Grateful Dead

i really didnt know this thread existed!..good to see you tigerlilly and hal!..sunny g mentioned something about that show at shorline..that was the first show of anykind that i had been to since 7 9 95..and sunny ,your so right about bieng right back home again!..even though it was different with joan oz and all..and that set was smokin with loose lucy, rubin and cherise and st steven and all..i really was in tears,because i was overwhelmed with the joy of letting my spirit surf with the music waves of the dead again..i was really speachless,so i just smiled the whole show through,and spun in circles...and all the family that showed up..jane and the cleanup crew was there,so i got my old job back,and we marched into the show just like we did years before,...and yes!!i got to somersalt down the hill at the end of the show!!hey now!..i knew right then i had to turn on,tune in,and drop out again!!then i went to prison pretty much after that,,but hey now, i didnt let that stop me,because i had a tv i bought for my cell..and once a month on pbs they hosted dead shows,for the fundraiser..and being the only deadhead there and whiteboy too (it was all mexican)so hey now!i told all the border brothers,hey jerry garcias on!!..they were like seemon!garcia!..i had a cell full of border brothers eatin chips and salsa,while i was educating them what hippies and deadheads are..and i tell ya..thats how i earned the nickname "loco blanco covaio"..i kinda liked it to tell you the truth...ok im babblin too much here...anyways,,ill post again soon on the subject at hand..i got carried away again:D...."somewhere in sanfrancisco on a back pourch in july,just lookin up at this cresent in the sky...in the sky --moondrop

''' NO JESUS, NO PEACE ''' ~~~ ''' KNOW JESUS, KNOW PEACE '''

It's funny how we have to be reminded of this stuff so much. I had a friend.....well she was more my best friend, my sister, my hero and my mentor.....she had breast cancer for five years. She was the first one to teach me that happiness is a choice. She taught it to me, by example, while she was terminal. She taught it right up til the day she died. She was the most amazing soul I've ever known. She's been gone for seven years now, so I tend to forget her lessons. When you have someone in your life who has CANCER and is reminding you to be happy, you tend to get the message loud and clear, you know? It's sooo easy to forget and wallow around. But I think that mucking in your own shit has it's place too? Sometimes you gotta muck just so that you can figure out how to get out of it? Life is SO great that way. So, a virtual Dead show? Now wouldn't THAT be a trip......hee hee......I'll pretend with you, I'm pretending right now. Let's see, they're playing Ripple.......and i've got this huge, goofy smile spread across my face (ripples my fav)......and my hands are floating out there around my body and my dusty, bare feet are sweeping, sweeping, sweeping the concrete. There's a breeze blowing my hair round my neck and across my shoulders and my dress is just trying to keep up with my body.......there's an amazing heaviness in my body contrasting sharply with the way it feels like it's gonna just lift off the planet and fly.....my eyes are closed but I've got a light show going on between my eyeballs and my lids.....and it's beautiful.....I open them......and I see you....... There is at least one fine and admirable quality in every person. Find it.

Hal is a treasure, have seen that over and over. And you got it loud and clear what I was saying. An example: have had some really rough days since I moved to Germany many years ago. Is a very hard, harsh and dull country spiriatually, after experiencing American shows. Had my moments of tending to wallow in this shitty life I landed in, until I got that info. about making choices and accepting responsibility. Remembering that I CHOSE to come here, and nobody held a gun to my head, helped me a whole lot, and find ways to still be what I am. You are soo right about one thing. I miss the dancing at a show too, and the feelings of peace and pure joy that it brought. Too bad we can't dance online-but we can pretend, if you want! Am sure Hal would join us too!

I like it! Who would've ever thought that responsibility could be so sexy? "Wait, you mean that I'M responsible for all this? That I have and I make choices that effect my life? And if I claim ownership, then the stress and the guilt and the frustration falls away?" Yeah, I get it. I am responsible for my happiness and my happiness is a choice.....it's lovely actually. Still wish that I coulda gotten that message through dance........am I killing that topic yet? :) But glad as heck that I've got you and Hal to remind me.......thanks......

loud and clear! You have written exactly my feelings and questions that I have had for several years now. Daily life as an adult makes it harder to find moments of pure peace and bliss, but like Guru Hal says, you gotta make time for that. One thing that helps me alot, in between being able to find joyful moments, is a simple phrase that a friend told me once. He said that he had just read in a book that the only people who are truly happy and balanced are those who can accept responsibility for their lives being as they are. That we have all made the choices that led us to where we are now, and that life hasn't just led us down a random bummer path. Was kind of hard to learn how to do this accepting, but now, in really bad moments, is like a prayer almost. I sit down and reflect on the choices that I made that got me to whatever bad thing I am experiencing. Brings me more inner peace to do this, and after practise, is easier than blaming the world for my shit. Then I look for any small thing to be happy about or proud of, and go on.

