HAPPY NEW YEAR 2015!

I'm ready! I am blowing the doors off 2015! Every dream! Every wish! Every long held fantasy will see the light of day! I'm marching into 2015 LIKE A BOSS!

Desire Over Reistance: This Writing Life or How I am Moving Into 2015

My Fairy Godmother/WritingCoach/Famous Author/Mentor in our conversation a few days ago, said, "your desire for what you want has to be greater than your resistance for going to get it" This stuck with me. Like a seed planted it just started to grow inside me. Now this is not news or a newsflash. I know this. And yet I just brushed by it. l was always chopping it up to folks just don't understand what I got on my plate What I am going through. And so I would remain stuck with my dreams deferred. I see it all through out my life. The success I've had were because I desired it more than the resistance in going after it. Like Graduate school or great jobs, or other projects.

But somehow I haven't made that leap with other things I desire.... I can see where the resistance has a greater hold. I truly did not want to put in the effort to accomplish my dreams. I wasn't committed to the effort needed for the long haul. That's the truth telling. I wanted results/success/accomplishment with minimum effort. I allowed excuses to be the driver of all things. Even when I felt like shit doing it, I still allowed the excuses to drive me. I KNOW BETTER. But the desires weren't greater than the resistance. I like the fairy tale but was not ready to shift into the reality of the work. Happiness, love, joy, peace, success, purpose, all require a real willingness to go the distance. I have to put myself in the place of allowing these things.... my desires to manifest. I gotta do the work.I am no stranger to work... I am no stranger to determination. I know what hard work can produce. I've experienced it all through out my life.

It also means quit letting people, places and things derail you. My Fairy Godmother/Writing-Coach/Famous Author/Mentor also  said to be mindful of who you share you dreams with... there are folks who are dream killers and dream deferrers. People who are small...think small... live small, dream small and cannot support your big dreams! They will never be able to see what you see. They will only hold you to their smallness. Small people live in excuses in their own lives... holding onto mess and staying trapped in foolishness. They ask why you want to do that? Rather than say how can I help? This last ridiculous mess of a relationship I was in was just this...a dream deferrer. People who have nothing cannot offer you anything other than more nothingness. Especially if everything out of their mouths is criticism, and dream killing. It's like Dorothy getting caught up in the fields of poppies, except there was no pleasure. I have been here before. Different cast...same distractions.

I do not wish to lament the sameness... the going back for more where there is only less. For 2015 my goal will be to layout my desires. To be about the desires of my being.  I am a writer... I desire to write. So write I will. I will deal with the resistance with a structure and a plan. Yes a plan of action.

Season Of Advent: LOVE

One of my favorite books is Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 'Strength To Love" I reread every so often trying to understand where all that love comes from. I wonder if I have that kind of strength? I wonder if I could love without judgement, in the face of great adversity and hatred? I don't know if I can get to that level. I do know I was shocked and stunned to love my children as each one arrived needing me.

I was always so guarded until they arrived. They opened my heart and in came warmth and joy, and real happiness. Unimaginable feelings that I always thought would never be for me. Sure I loved my siblings deeply. We were connected through blood and circumstances... loving them is/was a given. We were thrown together against great odds and survived.

Marriage gave me a glimpse of what love could be like. My then husband was patient on a lot of levels and on some not so much. I learned a lot in those 13 years. As I look back I can take away the things that add value to my life moving ahead. I can leave the things that blocked me and stifled me. That's OK, it all belonged once upon a time. I can hold all of it sacred.

In this mysterious season of advent... this time of waiting for the blessed event of a child who would save us all. I try to think about love in manageable bits and pieces...  still consuming, but also peaceful and calming. Life in God is like that, passionate and hot, peaceful and calm. That is how I imagine and experience love to be. God has given us so many scriptures on love that we are pulled into fiery passionate heart stopping experiences and in the next breath often find ourselves kneeling by still waters. The passion and the peace called love often are found played out in other sacred works by poets and intellectuals alike. We are all witnesses to the burning passions and the calming coolness of love.

I am inviting myself to embrace the passions and the calm together. I am making room at my table for all that love is. I am open to whatever God sets on my table... be it feast or famine. It all belongs.

Season of Advent: PEACE

I used to think peace was the absence of noise... That peace required absolute silence. I would go to great pains to have quiet in order to have peace. I have come to realize that peace isn't something that I can stage and then summon like a circus act. True peace is the inner stillness from within me. It is tapping that wellspring of quiet that already exists that I can step into regardless of what the noise of the world is. I don't have to run away to the quiet, all I gotta do is be the quiet and God meets me there always. Glad to see me.

This is why I can no longer tolerate bullshit from people. Nor can I ever again entertain other folks ridiculous expectations for my life. And I certainly cannot accept wishing someone into my life. All that bullshit and noise no longer disturbs my peace. I have happily walked toward God... glad to make his friendship and truly appreciating his advice and undeserved grace.
That is the beauty of this season of advent... waiting and learning and celebrating!

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

Mother Teresa

Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.

Buddha

Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.

Mahatma Gandhi

Season Of Advent: HOPE

The events of the last few months... and weeks have almost rendered me hopeless. My soul is weary and tired. I am trying to hold onto the wisdom of those that have come before me.. Fannie Lou Hammer, Rosa Parks, Ida B. Wells, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and so many other women warriors. I go back and read their lives and meditate on their words...

Ain't gonna let noting turn me around.... sick and tired of being sick and tired. I hold onto those words like a life raft. I go to my knees in fervent prayer. Oh dear God...save us all.

And then I remember... all shall be well all manner of things shall be well. I have real history with that understanding. it has been my personal experience. This is the season of waiting. This is the season of hope against hope. To lose hope is to lose my humanity. I am not ready to give up. Too many folks on the front lines walking the walk. The Christ story is about not quitting... keeping hope alive even in the face of persecution. Even as frustrated and angry as I am or seem to be getting, deep down I have this sense of Hope stirring in me. Inviting me to keep the faith. Shifting and rolling with the flow even if it hurts or stuns or almost breaks me.

I hope for peace for myself, my family and friends. I hope for peaceful resolutions to the worlds problems. I believe hope is the foundation for moving forward. I hope to fall in love...and stay there. I hope to be prosperous. I hope God never leaves my side....I know he will not.

I hope for goodness and mercy to follow me all the days of my life.