that I wasn’t going to let these people’s “light” come anywhere near
me. I’ll send light out to those behind me, sure, but keep your light to
yourself. I would send from my own bucket, tap from the (limited) source within
myself. I didn’t need your light – I can do it on my own.
This past weekend, however, sure, I recognized I still was very uncomfortable accepting the light from these loving
sources, but I let it in. It was like slipping into a fur coat that’s been in
mothballs for years – comforting but icky. 😉 That said, to know that I was a)
willing to accept light, and we can substitute the word “love” here, from
others was a huge shift, however uncomfortable I am to receive it, I was
willing to do so; and b) I didn’t have to send my love/light to others by
depleting my own reserves. Instead, I could be a funnel, a filter, a channel,
as is often said.
So, here I am. 30, single, hesitant to believe in a thing
called love (to quote the song with a cringe) ;P but opening more to it.
There’s been a level of conceit which says I’m able to give love and you’re not
allowed to give it to me; a level of conceit which says I know the right way to
love and you’re giving it to me wrong. These have kept me quite alone over the
years.
The reality is that I haven’t fallen in love with an addict,
alcoholic, unavailable, or taken man in a long long time. Doing these things
helped to cause my belief that love was a cruel trick. I haven’t had proof of
this for a long time. Instead, what I’ve been given evidence of as “love” has
been self-less, light, thoughtful, and consistent, and this love has come from many people, not only lovers or boyfriends. I’ve begun to give myself the same
respect and consistency, and finishing this course (and because I mainly just
read through it with lots of underlining(!), and didn’t complete all the exercises, I will now go back
through – there are a bunch which I know want my attention to help sever these
old ties of beliefs) – finishing the course, going on my date with myself, not dating jerks, all of these are helping to firm up
the new system of belief which is that your love (and my own) is not going to injure me, but
rather it is going to bolster me in my climb out into the sunlight.
For all that, I thank you, friends, readers, little secret
gnomes, who are sliming me with the support and generosity of love. 
action · balance · finances · integrity · letting go · maturity · responsibility · school · self-care · spirituality

Suddenly Seymour

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

I did it again. I agreed to a job that I didn’t stop to
consider whether I wanted to do it, but rather whether I could do it.
At about 3pm yesterday, I get an email from a woman I’ve
babysat for before saying her sitter cancelled, and could I sit for her
tonight. Almost immediately, without pausing to consider one way or the other, I
email her back and say thank you, but I have my final paper due for school
tomorrow, and I really need to concentrate on getting that done. But think of
me for next time.
Then, my brain starts in. Couldn’t I finish the paper before
I sit for them? Sure, I’ll barely get home, scarf down some food, and rush out
to BART where she’ll pick me up, but I could do it, right? I mean, I want her
to know I’m a reliable babysitter, someone she can call on to pay me x amount
of money. If I don’t take this job, she won’t think of me next time. If I don’t
take this job, I’ll be out a handful of cash, and I could use it.
So.Many.“Could”s. I could do it. So, I email her back, and
say, you know what, I think I can do it. Let’s meet at this BART station at
this time.
Then, all of the reality of my over-commiting sinks in.
Really, Molly? I’m actually back at home, jacket still on, sitting on my floor with my
Shakespeare paper open on my laptop when I realize that I’ve done it again.
(Oops) 😛
And so, now, at the last minute, I text her and let her know
that I thought I could do it, but I really can’t, and that I’m so sorry for
accepting a job that I couldn’t really take. She texts me back to say No
worries. But, it stuck with me.
This is one of those death-rattle behaviors. These are the
last vestiges, it feels to me, of a behavior that is on its way out. But, as is
usually the case, the Universe will give me a few more opportunities to see if
I’m really willing to let go of accepting things I don’t want to do, can’t do,
feel I “should” do. Am I ready to stop chasing the crumbs?
Cuz that’s part of what it comes down to. If I don’t show up
for this thing you’ve asked of me, you won’t give me love, esteem, validation.
If I don’t show up, even in a resentful, exhausted, crippled manner, you will
forget about me and I will be invisible.
Obviously, to a rational observer, these are lies. As more
likely, when I am rested, refilled, and available in mind and body, then am I more able to give anything at all.
People are not asking me to give from the dregs of my well to them. They’re
asking normal questions. And I’m offering them my dregs. That’s not fair to
anyone involved, and certainly, then, when I flake.
I had a situation this weekend where a woman had agreed to
meet me at a time and place, and I made effort to get into the city to do so.
While I’m on BART, she texts to say she can’t make it, and I’m furious. Way
more pissed than the situation calls for – and I know it’s because it’s the
same behavior I dislike in myself. Why agree to something when you know you
can’t do it?
My flakiness is a result of agreeing to stuff that I can’t
show up for. I agree to stuff I can’t show up for because I maintain a system
of belief that you will only love me and care about me if I’m Super Molly. I am
willing to let this go, because it’s just not working anymore. Super Molly is a
flake, and I don’t want to do that anymore. I’d rather be human Molly, making
commitments I know I can, and showing up to those fully and without resentment.
I’d rather be human Molly who doesn’t need to feed on the approval of others
for my sustenance. As human Molly, it means that I am equal to
you – no better, no worse, and I don’t have to prove I’m either.
Finally, in meditation this morning, I had the song
“Suddenly Seymour” from Little Shop of Horrors come to me (yes, sometimes my meditations are weird). But what
occurred to me about it is that the song’s “Seymour” = my Higher Power. (fyi, i get tons of puns and sight gags in my dreams and meditations. my mind/heart is one that would cook something like this up with no problem!) My HP is “here to provide me” with
everything I need. My HP, “treating me kindly” with “sweet understanding.”* I don’t need to depend on others’ approval for my
self-esteem, I don’t need to depend on my fear-based thoughts when I answer
requests from others, I don’t need to dig from my dregs to be a member of this
world. We’ll see how willing I am to let go of all of this when the next
opportunity comes up, but (I hope) for today, Seymour’s my man. 

