RESOLUTION

As we approach the ending of one calendar year and the beginning of another, I feel a profound call to carve out some time. I feel called to just sit and consciously be with this transition. It is such a full time of year for me and for our culture. I can feel an unusual level of busyness in my energy system. It is clear to me that it is collective, that is bigger than just me. I also feel a level of dissonance that has a similar collective quality. I feel it as a dissonant chord that is seeking resolution. It is a collective frictional tonality that wants to return to a harmonic. There is tension in the air and in the waves.

So while for many people the idea of a New Year’s resolution is an intention that is most often action based, I feel a deep need to become a resolution in terms of how I relate to the obvious chaos in a world of divisiveness and discord. 2017 has been a year of great upheaval and shadow exposure. The Field is seeking to right itself by exposing what is keeping us all from humming at our highest level. Masses are pitted against masses. Violence is widespread and pervasive. An investment in being right is the great divide. A tiny percentage of people are obscuring the advantages of the many. Greed is the current god that is governing. Disempowerment is a weapon that is erupting into war. At the relative level it needs to. Inequality is a travesty against truth. It must be exposed.

All of this is registering in our hearts, our minds, and our bodies. It is tense. It is even wrenching. And each of us must choose, at our current level of consciousness, how we are going to relate to it.

It requires courage. It requires conviction. It requires commitment. As we choose to have a wakeful relationship with all of this discomfort we have the possibility of resolving pieces of this energy. In order to do so we must be more in our bodies than in our minds. We must stay with the discordant energy without deadening or commentary. We must rely on the Great Source Conductor for the managing of our own internal orchestration. Dissonance gives way to harmonics when we stop resisting and allow for a transition within our own energy fields. Banging away at the same cacophonous chord will only bring more of it, at even greater volume. Allowing for a mindful, prayerful response will bring the chord to resolution and harmony.

And so my resolution for the New Year is to be even more resolved. To allow for a resolution of the dissonance that is occurring in me. I am allowing a restoration of harmony and even unity inside of me. The Universe is Music and so am I. It is all energy. I commit to being a space in which my non-resistance can result in peace, resolution, harmony, renewal. Being privy to the chaos doesn’t mean I become it. Being privy to the chaos means I am a part of the whole that consciously brings resolution out of dissonance and division.

Resolution is my resolution. Contribution is my result.

BEFRIENDING THE DARK

On this Solstice Day I am clearly recalling that as a child I had an unusually friendly relationship to darkness.

While many children fear the dark and what might be lurking I loved the darkness for a very specific reason. Let me explain.

In early elementary school I received a toy car dashboard for Christmas. It was designed to sit on your lap, and it had a steering wheel, a working horn, and flashing turn signals. I particularly loved those flashing turn signals. I would take my dashboard down into the basement, turn off all of the lights, and then steer my way down imaginary roads. I occasionally would honk my horn at something or someone. But I made a lot of turns, primarily so that I could use my turn signals. By going down into the dark basement, that context allowed me to clearly see the contrast of the darkness with the chosen flashing lights. My mother would ask me why I didn’t play with the car in my bedroom. I simply told her I preferred driving down in the cellar which I found to be a whole lot more fun.

As an adult I am navigating in a world of great darkness. It isn’t physical darkness per se. But a great darkness it is indeed. I do not feel fear this darkness. I wouldn’t say I prefer it by any means. But it is here and so I navigate it by making moment by moment choices for Light. I stay conscious in my steering. And I now have something the makers of my dashboard couldn’t have dreamed of.

I have a GPS.

I internally plug Divine Will into my God-Presencing-System, and then I listen and feel my way through the darkness mostly unafraid. I use the darkness as contrast for my own Light. I do not deny or seek to suppress the darkness. I simply steer by intuition, and use the Light to guide my way. I use the darkness, and it no longer uses me. And so to the darkness I say: “you have no authority over me for I am using you as a way to shine brightly in this world.”

And so on this Solstice Day I thank my little boy for teaching me not to steer clear of but to steer consciously in.

WORDS

Even as I begin to type these words I am aware that I have little to say.

As a minister preparing for one of the busiest and most profound seasons of the year, I sense a bit of weariness around finding yet another way to tell a story that is vastly beyond words.

So why am I writing this, and why am I continuing to take up space on a platform that could perhaps better be filled by someone more articulate than I?

Because the images of this season have taken root deep within my consciousness, and the shoots of embodied expression are pushing up through the ground of my humanity. Presence is seeking to be particularized. The wonder of Advent is seeking to become word and word. The luminosity of Hanukkah and of Christmas is moving in me and impelling me to shine forth in every way I can. The expression of the Light is an impulse that I cannot and will not suppress.

And so I say yes. I say yes to the feebleness of words and sermons and stories. I open to find a way to incarnate the Source Illumination that is rushing through my heart and mind and voice. I will, I must find a way to share, however inadequately, what is most important in my Soul.

I celebrate these holidays not by talking about their meaning. I celebrate these holidays by being their meaning. I bring the history into my present reality. I live from the archetypal patterns and I walk the path and I sing the songs and shine the Light.

I do so imperfectly. But I do it. I open to be it with every breath and every word and every feeble expression.

It is my devotion. It is my purpose. It is my life.

And so here are my words. Here is my expression. I hope you can feel the heart behind them.

And if you can there is truly nothing to say.

HAPPY THANKS-LIVING

I love the very specific felt-sense surrounding the holiday of Thanksgiving. For me it has little to do with eating or parades, and nothing to do multiple football games. There is energy around and permeating it that I have grown to deeply relish. It wasn’t always so. It used to be the precursor to the far more elaborate Christmas season. Symbolically, the Macy’s parade said it all: get through Thanksgiving and on to Santa!

The Thanksgiving energy that is so precious to me now is the result of some very specific practices. I have shared many of these practices with the church that I now lead. I have for the past three years invited those interested into an experience I call the “Grat-I-Challenge.” There are seven practices that I invite our congregation to engage in, practices that have literally created new grooves in my consciousness over the years. I do not only engage in these during November. I do intensify them during this season. They are very specific ways of expressing gratitude not only to others but also to ourselves.

During November I contact at least one person per day to directly express how much they mean to me. I call, write, or email. I put my thankfulness into words, and I make sure I am heard.

I keep a daily gratitude journal, something I have done all year for many years.

I make multiple donations to organizations that mean something to me. I do that in the name of others, and at least once as a way of honoring myself.

I give added attention everyday actively looking for things in life to thank. This is by no means limited to people. I thank birds, trees, bodies of water, lattes, whatever. It feels fantastic to me, and I know it energetically touches whatever I am blessing.

I also specifically look for the blessing I know is contained within every challenge. Because of Grace, everything is God-permeated. Nothing happens outside of Source. In that recognition I thank in advance the inherent blessing in everything that happens. I thank the Good that is bound to appear.

These are some of the ways I turn Thanksgiving into Thanks-Living! I am committed to live IN a state of thankfulness. Gratitude as context. Blessing as a state of being. When I am spiritually awake I am grateful. It is a perfect barometer.

And so it is from this place of inner Thanks-Living that I wish you a most rich and profound Thanksgiving holiday. Be sure to take a moment during it and thank yourself for being yourself. You are a precious gift of life to life. There is only one of you. I am grateful for our connection.

CONTEXTUAL APPRECIATION

For the past three years here at the church I serve I have invited people to join me in what I call a month long Grat-I-Challenge. We begin on November 1st , and the invitation is to engage seven different practices, most daily, that will heighten the awareness and experience of gratitude. As I write this blog it is the eighth day of the month and I already feel a palpable and vital increased aliveness within me as a result of these practices. I have kept a daily gratitude journal for many years. I make it a consistent practice to look for the good in every challenge. These are two facets of the Grat-I-Challenge which certainly are not new to me. It does seem, however, that when I am especially and intentionally ensconced in what I like to call Thanks-Living my days are Lighter and my energy more co-creatively focused.

