That Bothers Me

The other day I noticed that I was annoyed by the car that was driving in front of mine. I looked into the car and noticed that a blue placard, which identifies the driver as disabled, was dangling from the rear view mirror as the occupant of said car was driving. And it annoyed me. I came up with all different reasons, sane reasons, safety reasons, intelligent reasons why I should be annoyed with the dangling blue placard. But the bottom line was, I was annoyed by it. Have you ever been annoyed by things like that, things totally outside of your power to control them? Wow, it's such a waste of energy, yet there I was being all annoyed and up in this driver's business with my condemnation of his placement of his placard. After a few moments of distain, displeasure and judgment, I realized that I was no longer in my business because I was so preoccupied with his business. Talk about futility. Then, it dawned on me. I had been missing some of my meditation times in the month of December. With all of the hustle and bustle of the holiday season I neglected to set time aside to do my regular meditation and was participating in a hit or miss kind of practice. Well, no wonder I was cranky... I remembered something that Mother Teresa once said about being so busy she better meditate twice as long on that day, I'm paraphrasing here, but that was the gist of it. I do what I do, I get what I get. Miss my regular meditation time and I start being pulled and pushed by the effects of the world. Stay in my regular meditative practice and I go about my day anchored in the Truth. It's that simple and that challenging sometimes.

Equality Means Equal

I read with some interest that Maggie Gallagher, same sex marriage opponent, is ending her syndicated column after seventeen years. While she mentioned all of the reasons why she decided to walk away from her column, newpapers are dinosaurs, print media is a dying breed, I believe she has simply realized that she is not on the winning side of her crusade. Whether or not she has seen the light, it is apparent even to her that she will not "win" this one, that equality will win the day, and that marriage equality is a done deal, state vote by state vote. Freedom wins in the final analysis and the freedom to marry must be a freedom for all Americans. Over the age of consent? Want to marry the person of your dreams? They are over the age of consent also? Go for it. And don't give me any of those slippery slope arguments, either, they are stupid. Heteros cannot marry their dogs or their goats or whatever, so that's not even a conversation I'm going to have with the haters. And the legalization of same sex marriage will not force churches to marry anyone they don't want to marry...the Catholic Church has been denying the sacrament of marriage to various hetero people forever, and they have never been sued because of it. The legal contract of marriage issued by the government should not be dictated by religious beliefs but by the laws of the government. The religious sacrament of marriage can be as biased as the particular religious belief wants to be. It gives everyone freedom to marry. In her closing column, Maggie Gallagher admitted that the fight has not been going well. I am reassured by that. The Truth will out, as they say, and in the end the freedom to live a life as well as one can, to fall in love, to marry, to raise children, to love the person one loves must be a freedom accessible to all.

Grateful 2013

Here is an idea whose time has come. I read it on blogs, FB, newspapers (yes, some people actually continue to read real, smelly, finger staining, crinkly, old fashioned newspapers!) and heard it discussed by people near and far. It is, ta-da, the Gratitude Jar! Yeah, that's it. I know, big build up and that's it. Yup, that's it. The Gratitude Jar. Or Gratitude Box, Gratitude Drawer, or Gratitude Can, if you prefer. Get something, anything, in which to deposit little or big pieces of paper. You will have written something on the paper, something you are grateful for that day. Each day. Everyday. For a year. That's it. Simple & easy. Well, simple. Maybe not so easy. I know I fall into old habits easily and some of the old habits are all about complaining and complaining is not easy to do when we are busy being grateful for things. See how that works? Brain training. I find it next to impossible to complain and be grateful at the same time. So, I received a beautiful wooden box from my eldest son for Christmas. It is made to keep leaves at a constant temperature and humidity. Think tea leaves or tobacco leaves, if you will, though I don't know why anyone would want to think tobacco. This is my Gratitude Box for 2013. It will hold leaves of a different sort. Leaves of paper, items of gratitude, memories to be stored and opened on New Year's Eve, December 31, 2013, so I can look back over a year of blessings. Beats the hell out of making more New Year's Resolutions that don't work! : )

A New Vision

What's the intention for 2012 and what have we done to begin to realize it? We start the new year with tremendous intentions - I'm going to be in a body building contest by the end of the year - I'm going to weigh 50 pounds less by summer. How about - I'm going to Europe by spring - I'm going to make $10,000 a month by September. All of these things are intentions, serous intentions, but what do we do to make those things happen?