Enjoyment is my religion. I think doing the simple things we enjoy on a daily basis is what I would call religion. Anything that brings each individual inner peace is religion. That's all I have to say about that!!

yeah Hal, that's all true. thanks for that. sometimes I need reminding too. You're right, life is change. I thank God that I had that time too. It was a whirlwind trip, it was wonderful and then it was gone. But it's here in me and it's here in you and that means that it must be out there somewhere still. We will get by....... I'm in my 30's now. It's a trippy decade of life. I don't know if it's the same for everyone, but for me it's raising a pre-teen, it's feeding the relationship with my SO, it's a 40 hr per week job, it's being on community and work committees, it's building a house, it's homework and soccer games, it's meetings and deadlines, it's cooking and cleaning, and it's laundry......oh the laundry.......it never stops. Busy, busy, busy all the time. Faster, faster, faster everyday. Harder, harder, harder to sniff the roses. Since everything is a schedule now (which is incredibly hard for me in itself, not to mention following it), it's hard to fit in "meadow" time or "ocean" time and make it "church". Ironcially, it's almost like I need a scheduled show to plan for and go to; now more than ever. I do find it here and there. A hummingbird that comes to visit when I'm drinking my morning coffee. The sunset with beams of light shooting up from the hills as I drive home, the chit-chats with my daughter on the way to soccer games, finding a spider web strung all the way from the top of the garage to the concrete floor (my god, that spider had tenacity!), making my friends' baby smile. Those little moments are all there, sprinkled in amongst the hurry. Moments that remind me of God. I went to that show in Shoreline a few years back where the GD played with Joan Osborne. It just reminded me of......everything. I should find more shows to go to. I need to dance. BTW....I'm with you on this: the ONLY way I can get the house clean is to throw a GD CD in, crank up the stereo, and vacuum my heart out. You're words are comforting.......please keep them coming. And I'll do my best to do the same.

Hi Sunny,If you take a long walk outside in the mountains or the forest or near the ocean maybe you will see another church or the same church in another form. And maybe the birds singing are also a Band Beyond Description. Not the same but what is? Nothing lasts and that's the hard part. I got that feeling that you talk about when I saw Ratdog this summer. I felt like I was back home and had been away for a couple of years. The ecstasy and oneness of the dance of the Dead is one I treasure and gives me great joy and bliss and peace and love. I still find it at jam band shows, listening to Dead CDs and just dancing around the house as I do the daily chores. But there truly is nothing like a Grateful Dead concert. I'm just glad I was at a certain place and time on this planet to take part. And I still have nature and the birds to put a smile on my face and all those tapes and CDs and memories. I'm going around in circles here, just spinning away. It's a good day, send me this post when I am having a bad one to remind me to smell the roses and hear the songs. Hal Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) Walt Whitman-Song of Myself

Ummm.....I think that the Grateful Dead WAS my religion. That may sound strange to some, but it's true. I didn't worhship the band and I didn't think that Jerry was God or anything. Not like that. But the shows were my church. The Heads were my congregation. Dance was my prayer. Spinning was my rapture. Yes, I was a spinner. Spinning took me straight to God, Goddess, the Universe, whatever. No matter what happened during the week, everything always unraveled while I danced. Life became seamless, things took shape, problems worked themselves out, solutions offered themselves to me. The more I danced, the more I Understood. The more I Understood, the more peaceful my spirit became. I'm having a hard time writing this post because I'm not sure there's any good way to describe what religion does to your soul. All I know is that I learned more about forgiveness and prayer at Dead shows than anywhere else. So, I guess I lost my religion. It happens. No other music, no other band has been able to take me to the same place. I've tried on many different religions, none of them have clicked. For more than a decade now, I'm not sure what I believe in. Not sure how to get back to that place where the angels are dancing there with me. I'm sure I'll find it again. Maybe I'll be an old lady someday, spinning out in a meadow, dancing to the music in my memory, talking with God. Maybe I'll find it sooner than that. Maybe when Uncle John comes to take this child Home, there'll be Dead shows in Heaven. I'll be in the Phil Zone.....spinning.......