So it reaffirms in my awareness that living in conscious relationship to gratitude, to appreciation, to blessing, to praise is not something that is reserved for one day or one month of the year. Every day is a day for thanks-living. Every day is a day in which I get to consciously look for the goodness and the blessings that I know are constantly surrounding me. Every day is a day to express gratefulness to those around me. Gratefulness not only for things they may do but for simply being who they are. Praising raises the vibration of everything around me because first it raises my own energetic frequency.

I always have a chance and a choice of how to respond to what is happening. It may not seem that way at times. Because we have functioning reptilian brains we all get triggered. We all have times when the internal seas are rough. We all have preferences that are not met. These are the times for me when I need to go deeply into my heart-center, breathe very consciously, and make the switch from content to context. From my Deeper Self I can appreciate that life is unfolding perfectly even when it seems out of control and my personal demands are not being met. I do not pretend to like what is. When I am not concealed in pretense I can expand into a context that attunes to my Higher Self, accepts what is as it is, and then appreciate the greater flow of life that I allow through my acceptance to move through me.

This too shall pass. When I am living from context and from a spacious appreciation I know beyond preference or programming that this too shall pass. This includes what I prefer as well as what I resist. In contextual appreciation it is a wondrous passing show that I can fully engage yet not be trapped in. This too shall pass, and, it is all for good. Two Truths that keep me centered and atone. I appreciate that I am here to appreciate in the sense of becoming more. As I bless what is I am blessed for certain.

I so appreciate you reading my musings, whether you agree with me or not. I appreciate you whether I know you or not. I appreciate that we have this perhaps momentary connection within a shared humanity. I appreciate you for being you.

MY PRIMARY PRACTICE: YOU

I have never been clearer about my purpose for being in this world. And that purpose coincides with my greatest challenge.

You. Alright, that is a relative truth. But in practice it points to what is my most difficult aspect of an authentic and an actualized spirituality.

Loving you.

I am here to love you exactly as you are.

Now I know that I can only love you as much as I am able to love myself. I get that. And Divine Love is a continuum and a dynamic that is beyond linear or logical reason. Whether I frame it as loving myself or loving you the foundation is the same. It is a choice to tap, to sync, and to open into Love. It is really not a subject to object relationship. While we may speak of loving God that is again a largely relative concept. You can only love God to the extent that you are loving Love. And you can only love Love to the extent that you are loving yourself and loving the other. So we are right back to the greatest challenge.

Loving you.

So the authenticity of my spirituality isn’t in how good I try to sound or how consistent my church face is or how many gurus’s I can quote. It is in how I am treating you. It is in how I am treating and speaking about those who I disagree with or who disagree with me. It is in the degree to which I follow through on the impulse to gossip, retaliate, and belittle. My spiritual authenticity is in my relationship to what is going on in here, regardless of what is going on around me. My awakening is reflected in how I treat you when you may be coming against me. It is reflected in what I say about you when you are not here to hear it. It is challenged by my belief in my own opinions, my identification with my own projections.

My God is only as good as is my treatment and my caring of you.

And that is a radical practice. Ideologies abound that I find repugnant. Bigotry, prejudice, injustice, greed are flourishing. They are characterized and embodied by those who are sourced from the same Source as am I. My forgetfulness of that truth will result in not only my dehumanization of you but also in my stripping people of their very Divinity. I cannot claim to love God-Love and then denigrate you. That is delusional. And it is dangerous.

And so day by day I face those who do not treat me the way I think I should be treated. I face those whose opinions, ideologies, morals, ethics, and politics I find objectionable. And my practice is to come to in the face of all of that. My practice is to pray into the distinction between the ideology and the person. My practice is to bring an awakened presence to the programming and conditioning so that I can see beyond it.

God-Love is my practice. It always begins with acceptance. It begins with accepting my own rejection-recoil of you based on my paradigm. Accepting that in the moment I do not love you, that I do not even like you. From that place of self-acceptance a different and a higher presence and relationship can flow forth. I am willing to accept you, and even come into love with you. I cannot do that at the personality level. It requires that I access the Source of all Love.

And so this is the dance I am here to do. This is my primary practice. My practice is courageously facing the fact that I am temporarily disconnected from Love, and then praying my way back into it. Your picture is on my altar and you are my messiah.

My primary practice is truly and deeply loving you.

IS IT HEARTBREAK?

With all the tragedies and devastation that have been unfolding in our world lately, I have been feeling waves of discomfort in my heart center like I haven’t felt in quite some time. Several years ago I had a series of losses in a very short period of time. I began to have sometimes serious chest pains that resulted in a visit to a cardiologist. The doctor confirmed my suspicions that the pain had nothing to do with the physical organ of my heart. “There is nothing wrong with your heart other than heartbreak.”

I guess that was supposed to be comforting.

Today as I type these words I feel a vague tightening in my chest and back. I am more than certain that there is nothing wrong with my physical heart. And from this perspective I also know that it is not heartbreak.

Our hearts in fact do not break.

Okay, hearts become diseased, go into arrest, and indeed eventually stop. But they do not emotionally break.

What breaks are the protective shells we have inadvertently encased our sensitive heart-centers with. The armor breaks. The defenses crack and the walls slowly begin to fall. The layers of protection we have built to keep us from the inevitable pain of being human at some point begin to shake and loosen. The effect of that process is indeed experienced as sensations of pain, indeed, waves of sometimes serious pain. Radiating pain that often feels like an internal quaking. It is scary. We try to stop it by running to doctors or taking medications or retreating into spinning mental stories. We will try anything to lessen the effects of what really amounts to a deep level of spiritual awakening.

So right now I feel the waves. Is it heartbreak?

It is heart opening. It is heart awakening. It is the deep wisdom of the heart recognizing its place in a world filled with pain, loss, and torment. The heart doesn’t look with pity on what is happening over there. It feels with empathy what is happening right in here. Spiritually there is no over there. I am connected and I am awakening to that connection. I am feeling what is happening around the globe and my heart is telling me it is time to participate in the pain. It is time to compassion and to transmute some of that pain by bringing down the barriers I have built to shield myself from it.

Now I am typing these words in an air conditioned office wearing dry clothing and with a full stomach. I have a chilled glass of clean drinking water beside my computer. And yet my heart also feels the trauma for those who have none of that right now. And with my creature comforts in place my heart still aches. And I can authentically report that I am grateful. I have no desire to look the other way. I welcome the direct experience of my shared humanity. I welcome this pain as direct evidence that I am awakening to the reality of Oneness. Not a gold-gilded concept but a felt-reality of the broad spectrum of what can happen in a human experience.

So this is not heartbreak. It is my deepest heart feeling the hearts of hurting people around the world. I am grateful to no longer seek to deaden this discomfort. I am thankful to have moved beyond casting platitudes or only sending a check that assuages my guilt and stifles my caring. I send money for sure. But I do so staying connected to the massive quantities of loss and suffering that are pervasive on our shared planet at this time. I am not there, and yet I am. And I am choosing to stay with the pain and with the connection.

This pain in my heart tells me I am alive and I am awakening. I care. I can let myself care and I can let myself hurt. It is so worth the feeling of connection to my fellow beings in this horrid and wondrous human dilemma. It is so worth the waves of pain that tell me I am one.

MY PERSONAL STORM TRACKING

Everything is energy. Everything. I am energy. I am a field of energy in an Infinite Energy Field.

When energy becomes informed it becomes matter. Always.

When I interact with matter I interact with energy within my field and within THE Field. So how I interact has a direct effect on what I am interacting with. My attention energizes. Not only my attention, but the WAY in which I attend. This is the physics of attention.

As I awaken spiritually I become more and more responsible for what happens in my personal energy field. I claim responsibility for what I am focusing on and most importantly HOW. My quality of attention is always and in all ways a contribution. HOW I focus informs energy. HOW I choose to focus transforms energy.

