LOVE AND BREATH

Breathe in the pain; exhale the peace. Breathe in the anger; exhale the love. Breathe in the fear; exhale the courage. Breathe in the confusion; exhale the need to know. Breathe in the hurt; exhale the compassion. Breathe in the disappointment; exhale the gratitude. Breathe in the prison; exhale the freedom. Breathe in the control; exhale release. Breathe in the hesitation; breathe out the steps. Breathe in dying; exhale life.

Breathe through the feelings – especially the painful ones – feel them, let them express then allow them to be transformed back into the silence from which they came when your thought gave them life.  Grieve them, allow them but do not make a bed in them.   Rather chose the place to lay your head and your heart that brings you peace, joy. and love.  Every though gives birth to feelings and feelings need to be acknowledged and allowed to have expression.  They are real and you are alive because of all feelings – both those you enjoy and those you do not.  Each feeling is just the flip side of the other and  within the whole of them is where your being springs forth and that being that you are is awesome, fantastic, beautiful, alive, full of promise, and precious.  Breathe that in and exhale the wonder that you are.

LOVE’S NEW EYES

Many years ago now there arose a wave of what became known as the “Charismatic Movement” and being a seeker who yearned with all my heart to actually know and experience what we call God, I dove into that wave head first. At the time I was a member of the Catholic religion after coming from a Baptist/Methodist background. I officially converted a few years after my marriage to my part-time Catholic husband. I say part-time because he found living life to the fullest was much more satisfying and fulfilling than being a full-time practicing Catholic. This living life to the fullest and gobbling up all the different and interesting things life had to offer was his religion.. This was not a bad thing because this man could love like his very next breath depended upon it. At the time I did not understand a lot of things like I do now and I often resented his plunging into experiencing all of life that he could experience because it left me alone a lot of hours with the job of rearing our children pretty much entirely by myself. I was not as free as he was to pursue interests and flit about unaffected by all the responsibility that came with caring for children minute by minute.. John did hold a job and worked very hard but any and all his free time was his. Let me hasten to say that what this restlessness, resentment,and the emotional pain in my life (including guilt) did for me was to make me all the more hungry for finding peace, love, joy, contentment and understanding of myself, my life, and my God. So were it not for that, perhaps I would never have become what I call a Christian mystic though I hesitate to pin a label upon that which does not wear a label well. I will deal with the subject of mysticism in another chapter.

While I resented my husband’s religion of plunging as deeply as possible into experiencing all that life had to offer, he never resisted my seeking my own way to make peace with life. He fully supported me in anything I pursued and that included financially if that was called for. Was he perfect? No, but he was a prince among men and one whom I never really fully appreciated until I could see with new eyes. He and our life together looks so differently to me now as I look back and re-evaluate everything from a different point of view – that is, seeing through new eyes.

My path is what it is day by day minute by minute. And as my new eyes have grown through the years to see yet more clearly, that which has been, is now, or will ever be, changes each time I look at it.

How did I find myself in this enchanted land where nothing is as it seems or seemed, where thorns and roses can abide on the same one stem and be understood? How does one, for example, find in a person or condition or event both the good and bad, the wanted and unwanted, or an adversary and a supporter simultaneously? How can we find both tears and joy in one event? How can we find sense in those things that do not make sense? How can we find the whole in the world of division? Why do we even care about such things? One usually gets the urged to explore beyond what they think they know and understand, because of curiosity or pain or something that they cannot explain. It can be one thing or another of these or combination thereof. What made Alice go through the looking glass or chase the white rabbit? What made Dorothy want to go somewhere over the rainbow to make her way to the city of Oz and the Great Wizard? Whatever it was (and as undefinable as it might be) you know it when it calls your name and urges you out of your familiar comfort zone. As an aside, a “comfort zone” may not be all that comfortable but it is familiar and there is some comfort in the familiar; so, something has to call us to leave that comfort zone and to explore the unknown. So if you hear that call, let us leave behind what we thought we knew and begin the journey to chase the White Rabbit and slide over the rainbow to find the Great Oz.

ON THE WINGS OF LOVE

There is nothing but love
No matter how it may seem
It fills me and from my pores seep
Lifting me so high I can only weep
This is life, a fairy tale dream

Where all is well
Regardless of some pain
The euphoric sounds of harps and strings
Coming from all the living things
Full of Spirit nothing is in vain

So fly with me among the stars
And fill your lungs with pure delight
Cherry blossoms forming a pink clouded bed
A place of delight to lay one’s head
From dark to dawn only Love’s simple light

BABIES AND LOVE

When a new little human enters the world we just go all puddly. We just melt; we get excited; we wonder at the wonder; we speculate about what this child will be and what she will become. So innocent, so vulnerable to the moldings of those who will influence her life. Regardless of the exposure to indoctrination of outside influences, if this child is truly loved – not spoiled with things or her way, but loved, truly loved, wanted, and made welcome by those nearest to her – she will thrive in spite of some of the blows that living the human condition could do to her. She will learn to come to appreciate how different she may be even from her own family and she will complete the plan that will unfurl by the breath of Spirit like a flag in the breeze.

Love brought her into this world. Love will sustain her. Love will carry her through the ups and downs of the highway of life. Love will hold her hand. Love will keep her head above water. Love will light her way. Love will guide her. Love will give her life. Love will accompany her all the days of this human experience and one day Love will deliver her into other arms that will welcome her arrival into that world beyond this.

Love is the answer to any question that may form – always in all ways.

