“Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”-Meher Baba
My house is currently in renovation mode which began about a month ago with the redesigning of my bathroom, leading out in to the hallway with the refinishing and retreading of the spiral staircase and then spreading out to repainting the living room and dining room. At the moment, the shelves and cabinets in my kitchen have been loosed from their moorings and the contents are in the garage and aforementioned freshly painted living and dining rooms. Cooking in that torn apart room has been challenging with drywall dust and spackle scattered about like so much snow on a wind whipped around winter day. As fastidious as my contractor is about cleaning up at the end of the work day, the residual remains as a reminder that it is a work in progress. Bringing someone in to shake things up in your home is an act of faith. You and that person need to have a shared vision of what the finished product will look like. Fortunately, Mike and I do. He is more than a construction dude; he is an artist whose attention to detail impresses me mightily. He wants the outcome to be more than just ok, but rather a testimony to his craft. And it has been.
He has also gifted me with two items that are now decorative features. One is a little Buddha that he re-painted that sits on the bathroom sink, alongside an Om, a miniature Kwan Yin and a Ganesh plaque that can be seen beneath the glass sink bowl. The other is the butterfly on the wall in the first picture. He brought that to my home from a yard sale, since he knew my affinity for them and the connection with my mother who before she passed in 2010, had told me that she would come back as a butterfly.
In the past few days I have come to realize how this process mirrors my own, as I have been excavating and renovating my life in so many ways. I have kicked up dust, knocked down walls, stripped the wallpaper covering off my surface, cleared out space, chosen new embellishments, gotten to my foundation in the same kind of trust mode that I have been doing with the structure of my house in which I have lived since 1993. I have needed to hold the vision of that which I too desire to create in my life.
Someone reminded me of an event that occurred 20 years ago yesterday that had totally slipped my mind until I realized the significance it held in my life and how this was perfect timing for the work on my physical and psychological havens. On August 24th of 1992, a tropical depression catalyzed into what I think was one of the most potent hurricanes up until that point. At the time, we lived in Homestead, Florida which was ground zero for Hurricane Andrew. In it, we lost many physical possessions, but not our faith. For me, it was strengthened and sustained and I look back in awe at not only what was lost, but what was gained as a result; a certainty that we would rebound. That we did, with the support of family, friends and wise decisions when it came to purchasing homeowners’ insurance.
The hurricane left in its wake, soggily wet belongings and temporary tredpidation about gusty winds. What it also left were many of our spiritual items and a tall obilisque with the words May Peace Prevail On Earth in 4 languages….in our case English, Russian, Hebrew and animal paw prints. It survived the thrashing winds when implanted in a pot in the ground in our back yard when the fence that surrounded the yard was flattened. It came back up here with us and now is in the garden in my front yard as a potent reminder of resilience.
I am eager to see how my house and I come together in re-creating ourselves to make us welcome havens for whoever traverses the welcome mat I have placed before them and steps through our collective doorways
www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHFDa9efCQU Don’t Worry, Be Happy by Bobby McFerrin
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