Energy Follows Thought

Posted on January 2, 2017 by Allison Keeton

This past Christmas Eve morning, with fifteen dinner guests due to come in 10 hours, I ventured out first to have breakfast and then lunch with people whom I wouldn’t see otherwise. I almost canceled both appointments when my breath caught on the amount of preparation I still had to do. My list was long and included grocery shopping, hanging outdoor decorations, and breading fish, not to mention cooking a roast so large it seemed to want to be in the oven all day, ruining any option of leaving the house.

To cancel is easy. To figure out a plan to work it all in requires Divine Guidance. In my huffing and puffing, while tying giant red and white plastic balls onto a tree in the rain, I realized I could do it all if I just stopped giving energy to worrying I couldn’t. Everything would get done on time. And it did. Beautifully so.

Shifting my focus from what I couldn’t do to what I could, and trusting that all would work out, I created the space to make it all work. I took a breath and a step back, I stated exactly what I wanted to happen, and I gave into Trust. Believing and Trusting is key. So is being specific.

Now to apply this to other areas of my life, like writing this blog. I can write weekly like I promised myself over and over again. I have both topics and time to write about. So many topics and so much time. The variety of topics fit all aspects of being the Largest Ball of Twine. I will stop editing myself from ideas that pop up. And the time to write will appear. Also, in writing weekly, my readership will grow, inspiring me to write more.

My other writings—mainly my novels—will see the published light of day. This year, they will be received in a ready format and sold. Instead of worrying about them not being quite right, I trust they will find their way into the right hands who will right them where need be. And these right hands will find other right hands. And so it grows.

My website will launch. My publishing company will soar. And my weight will even go down naturally on its own. (Vanity still has its place, you know.)

May you who is reading this feel a surge of excitement. Kiss your worry and set it free. Write down exactly what you want for yourself. Write it down right now. If you can’t believe it’s this simple, start small. You will see results. Then ask for your real dreams. If you can’t, ask what is keeping you from them? Most likely the answer is You. You are keeping yourself from what you really want. Get out of your own way. It’s time to believe and trust.

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Chief Cook and Bottle Washer

Posted on August 30, 2016 by Allison Keeton

Between Thursday and Saturday, I fed over 200 people.

The first 140 or so were at a homeless shelter. Three work colleagues and I cooked and served first to a small group of women and children, and then to a seemingly never ending line of men. Most were in good spirits as we dished out mounds of spaghetti and meatballs. One of my endearing coworkers asked every diner “Is that enough? Do you want more?”

I handled the desserts—trays of donated cookies and homemade breads and brownies. When I asked what their preference was, I found that chocolate chip was the most popular with the women and kids. The men seemed to prefer what I called “The Sampler,” meaning that they’d eat anything as long as it was sweet. If they said they wished they could try them all, I added a couple of more items to their plate and called the array “The Sampler Deluxe” to the great delight of all within ear shot.  The Deluxe created many laughs and wide, twinkling eyes, and I overheard from those still waiting in line, “I’m going to ask for that Sampler Deluxe.”

We were told afterwards by one of the shelter workers that people especially enjoyed themselves with us. He said it was the food itself but was it? Perhaps it was the generosity of having as much food as everyone wanted.  We gave it on first pass, not worrying about running out.  Did that make the food taste better? I’ve always been a believer in “loaves and fishes,” trusting God that all would be provided. This principle worked in full force that night at the shelter. Or perhaps it was our own joy in serving, not just the food but serving others, that mixed into the flavor of the night, enhancing the taste. We stayed later than required.  We left the kitchen and passed out extra cookies among the remaining men. We were all one.

It is a gift to serve. Nothing pleases me more than to provide food, comfort, assistance, or a kind word to someone who needs it. Sometimes people don’t even know they need it, and I rarely know what is needed. Serving others as a natural part of my life allows me to serve without having to know there is a need. As with energy healing, the help goes where it is needed. It just knows.

On Saturday, I co-hosted a summer dinner party. A “small” dinner party I put on the invitation. Nothing I do is small. One hundred people were invited, and sixy-five people accepted. For me, it was a Saturday begun at 6:00 a.m. in order to put five dishes on the buffet line by 8:30 p.m. followed by a homemade ice cream cake sliced and served. During the party, a few trusted friends acted as sous chefs to prep salads and clear off the appetizer dishes. The food went out on time, but like in the shelter, the food itself wasn’t the kicker. Most important was the community that people shared with each other at this dinner—new friendships made, old friendships renewed, and laughter oozing from many corners of the house, yard, and front porch. My guests too thought the food was amazing, but I think it was their own hearts and souls that filled them up.

My own meal? By the time I fed both groups of people both nights, I was full to the rim. There is no better nourishment than the satisfaction of making others feel happily fed on food and fellowship.

