After spending 8 hours yesterday shredding so many files that I burned up my little shredder, filling 3 giant recycle bins with the detritis of past Meri's, I applied this morning for Social Security.

And I'm noticing, as the morning goes on, what it means to me... to tell my government that I intend to "stop working" now.

On the one hand, it's ludicrous to pretend it's logically possible for me to "stop working." I can't stop working! I have no savings to live on and no benefactor family or friends. How would I ever live without "working?" Impossible! The tiny amount I'm entitled to receive back from 35 years of social security contributions will barely pay the rent on the land beneath the manufactured home I'm renovating to live in. No, I won't ever stop "working." I will be doing things for other people in exchange for money, goods or services until the day someone recycles my organs and cremates the body.

On the other hand, to make the application for Social Security today is, in quite a beautiful way, to make a public declaration of full surrender to what is. Surrender to my age, to my maturity, to how tired I am of keeping up appearances, to my real human need for support as I continue to age, to my "right" to relax a bit and simply enjoy my life - at last. 

It's time for this surrender. The ego's still hanging on - like the shreds of a not-quite-shed-locust-shell - but the Truth of who I really am has finally begun to dawn on me. And thatTruth has taken the power out of the knee-jerk reaction stream that's been driving my processes of "making a living" since I was 15. How wonderful that there comes a time in the life of U.S. citizens when we can deliberately link our intentional use of time to our inner spiritual journey towards Freedom - and receive a little of the money we've been required to save while we let others "borrow" our intentions for our time.

So, here I go: I'm stepping right off the cliff, just like the Fool, in full acknowledgement of the Truth. I'm not what I think, do or say - and I never have been. What a glorious Spring day to affirm the mystical genius of Emily Dickinson: 

I'm nobody! Who are you?

 Are you nobody, too?

Then there's a pair of us -- don't tell!

They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!

How public, like a frog

To tell your name the livelong day

To an admiring bog!

To travel hopefully is better than to arrive. 

~Robert Louis Stevenson

It was March, three years ago, that I started this blog. I can't even take in all that's gone on in that time.

Then - I was horrified at having to move out of my home, suddenly, clean everything I owned of 8 types of toxic mold, and find a new place. For no good reason at all. Someone's carelessness and someone else's ignorance. 

I couldn't see the grace in any of it. Just rage and illness and shame and fear.

Now - three years later - I see the sudden catapult out of my home as the launch of a journey so profound, so deep, so transformational, and for which there's not enough room in my body to hold all the gratitude. 

I closed Friday on the purchase of my own home here in the Rogue Valley. It's got a wonderful space in it for a studio/shop.

And the first thing that I need to do to enjoy that new studio (with a lot of help from a 3-year collection of new friends) is take down a wall that's full of mold because of someone's carelessness. Someone else's ignorance. And someone else's slow march towards death. A march that didn't include worrying about a wall in the shop getting water logged from a backed up gutter.

Three years later - quite similar circumstance. But no rage, no shame, no fear. And only a little illness - even with a terrible allergy to mold.

And, wonder of wonders, my life is full of people I would never have met without the circumstances that blew me out of my home, out of a relationship that never fit me, out of my belief that the only way I was ever going to "survive" was to live as "Lock & Load Meri."

Oh, my! What a journey, this Life is...

Today I live every day heart broken open, drawn deeper every day into a whole- hearted life. And this couldn't have happened any other way...

Lucky, lucky, lucky me!

One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

~Andre Gide

So, in the ongoing saga of the Republican Party's self-destruction, it turns out that Rush Limbaugh played "Sledgehammer" last week behind his verbal assault of Sandra Fluke.

And it also turns out that Peter Gabriel was so horrified to learn that his music had been used in the broadcast that he made a public stand on Monday, attempting to remove the possibility of Rush ever again playing his music on Rush Limbaugh's show.

Read more about this here, if you're interested.

I'm delighted to hear it. And, I have to say that as a poet and music lover myself, I found it impossible to believe that Peter Gabriel's music would ever have been associated in any way with Rush Limbaugh. What a funny story! 

The unbridled display of unconsciousness in Rush hearing "Sledgehammer" as an appropriate background for a man to attack a woman around the topic of women's sexuality and contraception simply blows my mind. Is the man deaf? Is he blind? Did he ever listen to the poetry or see the music vid for "Sledgehammer?" 

The more these Republicans talk like Rush and the Virginia governor and legislature, the more they demonstrate what they actually think about women and poor people and people of color. And the faster we - as a nation - can flush these toxic beliefs and attitudes out into the light of day where we can have a public conversation about them. 

