Relationships
HEALING OF THE MALE AND FEMALE BEGINS WITHIN ME
Excerpt:
“Yet this is the first man in my life who doesn’t think I’m ‘too much,’ ‘too intense.’ No need to keep that secret diary anymore. I can be completely myself with him . . . We are exactly matched: two giant, thundering, selfish, pompous egos; two sensitive, vulnerable, defended, loving hearts . . .
Ann Kreilkamp
Relationships
THE UNSPEAKABLE WOUND
Excerpt:
“Dinnertime. The enormous modern kitchen holds cranky children under the feet of women preparing food, clanging pots, talking. In the middle of it all sits Helen, propped up in an armchair, all 90 pounds of her, only 56 years old and she is ancient, wizened, her face etched into a perpetual scowl by the stroke 15 months ago."
Ann Kreilkamp
Relationships
THIS FROZEN MALE RAGE WITHIN US ALL
Excerpt:
“Over the next few days, I go back through my memory of that evening, slowing it down like a film in the editing room, taking it apart step by step, frame by frame. I notice how, when he says that, I flinch. I notice how I feel the woman next to me on the couch flinch too, how we turn to each other for solace.”
Ann Kreilkamp
Relationships
YOU’D THINK WED GET CYNICAL
Excerpt:
“For me, those words “’til death do us part” sound like a death sentence. Yoked together forever. Bound. Bound up. In bondage. No release . . . Gag! I feel suffocated already! On the other hand, I can conceive of a relationship which lasts beyond so-called “death” into other lives as well.
Ann Kreilkamp
Peace, Community
BUILDING THE SNOW CASTLE
Excerpt:
“I seek to understand how communities work and don't work, their tendency to become either too structured or to degenerate into chaos. I am also fascinated with the underlying invisible but very real dynamics which give each community its unique identity.”
Ann Kreilkamp
Peace, Community
HARMONIC EMERGENCE
Excerpt:
“I begin by placing a point in the middle of the page, symbolizing earth, as a heavenly body. I trace concentric circles around it: the planets, their orbits, as spheres of influence, dimensions of understanding. Our task on earth, I say, is to expand our consciousness, attune to larger and larger space/time fields.”
Ann Kreilkamp
Peace, Community
IS THE LADY A TYGER?
Excerpt:
“I often practice this sort of witnessing of my experience, as a sort of controlled schizophrenia . . . To develop the fair witness within is to gradually dismantle the automatic mechanical internal program. It’s to learn how to think for oneself.”
Ann Kreilkamp
Peace, Community
WORLD PEACE BEGINS WITHIN ME
Excerpt:
“I remember the day that I stood at my sink, peeling carrots, and actually quieting myself enough internally to notice a subtle current of anxiety running through my nervous system. This was the very first time I had ever stilled my mind enough to notice it!”
Ann Kreilkamp
Aging, Dying, Death, Grief
KATHRYN
Excerpt:
“Terry [Tempest Williams] tells Kathryn [her mother] didn’t wake up until she was 50 years old. That’s when she began to read Krishnamurti, during the 1950s, when everybody around her was asleep. The two of us are talking exactly one month to the day after Kathryn’s death, at the “ripe old age” of 84.”
Ann Kreilkamp
Aging, Dying, Death, Grief
SATURN AND THE AGING PROCESS
Excerpt:
“Saturn can symbolize form, definition, identity, discipline; negatively, it can signify oppression, inhibition, blockage, manipulation. The first way of utilizing the Saturn energy builds character and a certain nobility of spirit; the second way leads to cynicism, bitterness, a certain rigidity of body, mind, and spirit.”
Ann Kreilkamp
Aging, Dying, Death, Grief
THE AMARYLLIS BUD
Excerpt:
“For the past six days I have spent two or more hours a day painting the opening of an amaryllis bud. . . An amazing experience. The flower grows faster at its leading end, as matter is more and more differentiated, more and more delicate. So I have to keep up with its growth….”
Ann Kreilkamp
Aging, Dying, Death, Grief
WHAT MATTERS? ON AGEISM, AGING, AND AGELESSNESS
Excerpt:
“So, on the one hand, I do accept the aging process, for the wisdom which is distilled from it; and on the other hand, I want to slow down the aging process as much as possible, so that I can be fully functioning up until (I hope) the very end of my life. Both feelings are there. Both are to be embraced as paradox.”
Ann Kreilkamp
Dreams, Magic, Miracles
AGAIN EXACTLY AS I STEP UPON THE WALL
Excerpt:
“During my walks I also ask for a sign from the universe. Not directly, not fervently, as there is nothing specific I need to know. Besides, I am embarrassed to ask — probably a holdover from not feeling worthy.”
Ann Kreilkamp
Dreams, Magic, Miracles
ANGELS & GUARDIANS NOT ALWAYS EASY ALLIES
Excerpt:
“Something is at hand; ‘it’ sits on my left shoulder, or it leads the way. It appears and disappears at will. Sometimes there are lots of them, sometimes only one; sometimes I feel utterly abandoned.”
Ann Kreilkamp