Welcoming prayer

Spiritual Practices: Teachers Quotations Everyone we meet in life is on a mission to teach us something new. Surprise! — Joan Chittister in Gospel Days   Feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we're holding back. They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we'd rather collapse and back away. They're like messengers that show us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we're stuck. This very moment is the perfect teacher, and, lucky for us, it's with us wherever we are. — Pema Chödrön in When Things Fall Apart

Spirituality & Practice

Spirituality & Practice

David Eugene Wilkins - U of MN Law School

David Eugene Wilkins - U of MN Law School I am looking forward to reading "The Navajo Political Experience" by David Wilkins, our book club selection for this month.

Goodreads | enter to win

Goodreads | enter to win Just the coolest thing on the internet...win books, make friends who read, review books, promote your own work!

Making friends with my "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"

I want to take this opportunity to thank my good friend, Evelyn, (see Daily Ecstasy Blog...I will learn how to spell ecstasy because of her), who reminded me that it all starts with "butt in the chair".  Not that I haven't been writing daily.  I have, for the past twenty years and more.  It's the going public thingee that has me paralyzed, my soul turned to dust, blown away with the slightest breeze.  I know all my friends would say, "You? Miss Mary, the extrovert."  Once and for all humankind, I shall state this eternal truth, within all extroverts there lies an introvert in deep Hyding  (with who knows what personality disorders).

I have a theory.  (I have about a million theories).  My theory is this:  practiced introverts know themselves and are thus able to muster up what it takes to go public easier than pretend extroverts,who have not allowed themselves or anyone else, for that matter, to know that other, darker part of themselves.

Mary, Mary, Quite contrary, how does your garden grow?
With lots of bunnies, eating the peonies,
and apples rotting all in a row!

I don't mean to be negative.  Oh, dear me, never negative!  Not in Minnesota, anyway.  However, I was raised through my adolescent years (26-36) in New York City.  If I had cultivated Midwestern nice in my early years, my adolescent years opened my eyes to the big, bad world, just a little.  But not much.  Just a little.

I still prefer to promote myself as a Mary, Mary Miss Sunshine, even if my garden is mainly in the shade.  I'll always try to pull something positive out of the daily nothingness of ordinary life; just as I tend towards solving the mystery of me and the world in my writing.

As my friend, Eileen, said to me this morning via internet, "Write on, Mary."
And I might add, "Read  on, dear follower!:

Befriend my writing, mary my blog

Yes, I misspelled "marry" on purpose.  Yes, it's a bit of wordplay.  And yes, it reminds me that blogging is a long-term commitment.

The other thing my title tells me is why I'm doing yet another blog.  I was having trouble finding my own blog.  "That's a sure sign," my brilliant husband's comment today. "You need a new address.  One you can remember.  One that's easy to find."

Thus, my maryalterman blog.  If I forget that name, I suppose I could be in serious trouble.