*and because I can’t resist… “I’d meet a dollar/approval, I’d follow it blindly – A job snaps its fingers, Me? I’d say sure!”

acceptance · fantasy · fear · letting go · love · relationships · school · spirituality

"This Rare Human Life" – P.C.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Before I go any further, I must report the variety of
references that occurred in tonight’s Shakespeare class:
Zombie Romeo, Dr. Who, the youtube video of a gosling
falling asleep, The Twilight Zone, and a graphic novella by Neil Gaiman.
And, most surprisingly, were all pertinent to our discussion
– well, except Zombie Romeo – he’s just fun to talk about.
Grad school is weird.
Next, it’s a very
good thing that the topic for today’s Calling in the One was about Abe Lincoln’s quote that we are “all as happy
as you make up your mind to be,” and to actively practice being happy in the
situation we are in, in the life that we are in no matter what it includes or
doesn’t include.
This is a very good thing I read this last night before bed,
as when I woke up, I did a dumb thing – I looked at an ex’s facebook page. Now,
now! I had good intention, there was this link he just needed to have, it so referenced inside jokes that happened
when we were together – it was pertinent…necessary…
I’ve pasted the link into the comment box … and then I see a
recent tagged photo of him with a girl. … My gut goes PHOOM – CLUNK – GAK and
STAB. Now, I have no idea who this woman is – could be his cousin – though I
doubt that. I delete the link. Ack – how that spun me. For several minutes I was …
triggered? I guess could be the word there?
Now, yes, I broke off our relationship. Yes, we both know
that we weren’t suited for the “long haul.” Yes, I really do believe there are
people who we are both more well suited
for – but F8ck! did you have to find one first!
Ha, as if it’s some contest. As if “happiness” is a contest.
Nannynanny poopoo I got there fiiirst.
So, there were a few minutes of pain that I don’t really
know what emotion it was – jealousy, envy, sadness? And I texted a few friends,
and then as I was putting my coffee in the microwave, I see on my fridge is a
card that has that very same Abe Lincoln quote on it. About being as happy as I
make up my mind to be. And I go back to the CITO book and I look at the wording for today’s “assignment,” and it’s to
affirm that I am happy with everything that I have and everything that I don’t
have. Everything as it is.
So, I say that a few times, sip some coffee, and text my
friends back and say, I’m okay, it was just sort of a kick in the chest, but
that I know that I’m making myself available for something phenomenal – and, in
fact, that I really do wish him to be happy. There’s nothing “wrong” with him –
as really, there’s nothing “wrong” with anyone – just things that don’t work for me or that I may not agree with.
So, there’s nothing “wrong” with any of this at
all. I mean, my life is chock full at the moment. I left the house to go meet
with my fellows this morning and had some good chuckles and a dash of support –
and I got to hold a two-month old baby and told my friend I’d be happy to
babysit – he seemed quite relieved to imagine an hour or more when he and his
wife could have silence. Babies sort of readjust your soul I think.
I went to the dentist for a check-up, I ate some lunch, and
then I met with my Shakespeare professor about my final project. … It may not
have Muppets. Sorry folks. He said, although he loves the um, enthusiasm,
perhaps I could thing of a more “robust” frame. So we spoke for quite some
time, and I also asked him what he thought of a female monologue from Shakespeare
for my audition on Sunday, and gave me some alternative ideas (I still have to
get my headshots printed. … gak).
Afterward, directly as I was walking down the stairs from
that meeting, I get a call from a girl friend whom I love dearly but hadn’t spoken
with in months. We chat for nearly an hour, then it’s time for dinner and
class.
So, yeah, my life is full. Of action, activities, love,
self-care, friendship, community.
And two of my friends texted back this morning to say that
my reaction was human. Just human. Normal, and human. And for me, another
thing to accept is that “human” is not a curse word. 
acting · action · courage · faith · gratitude · joy · performance · persistence · poetry · recovery · school · spirituality · synchronicity · time

