2/7/14—Keeping An Eye On The Birds

Pig in a roof vent with branch suspiciously nearby.

There is a National Geographic-quality wildlife mystery that's been playing out in my side yard over the course of months now. My Facebook readers are well aware of this, but it occurred to me that those who read my blog or my Deck of 1000 Spreads page are not yet initiated. 

It all began this past fall as I noticed something odd sticking out of the roof vent of my home. I ignored it for a while, because anything that even hints of needing intervention or repair is routinely ignored in my home. But finally curiosity got the better of me and I saw that one of my dogs' stuffed animals was shoved into the roof vent with only its head sticking out. So a photo session ensued, followed by a lively Facebook discussion, and then I went back to ignoring it. 

A few weeks later, I noticed the pig was gone and the nest it was part of had been disassembled and cast to the ground. So I did another photo shoot and left the pig where it landed, on some dead branches I have been ignoring for years. It stayed that way until a recent snowstorm took the pig to the ground. Or so I assumed. But a couple of days ago I saw it back up on the branches again. Not only that, but it had been joined by another stuffed toy, Blub Blub. 

Pig, after being cast out of the roof vent. 

Now, these toys usually live in my back yard. To get to the roof vent, the toys would have had to have scaled the fence and climbed forward and upward along the side of my house to the vent, which is located in my front yard. There is a tree whose limbs reach the roof vent. That tree is also in my back yard. So it's possible the toys might have climbed the tree then, balancing precariously on the furthest branches, reached the roof vent. Alternately, the toys might have had the help of birds or squirrels getting up to the vent. And therein lies the mystery. 

Popular opinion has it pinned on a squirrel, but because all the toys in their many moves have been found directly beneath the vent, I'm thinking birds. A squirrel has the opportunity to drop the toy anywhere between the tree trunk in the back yard and the roof vent in the front yard, yet the toys are always found beneath the roof vent. 

That, and I saw what could only be considered a menacing GANG of blackbirds hanging out in the branches in front of the vent yesterday, clearly plotting no good. There were three of them, all of whom appeared to be wearing hoodies and all of whom stopped talking and tried to look casual when they saw I had spotted them. (There has also coincidentally been a rash of car break-ins in the neighborhood and it's possible these same birds know a little something about that, too.)

The plot thickens as Blub Blub appears beneath the vent.

Traditionally, my roof vent has served as a nest for birds. I have very little bird knowledge, but I do know that some of the birds who nest on my property rebuild their nests in the same place every year. I've seen them do this. Kizzie shedding season is just beginning for its six-month run and I'll often brush him out back so they have fluff with which to build their nests. Whatever lived in the roof vent last summer destroyed their nest in fall and now seems to want to rebuild using the pig again. I can see how the pig could make it up there, as it is devoid of stuffing. But Blub Blub is a different matter. He is quite rotund and squeaker filled (and moisture laden after heavy rains.) 

It occurs to me that the stuffed animals make the birds or squirrels feel safer at night. After all, the toys stink of slobber from endless rounds of fisticuffs between my dogs. Who's going to raid a nest that smells like dog? But they're also soft and fluffy and warm and probably help keep things dry. When I think of it like that, it all makes sense. We all want to be safe and warm and dry. 

I imagine this saga will continue over the coming weeks as the birds/squirrels try and try again to get these relatively huge toys up into their nest. I'm keeping an eye out to see if I can catch anything in action. But the one thing this whole drama has taught me is that, beneath our noses every single day, there is something fascinating and dramatic happening in the animal kingdom. And we so rarely even notice the critters around us, much less catch them doing nefarious deeds. So while today's post was purely for fun, it makes you wonder about all the stuff you don't see that's going on out there. We all have our lives to live and the things we covet. Even if we're birds. 

2/5/14—Seeing The Light

I apologize in advance if today's post gets a little gloomy. It was inspired partly by someone I thought I knew, but didn't, and partly by the recent death of Philip Seymour Hoffman. What the two things have in common is something we all have in common—a dark side. 

Beneath the addictions, obsessions, bullying, lying, anger, abuse, excesses and other unhealthy behaviors lies pain and fear. And no matter how beautiful, rich, famous, talented or loved you are, you're not immune. Nobody is immune. 

We hurt ourselves and others because WE are in pain and can't always pinpoint the source. Maybe we had something tragic happen to us, but really that's just an excuse. What's really at the bottom of this, I believe, is something we forgot before we were even born. 