In the end, I trust "the American people" to move through this stalemate the Tea Party has created out of Obama's first term and get on to a reinvention of our economy in the context of our precious democracy.

While I don't want Sandra Fluke to be hurt in any way, I am seeing her playing a role right now like Rosa Parks and Lilly Ledbetter ... And I couldn't be more delighted that we have strong-minded women (and wonderful songwriters like Peter Gabriel) willing to just speak what's in their hearts in the public square!

Bring it on, Republicans! Let's see all the rest of what you've been hiding behind all that "family values" talk.  Here's a clip from Rush's latest diatribe about liberal, overeducated white women:

Let there be no doubt about it, we'll be calling Rush Limbaugh "Sledge" - or is that sludge - for a looooooooong time to come. It's amazing watching him self-immolate...

I've shared this TED from Brene Brown before, but it's here again because it's the perfect umbrella for this post. It is in our deepest vulnerability that our greatest power matures and flowers.

What a fascinating day today has been - and it's only half-way through! I'm getting to see my friends' leadership and creativity blossoming out all over the place ... as they stand up with whole-hearted vulnerability. 

First there's my RV-KINS brother, +chris hardy, taking a stand to protect our local food supply in the Rogue Valley, despite his worry that the time and energy it could take to get a GMO-free ballot initiative threatening his local relationships and endangering his own farming efforts. 

Then, the Ashland Public Library sends me notice that my old friend, Donna Johnson's, hot-selling memoir, Holy Ghost Girl, is available today for me to check out to my new iPad2. 

And, over lunch, I started reading a bit of Holy Ghost Girl with tears of joy streaming down my cheeks. It's a great read! Punchy, poetic prose and a totally engrossing story about a girl growing up inside a revival tent with a front-row seat on the power of faith and the frailty of the human heart 

Donna and I were raising kids together 20 some years ago when she decided to go back to school and complete a degree in journalism. After awhile, I gave her an internship at the monthly magazine I was editing ... and then watch her take off from there. I know what it cost Donna to write Holy Ghost Girl. Yet, despite the cost, she became willing to pay the five years at the keyboard to tell a multi-faceted story that only she could tell. These days she's willing to Tweet and Facebook and speak live at local bookstores across the country in order to connect in person with an audience that needs to see and hear her share more from a place of whole-hearted vulnerability. 

I'm feeling so grateful I've lived long enough to be watching one seeming crisis after another turning to gold in the crucible of Life. 

On the edge of my seat watching for what else emerges from the heat of 2012.

Along with millions of aging Boomer women, I've been watching the Tea Party yanking on the rudder, intent on steering the ship of State back to the bad old days. The days when men were men and women were women and we all knew what that meant - and were too scared to say anything. At least if you were a woman who didn't want to get hit. Or something worse.

But, it's nigh on to impossible for me to sit by silently while state legislators - including women legislators - say things like, "Abstinence and condoms are the best family planning options for poor people." It makes me feel crazy when I hear things like that. Especially after 50+ years of fighting for the civil rights of poor people and women of all colors and ages. 

When I feel crazy, I look around for elders. People who have suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune for longer than I have. One whose clear vision and courage has filled me with hope and fueled my resolve since I first met her trekking across the country in her late 80s is Doris Haddock, AKA Granny D.

I just rediscovered this transcript of a speech she made at Orchard House, Home of the Alcotts, back in October, 2005. It's filled with clear vision - and deep insight - about what's really going on with our national politics right now. 

Pull up a chair: it's a great read! 

http://www.grannyd.com/speeches/orchardhouse.htm

– Margaret Mead

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.

~Carl Jung 

Watching, listening, reflecting on the life of Whitney Houston. Oprah's interview so gentle, so kind, so deeply compassionate and yet unafraid to probe the wounds. Not just for Whitney's sake, but for the sake of every woman who has followed Love right into the Darkness.

Whitney's incredible talent. Her innocence. Her longing for Union. A lifetime of looking for love everywhere - including all the wrong places.

Sleep now, sweet sister. Rest in the love that you always were. 

Thank you for giving your very, very best when you could see through the darkness. Thank you for the courage it took to keep on keeping on with a broken heart and mind.

And thank you for reaching down - as deep as you could go - to tell Oprah the truth, knowing she was recording it, knowing she would show it to us all - both then and now, after you're gone.  

Your courage - in the face of so much pain - lives now in every one of us who heard you voice the Truth.

~Vaclav Havel

And, isn't this the real message of the Christmas story?

Away in a manger, no crib for a bed...the little Lord Jesus lay down his sweet head...