This is my favorite time of night... hubs is asleep, the house is quiet. The cats are all sleeping on and around my desk and I finally feel like I can breathe. There's no errands to run, cleaning to do, phone calls to return, prescriptions to pick up,projects to finish or anything else. It's just me and the cats and iTunes and a pot of tea.

I've always been a night person.And I've had trouble sleeping most of my life. But this feeling of deep peace at night didn't come until DH's second deployment. It was almost always late, like 2 or 3 AM, when he would get to call or get to be online. After hearing from him and knowing he was ok I could finally pass out on the couch for a few hours. My most beloved cat, my little kitty soul mate, passed away from congestive heart failure a few months into deployment #2. She died in my arms on our bedroom floor and after that I couldn't sleep in the bedroom anymore so I slept on the couch until the deployment was over and DH came home.

 When the house is quiet, and I have great music, hot tea, and purring kitties I can finally relax. Those are the rare moments when I am grateful for all I have without thinking about what I don't have. That's when I find the strength to keep going. What do you do to renew your spirit? How often do you do it? Are you visiting that room everyday? Start tomorrow if not.

Great piece from the Inspirations and Creative Thoughts Blog:

Everybody's born surrendered
Everybody from the same place
He picked you out of the mud
Everybody's born surrendered.

Everybody got a mother woman
Maybe you treat her like a fool
Heaven under the feet of her
Everyone comes in place.


- lyrics of Surrendered by Peter Murphy, in sufi influenced album Dust
.. the song is a tribute to Sufi Saint, Sen Ahmedi Mahmudu Muhammedsin Efendim, may God sanctify his Sirr.

Peter John Murphy (born 11 July 1957, near Northampton, England), is the vocalist of the rock group Bauhaus who later went on to release a number of solo albums, such as Deep and Love Hysteria. Thin, with prominent cheekbones, a rich voice, and a penchant for gloomy poetics, Murphy is often called the "Godfather of Goth."

Although he had grown up in an Irish-Catholic household, Murphy embraced Islam in the 1990s, eventually moving to Turkey with his wife. A subsequent Middle Eastern influence can be heard in his later albums. In particular, Murphy has been inspired by the mysticism of Sufism. 1992's Holy Smoke mixed some traditional Turkish influences into the music while continuing the sound pioneered on Deep. He is well known in Sufi circles in turkey where he lives with his wife Behyan.

The bio section of Peter Murphy starts like this: "I don't care that you know nothing about me, he said, I'd rather have someone write about me who knows nothing, because I'm sick of these biographies that just repeat the same old simple things, and that attatch me to the same old simple past, and that repeat the same old half-truths about who I am and what I do...."

Read the rest of this piece here...