Insights – Melannie Thomas

Archive for August, 2017

A pinnacle is a lofty peak.  We strive to achieve pinnacles of success in the important areas of our lives, to reach lofty peaks.  We admire the achievement of others as they reach pinnacles in their professions and in their personal lives.

“There are lots of people shaping decisions, and so if we want to predict correctly, we have to pay attention to everybody who is trying to shape the outcome, not just the people at the pinnacle of the decision-making pyramid.” ~Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

“You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested in money, compliments, or publicity.” ~Thomas Wolfe

Savor the pinnacles of your life experience.

Poetry Will Save Your Life by Jill Bialosky created immediate curiosity for me.  In her beautiful and powerful memoir, Bialosky chronicles how poetry gave her strength, hope and comfort through the challenges and heartbreaks of her life’s journey.  Poems “…might be about what hurts,”  but they “…remain a sustaining source of comfort.”

Using the power of the poetic form to help me through some of life’s most agonizing and arduous moments, as well as memorializing celebration and triumph, initiated in me a strong resonance with Bialosky.

Looking more deeply into this healing process, I discovered that there are Poetry Therapists and a group of organizations devoted to Poetry Therapy.  I am including the following links should you wish to pursue this thread.

• www.poetrytherapy.org;
• www.goodtherapy.org;
• www.sanctuarycenters.org/ (Poetry Therapist Perie J. Longo).

“If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it: blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches: for the Creator, there is no poverty.”  ~Rainer Maria Rilke

“Every age has its own poetry, in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.”   ~Jean-Paul Sartre

I am a devout convert to the comfort, joy and healing power of the poetic process.  I invite you this week to connect with your poetic muse.

Western Culture, especially American Culture is lacking in patience.  We want everything day before yesterday, and we want it delivered.

The advertising industry plays a large role in our inability to consistently practice patience.  However, inherent in capitalistic economic function is a built in structure for learning patience.  Patience is having control, discipline and restraint, a challenging practice for Westerners.  The ability to defer immediate gratification goes a long way toward achieving our long term material dreams and goals.

One of the fruits of a strong, vital spiritual belief system is patience.  Indeed, patience is a major factor in the function of enduring faith.

A spiritual discipline of practicing patience has the same benefit for our personal growth and maturation as it does in the material world; helping us to secure and sustain authentic relationships and substantive inner peace.

Inviting you this week into the practice of patience.

“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”  Tolstoy

“Patience is not simply the ability to wait – it’s how we behave while we’re waiting.”  Joyce Meyer

“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience” R. W. Emerson

I love the cricket song!  From childhood to the present, their sound is magically compelling to me.  On a warm summer evening I am often spellbound by a cricket symphony.

Celebrated in literature,  The Cricket on the Hearth by Charles Dickens;  in poetry by Wadsworth, Keats and Du Fu;  and widely  in film.  Disney’s Pinocchio is a classic cricket movie.

In many Asian and Latin Cultures crickets are a sign of intelligence and good fortune.  Cricket and it’s cousin grasshopper, are symbols of virtue, good cheer, abundance and even nobility.  And to harm a cricket can bring grave misfortune.

I find the cricket song comforting.  I think of them as little, active warning systems.  When they suddenly become quiet, I know some creature or cricket predator is near.  And I am always delighted when the symphony starts anew.  Their song makes me happy.  I hope when you hear cricket music, it will fill you with delight too.

Wishing you all a week full of cricket wonder.