How do we keep up the enthusiasm, the positive attitude? Why do we fall away from these great intentions and wind up being yet another gym membership casualty? I think that we make big plans, huge intentions, and we don't have a reasonable expectation of success. I think we hope and wish but lack a concrete plan for getting from here to there and when we don't "magically" manifest our intention, we give up and revert to pattern behavior. We don't think of the hundreds, perhaps thousands of little baby steps it takes to reach the destination of our dreams.

Hold the intention - keep the goal in mind - don't jettison the worthy intention because it does not manifest overnight. Keep taking the baby steps, do one more thing today that we didn't do yesterday. Acknowlegde our progress. Write one page a day of that great American novel. Paint on that masterpiece for one hour a day. Save $3.50 a day, the price of a trendy cup of coffee, toward that trip to Europe. Make baby steps in the direction of the goal. Little by little, step by step, day after day, and then we realize in one month, six months, one year, how much closer we are to manifesting our goals. Then we must acknowledge how far we have come, not how much more we have to go.
Most of us manifest the big vision, not overnight, but by one baby step at a time.

New Year New Day New Me

So, this is the year I blog consistently, faithfully and daily. Stop laughing...It just seems like life is happening so quickly that it is difficult to take the time to write about life happening so quickly.
Another year has gone by and I get to look at a brand new, shiny, never been used year and set my intentions for it. One of my spiritual practices is to daily read something, anything, by Ernest Holmes, founder of Centers for Spiritual Living. This morning I read, "The reflection of an image in a mirror is an exact likeness of the image which is held before the mirror. And so it is the Law of Good reflects back to you a likeness of the images of your own thought. Thus we are told that we reflect the glory of God. But too often we reflect the fear and limitation of the human rather than the glory of God."
With that in mind, I set my intentions for the new year. I set my intentions with love instead of in fear and I set my intentions with power instead of doubt. So, 2012, I accept more love, more joy, more peace, more prosperity, more unity, more wholeness, more health, more of the good that life has to offer.

Love Who?

"One of the first things to do, is to Love everybody. If you have not done this, begin to do so at once." Ernest Holmes, Science Of Mind, Text p.298.3

Simple, eloquent, life affirming advice. Simple, yes, easy, not so much. Well, not always, not with everyone, all the time. It's easy to love everyone across the globe. Especially those people who are far, far away. The ones we never run across are the easiest to love, aren't they, because we don't have to deal with them! We can love everybody - at a distance! It's those people we bump up against on a daily basis that make it so difficult to love! Family, friends, the drivers on the freeway, the slow pokes in front of us and the speed demons coming up on our tails - those are the people that bug us.
And that's why we call it,"a spiritual PRACTICE." We are practicing all the time. We are forever being reminded to practice, practice, practice, being the Love in the world. We are forever being given opportunities to be the love in the world. We are forever at choice to, "be the change we seek" in the world.
So, just for today, let us be the love. Let us be the thing we seek. Let's strengthen our practice, like being at the gym of our consciousness, and let's give our love a work out! Just for today, love everybody.

Dog days

Summertime, filled with hot air, trashy fiction and doing nothing...but enough about congress.
How is the summer going for you? Thinking about it? Are you taking some time to check in with yourself and examine the fruits of your labor? This is the time when things have come into full bloom. The things we planted into the soil of consciousness in the spring sprouted, and are in full bloom in the heat of summer. What have you grown? And do you like what you got? Is it time to go back to the drawing board of your thoughts and set new intentions? Or is it time to celebrate your harvest of good fortune, wonderful company and delights of your manifestations?
Whether we manifested the summer of our dreams or are in the process of choosing again, I know that Spirit always supports its own expression, and we are that.