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Merry 2013 Christmas Friends

    Merry, merry, merry Christmas. I am traveling and appreciating all of it. Whether you are on the road or at your home, I send you a warm Christmas greeting. I left Los Angeles, my new home, to return to Phoenix and connect briefly with some friends and colleagues. Then, off for Christmas to my daughter’s home in Nevada. While in Phoenix my colleague Rev. Renee Morgan Brooks and I discussed the meaning of Christmas over a Thai dinner. She recited to me her favorite Christmas sentiment from Michael Grady’s rewrite of A Christmas Carol. I loved it so much I asked her to please repeat it for you, too. Here goes … Now, my favorite line is to “measure your riches by what you give.” This reminds me of the reason we forgive. We forgive, or give Grace to others, and the side effect is we receive the freedom of Grace too. As we forgive, we are naturally freed. Which had me think of tithing. The practice...

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Defining Forgiveness

To forgive is to accept what is. To forgive is to love regardless of what is. To forgive is to not put anyone out of my heart. To forgive is to choose to love even and especially when it is not convenient. To forgive is to be a place of Grace. To forgive is to refuse to throw someone including oneself under the bus. To forgive is to choose to not slime someone else with my projections or to clean up the slime from my projection. To forgive is to acknowledge the Divine within human circumstances. Many spiritual teachers say forgiveness isn’t necessary. This is true. When One’s Consciousness connects with the High Truth that All is God and everything can and does happen on planet earth and Life is Eternal, then forgiveness isn’t necessary. Isness exists and all of life within it. However, most spiritual pilgrims have not connected with or live from this consciousness. From a dualistic consciousness, forgiveness is the practice that gathers together the pieces...

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My Three Favorite Forgiveness Practices

When I am in a state of unforgiveness, my insides feel like a damned up river. I can feel balled up energy acting as an impediment to the flow. The impediment is my perception of how things ought to be and the disappointment within me that they are not that way. That disappointment then is directed toward another person in the form of blame. In other words, I have created the entire internal mess by wanting something to be other than it is or someone to be other than they are. My first favorite practice for deconstructing the damn is pulling out my mala beads and on each 108 beads speaking the following words: “I release ______________________ from bondage. I am free. _______________ is free. I choose love.” The repetition of chanting or affirming these words opens within me a space for love to creep in. Contemplate the word “willing.” Once I am damned up, I often can’t unwind my own mess. To sit with the words “willing to…”...

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The Field of Right and Wrong Making

A minister colleague saw me as being wrong within a situation. She wanted me to provide her with some marketing materials unique to her church and yet she refused to ask me for them. She felt I ought to “know.” I knew her perception had nothing to do with me and everything to do with her pattern of pushing people away, making them wrong in order to step in and be the right one who cleans up the mess saving the day. This pattern provided her with a false sense of superiority. I saw the pattern. And yet, this woman was so caught up in her story that she refused to have a conversation. I was committed to speak at her church and she refused to talk with me. At this point I knew I could do one of several things: see the pattern for what it is and bless her, or step into the energy field of right and wrong making myself an investigator. As I was pondering...

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Love as a Spiritual Practice

The prosperity teacher Catherine Ponder defines forgiveness as giving-forth. My favorite definition for me, of forgiveness, then, is “being a place for Grace to show up or giving forth Grace/Love regardless of a situation.” T.D. Jakes gives a great talk on capacity in an Oprah Lifeclass. Jake says “There are people amongst us who are volumous. We are ten gallon people. But we may have been born into families of people who have pint capacities. And when you are a ten gallon person and you want love, you want it on a ten gallon level. But if you fool around and hook up with a pint person, they could be giving you all that they have, sincerely giving you everything but it doesn’t fill you up because you’re bigger than that. You operate on such a higher level you say, ‘is that it? Is that all you are going to give me?’ But you must realize for some people that’s all that they got.” I remember sitting in my...

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