New Years Eve

Beginnings always have an expectation.

What happens next, where do we go from here?

There is an old saying that says we attract to us what we fear. If it's true, then the antidote must be true too. Within each of us is an immense creative positive energy that can find a way out of the fear, the sadness, the despair, and the negative conditions for which we often blame others.

Perhaps it is time we take responsibility as creators. Not only the creator of things and conditions, but also of attitudes and personal prejudices.

We often constrict our creative self by limiting the power of our thoughts. We often inadvertently deny those in need by believing personal security is having more. Sometimes we delude those we say we love by only loving ourselves through them and not honoring their choices and sacred self. Sometimes we do a lot of stupid things that have unintended consequences.

It is a choice, but we can listen to the life force of our hearts. It lets us hear the trees, the oceans, the plants and animals when they speak to us with their beauty. It lets us acknowledge the equal sacred pursuit of life from those whose culture, language, beliefs and color are different from us. It even helps us to forgive.

That life force is Divine love. It is embedded in our spirits from the moment of our being. It can never be lost, it needs only to be remembered. It translates into common respect, courtesy, compassion and kindness and manifests into a willingness to be of service.

It has never been tried on a mass scale.

It seems to me we have nothing to lose. Maybe 2014 will be the year.

More Shame on Congress

I’ve been critical of our do-nothing; obstruct everything, congress for most of 2013. I might as well have one last posting on their selfishness partisan action and non-action before 2014 comes in.

To leave for the Christmas holidays without approving an extended unemployment benefits package for over a million struggling Americans is unconscionable. In the whole scheme of things it is not that much to the federal budget, but it is life saving to so many that need it.

I don’t know when compassion left the United States Congress, but I suspect it started to ooze from their hearts when each of them felt the security of power and privilege when first elected.

Most, if not all, members of Congress have succumbed to the vale of comfort, a condition where one becomes inured to the suffering of a struggling electorate.

Congress might still approve the package if the republican majority and the tea-party obstructers feel a twinge of empathy, but I doubt it.

In the meantime look at the stories being told on your local news channels about those who lose benefits and how their families will suffer.

One does not abandoned a sacred responsibility for the welfare of the citizenry because they are opposed to the cost. Let each member of congress look at the pork spending in their own district or state and then look those who need the extra benefits in the eye and say we can’t afford it.

Shame.

What if...

I don't know who wrote this, but I love it.

I dreamed I had an interview with God.

“So you would like to interview me?” God asked.

“If you have the time” I said.

God smiled. “My time is eternity.”

“What questions do you have in mind for me?”

“What surprises you most about humankind?”

God answered…

“That they get bored with childhood,

they rush to grow up, and then

long to be children again.”

“That they lose their health to make money…

and then lose their money to restore their health.”

“That by thinking anxiously about the future,

they forget the present,

such that they live in neither

the present nor the future.”

“That they live as if they will never die,

and die as though they had never lived.”

God’s hand took mine

and we were silent for a while.

And then I asked…

“As a parent, what are some of life’s lessons

you want your children to learn?”

“To learn they cannot make anyone

love them. All they can do

is let themselves be loved.”

“To learn that it is not good

to compare themselves to others.”

“To learn to forgive

by practicing forgiveness.”

“To learn that it only takes a few seconds

to open profound wounds in those they love,

and it can take many years to heal them.”

“To learn that a rich person

is not one who has the most,

but is one who needs the least.”

“To learn that there are people

who love them dearly,

but simply have not yet learned

how to express or show their feelings.”

“To learn that two people can

look at the same thing

and see it differently.”

“To learn that it is not enough that they

forgive one another, but they must also forgive themselves.”

“Thank you for your time,” I said humbly.

“Is there anything else

you would like your children to know?”

God smiled and said,

“Just know that I am here… always.”

-author unknown

Ah...the Day After!

It’s not that Christmas Day is over that pleases me, it’s that the Christmas preparation is over. It is an exciting, wonderful, special, and a welcomed time every year, but it also nice when it’s over.

The long preparations now become “put-a-ways” and clean-ups.

The family is back to their comfortable beds, and things familiar to them. It is right. It is the way things are in this day and age of close distance.

  

We grandparents had a magnificent time participating in the feast, the day, the festivities, the noise, the clutter and the chaos. It is wonderful and infectious; All  the ramparts held.

I remember one time when Christmas was held at our house. It was amazing when everyone left. In an instant I could hear the refrigerator hum again. I could hear the heat pipes creak in the walls, night lights were no longer needed to find one’s way to the bathroom and the hot water returned to normal. AND the sink, we hadn't seen the bottom of the sink in four days and how about the living room floor? It’s no longer festooned with opened toys, abandoned games, old bows, discarded garments, stored gifts, plastic bags of used wrappings and half-empty paper cups.

I would not change it for anything. I can’t wait for next Christmas.

The next holiday is next week, New Years. A wonderful alone time. No noise makers, no shouting “Happy New Year.” I’ll be in bed by ten and will welcome in 2014 by sleeping with expectant wishes, profound hopes for global peace and continued wonderment at the sacred joy of the universe.