Alright Sports Fans

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

You know those montage-y frenetic moments in movies or,
well, Looney Tunes, where they play “Flight of the Bumble Bee” and everything
starts moving insanely quickly?
Well, it’s sorta like that. I feel like saying, Drivers!
Start Your Engines!
This morning, Monday of the beginning two weeks of
school/work insanity, I emailed my boss at my temp gig and asked her if I could
have Wednesday off. I also asked her to get a little more clear with me on when
this assignment ends, as it’s really vague, and I don’t like my income hanging
on “really vague.” So she said, Yes to Wednesday off, and that she’d love to
keep me into January, so let her get back to me on Thursday. So, Okay.
PHEW on Wednesday off – my crazy long day with evening
class, and now I can meet with my professor to talk about my final project –
due next Thursday. I emailed him this morning too and suggested what I think I
might do for my project – it might be a script involving the two heckler muppet
dudes. Yep. He wanted creative! I’m thinking of having them, as images of the
upper class, watch several scenes from the Shakespeare plays we’ve read this
semester – scenes where Shakespeare seems to be calling out the upper class.
He’s got a lot of commentary on
classism, and I found myself drawn to those pieces in all the works. So, we’ll
see. That does not seem like an “easy” thing to do. But, it could be fun – they
get all ruffled and heckle-y, and then maybe that bald eagle guy comes in at
the end (You can tell I’ve been influenced by the Muppet Movie advertisement at
bus stops…)
After I emailed him, I packed up my shit and went to school.
I knew that hanging out here would only mean distraction – facebook, cat, tea,
nibbling, general procrastinating. Luckily, both the girls I was supposed to
meet with this morning cancelled – which was totally HP doing for me what I
couldn’t do for myself, as I really didn’t have the time to meet with them, and
would likely have been distracted.
So, I went to school, and plunked down in the English
Department with my tea, my laptop, and my homework. I got pretty far. (Poem for
evening class, two singing critiques for Friday, printed thesis draft.) There’s
still a lot to do, but I am feeling better about it.
I have to do a teaching demo on Friday of the workshop I’m
piloting in the Spring – “Creativity and Spirituality”. I co-facilitated this
workshop last semester with the Director of Spiritual and Religious Life at
school, and it went pretty well. So on Friday, I have to demo a portion of the workshop
to my professor and my classmates. I’m not too worried about it – but I do need
to get my own script down a little more. Leading people through spiritual
processes – well, you have to have a degree of confidence in yourself and the
work, to come from a calm position, or else people who may already be nervous
about WTF is going to happen – am I going to speak in tongues? is there going
to be “G-d” stuff? – feel like they are being led by a knowledgeable guide.
Luckily for me, this is all work that I’ve done. Some of the
pieces for the full workshop next semester (3 times, 3 hours, for 3 different
groups of women) I haven’t done, I’ve created from my own imagination, but I
believe in them. The whole workshop is about helping the participants to see that
they can access creativity in a variety of modes, and to call that pathway by
which they access it “spirituality.” To begin (or continue) to understand that
we always have something to say, to give, to create, to invent, because we have
the un-tap-out-able well of creativity inside us already – we don’t have to
“hunt” for it, “work” for it, we just need to access it.
And sure, it sounds “woo woo” hippie shit, but, I believe
it. I don’t always remember it – and try to create from a place of desperation
or scarcity – but the real juice is always there.
So, that’s my workshop. I also have 4 reading responses and
a final paper to do for this class. … And a final paper and an end of semester
portfolio for my poetry workshop.
BUT, on top, next to, in spite of all this – the Universe
works without me – often.
I get an email this afternoon while writing with frenzied
fingers that a slot opened up in the auditions…and I can get in Sunday at
8:30pm, if I want it.
I want it.
Of course, this week of ALL weeks (cue “Bumble Bee”), I now
have to memorize 2 one minute monologues, get my headshots printed, and read up
on this Strindberg fellow. But … it’s general auditions for a bonafide theater
company in SF for their upcoming season in a bonafide theater – and *I’m*
auditioning. Holy Crow.
The very next email I get? From another theater company (no
lie) I emailed in my diligent action moment of a few weeks ago. They can’t fit
me in this time, but will keep my info on file. Fabulous.
Just when I was beginning to feel like I was watching myself
retract from the whole acting thing again, the Universe throws me a bone. I was
watching myself follow the pattern of “flurry of action, then nothing, flurry
of action, then nothing” – but, this time, with my small little actions, these
self care little moments of listening to myself, this comes along. It is just an audition, I have to keep reminding myself, because I get easily scared the f
out.
To counter the crazy “I have no idea what I’m doing,” I
called in help. I called Lorraine, my acting friend I called a few weeks ago.
We just spoke, and she gave me some good tips on the monologues I’m choosing, a
classic and a contemporary: Gertrude from Hamlet cuz I just read it– and The Flood from Vagina Monologues cuz I know it, as I’m cast in it at school in the
Spring! Plus she gave me head’s up on a place to get my headshots printed in
the city, precisely where I will be on Thursday at noon.
So, yeah, I’m alright. A little dazed. But, I did a lot of
work today (and some action a few weeks ago) and some unexpected bounty
happened. Fancy that. 

