“We are pain and what cures pain, both.” Rumi “What is real can never be fully taken away; its essence always remains.” Poet David Whyte Many years ago, my heart broke wide open and since then I have not been the same. It splintered after an operation and my body wasn’t recovering well. My heart broke for the vulnerability and fragility of my physical being. At the same time, my father died. The grief oozed through my body and I saw everything through the temporal lens of death. Listening to a song I would say to myself “this could be the last time I hear this song,” then I’d...
Tuesday night I sat in my family room, herbal tea in hand, in my pajamas and wrapped in a blanket awaiting election results. With my cell phone on the coffee table in front of me ready to text friends, I imagined it would be a long night and I possibly wouldn’t know election results until the morning. And then it happened fast. I watched MSNBC for results out of my respect for Rev. Al Sharpton. In 2008 I attended a friend’s Baptist church in downtown Los Angeles to hear the Reverend speak. I sat in the front row, the only white person in the holy house, and I rested...
Three Wednesday’s ago I began giving talks at a local church with the purposeful intent of going deeper into Spirit. These one hour gatherings include spiritual practices, insights, and conversations between individuals wanting to activate their inner Spirit and live from their Soul as home base. The first evening I spoke of the Highest Most and Innermost God being One God; based upon Dr. Ernest Holmes’ Declaration of Principles. I spoke of the quantum field and the scientific discovery of light within humanity. And I spoke of each one of us as the Light of God and contributors to shaping the field, or the collective consciousness. After a powerful...
For the next thirty days, join me, my friends and colleagues in speaking the wealth prayer in the morning and evening out loud. Share your bountiful miracles on the blog so I may celebrate with you. I decide RIGHT NOW I covenant with God RIGHT NOW to accept the wealth of God as my Reality; to experience the overflow of God as who I am at this very moment. I decide RIGHT NOW I covenant as God RIGHT NOW to accept the wealth of God as my Reality; to experience the overflow of God as who I am at this very moment. I release my need (as...
Imagine the feeling of your favorite holiday or birthday moment and times that times ten. That is the feeling of a powerful prayer partnership. It consists of love, surprise, recognition, intimacy, delight, and the visceral knowing someone has your back. Contrast this with the feeling of being bogged down in complaints, disappointments, anger, unhealed dredge run amock … placed at your feet to fix. That is the heaviness of a prayer partnership which isn’t right. Prayer partnering can change your life or can be a waste of precious time. I’ve experienced both. As my new PP and I are defining and playing with our new partnership, I...
Today is my father’s birthday. He was my teacher when he was alive and continues to be my teacher after his death. On September 22, I posted a blog, Letters to Lillianne, about my practice of writing letters to my grand daughter to remind her of her Spiritual heritage and introduce her to her ancestral lineage. Another letter writing practice I look forward to is writing my father a letter on his birthday and Father’s Day to honor how he has informed me. And, today is his birthday. While my father walked this planet he taught me: To show up when I make a commitment, To decide I am...
I am a multi-dimensional being with most of me existing in the invisible realm. What about me can’t be seen? My thoughts. Yes, the evidence of what I believe shows up through my actions, I live them outwardly, yet the actual thought behind the action cannot be seen. An example of this may be I may think I am funny (thought) and laugh with myself (action following thought). My emotions. Emotions are most often a result of my thought interpretation. In changing how I see something, I change the emotion which arises from it, thus changing my behavior. With trauma victims, the fractured emotional field often informs the thought....
Last month I made a pilgrimage to Los Angeles to attend an Emerging Edge Conversation with Rev. Dr. Michael Beckwith at Agape International Spiritual Center. I have been a long time supporter, grateful participant, and distant congregant of this center visiting four or five times per year for the past twenty years. This visit was different. I entered into the sacred space and felt it. The field was palpable. The air was vibrant. I knew I was sitting in a consciously built field of Go(o)d and I knew the very place I sat in was pregnant with Infinite Possibility. I felt it. What existed in this space was so much...
I am seated at a local restaurant known for their fresh funky pizza and gourmet salads. Across the table from me is a robust South American woman with a space between her teeth, afro cut close to her head and a wickedly joyous laugh which produces an inner smile when I hear it. Glenda is my new friend, although she calls me a sister. It took many years for us to meet. Seven years ago my L.A. friend, Nina, brought me to a meeting at her local chapter of Women for World Peace (WfWP). Founded by the Unification Church, this group of women attracts members across faiths and countries...
An old plate with a painting of a cob of corn, husks partially peeled open, hangs above my kitchen sink. This plate was purchased by my favorite grandmother in her antique-seeking days. It hung in her kitchen, now it hangs in mine. In the early 1970s when television stations and programs were multiplying, mothers were working, and Bill Gates hadn’t yet made his way into the halls of Lakeside School to catch his computer vision; my grandmother would wait every summer for the Greyhound Bus to arrive so we could begin our week together. My favorite summer memories were camp, the beach, and visiting grandma. It was just the...
A beloved friend of mine has gone through a treacherous week of FaceBook bashing for his political views. On his FB page a mini-war has erupted with name calling directed at him. He called me really torn up inside. He is a deep, deep lover of humanity and serves his community through action. He is a good guy. And, his political views aren’t mine. Neither are the views of half of my friends. Half of my friends are Democrats and half are Republicans; and I don’t love either group of my friends more or less because of the road each party believes will create our brightest future....