LOVE TURNED INSIDE OUT

I watched the movie “Anna Karenina” the one made for TV in 1985 with Jacqueline Bisset and Christopher Reeve. (So as to not to confuse with other versions you may have seen.) The tragedy of that movie in a nut shell was that Anna allowed the thinking and attitude about women, especially the aristocrats, of that time period – 19th century Russia in this case- consume her with guilt about all her “sins” until it drove her crazy and she threw herself under the train. Her head was full of erroneous thoughts, lies she told herself that all began with, in my opinion, thoughts that she must be punished for breaking the moral code and all for having desired to be with a man who loved her rather than one who thought of her as a trophy wife that was there to make him look good. Many things could be said about this movie depending upon where you are in your understanding of things including your own beliefs about the shoulds and oughts in your path. We all could probably come up with some different ideas and beliefs and thoughts about this version of the story of Anna.

In the long run, I think the most important gem this story has to offer is how we get so caught up in self-condemnation that we literally kill ourselves. That’s love turned inside out or backwards. Life is nothing but choices that bring consequences we are pleased with and those with which we are not pleased. How many have driven themselves mad or to self medicating or self-destruction because they condemned themselves based upon what others believed or what they think was believed about them because of their choices or some other reason?

When you reach that place of not loving yourself for whatever reason, you immediately start on the path of self destruction. You may gamble too much, spend too much, eat too much, risk too much, drink too much, abuse drugs,work too much, drive yourself too much, do unhealthy things, smoke, break laws, and/or project onto others your own pain and anger and do harm to others. Any o.f these will make your life miserable and even kill you. I invite you to consider not being an Anna.  Don’t get it inside out and waste your life.

LIVE NOW

just because one breaths in and out, works at a job, takes a shower, cooks or/and eats a meal, drives a car, shops. goes to church, belongs to a group, rears children, and participates in other activities does not mean that they are truly living or are truly alive.

How often do you just trudge through the day with your mind so full you don’t notice the brightness, the colors, the sounds, the smells, the tastes, the feel, and the wonder of it all? Start making a habit of stopping now and then to appreciate what is around you. Maybe it is a beautiful sunrise or sunset. Maybe it is hearing a baby laugh. Maybe it is a delicious meal or snack. Maybe it is a couple holding hands or a child sliding down a sliding board. Maybe it is the way your cat or dog is playing or sleeping. Maybe it is hug from a good friend. Just be with it, notice it. Don’t try to hold onto it. Just be in the now.

Perhaps you are experiencing something painful or hurtful or full of anger. Maybe you are witnessing someone being unkind to another. Maybe a company you do business with is trying to shaft you. Maybe someone walked out on you. Maybe you can’t stretch your money far enough or your job is killing you this moment. Pleasant or not, just be with it for a moment. Allow it to be what it is without over reacting or trying to push it away.

Allow the feelings that you don’t enjoy as well as the ones you do. Be alive. Be with it for it all passes leaving you with feeling as though you have truly lived. Expect to “see” more of the beauty and the beast will not frighten you or upset you so much. You will find that you will know what to do, how to do it and when to do it regardless of the experience. Live now right in this moment. Let it flow through you and breathe in the peace.  

SWEET MYSTERY OF LIFE

SWEET MYSTERY OF LIFE

Way back in the land of long, long ago, when I was a mere future thought in my parent’s head there were movies called “talkies”. They were the first attempts at movie making that gone from the silent films to having sound tracks and dialog. Somewhere in the 1930s there were two actors Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy who made numerous films together. They ran these old films on TV when I was a child. I remember one film they made in which they sang a song “Ah Sweet Mystery of Life”

The lyrics: Jeanette MacDonald & Nelson Eddy – Ah Sweet Mystery Of Life

Ah, sweet mystery of life
At last I’ve found thee
Ah, I know at last the secret of it all
All the longing, seeking, striving, waiting, yearning

The burning hopes, the joy and idle tears that fall
For ’tis love and love alone, the world is seeking
And ’tis love and love alone that can repay
‘Tis the answer, ’tis the end and all of living

For it is love alone that rules for aye
Love and love alone, the world is seeking
For ’tis love and love alone that can repay
‘Tis the answer, ’tis the end and all of living
For it is love alone that rules for aye

Here in the film are two people who found each other and are “in” love. Love comes in many forms and comes to us and through us in many forms yet there is only one LOVE that comes from one Source and until we find that core, that endless well within us – until we find that Sweet Mystery of Life and surrender to It, become it, we cannot see the infinity of IT. Forms die, forms change, forms turn on us, forms leave but the Love Itself that, as the song says, is the end and all of living. This is what we all seek. How do you “find” It. Ah, now there’s the rub. Are you willing to do whatever it takes? Then you are on the right path. Follow that yellow brick road. More to come in this blog regarding the yellow brick road.

 

PLEASE SAVE ME!

I cannot find my way out of this castle. The moat all around is filled with crocodiles, the guards are many outside of my room. and there are so many rules I tend to break so I am found guilty. The more I am found guilty the more guards there are and the more crocodiles there are in the moat. I used to run free. i used to chase the butterflies. I used to laugh with joy just to hear the music of my voice. But one day I heard the voices outside of me telling me I was not worthy to laugh, nor to fly and chase the butterflies, and that my voice was only noise. Now I am a but a moan in the wound of my soul.

It was the voices of society. It was the raspy growls of the crowd. It was the rejection of yourself that followed all of that indoctrination that built the castle, the moat, the guards and the locks that serve as prison. Free yourself my daughter for what you believe is in your mind, the mind that has been poisoned by a shadow they call ME. It is lies and they never were a part of you. Let the lies go, find ME within your heart. If you will do that, the castle, the moat, the guards will vanish and you shall fly with the birds and flutter with butterflies. You will soar above the raspy growls of the crowd and rest in the palm of the Love that you are. Let your voice spring forth from within you and let it carry the message that this freedom brings,