A hurricane is energy. It is informed energy called storm. While physical factors, which are non-reflective consciousness, play a role in it for sure, so does consciousness. Self-reflective consciousness and choice transform energies. So how I focus on this thing called a hurricane plays a big part in what happens with it.

If I focus fearful, reactive, combative energy on it the field called hurricane grows stronger. If I feel it churning in my gut, and yet choose to bring peace and acceptance to it, the energy called storm becomes transmuted.

This does not mean I do not take human actions and precautions. And while I may do so I consciously, wakefully focus my attention and energy on this field within my field and softly, firmly say PEACE, BE STILL. I do not hope it goes elsewhere. I do not fight it with resistance and fear.

I see it as an informed field of energy currently called Irma and I realize it is the same essential energy as am I.

And so I allow the peace within my heart to become the peace I give to this storm. Energy meets energy. Information is transformed with prayerful peace.

If the majority of human energy fields focuses fearfully and fitfully it strengthens the storm and draws it toward us. If a critical mass number of self-reflective beings join in feeling and saying PEACE BE STILL the information will calm and the stormy energy with dissipate.

Forecast becomes prophesy. So does prayer.

Peace be still. In here, and so out there.

PEACE BE STILL.

WHAT MATTERS MOST

From this sixty year old perspective I sometimes look wistfully back on what feel like a whole lot of lost opportunities. It feels as if there were so many wasted years in which I was lost in my own limiting story. I lived years with a closed, protected heart. I always felt like I was here on this planet to serve and to make a difference. But I was too fearful, too cut off, to hidden to really be effective. There was an internal battle being waged between what was seeking expression within me and how willing or capable I was to be seen and heard and really felt.

And so I hid. I medicated in countless ways, pretended, defended, and played small while acting big. I deadened in so many ways and then wondered why I couldn’t feel the Love I believed my Source to be. I tried to look as good as possible. I tried to sound good, make good, and pretend I was good, all the while covering over what did not in any way feel good to me.

Years ticked by and opportunities to love were lost. I lived stretched by a tension, by a deep and continuing call to release the shroud of protection and to then step up and out in what was essential and authentic inside of me. As much as I wanted to do just that the fear was often paralyzing.

And then one day a crack in the armor began what was to be my great unveiling. I began to deeply examine how I had been living. I began to be gifted with the courage needed to go into the interior places that most needed my caring attention. I began to reclaim all the disowned parts of myself. I took back my projections and got honest about the people and circumstances I blamed for my self-induced torment.

I asked bigger questions and my life got bigger. I re-evaluated my priorities and prayerfully sought the strength to live by what I discovered matters most. I fearfully yet consistently began to allow myself to be seen, heard, and felt. I risked exposure. I became less and less defended. I became willing to love first, to love beyond return or condition. I found hidden beneath all of the deadening a life that was seeking to serve as love. Beneath the pretense was the presence I had always longed to become and to serve.

I do not love perfectly, no, far from it. Yet I know it is what matters most. I know it is my purpose. Now when the fear arises I rarely reach for one of the old compensating reactions. I bring an acceptance to the fear that softens it without deadening it. My goal isn’t to never fear. My goal is to love beyond the fear. To not let fear prevent me from serving, giving, being the love I know I am meant to be. The ability to be with my own fear allows me to stay with and to compassion yours.

I guess this awareness and this increased capacity to love and to serve are the currency that turns those lost years into the price I paid to reopen. What feels lost is now a literal part of my spiritual gain. It took what it took. I look back with a tear and a smile. I look back with a determination to never hide in those ways again.

And I look forward with a stunning clarity about what matters most to me. I am here to love. I am here to open and yes, to close, and to reopen again and again in love. I am here to be imperfectly perfect in a state of essential, authentic love. To waste no more time in hiding or pretending or defending. Whatever time I may have left will be spent in service of love.

And that is what matters most.

MY UNDOING

In an age of internet and social media the ability to join energies and co-create experience is profound. And it could well be my undoing.

With an increasing barrage of information and energy it is a full time job to stay awake and present. Chaotic forces are blurring the mind and shuttering the heart. This is happening at the macro level and has a direct effect within every living micro-being.

As dualistic humans we have an equal opportunity to generate either darkness or light. We are receivers and transmitters both. Everything in manifest creation is energy, and so energy is always moving and being transformed. This can happen as darkness being transformed to Light, and it also happens as Light being drawn to darkness. The current predominant force in collective human consciousness is fear and darkness. It is grief. It is disconnection. This is our suffering. And at the highest level it is my opportunity for choice.

I feel the waves of fear, darkness, grief, and disconnection moving within me. I see manifestations of them everywhere. I hear their voices all around me. I see them posting themselves, their veracity going viral. As I allow the free movement of these energies within me I move into conscious relationship with them. They are not what I am. They are not what you are. And there is an enormous identification with them for the masses. Some are fighting for them, and some are fighting against them. There is a ferocious level of fight.

It is seductive to join in the fight. And it is the fight impulse that is increasing the energy fed into the objects of attention. I become what I fight against. I join my energies into the fear and darkness. The greater potential is that I also become what I take a stand for. Same dynamic. Radically different outcome.

And so I feel these energies and I lean into the feel. I relate to the energy, and not to what I think is sourcing it. I attend to the places it tends to lock in me. I reclaim my transferences and projections. I become a conduit for these energies to be transmuted.

I am willing for this chaotic time in history to undo me. Yes, I am willing to be undone.

I am willing to see and feel the effects of my own programming. I am willing to take responsibility for the energy I am putting into the field. I am willing to have the True Source shine through me and to extend Its Light into all of this fear, darkness, grief, and disconnect. I am willing to allow my Being to be a beacon.

So every wave I feel, every post I read, every fight I see is a miraculous possibility for me to contribute peace. It is an opportunity for me to shine the Light and to spread the love. It is a chance for me to use my place within the One to generate and to give Sourced energy.

In so doing my sense of separation is diminished and my conscious doing is in actuality my ego-undoing. My autonomy becomes an opening to intimacy. My every moment becomes my contribution. I choose how I show up and what I transmit.

So unknot me, life. Undo me now. I am stand for Light, compassion, love, and peace. I am stand for what I ultimately am.

LET IT GO?

The Academy Award winning song from the movie Frozen is looping through my consciousness today. While its singer Idina Menzel is one of my favorites I never saw the movie nor do I have a recording of the song Let It Go. And yet it is informing my inner environment today, and so I embrace that it is in some way a message meant for me.

Or is it?

To think in terms of trying to let something go indeed freezes me. It just isn’t a helpful admonition for me personally. It invokes a bit of the dear-in-headlights dynamic. Whenever my mind goes to the concept of letting go I immediately feel an increased level of stress regarding whatever the current stimulus is. Seeking to let something go is like tightening a vice grip while also turning up the resistance. For me letting go is yet another control device in an over packed psychic tool bag.

As I type these words I hear the faint serenade of Idina in the background of my awareness. “Let it go, let it go: can’t hold it back anymore…”

While letting go often feels futile for me I can most certainly let it be. I can bring an allowing and compassionate attention to what is before me. I can feel into the impulse of wanting to push away what is not preferred. I can choose to stay with that impulse, doing nothing to engage it. I can breathe into the resistance, allowing the energy to be and so to expand and soften. I can let go of the grip for sure, and I can let be the subsequent freeing relationship.

When I truly choose to let be a grace-filled activity always begins to move gently within me. I surrender the notion that I know what needs to be let go. I surrender the illusion that I am ever in control. As I surrender in faith I can let everything and anything simply be as it is. And the result is always peace. The result is always freedom. The result is always ease.

And so today I let it go by simply letting it be. I let go the idea that of myself I know what is best for me or anyone around me. I let go the concept that I know what I really even need to let go of. I let go of trying to let it go.

In letting be a whole new level of Power is revealed. And it is that Power that I will not hold back anymore.

I am letting be in peace, in calm, in faith. It thaws the frozen places of resistance, and I am grateful. And I think Idina just might agree.

