Three Things to Remember

As long as you're dancing, you can

   break the rules.

Sometimes breaking the rules is just

   extending the rules.

Sometimes there are no rules.

This reminds me so much of a posting we had on our refrigerator when I was a child.

Household Rules

Rule #1: Dad is always right

Rule #2:  Refer to rule #1

Today it brings a chuckle, and also a caution:  Be wary of rules, especially if they report to be simple or give power over to oppressive schemes, such as patriarchy.

Yet we humans live with rules.  Might we also find a way to live with the constant breaking of rules as a way to double check on institutionalized rigor mortis that restricts flourishing, joy, and love?

Make rules, then break them by letting your heart break.

Here are some of my rules:

Earth Rules

Kindness first

Love fast

Joy not last

Forget the past

Live with thirst

What rules would you make if you could have just one, or what one thing will you strive to remember today?  Then how will you let your heart break?

And Bob Dylan Too

Anything worth thinking about is worth singing about.

Which is why we have songs of praise, songs of love, songs of sorrow.

Songs to the gods, who have so many names.

Songs of the shepherds sing, on the lonely mountains, while the sheep are honoring the grass, by eating it.

The dance-songs of the bees, to tell where the flowers, suddenly, in the morning light, have opened.

A chorus of many, shouting to heaven, or at it, or pleading

Or that greatest of love affairs, a violin and a human body.

And a composer, maybe hundreds of years dead.

I think of Schubert, scribbling on a cafe napkin.

Thank you, thank you.

It is July 1st - the beginning of Bob Dylan month in our household.  This is really just one family member's idea and the rest of us groan and roll our eyes.  "How is this music exactly?" we ask, and have been asking for years. 

Something has shifted over the years, however. On my Leonard Cohen Pandora Radio Station, frequently pop up songs by Bob Dylan, and to my surprise, I do not change the channel. As both Bob and Leonard croak, I hear beauty and life. They both are singing, thank you, as so scribbles Schubert on a napkin.

Our thoughts are but a few notes, and our lives but a bar of the infinite measures that make up the song of the universe.

Come, you, whoever you are, let us go where no two notes have gone before.

May we open ourselves across the universe.

Sounds of laughter, shades of life

Are ringing through my opened ears 

Inciting and inviting me.

Limitless undying love, which

Shines around me like a million suns,

It calls me on and on across the universe

- From "Across the Universe" by the Beatles