Uncategorized | Bonnie Barnard - Part 8

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Preparing for My Own Death

Who wants to think about their own mortality, yet preparing for our death? I didn’t think I’d want to, yet it has become a part of my annual new year process; that is quite rich. I began preparing for my own death in a Death and Dying class in college when I was twenty years old. In one our classes I was given the assignment to prepare my funeral/memorial service. This woke me up to the many details that exist in death. It also woke me up to the amount of work another would have to do in my absence while grieving, which didn’t feel right to me. At twenty-three I gave birth to my daughter. Remembering what I learned in my college class I would update my “Death” folder in my office between Christmas and the New Year with details of what my daughter would need to know when I die. This folder has now become electronic and although I haven’t done it yet, I can include videos...

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...

Faith, Faith and a Dose More of Faith

Today I am willing to let go of thinking I know everything. I see the Roller Derby of my mind, all of my opinions elbowing each other and jockeying for position. I see the ‘inner committee’ and laugh at its pushiness. I surrender to the space beyond the committee of opinions; the space that knows nothing and trusts everything. I make room for new discoveries — in the world, in myself and in others. Life is much better when I’m not a big smarty-pants. And so it is! Affirmation by Rev. Bonnie Rose, Ventura Center for Spiritual Living, November 6, 2013 One month ago today I woke up in my friend Heather’s home in Arizona, drove through three thunder and lightening storms with my car loaded from bottom to top with suitcases, clothes, salad dressings, photos, a few books, three overhead bags of toiletries, and three grocery bags of tea to land in West Hollywood, California on one of the hottest days of the year. The first thing...

The Spiritual Revival

I woke up this morning thinking about the Spiritual Revival, a two night event in the Los Angeles area. In three weeks, I, along with three powerful women, will facilitate stepping into the Field of Divine Love through prayer, meditation, chant, music, and dancing. My sister-friend Larisa Stow and the Shakti Tribe will weave music throughout the spiritual facilitation. Her music is known to create a vibration-raising revolution with their edgy blend of mantra-infused rock. My other sister-friend Gino Walker will be one of the three spiritual facilitators of the evening. She too is a powerful singer, singing from the consciousness of Oneness. Gino is also a Spiritual Teacher, teaching what she lives. Gino will close out the evening with her facilitation. I am the third spiritual facilitator for the evening and will open the Revival centering and grounding us in The Good of God. The first evening, Friday, October 18, will be held at the Ventura Center for Spiritual Living where Rev. Bonnie Rose will...

The Eternal, The Changing, and Being Content

I moved to Los Angeles this past week. After twenty years of visits and numerous friendships in this big city, I packed up my belongings for storage, rented out my home in Phoenix, and headed south to Los Angeles. Getting up this morning, like every morning, I begin my spiritual practice with sacred reading. Today I read Emerson’s essay on The Oversoul. The following jumps off the page and enters into my contemplation: We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE. And from his essay Compensation he says: I contrast this to a grouping of articles written in this month’s issue of Vanity Fair reviewing the culture of the past hundred years by decade. In essence, each contributing writer mentioned the good and the bad of the ten year span. Bill Maher said of the 2000’s “We gained Facebook. Like....

Investigating Ghosts in Bisbee, Arizona

My life is really busy right now. One task after the next, each one I love, there are just so many of them. I feel like the lady in the shoe who had so many children, she didn’t know what to do! Only my children are tasks. Panting and checking off my to-do list, I look up at my computer screen to see an advertisement for a paranormal “ghost” investigation with famed psychic, Chip Coffey. Without processing the impact upon my schedule, I pick up the phone, dialed my writing partner, Ann, and we both sign up in record time. Within a week we were off to Bisbee, Arizona. Bisbee, Arizona is a mining town, although mining is limited nowadays. In its hey day of 1885 through 1920, the town had upward of 30,000, out populating Phoenix (population 1,000) and Tucson (population 2,000) boasting 47 saloons and a lively town life. Today the population is about 6,000 and it has become a local fascination as the town...