ODE TO MR. STILLINGS

As much as social media can sometimes be off-putting it is also frequently a valuable source of information. Such was the case this week when I happened to see an obituary posted for my high school choral director Mr. Stillings. I am fully aware of his first name and yet forty two years after graduation it still doesn’t feel seemly to use it in reference to him. He is still and always my teacher and one of my first mentors; my Mr. Stillings.

I began singing at an early age, and had already recorded a gospel album by the time I was fifteen. When I got into high school I was a pre-college arts major, heavily involved in the schools vocal music programs. Though I had already been singing professionally for some time before my placement audition I froze when asked to sing for Mr. Stillings. It was only scales, but my pulse raced and my throat clutched. Mr. Stillings was polite and kind and placed me in the first tenor sections of the choir, men’s choir, and vocal ensemble.

My second year the school had selected Oklahoma as the spring musical production. The ensemble was singing through the score prior to auditions and I was apparently belting out the familiar tunes with more unreserved gusto than I realized. I barely noticed that Mr. Stillings was peering over the top of the spinet piano with a quizzical look on his face, even as he continued to perfectly play the score without missing a note.

After the session Mr. Stillings asked to speak to me. “Where did that come from?” I felt the creeping up of the internal freeze as he asked the question with an indeterminate intensity. “What,” I asked? “That voice” he said. “Where have you been hiding that beautiful voice?”

I can feel the question to this day. It wasn’t that anyone had never complimented my singing before. But I held Mr. Stillings in high musical regard and I had feared what his assessment might be of my musical capabilities.

“You need to stop hiding that voice and use it. You have it for a reason. And I will expect you to fully use it from here on out.”

I was then cast as the male lead of Oklahoma, a role I never got to play as the result of an emergency knee surgery. But the gift had been given and the lesson had been learned. It was the first time I realized that any talents I might possess are given to me to be fully given. Hiding and withholding my gifts dishonors the Great Creator and the very act of ongoing creation. I am here to shine forth with the radiance of God in whatever form that may take.

As a result of Mr. Stillings counsel I went on to sing out loud for many years. I had many wonderful directors, teachers, and coaches during that time. But it was his affirmation that propelled me forward into a musical and entertainment career. Modest as that career was, it reflected the admonition of my mentor who had the courage and wisdom to confront me in my hiding.

Even as I type these words I realize that when I left the entertainment industry to engage in full time ministry I have once again been mostly hiding my musical gifts. Hearing that Mr. Stillings is now gone from the earth re- ignites his advice within my heart. I can see and feel him looking over his spinet and into my soul. His question lands differently now. “Where did that come from?” The voice and the passion came from Source. The loving prod came from Mr. Stillings.

I will sing again, Mr. Stillings. With whatever voice I have left I will not hide. Music is a gift of the Creator, and I will sing for It and for you. I will sing to thank you and to honor you, to keep your teachings alive and active in me. I know your influence is singing in countless other grateful students.

And I know you sing on as well.

A LITTLE TOO REAL

“You are a little too real for me.”

That is one of the nicest things someone has said to me in a long time.

Some years ago that comment well might have shattered me. It most certainly would have sent me back into closure. I would have gone back into hiding, reapplying the mask that I had momentarily dared to remove.

I lived decades of my life trying to be what I thought you wanted me to be. My protective coating was everything. I had made the equation that to be real and authentic was to be rejected. And so I played the role I needed to play in order to have a small yet tenuous sense of belonging. The problem was that then I never really belonged within myself. I lost track of who I really was and what was true for me. The roles were circumventing my reality. It was a toxic dishonesty. And it was exhausting.

It took a long time to rediscover who I am and what is real, authentic, and vital in here. It has been risky. It has been scary. And it has been liberating. I no longer base my sense of belonging on what you want me to be. On how you think I should show up or what you think of my choices. I am not interested in being a member of a club that requires that I be anything different from just what I am. I have gotten real.

That is displeasing to many people that are still in hiding. Vulnerability scares many of those who are still wearing a mask. Authenticity is frightening when it veers from the social norms. I no longer want to save face. That can be unnerving. And for me it is nonnegotiable. I am committed to finally staying true to what is essential in here. I am devoted to showing up openly and unarmored. I am strong enough now to prefer rejection over pretense. I am done hiding.

Take me or leave me. This is what I am and who I am meant to be. I am more than willing to see and to embrace the authentic you, and it is my sincere desire that you will give me that option. If you are not yet ready for that level of sharing I completely understand. But I am not going to pour myself into a mold that keeps you comfortable. If I am a little too real for you than I am peaceful with walking away, heart open and head up.

It is for me a beautiful realization that I have finally reached a point where I can show up as me. As is, real. And I am willing to risk being a little too real for you.

FEAR AS FRIEND

I was listening intently to someone sharing about a deep fear they were experiencing. As I recall they actually stated that it was a deep they “were having.” While staying present to what this person was saying I also recognized that a subtle something was moving inside of me that was equal parts startling and liberating. It first presented itself as the awareness that I rarely find myself in an experience of fear anymore. I do not claim to be totally free of fear. It just isn’t something that has its hold on me very often.

As the awareness continued to unfold I could feel how after many years of persistent practice and committed emotional work what has shifted is that I no longer fear the experience of fear itself. That is really the miracle.

I was fear bound for much of my life. It is only from this current perspective that I realize that I was not only imprisoned by fear. That was its own type of hell. I was also profoundly fearful of the internal experience of fear. It left me feeling so vulnerable, out of control, anxious. Yes, anxious. That is it. My profound fear of fear resulted in the experience of anxiety.

From this anxious place I became a spider hanging in the fear-based stories I was telling myself. I was telling dread-filled stories, scary stories. They were past-fueled stories with even more dire endings. I couldn’t seem to stop the spin. And so I spun the webs in consciousness and then caught matching circumstances in the webs of my own making.

What I feared the most was actually myself. The horrid things I told myself. I was scaring myself with what I was saying but was too lost in the fear to stop the narrative. And so I lived in fear of fear.

I don’t live that way anymore. I have stopped telling myself stories that scare me. I have forgiven enough of my past that it doesn’t fuel my present or get projected into my future. I have enough internal space to watch and not get caught in believing my narrative.

But mostly my freedom comes from having moved beyond the fear of fear. I have become friendly with it. I do not see it as an enemy. In fact, I welcome it as a guiding friend. When I simply lean into it there is always gold to be gleaned. When I move with the energy there is guidance to be had. Embracing the fear I no longer find myself anxious or in knots. I may still have an experience of fear but it no longer has me.

As with any uncomfortable emotion as soon as I release the resistance the energy is free to move in and through me. It is indeed possible to make fear a friend. I know. I have done just that. And though it is a friend that only pays an occasional visit I have learned to welcome it when it shows up. And with every visit if always leaves a gift.

A DEEPENING DESIRE

Every morning I awaken with a deep and consuming desire to know my Source more and more intimately. It is a longing that feels much bigger and way stronger than me. It is there, persistently, each and every day. No matter how much more profoundly I feel the Source frequency in my heart and in my being there is a call inside of me for more.

Always and in all ways it is calling for more. More depth, more intimacy, more union, more merging, more God. I want to be a wave that goes back down into the Sea of One. I surf these feelings each day in deep appreciation of where I am and where I am being called to dwell. I recognize in wonder that as this pull, this desire is so much bigger and stronger than me, I am being desired by Source Itself! I am being called home to Source and to Self. The Will of the One is moving in me, beseeching me, inviting and cajoling me to say yes to What It Is. I am being called to experience the depth of What I am. Source is longing to know the fullness of Itself. This is a ceaseless longing that cannot ever be fully suppressed. It does not seek to dominate, but it does ask for cooperation. It asks for co-creation. It asks that the separate sense of self be surrendered in service of a grand awakening into the Universal One.

There were times in my life when I could not tolerate longing, especially longings for which I could not force fulfillment. Now I relish this tension. I know that the initiation of the longing is also the source of its fulfillment. And so I court this feeling. I lean into it. I breathe it and I open fully into it. It is my prayer. The longing is my prayer. The desire is my prayer. The beseeching is my prayer. And I say yes.