“When I was hungry, you gave me something to eat.”
Blessed Be.

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Why Blogging is Difficult

Posted on January 25, 2016 by Allison Keeton

I started this blog in 2011.  Many times, I thought I had an interesting thought to share but held back for fear of someone reading this and being offended by me telling the truth, or at least my version of it.  I had tried to change the names to protect the innocent but that felt stifling.  In essence, I wished for this blog to be a public journal.  So here goes.

 

 

 

 

 

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Yes, the World Needs Poetry

Posted on April 6, 2013 by Allison Keeton

I started writing poems when I was seven.  I had already compiled an anthology of my favorite poems, a gift to my mother for mother’s day.  Writing my own preoccupied me, taking precedence over assigned school work, and by junior high, poems became my number one way to communicate my disgust for my fellow students and fear of the world.  My mother gave her deceased brother’s well-read poetry book, and I was even more in love, memorizing all the roots in the eyes of a dead poet and crying over the war death of the Trees author.

But who noticed?  In high school, I appeared to be the only poem-read person among my friends, and my father, a World War II vet with a high school education, was afraid to have me go to college, let alone major in English.  As a campus electrician, he saw what those college students did with their time—Frisbee playing in the cemetery, drinking binges, and worst of all, arrests by non students.  College seemed like a dead end to my dad, especially because I didn’t learn to type (I took German as my third language instead).  So, I majored in business at my guidance counselor’s recommendation, and never transferred to English as she suggested.  I graduated to a corporate leadership training program, and my business career was off and running, with my dad joyfully cutting out my promotion announcements in the local paper.

But you can’t deny your true self for long.  When I was laid off from the bank, I told my parents I wanted to write poetry.  “Poetry?  Poetry?  Does the world need poetry?”  My mother wrinkled her face up as she asked.  I felt my heart drop to the floor.  And in a way, she was right.  Many years had passed since I had tried to write a poem.  I later stretched into bigger pieces of work, eventually writing drafts of multiple novels.  The small, sometimes delicate, pieces seemed too difficult.

Today, poetry sits in my face again.  First, a darling writer friend of mine is in a poetry contest.   Because I see her drafts, I realize how amazing her word choices are, and then she rewrites it, and makes a great poem even better.  The contest leads me to reading dozens of poems of others too.  I’m reverting back to my addiction.

Then I attend a funeral of a simple elderly country woman who lived with hunting dogs in her backyard and homemade root beer in her fridge.  At her service, a poem is read, written by her long deceased farmer father for the death of his mother.  It is a beautiful poem of loss, love, and appreciation, and on the back cover of the program is a poem written by the recently dead woman herself, about dying, and waiting for her six children to visit.

That night, at a community talent show, a nine year old boy, for his talent, recites three poems.  He receives thunderous applause from over four hundred listeners.

How many more signs do I need to let Poetry back into my life?  So, while there are many online tools now for word searches, I begin back into it by grabbing the thesaurus my mother gave me as an apology for her discouragement.  Yes, the world does need poetry after all.

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Who’s Cheering for Me?

Posted on March 12, 2013 by Allison Keeton

Would my life be different if I had been a cheerleader in high school?

As I approach my latest high school reunion, I find that all the organizing is being done by the former cheerleaders who are married women, happily, I don’t know, but still maintaining that rah-rah role with all of us.

Are they cheerleaders in other aspects of their lives too?  With their children and spouses?  “You can do it, honey.”  And with their co-workers.  “I think the new re-org is fantastic.  Give me an R.”

Ironically, I have been considered a cheerleader myself.  Even in high school, I was the only non-cheerleader up for “Most spirited,” a category I, of course, lost to a cheerleader.  But in my work settings, I am always reviewed as having a can-do attitude, singing the “High Hopes” song when times look bleak.  Isn’t that like a cheerleader?  Personally, I am often rallying the troops in my life to donate to a cause or socialize as a gang.  I am told I bring people together—like a pep rally?

I guess this is a confession.  I had wanted to be a cheerleader but felt that I didn’t have the necessary straight cartwheel and was petrified of being placed on someone’s shoulders.  I also didn’t think I was pretty—worthy?—enough of the title.  Just as well.  I think I would have gone brain dead learning the cheers, being the only cheerleader reading  Beowulf for fun.

But maybe it would’ve been amazing to walk the halls in the uniform and date a member of the basketball team.  At this stage, it doesn’t matter.  We live the choices we’ve made, and go forward.  With the approaching spring, we are reminded that while we can’t go back, we are allowed to be reborn every year.  “Who’s got the spirit

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I’m Still Here

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Allison Keeton

Since August, there have been many times I wanted to record here what had happened.  But I didn’t feel the freedom to do so. As a fiction writer, I am used to making it up, and even if I am using some truth in it, who is to know what is reality and fiction.

