The +10 Mortal Combat Pelvic Girdle

To take wing

I must detach from this leaf

I will never feel the wind in my hair

if I don’t lift off

(And it has been a Miracle)

The big-girl panties —

Forget that

I am wearing the +10 Mortal Combat Pelvic Girdle

There is nothing else that God needs to do

to prove to me that

I AM LOVED!

And now that I know

I completely release All into God’s hands

and away from my focus

I embrace the middle way

The true authentic Loved Ones

are waiting in the wings to be unleashed

in Love

into my Life

I take and accept my Wholeness

Finally

The Bigger steps will be directed

by God in perfect timing

Only Trust and Love

Do You Love?

The

consciousness

you have is what

you take with you when

you go — Better do more

than say magic words and

perform praise-worthy actions.

Is your heart (spirit) overriding your Ego (flesh)?

Do you want to reach heaven (Kingdom of God Living)

 here hard enough to do the spiritual practice that brings growth?

Do you care for yourself richly while denying needy desires?

Do you realize that this may be your last

day here to show love to others?

Do you love a peaceful moment?

Will you share

the animation of your

passion for Life?

Do you

Love?

God Popped the Question

God Popped the Question

and I said

Yes

Yes to loving the elderly

Yes to honoring the wise ones

Yes to cautious connection

Yes to joy with abandon

Yes to sending care

Yes to prayer

Yes to vulnerability

Yes to layers of fragility

Yes to truth to power

Yes to a quiet hour

Yes to you

Yes to me

Yes to everything collective we will be

God Popped the Question

and I said

Hell, yah!

Unafraid

Life is much sweeter

when the step right in front of your face

is a set of cracked lines in the road

from which

below

could be a hollow

sinkhole

And yet

appreciating the patterns made

you walk

studying the graininess

unafraid

Artificial, Perfect Children

My son recently got the part of Buonragazzo in a local production of Disney’s “My Son Pinocchio”.  It’s a great part, and he is very funny in it. He plays a brilliant scientist who creates artificial children who never do anything wrong. These children beg to take the trash out at their friend’s houses, and insist that their friends choose the games that they will play. They are the model of the fruit of the spirit, a kind of a pre-snake version of Adam and Eve.

This reminds me of a time in my own life when I was raising my oldest son. He was dealing with some difficult challenges, and I thought that at least some of the problems we  were all going through were due to the Public School system. Indeed, there were some aspects of it that didn’t meet his needs. As a result, we decided to home school him from 7th grade on.

Things at home would be as great as I possibly could make them. The house would be clean all the time, I would spend a lot of individual time with him going through his studies; what I didn’t know, we would find out together. I can honestly say that for a time it was very much like that.

I realize now though, that some of the families that I gravitated toward  seemed pretty perfect to me, or I thought it seemed that perfection was expected. Everything was on a much higher level; my thoughts were that people in those families might be really creating perfect children.  In a sense, I thought that I should mold my children into my idea of perfection. I’m afraid I was one of those people.

In the musical, Gepetto seeks for control, perfection, and appearances. He wants good reputation above real life. He desires that Pinocchio be a glorified version of himself, and for Pinocchio to act, do, and become an idealized version of the perfect child. As we know, that doesn’t work out so well. Pinocchio rebels, makes a donkey of himself, and Gepetto comes to the realization that he is as imperfect as all the parents that he judged to be unworthy of parenthood. He arrives at an understanding of his own faults and failings. It is only then that Pinocchio and Gepetto build a relationship worthy of true father and sonship.

Although my home-schooling days are all but over, I’ve learned a great deal. There are no perfect children. There are no perfect parents. Realistically, there are no perfect educational choices. Each person is an individual. Children, if they are lucky, will eventually be who they are. Love is beyond the boundaries of expectations.

All great spiritual teachers

All great spiritual teachers

Give something up.

They know that the only way

To free up something better

Is to die to the old way.

The Will of God

In The Will of God, Leslie D. Weatherhead, clarifies three distinctions of God’s will. One is the intentional will of God; the next is the circumstantial will, and the last is the ultimate will of God.  This represents a sort of trinity aspect of God’s will that allows one to potentially better understand the love of God and His response (or seeming lack of one) via our life experiences.

“So we concentrate on the first and think of the will of God in the sense of his ideal intention. To accomplish that, one of the first things we must do is to dissociate from the phrase ‘the will of God’ all that is evil and unpleasant and unhappy.”  This makes a great deal of heart sense. Although life is difficult at times, and there is a great deal to learn in going through difficulty, God’s first intention is that we live abundant, full lives of joy.

The Buddhist way of acknowledging suffering, so as to give it room to leave, and the desire to overcome suffering, resonates with this idea. This is not meant to compare the merit of ideologies, but to address the commonalities here. For Buddhists, it is the dharma, or as was explained to me, the phenomena in our lives and how we relate to it in such a way as to help relieve our own suffering.  This, at least in part, is a  philosophy which implies that the will of God  (the way) is not in sync with the idea of our hells being equivalent to God’s heaven.

As I and friends of mine come to terms with a tragic situation, a death of a man loved by our church community, I am reading this book. I felt the urge early this morning to find it and it now seems timely to me… The Will of God is a book that came from my father’s personal library.  I awoke thinking about “My Father’s Folder,” and then the thought about this book came to mind, and I at once got up and began to look for it, like a woman looking for a lost coin.

I think there is much more to be gleaned from it, and I will be writing more soon about my thoughts on the understanding conveyed within it. At times like these, a new study of an old idea, such as the facets of God’s will and our best attempts to comprehend them, can be helpful in healing a hurting people in need.

Resiliency

I smacked down

that fly

off of my monitor

It lay on its back

It grabbed my mouse cord

As I indifferently moved the mouse

It let itself be upright

I tried to scoop it up on a card

Instead it flew away

I saw it on the curtain

Opening the door

I shooed it over

It followed my coaxing

I opened the screen door

and away it flew

Make my spirit like that!

There are no Idols

 

 

 

There are no idols

No person can come between me

and my Lord

Anyone who seems that important to me

has been placed by me

in that position

wrongly

Anyone who

by leaving

can make my world feel crushed

has been placed too highly

in my heart

There are no idols

No person can come between me

and my Lord

Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box (Arbinger Institute)

My book review

Weight, State, Negotiate

“Getting out of the box” is one of those expressions that has become cliche  —  this book was originally published in 2000, so if the title seems a little dated, don’t let that bother you.  The advice contained therein is timeless and useful.

I originally ordered this book on Kindle after I finished directing our week-long music camp.  I learned a lot during that week and subsequently, I decided that it would be good for me to brush up on assertiveness, or something that would help me to ascertain the best way to “pick my battles”.

After reading and listening to portions of the book, I realized that the “battle” mentality is a part of my problem.  Once again, boundary setting without losing the caring is the theme of the day. This book presents it in story mode, which allows one to get lost in the narrative, experience the dialogue…

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