Not just with my head. Prayer is not of my head. It is an embodied yes, a vulnerable yes, a wide-open yes. I am not interested in a God-concept in my head. I’ve been there and it was cold and deadening. I am saying yes to a God-movement in my heart and in my body. I want an untamed mysticism coursing through me as Love Itself.

I want to be out of control with desire, out of control with this ceaseless longing. I want my prayer to be an out of control opening into a deep, intimate experience of What Source is as It becomes fulfillment in me. That is why I am here. That is my purpose. That is my passion.

And so every morning I awaken to a deep and consuming desire to know my Source. And every morning and throughout each day I say yes to allowing my Source to live as me. I release control and I lean into the love. My life is a prayer of Yes.

And so it is.

THE WAIL

I grew up with the “if you don’t stop crying I will give you something to cry about” style of parenting. I am beyond needing to judge that. I had parents who rarely allowed themselves to cry, and couldn’t abide by seeing their children cry either. I know that the cry-aversion was then amped up by being born male. “Big boys don’t cry.” Regardless.

Trying to apply those directives was for years nothing less than excruciating. Male or not I was born with a sensitive heart that had direct access to my tear ducts. My natural response was to cry when I was happy, cry when I was sad, cry when I witnessed any type of heroism or transcendence. Though I tried myriad ways to suppress those inclinations my attempts only led to a temporary deadening of not only those feelings, but all feelings in the emotional spectrum. For me to deeply feel was to frequently be led to tears. When I attempted to mitigate that impulse I paid a huge energetic price. Life became gray. I lost access to compassion, to joy, and to deeper levels of love. In disconnecting from my natural emotional language I lost the power of felt connection. I disengaged. I unplugged. Though there was an illusion of safety in that there was also a feeling of death.

I am grateful today to allow full access to my heart-centered response to life. That response includes a fair amount of tears. To keep it real with you my readers it also includes a not so infrequent sob. Alright, even an occasional wail. I am a big boy AND I cry. And whether I choose to cry or not in any given circumstance there seems to be no shortage in life of things to cry about. And I have found that the ability to be able to live deeply enough to allow for a full and even holy-water response to life is a gift beyond measure. It is evidence to me that I am alive and that I am fully engaged. That life is touching me and I am allowing it to do so. My tears are evidence that my heart is open and my compassion is flowing. To live in a world or guns, violence, terrorism, brutality, bigotry, and inequality brings me to tears. I don’t personally aspire to be deadened to it or disengaged from it. I know it is the realm of the relative, but it is that realm that I as a human am a part of. I watch the things happening in our world and my sensitive heart hurts. Tears come to my eyes as droplets of caring. Sometimes I even just have to let myself ugly cry. And sometimes it is beauty that brings about an almost equal torrent.

As I look at this world today I feel as if we as cosmic citizens need to allow for a full and unedited collective wail. A wail that is loud and messy and unrestrained. I feel as if it would go a long way to acknowledging and so healing the collective pain we have tried to deaden and endure. Our separation from our deeper selves, from our collective pain, from our common humanity needs to be grieved. It’s either that or we will continue to act out on the rage that comes from the inability to be with our sadness.

What would it be like to allow for a good, long, unsuppressed, collective wail? The whole of the human family joining to cry our substantial grief and to finally give way to the sadness that has accumulated for centuries? How might we hold each other in the process? What might be available on the other side? Peace. Maybe on the other side of the wail there will be peace. The stillness that follows a storm will fall upon our hearts and on our earth. Violence will cease and harmony will prevail.

The thought of such beauty brings me to tears.

HURTING PEOPLE HURT

I have often heard it said that hurting people hurt people. I do suppose that it is true. What we do not transform we will indeed transmit. What I am not able to really be with internally will become an external target. It is unfortunate at a deep level, and yet there is a deeper truth to this that most often goes unacknowledged.

While hurting people hurt other people in the process of becoming conscious it is also hurting people who help others at the deepest and most profound levels. A big part of my spiritual awakening has been about increasing the capacity to sit with and to stay with the pain surrounding my heart. I grieve the number of people that became targets of my projected grief, rage, and torment. I didn’t know that all of that blame was an ill-attempt to displace the pain from inside of me. If I could believe that you were the problem I didn’t have to bear the brunt of realizing it was me. I didn’t have to take responsibility for my part in energetically calling forth the cast of characters that would assist in my unshrouding. I didn’t have to be accountable for my misperceptions and my own self-aversion.

It wasn’t until a painful and horrifying truth began to dawn that the way to freedom became at first subtly visible. While blaming and hurting others was in some ways easier it was also a way of staying in a self-constructed prison. While it would seem that casting the pain out would alleviate it in here it actually amplified it. Hurting you hurt me even more deeply. Pain is pain. It ultimately isn’t about your pain or my pain. It is THE pain. Hurt is THE hurt. Until I could muster the courage to be with my pain and hurt I kept increasing it by projecting it forward and increasing the overall field of pain. When I could own that it was THE pain ensconcing my heart and dimming my experience healing became available. Wholeness began to come into focus. Compassion was exponentially increased. When I could be with the pain in my heart I could be with yours.

And so having become expansive and even friendly with this pain in here I can help you rather than hurt you. I can know at least in part what you are going through because I have limped along a similar path. My painful experiences become the fuel for a torch I am now meant to carry. When I do my own work I have no need to use you for a target. You were never the problem. You were never really the cause of this pain. It was in here and now it is in many cases not. And where pain remains I have the capacity to stay with it and so it no longer holds me captive.

So hurting people hurt people until they own the pain inside and begin to help others from a place of connection and deep compassion. The pain has become useful. It has become light. It has become love. And while I may hold boundaries I no longer need to build walls. It is safe in here. And in your pain you are safe with me.

SAFE TO LOVE

The relationship between love and safety is a profound one, and one that came to me rather late in life.

I was a gregarious child that had a natural affinity for easily expressing love, affection, and openness. Perhaps that is true for most children. I can only speak of my own personal experience. I loved laughing, cuddling, talking, touching. I was a feminine male-child, and those were my most prevalent attributes. I was, as I was called frequently, a sissy. I lived way to the left of gender expectation, and it was troubling to my family, my authority figures, and to most people around me. The tribe in which I lived knew there job well and performed it with generationally practiced precision: they needed to beat me into submission and make me into the man the system demanded I be.

I was unintentionally stubborn. Something within me clung to the natural expression that was my authentic self. My tender heart was soft and open. My language was gentle, kind, and delivered in a high and melodious octave. My open heart connected easily to the hearts of others. Empathy was easy for me. I could embrace others pain and felt it was my purpose to listen, to feel, to allow, to compassion. I held a space of safety for people even at a young age. It felt safe for me to love. It felt right and true.

Eventually the tribal intolerance began to teach me that it wasn’t always safe to love. That love had conditions. That my natural expression was unacceptable; it was deemed by most to be unnatural. The family said it was so. My peers and teachers said that it was so. My church said that it was so. I was told that God said that it was so. That was the ultimate wound.

And so began my toughening up. So began my withholding. While my heart longed to love it did so behind the barriers of pretense and defense. It was no longer safe to love. Love meant rejection. Love meant abandonment. Love meant you have to hide in order to remain or even survive. I shut down and covered up. I lowered my voice and tried to add swagger to my steps. I joined the ranks of the deadened ones. I was veiled and inauthentic but on the surface I was safe.

It took a long time and a lot of tears to recover that soft and gentle self. The work isn’t done, but today I am largely free. Today I am open and I am safe in here. I do not and will not conform. I will not become less than my natural loving expression in order to belong to a club I never wanted to join. My safety now is in my own free expression of love. People can judge me, criticize me, demean me, and take away my earthly rights but they can never again force me to shroud what is natural and authentic to whom I am. Internal safety is what matters most, and loving expression is why I am here.

