PaWs for Peace

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What better way to spend Christmas day than at Ft. Funston with good friends and good dogs. Not only was the day amazingly beautiful, but I was truly able to be in the  moment like all the dogs try to teach us...even for a little while. Something happens to the dogs once we hit the beach...beaches are magical, or spiritual if you will...I know the dogs feel it. The chasing of the waves, the digging in the sand, the wild abandon as they chase each other with wide, sloppy grins on their faces...How can that NOT take you out of your self and your mind's racing thoughts and just Be and feel the joy? 

I've always wondered what is it about beaches that attract so many to them? One thought I have is that they are that in between place of groundedness and spirit or emotion. I guess that is sort of how I live, a life in between. Not always easy. I sometimes think it would be just easier to be grounded all the time, logical, systemic and organized...or to just totally abandon myself to spirit and the chaos of feeling complete emotion all the time...But, that is not how I'm made and I need to accept that...I live a life in between, in the waves...Sometimes the waves are warm and calm, guiding me with their gentle caresses as they swirl around my body and other times they simply bash me on the head as if to say, "Wake up, fool! Get on with it!" In the end, it's always about the lesson...the damned lesson. My good friend Debby calls this the Learning Planet...if we weren't learning, we wouldn't be here...but shit, I wish I didn't have to learn so much all the time. I guess I'd rather be a conscious being, though, than a person who is still 'asleep' so to speak, making the same mistakes over and over...At least now, my mistakes build on previous ones and I no longer have to whine "Oh, gawd, not this same old shit again" Now I get to say, "Yeah! Some new shit to deal with, but Yeah! I get to learn something new!" Ha!

But, back to the title of this post. Paws/Pause for Peace. Right now, I just want peace...not only for myself, but for my family, friends, hell, for the whole world...I figured out how to get it. Go to the beach and just stop and look. Breathe. Listen. You can't help but feel the peace...then go back out into your world and share it with someone else.

Namaste in 2010