My lenten Journey: Choosing Sacred Over Personal

I already know what makes me happy.  What I want to focus on is what makes me holy.  The actions, the deeds, the thinking and the spirit.  This is a level of spirit maturity that I want to lean into.  How do I define holiness?  How do I make holiness apart of my everyday practical life?

I am not talking about what most are used to... judgement, categories of sin, holier-than-thou mess.  I am talking about real spiritual maturity, where I have no judgements and that my only interest in mankind is that we all love each other.  Love is the bond between me and God, me and my kids, me and my lover, me and the world.

Holiness is the holding of all relationships as sacred, whether I like the person, the object, the place, space or not.  It is well above like or tolerance.  Choosing the sacred over the personal.  Rising above the pettiness of all things that separate me from God.

My Lenten Journey: Fall In Love... Is Everything

Nothing is more practical than finding God, than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way.  What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.

It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you will do with your evening, how you spend your weekends, what you read, whom you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.  Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.  

   

Fr. Pedro Arrupe, S.J. General of the Society of Jesus (as quoted in Everything Belongs, by Richard Rohr)

My Lenten Journey: Let It Go

I am one of those people who will keep at something if I feel defeated.  I just keep fighting, or messin' with or hanging on to things.. people...situations that don't add any positive value to my life. I just want to make things right.  And in trying to make things right as I perceive it, I hold on way longer than is necessary. In my mind I keep thinking surely I can make this work... surely I can just be different, act different and it will be alright.  Sometimes the lessons of my life call for changes.  The struggles show up to point out where the growth ought to occur, or where I need to pay attention.  But I am also learning that there are some lessons that are teaching me to LET IT GO.  There are some situations, people and issues that drain the life out of me.  I just keep trying to plug the holes, when really all I need to do is pull the plug and let the water run out.  It seems so simple in hindsight. I am always amazed at how much time I have wasted trying to plug the holes.

I am closing my eyes, clearing my heart and I am letting it go.  God has my back. Christ went to the cross to take on all my burdens. If I believe this, then letting go is second only to breathing.

My Lenten Journey: My Inner Voice

It begins with trusting my own voice.  It is about having faith in who I am and the experiences I've had. People can express their opinions all day, but at the end of the day it's all about me and God and the conversation we have.

I know what it looks and feels like when someone wants to control me....own me.  I resist because it is unnatural and uncomfortable.  Growth is uncomfortable and positive and necessary.  I know how to tell the difference between inner growth and outer control.

God is all about the inner voice.  The inner growth.  This is where I want to be.

My Lenten Journey: God's Illumination

Whatever I imagine the problem to be is all in my mind.  The only problem that I have is a separation from God.  God illuminates my path... just enough light for the one step forward and one more step forward and one more step forward.....

"God has lit your mind Himself, and keeps your mind lit by His Light because His Light is what your mind is."

— Excerpted from A Course in Miracles

My Lenten Journey: Choosing My Words Wisely

I am been hearing a lot about the words we speak.  Lately I have been hearing this message of using words to bless rather than harm.  This isn't a new message, but it is one that is haunting me at the moment.  So I gotta pause and heed what I am hearing.

God is still speaking.

This weekend was illuminating.  I saw my words harming.  I also so saw my words healing and blessing.  I am coming to realize that when my words are harming, I am not standing in the presence of God... or rather I am ignoring God's presence for my own shit.  I think I am right and justified at popping off at the mouth and I say what I think and feel regardless of their effect.   It is the effect that I am going for... to get attention, to shame, to belittle, to wound.  I think that this way is the way to change behavior.

I wrong.  I am out of order.  Hard words is not the way to go in love. Never Ever.

I want to be in God's presence always.  I must start to choose my words wisely.  In all things, I need to choose my words wisely.

God is still speaking.  So rather than be ashamed, I must change. Be deliberate in my efforts to speak lovingly.  I need to give up the excuse of rushing to judgement, or annoyance, or short-temper.  I have to change.  I have to be thoughtful about the way in which I use words to convey my thoughts and feelings.  I gotta check myself first.