Before we come here and after we leave, we are without ego. Ego in the way I use the word is a self awareness that separates ourselves from others. So it manifests in us feeling "more than" or "less than" others. It seeks approval. Yearns for status. Desires recognition and understanding. Speaks in terms of us and them. Wherever you find ego, you also find a forgetting of our true nature...the one we'll return to when we die.

Our true nature is oneness. Universal love. It is inclusion. There is no separateness or self awareness because there is no individuality. All is one. If god indeed said "I am that I am", what that means is that we are everything we see. We are. There is no separation between you and the most vile entity on earth. No separation between you and the most beloved on earth. There can be no separation, because everything is one. And everything is an expression of love.

But, see, we come here to be individuals. And as long as we're individuals there will always be a pained, lonely, frightened place within that seeks the universal love we love we left behind. We may not remember, but the soul never forgets. There are times when we are so filled with light (or delusion...haha) that we drift far enough away from this place that it seems to disappear, but that is just an illusion. It is always there. This pain, loneliness and fear comes from believing we're separate from source. And it's the price of being human.

There are times that the experiences of life and the attachment to ego build upon our souls like so many magnetized barnacles that we draw ever closer into the gravitational field of this painful empty place. If we don't reach this place by our own volition, we may be pulled into it by a loved one. We may even be wired to explore this place through depression or mental illness. Sometimes it is all we can see. And the closer we get, the more pain we feel and the more pain we cause. We try to keep it at bay with drugs or purchases, anger or violence, lying or bullying. But that just makes it worse. 

And the further into the hole we travel, the more it hurts and the lonelier it feels. And then even the most brilliant and fortunate among us end up dead of an overdose with the hypodermic still in our arm. And we think, "what a waste of such a gifted life." But see, that's just our ego talking. There are no adjectives or superlatives in oneness, only in our separation. Interestingly, however, even in our separateness, we are still the same. Because we all have this place inside. 

But this empty, lonely place can be filled. The only thing that can fill it is universal love. And the path to universal love is the recognition of oneness. When we see an angry person, we recognize them as ourself and we love them...not from a place of being better off, but from a place of recognition of self. There is no human atrocity we can deny being within us (albeit dormant, perhaps), just as there is no human grace. We are all of that. We are. 

And while there are many paths that can lead us there, regular communion with god or source or light or whatever you want to call it, is key to spending as much time as possible in a place where the gravity of the empty place is the weakest. This is why we seek to raise ourselves and grow...so we can  balance our humanness with what we've forgotten. Not so we can forget we're human, because that's why we're here. But to remember we're so much more.

2/3/14—Being Friends

Tonight's energies have me thinking of people we've misjudged in our lives. Most of the time that conjures up memories of people you've trusted and then found were untrustworthy. Those can sometimes be heartbreaking experiences and cause us to question what it is about us that attracts people like that. 

I recently had a conversation with a friend about this very thing. While I do think we attract these experiences to us for a reason, the reason is not always that "we're broken, so we attract broken people." Sometimes the reason is to benchmark our own state of repair. Meaning, that if we handle the situation better than the last time it happened, we've probably healed some. 

Further, if we make empowering choices in dealing with the person, instead of choices underpinned by fear and disempowerment, then we've come a long way from the tantrums and tears we might have expended in the past. So the misjudgment may not be there to show you how stuck you are, but rather to show you how far you've grown. Or, at the very least, to give you an opportunity to grow in that moment by making a healthier choice. 

But the energies I've been thinking about this weekend are actually the opposite of all I've just said. They're about people we were WRONG to misjudge. We don't focus on those so much because we were just as wrong—if not more so—as the other person in our dynamic. 

A number of instances have come to my mind over the weekend. There is the woman whose friendship I coldly tossed aside because her energy was draining me. A couple of years later, she took my side and comforted me regarding a matter that was very emotional to me (and probably draining for her). Most people would have told me to go to hell. 

Then there's the colleague whom I always admired and considered a friend...until I found out about a conflict he waged with another, better friend of mine. I was shocked and disappointed when I heard the story. So when my colleague was dying, I didn't put forth the effort to say goodbye. And now I understand why he did what he did and I regret misjudging him. 

