Categories Menu

What is Resurrecting Within You?

  May your Easter reveal the message of resurrection within your Soul and may you become made new. Our Jewish brothers and sisters celebrated Passover this week. During the seder meal they asked the question: “What makes this night different from all nights?” This question is one of one renewal. We could stop at any moment of our day to ask “what makes this moment unique, alive, vibrant?” We could ask where life is at this moment in the context of our circumstances. Life is ALWAYS present. This practice is what many of us are doing at this moment of quarantine. Quantum physics would have us ponder the questions, “what is wanting to emerge here?” Looking at the edges of the outer world and the center of the inner world is a mystical practice of co-creation. What is wanting to emerge. Let me give you an example. Wednesday night I heard on the news that one person was dying every 45 seconds in America (on Wednesday). I stopped and...

Read More

Happy New Year (And Bali Cremations)

HAPPY NEW YEAR AND NEW DECADE!! 2020. I spent my November in Bali. While there I watched a culture practice “ceremony” throughout each and every day. Ceremony is another word for engaging in a ritual to honor and recognize the Divine Presence. Each morning when I woke up and went outside there would be evidence of prayer remains at my front door. A palm basket filled with flowers and incense honoring the three-fold nature of The Divine. The physical, the Soul, and the Invisible. Each hotel, store, and place of business had a temple and in front of the altar would be evidence that someone had shown up to pray and bless. If I were to be driven around throughout the day the car would have the palm, flowers and incense on the dashboard. Rice or flowers may be in the driver’s hair, also evidence of ritual. For one month I was in the presence of a Hindu culture that was praying their hearts open and I could feel...

Read More

Designing Your Own Memorial Service

I was 19, maybe 20 years old sitting in my college classroom following the instructions of my professor. “Write down the names of the three people you love the most on the three slips of paper in front of you.” I write down “dad,” “sister,” and “best friend.” Then we are to pass the paper to the front of the room. The teacher proceeds to burn the papers and tell us that our most beloved have died. I couldn’t and wouldn’t let go. I was angry. I hated this exercise. I was only 19 and hadn’t yet experienced the death of my beloved grandmother, let alone two generations younger. I wasn’t prepared for this exercise. This was part of my intense class on Death and Dying. Fifty hours in the study of death, grief, and cultural services to honor those who pass. Our next exercise would be to plan our own memorial service. We were to chart it out. Where would we hold it? I decided on the Episcopal...

Read More

My Friend Died This Week

  My friend died on Wednesday. We had been the closest of friends for twenty plus years. We witnessed each other, grew ourselves in the presence of each other, shared secrets and passions between us, and celebrated each other. We were in love with each other. And, she died. She was on the planet on Tuesday, and is in the invisible realm today. And I am feeling many things. Sadness; I will miss her. Pure joy; that we loved each other so completely. Expectancy; for the possibility of her spiritual visitations. An energy doctor told me that each time a friend or relative dies, they are passing the baton of energy to us to live. I tell my daughter that when I die I want her life to be MORE fully alive and vital, not less. My spiritual brother John would equate death to a Soul Retrieval and ask what part of me died along with my friend, and what part of me I retrieved from her passing. I...

Read More

My Experience of the Darkness: Thinking Today of Robin Williams

  Life is not for the faint of heart. To be alive — not survive, but REALLY live — means to be in touch with all aspects of Self. To see life from the perspective of the body or experience it through emotional states is different than seeing life through the eyes of Spirit. To see from the Sight of Spirit, means to have a larger peep hole or aperture from which to view or witness life. The journey of Spirit is filled with internal states of expansion and contraction. To transform, which is the call of the Spiritual, is to enter into deep dark states within oneself and to know that even here; Life is. God is. After all, in order to transform, we are called to die to an old self in order that a new self may emerge. And death it is. No pussy footing around it. The caterpillar leaves its current physical state and turns into goo!!! that may assume a new self. Surrendering at...

Read More

Honoring the Deceased Father on Father’s Day

  Oprah gave a heart opening address at her mentor and friend Maya Angelou’s memorial service where she referred to Maya as her “Spiritual Mama.” The love for her friend was palpable in her energy field of grief (note to self: grief is evidence of having loved). I administered two memorial services for my father. A private graveside one for my family and a public one for the greater community. In both I cried like a baby throughout the service as periods punctuate sentences throughout a paragraph. Fine for awhile and then a flood. If I were to describe my relationship to my father, I would say he was my “Earthly Father.” He had mastered a level of operating in the world, which I counted upon. When I was buying a new car, I’d call him for advise. When it came to buying homes, I’d bring him along. When there were uncomfortable situations at work, he’d talk them through with me. When I thought I was better than someone else in...

Read More