This sacred time of preparedness applies to my everyday practical life.  Lent is about Christ's walk to the Cross, and it is also mine.  These are the burdens I am laying down.  The Journey continues.

My Lenten Journey: Laying Down My Cross(es)

I am using this sacred time to change some patterns of behavior and thinking that for years have driven my decision making.  I am finally accepting the fact I can't change other people's behaviors.  I have no power to fix anybody.  We all must carry our own cross and lay it down.  It is not my role or call to carry someone else's cross.  I cannot cajole, manipulate, or shame anyone into making decisions about their life that are acceptable to me.  I can't do that kind of heavy lifting anymore. And most importantly I gotta let go of the expectation of how I want someone else's life to be lived. 

This sacred time is all about preparation for the risen Christ.  How does that play out in my life?  How do I lay my burdens down and come to the world renewed and reborn.  This is my journey.  This is my charge.

Change is all around me... my body... my weight... my life.  I am not afraid, I am embracing the possibilities. This is indeed preparation for the best life possible.  Laying down my cross in all areas.  Deciding instead to dwell in the mystical garden of love.

My Lenten Journey: What Am I Drawn To?

Oh mystic Rumi, what am I drawn to? What am I seeking?  What is this wanderlust in my bones?

Everyday I awake knowing I am destined for greatness.  Am I ready for that which I am seeking...that is also seeking me?

Change is in the air.  Time of preparation is underway.

My Lenten Journey: Be Still

My Lenten Journey: What I seek....

...is seeking me.

My Lenten Journey: Hannah Brencher: Love letters to strangers

When I saw her a few months ago, I was immediately inspired to write love letters to strangers!  I do this. This is how you change the world... one love letter at a time.

My Lenten Journey: Now Is The Time

Now is the Time

Now is the time to know
That all that you do is sacred.

Now, why not consider
A lasting truce with yourself and God.

Now is the time to understand
That all your ideas of right and wrong
Were just a child's training wheels
To be laid aside
When you finally live
With veracity
And love.

Hafiz is a divine envoy
Whom the Beloved
Has written a holy message upon.

My dear, please tell me,
Why do you still
Throw sticks at your heart
And God?

What is it in that sweet voice inside
That incites you to fear?

Now is the time for the world to know
That every thought and action is sacred.

This is the time for you to compute the impossibility
That there is anything
But Grace.

Now is the season to know
That everything you do
Is sacred.


 'The Gift - Poems by Hafiz the Great Sufi Master'
translations by Daniel Ladinsky 

My Lenten Journey: Farewell Debbie Ford. Thank You.

The bestselling author of self-help book "The Dark Side of the Light Chasers" has died in San Diego. Debbie Ford was 57.

We all will die.  I understand that.  However knowing that doesn't keep the hurt away.  I truly loved Debbie Ford.  She captured my attention.  I hung on her words.  I survived on her words. I prayed with her words.

Thank you Debbie Ford  for sharing your light with me.  You have illuminated my path further.  You have given me enough light for the step ahead.  You have done God's work beautifully.

Thank you Debbie Ford. for sharing your story with me.  We all have a story.  And no story is too big for God.

As I travel on my Lenten Journey I take with me a few words of encouragement by Debbie Ford:

Remember, your soul’s desire is the voice of God. You are being called even in this moment to unveil the next greatest evolution of yourself. You are always being called, but if you are not aware of this divine truth, you will miss out. You do not need to concern yourself with asking how you will step into your greatness, because the divine within you is always close by, whispering your next steps in your ears. As one of my favorite quotes reminds us, “God doesn’t call the qualified, he qualifies the called. #

in The 21-Day Consciousness Cleanse

It’s often hard to recognize our own bad behavior, because we are continually projecting it on others. The more convinced we are of other people’s wrongdoings, the more likely it is that we ourselves are guilty of the same indiscretions. #

in The Shadow Effect: Illuminating the Hidden Power of Your True Self

Debbie Ford - Defying Gravity
(1955 - 2013)

My Lenten Journey: What Does Rest Mean?

