Author Archives: Paula Josa-Jones

Jul3

grey play

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This morning with Guinnie.   Being with Guinnie is the quickest way that I know to find joy.  She is always present – intensely so – ready to play, ready to walk, ready, ready, ready.  I think that she would be a terrific agility dog, except that the joy of a full-on run would probably overtake her mid-course.

We have had greyhounds for the past twenty-two years.  Our fascination with them began during a cross-country ski holiday in New Hampshire.  The owners had a beautiful white and brindle greyhound named Finbar.  We had never seen an animal so elegant, so self-possessed.  Perhaps it had to do with the fact that his owners, the innkeepers, were British.  One day during afternoon tea, he walked in, through all the guests, over to the tea table where he delicately removed one biscuit from the tray and walked out.  All of us were breathtaken.  We hoped he would do it again.

The following week we adopted our first greys, Misha and Zoe.  Since then, there have been Tashi, Gordita, Dae, Esme, Luna, and now Cho (the 17-year old Spanish Galgo), Jules and Guinnie – the mistress of “Let’s go!”

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Jul2

step up 999

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Today is another opportunity to step up.  My daughter’s boyfriend and the father of her coming baby arrives today for a short visit.  In the catalog of raising kids, there are endless opportunities to step up, to learn a new dance.  Today is a big one.

Both of our daughters are adopted.  Based on observing my sister’s fancy dancing over the years of raising her kids, I don’t think that biological kids and adopted kids are different in the step up requirements. We have both had a lot of practice in learning the choreography of the day.

I have set an intention today for positive understanding and opening.  I want to start with an open heart.  Let it be said that I have moved an entire Himalayan range within myself to get to this place.  I am proud of that.  However, it must also be said that I am not the only one that is going to need to step up.

Here is what Abraham had to say about children a couple days ago:

Children coming forth today have a greater capacity to deal with the greater variety of information that is coming forward than you did. They deliberately are coming forth into this environment where there is more to contemplate. This generation gap that you are talking about, it has ever been thus. Each new generation, every new individual, that comes forth, is coming with you having prepared a different platform for them to proceed from. There is this thing that gets in the way of that that says, “I’m the parent. I got here first. I know more than you do.” From the children’s perspective, and from the purity of their Nonphysical Perspective, what they are saying is, “You’re the parent. You got here first. You prepared a platform that I am leaping off from — and my leap will be beyond anything that you have ever known.”

— Abraham

Jun29

the new site goes live!!!

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We are here!  This new website is a  labor of love.  The part I have enjoyed immensely is being deeply involved in the design of each page.  Elizabeth and Robert, the brilliant designers from Deko created a perfect vision and I have been able to color it with photographs and text.

It is a deep and broad site –  an archive of my work for the past twenty-five years, but it is also a vision of my work now and going forward.  I see it as a living place that will continue to evolve with images, ideas, art and new offerings. The blog remains the same for now, but we will be giving that a modest facelift as well down the line.

I am happy and proud to invite you to dive into the site.  I am excited to hear your responses.

Welcome!  Come on in!

ps.  please also visit and like our new facebook page!

Jun29

when I am among the trees

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This is actually a photo of my honey Pam (another poetry angel) among the trees on St. Barth in 2008.  She is gazing at the results of a hurricane/tropical storm that came steaming through while we were there.

We are currently sitting out a storm at home, requiring a battening of emotional hatches, a retreat to safety, and a reassessment of the landscape.  I have alluded to this, but Pammie, pictured above, did spill it on her blog.  Our oldest (but still very young) daughter is pregnant, the result of carelessness and perhaps an unconscious choosing of what seems to us an impossibly difficult, unwelcome, poorly planned path. Our parental list of objections and worries is long, ponderous even.  But maybe our parental list is not the point.  Maybe the point is that here we all are, and how are we going to proceed?

I remember that St. Barth storm and the philosophical, wonderfully French shrug of our landlord’s shoulders as he assessed the damage and then took his usual swim, once the waters had calmed.  It had happened before, and would undoubtedly happen again, this meteorological messing with his life and his home.  Beneath the turbulence, the sand is fine, the sea blue and warm, the volcanic shapes of the island untouched.

And beneath this current storm, the heart that connects us beats.  The arc of her life is hers alone.  This situation seems to me an excellent opportunity to practice my improvisational skills, to dance the music that is playing now, not the tune I was hearing yesterday.  Here’s some help:

When I Am Among the Trees

by Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

“When I Am Among the Trees” by Mary Oliver, from Thirst. © Beacon Press, 2006. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)