My voice is back to where it belongs, and I am very frequently called mam on the phone. I sometimes calmly correct them. Most often I simply smile. I am back to easily laughing, cuddling, talking, and touching. Oh, I still wince from time to time. It is a good reminder to open up and to celebrate my return to me.

So if I am a sissy I am content to be one. It is a small price for being safe in love.

OPEN THE WINDOW

I want to experience this day as if I were a dog hanging my head out of a moving car window.

I want to feel the breezes and winds of life blowing against my skin. I want to notice every scent that hangs upon those breezes. I want to relax my face, let my tongue hang out, and not care what I look like as I feel myself become one with the wind, the scents, and the sky.

I want to go for a ride with absolutely no thought of destination. I want to lean so far into the experience that I risk falling out of the car, and I want to know that the risk is worth the lean.

I want to let myself be taken for a ride by life. I want to trust so fully in the great Driver that I give no thought to the mechanics of the navigation, and never feel compelled to look back or over.

I want to be so completely taken by what I am seeing and feeling that it never occurs to me that I myself may be being watched.

I want to experience the thrill of freely and fully experiencing the experience, not distracting myself with fears about when the ride might end.

I want to end this day with messy hair, tired cheeks, reverberating wonder, and a body with only enough energy to fall into a delicious sleep that comes from having relished only the ride.

So open the door, and watch me hop right in. Roll down that window, and watch my head pop on out. Now speed up please. I have a lot of world to see, to taste, to smell, to wag.

THE LIGHT WITHIN THE WORLD

As traditional Bible translations tell me “I am the light of the world.”

Well, maybe not.

For me Light is not of this world. When I speak of the world I am not referring to the earth or to natural phenomena. To me the world refers to the thought-perceptual systems that govern the individual and collective peoples that inhabit the earth realm. The earth is run by natural order. The world is run by largely illusory and ever-changing rules. These rules are often set by the privileged and result in minimizing the masses. They are fueled by private agenda and molded by greed and a desire for control. This isn’t exclusively true but there is a prevalence that you don’t need to look too closely to find.

These thought systems of the world are in great need of Light. They are in need of radical renewal and relentless revision. Justice must by shined upon these perceptual artifacts, enough Light that these systems begin to literally melt. The Light that is needed is clearly not of the same system that generated the problem. It is a Light that is sorely needed by the world but is not of the world. I take that personally.

So I am here dwelling upon this glorious earth and I am privy to the thought systems of the world. Sadly, much of the world thinking will destroy the earth realm and its inhabitants if it is not transformed. My relationship as a Being of Light, here loving the earth and its sentient creations, is what is at the core of that well known scriptural admonition. It is for me to look upon the perceptual systems that comprise this world in such a way that I can see through them and invoke something higher, broader, wiser, and truer. As I see with an open heart, a spacious mind, and soft eyes I see with a Vision that transforms the systems that are beneath what is essentially true of a connected humanity.

I am here to be a Visionary. I am here to Be the Light WITHIN this world. I am here to remain awake and stable and ready to shine. This is not easy. The strategies of the world systems are becoming more virulent and unequal. The greed is a cancer that must be exposed. The marginalization and minimization of huge swaths of people is pervasive. The domination of the few is holding the masses hostage. And I am called to be the Light. To look courageously and unflinchingly at what is happening and maintain my Spirit-center. I must hold to my mission and to my purpose.

I am not the light of the world. I am the Light within this world, and so I choose to shine.

SO MUCH MORE

It remains shocking to me that as of last Friday I entered my sixth decade. A friend that crossed the same threshold shortly before me asked me how it could have happened. “We didn’t die,” I replied. And so here I am, still upon the planet, and now in a sixty year old body. I wanted to find a fitting way to enter into this new decade, something representative of how I intended to sojourn the trek to seventy. When I turned fifty I went tandem skydiving. For me that was facing my fear of heights and also my reluctance to really rely on other people, especially men. Since that time my fear of heights has abated and I am now happily married.

Approaching sixty it became clear to me that it wasn’t an activity that would capture the spirit I am now seeking to embody. I did indeed plan a short theatre trip to my former home of New York City. I ended up spending the evening of my birthday in the same Broadway theatre and in almost the exact same seat in which I had sat forty years prior. In 1977 I thought my life was going to take a very definite route, and I had the invincible sense of an enchanted twenty year old with the world at my dancing feet. Waiting on the show to begin last week I pondered the many detours my life has taken and how radically different my life has turned out compared to what I thought would happen. The reflecting had a tinge or two of sadness, but was mostly just sweet. Really, truly, deeply sweet. I felt affection for that young dreamer, and I felt warm waves of compassion for the man who would come to see many of those dreams shattered.

It has not turned out the way I thought it would. I am not doing what I thought I would be doing at age sixty. I thought I would be the one on the stage, not the one sitting in the audience watching. And at the same time I truly know that this entire journey has been about so much more than my personal goals, aspirations, dreams, or success. It has been about so much more than what I have done or what I have not done. It has been about so much more than I could have ever comprehended at age twenty or even forty.

It has been about so much more.

I know that I am now living the expression that is perfect for me at this time. I know that I have said yes to the authentic call upon my life, and that I am dedicated to staying obedient to that call. I know that every single thing that has happened during these previous decades have been in service of the Unfoldment of my higher self. I know that mine was, is, and shall ever be a life of service. That unfolding has been far from comfortable, and there have been many struggles and pains. I am continually called to die to personality aspects of myself that get in the way of my effectiveness in serving others. But I know now with certainty that I belong in the audience and not upon the stage. And I also know that my rightful place is in front of a congregation, sharing not a role but what is most real in my heart.

And that is so much more fulfilling than I ever dreamed my life could be.

RECLAIMING THE CROSS

I grew up in a mid-western Evangelical church that had an ongoing and profound effect on who I came to be. During these days preceding Easter I have a plethora of memories regarding that theology and the traditional meanings surrounding this season. Some of those memories are sweet in their remembrance, and many are admittedly painful. I recall as a small child staring intently at the enormous cross suspended over the baptismal of the church. I remember the feelings of remorse and shame as early as age seven or eight, and how I prayed to Jesus to forgive me for my part in his atoning death. The glory of a resurrection was lost to me compared to the detailed descriptions of his agonizing death.

A lot of internal work and integration has gone into seeing this depiction differently, and into my own healing from those deep feelings of shame and personal regret. I now see that the death of this magnificent way-shower was a political reaction to a spiritually empowering message. That message threatened the leaders of the time. Personal empowerment would have meant less dependence on the patriarchy and on the ruling class.

I do not in any way believe in a God-demanded sacrifice or in a vicarious atonement for the sins of the world. Human beings have historically killed those who came to earth with a torch of great Light. It is no different today, except that we do not deify them and connect the murder to a God-ordained act. We do not build a religion around them that often shrouds the beauty of the original message. Though it is by no means exclusive the one thing often missing from the traditional Christian message is the overarching gospel of the love he came to teach.

For me the power of Easter is in reclaiming the cross and in the deeper meaning of the symbols of this profound season. This Holy week for me is an opportunity to look more deeply within myself at the energy patterns of crucifixion and resurrection. The pattern of crucifixion is resistance, and the releasing of the resistance results in resurrection. It is a process that does not happen in my head. It happens in my heart and in my body. It is the Christ pattern literally happening in me. It is not historical. It is personal. It is devoid of shame and pregnant with Divine potential.

I was tormented in childhood by the image of that huge cross. Today I have reclaimed it. I know it well. I hung on my self-imposed cross for years. And now I am free. I am resurrected. And at times I nail myself back to the forces of the world, and I once again must die to self. It is a pattern that gets repeated daily. But the Power of the risen Christ is within me; because I am atone with It. That is my own personal Easter. It is that I celebrate this week.

IS ANYONE HOME?

I have been noticing with increased rapidity the tendency in our culture to interact with people as though they were “smart” devices.