There is some High Spiritual Truth in the childish saying “YOU Can’t Make Me!” My friend Glenda would add “I am boss of myself.” Each one of us is at choice and held responsible by the choices we make. Newton’s third law of motion says for every action there is a reaction. The Buddhist would call it karma; what I do to others, I do to myself. The Jew and Christian would say we sow what we’ve planted. No one else is responsible for me. I am the choice maker, I am it. With that said, I have made a commitment to myself to disengage from the...
In the movie Alice in Wonderland, Alice says “I sometimes think of six impossible things before breakfast.” This past weekend I attended a two day conversation with Rev. Dr. Michael Beckwith where he began by inviting the group to enter into the spiritual practice of stretching our minds daily by making a list of at list six things we find impossible. The underlying premise is the more I mentally stretch, the less impossible and more possible something feels. I began my list. 1. Ten thousand regularly readers read my blog. 2. Grocery stores decide to sell only organic food which is affordable to all. 3. The song...
Taking my seat in a large auditorium church, it is day two of a much anticipated conference. After a few minutes of sitting I notice something smells fishy. I raise my hands to my face. No, it’s not my skin. My skin smells like the just applied “Falling in Love” lotion I lathered on after my shower. I pull softly on my blue and white guaze top and smell the corner of it while looking around the room as though I always do this and it smells freshly laundered. Nothing. Then I look to the right. There is a woman with short brown Liza Minelli cut hair, a ruddy...
Spiritual living is filled with paradoxes. The spiritual practice of tithing teaches me it is by giving I receive. Through quiet meditation I learn to hear. By loving my enemies I know what love really is. I know peace through accepting what is while taking action toward something else. The paradoxes of spiritual living are many. In high school I was captivated by the book title You Can’t Go Home Again, by Thomas Wolfe. Although I tried reading the book, in my teens, several times without success, the book title haunted me. It is not possible to return home. This, too, I believe is a great paradox. As I...
I am on the final edit of a book I have been working on for over a year. It is a book of daily lessons based upon the work of Emma Curtis Hopkins, a Christian Mystic. Yesterday I edited a lesson based upon the idea “In God there is no sin.” This was written in the late 1880s and was a radical idea. Even today it can be for many of us. Who would you and I be without the idea of sin? Without the idea of good, bad, right, and wrong and myself as the judge of it all? How much energy would we have in my...
This weekend I drove from Phoenix, Arizona to Las Vegas, NV to return my daughter and grand daughter to their home. Always the consummate curiosity seeker, I see out of the corner of my eye a bicycle by the side of the road. “Oh my God, did you see that? Someone left their bike by the side of the road and it is all white!” I said to my daughter. We did a U-turn and a slow drive by. It appeared to be a “ghost bike.” A ghost bike, is a memorial for individuals who where hit by cars; reminding cars to be awake to all road...
My friend Paul Dillon is a wonderful man and powerful musician. He had a dream. His dream was to have his third CD, Brand New Day, professionally mastered and packaged by Grammy award winning master, David Glasser. The cost of this dream; $2,500. Few people have a dream. Fewer still, pursue the vision brewing within them. A very small number actually follow through to completion. One of the many self-imposed obstacles? Money. This is where Paul was brilliant! He set up an account with www.kickstarter.com. He laid out his vision, and suggested pledge amounts with accompanying gifts. He then sent an invitation to his friends, colleagues, and acquaintances with the...
“The Holy Spirit has descended upon you, now reach out and take it,” says former actress and faith healer Sara O’Meara as she walks amongst seated individuals coming to experience their own recognition of Wholeness. It is a hot, Phoenix evening, and maybe 100 of us are crammed next to each other in The Little Chapel with more in an overflow room. It is June 1st with the temperature hovering over 100 degrees outside and it is warm inside. “The energy of the Holy Spirit is warming,” she says with a smile. “Aren’t we blessed?” I have always been attracted to faith healers and jump at opportunities to be...
This poem segment is worth reading out loud and then contemplating pieces of it for several minutes. If it resonates with you, read this for one week to see what transpires for you. I believe it is High Truth with blessed wisdom in it. Love you … In every drop, the sea: in every cell, The Universe: in every soul, the life of God; and each contains full power of all. Life does not come in parts but wholes. There is No separation, no near nor farther out; No deeper down nor higher up, no void, No yonder; and no hopes that cannot be Fulfilled. The Power-of-All...
Two weeks ago, today, my daughter gave birth to a daughter, and I was made a grandmother. I am still learning what that means to my Soul and to my contribution while here on earth. I listen, and take note as I experience an inner shift underway. Last night I was awoken from a dream to pray for Katherine Jackson. This is not the first time I have experienced a deeper inner nudge calling me into prayer for someone I don’t personally know. This could be my unconscious mind, it could be the Voice of God. It doesn’t matter to me where it originated, what I know is; I...
Julia Ward Howe, magazine author and writer of The Battle Hymn of the Republic, was sick and tired of the Civil War’s devastation to families, the community, and the world. In 1870 she wrote a proclamation calling mothers to come together with a voice of peace. Below is her letter: Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage, For caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn...
