Affirmation: Wellness (or Well-Being)

This past week's "Monday Affirmation" topic was Wellness (or well-being). Try to sum that up in 17 syllables! Well, I most likely could, but that will take a lot more thinking. Instead, I have posted a picture and a short musing at TheMomentsBetween.net (the title of this post is linked to the affirmation page).

In my own mind, well-being correlates with home. In this case, it's a home I seem to remember, even though I've never been there. Memories from childhood contribute a bit to that home--the feelings of safety, of belonging, of being nurtured and nourished, of being acknowledged as a person. That sense of inner reality doesn't disappear in the face of the failures and embarrassments that outer reality hands to us as we go out and "do" as adolescents and then as adults. There is a steadiness, not of purpose, but of being that lends itself to an attitude of well-being. Like the experience of love, I believe, a sense of well-being is a decision. It is an attitude with which we engage life, just as we commit ourselves to love another person and live out that attitude in our feelings and actions.

And, yes, I do look forward to that final homecoming with joy, knowing that it will come in its own time and way.

Web Site update

I'm a bit behind in getting the Monday Affirmation up for last week. The theme is "time," and as usual, my piece and photo are a bit more meditation than affirmation. (That's one of the reasons that I am no longer putting my URL on the Affirmation Monday site, but simply using their topic as a creative prompt.)

Time is interesting. It's very fluid in my mind. There is always enough time, here in the moment, and yet I hardly notice the passage of the days and years and decades. There is actually only now--this moment. And this moment is very, very full of time...and love and memories, longing and desire, and great joy. This moment seems to last forever.

Affirmation: Time

Photo and poem updates

I've made a couple updates to my Moments Between Web site. First, I changed photos on the home page; this is one of the first pictures I took with the new camera I got (income tax refund showed up, a couple of weeks ago).

Also (refer to the Title link), I've added a "Marchscapes" page with a few of my favorite photos from the month.

Last, a friend (Hi, Jeanette!) directed me to a new creativity project: Affirmation Monday. I have uploaded two affirmation pages, now: New Vision and New Growth. They're linked to the photo art page, but each of the two photos is accompanied by a short poem. There's a link on each page to the affirmation project, if you're interested in this sort of thing.

SF Short Story: "By Any Other Name"

I've also put up on www.themomentsbetween.net an SF short story that I wrote for the 2005 48-hour Commie Pinko short story competition sponsored on Hanne Blank's LiveJournal.

I do so hate the idea of having to return to work, tomorrow! Only three jobs scheduled, though, so that's not too off-putting.

New Poems on Site

I've added two of my poems from the 70s to my site at SFF.net, "A Sense of Reality" and "Whimsy," and one that I wrote more recently ("Boundary of Fear"), which is contained in a previous post here: http://www.themomentsbetween.net/poemindex1.html

It is interesting to look back through poems one wrote 30 or more years ago, to remember the person that one was...to try to figure out what has changed, and what has remained constant. I believe that I am now much more firmly grounded in reality than I used to be. I believe also, however, that reality is much more expansive than I'd formerly thought. There is so much more!

Friday Poetry

Many years ago, in the writing chat mailing list I used to have a subscription to, there was a Friday Poet-Tree tradition. Remembering that as I was going through old files, this morning, I decided to post this poem that I wrote sometime in the 90s in response to a writing prompt. (I *think* that the title phrase actually was the prompt.)


Boundary of Fear
by Elizabeth W. Bennefeld

A boundary of fear encompasses my life,
protects my trembling heart and shaking hands
from reaching out to you for reassurance.
Familiar terrors comfort and protect me
from the urgent need to change, to grow.

Within that searing ring embraced,
I rest secure and safe, static and unchanging,
until sheer time would crumble and decay
what life, love, pleasure, joy, and laughter
may not erode or intrude unkindly on.


(Cross-posted to QuietSpaces LJ)

Sunday poem

Wind, freezing drizzle and snow can't compete with a rainy Sunday afternoon, but one does what one can with what one has.


Mother's Cookbook

Look through tabs of Mother's cookbook
for french toast with cinnamon
which we were used to devour
when children on a rainy Sunday
after church

Only recipes, now, and memories
of sticky hugs
laughter
warmth

Search among the tabs
just one more time
for Mother's recipe
for love


Copyright © September 2005,
by Elizabeth Bennefeld.

Third Annual Brigid in Cyberspace Poetry Reading

Vision Stalker
by
Elizabeth W. Bennefeld

Eyes glance at me as I enter,
then turn away, indifferent.
Where once I found acceptance,
I see polite, but vacant faces.
My words are spoken
in a newly foreign language.

You have not changed. It's I
who have become a stranger--
through choices not approved,
prowling along uncommon paths
beyond the borders of community.

I will not walk your narrow roads
another night or day
to reattain belongingness
or buy lost camaraderie.

Going my own way, I will stalk
the visions that cry out to me
in the night from distant places.

A solitary hunter, I will seek new voices
that sing in harmony with my heart's song.

An alien in your midst, no longer.

Copyright © 1996, by Elizabeth W. Bennefeld.


Out of all the poems I've written, this is the one I like the most. At my QuietSpaces LJ, I have posted my favorite sonnet by Shakespeare. --Liz


See http://www.branchesup.blogspot.com for the Third Annual Brigid in Cyberspace Poetry Reading.