As I step into this sacred season of Lent, I am learning the practice of allowing Sunday to be that day of rest.  The day where I put away working and doing and working.  This Sunday I stuck to it.  I rested.  I went to church of course. I think what made it easier to rest is the fact that I am SICK!  And being sick makes me not want to do anything.  Being sick is the legitimate excuse for not doing something.

Can I rest when I am not sick?  That will be the question for next Sunday.  What does rest mean?  And why do I feel so guilty when I do?  That's the problem, allowing guilt to drive away what is necessary and healing for mind, body and soul. 

The guilt I feel is something I make up in my own mind.  Yes, there are forces out there that constantly tell me I lack lack lack.  But I can tune that out.  Lent is a time of preparation.  Letting go of betrayal, sins, wrong-doings.  It is a time to turn to God.  I don't want to turn to God in a frenzied state of mind.  I don't want to pray in desperation.  Rest calms.  Rest settles the spirit.  Rest allows for God's movement in my life.

Rest means be still.  Calm down.  Go easy.  Be kind to myself.  Let go of old wounds, past hurts.  Rest means be fully present in this moment.  Allow my breath to be the only sound.

My Lenten Journey: Eat Pray Love.

“Prayer is a relationship; half the job is mine. If I want transformation, but can't even be bothered to articulate what, exactly, I'm aiming for, how will it ever occur? Half the benefit of prayer is in the asking itself, in the offering of a clearly posed and well-considered intention. If you don't have this, all your pleas and desires are boneless, floppy, inert; they swirl at your feet in a cold fog and never lift.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love 


 “Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love 


“In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible. Pleasure cannot be bargained down. And sometimes the meal is the only currency that is real.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love  


“Your treasure - your perfection - is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the busy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

My Lenten Journey: Pray Or Worry

I cannot do both.  Either I pray and believe. Or Worry and disbelieve.

There is no straddling the fence.  There is no halfway.

Either. Or.

Not both.

I know what it's like to go to bed with so much trouble on my mind.  I know what it is not to sleep for days on end because the fear is so great you don't dare close your eyes to it.  And yet by some miracle I come through feeling foolish and ashamed of the doubt, fear and disbelief that held me hostage.

I have not been racked with that kind of fear and disbelief in a long time.  It does however fear and worry hang out around the fringes of my life.  I must say, I am much more present in my life these days.... I recognize the devil (the negative voices whispering in my mind).

To let Go and Let God is a deliberate revolutionary act of love and faith.  It requires training.  It requires attention.  It requires fortitude and inner-strength.

Prayer.

My prayer life is my life line to God. All prayers... unedited and unfiltered are laid at my alter.... the alter.

The walk of faith is the choice of believing. 

I choose to believe.

My Lenten Journey: Mary Oliver... Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

"Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver

And of course...

My Lenten Journey: Day 1 Ash Wednesday

For the next 40 days I am going to step into holiness.  I am going to take up my cross with all the pain and heartaches, disappointments and sufferings.  Each day I am going to let one or more burdens on my cross go until at the end all I have is a renewed life. I am summoning my divinity to the forefront.  it is time for Rebirth, renewal, reward.

The way to live the life of my dreams is to live the life of my dreams.

40 days. To Fast. To Pray. To Contemplate. To Accept GRACE.

This is always my favorite time.  Some years I am in and some years I am not.  Since this is an answer year, I am decidedly in. There is a depth that awaits me.  Now would be the time to answer the call.  To listen and fully allow God's movement in my life.

I do not have to make stringent rules or layout a plan.  Only to end each day with prayer.  Sit quiet and allow God to speak.  Write in my prayer journal... all the good things I enjoy in my life.  Take up the prayers of those in need and to profess my love for God.  To rise at first light with prayer. Set the tone for holiness through out the day. To walk in truth.  To celebrate with kind words and deeds. 

I am inviting God in as my guest for the next 40 days.  It is my intention to have him be at home in me.  That I might be the dwelling place of Christ. That I become the light of the world.  That my life truly becomes a blessing to someone. I want a new consciousness. I want a new perspective. I want real peace and everlasting love.  I want joy all day.  I want to meet life's challenges with a glad heart.

40 days. To Fast. Pray. Contemplate. Grace.