The Secret Life of Bees

Highline Trail in Glacier National Park, Montana
Copyright (c) 2007 Wendee Holtcamp

"Everything we do is infused with the energy with which we do it. If we're frantic, life will be frantic. If we're peaceful, life will be peaceful. And so our goal in any situation becomes inner peace. Our internal state determines our experience of our lives; our experiences do not determine our internal state."
—Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love

That quote by Marianne Williamson appeared in my email inbox the other day and it really spoke to me. I just emerged from a month and a half of insane frenetic activity, deadline after deadline and taking the kids all over creation since their dad was out of town a couple different times, and I realized how true that quote is. If I calm my mind and my moment by moment interactions and thoughts, I still have the same stuff on my plate, but can tackle it in a more calm and gentle manner. It also is so true in how I respond to my kids. When I am calm and gentle they are too. When I get riled at their inevitable mistakes and misbehavior, they get angry and defensive. So I'm going to try to take this message to heart.

Anyhow, I was going to blog today about steady state economics, and an effort by some ecologists to get a message to the Obama administration because it's timely and an issue I want to write about in the future, but.... nah. I don't feel like it. Today was a super lazy day! It is the first day in a long time that I have not woken to either a pressing deadline or having to take the kids around somewhere or another. I ended up getting out of bed at, get this, 1pm!! Holy moly! I had a cup of coffee and started getting caught up on the 500+ emails that have accumulated i nmy inbox (and this does not include spam, but ones that I need to reply to or sort and save). I always feel best when my inbox stays under 100 emails. Anyone else do that too?

I went to see The Secret Life of Bees with some girlfriends last night and loved it. It is based in 1964 just after the Civil Rights Act passed, and it is about a 14-year old girl who runs away from her abusive father with her black housekeeper, who had just been beaten by some white men when she was on her way to register to vote for the first time. They head to a city where the girl (played by Dakota Fanning) thought her long-since dead mom may have lived. They end up moving in with a black family (3 sisters) who run a bee farm, making honey. It stars Queen Latifah (who I love!), Alicia Keys and Jennifer Hudson. Though this is a fictional book, I feel it's so important for all of us to see and know this part of our history of our nation's past, the ignorance and hate that can so easily infect people and cause such horrible prejudice and crimes and violence. Love and truth are the only way to true inner and outer peace.

Oh and the movie brought back memories because my dad used to keep bees for a while during the time I livd with him. He had those same white hives, used an all-white bee suit with a hat and a mesh screen that covered his face, and used that same smoker to smoke out the bees, had that same spinner to get the honey out of the honeycomb. Boy I loved eating the honeycomb - yum!! Celeta are you reading this? Do you remember that? :)