Greetings, sisters! 

Well, spring has really sprung in all its glory here in Seattle. The next six months here, flowering and greening and birds and color, are what makes living through six months of cold, dark, and wet worthwhile. It’s amazing how powerful a feel-good warm sunshine is. 

We’re having a great time over at my blog, The Feral Nun, www.FeralNun.com – for any of y’all who haven’t sashayed over, come visit the Disorder! (Thanks to Kay K. who suggested that the home for Feral Nuns should be the Disorder, rather than the Order.) 

Several of you have asked how to post a comment and join the community. Here’s the link for instructions for how to bring your wonderful, wise, and wayward voice to the Disorder: http://feralnun.typepad.com/blog/2008/01/welcome-1.html Click on this link and you’ll be shown how to post. We all want to hear from you, so come on by! 

Wishing you all the same luscious fertility -- symbolic, I mean ;-) – that the earth is bringing forth now. May we all be blessed by it, and be blessings for each other. 

With love and pleasure, 

FEATURE ARTICLE: Waltzing with Loose Ends

My mother’s house finally sold on Friday. Her tombstone is finished and almost installed, her belongings disbursed. It’s been almost a year and a half of crossing stuff of the list since my mom died, tying up loose ends from my mom’s estate.

Last Saturday David (The Husband) and I “refreshed” our to-do list: clear gutters, make fence, paint bedroom, repair skylights... If we froze the list right now, there’s enough on it to keep us off the streets for another half-century. By summer -- or probably by next weekend -- new things will spring forth as lushly as the hyacinths and daffodils popping up everywhere. “The back steps? Oops, forgot those ...Yikes! How could we have forgotten new gravel in the driveway? ... Oh no, the creeping buttercup highjacking the lawn ...”

And then there’s always, always, the dishes, the laundry, the cat box, the kitchen floor.

Are you depressed yet? I sure was there after writing The List and tucking it back in the cabinet, hoping never to see the cursed thing again.

Well, Yours Truly has been on the pleasure path long enough to recognize when she’s not having a very good time. And she’s also been on it long enough to remember that pleasure is almost always around, it’s just that I’m outta here. When I can take a deep breath, call my spirit graciously back into my body, and get curious about what’s happening and what the possibilities are, pleasure welcomes me back.

After cursing The List I went out to pull weeds, one of my favorite ways of restoring the illusion of order into my world. As I cleared out the front garden, I was struck by the contrast between closing my mom’s estate, and adding to our to-do list.

Ladies, leaning back on my (creaky) haunches with a fistful of dandelion roots, I had this earth-shaking realization:

Loose ends will only be tied up after I’m dead.

Bada-bing!

I know that’s probably old hat to you, but I sure got it at a deeper level. I used to joke that I’d rest when I’m dead (this coming from someone who, up to age 50 or so, would invariably choose an adventure over the couch. Now I’m pretty much 50-50 these days). Now I get it that my life will be flapping loose ends of all sizes everywhere until my body’s six feet under.

So, as I stood up to ease my achy knees and toss the dandelions into David’s truck bound for the “green” dump, I asked myself these questions:

• Given that loose ends are as inevitable as death and taxes, what do I want my relationship to be with them?
• How can I learn to dance with my loose ends rather than curse them? What might it be like to, say, do a sweet Cajun waltz (my favorite dance) with cleaning the gutters?

Wow! This sure got me thinking. I love questions that blow my mind, and these sure did. How to have a most pleasured and soulful relationship with my to-do list?

Sisters, here’s what I’ve discovered:

Looking at how “perfect” my mom’s house is -- because there’s no on living in it any more -- I see the to-do list in a different light. Perhaps the to-do list is simply part of the human journey.

I know this sounds a little crazy, but when I imagine being on my deathbed, and thinking about the rich and wonderful life I will have had with David, I realize that the clogged gutters, the laundry, the cat hair-covered carpet, all this I will see with a full and grateful heart. From that place it won’t just be about the sunsets and the great sex. What I’m imagining that I’ll miss will be the sheer dailiness of my life, just as I now miss the sheer dailiness of my life with my now-out-of-the-house daughter.

I realize that I’ve always had this fantasy of The Bliss Land I’ll be ushered into when I’ve completed my to do list: resting back on a velvet couch, handsome guys peeling grapes for me, foot rubs, endless amounts of chocolate with no weight gain...

I also realize the harm I’ve done myself with that fantasy (or something like it):

• I’m always trying to push through The List, making myself and everyone around me miserable (remember: If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy)
• I’m comparing the harriedness of my present life with the sweet fantasy of a to-do-list-less life, which means that Now always comes up short and sour

So what if, I ask myself, I’m already in the Lotus Land? What if this life, in its heartbreaking poignancy, is truly as good as it gets, not sans list, but with? If this all passes just as surely, and just as quickly, as my daughter’s childhood did, then why not open to all of it? Instead of waiting for pleasure to happen as some sort of reward for working my ass off, why not allow it to come to me now, no matter what I’m doing?

Who says that pleasure, and soulfulness, and meaning, aren’t found just as much as the bottom of the laundry basket as on the meditation cushion?

Later that Saturday, I cleaned my hands off, took out the list, and said hello to it (I wish I could say I apologized to it, but I didn’t). I looked at every item on there and asked myself if I’d rather be where my mom is, or right here doing that thing.

Guess what I picked.

And as I imagined cleaning the gutters or the cat box, I realized that the birds would be singing and the forsythia blooming just as sure as if I were in my Adirondack chair with a gin and tonic.

It was just my mind that was the problem. My mind imperiously demanding that I not be here with this task, that I deserve better than this...

When I just let my mind go, I discovered that I could imagine doing laundry with pleasure. If this was my last day on earth (and who’s to say that it isn’t?), I could see pouring new gravel in the driveway as an act of delight.

So, as I put the list back into the cabinet, I realized that the purpose of my life really wasn’t to have all the loose ends tied up, once and for all.

I headed back out to the weeds, and the leafy gutters, and the dirty driveway.

And in the back of my mind, in the ears of my heart, I could hear the fiddle in that sweet Cajun waltz...

COACHING SESSIONS WITH MELISSA
If you would like to:

• Experience deep and authentic pleasure in your life
• Create a life that sings for you, free from struggle and efforting
• Free yourself from damaging cultural myths about growing older that limit your aliveness, creativity, and unique genius
• Making a meaningful difference in this time in your life
• Deepen your spiritual journey in a way that reflects who you are now
• Reclaim curiosity, gratitude, and wonder for your journey

Read more about how you can benefit from private coaching with Melissa: http://www.MelissaGayleWest.com
If you're interested, contact Melissa at Melissa@MelissaGayleWest.com, or 206.427.1325

 ABOUT Pleasure and Soul
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Melissa Gayle West
106 NW 104th St.
Seattle, WA 98177