While it is not exclusively true I find it rarer and rarer to leave a conversation and truly have felt heard. This is the case whether the interaction is via phone or face to face. On the phone I often hear the subtle click of computer keys, and a general vagueness coming from the other party. Reactions to what I have said are frequently delayed and just as frequently irrelevant to what I was actually communicating.

In person I watch the darting and averting eyes, and I most often feel as if I am being scrolled. If there is a device anywhere near it largely takes priority over the conversation I am attempting to have. The distancing is palpable and disconcerting. It is in a felt-sense way dis-heartening. I recently stopped what I was saying to someone mid-sentence, as I realized they were in no way present, and they didn’t even notice I had stopped speaking.

The fascination and identification with information is shutting us down. It puts a power off on heart to heart connection and intimacy. The next byte is far more important than what a feeble heart may be trying to say. With an ongoing barrage of data we never have to stop and feel our hearts, feel our connection, feel our natural compassion, and feel the often painful experience of being real.

It is a new and startling kind of lonely. You are right there. I see you. I hear you. And I in no way can feel you here with me. I often want to stop and simply ask “is anyone home?” I think the lights are on. I know at some level you are in there. But are you really home? Can I really connect with you? Can I get close enough to feel you present, and feel myself being felt by you? Will you listen and hear me when there is no social media like button to handle your reacting?

I am committed to being a home space for you. I am committed to being truly present, and to listen and to hear. I am committed to releasing the habitual multi-tasking in any form. When I am speaking with you I will listen. I will remain in the interaction, and I will feel before I respond. I will hold your gaze and I will stay. You will be central to me and I will be home for you.

Is anyone home? I am.

LESS IS MORE

It took me many painful years to learn the lesson that less is indeed more.

I am not speaking in terms of interior decorating, accessories, or God knows my number of pairs of shoes. I am speaking of a much more painful pairing down.

I have finally learned that less of me is more. Much less self-assessment, less self-evaluation, less approval seeking, and less caring about what others may think of me or the choices that I make.

Less thinking about me, myself, and the separate I and more of focusing on and in my Source. Less trying to do something or express something that will win accolades or applause, and more of relishing expression for the simple sake of expression.

For so long I didn’t know to what degree I was doing things to get the approval I never thought I had. It was exhausting! The successes that I did get were dampened by the lack of enthusiasm I perceived from those I was most trying to please. There was a subtle yet dynamic sense of hurriedly moving on to the next thing in hopes it would garner more praise. My entertainment career was sullied by my own relentless need for perfection and the inability to withstand the super competitive field I was in. It wasn’t art for art’s sake. It was me trying to win the acceptance, approval, and accolades I so longer for and never felt I got.

I am embarrassed to say that I brought this same need for approval and a building up of me to my early years in ministry. I do not doubt that I had and have a sincere and growing longing to serve. Yet there was also the diminished little boy who was still looking for someone to say that I was doing well, that I was making a difference. That people liked my lectures, workshops, and classes. The number of people in the seats could make or break my attitude on any given day. A consternating look would throw me into self-examination for hours.

I suffered from the misperception that it was somehow about me.

In order to be rooted in authentic service and inspired expression there simply must be less of me. Less of the personality self and less approval seeking. In order to do what I am passionately called to do I must step back and let myself be guided by the One whose approval I have had all along. I stay centered in that calling and I must not be swayed by attendance, offerings, or accolades. Today they may love me, and tomorrow they may turn their backs. It does not affect the message I am called to share. My ministry isn’t about me. It is about God. It is about the people I may touch when I stay out of the way and leave my sense of self out of it. The less I focus on me the more effective I can be for others.

And the funny thing is, the less I need approval the more I seem to receive . Does it feel nice? Sure. And, I remain in my center and I keep doing what I am called to do regardless of response. I don’t read the reviews. I don’t need to. As long as I stay true to my calling and keep showing up the Ultimate approval comes from within. As long as there is less of me there is always more of God to come shining through.

SERVICE: THE GREAT REFINEMENT

There are so many things that they don’t dare tell you in seminary.

I will soon celebrate twenty-one years as an ordained minister. I have been blessed to be ministering full time for all of these years, doing what I truly know I am meant to be doing. It is not a job or a career for me. It is my vocation. It is my life’s purpose that I happen to be paid to do. Though it was a circuitous route to the ministry I have never doubted the intuition that brought me here. I can clearly see that everything that I have been through in my life experience has helped prepare me for this form of service. Things that never made sense at the time they were happening have been necessary puzzle pieces in the vision that I am now living. I know that as long as I am on this planet a minister I will be.

While I have always been grateful for the seminary training I received, leading to my ordination, it didn’t prepare me for many of the things I have faced within this twenty one year time frame. As an independent contractor and an unaffiliated servant for much of that time I have had to feel my way through this journey, one prayer at a time. There is no effective manual or class for the myriad kinds of situations, circumstances, predicaments, personalities, traumas, and detours that need to be faced. It has proven to be the best kind of spiritual work out, demanding that I build an internal musculature that would allow me to navigate what needed to be handled.

There are so many things they don’t dare tell you in seminary. They don’t dare tell you that every single loveless perception within you will most certainly be revealed and highlighted. They don’t tell you that people will seek counsel from you on precisely the issues that you yourself are painfully struggling with. They don’t highlight the fact that while it is a blessing to be continually soaked in the oceanic presence of spirit that same soaking can frequently feel like drowning. No one mentions the dangers of over-identifying with the position, with the size and stamina of the congregation, with the financial solvency of an often fluctuating group commitment. Oh, there may be passing mentions of some of these issues. I later suspected that there was a calculated omitting of details that would send most seminarians shrieking for the hills.

Ministry has been both glorious and painful. It has refined me in ways that I never imagined. It has pushed every button and highlighted every deficiency. It has presented me on a daily basis with choices that often felt so trying to make. It has confronted me repeatedly with the choice between personal preference and what I knew to be best thing for the greater good. It has been a day to day decision to love. To love even when people seemed so unlovable, indeed, especially when people seemed so unlovable. To love those who opposed me and those who sought to sabotage me. To love when I was triggered and to love those who helped reveal the most hidden parts of me.

To love. That is what ministry is to me. I am an administrator of love. I am here to give and to serve love. It isn’t always easy or comfortable. But it is exactly what I am meant to be and do.

NONE OF MY BUSINESS

I was gifted today by a chance encounter with someone who doesn’t like me.

Gifted?

I am profoundly grateful to be dwelling in a place in consciousness that has realized that what others may think of me is truly none of my business. As a human being with an open and highly sensitive heart the preference is always to enjoy a loving connection with other inhabitants of this human experience. I am purposeful in how I approach and treat others. My spirituality is one of embodying loving-kindness to the best of my ability. In my personality self I certainly don’t like everyone. But I am committed to accepting, compassioning, and embracing others in a prayerful place that is imbued with my spiritual nature. That spiritual nature is indeed Love.

So when I encounter someone who interacts with me in a way that I simply know by intuition isn’t embracing I also know I have a choice to make. I can go with the reptilian recoil and withhold, or I can maintain my spiritual composure and not make what the other is experiencing about me. It truly isn’t ultimately about me. When someone treats me with indifference or even hostility it is an opportunity for my growth. It doesn’t feel good. In fact it often feels down right painful. And it is a gift in that I get to stay awake, know that another’s reaction is none of my business, and it is a chance for me to come from my highest nature and intended values.

We are hardwired for both connection and protection. It’s the way of life. The fact that someone else may be defended against me does not preclude my choice for connection. They may not engage. But I still can choose to hold them in my heart and I get to stay open. Or at least choose to reopen. And that for me is liberation.

And so I was gifted today by a chance encounter with someone who doesn’t like me. There was in actuality nothing chance about it. It was a Divine appointment. I felt the pullback in the other, and I stayed present. I engaged respectfully, and I didn’t force too much deliberate interaction. I stayed with the genuine affection I hold this person in, and I didn’t waver. I felt a softening in them, and I internally smiled at that moment. But that was not the goal. My goal was to personally stay open and connected and true to what is most precious in my heart. Their choices are none of my business. My business is to love them as is.