While we may fixate on all the "bad guys" in our lives, we all have incidents where the bad guy is us. And we may feel quite justified in the things we've done or said, but that doesn't mean the other side doesn't see you as a bad guy. They may even be right. 

Recently someone I had once misjudged was my savior. It was humbling. They reminded me I don't have to wait to see what others do in order to decide what I'm going to do. They reminded me I have more power than I give myself credit for. 

I'm someone who has been picked on, called names and bullied at points throughout my life. I'm guessing most of us have experienced someone who took our power away or otherwise diminished us. But power isn't something that's for them to take. It's for you to give, usually out of fear of some consequence happening. And if giving away your power is a pattern in your life, you become fearful of asserting yourself or taking a strong stance. That's where I was until I was reminded that, not only did I hold power, I held way more power than I thought. 

There are people you have conflicts or tension with, then after the conflict, they disappear from your reality. Then there are those you can't seem to shake from your life. So far my experience has been that the latter people merit a second look. Maybe there's more to that person beneath the part that once rubbed you the wrong way. Maybe you've both changed enough over time for things to be different. 

Friends don't always come clothed as friends, just as "enemies" don't always come clothed as enemies. It's inevitable we'll misjudge one for the other. What's important is that we don't give our power over to the bad guys and that, when we recognize we've been the bad guy, we make the appropriate amends.

1/31/14—Contemplating Extinction

Looks like someone needs a new fishin' spot.

There's a special place along the river where I like to sit and just be. Years back I had a habit of going to this particular spot a couple of times a week. It's within a heavily wooded shoreline and the trees on either side of the sittin' spot frame the river and view perfectly. It was cool to see the seasons change from that same vantage point. Spring to summer. Summer to fall. Fall to winter.

I must have started there in spring, because I enjoyed quite some time there before the littering started. Then every time I would go to this spot back in the woods, there would be soda bottles and bait cups and all manner of chip bags strewn about. The fishermen didn't even try to bag their trash. They just left it—and the bags it came in—where they used it.

So each time I visited, I brought a trash bag. And I picked their trash up. And I deposited it in the trashcans back in the parking lot. The same trashcans the litterers passed every time they came there to fish. And after a while I started thinking, "they probably think a fairy comes by and cleans up after them. So I'm really just enabling their behavior."

Gaia killed the dinosaurs for less.

I thought of making a sign and posting it on one of the trees. Instead, I just visited less often. And after a while, I grew so weary and disheartened that I just abandoned the spot altogether and found another.

After a month or two, it was spring again and I missed my spot. So I thought I'd give it a try. I loaded up with trash bags and hiked back into the woods to my special place, braced for all the trash I would find there. But there was none! Nothing!

I plunked down in my spot and took in everything. The sun sparkling on the river. The beauty of the opposite shoreline. The ducks and ducklings paddling by. And I looked up to see the fresh green leaves on the trees overhead and....there were at least three fishing lines and hooks caught up in the branches. It seems that, when the leaves started to come, the canopy prevented the fishermen from casting their lines!

At first I chuckled at Mother Nature's brilliance. Then it hit me. There I was worrying about saving the planet when we should all be worried about saving ourselves! Mother Nature was here billions of years before us. She survived methane air, the dinosaurs, geomagnetic reversal and all sorts of scary crap. And she came out of it looking pretty darned awesome and bountiful.

It's time to start calling a spade a spade. The earth isn't in any danger from our emissions and littering. We are. Instead of talking about climate change, we should be talking about species change. Because soon it will behoove her to choke us out, rather than suffer the case of the sniffles we're inflicting on her with our holes in the ozone and non-biodegradable toxin-infused trash. In 100 years, she'll have covered all evidence of us being here. In 1000 years, she will have recovered from our actions. And in 10,000 years, they'll have to use sonar and soil samples and carefully calibrated instruments to even know we ever existed. And Mother Nature? She'll have aged the equivalent of maybe two human weeks. 

This is an unfortunate reality of most urban shorelines.

Of course, we don't choose to see it this way, but what's going on here is a war. It's humans vs. Gaia. And we somehow have the arrogance to think we could possibly win when 99.9% of everything that's ever lived on this planet has lost. Who's the only one that's won? The gentle, unassuming ferns, that's who! To the earth, we're just another self-important species going extinct. Like the Cave Lion, T Rex and Quagga. What's a Quagga? Critters will be asking the same thing about humans a couple hundred years from now. 