abundance · courage · letting go · spirituality

The Pan Story

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

I was walking home yesterday afternoon, when it occurred to me.

I love to cook eggs. I’d been cooking eggs every morning, in the same pan, for three years. It was a black pan with a red bottom, as I liked to envision my future kitchen being kind to black pans with red bottoms. But this pan, had seen better days. The surface of the pan was shredding, and each morning more bits of egg would cling to more bits of iron, and surely I was eating more iron than was found in the eggs alone. And each morning, as I was earnestly scraping bits of egg from between the threads of raised, raw metal, I would tell myself I needed to get a new pan.

But I didn’t. Each day, I would cook eggs in the thoroughly aggravating way, with the thoroughly aggravating pan. And even took to microwaving the eggs so I wouldn’t have to deal with the pan. The pan with the red bottom. The pan that had been the first real piece I’d bought when I moved into my last apartment. My first apartment to myself in several years. And so I kept this damned pan, cursing it, and each day putting it back in the cupboard. After all, I am a student, living on student loans; I couldn’t really afford a pan right now. Plus my car was stolen a little while ago, so I couldn’t really get to the store that would sell the kind of pan I wanted anyway. And so on…

Until. One morning. I’d had enough. I put the pan in the garbage can.

The next day I took it out. Washed it, ripping up another sponge, and used it.

A few weeks later, I put it in the garbage can again, and took the garbage out to the building’s dumpster. The pan was no longer useful to me. Or to anyone really. It was now, after years of good service, not suited to my needs.

Two days later, I was walking home and out front of the apartment building next to mine, someone had put a box of moving-out items: mugs, magazines, candles, and… a pan. The pan wasn’t what I wanted it to be – medium sized Teflon with a red bottom – but it was exactly what I needed. A pan, with a smooth cooking surface, in reasonable condition. I took it home.

And so, I remembered the pan story as I was walking home yesterday afternoon. Not long ago, I’d ended a relationship that was not working for me. I had been waffling on that decision lately, agonizing over whether I had done the right thing. Wasn’t “good enough” good enough? Why isn’t “good enough” good enough for me? Can’t it have been?

And so, I remembered the pan story. If my Higher Power, or the Universe, is able to put a pan perfect for my use directly in my path just when I needed it, isn’t that same power able to provide me with a relationship that is mutually wonderful just when I’ll need it? I realized then, that perhaps, Yes. Perhaps relationships, as with kitchenware, are under G-d’s domain, and I can let it go, leave it be, and continue to walk in my life until I come across the relationship-sized box.

(P.S. My goal by the end of the week is to buy myself a new, red-bottomed, Teflon pan.)