MY EXPANDING WORLD

Though growing older is often associated with limitation and a shrinking sphere of experience I am not personally finding that to be the case at all. There are certainly things that I used to be able to do physically that I can no longer do. There were a number of years when I averaged seven to ten dance classes per week while also hoofing it in eight performances of a musical. That seems a long time ago now for sure. My pace may have slowed but I am gratefully more present to what I am choosing to do, and the decreased speed has heightened my attention to the wonders I am sure I used to race right by.

I have found that rather than contracting into a shrinking world my interior experience in particular has become deepened, broadened, and heightened. I recall my late mother lamenting how her world had become mostly the world of her recliner and her television set. Part of that was her declining health for sure. As I have aged I have lost the desire to constantly be doing something or going somewhere, and that has little to do with the capabilities of my body. I tire from too much constant stimulation, not physical exertion. I relish opportunities to sit and to simply stare. To contemplate life from the sweet vantage point of my open, engaged heart and my very vital attention and imagination. I can now watch a bird bathing or a butterfly flower dancing for as long as they remain in my line of vision. I can now experience far more from the chair in my Florida room than I ever did in my high speed New York lifestyle.

My interior experience is growing more intimate, more curious, more fascinating with each passing day. I have found something I didn’t even know I was looking for; I have found a friendly inner environment in and from which to live. I really like being in here. I am at home in myself. I am coming to know myself better and to love myself more. My world is expanding because the experience in here is expanding. I am welcoming what is occurring. I have finally come to peace with what is. I have little to prove anymore. I am no longer compelled to run around achieving. Whether I am traveling afar or at home in my favorite chair the primary experience is an internal one.

I am still quite active for sure. But I no longer need to be. There is nothing to outrun anymore. My ever-expanding world is the world within. And I am so grateful to be happy here in now.

THE PAIN THRESHOLD

It is only in retrospect that I recognize the incredible threshold for pain I seem to have been born with. Or at least so it seems. From this perspective in consciousness I marvel at the decades I spent living in a self-inflicted and agonizing story of diminishment and unworthiness. I literally lived inside of a just out of awareness container of self-reproach and self-loathing. Oddly enough it was so pervasive that it has given me a firm and deep knowing of the power of Grace. The fact that I still managed to have some level of happiness and success is only a God-thing. Of course there is also the issue of heavy self-medicating which is beyond the scope of this reflection.

The ability to tolerate great levels of physic pain resulted in the fact that it took longer for me to be brought to my knees than perhaps it would have without this threshold. I finally did crumble, and it was the most important day of my life. The pain finally broke me open. I deeply considered suicide but realized that it would devastate those who loved me and for me it would at a level be redundant. And so the breaking open was liberation day for me. Or it was at least the beginning of my liberation. It was the start of a great deal of inner work and spiritual devotion. I had a lot to move through and to unknot. A lot to look deeply into and a lot to reclaim as I realized they were my own issues projected out. It was far from easy. Here the expansive pain threshold served me well. But here I didn’t deaden, deny, or avoid any of it. Or at least not for very long. I was committed to going deep. It was my highest priority. And it has resulted in leading me to my greatest joy.

So as I look at the deep level of individual and collective pain being so profoundly displayed within our world and I know that it is a result of the collective pain threshold finally crumbling and caving in. I know something powerful is afoot. I know it is time for people to take back the personal power that is the God-given right of every living being. I know that just as it happened in my own life a transformation is in process. I know that the pain will give way to meaning, the suffering to greater purpose. I am lending my knowing to that which I am witnessing. I am holding a space for all of this pain. I can do that because I am on the other side of what happened for me. I am not pain free by any means. But my threshold has softened and my capacity to be what is increased. And I know deeply that pain is not an enemy. It is a doorway through which we are invited to pass into greater expressions of freedom and liberty.

I know this because freedom and liberty are where I largely live today. And so I look out from that place within me and bless the pain I see and feel as a force that is leading to a demonstration of what is seeking to be.

It’s time. The pain is telling us so.

Resist?

It certainly seems that RESIST is the word that is dominantly trending in our culture at this time. It is a dynamic, a force that is activated against what is externally happening. It results in an internal reaction, a pushing against what is undesired. This can and does happen at both the individual and collective level. While it is my intention to live in as much non-resistance as possible I do not see resistance as an enemy. That would be resisting resistance, and a futile waste of energy and precious life force.

Resistance is a masterful teacher when we begin to have a wakeful relationship to it. It is often said that what we resist, persists. That is an accurate summation of how this aspect of consciousness works. And it is a bit too tidy to be of much use.

Resistance is often a reaction to perceived injustice. In that way it is for me an angel seeking my attention and my appropriate action. Just as I learned many years ago in physical fitness class resistance can, if applied carefully and mindfully, result in added strength. If misused and too long sustained resistance can also result in depletion, injury, and burnout. To achieve a balance the spiritual activist is called to deal directly and prayerfully to the resistance happening in their own energy system. To bring presence to the level of resistance will glean the power and the energy from the increased contraction, making it useful and imbued.

When resistance is born of hatred and unbridled rage it is toxic to all concerned. When it is harnessed and spiritually aimed it is love-based and transformative. This is resistance training at its best. It moves us from a deeply seated mysticism to a radiating useful prophesy. When we use resistance it can no longer use us. Injustice, domination, abuse, and bigotry will always result in backlash. This is healthy and appropriate. How we address them will either bring about more of the toxicity or will transmute the energy into justice, freedom, dignity, and equality. To fight hatred from a place of hatred will only bring about more hatred. And to pretend there is no injustice will allow this cancer to kill and to destroy.

It is time for our culture to become the democracy we claim to be. “With liberty and justice for all” is a magnificent declaration of heaven on earth. When it is violated resistance will arise. Harnessing it peacefully, mindfully, lovingly, and in focused community will bring about the state of Union this country is to become. A culture of resistance then can become a culture of spiritual radiance. But we each must learn to have a conscious relationship to the energy of resistance. That is an inside job regardless of what is happening in the external realm.

What you resist indeed does persist. And so does what you love. What you cherish and hold dear. Take a stand for what is right and true within your heart. March, carry a sign, and chant. And harness the energy of resistance and aim it as love. It then must become reality.

MY WORDS

I have long taught that people should always move with the flow of that which they love. It is only in retrospect I see that until I began being true to the song within my heart, really giving myself permission to sing that song out loud, that I began to come alive. I didn’t know that what I love could also invoke fear in terms of giving it expression. I let the fear stop me, assuming that it was a sign that I shouldn’t pursue what seemed to be seeking expression.

When I began to realize that the fear was simply an energy related to my own expansion I began to use the fear as power, and the fear no longer used me. It was liberation at its best.

I love to write. I love finding words that resonate with feelings in my heart and the aliveness in my body. I have received a fair amount of criticism over the years about my writing, and I often notice a wince when I am about to post or present something I have written. Over time I have allowed that wince to soften into an internal wink that I gift myself with. I have not let it detract one bit from the joy I get from expressing my love in the form of words.

I do not pretend to be a great technician of grammar or syntax. Heck, I have enough trouble just trying to spell. I write to an internal harmonic that flows inside of me. There is a cadence that I choose to follow. When I try and step out of that harmonic the words fall flat and the whole process deadens. I follow the flow and the words pour forth.

My prayer is that these words may touch a few hearts. I believe that if we follow our love’s urgings that they do somehow become gifts. But I do not write for approval or accolades. I write because I must. Because my love seeks to become form and I say yes to that seeking.

And so in these beginning days of this New Year I feel the stirring in my heart and I follow the internal symphonic, the cadence that is seeking to become words. I ready for the likely wince and I give it a wink. I flow forth the song in my being and I offer it to you. Sing along if you choose, or delete and move in.

I have honored my instinct, and that is what I am here to do.