So this week, consider what's really at stake with the choices you make each day—and beyond your relationship to the earth. Consider other things you may have a skewed perspective on. A pet owner may think nothing of letting their dog run off leash—until it gets hit by a car. A person may think nothing of smoking cigarettes—until they get lung cancer. A husband may think nothing of having a passing affair—until he loses his wife and children.

There is something ingrained in the human psyche that a) makes us think we're the most important and powerful thing on earth b) makes us seem beyond extinction as a species and c) allows us to justify and/or blind ourselves to things we KNOW are wrong or against our best interests.

As far as the things we justify are concerned, we know what those things are because they're the things we don't openly discuss with others. So start there. What wouldn't you tell your cubicle mate about your life? And how can you turn your thoughts around on that so that you clearly see what's at stake?

There are spiritual folk who believe earth is just one of many places a soul goes to learn lessons. And they say earth is the most beautiful and difficult of all those places. It would suck to cut your time short here only to end up in some brown, chalky, dimly lit desert in the next lifetime. We could all do well by sparing a moment to take inventory of what it means to be worthy of this place, this body, this opportunity and this gift we call life.

(Reposted from 2/12/12)

1/29/14—Letting Clouds Pass

Cloudy, gray sunset.

Last Friday we talked about how clouds make the sunsets more interesting and colorful, as do the "clouds" that come along in our lives. Last night's sunset kind of expanded on that. 

See, it started out all overcast and gray. And I was pretty sure the sunset would suck. But then I saw a tinge on pink on the bottom of one of the clouds and thought, "well now". Then minutes later, the sunset exploded into fabulous color. 

This reminded me of what happened at my last job. I said the wrong thing at the wrong time to my boss and she, in turn, completely handled the situation poorly and it became clear my days were numbered. So the skies on that day seemed pretty gray. But almost immediately it occurred to me to become a freelancer. The gray clouds got a tinge of pink. Then days later, I gave my notice. And, since then, it's been one wild, colorful, spectacular sunset! 

Kinda. :)

A hint of pink lines the gray.

It has certainly resulted in the best years of my professional life. So the very best thing that ever happened to me started out as gray skies. For some, the very best thing started out with a spouse leaving them. Or catching a disease. Or like something that happened as a result of an old friend's actions many years ago.

My friend drove drunk on New Year's Eve and it resulted in a boy's leg being severed from his body. She went to jail and hasn't lived a day of her life without thinking about that. But this boy contacted her 20 or 25 years later and told her losing his leg was the best thing that ever happened to him. He was going down a bad path and it was just the wakeup call he needed. Today he has a wife and children and he doubts that would have ever happened had he not been in the "wrong place at the wrong time". 

The sky explodes into glorious color.

Sometimes our gray clouds don't show their pink edges immediately. And sometimes the pink edges are very subtle and hard to see. But I can't think of anything that's happened in my life—even the really bad stuff—that didn't end up with pink edges and even spectacular color. 

We tend to think of things in terms of winning or losing or of whether or not the universe is on our side. But in the end, there is no loss. There is no such thing as an unsupportive universe. There are just people who prefer to live in perpetual victimhood. That sounds harsh, but the fact is that what you take away from an experience is your choice, not your fate. 

You see this in the video of the guy with no arms or legs who turned his disability into an extraordinary ability to inspire. And through the young girl singled out and shot by the Taliban for promoting education who, after recovering her ability to walk and talk, took her fight to a much larger and more powerful audience. And through John Walsh, who used his son's kidnapping to create a national sex offender registry and the precursor to the "Amber Alert". There is no telling how many lives have been saved or criminals captured as a result of this man's gray clouds. 

All these people turned their gray clouds into spectacular shows. Really, what challenges do any of us have that compare? There is a win in every loss we have...a bigger plan than we can ever imagine when we're down. Last night I waited about 15 minutes to see why the gray clouds had to be that way. Whatever you're going through may take longer. But it will change and the beauty of it will be revealed. All it takes is trust and making the choice to turn your eyes towards the gift.

1/27/14—Waking to the Cardinals

About 45 minutes to an hour before sunrise.

The weather people said the sun was set to rise at 7:19 am. I've come to learn that what they mean by that is the sun breaks the horizon at 7:19. But by the time the sun breaks the horizon, the show is most of the way over. 