In this blog, however, it is my life, and my interactions with friends and family.  While I can’t hide who my mother is, I can protect my friends by changing their names.  Not that they are innocent—more to free me.  Now when I think of something to say, I can say it.  More or less.

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The Tooth Fairy

Posted on August 25, 2011 by Allison Keeton

“Free teeth for everyone East of the River.”  My friend and neighbor, Bobby, has run on this pretend platform for Governor for a decade or more.  “The River” is the Connecticut River that runs more or less down the middle of the state of Connecticut, and there is a definite “East of the River” and “West of the River” mentality, with the West holding the upper hand financially and culturally with a few town exceptions on both sides.

I am from East of the River, and not only do I have all of my teeth but I also had braces and now a recognizable broad smile. But Bobby is actually referring to far east, by the Rhode Island border, where Connecticut is substantially less affluent.

He is right on the importance of teeth.  For heath reasons, so food is properly digested.  For appearance, so better employment and social status is secured.  For proof of health, because a loss of teeth is also an example of other medical issues.

This past weekend, he brought up Connecticut’s teeth population again.  With our recent budgetary changes, those on state aid were cut to one cleaning a year which is a better compromise than what the two preceding (Republican) governors wanted to do: limit state dental services to extractions only.

“We don’t want to lose our status as the state with the most teeth,” Bobby said.  Who knew that the mouths of Connecticut’s residents boasted the most teeth per capita in the nation.  The lowest?  Sadly, the hills of West Virginia.

I wonder if Connecticut’s obsession with teeth is why my 87-year-old mother has suddenly taken to carrying my father’s bridge in her purse.  He’s been gone eleven years, but she only recently came across it in one of his dresser drawers.  Proudly displaying it to the horror of my family at a recent birthday party, she declared, “This is all I have left of him.”  Maybe for her sake, it is a good thing that he spent the money years ago to maintain that Connecticut smile.

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The Mayans still know what to say

Posted on August 21, 2011 by Allison Keeton

From today’s Mayan Calendar (August 21). “The road you travel by day is not the same path you take by night. Open your heart to one and you will open a path for many. The more roads we can connect and link with others, the more travelers can come together and mutually enrich their journeys. Some may choose the solitary path, but even the lone traveler will find comfort in the company of friends and loved ones, no matter for how brief a time their paths should cross.”

This reminds me of the philosophy that when we contribute to our community, we begin to be woven in, strengthened by our involvement. Opening our hearts to others, not just those we know well, is the way to open ourselves to real joy, pure happiness.

There are too many people searching for “happiness.” As Wayne Dyer says, “There is no way to happiness; happiness is the way.” We choose happiness everyday, in our thoughts and actions and in our love of self. Happiness is always within us. By opening our hearts, we can hope to ignite others, yet it is their own journey to their own happiness–we cannot make someone else happy anymore than they can truly make us happy. When we cross paths, we amplify and reflect our joy, but we cannot give joy to one another for we only hold it within ourselves. Our joy simply allows them, perhaps, to better see their own.

May we all continue to have the courage to be authentic and joyful for own sakes, for life is truly simple. We complicate it. Be good to yourself, and be good to others, and choose to be happy.

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To there and back

Posted on August 21, 2011 by Allison Keeton

When we originally planned the Largest Ball of Twine day, it was to make fun of an old trip to Jamestown, NY, when we went to the Lucy Museum for Frank’s birthday.

At the time, my friend, Bobby, said we drove the nine hours, looking for the largest ball of twine, and the name has stuck.

But the search for a seemingly insignificant or individually-interesting-yet-in-an-obscure-place item is the most important part of the journey.

Today, I am reminded it has nothing to do with the destination itself.

We got off the Mass Pike this morning, on route to Pittsfield, but “pitt stopped” in Lee first where i bought an original watercolor for $30 and picked up crystals–everything from joyous ones to some to help others mourn.

Pittsfield itself was enjoyable, a town of a surprisingly high number of art galleries containing wonderful paintings, photographs, and pottery.

Even the side exertions to a glass blower–many dollars later–and a vineyard with apple cider donuts was a treat.

But the real ball of twine was the laughter and the companionship of Bobby, and another friend, Barbara.  The miles we had clocked in the past, and the space between the last trip and this one, and the current energy of the day all intertwined and formed its own destination.  We could have traveled around the block for five hours and had just as much fun.  A lesson to be reminded of over and over.

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Welcome to the Largest Ball of Twine Tour

Posted on August 19, 2011 by Allison Keeton

We go through life, quickly, distracted, often doing things we think we should instead of just being.  We walk past the Largest Ball of Twine without stopping and admiring it for what it is.

 

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