Before the "sunrise", the dark blueness of the sky spills slowly out. One by one stars "shut the light off" for the night. A redness starts to build at the edges of the earth. The streetlights turn off. The sky goes to light blue. And while the moon is still visible, it's also pretty darned light out. All before the appointed 7:19 "sunrise". 

The pre-sunrise is cool because there's a palpable stillness to the world just before things start to go light. Then you might hear a chirp or two off in the distance. Then the streetlight that annoys me with its bright light in my line of sight of turns off. Then all hell breaks loose. One by one, species of birds awaken. The first squirrel sets out on his daily rounds. You might start to hear cars on the roads. Like us, the earth is a little groggy when it first wakes up, then it hits its stride. 

This morning I heard a really loud caterwauling somewhere in the neighborhood. As I listened, I tried to remember what it reminded me of. Then I remembered it reminded me of the early morning before I put my dog Passion to sleep. We'd heard the same noise. I wondered what kind of bird it was and, just as I wondered, I heard the sound again. This time it was very close. And as I turned to look, there was my cardinal friend, sitting on one of the branches it usually sits on. 

He sat there for a good couple of minutes, making a sound I didn't know cardinals made. Then he started making the usual cardinal sound and I listened for his mate to reply. This couple frequents my back yard, so I know that wherever the male is, the female isn't far behind. 

My best picture of the moon and some pink
clouds, still a few minutes before sunrise.

"They" say that when you see a cardinal, it's a visitation from a loved one who has passed. In this case, I think it was my dog Passion, because that's what it made me think of (other times I've felt a cardinal was my brother.) It feels like she's been around a lot lately. Because of the way things played out—I heard the sound, thought of Passion, then the bird squawked closer—I felt it was a clear sign. So I asked in my head what she wanted me to know. And what I heard back (in my head) was that I was being watched over and everything was going to be OK. That was a nice thought to have prior to sunrise. :)

I poked around online to get statistics about how many people believe in life after death. I found a huge range of results. 34%, according to a Fox News story, 51% on a Reuters poll and 76% on this Huffington Post poll. When you consider that, in order for anyone to go to heaven there has to be life after death, I'm guessing at least half believe. 

But that doesn't speak at all as to how many people think we can get messages from beyond. Certainly that number is lower. My experience reading tarot is that, even if people don't believe in it, they still want to get a reading. And they still hang on every word. This makes me think they may be less of a non-believer than they claim to be. I think the same thing is true when it comes to ghosts and messages from those who have passed over.

You don't need a sixth sense to communicate with loved ones who have passed. You just need the five senses you already have. They'll let you know they're there through scent, like a wafting of perfume from nowhere. Through sight, maybe manifesting in form or making lights flicker, for example. Through sound, perhaps in the form if a song that reminds you of them or your name whispered in your ear. Through touch, you might feel a room get colder, get a tickle in your ear or feel a burning on your face. Taste...well, taste isn't as common, but it's possible. 

Mediums frequently "see" them in their mind's eye, "hear" them telepathically and they might "taste" blood, feel the pain of someone's death or smell a flower. In short, our deceased loved ones try to communicate in many ways we can readily understand without any special skills. And when these things happen, stop to remember that you can ask them why they're there or what they have to tell you. You should hear an answer in your head. You might think you're making it up. And maybe you are. Or maybe they put the thought in your head. 

In the end communicating with deceased loved ones takes the same skills it did when you related to them as living beings. Included in that is trust. As you trusted them then, you need to trust that what you're hearing/thinking/seeing now is true. The more you notice these "odd coincidences", the more you start to see more than just coincidence is involved. Can you imagine being dead and expending so much energy to turn off lights and make birds fly to your loved one and whatnot, only to have them ignore and deny you're there, time after time? For that reason alone it's worth at least entertaining the possibility.

Even if you're a believer, the relationship and lines of communication won't be the same as when they were here. But for me, it's better than the nothing that those who don't believe get. What kinds of signs have you gotten?

1/24/14—Reflecting the Sun's Light

Today's fabulous sunset. And this was just the beginning.

I'm getting a lot of inspiration from sunsets these days. I didn't really plan on making it an almost daily hobby to sit on my front stoop and watch the sunset. But that's what it has become. And taking that extra time (I already sit outside most mornings and before bed) has made a huge difference in my wellbeing lately. Today it was about 20 degrees out with a moderate, persistent wind. There I was, in a tank top and a blanket, sitting bare-footed on my concrete stoop for an hour (fingers FREEZING as I tried to take pics). :D

Most of the time my boy, Kizzie, joins me. He's got executive privilege in the house. He's the oldest, so he gets the biggest treats AND he gets to sit outside on the stoop with mommy. The other two dogs would try to attack every leaf that blew by, so he's really my only option. Besides, the poor boy is the only male in a house full of girls and he is often shoved aside by much younger rivals for mommy's attention. So I do what I can to give him extra snuggles and consideration.

Anyway, he wasn't out there today because, on my
way to the door, a spinning, gyrating, leaping Manic Mystic managed to break one of my crystal ringing bowls. These are very expensive things. I was disappointed and, while not angry per se (it's my fault the bowls are where they are...the dogs bump into them all the time) I lost my taste for dogs for the moment. It wasn't fair that Kizzie had to pay for Mystic's mania. He was upset to miss "our time." So I feel bad now. But in the moment I wasn't in the mood for dogs.

Yesterday's lovely, but lackluster, sunset.

Which brings me around to what I noticed in the sunset today. See, yesterday the skies were crystal clear. And while I watched the first part of the sunset, it was really kind of boring. Even when you can see the horizon (which I can't), sunsets, while always lovely, just aren't as interesting unless there are clouds in the sky. I included pics of both yesterday's and today's sunset, taken at roughly the same time, to illustrate my point.

Clouds give the sun an opportunity to show its beauty in the most spectacular ways. They reflect the sun's light...contain it in concentrated bursts instead of having it diffuse out to forever until it is just no longer visible. They make sunrises and sunsets more interesting and remarkable. They show that the sun isn't just some hard-working source of light and heat, it's also something that paints a palette of beauty on every eye it's cast upon. Although I'm a big moon lover myself, I believe the sun puts on a far more spiritual show, aesthetically speaking.

Today was a day when I had to deal with lots of little annoyances. My email wasn't working. Then I got it fixed. Then it stopped working again. So lots of time spent with my ISP on the phone and over chat. Same kind of technical issues with Blue Cross, who fixed their online issues just in time for me to discover they're raising my rates by nearly $100 month.

Today's spectacular sunset at its most cloudy and fabulous. 

Then there was an issue with my bank, because they showed a $0.83 charge from Paypal that I couldn't verify on Paypal, so I opened a dispute and changed all my passwords. Then I found the $0.83 charge and had to call them to close the dispute. I know that sounds petty, but the fact is that when scammers get your personal information, they will do small charges like $0.83 just to test the waters. Then they'll hit you hard. So those small charges are vital clues that could save your arse. If you weren't aware of this, you know it now.

Finally, of course, was the expensive bowl Mystic broke. See, all of these things are "clouds". And while too many clouds will block the sun altogether, we get to choose whether or not the clouds that cast shadows on our day will block the world from seeing our light, or reflect our light in the most spectacular and profound ways.

I like to think I made a good sunset from my day. I was very pleasant with all the customer service people I spoke to (and that's saying a lot because sitting on hold for 45 minutes like I did this morning  usually brings out my inner Kali.) And Mystic didn't get anything more than a talking to...later, when she curled up to me all sorry-like.

The usual front porch scene. Kizzie's fur is a sunset in itself!

The only place I fell short and blocked my light might have been with Kizzie. None of this was his fault and he was so disappointed. He tried desperately to get out the door with me. I feel terrible about it now. But in the moment I think it was best for all involved if I just had some time alone. So I'm going to count that as a win, too. BTW, Kizzie addressed the cloud of not getting to watch the sunset with me quite gracefully. He laid in front of the window and watched me and the sunset from inside the house. Where it was NOT 20 degrees and windy.

While it's nice to have days when everything is perfect and easy, sometimes it's more gratifying at the end of the day to know you made it through an obstacle course alive. Little clouds make days more interesting. But more than that, the way we handle them makes US more interesting. We could live our lives with a blandly content visage perfect day after perfect day. But try being bland or content on a bad day...it's just not done!

Various clouds—wispy ones, small ones, stormy ones—along with varying amounts of cloud cover, combine in ways to really reflect who we are inside. Or they at least capture who we are on that particular day. Like I said before, some clouds are just born to block the sun and there's nothing we can do about days like that. But most days we have a choice of whether to reflect the light within or block it out. What kind of sunset will you choose to be?